Going against the flow

William Rufus

Born between 1056 and 1060, Normandy    Died 2 August 1100, New Forest, England
Third son of William the Conqueror, chosen to succeed him as king of England. A tricky job at a tricky time and may not have been the man for it. Fell out with the Church; they wrote the history.

As with any job, there are good times to be a king and bad times. Times with opportunities and a following wind, when the stars align and everything looks effortless. And then the times when things are anything but.

“Yes,” you might well say, “but mastering the bad times are where reputations are really made.” You would be right. It is not easy, though, and as two of the enduring currents of the Middle Ages were about to wash across the new English king in the 1090s, you could be forgiven for thinking that William Rufus did not help himself.

William’s most obvious challenge on the death of his father was filling the shoes and the reputation of the man who had stunned Christendom in 1066 and remains one of England’s most famous kings. The chronicles of the time make surprisingly little mention of this, though. This may well be because the Conqueror’s passing was met with no little relief, and the world was happy to move on.

How kings should behave and what they might expect in return would be the defining question of the Middle Ages, if not the next six or seven centuries. The 1090s saw the fault lines revealed in England: at home between the king and his nobles, across the Channel between England, Normandy and the lands beyond, and finally between the king and the pope.

William the Conqueror ruled England and Normandy as king and as duke. Many of his nobles held lands on both sides of the Channel, but that was as far as it went. Government on each side of the water remained separate. Here was a problem that lay in wait.

The Conqueror had always planned for his eldest son, Robert Curthose, to succeed him as duke. He had left his son behind when he sailed in 1066 and had made his magnates swear to follow Robert should the worst happen in England. By 1087, however, Robert had spend much of the last decade either fermenting dissent or in open rebellion against his father. Nonetheless, he was heir to Normandy and that was that.

Normandy was the duke’s patrimony. It had been passed down through the family and William had held it at great risk and effort in the early days. It had the prestige. England had the money.

England was left to William’s second surviving son William1 - Rufus thanks to his red hair. He became King William II in 1087.

Now the nobles were left with the problem of serving Robert Curthose in Normandy and William Rufus in England. The monk Orderic Vitalis, writing not long after, put words in noble mouths which hit the nail on the head:

What are we to do? Now that our old leader is dead two young men have succeeded him, and now they have suddenly divided the government of England from that of Normandy. How can we provide adequate service to two lords who are so different and live so far apart? If we serve Robert duke of Normandy as we ought we will offend his brother William, who will then strip us of our great revenues and mighty honours in England.

The leading nobles of England, as attributed by Orderic Vitalis

A group of nobles, mainly those from southern Normandy which included the powerful bishop Odo of Bayeux and Robert of Belleme, took matters into their own hands in 1088. Again, Orderic captures the tone perfectly:

Let us form an inviolable league; since king William is the younger of the two and very obstinate and we are under no obligation to him he must be deposed or slain. Then let us make Duke Richard ruler of England and Normandy to preserve the union of the two realms, for he is older by birth and a more tractable character, and we have already sworn fealty to him during the lifetime of the father of both men.

The leading nobles of England, as attributed by Orderic Vitalis

No man wanted to serve two masters, so a clear leader was important. A weaker, biddable leader, it seems, was icing on the cake.

Yet over in England, this could have been avoided. Eadmer tells us that as William moved for the crown he needed the support of Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury and lynchpin of the English administration, to get over the line. Lanfranc was "a man highly skilled in the laws both human and divine, and the government of the whole kingdom waited on his every word." To get his support Rufus had to promise to "obey the orders and accept the advice of the archbishop in everything." England’s influential nobles were happy with the status quo, and that was the old archbishop and the legacy of the Anglo-Saxon administrative machine. Tractable Robert, it seems, was no more tempting.

William Rufus defeated the rebel barons in 1089 and Lanfranc died a year later, but the problem did not go away. The only answer to unify the territories again under one ruler, which was easier said than done.

Robert was in no position to do that. While Norman lands were wealthy there were comparatively few ways for the duke to get that wealth out as cash. William the Conqueror’s 1066 expedition would have been ruinously expensive and he was running low on funds as the ships waited to sail. To repeat the feat the expedition would have to succeed, and there are no signs that Robert was even willing to try.

Rufus' approach was to use what England had in abundance.  Money.

Rufus spent much of 1091-1095 in Normandy helping his brother to rebuild ducal authority. What this really meant was that England’s king was buying support for when he would be duke. At the same time he was buying leverage against his brother; the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in 1090 talks of his ‘costly gifts’ to people such as King Phillip of France which put pressure on from the outside. This kind of alliance was reassuringly expensive.

Domesday Book shows the detailed knowledge that the English administration had of the taxable value of the land, and taxed we can be sure it was. The Church, whose lands evaded some of the Domesday spotlight, were also taxed. The Worcester Relief from 1095 shows us the numbers while the chroniclers - all of them churchmen - provide the harmony. Eadmer does not hide his feelings:

[Rufus] put up the whole of the Church of Christ for sale, granting the power of lordship over it to the highest bidder, no matter how great the damage incurred thereby. Each year in lamentable succession a new assessment of values was made; for the king would permit no agreement to remain settled, but whoever promised more ousted him who was paying less.

Eadmer

Nobody likes a big tax bill. Lurking in there is a sign of Rufus’ personality, however. He valued money over predictability, or so it seemed. Those doing the paying - nobles, barons, knights and churchmen - could not rely on him to stick to the rules or hold to his word. The king kept church posts vacant so he could keep the income: Canterbury itself from 1089-1093 and sixteen in total by 1097. Some of these he sold in breach of canon law, and he alienated lands from others permanently.

Beyond the church, Rufus went against usual practice when he sold feudal reliefs - permissions that had to be sought from a lord. He also broke with tradition by calling up the fyrd - the army provided by the old Anglo-Saxon military service obligation - to use them on the Continent for the first time. Then they never sailed. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for 1094 tells how 20,000 men were called up but as they arrived at the docks they were each relieved of their 10 shilling funds and sent home. The takings were used to pay for a mercenary force instead.

John of Worcester reckoned that the brains behind this unique use of the fyrd was William’s justiciar, Ranulf Flambard. Opinions of Ranulf are not ambiguous: ‘this plunderer of the rich, this exterminator of the poor, this confiscator of other men’s inheritances. As an advocate he was unbeatable; he was as unrestrained in his words as he was in his actions; and he was equally enraged against the humble or the rebellious.’2

Such may be the price of success. Nearly a century later Richard FitzNigel wrote the Dialogue of the Exchequer. His experience at the highest level of government and administration gave him a different, if barely more nuanced, view:

The power of kings rises or falls as their financial resources flow or ebb. Those who lack money are prey to their enemies; those who have it prey upon them. However questionable, therefore, may be or may seem to be the cause or method of obtaining wealth, those whose duty it is to guard it have no excuse for slackness, but must give anxious care to its collection, preservation and distribution. They hold the fate of the kingdom in their hands since its very security depends upon wealth.

Richard FitzNigel, Dialogue of the Exchequer (late twelfth century)

And for William, it worked. Having crushed a second, smaller baronial revolt in 1095 Rufus at last had a stroke of luck. In November that year Pope Urban II preached what became the First Crusade. Robert, with more knightly than ducal prowess, mortgaged his duchy to William to finance his expedition. For the juicy sum of 10,000 marks William at last ruled over England and Normandy, at least for the duration.

Provided the money kept on coming that could have been that. The cross-Channel nobility had their one lord. William was building infrastructure in London, including the stone wall of the Tower, Westminster Hall and a repaired London bridge. He was adding to Normandy by reconquering the province of Maine. Things could have been set at least relatively fair.

Unfortunately for Rufus, this was only the half of it.

William’s problems with the Church were remarkably similar. There was little chance of buying his way out this time. That very same money would be a big part of the problem.

Bibliography

• Bartlett, Robert (2000) England under the Norman and Angevin Kings. Oxford, Oxford University Press
• Mason, Emma (2005) William II. Stroud, Tempus Publishing