“Nec vero fuit qui persequeretur, illis conniventibus, istis miserantibus, omnibus postremo alia molientibus; pars receptacula sua munire, pars furtivas prædas agere, pars regem novum jamjamque circumspicere. Pauci rusticanorum cadaver, in rheda caballaria compositum, Wintoniam in episcopatum devexere, cruore undatim per totam viam stillante. Ibi infra ambitum turris, multorum procerum conventu, paucorum planctu, terræ traditum.”
Orderic (782 D) tells very much the same story;
“Mortuo rege, plures optimatum ad lares suos de saltu manicaverunt, et contra futuras motiones quas timebant res suas ordinaverunt. Clientuli quidem cruentatum regem vilibus utcunque pannis operuerunt, et veluti ferocem aprum, venabulis confossum, de saltu ad urbem Guentanam detulerunt. Clerici autem et monachi atque cives, duntaxat egeni, cum viduis et mendicis, obviam processerunt, et pro reverentia regiæ dignitatis in veteri monasterio Sancti Petri celeriter tumulaverunt.”
The words of William of Malmesbury, it will be noticed, are quite general. They do not assert the usual religious ceremony, but neither do they exclude it. It is Orderic who in a marked way asserts the popular excommunication. His words are;
“Porro ecclesiastici doctores et prælati, sordidam ejus vitam et tetrum finem considerantes, tunc judicare ausi sunt, et ecclesiastica, veluti biothanatum, absolutione indignum censuerunt, quem vitales auras carpentem salubriter a nequitiis castigare nequiverunt. Signa etiam pro illo in quibusdam ecclesiis non sonuerunt, quæ pro infimis pauperibus et mulierculis crebro diutissime pulsata sunt. De ingenti ærario, ubi plures nummorum acervi de laboribus miserorum congesti sunt, eleemosynæ pro anima cupidi quondam possessoris nullæ inopibus erogatæ sunt.”
Here is no contradiction; only Orderic asserts a very remarkable feature in the case of which William takes no notice. To me it seems more likely that William of Malmesbury, whose business it clearly was (see above, [p. 491]) to make out as good a case for William Rufus as he could without asserting anything positively false, should leave out a circumstance which told so much against the King, than that Orderic, or those from whom he heard the story, should invent or imagine it. On the other hand, the very fact that the story of the popular excommunication is so very striking and solemn and in every way befitting does make us tremble the least bit in admitting it as a piece of authentic history.
We must not however forget that William of Malmesbury in a later passage (v. 393) does seem to imply that the burial of Rufus was accompanied by the ordinary ceremonies. In recording the election of Henry, he says that it happened “post justa funeri regio persoluta.” But it may fairly be doubted whether an obiter dictum of this kind is entitled to the same weight which would undoubtedly have belonged to a direct statement in his regular narrative. The words are, after all, somewhat vague, and if we compare this passage in William of Malmesbury with the entry in the Chronicle, it sounds very much as if it were merely a translation in a grander style of the simple words “syðþan he bebyrged wæs.” The same feeling as that which is expressed in Orderic’s account comes out in a singular passage of the Saxon Annalist (Pertz, vi. 733); “Willehelmus rex de Anglia sagitta interfectus est. Heinricus vero frater ejus in eodem loco pro remedio animi sui volens monasterium constituere, prohibitus est. Apparuit enim ei, et duo dracones ferentes eum, dicens, nichil sibi prodesse, eo quod suis temporibus omnia destructa essent, quæ antecessores sui in honorem Domini construxerant.”
I suppose that there need be no difficulty about the “clientuli” of Orderic as compared with the “rusticani” of William, though the word “clientuli” by itself might rather have suggested some of the King’s inferior followers. But one is amazed to find Sir Francis Palgrave (iv. 686, 687) telling us the name of the churl who brought in the body, “a neighbouring charcoal-burner, Purkis.” And he goes on to say;
“We are not told that Purkis received any reward or thanks for his care. His family still subsists in the neighbourhood, nor have they risen above their original station, poor craftsmen or cottagers. They followed the calling of coal-burners until a recent period; and they tell us that the wheel of the Cart which conveyed the neglected corpse was shown by them until the last century.”
I have often heard of this local legend about Purkis, but really so palpable a fiction ought not to have found its way into the pages of a scholar like Sir Francis Palgrave. There are some stories which need no argument against them, but which the evidence of nomenclature at once upsets. Purkis is on the face of him as mythical as Crocker and Crewis and Copleston—I am not sure whether I have remembered the first two names right, and it is not worth turning to any book to see. By the way in which the story is told, one would fancy that Purkis is meant for a surname, and it may be that those who believe in him think that he was baptized John or Thomas. In inventing legends it is at least better to invent legends which are possible. If any one chooses to say that the cart was driven by Godwine or Æthelstan, we cannot say that it was not.