Chapter II: The Early Days of William Rufus.4 (6)

Thus far we are inclined to see in our second William a character of unmixed blackness, alike as a man and as a King. There seems no room left for even pagan virtues in the oppressor, the blasphemer, the man given up to vices at whose foulness ordinary sinners stood aghast. Yet nothing is plainer than that there was something in the character of William Rufus which made him not wholly hateful in the eyes of his own age. There was a side to him which, if we may not strictly call it virtuous, has yet in it something akin to virtue, as compared with other sides of him. There is, as I have already hinted, amidst all the general oppressions of his reign, amidst all the special outrages which he at least allowed to go unpunished, no sign in him of that direct delight in human suffering which marks some of his contemporaries. I have spoken of his dutiful obedience to his father while he lived; and the sentiment of filial duty lived on after his father’s death, and showed itself in some singular forms of respect for his memory. Elsewhere the enemy and spoiler of the Church, towards his father’s ecclesiastical foundations Rufus appears as a benefactor. Saint Stephen’s, the monument of his father’s penance, Battle, the monument of his father’s victory, were both the objects of his bounty.[466] But it is singularly characteristic that the means for bounty towards Saint Stephen at Caen were found in the plunder of the Holy Cross at Waltham.[467] At York, strangely out of the common range of his actions, we find him counted as a second founder of the hospital of Saint Peter; we find him changing its site, enlarging its buildings and revenues, but specially setting forth that he was confirming the gifts of his father.[468] We shall see that, in all his wars, it was his special ambition to keep whatever had been his father’s; whatever he lost or won, it was a point of honour to hold the great trophy of his father’s continental victories. In other warfare the Red King might halt or dally or put up with an imperfect conquest. But when Le Mans, castle and city, was to be kept or won, when the royal tower of his father was in jeopardy or in hostile hands, then the heart of Rufus never waxed weak in counsel, his arm never faltered in the fight.

[Sidenote: His chivalrous spirit.]

[Sidenote: Chivalry a new thing.]

But one form of words which I have just used opens to us one special side of the character of the Red King which is apt to be overlooked. I have spoken of the point of honour. I am not sure that, in the generation before Rufus, those words could have applied in all their fulness either to Harold of England or to William of Normandy, either to Gyrth of East-Anglia or to Roger of Beaumont. But to no man that ever lived was the whole train of thoughts and feelings suggested by those words more abidingly present than they were to the Red King. It might be going too far to say that William Rufus was the first gentleman, as his claim to that title might be disputed by his forefather Duke Richard the Good.[469] But he was certainly the first man in any very prominent place by whom the whole set of words, thoughts, and feelings, which belong to the titles of knight and gentleman were habitually and ostentatiously thrust forward.

[Sidenote: True character of chivalry.]

[Sidenote: The knight and the monk.]

[Sidenote: His word when kept and when broken.]

[Sidenote: His knightly courtesy.]

[Sidenote: His trust in the knightly word of others.]

[Sidenote: Contrast with Helias.]

[Sidenote: Importance of this side of his character.]

[Sidenote: He marks the beginning of a new æra.]

We have now in short reached the days of chivalry, the days of that spirit on which two of the masters of history have spoken in words so strong that I should hardly venture to follow them.[470] Of that spirit, the spirit which, instead of striving to obey the whole law of right, picks out a few of its precepts to be observed under certain circumstances and towards certain classes of people, William the Red was one of the foremost models. The knight, like the monk, arbitrarily picks out certain virtues, to be observed in such an exclusive and one-sided way as almost to turn them into vices. He has his arbitrary code of honour to supplant alike the law of God and the law of the land. That code teaches the duties of good faith, courtesy, mercy――under certain circumstances and towards certain people. Was William Rufus a man of his word? His subjects as a body had no reason to think so; the princes of other lands had no reason to think so. His promises to his people went for nothing; his treaties with other princes went for nothing.[471] To observe both of these was the dull everyday duty of a Christian man whom it had pleased God to call to a particular state of life, that namely of a king. Holding, as Rufus did, that no man could keep all his promises,[472] these were the class of promises that he thought it needless to try to keep. But when William plighted his word in the character of the _probus miles_, the _preux chevalier_, in modern phrase, as “an officer and a gentleman,” no man kept it more strictly. No man cared less for the justice of his wars; no man cared less for the wrong and suffering which his warfare caused. But no man ever more scrupulously observed all the mere courtesies of warfare. He was not like Robert of Bellême. The life and limb of the prisoner of knightly rank were safe in his hands. Indeed any man of any rank who appealed to his personal generosity was always safe. Under the influence of the law of honour, the tyrant, the blasphemer, the extortioner, the oppressor who neither feared God nor regarded man, puts on an air of unselfishness, of unworldliness. Strict in the observance of his own knightly word, he places unbounded confidence in the knightly word of others. He thrusts indignantly aside the suggestion of colder spirits that a captive knight may possibly break his _parole_.[473] We shall see all this as we follow the tale of his strife with Helias of Maine, one who was as scrupulous an observer of the law of honour as himself, but one who did not let the law of honour stand in the place of higher and older laws. And this is a side of the character of Rufus on which it is important to dwell, as it is one which the popular conception of him, a conception perfectly true as far as it goes, is apt to leave out. We have not grasped the likeness of the real man, unless we remember that the man whose crimes and vices the popular picture has not exaggerated, carried with him through life a sentimental standard of filial duty and reverence, and a knightly conscience, if the phrase may pass, as quick to speak and as sure to be obeyed as the higher conscience of Anselm or Helias. Without fully taking this in, we shall not easily understand the twofold light in which Rufus looked to the men of his own age, in whose eyes he clearly was not wholly hateful. And without fully taking it in, we shall fail to give him his place in the general history of England, Normandy, and mankind in general. In William Rufus we have not only to study a very varied and remarkable phase of human nature; we have also to look on a man who marks the beginning of a new age and a new state of feeling.

[Sidenote: Chivalry the bad side of some princes;]

[Sidenote: Its one-sided nature.]

[Sidenote: Its incidental use.]

[Sidenote: Instances of obedience to a higher law.]

[Sidenote: Practical working of chivalry.]

[Sidenote: Bayard.]

[Sidenote: The Black Prince.]

[Sidenote: Francis the First of France.]

[Sidenote: Twofold character of the Black Prince.]

The Red King has indeed this advantage, that the other parts of his character are so bad that the chivalrous side of him stands out as a relief, as at least comparative light amid surrounding darkness. There are other princes in whom the chivalrous side is the dark side, because there are other parts of their character better than chivalry. The essence of chivalry is that the fantastic and capricious law of honour displaces all the forms of the law of right. The standard of the good knight, the rule of good faith, respect, and courtesy, as due from one knight to another, displaces the higher standard of the man, the citizen, and the Christian. There are perhaps whole ages, there certainly are particular men, in which this lower standard has its use. Any check, any law, is better than no check and no law. He who cannot rise to the higher rank of an honest man had better be a knight and gentleman than a mere knave and ruffian. If a man cannot be kept back from all crimes by the law of right, it is a gain that he should be kept back from some crimes by the law of honour. It was better that William Rufus should show mercy and keep his word in some particular kind of cases than that he should never show mercy or keep his word at all. But the very fact that such an one as Rufus could feel bound by the law of honour shows how feeble a check the law of honour is. And we must remember that the very feeling of courtesy and deference towards men of a certain rank led only to more reckless and contemptuous oppression of all who lay without the favoured pale. And, at least as regards particular men, the beginning of the days of chivalry was the falling back from a higher standard. We have come across men in our own story who showed that they obeyed a better law than that of honour. It was not at the bidding of chivalry or honour, it was not in the character of knight or gentleman, that Herlwin made light of his own wrongs by the side of those of his poor peasants,[474] or that Harold refused to harry the lands of the men who had chosen him to be their king.[475] But the law of honour and chivalry was most fully obeyed, the character of knight and gentleman was shown in its full perfection, when the Knight without Fear and without Reproach refused to expose himself to toils of war which were too dangerous for any but the base churl.[476] It was fully carried out when the mirror of chivalry, the Black Prince himself, gave their lives to the French knights who fought against him, and murdered the unarmed men, women, and children, who craved for mercy.[477] It was no less worthily carried out by the king who ever had the faith of a gentleman on his lips, who boasted that he had never broken his word except to women, and who betrayed, not only the women, but the allied princes and commonwealths who trusted in him. William the Red at least need not shrink from a comparison with Francis of Valois.[478] But it must not be forgotten that one of the chivalrous heroes on our list had a side to him better than his chivalry. William the Great assuredly, and I believe William the Red also, would have shrunk from such a deed as the slaughter of Limoges. But he who wrought the slaughter of Limoges was also the patriotic statesman of the Good Parliament. The knight, courteous and bloody as became his knighthood, could turn about and act as something better than a knight. In such a man we must measure the balance of good and evil as we can, and the chivalrous side of him is the evil side. In William Rufus the chivalrous side is the better side; it is the comparatively bright spot in a picture otherwise of utter blackness.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Grouping of events in the reign of Rufus.]

The chief events of the reign of William Rufus fall into two classes. There is the military side; there is the ecclesiastical and constitutional side. There is the side which shows us the noblest and the basest type of the warrior in Helias of La Flèche and in Robert of Bellême. There is the side which shows us the noblest and the basest type of the priest in Anselm of Canterbury and in Randolf of Durham. The two sides go on together. The most striking features in both belong to a somewhat later time than that which we have now reached. But it is the military side in its earlier stages which most directly connects itself with the tale which we have gone through in the present chapter. The first Norman campaign of the Red King comes in date before the archiepiscopate of Anselm; it comes in idea before the administration of Randolf Flambard. On the other hand, it is directly connected with the war of Pevensey and Rochester, with the banishment of Bishop Odo and Bishop William. We will therefore pass to it as the chief subject of our next chapter.