In a kind of odd reversal of narration, I first show William Rufus at perhaps his weakest moment. In March 1093, he is taken sick while at the royal manor of Alveston. In a rapidly worsening condition, he forces himself on to Gloucester where he takes to his bed and prepares for what might possibly turn out to be the very end of his life.
He is sick in bed at kingsholm palace and the court believes him to be dying (The Remarkable Tale of the Bull and the Sheep, p. 31):
By the second week of March, there was still no improvement in the king’s condition. He lay prostrate, barely eating, hardly speaking. He might spend a whole day only half aware of those around him, the barons and bishops, clerks and menials who questioned him, prayed over him, tended him or just wished him either to stand up or die so that the interminable wait would be over.
In the extremity of his illness William’s thoughts turn to salvation (p. 34):
King William was confined to his sick chamber throughout the period of Lent, from early March to mid-April. Never before had he fasted so long or so completely. Nor had he spent so much time thinking about sin and salvation. When the penitential psalms were read to him, he listened and promised again to abide by the sacred pledges that now lay on the altar of the abbey church of St Peter’s. He would reform, he said, dismiss his favourites, enact good laws and deal justly with everybody. During one of the worst crises, he sent for Anselm and entreated him not to let him perish in body and soul. He begged him to accept the archbishopric and enter upon the office with full grace so that he would not have a great sin against the church on his conscience at his death. Cynics sneered, but there was no doubt that William was so dangerously ill and the fear of death so genuine that he was at last in naked confrontation with his soul.
Having been ill for almost the whole period of Lent, William’s fever suddenly leaves him on Easter Day, a sign taken by some as indicating a special blessedness.
Will the experience make William a better king? (p. 54)
“Then, early on Easter Sunday, the 17th day of April, the morning of the Resurrection when Christ rose and walked in the garden, the king rallied. Fully conscious, he opened his eyes and asked what day it was. Ranulf Flambard, whose lonely vigil had lasted most of the night in hopes of catching the last words of the king, could barely master his relief. All the complicated plans he had been weaving fell away in an instant. Here was the simplest, most perfect, most symbolic solution to all his problems. The king would rise again. Then he thought about the possibility of a “false crisis”, when sufferers appear to rally just before death. In a torment of hope and doubt, Ranulf hastily sent for Anselm and the chief courtiers to witness the ultimate outcome of the king’s long ordeal.
‘My lord king,’ he whispered to the ravaged carcass, burnt up by weeks of fever, ‘it is Easter morning, Holy Sunday. Please God you are saved.’
William touched his hand and gave him the shadow of a smile. ‘God has spared me, Flambard. God in his mercy has spared me.’ The last residue of fluid in his body squeezed out from the corners of his eyes.”
The experience affects William in many ways but does not transform his character. It gives him energy and a desire to travel and even stirs him to seek a bride. After all, he is still young, in his thirties, and the recent escape from death makes him think of securing his posterity.
Journeying down to Wilton to view a prospective bride, William is in expansive mood as he passes through Basingstoke (p. 79):
“Basingstoke paid no attention to the king, nor he to Basingstoke. A royal manor of about two hundred souls and a huddle of cottages around a market square, its greatest boast was the possession of three watermills. The main Winchester road lay just to the north, edged by strip fields which had been reaped of the Lammas harvest and extensive commons where the Basingstoke ruminants grazed.
The king was in excellent spirits. How sweet, he thought, to ride through this rich and fertile country on a pleasant August day. He was seized by unfamiliar feelings of appreciation for the natural world. Trees and hedgerows ceased to be a blur and defined themselves into interesting shapes with leaves. Dull, late summer leaves looked as fresh to his renewed senses as burgeoning spring leaves which he had failed to see this year and had never in all his life appreciated.
‘Face of Lucca, Flambard! How fine a thing is health!’
William’s temperament is mercurial, some of his jokes are funny only to himself, and he has a way of baffling even his most astute minister, Ranulf Flambard. On one occasion, when a rare and important meeting is scheduled between William and the Malcolm, King of Scotland, William suddenly decides to pull out.
Ranulf Flambard, in charge of the high profile meeting, is nonplussed (p. 102):
‘My lord king,’ he breathed, ‘are you going to refuse to meet him?’
The king’s dressers came bustling into the closet and began laying out formal tunics and robes, fussing over their costly materials, smoothing wrinkles from damasks and silks. William raised his arms as they removed his outer garment in order to dress him in ceremonial attire.
‘Do I look as if I am refusing?’
‘Forgive me, my lord. May I ask what you wish?’
‘Let Malcolm send me emissaries with his requests. I will consider how I might answer them. After that, if a meeting seems appropriate, I will gladly oblige.’
In other words, thought Ranulf with a crushing realisation, he is pulling out. Or at least threatening to’.
William’s plans for marriage come to nothing and he shows no particular will to marry. His time is taken up with disputes with Anselm, discord with his brother, Duke of Nomandy, and subsequent disturbances in Normandy for which he has to raise money and troops.
But there are periods of relative quiet (p. 213):
“When at Windsor William preferred to stay in the former palace of Edward the Confessor rather than in the draughty old motte and bailey castle his father had built on a hill above the burgh. He purposely neglected his father’s stronghold, spending no money on it. Edward’s old palace offered an escape from the perpetual shadow of his father, the man against whom he was always forced to measure himself and always find himself wanting. The ancient sprawling pile with its chapel and hunting lodge nestled its sedate wooden frame on the south bank of the Thames. Encircled by expansive royal estates taking in swathes of Berkshire countryside, it offered some of the best hunting to be found. But in the third week of May 1095, William Rufus was not out hunting his prey. He was waiting for his prey to come to him.
While he waited, he was enjoying one of those brief moments of his reign when affairs were going well. His brother, Henry, had gone to Normandy with money to buy mercenaries and was already employing these resources with some success against Duke Robert. Scotland was momentarily quiet, being distracted by internal disputes, and although Wales continued its resentful insurgencies, plans were in hand for a campaign of reoccupation. There remained only Anselm to deal with and Anselm was on his way…”.
In 1096 William is busy trying to raise money for an extraordinary property deal. It came about like this: his brother, Robert, Duke of Normandy, wants to go as a pilgrim warrior to the Holy Land as part of the mass movement encouraged by Pope Urban. To do so Robert needs to raise money and so he proposes nothing less than the mortgage of his duchy. William Rufus, with an eye to a bargain, aims to put up the money gain and the control of Normandy for three years, after which time the returning Robert will repay the money and take back the duchy. Believing that his brother will never return, or if he does, will never repay the debt, William tries by every means to raise the money.
He turns first to the church, with mixed results (p. 244):
“Holy Face of Lucca! Flambard, a paltry sum.’
Such was William’s reaction on learning of Anselm’s donation towards the purchase of Normandy.
‘But, I trust, my lord king, you will be pleased to accept it.’
William nodded. ‘I will accept it. You may tell him so. Thank him. Humour him. Anything, so long as he keeps from court and does not plague me with requests for Church Councils.’
‘Granted the donation is paltry, yet to his credit, he has been making efforts to raise knights from his fiefs for your Welsh campaign.’
Ranulf thought he might put in a good word for Anselm whose ungenerous response was at least not downright refusal.
‘The Welsh, the Welsh,’ said William. ‘What use is the great bulk of Hugh d’Avranches if he cannot stand in their way?’ He was referring to the Earl of Chester, a powerful marcher lord, a man of titanic physique, huge appetites and martial reputation who was, in spite of these great qualities, failing to keep Welsh nationalist fury in check.
‘I’ll settle with them when I have got hold of Normandy. How far are we from our target?”
William Rufus, helped by Flambard, raises the money to purchase the lease on Normandy in the full expectation that his brother will never return to buy it back. After exerting his power in the Duchy and putting down isolated revolts in 1099, he comes home.
In a good mood and feeling at the highest point of his powers (p. 279):
“When he returned to England at the end of September, he felt, for the first time in his life, that he was returning from a secure duchy to a secure kingdom. At thirty-eight, he was the same age his father had been when he won a kingdom at Hastings. He was king of one of the richest realms in Europe, he had a grip on Normandy. After nine disorderly years, orderly administration had been achieved. William’s secretariat was producing crisp instruments of government. Jurisprudence was being strengthened and could be left in the control of the most reliable bishops and vicomtes. He had gained a reputation for military success and command in the field that made some observers compare him not only with the Conqueror, but with Caesar. William held his Christmas court that year in Gloucester at the palace of Kingsholm where, six years before, he had been dying. Like a king, he had taken the place of his father and, like a ghost, he had risen from death. But death was closer than he could have imagined. As winter turned into spring 1100, King William II entered his last year”.
Like many Norman magnates, the king was fond of hunting and often hunted in the royal forest of Brockenhurst with his intimate circle, among whom is his younger brother Henry. Flambard strongly suspects that Henry is plotting against his brother, in order to take the throne.
At last, without proof, but only his suspicions, Flambard tries to warn the king (p. 280):
‘Face of Lucca! Flambard. You have let personal animosity cloud your judgement. Henry has warned me that you are trying to undermine him. He believes you are jealous, that you are starting up rumours to prise him away from me.’
Nothing, it seemed, could dent William’s new-found security. Without proof, Flambard had no case and desisted. Unlike Anselm, he would never push a quarrel. Henry’s long game was paying off. Safe in William’s lap, the cat had been purring away with fabrications, lies and falsehoods. William had stroked him and listened. The king warned Flambard to keep away from Henry, not to follow him, not to provoke him and not to set his men to watch him.
‘I would rather you could be friends,’ said William. ‘But as things stand now, with Robert coming back to stir up Normandy, I need to keep Henry close. You see how it is, Flambard? You, I trust. I can let you go. Henry, I don’t trust, he must stay. Besides, you are Bishop of Durham. Go north for a few months, establish yourself there, shake up the monks, check the finances. Face of Lucca, Flambard! It will do you good.’
With Flambard gone, William Rufus goes hunting in Brockenhurst Forest with his usual hunting companions, among them Henry. It is Thursday August 2nd 1100. He never comes back.
For the full story of King William Rufus see The Remarkable Tale of the Bull and the Sheep.