Leaders of the People: Studies in Democratic History

by Joseph Clayton

But now, in September, 1087, the great King William was dead, with his life-work done; and from the tyranny of a strong and just ruler, England passed to the despotism of his fearless son, William the Red, who was “terrible and mighty over his land and his men and towards all his neighbours;” in whose reign “all that was loathsome in the eyes of God and righteous men was of common use; wherefore he was loathed by well-nigh all his people, and hateful to God as his end showed.”

There was much of the later Puritan in William I. in the steadfastness of purpose, the suppression of “malignants,” and determination to have justice done, no less than in the sincerity for Church reform, and the deep respect for the ordinances of religion. No king of England worked more harmoniously with a strong archbishop than William I. with Lanfranc—save, perhaps, Charles I. with Laud.

Then on the death of William I., followed less than two years later by Lanfranc’s, came the reaction in Church and State from the efforts after law, religion, and social decency under the Conqueror’s rule.

The Red King had all his father’s sternness and strength, but was without any of that belief in justice, that faith in the Sovereign Power of a Living God, that desire for law and order, and that grave austerity in morals, which saved the Conqueror from baseness in his tyranny.

William II., unmarried, made the wildest and most brutish profligacy fashionable at court. To pay for his debaucheries and extravagances he plundered all who could pay, in especial the Church, enjoying the revenues of all vacant sees and abbeys, and declining to fill up the vacancies so that this enjoyment might remain. After Lanfranc, as the king’s chief adviser, came Ranulf (nicknamed the Torch, or Firebrand), a coarse, unscrupulous bully, with the wit of a criminal lawyer. This man was made Bishop of Durham, and Justiciar. For him government meant nothing but the art of getting money for his royal master, and silencing all opposition.

For over three years there was no Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Red King refused to fill up the vacancy caused by Lanfranc’s death, preferring to enjoy the revenues and possessions of the see; a thing that was shocking to all lovers of religion, and scandalous to those who cared for public decency and the good estate of the country.

Eadmer, a contemporary, describes the condition of England in those early years of William II.:—

“The king seized the church at Canterbury, the mother of all England, Scotland, and Ireland, and the neighbouring isles; he bade his officers to make an inventory of all that belonged to it, within and without; and after he had fixed an allowance for the support of the monks who served God in that place, he ordered the remainder to be disposed of at a rent and brought under his domain. So he put up the Church of Christ to sale; giving the power of lordship over it to anyone who, however hurtful he might be, would bid the highest price. Every year, in wretched succession, a new rent was set; for the king would allow no bargain to remain settled, and whoever promised more ousted him who was paying less, unless the former tenant, giving up his original bargain, came up of his own accord to the offer of the later bidder: and every day might be seen, besides, the most abandoned of men on their business of collecting money for the king, marching about the cloisters of the monastery, heedless of the religious rule of God’s servants, and with fierce and savage looks giving their orders on all sides; uttering threats, lording it over every one, and showing their power to the utmost. What scandals and quarrels and irregularities arose from this I hate to remember. Some of the monks of the church were dispersed at the coming of this misfortune, and sent to other houses, and those who remained suffered many tribulations and indignities. What shall I say of the church tenants, ground down by such wasting and misery, that one might doubt, but that worse followed, whether escaping with bare life they could have been more cruelly oppressed. Nor did all this happen only at Canterbury. The same savage cruelty raged in all her daughter churches in England, which, when bishop or abbot died, at that time fell into widowhood. And this king, too, was the first who ordered this woeful oppression against the churches of God; he had inherited nothing of this sort from his father, but was alone in keeping the vacant churches in his own hands. And thus, wherever you looked, there was wretchedness before your eyes; and this distress lasted for nearly five years over the Church of Canterbury, always increasing, always, as time went on, growing more cruel and evil.”

There is no word of exaggeration in this pitiful lament of Eadmer’s. England under William II. was at the mercy of a Norman whose notion of absolute monarchy was to bleed the land as a subject province. Courageous in battle he was, and skilful in arms, but utterly heedless of the welfare of the people he ruled. It was enough for the Red King if his demands for money were met. There was no one strong enough to gainsay his will, or stand before him as the prophets of old stood before the kings of Israel, until Anselm came to Canterbury. It is only in the utterances of men like Eadmer we learn something of the misery of the nation.[1]

The king was with his court at Gloucester at Christmas, 1092, and Anselm, then abbot of the famous monastery of Bec in Normandy, was in England at that time; partly to comfort his friend, Earl Hugh of Chester, who was sick, and partly to attend to the English affairs of his monastery.