Ch. 9 - William the Second

ENGLAND UNDER WILLIAM THE SECOND, CALLED RUFUS

WILLIAM THE RED, in breathless haste, secured the three great forts
of Dover, Pevensey, and Hastings, and made with hot speed for
Winchester, where the Royal treasure was kept. The treasurer
delivering him the keys, he found that it amounted to sixty
thousand pounds in silver, besides gold and jewels. Possessed of
this wealth, he soon persuaded the Archbishop of Canterbury to
crown him, and became William the Second, King of England.

Rufus was no sooner on the throne, than he ordered into prison
again the unhappy state captives whom his father had set free, and
directed a goldsmith to ornament his father's tomb profusely with
gold and silver. It would have been more dutiful in him to have
attended the sick Conqueror when he was dying; but England itself,
like this Red King, who once governed it, has sometimes made
expensive tombs for dead men whom it treated shabbily when they
were alive.

The King's brother, Robert of Normandy, seeming quite content to be
only Duke of that country; and the King's other brother, Fine-
Scholar, being quiet enough with his five thousand pounds in a
chest; the King flattered himself, we may suppose, with the hope of
an easy reign. But easy reigns were difficult to have in those
days. The turbulent Bishop ODO (who had blessed the Norman army at
the Battle of Hastings, and who, I dare say, took all the credit of
the victory to himself) soon began, in concert with some powerful
Norman nobles, to trouble the Red King.

The truth seems to be that this bishop and his friends, who had
lands in England and lands in Normandy, wished to hold both under
one Sovereign; and greatly preferred a thoughtless good-natured
person, such as Robert was, to Rufus; who, though far from being an
amiable man in any respect, was keen, and not to be imposed upon.
They declared in Robert's favour, and retired to their castles
(those castles were very troublesome to kings) in a sullen humour.
The Red King, seeing the Normans thus falling from him, revenged
himself upon them by appealing to the English; to whom he made a
variety of promises, which he never meant to perform - in
particular, promises to soften the cruelty of the Forest Laws; and
who, in return, so aided him with their valour, that ODO was
besieged in the Castle of Rochester, and forced to abandon it, and
to depart from England for ever: whereupon the other rebellious
Norman nobles were soon reduced and scattered.

Then, the Red King went over to Normandy, where the people suffered
greatly under the loose rule of Duke Robert. The King's object was
to seize upon the Duke's dominions. This, the Duke, of course,
prepared to resist; and miserable war between the