FUNERAL OF WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR.
The death of William, almost every reader knows, was occasioned by a hurt in the belly from the pummel of his saddle, while reducing the town of Mantes to ashes, at Rouen on Sep. 9, 1086, in the 63rd year of his age and 21st of his reign.
The king's decease was the signal for general consternation throughout the metropolis of Normandy. The citizens, panic struck, ran to and fro as if intoxicated, or as if the town were upon the point of being taken by assault. Each asked counsel of his neighbour, and each anxiously turned his thoughts to the concealing of his property. When the alarm had in some measure subsided, the monks and clergy made a solemn procession to the abbey of St. George, where they offered their prayers for the repose of the soul of the departed duke: and Archbishop William commanded that the body should be carried to Caen, to be interred in the church of St. Stephen, which William had founded. But the lifeless king was now deserted by all who had participated in his bounty. Every one of his brethren and relations had left him; nor was there even a servant to be found to perform the last offices to his departed lord. The care of the obsequies was finally undertaken by Herluin, a knight of that district, who, moved by the love of God and the honour of his nation, provided at his own expense, embalmers and bearers, and a hearse, and conveyed the corpse to the Seine, whence it was carried by land and water to the place of its destination.
Upon the arrival of the funeral train at Caen, it was met by Gislebert, bishop of Evreux, then abbot of St. Stephen's, at the head of his monks, attended by a numerous throng of clergy and laity; but scarcely had the bier been brought within the gates, when the report was spread that a dreadful fire had broken out in another part of the town, and the duke's remains were a second time deserted. The monks alone remained; and, fearful and resolute, they bore their founder "with candle, with book, and with knell," to his last home. Ordericus Vitalis enumerates the principal prelates and barons assembled upon this occasion; but he makes no mention of the Conqueror's son Henry, who, according to William of Jumieges, was the only one worthy of succeeding such a father. Mass had now been performed, and the body was about to be committed to the ground, "ashes to ashes, dust to dust," when, previously to this closing part of the ceremony, Gislebert mounted the pulpit, and delivered an ovation in honour of the deceased. He praised his valour, which had so widely extended the limits of the Norman dominion; his ability, which had elevated the nation to the highest pitch of glory; his equity in the administration of justice; his firmness in correcting abuses; and his liberality towards the monks and clergy; then finally addressing the people, he besought them to intercede with the Almighty for the soul of their prince. At this moment, one Asselin, an obscure individual, starting from the crowd, exclaimed with a loud voice, "the ground upon which you are standing was the site of my father's dwelling. This man, for whom you ask our prayers, took it by force from my parent; by violence he seized, by violence he retained it; and, contrary to all law and justice, he built upon it this church, wherein we are assembled. Publicly, therefore, in the sight of God and man, do I claim my inheritance, and protest against the body of the plunderer being covered with my turf." The appeal was attended with instant effect: bishops and nobles united in their entreaties with Asselin; they admitted the justice of his claim; they pacified him; they paid him sixty shillings on the spot by way of recompense for the place of sepulture; and, finally, they satisfied him for the rest of the land.
But the remarkable incidents doomed to attend upon this burial were not yet at an end; for at the time when they were laying the corpse in the sarcophagus, and were bending it with some force, which they were compelled to do, in consequence of the coffin having been made too short, the body, which was extremely corpulent, burst, and so intolerable a stench issued from the grave, that all the perfumes which arose from all the censers of the priests and acolytes were of no avail; and the rites were concluded in haste, and the assembly, struck with horror, returned to their homes.
The latter part of this story accords but ill with what De Bourgueville relates. We learn from this author, that four hundred and thirty years subsequent to the death of the Conqueror, a Roman cardinal, attended by an archbishop and bishop, visited the town of Caen, and that his eminence having expressed a wish to see the body of the duke, the monks yielded to his curiosity, the tomb was opened, and the corpse discovered in so perfect a state that the cardinal caused a portrait to be taken from the lifeless features. It is not worth while now to inquire into the truth of this story, or the fidelity of the resemblance. The painting has disappeared in the course of time: it hung for awhile against the walls of the church, opposite to the monument, but it was stolen during the tumults caused by the Huguenots, and was broken into two pieces, in which state De Bourgueville saw it a few years afterwards, in the hands of a Calvinist, one Peter Hode, the gaoler at Caen, who used it in the double capacity of a table and a door. The worthy magistrate states, that he kept the picture, "because the abbey-church was demolished."
He was himself present at the second violation of the royal tomb, in 1572; and he gives a piteous account of the transaction. The monument raised to the memory of the Conqueror, by his son. William Rufus, under the superintendance of Lanfrane, was a production of much costly and elaborate workmanship; the shrine, which was placed upon the mausoleum, glittered with gold and silver and precious stones. To complete the whole, the effigy of the king had been added to the tomb at some period subsequent to its original erection. A monument like this naturally excited the rapacity of a lawless banditti, unrestrained by civil or military force, and inveterate against every thing that might be regarded as connected with the Catholic worship. The Calvinists were masters of Caen, and, incited by the information of what had taken place at Rouen, they resolved to repeat the same outrages. Under the specious pretext of abolishing idolatrous worship, they pillaged and ransacked every church and monastery: they broke the windows and organs, destroyed the images, stole the ecclesiastical ornaments, sold the shrines, committed pulpits, chests, books, and whatever was combustible, to the fire; and finally, after having wreaked their vengeance upon every thing that could be made the object of it, they went boldly to the town-hall to demand the wages for their labours. In the course of these outrages the tomb of the Conqueror at one abbey and that of Matilda, his queen, at the other, were demolished. And this was not enough; but a few days afterwards, the same band returned, allured by the hopes of farther plunder. They dug up the coffin: the hollow stone rang to the strokes of their daggers: the vibration proved that it was not filled by the corpse, and nothing more was wanting to seal its destruction.
De Bourgueville, who went to the spot and exerted his eloquence to check this last act of violence, witnessed the opening of the coffin. It contained the bones of the king, wrapped up in red taffety, and still in tolerable preservation; but nothing else. He collected them with care, and consigned them to one of the monks of the abbey, who kept them in his chamber, till the Admiral de Chatillon entered Caen at the head of his mercenaries, on which occasion the whole abbey was plundered, and the monks put to flight, and the bones lost. "Sad doings these," says De Bourgueville, "et bien peu réformez!" He adds that one of the thigh-bones was preserved by the Viscount of Falaise, who was there with him, and begged it from the rioters, and that this bone was longer by four fingers' breadth than that of a tall man. The bone thus preserved, was reinterred, after the cessation of the troubles: it is the same that is alluded to in the inscription, which also informs us that a monument was raised over it in 1642, but was removed in 1742, it being then considered as an incumbrance in the choir.
The melancholy end of the Conqueror, the strange occurrences at his interment, the violation of his grave, the dispersion of his remains, and the demolition and final removal of his monument, are circumstances calculated to excite melancholy emotions in the mind of every one, whatever his condition in life. In all these events, the religious man traces the hand of retributive justice; the philosopher regards the nullity of sublunary grandeur; the historian finds matter for serious reflection; the poet for affecting narrative; and the moralist for his tale.
J.R.S.