Tynemouth.
[XLIX.]
ROBERT DE MOUBRAY
About the spring of 1095, William Rufus was menaced with ruin. It was Robert de Moubray, Earl of Northumberland—a man who possessed two hundred and eighty manors—whose influence the Red King now had to dread.
Not without bitter grumbling had the Norman barons hitherto submitted to the law by which the Norman king retained the exclusive right of hunting in the forests of England. Nevertheless, this privilege was maintained by Rufus as vigorously as ever it had been by the mighty Conqueror. The Saxons contemptuously called him "The Wild Beast Herd," while the Normans conspired to take off his crown, and place it on the head of Stephen, Earl of Albemarle, son of the Conqueror's sister. At the head of this conspiracy, which included several of the highest Norman nobles, Robert de Moubray nobly placed himself.
Rufus was not altogether unaware of the conspiracy formed by the Anglo-Norman barons to overturn the throne. Indeed, Moubray drew suspicion on himself by failing to appear at court on the occasion of a great assembly of knights and barons at Easter. In order to bring matters to a crisis, Rufus issued a proclamation that, at the feast of Whitsuntide, every great landholder should attend, or be excluded from the public peace. Moubray, instead of presenting himself, sent Rufus a message, which sounded like a defiance.