Changes then had been great in east and west and north and south during the century which carries us from Otto the Wonder of the World and Basil the Slayer of the Bulgarians to what at first sight seems the lower level of Henry the Fourth and Alexios Komnênos. Change from Æthelred to William Rufus. And when in our own land the same space carries us from Æthelred to William Rufus, the gap seems wider still. And it was at least not the fault of William Rufus that the changes wrought by the eleventh century were not greater still. Æthelred, the man without rede, was not likely to change the face of the world, unless by passively supplying the means for Swegen and Cnut to change it. But William Rufus had no lack of rede of one kind, though it was perhaps of a kind which better deserved to be called unrede. But it was unrede of a more active kind than the unrede of Æthelred. Schemes of Rufus. William was eager enough to change the face of the world for his own behoof. To win, after a sort, the submission of Scotland and Maine, to plan the conquest of Ireland and France, to negotiate for the purchase of Aquitaine—here alone are far-reaching plans enough, plans which could not have been carried out without some large result on the history of mankind. That result could never have been the lasting establishment of that Empire of Gaul and Britain of which Rufus seems to have dreamed. But had his continental plans been successful, they might have led, as the marriage of Lewis and Eleanor in the next century might have led, to the formation of a kingdom of France in the modern sense some ages before its time.
Contradiction in William’s position. The strange thing is that a man who schemed so much, who filled so great a place in the eyes of his own generation, after all did so little. Almost more strange is the way in which he sees all his great plans utterly shattered, and yet seems to feel no shame, no discouragement, no shock to his belief in his own greatness. He comes back really defeated; he has twice won Le Mans, and that is all; but if he has won Le Mans, he cannot win Mayet. So far from winning Paris, he cannot win Chaumont. So far from reigning on the Garonne, he cannot keep even the frontier of the Loir. His defeats not counted defeats. But what would have been counted defeat in any one else does not seem to have been counted defeat in William Rufus. Beaten at all points but one, he still keeps the air of a conqueror; he still seems to be looked on as a conqueror by others. From the beginning to the end, there is a kind of glamour about the Red King and all that he does. He has a kind of sleight of hand which imposes on men’s minds; like the Athenian orator, when he is thrown in the wrestling-match, he makes those who saw his fall believe that he has never fallen.[746] We might even borrow a word from the piebald jargon of modern diplomacy; we might say that the reign of the Red King was the highest recorded effort of prestige.
The year 1100. And now we have entered on the last year of the reign and of the century. Lack of events in its earlier months. It is a year whose earlier months are, within our own range at least, singularly barren of events, while its latter months are full of matter to record. It is a kind of tribute to the importance of William Rufus that there is at once so much to record the moment he is out of the way. When he is gone, a large part of the world feels relief. But about the lack of events earlier in the year there is something strange and solemn. Contrast with the year 1000. The last year of the eleventh century was not marked by that general feeling of awe and wonder and looking forward to judgement which marked the last year of the tenth century. Vague expectations afloat. But, at least within the range of the Red King’s influence, that year seems to have been marked by that vague kind of feeling of a coming something which some of us have felt before the great events of our own times. Whatever may be the cause, it is certain that, as the news of events which have happened sometimes travels with a speed which ordinary means cannot account for,[747] so the approach of events which have not yet happened is sometimes felt in a way which we can account for as little. Coming events do cast their shadows before them, in a fashion which, whether philosophy can explain it or not, history must accept as a fact. And coming events did preeminently cast their shadows before them in the first half of the year 1100. Portents and prophecies. In that age the feeling which weighed on men’s minds naturally took the form of portent and prophecy, of strange sights seen and strange sounds listened to. There is not the slightest ground for thinking that all these tales are mere inventions after the fact, though they were likely enough to be improved in the telling after the fact. The frightful state of things in the land, unparalleled even in those evil times, joined with the feeling of expectation which always attends any marked note of time, be it a fresh week or a fresh millennium—all worked together to bring about a looking for something to come, partly perhaps in fear, but far more largely in hope. Things could hardly get worse; they might get better. Men’s minds were charged with expectation; every sight, every sound, became an omen; if some men risked prophecies, if some of their prophecies were fulfilled, it was not wonderful. The first half of the year, blank in events, was rich in auguries; in the second half the auguries had largely become facts. In its first months men were saying with hope, “Non diu dominabuntur effeminati.”[748] Before the twelvemonth was out, they were beginning to say with joy, “Hic rex Henricus destruxit impios regni.”[749]
§ 1. The Last Days of William Rufus.
January—August, 1100.
The three assemblies of 1099–1100. Christmas at Gloucester. 1099–1000. This year the King, occupied by no warfare beyond his realm, was able to hold all the assemblies of the year at their wonted times and in their wonted places.[750] At Christmas William Rufus wore his crown at Gloucester, the place of his momentary repentance and of his wildest insolence. He had there given the staff to Anselm; he had there sent away Malcolm from his court without a hearing. Easter at Winchester. April 1, 1100. At Easter he wore his crown at Winchester, the city which had first received him after the death of his father, where he had first unlocked his father’s treasures, and had put in bonds those whom his father had set free. Pentecost at Westminster. May 20, 1100. At Whitsuntide he wore his crown at Westminster, and again held the assembly and the banquet in the mighty hall of his own rearing. No record of these assemblies. We have no record of the acts of any of these three assemblies. The two former at least may well have been gatherings which came together more for the display of kingly magnificence than for the transaction of any real business of the realm. All things seemed to be as glorious as ever for the defeated of Mayet and Chaumont. In the death of Urban Rufus saw the removal of an enemy, at least of a hindrance in his way. Death of Urban. He had indeed found that Urban could be won to his will by a bribe. Still he was a Pope, a Pope whom he had himself acknowledged, a Pope whom it might be needful to bribe. Better far was it to come back to the happy days before he had been cajoled by Cardinal Walter, before he had been frightened into naming Anselm, the happy days when he was troubled by no archbishop in the land and no pope out of it. Those days were come again. Anselm was far away; Urban was dead; Paschal he had not acknowledged. The last recorded words of Rufus before the day of Lammas and its morrow were those in which he set forth his fixed purpose to use as he would the freedom which was his once more.[751]
But if we have no record of the three assemblies of the year, if we have no traditional sayings of the King, if we have no record of anything that really happened during these months, we can see that great schemes were planned; great preparations were making, which must have been the matter of deep debates at the Pentecostal assembly. Our own Chroniclers are silent; our tidings come from our familiar teacher at Saint Evroul. Continental schemes of Rufus. Though the Red King kept himself so close in his island kingdom, he was planning greater things than ever beyond the sea. He had Normandy to keep and he had Aquitaine to win. For such objects he had need of both gold and steel, and we cannot doubt that in the assembly held at Whitsuntide within the new hall of Westminster King William demanded no small store of both to enable him to carry out the schemes of his overweening pride.
Robert’s return from the crusade. Normandy was to be kept. Duke Robert, the bold crusader, was coming back from the lands where his name, once so despised in his own duchy, had been crowned with unlooked-for glory. He was coming back by the path by which he had gone, through the Norman lands of southern Italy. His marriage with Sibyl of Conversana. And he was coming with a companion whose presence promised something in the way of amendment alike of his private life and of his public government. He brought with him a wife, Sibyl of Conversana, daughter of Geoffrey lord of Brindisi, and grand-niece of Robert Wiscard. His reception in south Italy. He had been welcomed by his southern countrymen with all honours and with precious gifts; both Rogers, the Duke of Apulia and the young Count of Sicily, to be one day the first and all but the most famous of Sicilian kings, were zealous in showing their regard. Character of the Duchess Sibyl. But from the house of the Count of Conversana he took away the most precious gift of all in a woman who is described as uniting all merits and beauties within and without, and who was certainly far better fitted to rule the duchy of Normandy than he was.[752] His funds for buying back the duchy. His father-in-law and his other friends gave him great gifts in money and precious things towards redeeming his dominions from his brother.[753] But William Rufus had no thought of restoring the pledge; he had Normandy in his grasp, and he had no mind to let it go.
William of Aquitaine; his crusade; But besides this, Aquitaine was to be won. It was indeed to be won in a peaceful sort, as far as the engagements of its sovereign went. Duke William of Poitiers, the ally of William of England in his French campaign, was at last ready for his crusade. Strange warrior of the cross, strange comrade for Godfrey or even for Robert, was he who, after his return from the Sepulchre, spared the life of a holy bishop who rebuked him on the ground that he hated him too much to send him to paradise, who brought together the monastic harem at Niort, and who marched to battle with the form of his adulterous mistress painted on his shield.[754] But now he was setting forth for the holy war. Thirty thousand warriors—the conventional number everywhere—from Aquitaine, Gascony, and other lands of southern Gaul, were ready, we are told, to follow in his train.[755] He proposes to pledge his duchy to Rufus. But Duke William, like Duke Robert, lacked money. He sent therefore to the master of the hoard which seemed open to all comers, seeking to pledge his duchy, as Robert had pledged his.[756] We cannot help suspecting that some such arrangement had been made at an earlier time, when the two Williams joined their forces together against France; but, if not made then, it was made now. King William readily agreed to an offer which would practically make him master of the greater part of Gaul. He was lord of Normandy; he held himself to be master of Maine; he was about to become lord of Aquitaine. Preparations for occupation of Aquitaine. Maine and Poitou indeed did not march on each other; but Anjou might be won by some means. Fulk could not hold out against a prince who hemmed him in on either side. Either gold or steel would surely open the way to Angers, as well as to Rouen and to Bourdeaux. Prepared for all chances, William was gathering money, gathering ships, gathering men, for a greater work than fruitless attacks on Mayet and Chaumont, for the great task of enlarging his dominion,--our guide says to the Garonne; he should rather have said to the Pyrenees. Robert was to be kept out of Normandy; to restore to the debtor his pledge was the dull virtue of the merchant or the Jew; such duties touched not the honour of the good knight. No man could perform all his promises, and the restoration of Normandy was a promise of the class which needed not to be performed. Aquitaine was to be peacefully bought; but possibly arms might be needed there also. All who should dare to withstand the extension of William’s dominion to the most southern borders of Gaul were to be brought to obedience at the sword’s point.
His alleged designs on the Empire. I have said “dominion;” but the word in the writer whom I follow is Empire.[757] That name, one not unknown to us in the history of Rufus, may have been dropped at random; but it may have been meant to show that mightier schemes still were at work in the restless brain of the Red King. We may couple the phrase with vague hints dropped elsewhere, which show that, whether Rufus really thought of it or not, men gave him credit for dreams of dominion greater even than the supplanting of Fulk of Angers, of William of Poitiers, and of Philip of Paris all at once. The doctrine that Britain was a land fruitful in tyrants was to be carried out on a greater scale than it had been in the days of Carausius or Maximus or the later Constantine. The father had once been looked for at kingly Aachen;[758] the son, so men believed, hoped to march in the steps of Brennus to imperial Rome.[759] He would outdo the glory of all crusaders, of princes of Antioch and kings of Jerusalem. Geoffrey, Bohemund, his own brother, had knelt as vassals in the New Rome; he would sit as an Emperor in the Old. Then he would have no question about acknowledging or not acknowledging popes; he would make them or refuse to make them as he thought good. The patrimony of Saint Peter might be let to farm, along with the estates of Canterbury and Winchester and Salisbury. Whether such thoughts really passed through the mind of William Rufus we can neither affirm nor deny. That men could believe that they were passing through his mind shows that they believed, and rightly, that he was capable of dreaming, of planning, of attempting, anything.
Portents. But while the preparations were making, the portents were gathering. First came a stroke which reads like a rehearsal of his own end. While Robert was coming back with his Sibyl to found a new and legitimate dynasty in the Norman duchy, a blow fell on one of the children of his earlier wanderings.[760] Death of young Richard. May, 1100. One Richard had already fallen in the haunted shades of the New Forest,[761] and his death opened the path for his younger brother to reign at Winchester and Rouen and Le Mans, and to dream of reigning at Dublin, Paris, Poitiers, and Rome. Another Richard, the natural son of Duke Robert, who must have been enrolled in the service of his uncle, was cut off on the same fatal ground early in May, shortly before the Westminster assembly. The King’s knights were hunting the deer in the forest; one of them drew his bow to bring down a stag; the arrow missed the intended victim, and pierced Richard with a stroke which brought him dead to the ground.[762] Great grief followed his fall; his unwitting slayer, to escape from vengeance, fled and became a monk.[763] Young Richard thus died while his uncle was making ready to keep his father out of the dominions which he was pledged to restore. William, natural son of Robert. His brother William, the other son of Robert’s vagrant days, seems to have followed the fortunes of his father, till, after Tinchebrai, he went to Jerusalem and died fighting in the Holy War.[764]