The Reign of William Rufus and the Accession of Henry the First, Volume 1 (of 2)

by Edward A. Freeman

INTRODUCTION.

Character of the reign of William Rufus.

THE reign of the second Norman king is a period of English history which may well claim a more special and minute examination than could be given to it when it took its place merely as one of the later stages in the history of the Norman Conquest, after the great work of the Conquest itself was done. There is indeed a point of view in which the first years of the reign of William the Red may be looked on as something more than one of the later stages of the Conquest. The Norman Conquest in one sense completed, in another undone. They may be looked on, almost at pleasure, either as the last stage of the Conquest or as the reversal of the Conquest. We may give either name to a struggle in which a Norman king, the son of the Norman Conqueror, was established on the English throne by warfare which, simply as warfare, was a distinct victory won by Englishmen over Normans on English soil. The truest aspect of that warfare was that the Norman Conquest of England was completed by English hands. But, in so saying, we must understand by the Norman Conquest of England all that is implied in that name to its fullest extent. When Englishmen, by armed support of a Norman king, accepted the fact of the Norman Conquest, they in some measure changed its nature. In the act of completing the Conquest, they in some sort undid it. If we hold that the end of the Conquest came in the days of Rufus, in the days of Feudal developement under Rufus and Flambard.Rufus also came the beginnings of the later effects of the Conquest. The reign of William the Red, the administration of Randolf Flambard, was, above all others, the time when the feudal side, so to speak, of the Conquest put on a systematic shape. The King and his minister put into regular working, if they did not write down in a regular code, those usages which under the Conqueror were still merely tendencies irregularly at work, but which, at the accession of Henry the First, had already grown into abuses which needed redress. Growth of anti-feudal tendencies.But, on the other hand, it was equally the time when the anti-feudal tendencies of the Conquest, the causes and the effects of the great law of Salisbury,[1] showed how firmly they had taken root. The reign of Rufus laid down the two principles, that, in the kingdom of England, no man should be stronger than the king,[2] but that the king should hold his strength only by making himself the head of the state and of the people. As a stage then in the history of the Conquest and its results, as a stage in the general constitutional history of England, the thirteen years of the reign of Rufus form a period of the highest interest and importance.

Extension of the power of England at home. But those years are a time of no less interest and importance, if we look at them with regard to the general position of England in the world. Within our own island, the reign of William the Red was marked by a great practical extension of the power of England on the Welsh marches. Wales;On another side it was marked yet more distinctly by an enlargement of the kingdom itself, by the settlement of the north-western frontier, by the winning for England of a new land, and by the restoration of a fallen city as the bulwark of the new Carlisle.boundary. What the daughter of Ælfred was at Chester, the son of the Conqueror was at Carlisle. Beyond the sea, we mark the beginnings of a state of things which has ceased only within our own memories. Beginning of rivalry between England and France.
Wealth of England.The rivalry between France and Normandy grows, now that England is ruled by Norman kings, into a rivalry between France and England. In will, if not in deed, the reign of Rufus forestalls the reigns of Edward the Third and Henry the Fifth. It sets England before us in a character which she kept through so many ages, the character of the wealthy land which could work with gold as well as with steel, the land whence subsidies might be looked for to flow into the less well-filled coffers of the princes of the mainland.Change in the European position of England. In the reign of Rufus we see England holding an European position wholly different from what she had held in earlier days. She passes in some sort from the world of the North into the world of the West. That change was the work of the Conqueror; but it is under his son that we see its full nature and meaning. The new place which England now holds is seen to be one which came to her wholly through her connexion with Normandy; it is no less seen to be one which she has learned to hold in her own name and by her own strength.

And, if we pass from the domain of political history into the domain of personal character and personal incident, we shall find few periods of the same length richer in both.Personal character of William Rufus. The character of William Rufus himself, repulsive as from many points it is, is yet a strange and instructive study of human nature. The mere fact that no prince ever made a deeper personal impression on the minds of the men of his own age, the crowd of personal anecdotes and personal sayings which, whether true or false, bear witness to the depth of that impression, all invite us to a nearer study of the man of whom those who lived in his own day found so much to tell, and so much which at first sight seems strange and contradictory. William Rufus stands before us as the first representative of a new ideal, a new standard. Our earlier experiences, English and Norman, have hardly prepared us for the special place taken by the king who has some claim to rank as the first distinctly recorded example of the new character of knight and gentleman. In the company of the Red King we are introduced to a new line of thought, a new way of looking at things, of which in an earlier generation we see hardly stronger signs in Normandy than we see in England. For good and for evil, if William Rufus bears the mark of his age, he also leaves his mark on his age. His own marked personality in some sort entitles him to be surrounded, to be withstood, by men whose personality is also clearly marked. His companions and adversaries.A circle of well-defined portraits, friends and enemies, ministers and rivals, gathers around him. Among them two forms stand out before all.Anselm and Helias. The holy Anselm at home, the valiant Helias beyond the sea, are the men with whom Rufus has to strive. And the saint of Aosta, the hero of La Flèche, are men who of themselves are enough to draw our thoughts to the times and the lands in which they lived. Each, in his own widely different way, stands forth as the representative of right in the face of a power of evil which we still feel to be not wholly evil. All light is not put out, all better feelings are not trampled out of being, when evil stands in any way abashed before the presence of good.

Rufus and England. Looked at simply as a tale, the tale of Rufus and Anselm, the tale of Rufus and Helias, is worth the telling. But better worth telling still is the tale of Rufus and England.The last warfare of Normans and English. The struggle which kept the crown for Rufus, the last armed struggle between Englishmen and Normans on English ground, the fight of Pevensey and the siege of Rochester, form a stirring portion of our annals, a portion whose interest yields only to that of a few great days like the days of Senlac and of Lewes. But the really great tale is after all that which is more silent and hidden. Results of the struggle.This was above all things the time when the Norman Conquest took root, as something which at once established the Norman power in England, and which ruled that the Norman power should step by step change into an English power. The great fact of Rufus’ day is that Englishmen won the crown of England for a Norman king in fight against rebellious Normans.The Conquest accepted and modified. On that day the fact of the Conquest was fully acknowledged; it became something which, as to its immediate outward effects, there was no longer any thought of undoing. The house of the Conqueror was to be the royal house; there were to be no more revolts on behalf of the heir of Cerdic, no more messages sent to invite the heir of Cnut. And with the kingship of the Norman all was accepted which was immediately implied in the kingship of the Norman.The Norman kingship becomes English. But on that day it was further ruled that the kingship of the Norman was to change into an English kingship. It became such in some sort even under Rufus himself, when the King of England went forth to subdue Normandy, to threaten France, to dream at least, as a link between Civilis and Buonaparte, of an empire of the Gauls.[3] Effects of the French War.The success of the attempt, the accomplishment of the dream, would have been the very overthrow of English nationality; the mere attempt, the mere dream, helped, if not to strengthen English nationality, at least to strengthen the national position of England. But these years helped too, in a more silent way, if not to change the Norman rule at home into an English rule, at least to make things ready for the coming of the king who was really to do the work. It was perhaps in the long run not the least gain of the reign of William the Red that it left for Henry the Clerk, not only much to do, but also something directly to undo.

Scheme of the work.In a former volume we traced the history of the Conqueror in great detail to his death-bed and his burial. In another volume we followed, with a more hasty course, the main features of the reign of William Rufus, looked at specially as bearing on the history of the Conquest and the mutual relations of English and Normans. We will now again take up the thread of our detailed story at the bed-side of the dying Conqueror, and thence trace the history of his successor, from his first nomination by his father’s dying voice to his unhallowed burial in the Old Minster of Winchester. And thence, though the tale of Rufus himself is over, it may be well to carry on the tale of England through the struggle which ruled for the second time that England should not be the realm of the Conqueror’s eldest son, and, as such, an appendage to his Norman duchy. The accession of Henry is essentially a part of the same tale as the accession of Rufus. The points of likeness in the two stories are striking indeed, reaching in some cases almost to a repetition of the same events. But the points of unlikeness are yet more striking and instructive. And it is from them that we learn how much the reign of Rufus had done alike towards completing the Norman Conquest and towards undoing it.