Chapter VII (2)

In these versions, both written in the Red King’s own tongue, the details are very remarkable. They seem to come from a kind of wish, like the feeling which strewed flowers on the grave of Nero, to make the end of the oppressor and blasphemer one degree less frightful. Other versions know nothing of this conversion at the last moment. In one of them, the two, the King and Walter, are alone; the King shoots at a stag; he hits the beast, but only with a slight wound. The stag flies; the King follows him with his eyes, sheltering them with his hand from the sun’s rays. Walter Tirel meanwhile aims at another stag, misses him, and strikes the King. Rufus utters no word; like Harold, he breaks off the shaft of the arrow; he falls on the ground, and dies. Walter comes up, finds him lifeless, and takes to flight.[814] Or again, the stag comes between his two enemies; Walter shoots; the King at the same moment shifts his place; Walter’s arrow flies over the stag’s back, and pierces the King.[815] In another version the arrow, as we have already heard, glances from a tree;[816] in another the King stumbles and falls upon it.[817] In later but not less graphic accounts the string of the King’s bow breaks; the stag stands still in amazement; the King calls to Walter, “Shoot, you devil,” “Shoot, in the devil’s name; shoot, or it will be the worse for you.” Walter shoots; his arrow, perhaps by a straight course, perhaps by glancing against a tree, strikes the King to the heart.[818]

[Sidenote: Dunstable version.]

[Sidenote: The dream with new details.]

[Sidenote: The prior of Dunstable warns the King.]

[Sidenote: The King shot by Ralph of Aix.]

In all these versions the arrow comes from the bow of a known companion, and in all but one that companion is said to be Walter Tirel. In another form of the story the general outline is the same, but the persons are different. The vision which in the other version is seen at Gloucester is moved to Dunstable, and is seen there by the prior of that house. The change of place is unlucky, as the priory of Dunstable was not yet founded.[819] The Prince on his throne, and the fair woman complaining of the deeds of William Rufus, are seen, with some differences of detail, but quite a new element is brought in. A man all black and hairy offers five arrows to the Prince on the throne, who gives them back again to him, saying that on the morrow the wrongs of the suppliant woman shall be avenged by one of them. The Prior has the vision explained to him much as in the other versions of the story, but with the addition that, unless the King repented, the woman――the Church――would be avenged by one of the arrows on the morrow. The Prior starts from his sleep, and midnight as it was, he sets out at once on a journey to the New Forest, as swift and headlong as the King’s own ride to Southampton the year before. He reaches the place at one in the afternoon, and finds the King going forth to hunt. As soon as William sees him, he says that he knows why he is come, and orders forty marks to be given to him. For, it is added, the King, who destroyed other churches throughout all England, had a love for the church of Dunstable and its prior, and had even built the minster there at his own cost. The Prior says that he has come on much greater and weightier matters; he takes the King aside; he tells him his dream, and warns him on no account to go into the forest, but at once to begin to repent and amend his ways. The Prior has hardly ended his discourse when a man, like the man whom he had seen in his dream, comes and offers the King five arrows, like the arrows of the dream. The King gives them――not to Walter Tirol, who is not mentioned, but to Ralph of Aix, to take with him into the forest. The Prior meanwhile prays him not to go, but in vain. He goes into the wood, and is presently shot with one of those arrows by the hand of Ralph. No details are given, nor is it implied whether the King’s death was an act of murder or of chance-medley.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Impression made at the time by the death of Rufus.]

[Sidenote: Its abiding memory.]

[Sidenote: Local traditions.]

[Sidenote: Impressive character of the death of Rufus.]

[Sidenote: Rufus and Charles the First.]

[Sidenote: The words of the Chronicle.]

[Sidenote: End and character of Rufus.]

[Sidenote: Judgement on the reign of Rufus.]

These varying tales, whose very variety shows the impression which the event made upon men’s minds, may make us glad to come back to the safe statement of the Chronicler, that the Red King was shot from his own men. The place and circumstances of the death of Rufus were such as could not fail to stamp themselves upon men’s minds. We see the proud and godless King, in the height of his pride and godlessness, with his heart puffed up with wilder plans and more swelling boasts than any of his plans and boasts in former years. He goes forth, in defiance of all warning――for some kernel of truth there must surely be in so many tales of warning――to take his pleasure in the place which men had already learned to look on as fatal to his house, the place where his brother had died by a mysterious death, where his nephew had died only a few weeks before his own end. He goes forth, after striving first to quiet his restless soul with business, and then to quench all thoughts and all warnings in the wine-cup. In the midst of his sport, he falls, by what hand no man knows for certain. One writer rejoices to tell us how the oppressor of the Church died on the site of one of the churches which had been uprooted to make way for his pleasures.[820] Others rejoice to tell how the King whose life and reign had been that of a wild beast, perished like a beast among the beasts.[821] And the impression was not only at the time; it has been abiding. The death of William Rufus is one of those events in English history which are familiar to every memory and come readily to every mouth. His death lives in the thoughts of not a few who have no clear knowledge of his life. The arrow in the New Forest is well known to many who know nothing of the real position of the Red King’s reign in English history. The name of Walter Tirel springs readily to the lips of many on whose ears the names of Randolf Flambard and Robert of Bellême, of Helias of Maine and Malcolm of Scotland, nay the name of Anselm himself, would fall like unwonted sounds. No keener local remembrance can be found than that which binds together the name of Rufus and the name of the New Forest. At the scenes of the great events of his reign, at Rochester and Bamburgh and Le Mans, local memory has passed away, and the presence of the Red King has to be called up by book-learning only. In a word, in popular remembrance William Rufus lives, not in his life but in his death. Nor is this wonderful. In the widest survey of his reign, we can only say that his death was the fitting ending of his life; in a life full of striking incident, it is not amazing that the last and most striking incident of all should be the best remembered. Of all the endings of kings in our long history, the two most impressive are surely the two that are most opposite. There is the death of the king who fell suddenly in the height of his power, by an unknown hand in the thickest depths of the forest; and there is the death of the king who, fallen from his power, was brought forth to die by the stroke of the headsman, before the windows of his own palace, in the sight of his people and of the sun. The striking nature of the tale is worthy of its long remembrance; but one could almost wish that the name of the supposed actor in the death of Rufus had never attached itself to the story. The dark words of the Chronicle are in truth more impressive than the tale, true or false, of Walter Tirel. Rufus was shot in his hunting from his own men. That is enough; his day was over. A life was ended, stained with deeds which, in our history at least, stand out without fellow before or after, but a life in which we may here and there see signs of great powers wasted, even of momentary feelings which might have been trained into something nobler. As it is, the career of William the Red is one of which the kindest words that we can say are that he always kept his word when it was plighted in a certain form, and that he was less cruel in his own person than many men of his time, than some better men than himself. But, however we judge of the man, there is but one judgement to be passed on the reign. The arrow, by whomsoever shot, set England free from oppression such as she never felt before or after at the hand of a single man.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Alleged final penitence of Rufus.]

[Sidenote: The other version prevails.]

[Sidenote: Accounts of William’s burial.]

One tale of the death of Rufus, it will be remembered, charitably describes him as seeking at the last for the mercy of the God whom he had so often defied. Others paint him as stubborn to the end, and put the name of the fiend in his mouth as his last words. The latter version is the one which left its abiding remembrance; it is the one which all men accepted at the time as the true picture of the oppressor whose yoke was broken at that memorable Lammas-tide. But the versions which try to assert a repentance for William Rufus at the last moment try also to claim for him a solemn and honourable burial amid the tears of mourning friends. One story goes so far as to place at the head of the assembly the late Bishop of the diocese, Walkelin of Winchester, whose body was already resting in the Old Minster, while the revenues of his see were in the hands of the King. This version gives us a vivid picture of the scene which followed the King’s death.[822] A company of barons gather round the corpse. There were the sons of Richard of Bienfaite, pointedly distinguished, the one as _Earl_, the other only as _Lord_.[823] There were Gilbert of Laigle and Robert Fitz-hamon, names familiar to us, and William of Montfichet, a name afterwards well known, but which is not enrolled in Domesday. These lords weep and rend their hair; they beat themselves and wish they were dead; they could never have such another lord. Gilbert of Laigle at last bids them turn from vainly lamenting the lord who could not come back to them to paying the last honours to what was left of him. The huntsmen make a bier; they strew it with flowers and fern; they lay it on two palfreys; they place the corpse on the bier and cover it with the new mantles of Robert Fitz-hamon and William of Montfichet. Then they bear him to the minster of Saint Swithhun, where bishops, abbots, clerks, and monks, a goodly company, are come together. Bishop Walkelin, strange to say, watches by the body of the King till the morning. Then it is buried with such worship, such saying of masses, as no man had ever heard before, such as no man would hear again till the day of doom.

[Sidenote: The genuine story.]

[Sidenote: Popular canonizations.]

[Sidenote: Popular excommunication of Rufus.]

[Sidenote: He is buried in the Old Minster without religious rites.]

[Sidenote: Fall of the tower. 1107.]

Such is the tale of those who would soften down the story; but the version which bears on it the stamp of truth gives us quite another picture. The King, forsaken by his nobles and companions, lay dead in the forest, as little cared for as his father had been when he lay dead in his chamber at Saint Gervase. Those who had been his comrades in sport hastened hither and thither to their own homes, to guard them against troubles that might arise, now that the land had no longer a ruler. Only a few churls of the neighbourhood, men of the race at whom Rufus had sneered for heeding omens and warnings, were, now that omens and warnings had proved too true, ready to do the last corporal work of mercy to the oppressor. They laid the bleeding body on a rustic wain; they covered it as they could, with coarse cloths, and then took it, dripping blood as it went, to the gates of Winchester. He who had so dearly loved the sports of the woods was himself borne from the woods to the city, like a savage boar pierced through by the hunting-spear.[824] And now took place one of the most wonderful scenes that our history records.[825] That history records not a few cases of popular canonization; neither pope nor king could hinder Earl Waltheof and Earl Simon from working signs and wonders on behalf of the folk for whom they had died.[826] But nowhere else do we read of a popular excommunication. William Rufus, as I have more than once remarked, had never been openly cut off from the communion of the Church. He had died indeed unshriven and unabsolved, but so had many a better man in the endless struggles of those rough days. There was no formal ground for refusing to his corpse or to his soul the rites, the prayers, the offerings, which were the portion of the meanest of the faithful. But a common thought came on the minds of all men that for William Rufus those charitable rites could be of none avail. His foul life, his awful death, was taken as a sign that he was smitten by a higher judgement than that of Popes and Councils. A crowd of all orders, ranks, and sexes, brought together by wonder or pity――we will not deem that they came in scorn or triumph――met the humble funeral procession, and followed the royal corpse to the Old Minster. The dead man had been a king; the consecrating oil had been poured on his head; his body was therefore allowed to pass within the hallowed walls, and was laid with all speed in a grave beneath the central tower. But in those rites, at once sad and cheerful, which accompany the burial of the lowliest of baptized men, the lord of England and Normandy had no share. No bell was rung; no mass was said; no offerings were made for the soul which was deemed to have passed beyond the reach even of eternal mercy. No man took from the hoard which Rufus had filled by wrong to win the prayers of the poor for him by almsgiving. Men deemed that for him prayer was too late; no scattering abroad of the treasure by the hands of others could atone for the wrong by which the treasure had first been brought together. Many looked on; but few mourned. None wept for him but the mercenaries who received his pay, and the baser partners of his foul vices. They would gladly have torn his slayer in pieces, but he was already far away out of their reach. Thus unwept, unprayed for, a byeword, an astonishment, and a hissing, the Red King lay beneath the pavement of the minster of St. Swithhun. A few years later the tower under which he lay crumbled and fell. Men said that it fell because so foul a corpse lay beneath it.[827]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Portents at William’s death.]

[Sidenote: Dream of Abbot Hugh of Clugny. July 31, 1100.]

[Sidenote: Vision of Anselm’s doorkeeper. August 1.]

[Sidenote: News brought to Anselm’s clerk. August 2.]

[Sidenote: Vision of Count William of Mortain. August 2.]

But as portents had gone before the fall of the Red King, so portents did not wait for the crumbling of Walkelin’s tower to startle men in strange ways with the news that he had fallen. That news, so say the legends of the time, was known in strange ways in far-off places, long before the tidings could have been brought by the utmost speed of man; sooner, it would seem, than the moment when the arrow hit its designed or unwitting mark. Already on the last day of July, the holy abbot Hugh of Clugny was able to tell Anselm that he had seen in a dream the King of the English brought before the throne of God, accused, judged, and condemned to eternal damnation.[828] The next day, the night of the kalends of August, a bright youth stood before Anselm’s door-keeper at Lyons, as he strove to sleep, and asked if he wished to hear the news. The news was that the strife between King William and Archbishop Anselm was over.[829] The next day, the day of the King’s death, one of the Archbishop’s clerks was at the matin service, singing with his eyes shut. He felt a small paper put into his hand and a voice bade him read. He looked up; the bearer of the paper was gone; but he read the words, “King William is dead.”[830] Within our own island the news was said to have been spread abroad in yet stranger ways. At the same hour when King William went forth to hunt in the New Forest, his cousin Count William of Mortain went forth for his sport also in some of his hunting-grounds in Cornwall. He too found himself by chance alone, apart from any of his comrades. No archer from Poix crossed his path, but a sight far more fearful. A huge goat, shaggy and black, met him, bearing on his back a king――how was his kingship marked?――black and naked, and wounded in the midst of his breast. The Count adjured the beast in the holiest name to say what all this meant.[831] The power of speech was not lacking to the monster. “I bear,” he answered, “your king, rather your tyrant, William the Red, to his doom. For I am the evil spirit, I am the avenger of the wickedness with which he raged against the Church of Christ, and I brought about his death, at the bidding of the blessed Alban, protomartyr of England, who made his moan to the Lord, because this man sinned beyond measure in the island which he had been the first to hallow.”[832] From what mint this wild tale comes it is needless to add. The house of Saint Alban was only one of thirteen abbeys which the King had kept vacant to receive their revenues.[833] But the other twelve were less rich in that special growth both of legend and of genuine history which adorns the house of the protomartyr.

§ 2. _The First Days of Henry._

_August 2――November 11, 1100._

[Sidenote: Vacancy of the throne.]

[Sidenote: Claims of Robert by the treaty of 1091.]

[Sidenote: Such claims little regarded.]

[Sidenote: Choice confined to the house of the Conqueror.]

[Sidenote: No thought of either Eadgar.]

[Sidenote: Choice between Robert and Henry.]

[Sidenote: Claims of Henry; the only son of a king.]

[Sidenote: His personal merits.]

[Sidenote: Speedy election of Henry.]

The throne was again vacant; and now came the question which Englishmen knew so well whenever the throne was vacant, Whom should they choose to fill it? There was indeed an instrument in being, dated nine years before, by which it had been agreed that, if either Robert or William died without lawful issue, the survivor should succeed to the dominions of his brother.[834] But Englishmen had never allowed their most precious birthright to be thus lightly signed away beforehand. And many men of Norman birth must by this time have put on the feelings of Englishmen on this point as on many others. With the great mass of both races there could have been no doubt at all as to the right man to place upon the vacant throne. By this time, we may be sure, all thought had passed away of choosing outside the line of the Conqueror; and if such a thought had come into the head of any man, there was no candidate who could have been brought forward. The elder Eadgar was far away on his crusade, and no one was likely to think of sending to Scotland to offer the crown to his nephew. His nieces were near at hand; but the thought of a female ruler did not come into men’s minds till the next generation. Within the house of the Conqueror there were two claimants. Robert had whatever right the treaty could give him, a better right undoubtedly than any which he could put forward as the eldest son of his father. But a paper claim of this kind went for little when the man who asserted it was far away, and when, had he been at hand, everything except the letter of the treaty was against him. It went for naught when there, on the very spot, was the man whom every sign marked out for kingship. There among them was the only man――unless indeed they had gone to Norway to seek for the younger Harold――who was the son of a crowned King of the English. There was the one man of the reigning house who, born on English soil of the Norman stock, could be looked on as a countryman by Normans and English alike. There was the man who, while his brothers had, in different ways, so deeply misgoverned on their several sides of the sea, had shown, by his wise rule of a small dominion, how far better suited he was than either of them to be entrusted with the rule of a mighty kingdom. The Count of the Côtentin, Henry the Ætheling, Henry the Clerk, was the man whose name spoke alike to English and to Norman hearts. To the Normans he was the son of their conquering Duke, the descendant of the dukes that had been before him, the man who had made one spot of Norman ground prosperous while anarchy tore the rest in pieces. To the English he was their own Ætheling, the one son of their king, their countryman, as they fondly deemed, speaking the tongue of Ælfred, sent to renew the law of Eadward. With such a candidate at their doors, the bit of diplomatic parchment was torn to the winds. No time was to be lost; the land could not go without a king. The work was done speedily and decisively. The record which tells how the late king died in the midst of his unright, without shrift, without atonement, goes on to say, “On the Thursday was he slain and on the morrow was he buried; and, after that he buried was, the Witan that nigh at hand were his brother Henry to king chose.”[835]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Story of Henry on the day of William’s death.]

[Sidenote: Henry hastes to Winchester.]

[Sidenote: William of Breteuil maintains the claim of Robert.]

[Sidenote: Popular feeling for Henry.]

[Sidenote: Formal meeting for the election. August 3.]

On the day of the Red King’s fall Count Henry was hunting in the New Forest, but not in the same immediate part of it as his brother. The tale ran that the string of his bow broke, that he went to the house of a churl to get wherewithal to mend it. While the bowstring is mending, an old woman of the house asks one of the Count’s companions who his master was. He answers that he is Henry, brother of the king of the land. She tells them that she knows by augury that the King’s brother shall soon be king himself, and bids them remember her words.[836] Henry turns again to his sport, but, as he draws near to the wood, men meet him, one, two, three, then nine and ten, telling him of the King’s death.[837] In this account, he goes in grief to the place where the corpse lay;[838] a more likely version carries him straight to the hoard at Winchester, where, as lawful heir of the kingdom, he demands the keys at the hands of the guard.[839] The tale reminds us of Cæsar and Metellus.[840] William of Breteuil withstands the demand. He pleads the elder birth of Robert and the homage which both Henry and himself had done to him. Robert had waged wars far off for the love of God; he was now on his way to take his crown and kingdom in peace.[841] A fierce strife arose; a crowd swiftly gathered, and it was soon seen on which side the feelings of the people lay. Men pressed together from all quarters to swell the company of him who in their eyes was the lawful heir claiming his right. The voice of England――so much of England as had heard the news――rose high against the stranger who dared to withstand the English Ætheling, the son of a crowned king born in the land. Thus, four-and-thirty years after the great battle, Englishmen still looked on the son of William Fitz-Osbern, nay on the son of William the Great born to a duke in Normandy, as outlandish men. But the son of William the Great, born to a king in their own land, they claimed as their own countryman. Strengthened by the favour of the people, the Ætheling put his hand on his sword’s hilt; he would endure no vain excuses to keep him out of the inheritance of his father.[842] A stop seems to have been put to this open strife, perhaps by night, perhaps by the coming of the lowly funeral pomp of the fallen king on the Friday morning. The unhallowed ceremony over, the Witan came together in a more regular assembly for the formal choice of a king.

[Sidenote: Division of the assembly;]

[Sidenote: English and Norman supporters of Henry;]

[Sidenote: supporters of Robert.]

[Sidenote: Comparison with the assembly after the death of Cnut. 1035.]

[Sidenote: The divided kingdom now impossible.]

[Sidenote: Henry chosen;]

[Sidenote: influence of Henry Earl of Warwick.]

The place of their meeting, whether in the minster or in the king’s palace, is not recorded.[843] Wherever it was, other voices were now to be heard besides those of the Englishmen of Winchester and the coasts thereof. These called with one voice for their own Ætheling; but the voices of the Norman lords were by no means of one accord. Some of the immediate companions of the late king had hastened at once on his fall to pledge themselves to the cause of Henry. But in the assembly which now came together a strong party, Normans we may be sure to a man, supported the cause of Robert. There are few assemblies of which we would more gladly hear the details than of this, in which the claims of two candidates for the crown were debated, not without fierce strife, but at least without bloodshed. We are reminded of the assembly which, sixty-five years before, peaceably decided between the claims of Harthacnut and the first Harold.[844] But then the question was settled by a division of the kingdom; now such a thought is not breathed. The Conqueror had made England a realm one and indivisible; it was doubtful to which of his sons it was to pass, but, to whichever it passed, it was to pass whole. Unluckily, when debates concerned the kingdom only, without touching any ecclesiastical question, no Eadmer or William Fitz-Stephen was found to report them. We know only the result. Henry was chosen, and he largely owed his election to one special friend. This was his namesake Henry, Earl of Warwick, the younger son of the old Roger of Beaumont and brother of the more famous Count of Meulan, soon to be Earl of Leicester. Earl Henry and his wife Margaret of Mortagne bear a good character among the writers of their time, and they seem to have been designed for a more peaceful age than that in which their lot was cast. Chiefly by the influence of Henry of Warwick, Henry of Coutances and Domfront was chosen to the English crown. The work was almost as speedy as the burial of Eadward, the election and the crowning of Harold. Quite as speedy it could not be, when the Gemót of election was held at Winchester, while the precedents of three reigns made it seem matter of necessity that the unction and coronation should be done at Westminster. Before the sun set on the day after the death of Rufus, England had again, not indeed a full king, but an undisputed king-elect.

[Sidenote: The hoard opened to the king-elect.]

[Sidenote: He grants the bishopric of Winchester to William Giffard.]

[Sidenote: Consecrated 1107; died 1129.]

Against a king-elect the gates of the hoard could no longer be shut. Not five thousand pounds only, but the whole treasure of the kingdom was now Henry’s. His first act was to stop one of the many sources by which the hoard was filled. One of them was found in the revenues of the vacant bishopric of the city in which they were met. Henry, still only chosen and not crowned, took on him to do one act of royal authority which all men would hail as a sign that the new reign was not to be as the last. As the uncrowned Ætheling Eadgar had confirmed the election of Abbot Brand by the monks of Peterborough,[845] so the uncrowned Ætheling Henry bestowed the staff of the see of Winchester on the late king’s Chancellor, William Giffard, doubtless a kinsman of the aged Earl of Buckingham. In his appointment we may perhaps see a wish on the part of a king who was emphatically the choice of the English people to conciliate at once the Norman nobles and the royal officials.[846] But seven years were to pass before the bishop-elect appointed by the king-elect became a full bishop by the rite of consecration. And what we should hardly have looked for in a minister of the Red King, some of those years were years of confessorship and exile endured by the new prelate on behalf of an ecclesiastical principle.[847]

[Sidenote: Need for hastening the coronation.]

[Sidenote: Henry crowned at Westminster. August 5, 1100.]

[Sidenote: Form of his oath.]

[Sidenote: He swears to undo the evils of his brother’s reign.]

[Sidenote: Joy at Henry’s accession.]

But Henry, Ætheling and Count, was not long to remain a mere king-elect. The interregnum ended on the fourth day. It was not a time to tarry; it was needful that the land should have a full king at the first moment that the rite of his hallowing could be gone through. It was known that Robert was on his way back from Apulia, and Henry and his counsellors feared lest, if the Duke should show himself in England or even in Normandy before the crown was safe on the new king’s brow, the Norman nobles in England might repent of an election in which it is clear that they had not very heartily agreed.[848] From Winchester therefore Henry went to London with all speed, in company with Count Robert of Meulan, who kept under the new reign the same post of specially trusted counsellor which he had held during the reign of Rufus.[849] On the Sunday after that memorable Thursday, Count Henry was admitted to the kingly office in the West Minster. As the Primate was far away, the rite of consecration was performed by the highest suffragan of his province, Maurice Bishop of London.[850] The form of Henry’s coronation oath seems, like the oaths of his father and his brother,[851] to have had a special reference to the circumstances of the time. It is the oath of a reformer, of a king who has to bring back right after a season of wrong. As the memory of Rufus had been branded in his burial as the memory of no other king ever was, so it was branded no less in the coronation rites of his successor. The new king swore, as usual, to hold the best law that on any king’s day before him stood; but he swore further to God and to all folk to put aside the unright that in his brother’s time was.[852] These weighty promises made, Bishop Maurice of London hallowed Henry to king, and, according to the great law of his father, all men in this land bowed to him and sware oaths and became his men.[853] The work was now done; the diplomatic meshes of nine years before had been broken asunder by the strong will of the English people. England had again a king born on her own soil, a king of her own rearing, her own choosing, King of the English in a truer sense than those who went either before him or after him for some generations. Great was the gladness as the news spread through the length and breadth of the land. The long hopes of the English, the dark sayings of the Britons, were fulfilled in the coming of the king sworn before all things to undo the wrongs of the evil time. The good state was brought back; the golden age had come again; the days of unlaw had passed away; the Lion of Justice reigned.[854]

[Sidenote: He puts forth his Charter.]

[Sidenote: Its provisions.]

[Sidenote: The Church to be free;]

[Sidenote: ecclesiastical vacancies.]

Before the Sunday of his consecration had passed, King Henry had put the solemn promises which he had made before the altar into the shape of a legal document. That very day he set forth in writing that famous charter which formed the groundwork of the yet more famous charter of John.[855] I have commented on its main provisions elsewhere, and I have tried to show how it at once establishes the new doctrines as to the tenure of land, and promises to reform the abuses to which they had already led.[856] I will now go through its main provisions in order. First, Henry, King of the English, does his faithful people to wit that he has been crowned king by the common counsel of the barons of the whole realm of England.[857] He had found the realm ground down with unrighteous exactions. For the fear of God and for the love which he has to his people, he first of all makes the Church of God free. He will not sell the Church nor put her to farm.[858] When an archbishop, bishop, or abbot, dies, he will take nothing during the vacancy from the demesne of his church or from its tenants. And he will put away the evil customs with which the realm of England was oppressed, which evil customs he goes on to set down in order.

[Sidenote: Reliefs.]

Secondly, he touches the question of reliefs. The heir of lands held in chief of the crown shall no longer, as was done in his brother’s time, be constrained to _redeem_ his land at an arbitrary price; he shall _relieve_ it by a just and lawful relief.[859] And as the King does by his tenants-in-chief, he calls on his tenants-in-chief to do in their turn by their under-tenants.

[Sidenote: Marriage.]

Thirdly, he comes to the abuse of the lord’s rights in the matter of marriage.[860] He will take nothing for licence of marriage, nor will he meddle with the right of his tenants to dispose of their daughters or other kinswomen, unless the proposed bridegroom should be the King’s enemy. The rights of the childless widow are also secured.

[Sidenote: Wardship.]

The fourth clause touches the case of the widow with children. The mother herself or some fitting kinsman shall have the wardship.[861] And as the King does by his barons, so shall they do in the case of the daughters and widows of their men.

[Sidenote: The coinage.]

Fifthly, the coinage is to be brought back to the state in which it was in the days of King Eadward, and _justice_ is denounced against false moneyers and other retailers of false coin.[862] Sharp justice it was, as we know from the annals of Henry’s reign.

[Sidenote: Debts and suits.]

Sixthly, The King forgives all debts owing to his brother, and stops all suits set on foot by him. This is not the first time in which it is presumed that claims made by the crown must be unjust. Henry excepts debts arising out of the ordinary farming of the crown lands; he excepts also anything that any man had agreed to pay for the inheritances or other property of others.[863] Does this refer to property confiscated and sold by the King? Payments which had been made in relief for a man’s own inheritance are specially forgiven.[864]

[Sidenote: Wills.]

Seventhly, he confirms the free right of bequest of personal property. If a man, through warfare or sickness, dies intestate, his wife, children, kinsfolk, and lawful men, are to dispose of his money as they may think best for his soul.[865]

[Sidenote: Amercements.]

The eighth provision goes back a step further than the others. It cancels the practice of both Williams, and goes back in the most marked way to earlier times. If one of the King’s barons or other men incurred forfeiture, he should not bind himself to be at the King’s mercy, as had been done in the time of his father and brother; he should be fined a fixed amount according to custom, as was done in the days of the kings before his father.[866]

[Sidenote: Murders.]

Ninthly, the King forgives all _murders_ up to the day of his coronation. That is to say, he forgives all payments due from the hundreds according to the special law made by his father for the protection of his foreign followers.[867] For the future the payment shall be according to the law of King Eadward.[868]

[Sidenote: The forests.]

Tenthly comes the one illiberal provision in the document. “By the common consent of my barons, I have kept the forests in my own hands, as my father held them.”[869] Here, where the King’s personal pleasure was concerned, we hear nothing of the law of King Eadward or of the practice of yet earlier kings.

[Sidenote: Privilege of the knights.]

[Sidenote: Effect of the provision.]

[Sidenote: Growth of the country gentry.]

[Sidenote: Policy of Henry towards the second order.]

The eleventh clause is a remarkable one. It does not speak, like the others, of reforming abuses or of going back to the practice of some earlier time. The King, of his own free will, bestows a certain privilege on one class of his subjects. Knights who held their lands by military service are to be free, as far as their demesne lands are concerned, from all gelds and other burthens. This the King grants to them as his own gift. In return for so great a boon, he calls on them to stand ready with horses and arms for his service and the defence of his kingdom.[870] This boon seems meant for a class whom it was very important for Henry to attach to his interest, the men namely of both races who were of knightly rank but not higher. Many of them were his tenants-in-chief; those who held only of other lords were still his men by virtue of the law of Salisbury. It was his policy to strengthen both classes in opposition to the great nobles whom he knew to be disaffected to him. It may not be too much to see in this clause of Henry’s charter an important stage in the developement of an idea which is peculiar to England, the idea of the gentleman who has no pretensions to be a nobleman. The knights of Henry’s charter are the representatives of the thegns of Domesday, the forerunners of the country gentlemen of later times. Holding a place between the great barons and the mass of the people, and again between the greatest and the smallest of the king’s tenants-in-chief――largely Norman by descent, but also largely English――they were well suited to become the leaders of the people, as they worthily showed themselves in our early parliaments. Their existence and importance, as a class separate from the great barons, did much to establish that distinctive and happy feature of English political life, which spread freedom over the whole land, instead of shutting it up within a few favoured towns. The existence of the knight, as something separate from the baron, secured, not only his own freedom, but the freedom of land-owners smaller than himself. It helped to hinder the growth of the hard and fast line which in France divided the _gentilhomme_ from the _roturier_. It was part of the policy of Henry to raise particular men of this second rank, while he broke the power of the great barons of the Conquest. This clause shows that it was also his policy to strengthen and to win to his side this class as a class.

[Sidenote: The King’s Peace.]

[Sidenote: The Law of Eadward.]

[Sidenote: The Conqueror’s amendments.]

[Sidenote: The alleged Laws of Henry.]

Of the other three clauses of the charter, the first two are general, the last is temporary. The twelfth clause establishes firm peace through the whole kingdom. The thirteenth expresses that mixture of old things and new which marks the time. Henry lays down the great basis of all later English jurisprudence; “I restore to you the law of King Eadward, with those amendments which my father made with the consent of his barons.”[871] The law of Henry was to be the old law of England, traditionally called by the name of the king to whose days men looked back as to the golden age, but modified by the changes, or rather additions, which were brought in by the few genuine statutes of the Conqueror.[872] Here, as throughout, Henry sets forth his full purpose to reign as an English king, and he carefully puts forward the nature of his kingship as a strict continuation of the kingship of Eadward and of the kings before Eadward. We have seen that the collection which goes by the name of the Laws of Henry is no real code of Henry’s issuing.[873] But it breathes the spirit of this clause and of the other clauses of the charter. It shows how English, in theory at least, the government of Henry was meant to be.

[Sidenote: Amnesty.]

The fifteenth and last clause is a kind of amnesty for any irregularity which might have happened during the short interregnum. Two days and parts of two other days had passed after the peace of King William――if we may so speak of the days of unlaw――had come to an end, and before the peace of King Henry had begun. If any man had during that time taken anything which belonged to the King or to any one else, he might restore it without any fine; if he kept it after the proclamation, he was to be heavily fined.[874]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Witnesses to the charter.]

Such was the famous charter of Henry, the document to which Stephen Langton appealed as the birthright of English freemen.[875] It was witnessed on the day of the crowning by the bishop who had officiated, Maurice of London, by Gundulf Bishop (of Rochester), William Bishop-elect (of Winchester), Henry Earl (of Warwick), Simon Earl (of Northampton), Walter Giffard, Robert of Montfort, Roger Bigod, and Henry of Port.[876] Such names look forward and backward. There is already a Bigod, forefather of the Earl who would neither go nor hang.[877] There is a Simon, and if the likeness of names is merely accidental, the tradition is carried back in another way when we remember that Earl Simon of Northampton was the son-in-law of Waltheof.[878] The fewness of the names may perhaps show that the coronation of Henry, celebrated as it was amidst a burst of popular joy, was but scantily attended by the great men of the realm. The whole thing was almost as sudden as the death of Eadward and the election of Harold, and it did not, like those events, happen while the Witan were actually in session. The summons, or even the news, could have gone through a very small part only of the kingdom. One would be glad to know how men heard in distant shires, in Henry’s own Yorkshire for instance, not only that the oppressor was gone, but that the new king was crowned, pledged by his oath and his seal to give his land a new time of peace and righteousness.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Appointments to abbeys.]

[Sidenote: Saint Eadmund’s and Ely.]

[Sidenote: Herlwin Abbot of Glastonbury. 1100-1120.]

[Sidenote: Faricius Abbot of Abingdon. 1100-1117.]

The new King had taken upon himself to undo the evils of his brother’s reign, to bring back the days of Eadward, to reign as an English king. One step towards the restoration of the good state was to fill the churches which his brother had sacrilegiously kept vacant. The see of Winchester he had filled already; he now began to fill the thirteen abbeys which Rufus had held in his hands on the day of his death. Several were filled before the year was out; two at least were filled on the very day of his coronation. These were the abbey of Saint Eadmund, void by the death of its abbot Baldwin, and that of Ely, which had stood void for seven years since the death of the aged abbot Simeon.[879] The staff of Saint Eadmund was now placed in the hand of Robert, a young monk of Bec, who is described as a son, seemingly a natural son, of Earl Hugh of Chester.[880] That of Ely was given to Richard, another monk of Bec, son of Richard of Clare.[881] In these appointments and in some others we again see the need in which Henry stood of pleasing the great nobles, even at the cost of sinning against ecclesiastical rule. In the case of the appointment to Saint Eadmund’s we are distinctly told that the King’s nomination was made against the will of the monks, and a little later Anselm thought it his duty to remove both Robert and Richard from their offices. Two other prelates, appointed before any long time had passed, are of greater personal fame. The name of Herlwin of Caen, who now received the staff of Glastonbury, lives in local memory as a great builder.[882] And the Italian Faricius, now placed in the vacant stall of Abingdon, figures among the most renowned abbots of his house, famous amongst his other merits for his skill in the healing art. Oddly enough, his skill in this way kept him back from higher honour. Had Faricius been less cunning in leechcraft, he might have been Archbishop of Canterbury.[883]

[Sidenote: Anselm and Flambard.]

[Sidenote: Flambard imprisoned in the Tower.]

[Sidenote: The King’s inner council.]

[Sidenote: Roger, afterwards Bishop of Salisbury.]

But to undo the evils of the days of unlaw and to reign as an English king, something more was needed than to put men of Norman, or even Italian, birth in possession of English abbeys. Towards carrying out the former of these objects, Henry had a criminal to punish and a sufferer to restore. Towards carrying out the second, he had a wife to marry. These three events pretty well filled up the rest of the year. Henry had two bishops to deal with, who needed to be dealt with in two very different ways. They were between them the living representatives of the late rule of unright. The one was the embodiment of what its agents did, the other was the embodiment of what its victims underwent. The King had promised to put away the unrighteousnesses of his brother and of Randolf Flambard; he began by putting away their surviving author. By the advice of those about him, the Bishop of Durham, the dregs of wickedness, as he is called in the vigorous words of one of our writers, was sent as a prisoner to the Tower of London.[884] This was most likely not the first case, but it is the first recorded case, in which the great fortress of the Conqueror was used as a state-prison for great and notable offenders. Randolf Flambard heads the long list of its unwilling inmates, few of whom better deserved their place there than he did. We hear nothing of any claim of ecclesiastical privilege on behalf of the man who had brought God’s Church low. Flambard was not allowed the advantage of any of the legal subtleties which his predecessor in his see had known how to play off so skilfully, and which, one would think, he could have played off more skilfully still. We do not even hear whether the Bishop of Durham was summoned before any court of any kind. The accounts read rather as if his imprisonment was simply a stretch of the royal power in answer to a popular demand. The Tower may even have been the best place for Flambard’s safety, as it was the best place for the safety of Jeffreys, as understood by Jeffreys himself.[885] The words which say that the act was done by the advice of those about the King are also worthy of notice. The King’s inner council must certainly have contained the two Beaumont brothers, the subtle Count of Meulan and the upright Earl of Warwick. It contained Roger the Bigod, more honoured in his descendants than in himself. It contained too some of Henry’s old friends from his Norman fief, Richard of Redvers and Earl Hugh of Chester. We are told that as soon as the news of the death of Rufus was known in Normandy, several of the great men who were there, specially the Earls of Chester and Shrewsbury, hastened to England to acknowledge Henry.[886] We do not find Robert of Bellême among Henry’s inner counsellors; we do find Hugh of Avranches. And to the list we may also most likely add the bishop-elect of Winchester, William Giffard, a tried court official, though one who afterwards showed that he could suffer for a principle. And a man who was to be more famous than all of them, the patriarch of the long line of English Justiciars and Judges, the poor clerk who was to be presently the all-powerful Bishop Roger of Salisbury, may have already given his voice among men who were as yet so far above him in worldly place.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: The news of the King’s death brought to Anselm.]

We are told that the imprisonment of the Bishop of Durham was one of two acts which the new King did in order that nothing might be wanting to the universal joy at his accession.[887] The other was the recall of the Archbishop of Canterbury. We have seen that, in legendary belief at least, the death of Rufus was very speedily made known, if not to Anselm himself, at least to his friends.[888] The news was presently brought to him in a more ordinary way by two monks, one of Bec, one of Canterbury. His head-quarters were now at Lyons, but he was at the moment staying at a monastery called God’s House.[889] There the messengers met him, and told him that King William was dead. Anselm was overwhelmed at the tidings, and burst forth into the bitterest weeping. Those who stood by wondered; but he told them with a voice broken with sobs that, by the truth which a servant of God ought not to transgress, he would far rather have died himself than that William should die as he had died.[890]

[Sidenote: He is invited to come back by his own monks,]

[Sidenote: and by the King.]

[Sidenote: Importance of Henry’s letter.]

[Sidenote: Its popular language.]

[Sidenote: Signatures to the letter.]