§ 13. There are one or two circumstances recorded at the time which help to guide us to a judgment on the death of Rufus. "A certain town in Berkshire," we see in the AngloSaxon Chronicle, "observed the strange sight of blood gushing out of the ground; and after this," it adds, "on the morning after Lammas-day, King William was shot with an arrow by his own men." We are told also by Eadmer, abbot of St. Alban's, who was a pupil of Anselm, and lived at this time, that "Anselm, the exiled Archbishop of Canterbury, being with Hugo, the Abbot of Cluny, the conversation turned on King William, when the abbot observed, "Last night that king was brought before God, and by a deliberate judgment received the sorrowful sentence of damnation." How he came to know this he neither explained at the time, nor did any of his hearers ask. Nevertheless, out of respect to his piety, not a doubt of the truth of his words remained on the minds of any present. Hugo led such a life and had such a character, that all regarded his discourse and venerated his advice as though an oracle from heaven had spoken. It is, perhaps, not a great departure from the rule of charity, considering the relations between the Church and William, to suppose that among those who regarded the discourse, and venerated the advice of this holy personage, was the famous marksman, Sir Walter Tyrrel, or the person, whoever it might be, whose arrow had so opportunely glanced aside. CHAPTER III. HENRY I. (BEAU CLERC). A.D. 1100 TO A.D. 1135. CONTEMPORARY SOVEREIGNS. FRANCE. Philip I., the Fair; Louis VI., the Fat. § 1. Accession of Henry I. His advantages over his disinherited brother Robert. His various measures.-§ 2. Reflections on the past, and comparisons with the present.-§ 3. Duke Robert invades England. Reconciliation of the brothers. Charges against Robert de Belesme, Earl of Shrewsbury. His banishment. § 4. The king makes war upon his brother Robert, takes him prisoner, and subdues Normandy. Robert's long imprisonment. The Earl of Shrewsbury restored to his honours and estates.-§ 5. The son of Robert committed to the guardianship of Sir Helie de St. Saen. § 6. Prince William acknowledged as future king. War with France. Battle of Brenneville. Prince William betrothed to the Princess of Anjou. § 7. The prince with his sister and a large suite shipwrecked and drowned.— $8. The king's only surviving child, the Empress Matilda, married to Geoffrey Plantagenet, from whom descended the dynasty of the Plantagenets. § 9. William Clito of Normandy. The king makes war upon him.-§ 10. His cares to secure the succession of his daughter Matilda to the throne. Death of Henry from over-eating stewed lampreys. His character.-§ 11. Retrospect of his reign. Eustace de Breteuil, and Juliana his wife. § 1. WHILE the dead king was lying in that solitary glade of the New Forest, his brother Henry set spurs to his horse, and galloped into the city of Winchester. He never pulled bridle till he came to the gate of the great castle where the royal treasure was kept. With sword drawn, and words of furious threatening, he forced his way in, and in spite of the opposition of the Lord Treasurer, De Breteuil, who reminded him of the oaths of fealty and allegiance they had both sworn to Robert, laid violent hands on the caskets of gold and valuable jewels. In this he was assisted by certain powerful nobles and influential churchmen, whose favour he had secured beforehand; and on the following day, summoning as many of his adherents as were in the neighbourhood to a council, which, in imitation of the old Saxon assembly, he called a Witan, he was elected king, and verified his father's prophecy, that his rank would be equal to his brothers' if he patiently waited his time. In Henry had many advantages in the contest which would inevitably arise on behalf of the twice disinherited Robert. That easy and luxurious crusader had wasted the whole of the previous year in feasts and pageants among the Norman nobles who had recently established a dominion in Apulia and Naples, and received him in their splendid Italian castles, and owned their natural allegiance to his ducal crown. this gay and chivalrous existence the soldier of the Cross consoled himself for his toils and perils in the Holy Land, regardless equally of the unruly vassals in his hereditary State, and of the events which were evidently at hand in England. He took home with him to Rouen one of the fairest and richest brides in Europe-Sibylla, the daughter of a great Apulian baron; and even after the news of the startling incident in the New Forest reached him, he continued in the congenial employment of spending his wife's fortune, and attending tournaments in honour of her beauty. But Ralph the Firebrand had a great longing for the riches and power from which he had been driven by the hatred of the English nation, and urged him to vindicate his claims by force of arms. Robert was always delighted to fight, as perhaps he was conscious that he made a better figure on his warhorse than at a council table, and accepted gladly the services of many of the great barons of his duchy, receiving at the A.D. 1100.] HENRY'S ACTIVE MEASURES. 141 same time promises of assistance from several of the most powerful of the English lords. The feeling was still very strong in favour of keeping the countries united under the same ruler; and the Earls of Shrewsbury, Surrey, Montgomery, Pontefract, and others of the highest station, who were proprietors of estates in the dukedom, repudiated the election of Winchester, and waited the approach of the legitimate heir. They armed their followers, and provisioned their castles. Normandy marshalled its forces as in the year of the conquest, and Henry turned all his attention to the defence of his newly-gained throne. First, he recalled Anselm, the wise and learned Archbishop of Canterbury. In his consecrated hands he swore to observe all the laws which the English nation had approved of in the time of any of his predecessors, and to defend the liberties it had at any time enjoyed. Second, he relaxed the burdens under which the land was groaning from the cupidity and injustice of the late king, and restored the church benefices to their dispossessed incumbents, filling up all the vacant offices with the best men he could select; and thirdly, he looked round for a bride through whom to strengthen his position, either by her wealth or family connexion. He fixed on a maiden who was probably very poor, and whose father could be of little use in the approaching contest in the south of England; and yet she brought more support to his cause than if she had been loaded with treasures, and had been the heiress of the greatest potentate. When it was known that Henry was going to marry Matilda, the daughter of Malcolm, the Scottish king, the popular enthusiasm knew no bounds. Her mother was Margaret, the sister of Edgar Atheling, the lineal representative of Alfred, and nearest in blood to Edward the Confessor. It was a going back to the royal stock which connected the English with the period of their independence, before the Normans had set foot upon the soil; and loyalty to the throne on which the descendant of their "right kingly man. line of England" was seated, was the duty of every EnglishThe Anglo-Saxon was no longer a degraded race, since it gave a queen to the ancient realm, and a mother to future princes; and all the love which had been accumulating through four-and-thirty years towards the line under which the realm had flourished so long, was poured forth on the Anglo-Saxon princess, whom the people would know by no other name than familiar "Maud." § 2. The earnest clinging to old associations which we find in this instance would be unaccountable to us if we did not perceive the mellowing and elevating effects of time. A period may be marked with griefs and misfortunes of the severest kinds. There may be Danish invasions and civil broils; there may be tyranny among the powerful, and hunger and wretchedness among the poor; but when a few years have passed, when the personal sufferers have died, and the traditionary recollections have become faint, men compare their present position with something they imagine to have existed in the past, and long for a recurrence of the good old times. The reign of Edward the Confessor seems to have been fixed on by the unavailing regret of the whole English nation as the golden age of English wealth and liberty. If we look back upon the period thus fondly dwelt on, we find it a time when life was little regarded, and when property was insecure. And yet, in all his woes, the down-trodden Anglo-Saxon appealed from the cruelty of his Norman lord to the laws of Edward; and the worst and most ambitious of our Norman kings had nothing to do, in order to secure the affection and confidence of the people, but to promise a return to the manners and legislation of the last of the sons of Odin. § 3. With Anselm binding the Church to his cause, with the native English gathering round him, in honour of the holy Confessor and the beautiful Maud, and with many of the H |