17. WILLIAM RUFUS
Now that the king in England was the feudal chief of his vassals and commanded the national resources, succession of the crown was a right of inheritance.
After William the Conqueror's death his second son William, called Rufus, or Red, because of the colour of his hair was an heir. When he became the English King he had immediately to face a rising of the Norman barons in favour of his elder brother Robert, who had succeeded to the duchy of Normandy; and William Rufus won a victory largely to the help he received from his English subjects.
William II appointed Anselm, Abbot of Bec, as Archbishop of Canterbury in 1093. But very soon the king began to quarrel with his archbishop, who was not prepared to allow any encroachments upon the dignity or power of the Church. When Anselm said that he wished to go to Rome to receive the archbishop's pall at the hands of Pope Urban, Rufus replied by refusing to acknowledge Urban as Pope at all, but when the king sent for the pall to bestow it upon the archbishop himself, Anselm refused to receive it. However, a compromise was arrived at, and Anselm settled down to his work.
Rufus was born some years before the conquest of England, but the exact date is unknown (about 1056). He seems to have been his father's favourite son, and people often saw him in his father's company. That's why he succeeded to the English Throne.
On the second of August, 1100, in the first year of the twelfth century, a certain man named Walter Tirel fled over the Channel from Southampton. He was in desperate anxiety for his ship to go quickly. Не was a knight who had been hunting in the New Forest with William Rufus, and suddenly the king was shot by some arrow — perhaps, quite by accident. But the king was killed, and Walter Tirel was close to him at that moment, and he was so frightened that rushed away to Normandy.
But afterwards a certain Ralph of Aix was accused in that crime also, and Tirel, from a safe distance, solemnly protested his innocence. Even in our days you can see the stone set up in the beautiful forest, to mark the spot. But there was no mourning for the Red King; people were glad when he died.
Comprehension questions
1.What was the intrigue around William Rufus and Archbishop Anselm? Do you agree that it suggests the desire of the English Crown to be independent from the Roman Church?
2.What is known about Rufus’s death?
30
18. FINE SCHOLAR, OR THE LION OF JUSTICE
As we have already mentioned, William the Conqueror had four sons: Robert, duke of Normandy, Richard who was killed while he was hunting, his favourite William Rufus, and the youngest son was Henry (1068-1135). After William II’s death Robert of Normandy again claimed the English throne, but the youngest brother secured English support by publishing a charter (Charter of Liberties) promising better government, and so gained the crown.1
Henry I in his youth had a nickname Beau Clerk, which means ‘a Good Scholar’, because he liked learning and wisdom. He often repeated that the unlettered king is only a crowned ass. We know almost nothing else about Henry's youth except that he was born on English soil and he was the favourite of his mother, the queen Matilda of Flanders, William the Conqueror's wife.
In his later years people called Henry I also the Lion of Justice, for when there was peace in England he would not suffer his barons to wax proud and to do as they willed, but, like his father William I, he held them in check with a strong hand. And Henry tried to help the common folk and made it easier for them to come before the king's justices and have right to them when the barons oppressed them. And though King Henry did so not so much because he cared for the common folk as because he wanted to keep the barons from growing too powerful, yet it was the common folk who were the gainers.
Henry I had pleased the English very much by marrying a princess who was the daughter of Queen Margaret of Scotland, belonging to the old royal family of Alfred and Edgar. The people felt now that they had some hope for better days. Queen Matilda, or Maud, (10801118) was a good woman, and she helped her husband in many ways.
Henry reorganised the Courts of Law. The duties of the king's officers and the king's council were rearranged and a new smaller body of advisers created, called the King's Court.
Comprehension questions
1.What kind of person was Henry I? What important achievements were there during his government?
2.Why were the English pleased with that king?
19.WHEN THE WHITE SHIP WENT DOWN
Henry I had the only son William. We do not know very much about him except that his father was very fond of him and that he disliked the people of Normandy, which his father had conquered. But there is one deed of his which we like to recall, because it shows he could think of another's safety before his own, and by it he lost his life at the age of eighteen.
Prince William's father was constantly in war with the King of France, who resented the presence of the English in Normandy, and especially of King Henry, who had unjustly taken it from his brother Robert and his son.
In 1120 Henry made peace with the King of France, and set sail from Barfleur, in Normandy, on his return to England. The wind was favourable, and the vessel was soon out of sight of land. Prince William and his courtiers were not ready to start with the king, and it was not until nightfall that they left the port, for the stupid courtiers gave wine to the sailors, and then the rowers were not in a fit condition to take the boat safely across the Channel. The boat was called the Blanche Nef, or the White Ship, and was commanded by the same man who had rowed the Prince's grandfather across to the conquest of England 54 years before.
1 The document addressed abuses of royal power by his predecessor, his brother William Rufus, as perceived by the nobility, specifically the over-taxation of the barons, the abuse of vacant sees, and the practices of simony and pluralism. The charter of liberties was generally ignored by monarchs until in 1213.
31
Some of the sensible people refused to trust themselves to the incapable sailors, and those who remained in the boat soon repented doing so. There was no moon, and the man who was steering drove the vessel on to the dangerous rocks near Alderney. There were nearly 300 people on board, and they managed to lower a boat, and put Prince William with a few others into it. Then the Prince remembered his half-sister, and ordered the little boat to return to rescue her. But directly the small boat got alongside the ship, the frantic people jumped into it, and, of course, the boat was sunk.
It is said that only two men got away from the wreck. One was captain, who afterwards drowned himself, when he knew the Prince was lost; the other was the butcher of Rouen, who clung on to the mast, and was picked up by a fishing boat next day. He told the news of the wreck, and how Prince William lost his life, and how 140 young men of noble families had died.
Nobody dared to tell the king the fate of his only son, but at last the nobles sent a weeping page to him with the sad news. It is said that King Henry fainted and nobody ever saw him smile again.
Comprehension questions
1.What do we know about Prince William’s character?
2.Describe the Blanche Nef tragedy.
20. THE WHITE SHIP (after Charles Dickens)
When king Henry I made peace with the French powers, he went to Normandy with his son Prince William and a great retinue; he wanted the Norman nobles to acknowledge the Prince as his successor and to contract his own second marriage as his first wife Queen Maud by nickname the Good unhappily died. Henry wanted to marry the daughter of the Count of Anjou. Both these things were triumphantly done; and on the twenty-fifth of November 1120 the whole retinue prepared to embark at the Port of Barfleur, for the voyage home.
On that day, and at that place, there came to the King Fitz-Stephen, a sea-captain, and said: "My liege, your father served your father all his life, upon the sea. He steered the ship with the golden boy upon the prow, in which your father sailed to conquer England. I beseech you to grant me the same office. I have a fair vessel called the White Ship. I pray you, Sire, to let
your servant have the honour to steer you in the White Ship to England!"
"I am sorry, friend", replied the King, "that my vessel is already chosen, and that I cannot therefore sail with a man who served my father. But the Prince and all his company shall go with you in the fair White Ship".
An hour or two afterwards, the King set sail in the vessel, that he had chosen, accompanied by other vessels, and, sailing all night with a fair and gentle wind, arrived upon the coast of England in the morning. While it was yet night, the people of some of these ships heard a faint wild cry come over the sea, and wondered what it was.
Now, the Prince bore no love to the English, and had declared that when he came to the throne, he would yoke them to the plough like oxen. He went aboard the White Ship, with one hundred and thirty youthful nobles; among them were eighteen noble ladies. All that gay company, with their servants and fifty sailors, made three hundred souls aboard the fair White Ship.
The Prince commanded to make merry; and the sailors drank out three casks of wine; and the Prince and all the noble company danced in the moonlight on the deck of the White Ship.
When, at last, the vessel shot out of the harbour, there was not a sober seaman on board. But the sails were all set, and the oars all going merrily. The gay young nobles and the
32
beautiful ladies wrapped in mantles of bright colours to protect them from the cold, talked, laughed and sang.
Crash! A terrible cry broke from three hundred hearts. It was the cry of the people the distant vessel of the King heard faintly on the water. The White Ship had struck upon a rock!
Fitz-Stephen hurried the Prince into a boat with some Nobles.
"Push off", he whispered; and rowed to land. "It is not far, and the sea is smooth. The rest of us must die".
But, as they rowed away, the Prince heard the voice of his sister Marie, calling for help. He never in his life had been so good as he was then. He cried in an agony: "Row back at any risk! I cannot leave her!"
They rowed back. As the Prince held out his arms to catch his sister, so many people leaped in, that the boat was overset. And in the same instant the White Ship went down.
Only two men floated. They clung to the main yard of the ship, which had broken from the mast, and now supported them. By-and-by, another man came swimming; when he pushed his long wet hair aside, they knew it was Fitz-Stephen.
"Where is the Prince?" said he. "Gone! Gone!" — the two cried together. "Only we three have risen above the water!" The captain with a ghastly face, cried: "Woe! woe to me!", and sunk to the bottom.
The other two clung to the main yard for some hours. At last, one of them said faintly: "I am chilled with the cold, and can hold no longer. Farewell, good friend!" So, he dropped and sank; and the poor Butcher of Rouen alone was saved. In the morning, some fishermen saw him flowing in his sheep-skin coat, and got him into their boat — the only man who told this dismal tale.
For three days, no one dared to carry the news to the King. At last, they sent to him a little boy, who, weeping bitterly, and kneeling at his feet, told him that the White Ship was lost with all on board. The King fell to the ground like a dead man, and never, never afterwards, was seen to smile.
21. THE CIVIL WAR
After Prince William's death, having no more sons, Henry I proposed to the Barons to swear that they would recognize as his successor his daughter Matilda, whom he married to the eldest son of the Count of Anjou, Geoffry, surnamed Plantagenet, because he liked to wear a sprig of flowering broom (Gene in French) in his cap for a feather. The Barons took the oath about the succession of Matilda (and her children after her) twice — but they had no intention to keep it.
In 1135 Henry died of indigestion. His remains were brought over to Reading Abbey to be buried.
The King was no sooner dead than all the plans he had laboured at so long crumbled away like a hollow heap of sand. Stephen, whom Henry had never mistrusted or suspected, started up to claim the throne.
Stephen was the son of Adela, the Conqueror's daughter; her husband had been the Count of Blois. After Henry I’s death Stephen hastily found a false witness, a servant of the late King, and the man swore that the King had named Stephen for his heir upon his death-bed.
Matilda and her husband were haughty and unpopular; a woman's rule was risky; so the Archbishop of Canterbury crowned Stephen on the false evidence of the servant.
Matilda and her husband immediately fled to Normandy. An old Chronicle of that time gives us an account of Matilda escaping from Oxford with her companions, over the Christmas snows, all dressed in white, so as not to be seen. Fighting went on, and the Barons began building castles again, and taking people's property from them and doing as they liked.
33