THE SHIPWRECK OF WILLIAM, SON OF HENRY I. (1120).
Source.—William of Malmesbury, De gestis regum Anglorum, ed. Stubbs, vol. ii., p. 495. (Rolls Series.)
By Matilda king Henry had a son named William, trained and destined to the succession with tender hopes and great anxiety; he was hardly twelve years old before all freemen of England and Normandy, of every condition and rank, to what lords soever they owed fealty, were compelled to become his men by homage and oaths. As a boy he espoused and took to wife the daughter of Fulk count of Anjou, herself but a girl, receiving from his father-in-law the county of Maine for her dower; moreover, when Fulk was bent on his journey to Jerusalem, he commended his county to the king, if he should live, to go to his son-in-law if he should not return. Many countries, therefore, awaited the boy’s governance, and it was thought that he would fulfil the prophecy of king Edward, and it was said that the hope of England, cut down like a tree, would burst again into flower in his person, put forth fruit, and so might an end of evil be looked for. God willed otherwise. This hope was shattered, for he was destined to an untimely end. It happened that by the exertions of his father-in-law, and of Theobald son of Stephen and Adela his aunt, Louis king of France granted the lad Normandy, that after homage done he might hold it by lawful right; this was planned and brought to effect by the astuteness of his father, that the homage, which he disdained to do himself by reason of his high sovereignty, might be done by a tender child, who, it was supposed, was unlikely to live. The negotiations and peaceable settlement of these schemes occupied the king for a space of four years, during the whole of which he stayed in Normandy. And yet the peace, so brilliant, so carefully devised, and the hopes of all men, raised so high, were brought to confusion by the uncertainty of man’s lot. It was decided to return to England, and on the evening of the 24th of November the king set sail at Barfleur; a fair breeze filled his sails and brought him safe to his realm and noble heritage. But the young man, now seventeen years of age and a little more, endowed by his father’s bounty with every honour except the name of king, ordered another ship to be made ready for himself; and almost all the young nobility, sharing with him the pleasures of youth, flocked in his train. The sailors had drunk too freely, and the drink excited their seaman’s enthusiasm; they swore that those who had started first must speedily be left astern; for the ship was excellent and fresh-fitted with new planks and rivets. The night was now dark, when the young and inexperienced band, overcome with drink, pushed out from the shore. The ship flew swifter than the winged arrow, and cutting through the curling billows, by the crew’s drunken carelessness struck on a rock rising out of the sea not far from the shore. The wretched men jumped up and shouting wildly strove long to push the ship off the rock with their iron boat-hooks; but fortune was against them and all their efforts were useless. The oars also were dragged against the rock and snapped, and the forepart hung jambed and shattered; and now some were washed overboard, and others were drowned by the inrushing water, when the ship’s boat was at length pushed off, and the king’s son put in it; he could have reached the shore in safety, had not his sister, the countess of Perche, struggling with death in the larger vessel, with shrieks implored her brother’s help, and begged him not to abandon her so cruelly. He was moved with pity, ordered the skiff to be brought close to the ship to rescue his sister, and thus through tenderness of heart pitifully met his death; for at once a crowd of men jumped into the boat and upset it, and all alike sank to the bottom. Only one man, a rustic, escaped, and by clinging to the mast all night lived to tell the whole tragic story the next day. No ship ever brought on England misery so great, no ship was so notorious throughout the world. With William perished also Richard, another son of the king, the child of a woman without rank, born before his accession to the throne, a young man of excellent parts and dear to his father for his devoted service; also Richard earl of Chester and his brother Otwell, the tutor and guardian of the king’s son; also the king’s daughter, the countess of Perche, and his niece, the sister of Theobald, countess of Chester; and indeed almost the whole flower of the court, whether knight or chaplain, and the sons of the nobility in training for knighthood; for, as I have said, they flocked to him from all sides, hoping to gain no small glory from either amusing or serving the son of the king. The disaster was increased by the difficulty of recovering their bodies, which could not easily be found by the searchers scattered along the coast; their noble limbs became food for the cruel monsters of the deep.
The news of the prince’s death caused remarkable changes. His father abandoned the celibacy observed by him after Matilda’s death, scheming to beget heirs from a new queen. His father-in-law, on the other hand, on his return home from Jerusalem, faithlessly joined the party of William, son of Robert duke of Normandy, giving to him in marriage his second daughter and the county of Maine, his wrath being roused and sharpened against the king for keeping the dowry of his daughter in England after the prince’s death.