Was the bidding of William Rufus actually carried out in this matter? Did Bishop Hildebert pull down the towers or not? Unluckily Orderic tells us nothing about the story, and the language of the Biographer seems to me to be purposely obscure.
Hildebert himself mentions the matter in a passage which I quoted in the text ([p. 298]), in which he complains of the horrors of a voyage to England. He says (Duchèsne, iv. 248);
“Longum est enarrare quam constanti tyrannide rex Anglicus in nos sævierit, qui, temperantia regis abjecta, decreverit non prius pontifici parendum quam pontificem compelleret in sacrilegium. Quia etenim turres ecclesiæ nostræ dejicere nolumus,” &c.
One can make no certain inference from this, except that Hildebert was not disposed to pull down the towers when he wrote the letter, seemingly in England. The Biographer is fuller. I have quoted (see [p. 298]) the passages which describe the commands and offers of Rufus; we then read;
“Verumtamen Hildebertus magnis undique coartabatur angustiis, quia sibi et de regis offensione periculum, et de turris destructione sibi et ecclesiæ suæ imminere grande prævidebat opprobrium: propter quod a rege dilationem petebat, donec super his consilium accepisset. Qua vix impetrata, cernens sibi nequaquam esse utile in illis regionibus diutius immorari, breviter ad suam reversus est ecclesiam…. Interea præsul de præcepto regis vehementer anxius, de urbis incendio, de domorum et omnium rerum suarum destructione, de civium expulsione; primo tamen de clericorum, quos violentia regis ab urbe eliminaverat, dispersione, mæstissimus, Dei omnipotentis clementiam jugiter precabatur, ut ab ecclesia et populo sibi commisso iram indignationis suæ dignaretur avertere.”
He then goes on to tell how wonderfully God saved them all by the sudden death of Rufus and the final coming of Helias. But he does not directly say whether the towers were pulled down or not. His way of telling the story might suggest the thought that the towers were pulled down, but that he did not like to say so.
To my mind the appearances of the building look the same way. We have seen that the towers of Howel were clearly at the ends of the transepts. Of the single tower now standing at the end of the south transept, the lower part is of the twelfth century; most likely the work of William of Passavant (see above, [p. 636]). The ruined building at the end of the other transept has columns and capitals of a much earlier character, agreeing with the work of Howel. A base of the same early kind as the single pair of piers spoken of in the nave (see above, [p. 638]) may be the work of Howel; it may be either a relic of Arnold’s foundations or a scrap of something much earlier. It has been objected that this ruined building does not seem to have been a tower. And I must allow that it must have been a tower of a somewhat unusual kind. But the appearances are quite consistent with the notion of a transept with aisles, and with its main body ending in an engaged tower.
If these ruins are not the remains of one of Howel’s towers, his towers must have stood nearer to the body of the church than the existing southern tower stands, and the ruins to the north-west must belong to the episcopal palace or some other building. If this be so, something of the interest of the place is lost, but the argument seems almost stronger. It would have been nothing wonderful if the later rebuilding of the transepts had swept away all trace of the work of the eleventh and twelfth century, so that the fabric should in no way show whether any Romanesque towers were ever pulled down or ever built. But it is not so. We see that a late Romanesque tower was built to replace one of the towers of Howel, while the other, according to this view, has vanished without trace or successor. This would seem to point even more strongly than the other view to the belief that two towers were built, that both were pulled down, that afterwards one was rebuilt and the other not.
It is the business of the topographer of Le Mans rather than of the historian of William Rufus to settle what the remains at the end of the north transept are, if they are not the remains of Howel’s tower. But it may be noticed that Howel was a considerable builder or restorer in the adjoining palace (Vet. An. 298), and that the palace itself had a tower hard by the church. William of Passavant (Vet. An. 373) made certain arrangements about the three chapels of the palace—Saint David’s itself has only two—one of which is described as “tertia altior, quæ in turri sita ecclesiam cathedralem vicinius speculabatur.” In any case this group of buildings and ruins at the north-east corner of Saint Julian’s is one of the most striking to be found anywhere. There are these puzzling fragments of the days of the counts and bishops of our story; there is the mighty eastern limb of the present church, begun when Maine had passed away from all fellowship with Normandy and England, when Le Mans was the city of a Countess, widow of Richard, vassal of Philip. There is the northern transept, begun when Maine and Normandy were wholly swallowed up by France, finished at the very moment when Maine had again an English lord (Recherches, p. 122). And earlier than all, there is the Roman wall which the vast choir has overleaped, but which still remains outside the church. And, as if to bring together the earliest and the latest times, one of its bastions is strangely mixed up with work of an almost English character, which seems plainly to proclaim itself as belonging to the reign of Henry, Sixth of England and Second of France. Truly, setting aside exceptional spots like Rome and Athens, like Spalato and Trier and Ravenna, no city of Christendom is fuller of lessons, alike in art and in history, than the city of Helias, the birth-place of Henry Fitz-Empress.