History of England 1-6

William himself died in the autumn of 1087. He had been campaigning on the borders of Normandy, during one of his frequent visits to his duchy, where he became gravely ill from heat and exhaustion; when his horse jumped a ditch, his internal organs were in some way ruptured. He was carried to a priory at Rouen, where he lingered for three weeks. When his body was taken to the monastery of St Stephen at Caen for burial the body burst, exuding a foul stench that sent the mourners running from the building. It was, perhaps, a fitting end for one who was already swollen with greed and cruelty. He had a cold heart and a bloody hand.

He bestowed the duchy of Normandy upon his eldest son, Robert; Robert had asked him for it before, but William had replied that it was not his custom to take off his clothes until he went to bed. The dying king left England to God’s mercy and to the care of his second son, William Rufus. To his youngest son, Henry, William left £5,000 of silver as a consolation; Henry carefully weighed it before taking it away. The threefold disposition was a source of much strife and disquiet in subsequent years; the three brothers quarrelled over Normandy, in particular, like children fighting over a piece of pie.

William Rufus held England. William the Red, of red face, of red beard and of red temper, was almost a comic-book version of his father. He was short and thickset, with a protruding stomach; he was very strong but, unlike his father, he was not of forceful address. A medieval proverb might suit some of William’s characteristics. Who ever knew a tall man who was clever, a red-head who was faithful, or a short man who was humble?

When in a passion or in a rage, he stammered or spoke in short sentences. But he possessed more attractive characteristics. He soothed difficult situations with a joke, and liked to outrage the more serious-minded of his clerical advisers with a scandalous or blasphemous remark. This amused his courtiers. His most famous oath was ‘by the face of Lucca’; this was the face of a wooden image of Christ in the church of St Martin in Lucca. He was boastful and ebullient, extravagant and bold; he always appeared to be greater than he was.

In his youth William had been devoted to the interests of his father, believing that this was where his own advantage lay. He stayed in Normandy until he was in his twenties, and so it is very unlikely that he was fluent in English. We may prefer to call him Guillaume le Rouge. He had left his dying father’s side at Rouen, and crossed the Channel in order to claim his kingdom. At the age of thirty-one he was crowned in Westminster Abbey by Archbishop Lanfranc as William II, apparently on Lanfranc’s own initiative; the archbishop was the most powerful man in England and, as it were, was standing in for God. The coronation liturgy was Anglo-Saxon, but the languages of the service were French and Latin.

The king’s skills were soon tested. He put down a rebellion by some of the Norman magnates of England in favour of his older brother, Robert, by using what was essentially an English army; one chronicler suggests that 30,000 men flocked to his standard, but that may just be a device to convey a large number. Nevertheless Englishmen fought against the rebellious Norman magnates on behalf of their king. National feeling was coming forward once more, and this resurgence of national consciousness is plain in the soldiers’ call on William to win the whole ‘Empire of Albion’.

He answered this call by marching north. In the spring of 1091 Malcolm of Scotland had invaded northern England, hoping to advance his claims to a large part of that territory. As the leader of the southern part of Scotland, Malcolm Canmore, or Malcolm Big Head, had already provoked William I with raids and alarms; eventually he had submitted to the stronger power. Now he was testing his son.

William Rufus moved against him by taking Cumbria, then under the overlordship of Scotland. He captured and refounded Carlisle, settling it with English farming families, and effectively redrew the northwestern frontier of England. It remains the frontier to this day. He found the English settlers among the workers on the royal lands in the south and, unfree as they undoubtedly were, they could only obey the summons. Yet they represent the beginning of English colonialism. In pursuit of the ‘Empire of Albion’, William Rufus had invoked the spirit of English imperialism. He also began the work of conquering Wales that until this time was comprised of warring principalities. That land was planted with castles, as the English moved slowly forward. But they were beset by Welsh rebellion, and in the end William held only Glamorgan and one castle in Pembroke. On the battlefield he never completely failed and never wholly succeeded; but his bravado kept him going.