The Eccentricities of William the Red – The Revolt of 1088 – A Drama of Three Brothers – William II in Scotland & Wales – The Battle of Alnwick 1089 – The Revolt of 1095 – Pope Urban II Calls for a Crusade – A Reunited Norman Empire – Anselm of Canterbury – The First Crusade – A Suspicious Death
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| William II |
William the Conqueror sired four sons: Richard (who had died), Robert (the eldest), William (the favorite), and Henry. According to French feudal custom, William I’s eldest son Robert Curthose (or “court-hose” or “short-legs,” as he was known) inherited the Duchy of Normandy, despite the fact that he had rebelled against his father and tried to seize the city of Rouen for himself. Because England was William’s acquisition (a territory outside the homeland obtained by a man’s purchase, marriage, or, in this case, conquest), he wasn’t bound by the feudal laws of primogeniture to hand it over to Robert. William gifted England to his favorite son William, and he appeased his third son with a financial settlement. Unlike his older brother, and along with his younger brother Henry, William had remained loyal to his father and had been present at his father’s deathbed (Robert was notoriously absent).
Young William was known as William “Rufus” (“The Red”), likely because of his florid, red-faced complexion combined with red hair like his father. He had eyes of different colors and spoke with a stutter. He spent an inordinate amount of time hunting, like his father, and he ruled the royal forests with an iron will: anyone caught killing a deer in the royal forest would be subject to the death penalty. The late scholar Frank Barlow describes William II thus: “A [rambunctious], devil-may-care soldier, without natural dignity or social graces, with no cultivated tastes and little show of conventional religious piety or morality—indeed, according to his critics, addicted to every kind of vice, particularly lust and especially sodomy.” Anglo-Saxon sources (which, we must remember, were rather biased against the Norman rulers) portray William II as a shameless skeptic who flaunted his homosexuality. English writers condemned his opulence, carefree living, and they harped long and hard on his adoption of a particular fashion that they interpreted as “effeminate and licentious”: long hair on men. As a religious skeptic he had no qualms about leaving bishoprics vacant for long periods of time to take the money for himself, a practice that resulted in a long enmity between the monarch and the Church. He treated the Church as if it were a corporation he could squeeze for profit, didn’t put much energy into appointing bishops or abbots (once emplaced they made it difficult for him to seize the finances of churches and abbeys), and he found an ally in his heretical treatment of the Church in a corrupt clerk named Ranulf Flambard, whom he eventually made Bishop of Durham, much to the chagrin of the pious. Despite English accounts of William II, the French (who, we must remember, were biased towards the Normans) viewed William II as a good ruler who had, in the words of Frank Barlow, “maintained good order and satisfactory justice in England and restored good peace to Normandy. He had extended Anglo-Norman rule in Wales, brought Scotland firmly under his lordship, recovered Maine, and kept up the pressure on the Vexin.” William II never married (the Welsh Chronicle of Princes claims that he preferred whores, though whether male or female isn’t specified), and thus he died without an heir.
Archbishop Lanfranc, a friend and confidant of William II’s father, accepted Rufus as William I’s successor. William II’s reign went well at first: he had the sound advice of the saintly Anselm, and he won popularity with the English people by distributing a hefty amount of the royal treasury to monasteries, churches, and the poor. But the division of the Anglo-Norman realm (between William II in England and Robert Curthose in Normandy) could only breed problems. The Norman barons in England (who had replaced the Anglo-Saxon thegns) faced a dilemma: they held lands and property in both England and Normandy, and since the two territories were under separate rulers, they were forced to decide whom they would serve. Odo of Bayeux, William II’s uncle, put it thus: “How can we give proper service to two distant and mutually hostile lords? If we serve Duke Robert well we shall offend his brother William and he will deprive us of our revenues and honors in England. On the other hand if we obey King William, Duke Robert will deprive us of our patrimonies in Normandy.” Tensions escalated and within a few months a number of great barons decided their loyalties lie with Robert rather than William II, and the king faced a rebellion known in history as the Revolt of 1088.
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| Robert Short Legs |
These barons wanted to reunite England and Normandy, which would make it easier for them to maintain their family realms, and William II’s Uncle Odo, now the Earl of Kent, stood at their head. The Normans in England were vastly outnumbered by the native English population, and William II won their favor by promising to cut taxes (a promise he wouldn’t keep). Having garnished English support, he retook the rebel strongholds at Pevensey and Rochester, and the revolt crumbled when the revolt’s star, Robert Curthose, failed to cross the Channel from his duchy and support their rebellion. Though he had extinguished the revolt, William II knew that it was but a matter of time before another rebellion rose like a phoenix from the ashes; so long as the Anglo-Norman realm was divided, the powerful barons wouldn’t be happy. It was not only in the best interests of the barons for the realm to be united; a united realm would make life easier for the Anglo-Norman monarch, as well. William II knew he had to reunify England and the duchy of Normandy, and to this end he invaded Normandy in 1091. He managed to recapture several chunks of Normandy from his brother, and during peace talks between the siblings, William and Robert reconciled, joined forces, and moved to retake Maine and Contentin from their youngest brother Henry. After a two-week siege, Henry surrendered the Cotentin and skulked away, plotting how to retake what he saw (and what was) as rightfully his (he had used the cash settlement from his father to purchase the Cotentin from Robert).
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| modern day Alnwick Castle |
William II had yet to carry the Anglo-Norman realm to its borders under his father, but his campaigns in Normandy hadn’t been a total loss. The newly-acquired lands made his kingdom the most powerful in Europe, thanks to the decline of the Salian rulers of France. Back in England William II dealt with England’s immediate enemies and borders. In 1091 the Scottish King Malcolm III (known as “Malcolm Greathead”) invaded England, but the royal forces repelled him. William II moved quickly, forcing the Scottish king to acknowledge his lordship. The next year he built Carlisle Castle, wresting control of Cumberland and Westmoreland from the Scots. Malcolm III had begrudgingly accepted English dominance, but the loss of Cumberland and Westmoreland was just too much for him: in 1093 he rose against England, ravaging Northumbria before meeting the royal forces on 13 November 1093 at the Battle of Alnwick.
The Earl of Northumbria, Robert de Mowbray, didn’t have the strength to oppose Malcolm’s Scottish army in a pitched battle, so he resorted to hit-and-run raids and skirmishes to harass the Scots. Malcolm may have considered Mowbray nothing but an irritating bug nipping at his heels, for he didn’t pursue him; instead he laid siege to Alnwick Castle. Mowbray gathered his forces and made a hurried march to relieve the castle; he arrived in sight of the besieged fortress on St. Brice’s Day 1093 (13 November), and having caught the Scottish army by surprise, he attacked. The Scots had a numerical advantage, but they weren’t prepared for the English attack. Mowbray’s knights stormed the Scots on the castle ramparts, and in the ensuing battle Malcolm III and his son Edward were slain. The leaderless Scottish army hurried dejected back behind their own borders. In the wake of Alnwick, Malcolm III’s son Donald seized the Scottish throne. William II favored another son of Malcolm’s, Edgar, for the throne: Edgar was more genial towards England and could be easily managed. With English support Edgar wrested Lothian from Donald’s control in 1094, and in 1097 it was brother-against-brother for the Scottish throne. Edgar won out and took his brother’s place as Scotland’s monarch. As king Edgar recognized William II’s authority over Lothian (the border between Northumbria and Scotland proper), and Edgar even attended the English court. William II made two uninspiring forays into Wales in 1097, accomplishing little besides building a few castles on the Welsh border.
Robert of Mowbray, the Earl of Northumbria who had bested the Scottish army at Alnwick, rose against William II two years later in 1095. He had been part of the Revolt of 1088 but had been pardoned; his gratitude, it seems, hadn’t been long-lasting. William led an army against Mowbray’s forces and beat him. Mowbray was captured and stripped of his lands and titles and imprisoned. Another noble, William of Eu, was accused of treachery and was both blinded and castrated. William II’s brutal punishments on the ringleaders of the so-called Revolt of 1095 ensured that no other barons dared to rise up against him—but tensions were flaring yet again between him and his brother in Normandy, and England baited its breath, waiting for the inevitable clash of arms that would decide who would rule not only Normandy but the whole of the Anglo-Norman realm.
The decisive clash was avoided in 1095 when Pope Urban II called for a holy crusade into the Holy Land. In a sermon at Clermont in southern France, the pope exhorted the nobility to take up arms against the Muslims who had overrun Jerusalem. He promised that all who fought against the heathens would be participants in a Christ-sanctioned holy war and would find forgiveness of their sins. All across France the hearts of nobles and peasants were stirred: nobles for the possibility of winning fame, fortune, and land; and the peasants who knew they had a lot of sins that needed to be forgiven. Robert Curthose answered the call, perhaps in a bid for glory and wealth and to be rid of domestic difficulties in his duchy, and he sold Normandy to his brother William for 10,000 marks. Robert marched off to do battle in Palestine, and William—with Normandy secured—moved to take Maine and the Vexin, which Robert had lost through weak rule. By 1099 Maine and the Vexin were secure, and William II had restored the Anglo-Norman realm to the borders won by his father.
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| Anselm of Canterbury |
William II had secured his borders from enemies without, but he soon found an enemy within in the future St. Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury. William was no friend to religion, and when Lanfranc died in 1089, he left the archbishopric empty and used its income to pad his pockets. During a spate of illness in 1093, William became convinced that he was dying, and eager to settle his debt with God, he appointed the Benedictine monk Anselm of Bec as Lanfranc’s successor. Anselm settled into his post with a dedication to the Gregorian Reforms sweeping through Europe. The bulwark of the Gregorian Reforms were internal changes to the Church, but these included the freedom from lay domination and the centralization of papal authority over bishops, abbots, and clergy—at the expense of control of local sovereigns, be they princes, kings, or queens. Gregorian reformers believed that secular sovereigns held no authority over the Church. This clerical conviction would become a bone of contention driving a wedge between the English church and state. As for Anselm, he was regarded as the top dog theologian of his time. He’s been credited as the founder of Scholasticism (the medieval approach to knowledge that focused on dialectical reasoning by inference and resolving contradictions; Scholasticism would dominate medieval universities from Anselm’s time to the 18th century). Scholasticism competed against the humanistic studies that marked the early middle ages; humanist studies were built upon the works of classical authors, especially Plato, but the rediscovery of Aristotle in the 12th century—thanks to Islamic scholars’ dedication to classical studies—marked a shift in the practice of knowledge. Scholasticism isn’t Anselm’s only legacy: he’s also hailed as the founder of the Ontological Argument of God (which is still discussed in seminaries today) and the Satisfactory Theory of the Atonement. Anselm and William II disagreed about a lot, but the biggest beef between them was Anselm’s conviction that the king didn’t have any God-given authority over the clergy. William II is reported as fuming about Anselm, “Yesterday I hated him with great hatred, today I hate him with yet even greater hatred and he can be certain that tomorrow and thereafter I shall hate him continually with ever fiercer and more bitter hatred.”
William II had enough of Anselm, and in 1095 he called a council in Rockingham to get to the bottom of their disputes. Anselm appealed to Rome, arguing that because he was the Archbishop of Canterbury he was subject to the judgment of the Church rather than the judgment of the king, and thus he couldn’t be judged in a secular court. The papacy had exploded in strength in the 11th century, and churchmen like Anselm believed their highest authority was God, who was represented by the vicar of St. Peter (the Pope), and that the churchmen’s duty to God overrode any duties they had to secular authorities. Anselm may have expected Pope Urban II to take his side, but the Pope was already neck-deep in a conflict with Henry IV, the Holy Roman Emperor. Unwilling to make another enemy, Urban II left the English king alone. Undeterred, Anselm didn’t back down from William II, and when tensions boiled over in 1097, Anselm sought exile in France, leaving the see of Canterbury in the king’s hands.
William’s conflict with Anselm may have reached an end, but a new one lie on the doorstep: in the summer of 1100, his brother Robert was returning from winning renown and treasure in the First Crusade, and all England chafed with fear at what might happen upon his return. William II had struggled to secure that which his father had won, but if Robert demanded the return of his duchy, England and Normandy would be plunged into chaos once more. The First Crusade had had an ignominious beginning: scores of peasantry from France and the Rhineland, under the sway of charismatic preachers like Peter the Hermit and Walter the Pennyless, marched en masse towards Palestine with an escort of few knights and clergy. They marched down the Rhine Valley, attacking Jews en route, and they marched through Hungary and Bulgaria before reaching Constantinople. Emperor Alexius of Byzantium couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw the ill fated horde of peasants, and he was eager to be rid of them, giving them transport across the Bosporus Strait. The rabble was ill-equipped and untrained, and thus they didn’t stand a chance against the Turks, who cut them apart with hardly an afterthought. Any victories would have to be won by soldiers who knew a thing or two about war—solders like Robert Curthose.
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| The Capture of Jerusalem, 1099 |
Robert had done well in the First Crusade, leading his French army alongside other western European armies. Godfrey of Bouillon, his brother Baldwin, and Robert of Flanders led a force of Flemings; Bohemund of Taranto and his nephew Tancred led the Normans of southern Italy; and Raymond of Toulouse was in charge of soldiers of Languedoc. These four armies traveled overland and overseas to arrive in Constantinople between 1096 and 1097. Once in the capital of the Byzantine Empire, Emperor Alexius had the gall to make them swear an oath of fealty to him in return for the supplies they would need on their last leg to the Holy Land. This meant that whatever lands the European generals won would be ruled with Alexius as overlord. Tensions ran high between the Europeans and Alexius, at the cost of a unified front; but the Seljuk Turks were themselves divided and unable to react against the crusaders with a unified front of their own. Politics aside, the crusaders launched from Constantinople and marched into the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum, winning a smashing victory at Dorylaeum. At this point Baldwin detached from the main body of crusaders and marched on Edessa; once it fell, it became the first crusader state in the East. Bohemund won the Battle of Antioch and claimed the city as its own. With Antioch in crusader hands, the road to Jerusalem was open. The crusaders, with Robert of Normandy among them, laid siege to Jerusalem for five weeks, and on 15 July 1099, the crusaders stormed Jerusalem and slaughtered its occupants without discrimination: as many as 10,000 Muslims, Jews, and Christians perished side-by-side. The Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem was born, but Robert’s part in the First Crusade wasn’t over: his leadership would help secure victory at the last major conflict of the First Crusade at Ascalon in August 1099. Having won reputation, riches, and favor in the eyes of the church, Robert decided to leave the management of the new Frankish states in Palestine to others and return to Normandy. No doubt he intended to use his fame, fortune, and favor as leverage for retaking Normandy from his brother.
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| The Supposed Site of William II's Death |
William II and his brother Henry joined hands and discussed how best to meet the impending crisis. Their alliance against Robert, however, would never come to fruition: on 2 August 1100 the English king died in a (so-called) hunting accident in the New Forest. The chronicler William of Malmesbury alleges that William had endured a frightening dream the night before, and when he and his entourage (including his younger brother Henry) headed out into the forest to hunt, he had been uneasy. The hunting party spread out to chase deer, but a baron named Walter Tirel stayed with the king. The king saw a stag through the trees and fired an arrow at it, wounding it; the stag fled into the trees, and the king shielded his eyes against the sun to try and see where it went. Another deer appeared, and Tirel fired his own bow, but he missed and the arrow struck the king in the chest. The king broke the arrow at the shaft, but then he lost consciousness, slid off his horse, and pitched forward to the ground. The impact drove the arrow deeper into his chest, between his ribs, and piercing his lung. Tirel hurried to the downed king’s side, but William II was unconscious and beyond help. Tirel’s calls for help carried through the trees, and the king’s entourage, with Henry at its head, arrived. Henry took charge, and he and his companions abandoned his older brother in the woods and made haste to Winchester to secure the royal treasury. He would lose no time in taking the crown for himself, and he would be officially made king just three days after the accident, being crowned in Westminster by the Bishop of London (since Anselm, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was exiled in France and the Archbishop of York was in far-off northern England). The late king’s body was discovered in the woods by a wandering charcoal burner, and he and some peasants loaded the stinking body onto a horse-drawn cart and delivered it to Winchester. William II would be buried in Winchester Cathedral, and when the cathedral’s tower collapsed the next year, many saw it as an act of God’s judgment against William II’s skepticism and flagrant sin.
The nature of the king’s death, coupled with his younger brother’s rapid seizure of power, has made many historians down the ages ponder the presence of a conspiracy. They argue that because Walter Tirel was renown as an excellent bowmen, how did he not only miss the stag but also strike the king with a killing blow? Around the 17th century, legend had it that Tirel’s arrow had deflected off a tree and haplessly lodged in the king’s chest (this is the claim proposed by the “Rufus Stone,” which is erected in the alleged spot of the king’s death). Furthermore, William Tirel lost no time in abandoning his lands and fleeing to France; but is this a mark of a guilty conscience or a man knowing all too well that he could become a scapegoat for the king’s demise? Though historians through the ages have debated whether or not Henry had a hand in his brother’s death, it must be observed that (a) no contemporary made the charge of assassination, (b) hunting was risky and accidents were common, and (c) if Henry was the architect of his brother’s death, it would make more sense for him to wait and see who came out on top in the impending war between William and Robert. It would be far more expedient for him to assassinate the resultant victor of the coming family feud and thus take charge of a unified Anglo-Norman realm.
But Henry succeeded his brother just in time to take the reigns against Robert.
It would be brother-against-brother in a winner-take-all showdown.
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