When brothers won't share - the curious case of William Rufus (ruled 1087-1100)

That William II - known as Rufus because of either his red-faced complexion or his propensity to anger quickly - succeeded his father to the throne of England, despite being William the Conqueror's third son, tells a story of its own and gives some insight into the troubles that lay ahead.

At his death in September 1087, William the Conqueror had ruled Normandy for, in effect if not in fact, over fifty years and his family had held it for considerably longer. England, however, had only been added to his possessions a mere twenty-one years previously. Whether we like it or not, England, as wealthy as it might have been at the time, was not the most not the most prized asset up for grabs.

William had three surviving sons amongst whom to divide his estate; a fourth, Richard (the second born son), had - spookily enough - been killed in a hunting accident in the New Forest around 1075. The eldest son, Robert (known as Curthose on account of the fact that he was a bit of a short-arse and thus his leggings were not the longest) was bequeathed the duchy of Normandy as was in keeping with the rules of primo-geniture (first born) in that land.

No doubt in an attempt to be even handed between the three sons, perhaps to try and stave off future conflict, William then gave England to his third son, William Rufus. The fourth son, Henry (keep him in mind for later), was given no land but instead inherited 5,000 pounds of silver to ease the pain.

Despite these best intentions, this settlement caused turmoil both amongst the sons and the barons alike, many of whom owned estates on both sides of the channel and were thus caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place. When, rather than if, Robert and William were to fall out, they would be forced to pick sides and therefore would risk losing their estates if they chose wrong.

That the brothers were not best of friends is well illustrated from an incident that supposedly took place around 1077/78 when William would have been around 17 years old. He and his brother, Henry, had been playing dice when - growing bored - they cooked up a prank to play on Robert. You can imagine that the eldest brother might have had a "considerably better than you" attitude to his younger siblings which no doubt made them feel the need to take him down a peg or two. The details are not entirely clear but it seems they waited until he was passing below the gallery on which they stood and then either emptied the contents of a chamber pot on his head or urinated on him. Either way it would not have been particularly pleasant.

But hey! We've all done that to our older brothers, right?  Boys will be boys and all that? Robert didn't find it funny, though, and laid into his brothers so furiously that eventually William senior had to break it up. You can imagine how he must have been annoyed to be distracted from his work: "Don't make me come in there! You'll feel the back of my hand if I do." etc etc.

Anyway, sure enough, it was not long after the father's death that the problems began. A number of nobles felt that the best outcome all round would be if the two lands were united under one of the brothers which, combined with the natural sense of conflict between the three men, led to a number of plots over the succeeding years. Added to this mix was the character of the men themselves. Robert appeared to be a thoroughly ineffectual ruler, unwilling to stand up to the unruly excesses of the barons in Normandy. William, on the other hand, while he could be wise and decisive, was interested in little other than hunting and military exploits. Chroniclers of the time described him as vain, capricious, ill-tempered, blasphemous and contemptuous of religion. His apparent cruelty and greed was enough to see many nobles side with Robert in the first rebellion of his reign in the late 1080s. Robert - being next to useless, however - failed to capitalise on what could have been a golden opportunity to combine both lands by not coming to England to lead the uprising. It was relatively simple, therefore, for William Rufus to crush the rebels before too much longer.

With a free hand, William was now able to use his position to exploit his subjects and abuse his power as much as he liked. Exorbitant inheritance taxes were levied, heavy court fines were imposed and enforced rigorously. He saved the church for special attention, seeing them as little more than a huge corporation to be taxed to the hilt. He deliberately left empty bishoprics vacant for ages so that he could claim the unused salary. He clearly had no fear of the threatened eternal damnation for his actions.

Whilst he was not the best of chaps, it should be remembered that chroniclers tended to be religious men and you annoyed them at your peril as they would have the last laugh in that it was they who got to write the history by which you would be remembered. The finger was also pointed firmly at his morals. He never married and there was no mention of lovers or bastard offspring and it was claimed that he often engaged in sodomy. To the modern observer, it is pretty clear that he king was homosexual. No big deal, right? But at the time this was an affront to God and a threat to the kingdom as one of the key duties of the king was to secure the succession but providing an heir. Interestingly, even as recently as the early 1950s a text book I have described him as "one of the worst kings in respect of his morals." Our more enlightened times are a thing of the relatively recent past and are as yet still not that well-established in all corners of the world.

Enough of that! Let's get to the subject of William's curious death while hunting. It's fair to say that, since 1066, a decent number of kings have died violently in one way or another. But once you rule out battle (Richard I and III), execution (Charles I) and deposition (Edward II, Richard II, Henry VI and Edward V), then William Rufus seems to be the only case I can call to mind of a king of England who was killed by accident - or was he? Are we dealing with a fatal accident or a deadly conspiracy?

On the day in question, William was in fine fettle; he loved hunting above all else. In terms of his choice of royal day-out it was the best larks evs. Also in his party were a number of other nobles, key amongst whom were: his younger brother, Henry (Aha! He's back!), the brothers Gilbert and Roger de Clare and Walter Tirel who was Lord of Poix in Ponthieu and brother-in-law to the de Clares. Shortly before they set off, a letter from the Abbot of Gloucester was delivered which warned of a monk who'd had a vision of the king's death. William, however, scoffed at the nonsensical "dreams of snoring monks" and rode off into the forest.

As the story goes, the party became separated as the chase got underway, Rufus and Tirel finding themselves alone. Startled by a stag that came out of nowhere, Tirel supposedly loosed an arrow which missed, deflected off an oak tree and struck the king in his chest, piercing his lung. What happened next is what has given rise to claims of a conspiracy. First of all, Tirel immediately fled overseas. Was this because he was worried he might be punished for his negligence or rather because he had been paid to carry out the evil deed and needed to make himself scarce? You ain't seen me, right?  Either way, he was supposed to be an accomplished bowman so it is doubtful that he would be so rash as to take such a risky shot. That said, hunting accidents were not uncommon; remember William's own brother had died twenty-five years earlier in the same forest.

More telling, though, is the behaviour of Henry. Rather than care for his wounded brother or oversee the transport of his body to nearby Winchester, he chose instead to abandon Rufus and ride with all speed to Winchester where he seized the treasury. A day later he had himself elected king and was crowned two days later in Westminster Abbey before either Archbishop could arrive. Why the haste if this was not a premeditated plan? Seizing the treasury so quickly is particularly telling as possession of the royal coffers effectively conferred power onto the person who held them.

Once Henry was king (Henry I for those that worry about such things), he was at pains to lavish favour on the de Clare brothers. Perhaps this was reward for their support in the conspiracy?

So what of William Rufus? His body lay abandoned while everyone else rushed off to secure their positions for whatever reason. He was eventually found by a charcoal burner named Purkiss, who unceremoniously dumped the body in the back of his cart and took it to Winchester where the king was hastily buried beneath the tower. That the tower then collapsed a few years later was taken as a sign - by the church - that he was ill-favoured by God due to the evil actions during his reign. His death, to them, was quite simply an act of God and nothing more than he deserved.

The White Ship: a 12th century succession crisis.

It is one of the greatest naval disasters in the history of these British Isles but one that few people have heard ever of.  One seemingly small event on a foul day in November 1120 was to cause a crisis in the royal succession and lead to a civil war that was comparable in impact to its more famous successors in the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries.  

As the Chronicler, William of Malmesbury wrote: ‘No ship ever brought so much misery to England’.

So what happened? The king at the time – Henry I, fourth son of William the Conqueror – had been in Normandy to deal with a dispute over the title to the Duchy that had been raging with Louis VI of France since 1115. Peace had finally been achieved with the help of Pope Callixtus II and now Henry was preparing to sail back to England with his only son and heir, William Adelin.

(NB. Regular readers of this blog may recognise a similarity with the Saxon word Aetheling, meaning prince of the royal dynasty, as in Edgar Aetheling who was briefly acclaimed King by the Saxons after the death of Harold II at Hastings. Adelin is the Norman spelling of the word and an attempt to show continuity with the former Saxon rulers; a union of old and new, if you will.)

Henry and William arrived at the port of Barfleur where they were met by a ship’s captain, Thomas FitzStephen, who offered his newly refitted, state of the art vessel – the White Ship – to convey the king back to England. Thomas was a man of some renown as he was the son of Stephen FitzAirard who had captained the Mora in 1066; the ship that had carried Duke William to England to launch his invasion.

Despite these impressive credentials, King Henry demurred. He had already made his travel plans and no doubt he preferred his trusty old ship rather than any new-fangled, modern nonsense. Nonetheless, he did allow his son and his retinue (including two of the king’s illegitimate children: Robert of Lincoln and Matilda FitzRoy) to avail themselves of Thomas FitzStephen’s offer.

That is when the drinking started. William was 17 at the time and, like many teenagers suddenly free of the shackles of an overbearing father, he saw the opportunity for a party with his mates. The wine flowed in copious quantities and by the time the ship set sail that night, over 300 people were on board, most of whom would have been roaring drunk; including the ship’s captain.

Whether it was William himself or one of his friends that put him up to it is not known, but – full of drunken bravado – they ordered the captain to show them what the ship could do, challenging him to overtake his father (who had left port several hours earlier) and to reach England before him. No doubt William pictured himself standing smugly at the docks in Southampton or wherever, casually waving as his father eventually arrived, shouting “What took you so long?”

However, the harbour of Barfleur is difficult to navigate at the best of times but in the dark and with the crew several sheets to the wind, it was a recipe for disaster. In order to gain time on the rest of the royal fleet, they dispensed with following the safe route and instead went full pelt in the most direct route possible. Disaster struck not far out to sea, when the hull struck a submerged rock, ripping a huge gash in the timbers.

It would appear that not everyone was completely trousered, however, as members of William’s household did manage to bundle the prince into a small dinghy and get him away from the floundering ship. Everything might have been well were it not for the fact that William was said to have heard the cries of his half-sister who was still on the White Ship. William gallantly ordered the dinghy back to rescue her and it is ironic that such a noble action was to seal his fate. By now there were so many people in the freezing waters of the Channel that there was a mad scramble to reach the dinghy, the result of which was that the little boat was swamped. It capsized and sank without trace, taking the heir to the throne of England and Normandy with it. For months after, finely dressed bodies were washed up all along the shoreline, but no race was ever found of William Adelin.

Impact

So why did the loss of this one ship have such a huge impact? Well, never was the phrase ‘Heir and a spare’ more apt. Despite having numerous illegitimate children, William was Henry’s only surviving male heir. His only other legitimate offspring was his daughter, Mathilda (also sometimes known as Maud), and in these unenlightened times, no one was quite ready for England to be ruled by a woman.

The death of William therefore caused a succession crisis. Although Henry married again and was to reign for another 15 years, he did not produce any more legitimate children. On his death in 1135, therefore, England was plunged into a period of civil war – known as the Anarchy – that was not fully resolved until Mathilda’s son, Henry II, acceded in 1154 (him of Thomas a Becket fame).

Henry I did nominate his daughter as his successor and made his nobles swear an oath of allegiance to her but, with him gone, they weren’t inclined to make good on that vow. Mathilda, together with her husband, Geoffrey of Anjou, tried to take the throne as planned but they were met with resistance from the Norman barons who, instead, favoured her cousin (and Henry I’s nephew), Stephen of Blois, who was to become King Stephen.

Mathilda did actually defeat and capture Stephen at the Battle of Lincoln in 1141 but her attempted coronation at Westminster Abbey collapsed in the face of bitter protests from the London crowds. Then, as now, there were those who would rather anyone other than a woman be in charge.

Thereafter an uneasy stalemate ensued with many twists and turns until a point was reached whereby the future Henry II acknowledged Stephen as the rightful king was in return was adopted as Stephen’s son and successor. Although Mathilda had failed to become Queen in her own right, she had at least managed to secure the succession for her son. A great grandson of William the Conqueror would carry on the line.