But the central speech about a king being drowned is in much the same words as in the other riming versions;
“E li reis corajos e proz
Responeit e diseit a toz
C’unques n’aveit oï parler
De ré qui fust neiez en mer,
N’il ne sera jà li premiers.”
This writer does not mention Southampton, Touques, Barfleur, or any particular port.
The doctrine that kings were never drowned might seem to be contradicted by the popular interpretation of the fate of the Pharaoh of Exodus. But the text certainly does not imply that the Pharaoh himself was drowned. On the other hand, there is somewhere the story of an Irish king who, setting out with his fleet, was met by Noah’s flood—conceived seemingly as something like the bore in the Severn—and was drowned.
It is worth while comparing this story of William Rufus with the behaviour of our next king of the same name in a case somewhat like this, when he too was sailing from England to the land of his birth. When William the Third was in danger in an open boat off the isle of Goree, we read (Macaulay, Hist. Eng. iv. 2);
“The hardiest mariners showed signs of uneasiness. But William, through the whole night, was as composed as if he had been in the drawing-room at Kensington. ‘For shame,’ he said to one of the dismayed sailors: ‘are you afraid to die in my company?’”