The death of Richard might be a warning. It might be taken as a sign that some special power of destiny hovered over the spot where the dwellings of man and the houses of God had been swept away to make clearer ground for sports where joy is sought for in the wanton infliction of death and suffering. Still it was no portent out of the ordinary course of nature. But portents of this kind too were not lacking. Wonders and apparitions. The pool of blood in Berkshire welled again;[765] the devil was seen openly in many places, showing himself, it would seem, to Normans only, and talking to them of their countrymen the King and the Bishop of Durham.[766] Strange births, stranger unbirths, were told as the news of the day to a visitor from another land.[767] As the day approaches, a crowd of vivid pictures seems to pass before us. Warlike preparations. June-July, 1100. June and July passed amidst preparations for war, but July saw also one great ecclesiastical ceremony. Abbot Serlo’s minster of Gloucester was now near enough to perfection for its consecration to be sought for. Whether all the lofty pillars of the nave were as yet reared or not, at least that massive eastern limb with its surrounding chapels, which may still be seen through the lace-work of later times, was already finished. Consecration of Gloucester Abbey. July 15, 1100. The rite of its hallowing was done by the diocesan Samson and three other bishops, Gundulf of Rochester, Gerard of Hereford, and Hervey the shepherd of the stormy diocese of Bangor. The zeal of the monks and their visitors was stirred up by the ceremony, and the house of Saint Peter at Gloucester became a special seat of vision and prophecy. Vision and prophecies. One godly brother[768] saw in the dreams of the night the Lord sitting on his throne, with the hosts of heaven and the choirs of the saints around him. A fair and stately virgin stood forth and knelt before the Lord. She prayed him to have pity on his people who were ground down beneath the yoke of King William of England. The dreamer trembled, and understood that the suppliant was the holy Church of Christ, calling on her Lord and Saviour to look down on all that her children bore from the lusts and robberies and other evil deeds of the King and his followers.[769] Serlo, filled with holy zeal, set down the vision in writing, and sent the message of warning to the King.[770]
Abbot Fulchered’s sermon at Gloucester. August 1, 1100. But the visions of the night were not all. A more open voice of prophecy, so men deemed, was not lacking. A few days after the monk’s vision, on the day of Lammas, a crowd of all classes was gathered in Saint Peter’s church at Gloucester to keep the feast of Saint Peter-in-Chains.[771] Fulchered, Abbot of Earl Roger’s house at Shrewsbury, once a monk of Earl Roger’s house at Seez, an eloquent preacher of the divine word, was chosen from a crowd of elders[772] to make his discourse to the people. A near neighbour of the terrible son of his own founder, none could know better than he under what woes the land was groaning. Fulchered mounted the pulpit of the newly-hallowed minster, and the spirit of the old prophets came upon him.[773] In glowing words he set forth the sins and sorrows of the time, how England was given as an heritage to be trodden under foot of the ungodly. Lust, greediness, pride, all were rampant, pride which would, if it were possible, trample under foot the very stars of heaven.[774] The words have the ring of the words of Eadward on his deathbed; but Eadward had to tell of coming sorrow, and of only distant deliverance. Fulchered could tell of a deliverance which was nigh, even at the doors. A sudden change was at hand; the men who had ceased to be men should rule no longer.[775] And then in a strain which seems to carry us on to the days of Naseby and Dunbar, he told how the Lord God was coming to judge the open enemies of his spouse. He told how the Almighty would smite Moab and Edom with the sword of vengeance, and overthrow the mountains of Gilboa with a fearful shaking. “Lo,” he went on, “the bow of wrath from on high is bent against the wicked, and the arrow swift to wound is drawn from the quiver. It shall soon smite, and that suddenly; let every man that is wise amend his ways and avoid its stroke.”[776]
Such is the report of Abbot Fulchered’s sermon, as it is told us by one who no doubt set down with a special interest the words of the first prelate of the minster into which the humble church of his own father had grown.[777] The alleged dream of the King. Other stories tell us how on the night of that same Wednesday a more fearful dream than that of the monk of Gloucester disturbed the slumbers of some one. In the earlier version the seer is a monk from beyond sea; in its later form the terrible warning is vouchsafed to the King himself.[778] The story, as usual, puts on fresh details as it grows; but its essential features are the same in its simplest and in its most elaborate shape. The King, with his proud and swelling air, scorning all around him, enters a church. In one version it is a chapel in a forest; in another it is a minster gorgeously adorned. Its walls were robed with velvet and purple, stuffs wrought by the skill of the Greek, and with tapestry where the deeds of past times lived in stitch-work, like the tale of Brihtnoth at Ely and the newer tale of William at Bayeux.[779] Here were goodly books, here were the shrines of saints, gleaming with gold and gems and ivory, a sight such as the eyes of the master and spoiler of so many churches had never rested on. At a second glance all this bravery passed away; the walls and the altar itself stood bare. At a third glance he saw the form of a man lying bare upon the altar. A cannibal desire came on him; he ate, or strove to eat, of the body that lay before him. His victim endured for a while in patience; then his face, hitherto goodly and gentle as of an angel, became stern beyond words, and he spoke—“Is it not enough that thou hast thus far grieved me with so many wrongs? Wilt thou gnaw my very flesh and bones?” One version gives the words another turn; the stern voice answers simply, “Henceforth thou shalt eat of me no more.” Exhortation of Gundulf. In those accounts which make the King the dreamer, Rufus tells the vision to a bishop—one tale names Gundulf—who explains the easy parable. The exhortation follows, to mend his ways, to hold a synod and to restore Anselm. The King, in one account, in a momentary fit of penitence, promises to do so. But his better feelings pass away; in defiance of all warnings, he goes forth to hunt on the fatal ground, the scene of the wrong and sacrilege of his father—in some of these versions the scene of further wrong and sacrilege of his own.
The details of some of these stories I shall discuss elsewhere. If they prove nothing else, they prove at least the deep impression which the Red King’s life and the Red King’s end made on the men of his own days and of the days which followed them. William at Brockenhurst. August 1, 1100. One thing is certain; on the first day of August, while Fulchered was preaching at Gloucester, King William was in the New Forest, with his head-quarters seemingly at Brockenhurst.[780] His companions. He had with him several men whose names are known to us, as Gilbert of Laigle, once so fierce against William’s cause at Rouen, Gilbert and Roger of Clare, the former of whom had won his forgiveness by his timely revelations on the march to Bamburgh.[781] Henry. Henry, Ætheling and Count, if not one of the party, was not far off; he too had, if not his visions, at least his omens.[782] Walter Tirel. But chief among the company, nearest, it would seem, to the King in sportive intercourse, was one who was perhaps his subject in Normandy by birth, perhaps his subject in England by tenure, but whose chief possessions, as well as his feelings, belonged to another land.[783] This was a baron of France, whom we once before heard of in better company, but whom the fame of the Red King’s boundless liberality had led into his service. His father the Dean of Evreux. In days before the stern laws of Hildebrand were strictly enforced, a churchman of high rank, Fulk, Dean of Evreux, was, seemingly by a lawful marriage, the father of a large family. Walter, one of his sons, bore the personal surname of Tirel, Tyrell, in many spellings, pointing perhaps to his skill in drawing the bow. His lordships and marriage. He became, by whatever means, lord of Poix in Ponthieu, and of Achères by the Seine between Pontoise and Poissy; at the former of these lordships, it would seem, he had once been the host of Anselm.[784] He was not, in the days of the Survey at least, a land-owner of much account in England. A small lordship in Essex, held under Richard of Clare, is the only entry under any name by which he can be conceived to be meant. He had married a wife, Adelaide by name, of the great line of Giffard, who seems to have lived till the latter days of King Henry. He was now a near friend of the Red King’s, a special sharer with him in the sports of the forest, so much so that, when legend came to attribute the laying waste of Hampshire to the younger instead of the elder William, Walter Tirel was charged with having been the adviser of the deed.[785]
Gab of the King and Walter Tirel. On the Wednesday of Fulchered’s sermon, the King and his chosen comrade were talking familiarly. Walter fell into that kind of discourse which is called in the Old-French tongue by the expressive words gaber and gab.[786] He began to talk big, to jeer at the King for the small results of his own big talk. But the matter of the discourse sounds a little strange, if it was really uttered at a moment when such great preparations were making for the defence of Normandy, for the purchase of Aquitaine, perhaps for the conquest of Anjou, to say nothing of schemes greater and further off. Walter jeers at the king. The lord of Poix asked the King why he did nothing; with his vast power, why did he not attack some neighbour? Great as the Red King’s power was, Walter is made to speak of it as a good deal greater than the truth, so much so indeed that we can read the speech only as mockery. William’s alleged subjects and allies. All William’s men were ready at his call, the men of Britanny, of Maine,[787] he adds of Anjou. The Flemings held of him—we have heard of his dealings with their Count;[788] the Burgundians held him for their king; Eustace of Boulogne would do anything at his bidding.[789] Why did he not make war on somebody? Why did he not go forth and conquer some land or other? The King’s answer; he will keep Christmas at Poitiers. The King answers that he means to lead his host as far as the mountains—the Alps, we may suppose, are meant. He will thence turn back to the West, and will keep his next Christmas feast at Poitiers.[790] Angry words of Walter. The mocking vein of Walter Tirel now turns to anger; he bursts forth in wrathful words. It would be a great matter indeed to go to the mountains and thence back to Poitiers in time for Christmas. Burgundians and French would indeed deserve to die by the worst of deaths, if they became subjects to the English.[791]
Illustrative value of the story. This talk, put into the mouth of the King and his chosen comrade by a writer of the next generation, is in every way remarkable. The King’s boast that he would keep Christmas at Poitiers is found also in an earlier writer, and it is almost implied in his preparations for taking possession of Aquitaine.[792] The words about French and Burgundians becoming subject to the English might sound more in harmony with the next generation; but we have already seen examples which show that, even so soon after the Norman Conquest of England, the English name was beginning to be applied on continental lips to all the subjects of the English crown. The armies of William Rufus were English in the same sense in which the armies of Justinian were Roman. The threat of a King of England, speaking on English ground, to overrun all the provinces of Gaul is conceived as calling forth a feeling of patriotic anger in the lord of Poix and Achères. Yet, while we might have expected such an one to fight valiantly for Ponthieu or the Vexin against a Norman invader, we might also have expected him to be quite indifferent to the fate of Poitiers, indifferent at all events to its transfer from the Aquitanian to the Norman William. The speech is followed by words which imply that the King’s boast was taken more seriously than it was meant, and which almost suggest a plot on Walter’s part for the King’s destruction.[793] In the crowd of conflicting tales with which we are now dealing, we must not insist on any one as a trustworthy statement of undoubted facts; but the dialogue which is put into the mouths of William Rufus and Walter Tirel is almost as remarkable if we look on it as the invention of the rimer himself as if we deem it to have been, in its substance, really spoken by those into whose mouths it is put.
Last day of William Rufus. August 2, 1100. Of the events of the next day we may say thus much with certainty; “Thereafter on the morrow after Lammas day was the King William in hunting from his own men with an arrow offshot, and then to Winchester brought and in the bishopric buried.”[794] Statement of the Chronicle. These words of our own Chronicler state the fact of the King’s death and its manner; they suggest treason, but they do not directly assert it; they name no one man as the doer. Other versions; Walter Tirel mentioned in most. Nearly all the other writers agree in naming Walter Tirel as the man who drew the bow; but they agree also in making his act chance-medley and not wilful murder. Yet it is clear that there were other tales afloat of which we hear merely the echoes. Ralph of Aix. One tradition attributed the blow, not to Walter Tirel, but to a certain Ralph of Aix.[795] As the tale is commonly told, the details of the King’s death could have been known from no mouth but that of Walter himself; The charge denied by Walter. yet it is certain that Walter himself, long after, when he had nothing to hope or fear one way or the other, denied in the most solemn way that he had any share in the deed or any knowledge of it.[796] The words of the Chronicler, though they suggest treason, do not shut out chance-medley; they leave the actor perfectly open. Estimate of the received tale. There is nothing in the received tale which is in the least unlikely; but it is the kind of tale which, even if untrue, might easily grow up. William may have died by accident by the hand of Walter Tirel or of any other. He may also have died by treason by the hand of Walter Tirel or of any other. In this last case there were many reasons why no inquiries should have been made, many reasons why the received tale should be invented or adopted. It was just such a story as was wanted in such a case. It satisfied curiosity by naming a particular actor, while it named an actor who was out of reach, and did not charge even him with any real guilt. In favour of the same story is the statement, which can hardly be an invention, that Walter Tirel fled after the King’s death. But this was a case in which a man who was innocent even of chance-medley might well flee from the fear of a suspicion of treason. And Walter’s own solemn denial may surely go for as much as any mere suspicion against him. Guesses in such a case are easy; the slayer may have been a friend of Henry, a friend of Anselm, a man goaded to despair by oppression—all such guesses are likely enough in themselves; there is no evidence for any of them. All that can be said is that the words of the Chronicle certainly seem to point out the actor, whether guilty or only unlucky, as belonging to the King’s immediate following. The statement of the Chronicle the only safe one. “The King William was in hunting from his own men by an arrow offshot.” Beyond that we cannot go with certainty. But the number of men of every class who must have felt that they would be the better, if an arrow or any other means of death could be brought to light on the Red King, must have been great indeed. Wonder that he was not killed sooner. The real wonder is, not that the shaft struck him in the thirteenth year of his reign, but that no hand had stricken him long before.
Accounts of the King’s last day. Of the last day of the Red King, Thursday, the second day of August, we have two somewhat minute pictures which belong to different hours of the day. There is no contradiction between the two; the two may be read as an unbroken story; but we have that slight feeling of distrust which cannot fail to arise when it is clear that he who records the events of the afternoon knew nothing of the events of the morning. The details of such a day would be sure to be remembered; for the same reason they ran a special chance of being coloured and embellished. We shall therefore do well to go through the details of the earlier hours of that memorable day as we find them written, not forgetting the needful cautions, but at the same time not forgetting that the tale has much direct evidence for it and has no direct evidence against it.[797]
Morning of August 2. The King then, even according to those who do not assign the specially fearful vision to himself, passed a restless night, disturbed by dreams which, on this milder showing, were ugly enough. William’s dreams. He dreamed that he was bled—a process which in those days seems to have passed for a kind of amusement—and that the blood gushed up towards heaven, so as to shut out the light of day.[798] He woke suddenly with the name of our Lady on his lips; he bade a light to be brought, and bade his chamberlains not to leave him.[799] He remained awake till daybreak. Robert Fitz-hamon tells the monk’s dream. Then, according to this version, came Robert Fitz-hamon, entitled to do so as being in his closest confidence,[800] and told him the dream of the monk from beyond sea. William was moved; but he tried to hide his real feelings under the usual guise of mockery; William’s mocking answer. “He is a monk,” he said with his rude laugh, “he is a monk; monklike he dreams for the sake of money; give him a hundred shillings.”[801] Here we see the boasted liberality which recklessly squandered with one hand what was wrung from the groaning people with the other. His disturbance of mind. Seriously disturbed in mind, William doubted whether he should go hunting that morning; his friends urged him to run no risk, lest the dream should come true. His morning. He therefore, to occupy his restless mind, gave the forenoon to serious business;[802] there was enough of it on hand, if he was planning a march to Rome or even a march to Poitiers. The early dinner of those days presently came; he ate and drank more than usual, hoping thus to stifle and drown the thoughts that pressed upon him.[803] In this attempt he seems to have succeeded; after his meal he went forth on his hunting.
He sets forth to hunt. At this point we take up the thread of the other story. The King, after his meal, has regained his spirits, and, surrounded by his followers and flatterers, he is making ready for the chase. The new arrows. He was putting on his boots—boots doubtless of no small price—when a smith drew near, offering him six new catapults, arrows, it would seem, designed, not for the long bow, but for the more deadly arbalest or cross-bow.[804] The King joyfully took them; he praised the work of the craftsman; he kept four for himself, and gave two to Walter Tirel. He gives two of them to Walter Tirel. “Tis right,” he said, “that the sharpest arrows should be given to him who knows how to deal deadly strokes with them.”[805] The two went on talking and jesting; the flatterers of the King joined in admiringly. Abbot Serlo’s letter. Suddenly there came a monk from Gloucester charged with a letter from Abbot Serlo. The letter told the dream of the monk, in which the Holy Church had been seen calling on her Lord for vengeance on the evil deeds of the King of the English. The letter was read to the King[806]—there was a future king not far off who could read letters for himself. William’s mockery. William burst into his bitter laugh; he turned to his favourite comrade; “Walter, do thou do justice, according to these things which thou hast heard.” “So I will, my lord,” answered Walter.[807] Then the King talks more at length about the Abbot’s letter. “I wonder at my lord Serlo’s fancy for writing all this; I always thought him a good old abbot. ’Tis very simple of him, when I have so much business about, to take the trouble to put the dreams of his snoring monks into writing and to send them to me all this way. His sneers at English regard for omens. Does he think I am like the English, who throw up their journey or their business because of the snoring or the dreams of an old woman?”[808] This speech has a genuine sound; it should be noticed as being the only speech put into the mouth of William Rufus which can be construed as expressing any dislike or scorn for his English subjects as such. Yet the words are rather words of good-humoured raillery than expressive of any deeper feeling. The Red King oppressed and despised all men, except his own immediate following. Practically his oppression and scorn must have fallen most heavily on men of native English birth; but there is no sign that he purposely picked them out as objects of any special persecution.