Matthew Paris (Hist. Angl. i. 34, 35), as usual, gives the story a colouring of his own, which may be compared with his version of the accession of Henry the First (see N. C. vol. v. p. 845). He has told us that the Conqueror, in bequeathing his kingdom to his second son, gave him special advice as to its rule;
“Willelmo Rufo filio suo Angliam, scilicet conquestum suum, assignavit; supplicans ut Anglos, quos crudeliter et veluti ingratus male tractaverat, mitius confoveret.”
He crosses to England, “utilius reputans regnum sibi firmare vivorum quam mortui cujuscumque exsequiis interesse.” Then we read;
“Willelmus, cognomento Rufus, filius regis Willelmi primi, veniens in Angliam, consilio et auxilio Lamfranci Cantuariensis archiepiscopi, qui ipsum a primis annis nutriverat et militem fecerat, sine moroso dispendio Angliam sibi conciliatam inclinavit, nec tamen totam. Sed ut negotium regis optatum cito sortiretur effectum, ipsum die sanctorum Cosmæ et Damiani, etsi cum sollemnitate mutilata, coronavit, veraciter promittentem ut Angliam cum modestia gubernaret, leges sancti regis Edwardi servaturus, et Anglos præcipue tractaret reverenter.”
These remarkable words must be taken in connexion with what immediately follows, which is in truth a very rose-coloured version of the rebellion of 1088, which is made immediately to follow, or rather to accompany, the coronation. For the next words are;
“Verumtamen quamplures Anglorum nobiles, formidantes et augurantes ipsum velle patrissare, noluerunt ei obsecundare, sed elegerunt potius Roberto, militi strenuissimo, militare, et tamquam primogenito ipsi in regem creato famulari, quam fallacibus promissis Rufi fidem adhibere. Sed Lamfrancus hæc sedavit, bona promittens.”
Still the new King sees that many of the nobles of the kingdom are plotting against him. By the advice of Lanfranc therefore he gathers a secret assembly of English nobles (“Anglorum nobiliores et fortiores invitando secretius convocavit”); he promises with an oath on the Gospels to give them good laws and all the old free customs (“pristinae libertatis consuetudines”). He then wins over Roger of Montgomery, according to the account in vol. i. p. 61. Then, again by Lanfranc’s advice, he divides and weakens the English by his promises (“omnes Anglos, quos insuperabiles, si fuissent inseparabiles, cognoverat, talibus sermocinationibus et promissis dissipatos et enervatos sibi conciliavit”). A few only resist; against those he wages a successful war at the head of the nation generally (“eorum conamina, universitatis adjutus viribus, quantocius annullavit”), and confiscates their goods.
It is clear that Matthew Paris had the elder writers before him, but that he did not fully understand their language with regard to the appeal of Rufus to the English. We must remember the time when he wrote. In his day the immediate consequences of the Conquest had passed away; the distinction of “Angli” and “Franci,” so living in the days of Rufus, was forgotten. But men had not yet begun to speculate about “Normans and Saxons,” as Robert of Gloucester did somewhat later. Moreover Matthew was used to a state of things in which a king who, if not foreign by birth, was foreign in feeling, had to be withstood by an united English nation, indifferent as to the remoter pedigree of each man. He therefore told the story of the reign of Rufus as if it had been the story of the reign of Henry the Third. All are “Angli;” the distinction drawn by the Chronicler between the “French” who rebelled against the King and the “English” to whom he appealed, is lost. The English people whom he called to his help against the Norman nobles become English nobles whom he cunningly wins over in secret. Matthew understands that England was a conquered country with a foreign king; he does not understand the relations of foreigners and natives in the island, and that the foreign king appealed to the natives against his own countrymen. The passage is most valuable, not as telling us anything about the reign of William Rufus, but as showing us how the reign of William Rufus looked when read by the present experience of the reign of Henry the Third.
At the same time Matthew Paris must have had something special in his eye, when he spoke of the coronation rites of William Rufus as being in some way imperfect. Was there any tradition that, as John did not communicate at his coronation, so neither did William? Men may have argued from one tyrant to another.
On the whole we may say that William Rufus, like Servius Tullius (Cic. de Rep. ii. 21), “regnare coepit, non jussu, sed voluntate atque concessu civium.”