Chapter XXXI: Appendix: TT. Vol. ii. p. 338

THE BURIAL OF WILLIAM RUFUS.

Some of the accounts of William’s burial have been already mentioned in the text, or in the last Note. It may have been noticed that some of them seem anxious to claim for Henry a share in the burial of his brother. The singular narrative of Geoffrey Gaimar (i. 56), where he follows up his attempt to make out a late repentance for Rufus by giving him a specially solemn and Christian burial, has been given in brief in the text. The barons and the rest are mourning, when Gilbert of Laigle bids them stop (“Taisez, seigneurs, pur Jhésu Xpist”) and turn to burying their master. Then the story goes on;

“Donc véissez valez descendre
Et venéours lur haches tendre.
Tost furent trenche li fussel
De quai firent li mainel.
Deus blertrons troevent trenchez;
Bien sont léger et ensechez,
Ne sont trop gros, mès longs estoient;
Tut à mesure les conreient,
De lur ceintures e de peitrels
Lient estreit les mainels,
Puis firent lit en la bière.
De beles flours et de feugère,
Ij palefreis ont amenez,
Od riches freinz, bien enseelez;
Sur ceus ij. couchent la bière;
N’ert pas pesante mès légère;
Puis i estendent un mantel
Qui ert de paille tut novel.
Le fiz Aimon le défoubla,
Robert, qi son seignur ama,
Sur la bière cuchent le roi,
Qe portoient le palefroi.
Enséveli fu en un tiret,
Dont Willam de Montfichet.
Le jour devant ert adubbé,
N’avoit esté k’un jor porté,
Le mantel gris donc il osta.”

After some more lamentations, they set out on their journey and reach Winchester;

“Tresque Wincestre n’ont finé,
Iloeques ont le roi posé
Enz el mouster Seint-Swithun.
Là s’assemblèrent li baron.
Et la clergié de la cité
Et li évesque et li abbé.
Li bons évesques Walkelin
Gaita le roi tresq’au matin.
O lui, moigne, clerc et abbé,
Bien ont léu et bien chanté
Leudemain font cele départie.
Tiele ne vit homme de vie,
Ne tant messes ne tiel servise
N’ert fet tresq’au jour de juise
Pur un roi, come pur li firent.
Tut autrement l’ensévelirent
Qe li baron n’avoient fet.
Là où Wauter out à lui tret.
Qui ceo ne creit aut à Wincestre,
Oïr porra si voir pœt estre.”

This is a pretty story enough; but we may be sure that all its other details are as mythical as the part assigned to the dead Bishop Walkelin. The only question of any importance is whether there is any contradiction between the two more important narratives, that of Orderic and that of William of Malmesbury in the place where he is directly telling the story. The Chronicler and Florence simply mention the burial without detail or comment. The account of William of Malmesbury is the shorter of the two. The King has been shot, and Walter Tirel has fled. Then the story goes on (iv. 333);

“Nec vero fuit qui persequeretur, illis conniventibus, istis
miserantibus, omnibus postremo alia molientibus; pars
receptacula sua munire, pars furtivas prædas agere, pars
regem novum jamjamque circumspicere. Pauci rusticanorum
cadaver, in rheda caballaria compositum, Wintoniam in
episcopatum devexere, cruore undatim per totam viam
stillante. Ibi infra ambitum turris, multorum procerum
conventu, paucorum planctu, terræ traditum.”

Orderic (782 D) tells very much the same story;

“Mortuo rege, plures optimatum ad lares suos de saltu
manicaverunt, et contra futuras motiones quas timebant res
suas ordinaverunt. Clientuli quidem cruentatum regem vilibus
utcunque pannis operuerunt, et veluti ferocem aprum,
venabulis confossum, de saltu ad urbem Guentanam detulerunt.
Clerici autem et monachi atque cives, duntaxat egeni, cum
viduis et mendicis, obviam processerunt, et pro reverentia
regiæ dignitatis in veteri monasterio Sancti Petri celeriter
tumulaverunt.”

The words of William of Malmesbury, it will be noticed, are quite general. They do not assert the usual religious ceremony, but neither do they exclude it. It is Orderic who in a marked way asserts the popular excommunication. His words are;

“Porro ecclesiastici doctores et prælati, sordidam ejus
vitam et tetrum finem considerantes, tunc judicare ausi
sunt, et ecclesiastica, veluti biothanatum, absolutione
indignum censuerunt, quem vitales auras carpentem salubriter
a nequitiis castigare nequiverunt. Signa etiam pro illo in
quibusdam ecclesiis non sonuerunt, quæ pro infimis
pauperibus et mulierculis crebro diutissime pulsata sunt. De
ingenti ærario, ubi plures nummorum acervi de laboribus
miserorum congesti sunt, eleemosynæ pro anima cupidi quondam
possessoris nullæ inopibus erogatæ sunt.”

Here is no contradiction; only Orderic asserts a very remarkable feature in the case of which William takes no notice. To me it seems more likely that William of Malmesbury, whose business it clearly was (see above, p. 491) to make out as good a case for William Rufus as he could without asserting anything positively false, should leave out a circumstance which told so much against the King, than that Orderic, or those from whom he heard the story, should invent or imagine it. On the other hand, the very fact that the story of the popular excommunication is so very striking and solemn and in every way befitting does make us tremble the least bit in admitting it as a piece of authentic history.

We must not however forget that William of Malmesbury in a later passage (v. 393) does seem to imply that the burial of Rufus was accompanied by the ordinary ceremonies. In recording the election of Henry, he says that it happened “post justa funeri regio persoluta.” But it may fairly be doubted whether an _obiter dictum_ of this kind is entitled to the same weight which would undoubtedly have belonged to a direct statement in his regular narrative. The words are, after all, somewhat vague, and if we compare this passage in William of Malmesbury with the entry in the Chronicle, it sounds very much as if it were merely a translation in a grander style of the simple words “syðþan he bebyrged wæs.” The same feeling as that which is expressed in Orderic’s account comes out in a singular passage of the Saxon Annalist (Pertz, vi. 733); “Willehelmus rex de Anglia sagitta interfectus est. Heinricus vero frater ejus in eodem loco pro remedio animi sui volens monasterium constituere, prohibitus est. Apparuit enim ei, et duo dracones ferentes eum, dicens, nichil sibi prodesse, eo quod suis temporibus omnia destructa essent, quæ antecessores sui in honorem Domini construxerant.”

I suppose that there need be no difficulty about the “clientuli” of Orderic as compared with the “rusticani” of William, though the word “clientuli” by itself might rather have suggested some of the King’s inferior followers. But one is amazed to find Sir Francis Palgrave (iv. 686, 687) telling us the name of the churl who brought in the body, “a neighbouring charcoal-burner, Purkis.” And he goes on to say;

“We are not told that Purkis received any reward or thanks
for his care. His family still subsists in the
neighbourhood, nor have they risen above their original
station, poor craftsmen or cottagers. They followed the
calling of coal-burners until a recent period; and they tell
us that the wheel of the Cart which conveyed the neglected
corpse was shown by them until the last century.”

I have often heard of this local legend about Purkis, but really so palpable a fiction ought not to have found its way into the pages of a scholar like Sir Francis Palgrave. There are some stories which need no argument against them, but which the evidence of nomenclature at once upsets. Purkis is on the face of him as mythical as Crocker and Crewis and Copleston――I am not sure whether I have remembered the first two names right, and it is not worth turning to any book to see. By the way in which the story is told, one would fancy that Purkis is meant for a surname, and it may be that those who believe in him think that he was baptized John or Thomas. In inventing legends it is at least better to invent legends which are possible. If any one chooses to say that the cart was driven by Godwine or Æthelstan, we cannot say that it was not.

* * * * *

It is after this that Orderic goes on to speak of the classes of people who did mourn for the Red King, and how gladly they would have done summary vengeance on his slayer, if he had not been far out of their reach;

“Stipendiarii milites et nebulones ac vulgaria scorta
quæstus suos in occasu mœchi principis perdiderunt, ejusque
miserabilem obitum, non tam pro pietate quam pro detestabili
flagitiorum cupiditate, planxerunt, Gualteriumque Tirellum,
ut pro lapsu sui defensoris membratim discerperent,
summopere quæsierunt. Porro ille, perpetrato facinore, ad
pontum propere confugit, pelagoque transito, munitiones quas
in Gallia possidebat expetiit, ibique minas et maledictiones
malevolentium tutus irrisit.”

NOTE UU. Vol. ii. p. 347.

THE ELECTION OF HENRY THE FIRST.

The details of the accession of Henry come chiefly from Orderic (782 D), though, oddly enough, he does not record the election in so many words. But there can be no doubt as to the fact of a regular, though necessarily a very hasty, election. The words of the Chronicle are distinct; “And syðþan he bebyrged wæs þa witan þe þa neh handa wæron, his broðer Heanrig to cynge gecuran.” So Henry of Huntingdon; “Henricus, ibidem in regem electus.” Florence strangely slurs over the election, saying only, “successit junior frater suus Heinricus.” William of Malmesbury (v. 393) is quite distinct;

“In regem electus est, aliquantis tamen ante controversiis
inter proceres agitatis atque sopitis, annitente maxime
comite Warwicensi Henrico, viro integro et sancto, cujus
familiari jamdudum usus fuerat contubernio.”

Here we hear only of “proceres;” but we get the important facts of the division among the electors, and of the special agency of the Earl of Warwick, which falls in with the notice of Orderic (783 B) that the Count of Meulan accompanied the King-elect to London. The Beaumont brothers act together. But Orderic, in his zeal to describe the picturesque scene between Henry and William of Breteuil, leaves out any distinct record of the election. It is however implied in the words which follow the passage quoted in p. 347;

“Tandem, convenientibus amicis et sapientibus consiliariis,
hinc et inde lis mitigata est, et saniori consultu, ne pejor
scissura fieret, arx cum regalibus gazis filio regis Henrico
reddita est.”

The assembly which settled the matter, and which gave up the royal treasury to Henry, was beyond all doubt the assembly which, according to William of Malmesbury, elected Henry king. It was only to a king or king-elect that they would decree the surrender of the treasure. Indeed one might be tempted to make a slight change in the order of events as told by Orderic. One is tempted to suspect that the assembly voted the election of Henry, that he went, armed with this vote, to demand the treasure, and that it was then that William of Breteuil withstood him. This however is simply conjecture. But there can be no doubt as to the election of Henry by such an assembly as could be got together at the moment. Nor do I see any reason to doubt Orderic’s story as to the scene between Henry and William of Breteuil. At all events, Orderic has made it the occasion of putting forward some very sound constitutional doctrine, which is just as valuable, even if any severe critic should reject the story as a fact.

* * * * *

I have spoken elsewhere (see N. C. vol. v. p. 845) of two tales in Matthew Paris with regard to Henry’s accession, of which Thierry made a characteristic use. I have nothing to add to what I said then.

* * * * *

There can, I think, be no doubt that the celebrant at Henry’s coronation was Maurice Bishop of London. The Chronicler, Florence, Orderic, and Henry of Huntingdon, all mention Maurice and no other prelate, though of course some other bishops would take a secondary part in the ceremony. The Archbishop of York would have been the regular celebrant during the vacancy of Canterbury; but, as Thomas died so soon afterwards, the natural inference is that he was too sick to come. And indeed, if he was in his own province, he could not, even if he had been in the best of health, have come to Westminster at such short notice. Even Thomas Stubbs does not claim the consecration of Henry for his namesake, unless indeed he means (X Scriptt. 1707) to insinuate it in a very dark way. He mentions the vacancy of Canterbury after the death of Lanfranc, and adds;

“Ex antiquo tamen extitit consuetudo inter duos Angliæ
metropolitanos, ut altero defuncto alter in provincia
defuncti archiepiscopalia faceret, utpote episcopos
consecrare, regem coronare, coronato rege natalis domini,
paschæ et pentecostes majorem missam cantare. Hæc interim
fecit Thomas archiepiscopus, nec quisquam episcoporum erat
qui hæc in sua ipsius diocesi præsente archiepiscopo præsumeret.”

He then mentions the bishops whom Thomas consecrated, Hervey of Norwich――that is, Herbert of Thetford――Ralph of Chichester, and Hervey of Bangor. If he had really thought that Thomas had crowned a king, he would surely have said so distinctly. I can therefore attach no importance to the strange statement of the two Ely writers (Anglia Sacra, i. 613; Stewart, Liber Eliensis, 284) that Henry was consecrated by Maurice, but crowned by Thomas (“a Mauritio Lundoniensi episcopo in regem est consecratus, sed a Thoma Eboracensi coronatus”). But the distinction between consecration and coronation may be worth the attention of ritual students.

* * * * *

It was an easy mistake of a Welsh writer (see the Brut, 1098, that is 1100) to transfer the election from Winchester to London; “From thence [Winchester] he went to London, and took possession of it, which is the chiefest and crown of the whole kingdom of England [Lloeger]. Then the French and Saxons [Ffreinc a Saeson] all flocked together to him, and by royal council appointed him king in England [vrenhin yn Lloeger].”