in the dress of a pilgrim, with only his staff and wallet.
In Italy, Anselm was able to live in quiet study, write and pray in peace. He longed to resign his archbishopric, but the Pope would not consent; and when Urban was about to excommunicate the King, he prevailed to prevent the sentence from being pronounced.
William was left to his own courses, and to his chosen friend Ralph, a low-born Norman priest, beloved by the King partly for his qualities as a boon companion, partly for his ingenuity as an extortioner. He was universally known by the nickname of Flambard, or the Torch, and was bitterly hated by men of every class. He was once very nearly murdered by some sailors, who kidnapped him, and carried him on board a large ship. Some of them quarrelled about the division of his robes, a storm arose, and he so worked on their fears that they at length set him on shore, where William was so delighted to see him that he gave him the bishopric of Durham, the richest of all, because the bishop was also an earl, and was charged to defend the frontier against the Scots.
He had promised to relax the forest laws, but this was only one of his promises made to be broken; and he became so much more strict in his enforcement of them than even the Conqueror, that he acquired the nickname of Ranger of the Woods and Keeper of the Deer. Dogs in the neighborhood of his forests were deprived of their claws, and there was a scale of punishments for poachers of any rank, extending from the loss of a hand, or eye, to that of life itself. In 1099, another Richard, an illegitimate son of Duke Robert of Normandy, was killed in the New Forest by striking his head against the branch of a tree; and a belief in a family fate began to prevail, so much so that Bishop Gundulf warned the King against hunting there; but William, as usual, laughed him to scorn, and in the summer of 1100 took up his residence in his lodge of Malwood, attended by his brother Henry, and many other nobles.
On the last night of July a strange sound was heard—the King calling aloud on St. Mary; and when his attendants came into his chamber, they found him crossing himself, in terror from a frightful dream. He bade them bring lights, and make merry, that he might not fall asleep again; but there were other dreamers. With morning a monk arrived to tell that he had had a vision presaging the King’s death; but William brayed his own misgivings, and laughed, saying the man dreamt like a monk. “Give him a hundred pence, and bid him dream better luck next time.”
Yet his spirits were subdued all the morning, and it was not till wine had excited him that he returned to his vein of coarse, reckless mirth. He called his hunters round him, ordered the horses, and asked for his new arrows—long, firm, ashen shafts. Three he stuck in his belt, the other three he held out to a favorite comrade, Walter Tyrrel, Lord de Poix, saying, “Take them, Wat, for a good marskman should have good arrows.”
Some one ventured to remind him of his dream, but his laugh was ready. “Do they take me for a Saxon, to be frighted because an old woman dreams or sneezes?”
The hunters rode off, Walter Tyrrel alone with the King. By-and-by a cry rang through the forest that the King was slain. There was an eager gathering into the beech-shaded dell round the knoll of Stoney Cross, where, beneath an oak tree, lay the bleeding corpse of the Red William, an arrow in his heart. Terror fell on some, the hope of self-aggrandizement actuated others. Walter Tyrrel never drew rein till he came to the coast, and there took ship for France, whence he went to the holy wars. Prince Henry rode as fast in the opposite direction. William de Breteuil (eldest son of Fitz-Osborn) galloped off to secure his charge, the treasury at Winchester, and; when he arrived, found the prince before him, trying to force the keepers to give him the keys, which they refused to do except at their master’s bidding.
Breteuil, who, as well as Henry, had sworn that Robert should reign if William died childless, tried to defend his rights, but was overpowered by some friends of Henry, who now came up to the forest; and the next morning the prince set off to London, taking with him the crown, and caused the Bishop of London to anoint and crown him four days after his brother’s death.
No one cared for the corpse beneath the oak, and there it lay till evening, when one Purkiss, a charcoal-burner of the forest hamlet of Minestead, came by, lifted it up, and carried it on his rude cart, which dripped with the blood flowing from the wound, to Winchester.
There the cathedral clergy buried it in a black stone coffin, ridged like the roof of a house, beneath the tower of the cathedral, many people looking on, but few grieving, and some deeming it shame that so wicked a man should be allowed to lie within a church. These thought it a judgment, when, next year, the tower fell down over the grave, and it was rebuilt a little further westward with some of the treasure Bishop Walkelyn had left. Never did any man’s history more awfully show a hardened, impenitent heart, going back again to sin after a great warning, then cut off by an instantaneous death, in the full tide of prosperity, in the very height of health and strength—for he was but in his fortieth year.
A spur of William Rufus is still preserved at the forest town of Lyndhurst; Purkiss’s descendant still dwells at Minestead; part of the way by which he travelled is called the King’s Lane, and the oak long remained at Stoney Cross to mark the spot where the King fell; and when, in 1745, the remains of the wood mouldered away, a stone was set up in its place; but the last of the posterity of William the Conqueror’s “high deer” were condemned in the course of the year 1831.
A Minestead churl, whose wonted trade
Was burning charcoal in the glade,
Outstretched amid the gorse
The monarch found: and in his wain
He raised, and to St. Swithin’s fane
Conveyed the bleeding corse.
And still—so runs our forest creed—
Flourish the pious woodman’s seed,
Even in the self-same spot:
One horse and cart, their little store,
Like their forefather’s, neither more
Nor less, their children’s lot.
And still in merry Tyndhurst hall
Red William’s stirrup decks the wall;
Who lists, the sight may see.
And a fair stone in green Mai wood,
Informs the traveller where stood
The memorable tree.
Thus in those fields the Red King died,
His father wasted in his pride,
For it is God’s command
Who doth another’s birthright rive,
The curse unto his blood shall cleave,
And God’s own word shall stand.
Who killed William Rufus? is a question to which the answer becomes more doubtful in proportion to our knowledge of history. Suspicion attached of course to Tyrrel, but he never owned that the shaft, either by design or accident, came from his bow, and no one was there to bear witness. Some think Henry Beauclerc might be guilty of the murder, and he was both unscrupulous enough and prompt enough in taking advantage of the circumstance, to give rise to the belief. Anselm was in Auvergne when he heard of the King’s death, and he is said to have wept at the tidings. He soon received a message from Henry inviting him to return to England, where he was received with due respect, and found that, outwardly at least, order and regularity were restored in Church matters, and the clergy possessed their proper influence. Great promises were made to them and to the Saxons; and the hated favorite of William, Ralph Flambard, was in prison in the Tower. However, he contrived to make his escape by the help of two barrels, one containing wine, with which he intoxicated his keepers, the other a rope, by which he let himself down from the window. He went to Robert of Normandy, remained with him some time, but at last made his peace with Henry, and in his old age was a tolerably respectable
