Rebellion of William's son Robert.
Some few years after the abortive rising of Ralf and Roger, the king found worse enemies in his own household. His eldest son and heir, Robert, began to importune him to grant him some of his lands to rule, and begged for the duchy of Normandy. But William was wroth, and drove him away with words of sarcastic reproof. The headstrong young man fled from his father's court and took refuge with Philip, the French king, William's nominal suzerain. Supported by money and men from France, Robert made war upon his father, and defeated him at the fight of Gerberoi (1079). Both father and son rode in the forefront of the battle. They met without knowing each other, and William was unhorsed and wounded by his son's lance. Only the courage of an English thegn, Tokig of Wallingford, who gave his horse to his fallen master, and received a mortal wound while helping him to make off, saved William from death. It must be added that Robert was deeply moved when he learnt how near he had been to slaying his own father, and then he immediately after sought pardon, and received it. But he had lost the first place in the king's heart, which was given to his second son William, whose fidelity was always unshaken. Robert was not the only kinsman of the Conqueror who justly incurred his wrath. His brother Bishop Odo angered him sorely by his cruel and oppressive treatment of Northumbria, and still more by raising a private army to make war over-seas; William seized him and kept him shut up in prison as long as he lived.
Threatened Danish invasion.
Disputes with foreign powers also arose to vex William's later years. In 1084, Cnut, King of Denmark, threatened to invade the island, and such a heavy Danegelt was raised to pay the mercenary army which the king levied against him, that it is said that no such grievous tax had ever before been raised in England. Yet Cnut never came, being slain by his own people ere he sailed. Less threatening, but more perpetually troublesome than the danger of a Danish invasion, were William's broils with Philip of France, who even in time of peace was always stirring up strife. But Philip, though nominally ruler of all France, was practically too weak to cope with William, since his authority was quietly disregarded by most of the counts and dukes who owned him as liege lord.
Domesday Book.
It was probably the difficulty that had been found in raising men and money to resist the expected Danish invasion of 1084, that led William to order the compilation of the celebrated Domesday Book in 1085. This great statistical account of the condition of England was drawn up by commissioners sent down into every shire to make inquiry into its resources, population, and ownership. Therein was set down the name of every landholder, with the valuation of his manors, and an account of the service and money due from him to the king. It did not give merely a rent-roll of the estates, but a complete enumeration of the population, divided up by status into tenants-in-chief of the crown, sub-tenants who held under these greater landowners, burgesses of towns, free "sokmen," villeins, and serfs of lower degrees. Under each manor was given not only the name of its present holder and its actual value, but also a notice of its proprietor in the time of King Edward the Confessor, and of its value at Edward's death. This enables us to form an exact estimate of the change in the ownership of the lands of England brought about by the Conquest. We see that of the great English earls and magnates not a single one survived; all their lands had been confiscated and given away at one time or another. Of the thegns of lower degree some still retained their land, and had become the king's tenants-in-chief; many had sunk into sub-tenants of a Norman baron, instead of holding their estate directly from the crown; but still more had lost their heritage altogether. In some counties, especially in the south-east, where the whole thegnhood had fallen at Hastings, hardly a single English proprietor survived . In others, such for example as Wiltshire or Nottingham, a large proportion of the old owners remained; but, on the whole, we gather that three-quarters of the acreage of England must have changed masters between 1066 and 1085. We discover also that while some parts of England had suffered little in material prosperity from the troublous times of the Conquest, others had been completely ruined. Yorkshire shows the worst record, a result of William's cruel harrying of the land in 1070; manor after manor is recorded as "waste," and the whole county shows a population less by far than that of the small shire of Berks.
The great Moot of Salisbury.
Having ascertained by the completion of Domesday Book the exact names, status, and obligations of all the landholders of England, William used his knowledge to bid them all come to the Great Moot of Salisbury in 1086, where every landed proprietor, whether tenant-in-chief or sub-tenant, did personal homage to the king, and swore to follow him in all wars, even against his own feudal superior if need should so arise.
Death of William.
Two years after the compilation of the Domesday survey, and one year after the Great Oath of Salisbury, the troubled and busy reign of William came to an end. The king died, as he had lived, amid the alarms of war. He was always at odds with his suzerain, the King of France, since Philip had done him the evil turn of encouraging the rebellion of his son Robert. In 1087, William was lying ill at Rouen, when the report of a coarse jest that Philip had made on his increasing corpulence raised him in wrath from his sick-bed. He headed in person a raid into France, and sacked the town of Mantes, but while he watched his men burn the place, the king came to deadly harm. His horse, singed by a blazing beam, reared and plunged so that William received severe internal injuries from being thrown against the high pommel of his saddle. He was borne back to Rouen, and died there, deserted by well-nigh all his knights and attendants, who had rushed off in haste when they saw his death draw near. Even his burial was unseemly: when his corpse was borne to the abbey at Caen, which he had founded, a certain knight withstood the funeral procession, crying that the ground where the abbey stood had been forcibly taken from him by the king. Nor would he depart till the estimated value of the land had been paid over to him.