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Overview
The future William II was born in the late 1050s the third son of William the Conqueror. The younger William, - nicknamed Rufus because of his ruddy cheeks - at first had no great expectations of succeeding to the throne. This biography tells the story of William Rufus, King of England from 1087-1100 and reveals the truth behind his death.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780752486833 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | The History Press |
| Publication date: | 07/01/2008 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 160 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
| Age Range: | 12 Years |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
King Rufus
The Life and Murder of William II of England
By Emma Mason
The History Press
Copyright © 2012 Emma MasonAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7524-8683-3
CHAPTER 1
Introducing the Red King
William II (1087–1100) was formally styled throughout his reign as William, King of the English (sometimes adding 'by the grace of God'), William, King of England or, in a formal record, as King William the younger. Down to the 1130s, chroniclers working in England used one or another of these styles, and the nickname of Rufus ('the Red' in Latin) was virtually unknown to them. If, as seems likely, this nickname stemmed from some feature in William's appearance, his French-speaking family probably knew him as Guillaume le ros or le rossel.
Red hair perhaps still recurred in the Conqueror's family, due to its Viking ancestry, but writers working in England in the twelfth century are agreed that William, as an adult, had fair hair, variously described as 'rather yellow', or 'blond'. They differ, though, over whether he had a red beard, or a ruddy complexion. Youthful red hair can fade to golden brown in an adult. This perhaps happened in William's case, while his beard retained its original colouring. Equally, though, he may have inherited the very fair north-European skin type of those whose face quickly turns red after eating and drinking or after exposure to strong sunlight or wind.
William's nickname is first used, in its Latin form, by writers working in French-speaking lands. Guibert, Abbot of Nogent-sous-Coucy, writing between 1114 and 1124, stated that the king was nicknamed Rufus because he was red: ('qui Rufus, quod et erat, cognominabatur'). A few years later, another monastic writer, Orderic Vitalis, based in the Norman abbey of Saint-Evroul, began to record William's nickname in the successive books of his Ecclesiastical History, a work which, despite its title, is largely taken up with the secular politics of the day. More than half of all his references to the king accord him one or another of his formal styles, most often King William, but occasionally William the younger. Orderic often referred to the king as William Rufus, though, and occasionally as William Rufus, King of the English. As his work progressed, Orderic sometimes abridged this to King Rufus, the equivalent of 'The Red King'. Geoffrei Gaimar, working in England in the later 1130s and writing in French, stated that William was known as the Rus Rei (the Red King). This nickname was probably already circulating in England when Geoffrei wrote, since he is not known to have had any direct contact with Orderic. The king's nickname continued to be used by writers later in the twelfth century, both in its French and Latin forms. Wace, writing for the court of Henry II, called William Guillelme le Ros (William the Red, or William Rufus) or else Li Reis Ros (the Red King). Towards the end of Henry II's reign, Walter Map, another writer in court circles, used the formal Latin styles of Willelmus secundus rex Anglie (William II, King of England), King William, or William Ruffus. Even in the highest social circles many men had nicknames, usually derived from some feature in their appearance. Being called William the Red carried with it dashing and exuberant overtones, on a par with another nickname, Longsword, which one writer ascribed to him. A tenth-century ancestor of his had been the first William Longsword, a man around whom there was some effort to promote a religious cult. This alternative nickname, sanctioned by family tradition, may have been the original one by which the future king was known. Clearly, though, the red feature in his appearance was so conspicuous that he quickly became known as Rufus. In his own time, and for generations afterwards, being known as William the Red or the Red King carried no derogatory overtones, but in the nineteenth century the writer E.A. Freeman, in particular, used the nickname to heighten his vilification of William II.
William of Malmesbury described the king as stockily built, with a ruddy complexion; his 'rather yellow' hair centrally parted; his eyes of indeterminate colour, containing bright specks; physically very strong, despite his moderate height, and with rather a paunch. He was not an accomplished speaker, and when he fell into a temper he had a marked stammer. William of Malmesbury was probably born about 1095 or 1096, so he is unlikely to have seen the king, but he may have spoken to older informants who had met him. It has been observed, though, that this description of William II includes features which the Roman writer Suetonius ascribed variously to the Emperors Augustus (stocky), Claudius (stammering when angry), and Titus (exceptionally strong in proportion to his height). William II may have resembled, more or less, the description of him by William of Malmesbury, but this cannot be verified. His portrayal on his coinage reflects the image of himself as king that he wanted to project, rather than his actual appearance, while two thirteenth-century miniature 'portraits' of him reflect how an artist of that period thought a king should look. In his depiction on a capital which was retrieved from the precincts of the palace of Westminster, he is shown with short, curly hair (the sculptor depicted none of the figures with straight hair) and a short, neat beard. Given the context, and the possibility that the sculptor had seen him, this may have been an attempt at a likeness, and was at any rate an image of himself that the king wanted to project.
Objective accounts of the reign written by those close to the centre are non-existent. The Canterbury monk Eadmer, biographer of Archbishop Anselm (1093–1109), also wrote the Historia Novorum (History of Recent Events) – essentially, in his view, a prolonged conflict between those exercising royal and ecclesiastical power. Eadmer's hero Anselm is depicted in a prolonged confrontation with King William, who is depicted in a uniformly bad light. Reading between the lines of Eadmer's narrative, and of those of other monastic writers, we gain a distinct impression that the king intentionally shocked his clerical opponents by making sensational remarks from time to time, and that earnest bystanders gained a frisson from these, then drew on them to provide good copy for their tendentious accounts of the reign.
Both of Eadmer's major works, his Vita Anselmi (Life of St Anselm) and his Historia Novorum, rely largely on notes which he took when travelling in the company of the archbishop, from soon after Anselm's election to Canterbury. These narratives have the strengths and limitations of lively eyewitness reporting, selectively presented to give only the archbishop's viewpoint in his confrontations with King William. Eadmer began writing the Vita Anselmi during the 1090s, but around 1100 the archbishop discovered what he was doing. He asked to see the work and then corrected various points, suppressed some, changed the order of others and approved the rest. A few days later, though, he told Eadmer to destroy the manuscript. The order was obeyed literally, but not in the spirit. Eadmer secretly made a copy, and resumed work on it after Anselm's death. Consequently, the work is very full when it covers the dealings of King William with the archbishop but, since note-taking was subsequently debarred, there is far less on Anselm's dealings with the king's brother and successor, Henry I. This imbalance inadvertently reinforced King Henry's own claims to be altogether a better king towards his subjects (including the clerics) than William had been. What is more, the detailed version of the archbishop's dealings with King William was that which, thanks to Anselm's revision of the text, he himself wanted to be recorded for posterity. The Vita Anselmi is a valuable work in many respects, but it is not an objective depiction of William II.
Eadmer was compiling material for his Historia Novorum at the same time as he was working on his biography of Archbishop Anselm. Between 1094 and 1100, he made careful notes of the key debates and discussions in which the archbishop was involved. He included in this second work lively eyewitness accounts of both royal and ecclesiastical councils which he attended as a member of Anselm's entourage, but he was not an impartial observer. He had a real talent for vivid description, and his reporting of the disputes between King William and Archbishop Anselm probably covers these confrontations fairly accurately, as seen from the archbishop's viewpoint. On the other hand, Eadmer rarely records anything about the king's policies apart from those which had implications for the archbishop, and of which he himself had direct knowledge. He omits from his work a great deal that could be said in favour of William, but includes discreditable rumours about the king. Between 1109 and 1115 Eadmer drew on these notes to write up his Historia Novorum. He did further work on it from 1119, but without making any extensive revisions. The disparaging spin that Eadmer put on his account of the arguments between King William and Archbishop Anselm stems from the fact that the archbishop distanced himself from worldly concerns, while the king's overriding interest was in the funding and attainment of his military objectives.
In one area, though, Anselm did have practical aims. At Canterbury he succeeded to a long line of predecessors who aspired to exercise a quasi-imperial ecclesiastical authority throughout the British Isles, and he did all in his power to succeed in this. Yet his aim could be realised only with the support of successful military campaigns. These in turn required financial and military support from the greater landholders – including the archbishop – a point which Anselm ignored. Whether the archbishop was totally oblivious to practical considerations is questionable. It has been argued that he was, in a real sense, a revolutionary, determined to shift the balance of power in the realm away from royal authority towards that of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, headed, of course, by himself. Acting in line with the precepts that successive Popes asserted with increasing vigour from the mid-eleventh century, it has been claimed that, during the later years of William II and the early years of Henry I, Anselm attempted to impose a series of reforms on the Church in England which were designed to further his aspirations to be acknowledged not only as the primate of the whole of Britain but also as co-ruler of the kingdom of England. Anselm's supporters regard this case against him as being too sweeping, but even with more limited objectives, his disregard of his reasonable obligations towards the king put him on a collision course with William. Eadmer needed to justify his hero, and the best form of defence was to attack William as the oppressor of an unworldly prelate.
A more comprehensive account of the reign is contained in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. During the tenth century, and for much of the eleventh, this work was kept up at several monastic centres, whose writers all had their own perspectives on national events, but after the trauma of the Norman Conquest there was no longer much enthusiasm for maintaining a work written in English for an English audience. After 1079 there is, for all practical purposes, only one extant version, which is generally known as the E-text. From the middle of the eleventh century this version was kept at St Augustine's abbey in Canterbury, but then either the author-manuscript or a copy of it was sent to Peterborough, perhaps shortly after 1116. Neither the manuscript actually sent there nor any earlier version of it survives, but at Peterborough itself a copy was made covering events down to 1121, and inserting passages relating events of particular relevance to Peterborough.
Superficially, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle consisted of a series of annals in which each year's events were written up just after they had occurred. Increasingly, though, from the early years of the eleventh century, hindsight crept in, and literary passages were inserted to heighten the drama of the narrative. The coverage of the reign of William Rufus in the E-text is in the form of annals, but in their surviving form they date from 1121 or later, when the manuscript was reworked at Peterborough. Most of the annals for the reign are quite long, and the writer commented on events in some detail. Naturally, this text emphasised those policies of the king which had a major impact on monastic interests. When covering the later years of the reign, the writer repeatedly criticised the heavy taxes that were levied. Summing up the king's reign, he criticised William's policy of leaving bishoprics and abbacies vacant after the deaths of their incumbents, so as to profit from the revenues of their extensive estates. The chronicler wrote that the king acted forcefully and fiercely towards both his subjects and his neighbours, and was 'very terrible'. The advice of his wicked counsellors and his own avarice led him to harass the nation by constantly demanding military service and levying punitive taxation. Because of these persistent malpractices, William was hated by 'nearly all' his people. God's judgement on him was demonstrated by the fact that the king was cut off in the middle of his wrongdoing, without time for repentance or for making any reparation.
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle provided the basic source material used by several twelfth-century writers, although some of them drew on versions now lost, which differed to some extent from the Etext. One of these men was John, a monk of Worcester Cathedral priory, who wrote the Latin chronicle which bears his name. Essentially, John echoed the verdict of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle on the king, but in a modified form. He wrote that William's dramatic death demonstrated God's vengeance for the demolition of churches, and the uprooting of those who had worshipped in them, when William the Conqueror created the New Forest. There was much injustice in the reign of William II, and the verdict of judges was swayed by the offering of bribes. The chief agent responsible for exacting the punitive taxation and for the retention of church benefices was the king's minister, Ranulf Flambard. An informal network existed among the major chroniclers of the earlier twelfth century, and inevitably information was transmitted from one writer to another. John did gain access to a manuscript of Eadmer's Historia Novorum, but made little use of it when narrating the reign of William II.
Two further monastic writers, William of Malmesbury and Orderic Vitalis, deployed their literary talents to the full when they narrated the reign of William Rufus. William of Malmesbury covered the reign in two of his works, the Gesta Regum Anglorum (History of the English Kings) and the Gesta Pontificum Anglorum (History of the English Bishops). The Gesta Regum was begun with the encouragement of Queen Edith Matilda, the first wife of King Henry I. Through her mother, Queen Margaret of Scotland, she was descended from the pre-Conquest kings of England, and the work accordingly charted the secular politics of the land from the coming of the Anglo-Saxons down to the twenty-eighth regnal year of King Henry I. The queen died in 1118, long before the work was finished, but copies were dedicated to King David of Scotland (her brother); to her daughter the Empress Matilda; and to Earl Robert of Gloucester, the eldest bastard son of King Henry I. Naturally, this courtly audience expected William of Malmesbury to write favourably of the successive royal subjects of his work, a consideration which placed him under some constraint when it came to discussing William Rufus. Given the king's appropriation of clerical wealth, a policy continued by Henry I despite his renunciation of this at his accession, the chronicler was obliged to omit a good deal of the criticism that he felt about King William and instead to comment favourably on him, as far as possible.
Much of the information on the reign that William of Malmesbury did include is also found in the Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, in particular, and also in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Eadmer's Historia Novorum and in the Chronicle of John of Worcester. William seems to have obtained almost all of his material independently of any of them, sometimes from verbal sources, but he criticised the same features in the king's character and rule as did the other writers. When William wrote his Gesta Pontificum for a clerical audience, he was free to give full vent to his criticisms. The Gesta Regum is transmitted in four versions, all essentially originating with William of Malmesbury himself. Two drafts were written over a period of years, down to about 1126. One of these drafts was transmitted much as it stood, but the other was substantially revised by about 1135, after which one manuscript copy of this revised version was amended still further. Comparison of the texts that transmit these varying versions shows that over the intervening decade William of Malmesbury toned down some of his initial criticisms of William Rufus.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from King Rufus by Emma Mason. Copyright © 2012 Emma Mason. Excerpted by permission of The History Press.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Title,Dedication,
Preface,
1 Introducing the Red King,
2 The Third Son,
3 Securing the Throne: 1087–1088,
4 Brothers at War,
5 The Northern Frontier,
6 Challenges to Royal Authority,
7 Conflicts,
8 Triumph; Tragedy; Epilogue,
Map,
Annotated Select Bibliography,
List of Illustrations,
About the Author,
Copyright,