CIRCUMSTANCES OF WILLIAM'S DEATH.

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some charcoal-burners; they threw the body upon a cart, and took it to Winchester. A low tomb of black marble, just one remove above the grassy hillock that marks a peasant's grave, tells where the second Norman king was buried in the cathedral. Popular belief said that Sir Walter Tirel, aiming at a deer with a bolt given him by the king himself, had struck an oak; the arrow had glanced back and killed William. Tirel's flight into France appeared to confirm the suspicion; yet he himself, at a time when he had nothing to hope or fear, declared solemnly to a friend that he had not been in the same part of the forest with the king. His conduct is intelligible, if we suppose that accident made him acquainted with the secret of the actual murderer, whom it might be perilous to denounce or trust. Prince Henry was in the forest that day, and profited most by the king's death. In the times of Henry VIII., when monks were out of favour, it was currently said that they had delivered themselves of a persecutor. The grave of William Rufus, unwept and unhonoured, will never disclose its secret till it gives up its dead.

1 Suger (Vit. Lud. Gros., p. 283) is the witness to Tirel's protestations of innocence. He was a Frenchman, lord of Poix on the Somme, and seneschal of Pontoise. He had therefore no interest in the king's death. The charge against the monks is reported by Nicander Nucius.-Travels, pp. 34, 35.

HENRY BEAUCLERK.

HENRY'S ACCESSION AND MARRIAGE. HIS CHARACTER AND TRAINING.-COM

PROMISES WITH ROBERT.-CONQUEST OF NORMANDY.-PETTY WARS WITH FRANCE AND ANJOU.-FLEMISH COLONY IN WALES.-NATIONAL DISTRESS. -POLICE AND JUSTICE.-SHIPWRECK OF PRINCE WILLIAM.-SUCCESSION TO THE CROWN.-HENRY'S DEATH.

ON learning the death of his brother, Prince Henry hastened to Winchester, and claimed the royal treasures. Their guardian, William de Breteuil, declared his intention of keeping them for the rightful heir, the Crusader Robert; Henry drew his sword, and William was half-overpowered, half-persuaded by the by-standers to withdraw his opposition. Two days later, Henry was crowned at London by its bishop, Maurice, as the primate Anselm was an exile on the continent. The only title which the new king could claim was derived from the wellknown intentions of the conqueror to disinherit his eldest son of England. But Henry was easily able to secure adherents; he bought over the clergy with the vacant benefices, the nobles with grants of money, and propitiated all classes with promises of reform. Old offences were to be condoned; the laws of king Edward enforced, and church privileges respected. Feudal dues were to be mitigated, and lands owing military service were freed from other burdens. The king's license for marriage was no longer to be put up to sale, and widows were not to be married against their will. The liberty of bequest, which Rufus had called in question, was restored. The only unpopular act was that by which the king kept the forests in his own hand.1 Lastly, to conciliate his English subjects, already

1 Charta Hen. Imi, A. S. Laws, vol. i., pp. 497-500. There is no authority for Thierry's assertion that Henry took away and destroyed the copies of this charter which had been deposited in the principal churches of the kingdom.

MARRIAGE WITH THE PRINCESS EDITH.

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well disposed to a prince who had been born among them, Henry determined to marry the sister of Edgar Ætheling, who represented the claims of the Saxon dynasty. There was some difficulty in the way of the marriage, for it appeared that the princess Edith had taken the veil in the convent of Rumsey, where she was educated. But the lady deposed that her aunt, the abbess Christina, had thrown it over her to secure her from outrage, during the lawless reign of the late king, from himself or his followers. Anselm, who had now returned to England, decided that the princess was not bound by a profession to which the heart had not consented, and declared her free from the obligation of celibacy. Edith, on her marriage, assumed the name of Matilda, and was known among the people as "the good queen Maud." It was with reluctance she had consented to a marriage which brought her no happiness; unlovely in person and ascetic in tastes, she never won her husband's affections; and when she had borne him two children, he permitted her to retire again to a convent. Her last years were spent in the cultivation of church music, of which she was passionately fond, in the study of ancient

If he had done so, London, York, and St. Alban's, where Thierry supposes the copies to have escaped by accident, were the last places to remain unvisited.— Conquête d'Angleterre, tom. ii., p. 244.

' Eadmer's testimony is express, and, as a member of Anselm's household, he must have known what reasons were officially given.-Hist. Nov., lib. iii., p. 426. Heriman, third abbot of St. Martin, who was also present at the conferences, states that the veil was first worn on the occasion of a visit by William Rufus, who came professedly to see the convent flower-garden, but whose vio lent passions were dreaded by the abbess. A week after, Matilda's father came, and ordered it to be laid aside.-Eadmer, Hist. Nov., lib. iii., pp. 429, 430; note by M. Henschen. But Malmesbury states that she affected wearing the veil to avoid being given in marriage to an unworthy favourite.-Lib. iv., p. 649. She was once promised by William to Count Alan of Brittany. It was clearly William's policy to get rid of the heir to Saxon royalty; he may at one time have meant to dishonour her; and later on to dispose of her to a husband who could not be a rival. Malmesbury's account is therefore not unlikely to be true. But it would not have justified Anselm in permitting the marriage. As it was, he gave his consent reluctantly, and prophesied that no good would come of it.

X

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HENRY'S EARLY TRAINING

authors, whom she loved to quote, and in ministering with her own hands to the wants of the sick and poor. The Norman nobles regarded her with contempt. When she first appeared at court by the side of her clerkly husband, the rough soldiers who remembered the wars of the first William and the orgies of the second, jeered openly at "Godrik Godfadyr and his wife Godiva." Henry laughed grimly at the raillery; he never showed his anger out of place, and he never laid it by.

The conqueror's youngest son had the stature and general features of his family; but the high forehead, inherited from his father, the dark complexion and quiet thoughtful eyes peculiar to himself, indicated a statesman rather than a soldier. Thrown early upon the world, Henry had been trained in a rough school. He had spent a large portion of his inheritance in buying the government of a part of Normandy from Robert. Robert discharged the obligation by throwing him into prison. A reconciliation was effected, and Henry did good service against Rufus, assisting to suppress the revolt of Rouen, and throwing its leader, Conan, with his own hands, over the battlements. A few weeks passed, and the fickle Robert had united with William to besiege Henry in his castle of Mont St. Michel. That Robert behaved with knightly courtesy in refusing to starve his brother out, is true; but he continued the siege till the castle was surrendered; and Henry spent the next few years of his life without money or men, with a beggarly household of one squire and a priest. He was probably the better scholar, but not the milder man, for these experiences. As king, he soon made himself respected; he was a pleasant companion at times; but no man could withstand "the imperious thunder of his voice;" and it was remarked that he was inscrutable: his praise was often a sure sign that he meant to ruin. He brooked no rivalry and forgave no insult; the old favourite, who had boasted that he could build as grand a mo

1 See a curious letter from Matilda to Anselm, in which she quotes Cicero de Senectute, and warns him not to follow the examples of Pythagoras, Antisthenes, and Socrates, in excessive fasting.-Anselm, Epist., lib. iii., 55.

nastery as the king, was ruined by suits at law, and died brokenhearted. The foreign knight who satirized Heny in songs was blinded, in spite of the earl of Flanders's intercession, and dashed out his brains in despair. Where the king's ambition was interested, he was careless what suffering he caused; he oppressed the people with intolerable taxes; and punished one of his own daughters for rebellion by dragging her through a frozen moat.3 Yet Henry possessed merits of a high order. He was not moral, but he was not shamelessly vicious; he was moderate in dress and food; his conversation was pure, and his court decorous. He honoured learning and talent, formed a menagerie at Woodstock, and promoted the formation of a vernacular Norman literature. He advanced the fortunes of Roger the Great, whom he had chosen chaplain for his skill in hurrying through the mass, but who proved a first-rate justiciary, and adorned his see with the splendid cathedral of Salisbury. He brought over Gilbert the Universal, the first scholar north of the Alps, to be bishop of London. A great historical school flourished in his reign, and the zeal of his son, the earl of Gloucester, for these studies, may well have been derived from a father who looked back with affection on his old "tumultuary" scholarship through all the troubles of his life. Nor was he indifferent to religion; he preferred being served by good men if good men would do his will. He was clear-sighted enough to perceive the importance of uniformity in standards. He fixed

1 Robert Bloet, bishop of Lincoln. He was a loose liver, but a capable man, and had been justiciary of England.-Huntingdon de Mundi Contemptu; Ang. Sac., vol. ii., pp. 694, 695.

2 Luc de la Barre-en-Ouche, who was not even a vassal.-Orderic, vol. iv., pp. 460, 461.

3 Juliana de Breteuil, a natural daughter. Her husband had blinded the son of a royal officer, and Henry had allowed the injured man to retaliate on Juliana's two children.-Orderic, vol. iv., pp. 336-338.

4 Malmesbury's praise of Henry as "obscœnitatum cupidinearum expers' (lib. v., p. 642), reads a little oddly at first by the side of Huntingdon's invective, and in contrast with the known fact that the king had fifteen natural children. But Malmesbury only meant that Henry was not tainted by the monstrous vice then prevalent, "advena delectatio."