but his father, who well knew the characters of his children, foretold that the day would come when Henry would have all.

38. He then tried, it seems, to make some reparation for the ill he had done, by ordering large sums of money to be given to churches and monasteries, and particularly that the church of Mantes, which had been burnt down, should be rebuilt. He also commanded many of his prisoners to be set free.

At

39. After all his glories and triumphs, the great conqueror could barely find an honourable grave or a true mourner. the very moment when he was to be laid in a tomb in a fine church he had built at Caen, a certain knight stood forth, "loudly exclaiming against the robbery." The very land the church was built upon, had belonged to him and to his father before him, and William had taken it from him by force to found this new church. It was not till a sum of money had been paid down to appease this injured man that the funeral could be proceeded with. And only one of the sons he had loved, if even one, followed his father to the grave.

LECTURE XVII.-THE CONQUEROR'S SONS.

William Rufus. His brother Robert. The king and the barons. The English people. Anselm. The Crusades. Henry Beauclerc. His marriage. The English take his part. Peace, order, and justice. Stephen and Matilda. Misery of the country. The agreement and promised reform. Death of Stephen.

1. WILLIAM, the Conqueror's second son, who is generally called Rufus, from his red hair and complexion, lost no time in rushing to England to take possession of the kingdom and his father's treasure. This treasure was at

1087.

William

Rufus.

Winchester, and the 'Chronicle' says, "It was not to be expressed by any man how much was there gathered in gold, and in silver, and in vessels, and in robes, and in gems, and in many other precious things."

His character.

William

2. He was speedily crowned by Lanfranc, as his father had desired. He seems to have been one of the worst kings England ever had; more hated and detested far than his father had been. William the Conqueror had something grand and kingly about him, which people looked upon with awe and reverence as well as fear. Rufus was brutal, coarse, irreligious, and ignorant, in addition to being, like his father, cruel, tyrannical, and avaricious. William of Malmesbury says that in public "he had a supercilious and threatening look, and a severe and ferocious voice; in private he liked jesting and levity." He tells us too that he "blushes to relate the crimes of so great a king;" but he does relate quite enough to show us what his opinion really was. "He feared God but little; man not at all."

3. He disgusted the people not only by his cruel taxes and oppression, but by pouring contempt on all they held most sacred. It appears to have been his custom "to come into church with menacing and insolent gestures," and to treat the bishops and clergy with shameful injustice. The wonderful value placed on "relics" in those times has been mentioned already. The bones of saints and other such things were placed

in boxes in the churches, which boxes were splendidly ornamented with gold, silver, and jewels, and called "shrines," and they were regarded with a reverence that we in our days can hardly understand. When William Rufus wanted money, which he nearly always did, for he was a spendthrift as well as covetous, he called the relics "dead men's bones," and made the abbots and bishops give up the gold and silver from their shrines, and even their crucifixes and sacramental cups.

The Chronicle' says, "All that was hateful to God and oppressive to men was customary in this land in his time, and therefore he was most hateful to almost all his people, and odious to God." Moreover, he was perpetually quarrelling with one or other of his brothers.

4. Just at first he did not begin so ill; indeed, as long as Archbishop Lanfranc lived he was kept in some kind of check, and the people were inclined to take his part. Almost as soon as the Conqueror was dead, the proud, fierce lords, whom even he could hardly tame and keep down, began to rebel again. 5. Robert, the eldest son, had been made Duke of Normandy, but he would have very much liked to be King of England too. For these Frenchmen found England His brother a very pleasant place when they had once set foot in it. It is all very well, as Fuller remarks, to say that France is so much better than England, and when we have ale they have wine, and when we have oats they have wheat; in short, that France is a garden and England only a field. "But let such know," says patriotic Fuller (and I am sure we all agree with him), "that England in itself is an excellent country, too good for the unthankful people which live therein; and such foreigners who seemingly slight secretly love and like the plenty thereof."

Robert.

6. Many of the great Norman lords took part with Robert; partly because he was of a much pleasanter disposition than William; kindly and generous, though idle and pleasure-loving (but that suited them all the better, as they did not like a master); partly also because they now had lands both in England and France, and if they did not like one master, far less would they like two. So they wished one man to be both King of England and Duke of Normandy, and that man to be Robert.

7. William for his part would have had no objection to be Duke of Normandy as well, but he had no notion of giving up England. Now these and other disputes between the king and the barons turned out in the end very well for the English,

because, as the barons were against him, the king had to throw himself upon the people, and to try and please them, and win their confidence. And in after times, when the kings grew strong, the barons had to do the same, and so the people rose in importance and were better treated.

William's

promises.

8. We do not find, however, that it did them much good as yet, because William was so faithless. He made excellent promises to the people again and again, but he never kept them. Before Lanfranc would crown him king, he had made him swear that he would preserve justice and mercy throughout his kingdom, that he would defend the Church and follow the archbishop's advice in all things. Now, again, being in this trouble about his brother Robert, he called the English together and begged them to help him. He promised if they would aid him in this need, he would give them a better law of their own choosing; he would have no more unjust taxes, and he would not be so harsh and cruel about his hunting-grounds.

So then the English agreed to stand by him and fight for him, and no doubt were all the more glad to do so from knowing and hating the French lords as they did.

9. But William never kept his word, and when Lanfranc died he went from bad to worse. After a few years he fell ill, and then, thinking he was going to die, he began to repent and made all sorts of good promises over again. But as soon as he got well he forgot them all and behaved worse than ever.

10. It was while he was ill that he did one good thing, for which it appears he was heartily sorry afterwards; that was, that he appointed a very good old man to be Archbishop of Canterbury in the place of Lanfranc, who had now been dead some years, and the king had never yet filled up his place, in order that he might keep all the great income which belonged to the post for himself. The new archbishop, whose name was Anselm, was very unwilling indeed to be settled in England near such a king as he knew William to be. He said "the Church of England was a plough which ought to be drawn by two oxen of equal strength; would they then yoke him to it, an old feeble sheep, with a wild bull?"

Anselm.

11. The king and the archbishop very soon fell out, as was likely. We must still leave on one side the great dispute that went on through several reigns between the king and the Church, and for the present only observe that William's violence was such that Anselm left the country.

12. But before he went away he fell into a difficulty of another kind-about the dress and fashion of the times. Just as the clergy in the old days before the Conquest had taken a great deal of trouble in preaching against fine clothes and vanity, so did Anselm now. There were two special things he found to complain of. One was that the noblemen and fashionable gentlemen had begun to wear long curled hair. The French had perhaps for once condescended to learn this fashion from the English, for we saw how they had admired Edgar the Etheling and the other young Englishmen with their flowing locks when William the Conqueror took them over to France.

13. Anselm would not put up with this, nor with another fashion of wearing a most extraordinary kind of long shoes with sharp points, sometimes so long that the ends were tied up to the knees with silver chains. Innumerable sermons were preached against these shoes; the clergy even held assemblies to denounce them; but all in vain. Hume writes about this, "Such are the strange contradictions of human nature, though the clergy at that time could overthrow thrones, and had authority sufficient to send a million of men on their errand to the deserts of Asia, they could never prevail against those long-pointed shoes."

The Crusades.

14. We will not linger over the wars with Robert in Normandy, but it will be well to explain what Hume meant by the million of men going to the deserts of Asia. We heard before about the love for going on pilgrimages; about Cnut's pilgrimage to Rome, and the troubles and dangers of the pilgrims. The still holier pilgrimage to Palestine and the tomb of Christ was even more dangerous. Yet people longed fervently to go there, not only from love to Christ's memory, but also because they believed that if they made that journey all their sins would be forgiven. They would lay by the very shirt they wore when they entered Jerusalem, that they might be buried in it, and they thought that would carry them straight to heaven.

15. Terrible dangers and difficulties beset the pilgrims at Jerusalem. The Holy Land by this time belonged to the Turks, who, besides being always a cruel people, had a great hatred for the Christian religion. They began to insult and ill-use the priests and pilgrims to the holy places. The patriarch, or principal clergyman, was interrupted in his prayers, dragged along the pavement by his hair, and thrown into a dungeon. The Christians were murdered and outraged, and treated like the worst of criminals.