Royal Murder Page 3

  Those who disagreed with the finding claimed that it was unlikely that in the throes of agony after cutting his throat Sellis would have been able to place his razor on the chest of drawers, it would have been more likely to have fallen to the floor or remained in the dying man’s convulsive grip. Another point was that according to a doctor the gash had been made by an instrument held in the right hand, yet Sellis was said to be left-handed. If he was this raises doubt about the Rt Hon George Rose’s remark that the blood on the left hand sleeve of the coat must have “streamed on it from the sabre held in the right hand.” It is also doubtful if enough of the duke’s blood would have adhered to the blade to “stream”.

  Some authors have written that when the physician Sir Henry Halford was summoned to the duke’s apartments he found him with his shirt stained with blood. Cumberland explained that he had been set upon and injured but Halford only found a cut on his hand.

  Others who did not agree with the official version of the events suggested that in a fit of temper the duke killed his valet with the newly sharpened sabre, then laid his body on the bed and cut himself with the dead man’s razor to give credence to the attack-and-suicide story. This theory is as open to question as the coroner’s and unless some overlooked clue comes to light the affair will remain a minor mystery.

  Contents

  CHAPTER ONE - The Murder of William Rufus

  “. . . departed in the midst of his unrighteousness ...”

  “. . . thereafter on the morrow was the King William shot off with

  and arrow from his own men in hunting.”

  This terse statement in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle refers to one of the classic puzzles of English history — the violent death of William II. When his body was found by a charcoal burner named Purkiss in a New Forest clearing, no one mourned the dead monarch or cared whether the arrow had struck him by accident or had flown from an assassin’s bow. It was left to Purkiss to transport the royal corpse to Winchester on his cart, tradition asserting that it left behind a trail of blood which the king’s spectre returns to follow on each anniversary of his death.

  The universal detestation for William was expressed thus by a contemporary English chronicler: “Though I hesitate to say it all things that are loathsome to God and earnest men were customary in this land and this time. And therefore he was loathsome to well nigh all his people and abominable to God ... he departed in the midst of his unrighteousness without repentance and expiation.”

  The dead king was interred in Winchester Cathedral without ceremony — no bell tolled, no prayers said for the repose of his soul and later when the roof collapsed the accident was blamed on the evil which clung to his remains.

  It is understandable that the Saxon population should feel no grief over the death of the son of the harsh Conqueror, and the antagonism which existed between William and the Church could explain the monkish author’s pious criticism, but the complete lack of ceremonial for an anointed sovereign could have had other connotations — to have mourned the victim might have appeared as disrespect to the man who gained the throne as a result of the murder.

  Born between 1056 and 1060, William was the third of William the Conqueror’s sons, yet it was he who gained the crown of England on his father’s death. It was eleven years after the Conquest that history first takes note of William, when hostility grew between his eldest brother Robert and his father. Soon after 1066 Robert had been nominally invested with the Duchy of Normandy but as he grew older he resented the way his formidable father refused to allow his sons any real say in the governing of his realms. With some encouragement from his mother, Queen Matilda, he began to intrigue against his father, but in the resultant disputes the king was supported by his sons Richard and William. In 1079, the latter was wounded in Normandy when the Conqueror was attacking a castle held by Robert. This shedding of blood on his behalf endeared the youth to William.

  Two years later there befell a tragedy for the Conqueror which the Saxons saw as an act of supernatural retribution. While hunting in the New Forest — a vast game preserve the king had created by demolishing the hamlets of the vanquished — his most promising son Richard was gored to death by a stag. Thus, when King William lay on his death bed six years later in the Priory of St Gervais in France, he brooded on the disloyalty of his first-born and, with Richard dead, decided to make the dutiful William his successor in England. The day before he died he sent him to England with a letter for Archbishop Lanfranc requesting him to crown William “if he deemed it might be justly done,” In England William’s first astute action was to race to the royal treasury at Winchester where he seized the keys and found that his father’s fortune amounted to £60,000 in silver, gold and jewels.

  Possessed of this basic necessity for royal power, he persuaded the archbishop to crown him on September 26, 1087.

  In appearance the new king had a broad forehead, blond hair, eyes of “varying colour flecked with white” and a ruddy complexion which caused him to be known as Rufus or the Red King. He was of middle height, and, like his father, of stout build. His greatest love was for hunting, spending so much time at the chase that he earned the additional cognomen of the Wood-Keeper.

  He had been reared as a typical Norman lord to hunt and fight and, like the knights of his time, he had a schizophrenic outlook which reconciled brutality with the principles of chivalry. It was his ambition to become the most famous knight in Christendom, an ambition which it seems he fulfilled. (Lines in the Roman de Rou refer to him thus:- Li Reis Ros fu de grant noblesce/Proz fu e de grant largesce/N’oist de chevalier parler/ Ke de proesc oist louer,/Ki en son brief escrit nefust/E ki par an del men n ‘eust.)

  The only men he had respect for were Norman warrior knights. For the clergy he felt contempt while his subjects seemed to have inspired no feeling at all. Nor, it seems, did he have any serious feelings for women. He was the only adult English king never to marry, nor did he father bastard children, with the inevitable result that some historians have suggested that he was homosexual. Earlier chroniclers, who had little sympathy for him, never went so far as to accuse him of what was then regarded as a blasphemous vice, though William of Malmesbury did write of the “troops of pathics” (A word meaning a “sodomite’s minion”.) as well as the “droves of harlots” which followed his court. The same author probably gave the best summing up of him as a king, and in the final words there is the suggestion of reckless arrogance: “His greatness of soul was obscured by excessive severity and the world doubted for long to which side he would incline: but at last the desire after good grew cold - for he feared God but little and man not at all.”

  Yet through chinks in the criticism of the chroniclers we do get glimpses of the man within the armour of kingship, a man who enjoyed cracking jokes with his heroes when out of the public eye and who had some amusing character traits. Of one of these William of Malmesbury wrote: “He was a man who knew not how to judge the value of goods — the trader might sell him his commodity at whatever rate he pleased. He was anxious that his clothes should be extravagant, and angry if they were purchased at a low price. One morning .when putting on some new boots he asked his chamberlain what they had cost, and on hearing three shillings, he cried out in a rage, ‘You son of a whore, how long has the King worn boots of so paltry a price? Go, get me a pair worth a mark of silver.’ The chamberlain went and, bringing him a much cheaper pair, told him falsely that they had cost as much as he had ordered ‘Aye’, said the king, ‘these are suitable to regal majesty.’ “

  In the new reign the forest laws were enforced even more harshly than they had been under the Conqueror, and this was to earn William the hatred of the common people. No dogs were allowed to be kept within miles of the royal reserves except mastiffs which were used to guard households in those uncertain days. Even these animals had to be crippled by amputation of three claws of the forefeet so they could not run after deer. A special Court of Regard was held every three years to ensure that
no one had a dog fit for hunting.

  No Saxon Englishman dared approach the accursed hunting domains unless he was some desperate dispossessed wretch whose hunger drove him to poaching. If caught, he knew he would be hanged on the spot with his own bowstring. The evidence required for such rapid execution was impressed into the minds of the peasants by this doggerel:

  Dog draw — stable stand,

  Back berand — bloody hand!

  This means: Dog draw, holding a dog by a leash; stable stand, standing concealed with a drawn bow; back berand, bearing away a dead deer, and bloody hand, obviously hands stained with deer blood.

  William exploited the love of the English for their forests when, three months after his coronation, he learned that his uncle Odo, the Bishop of Bayeux, was plotting to replace him with his more tractable brother Robert.

  “When the King understood these things and what treason they did towards him ... he was greatly disturbed in his mood,” states the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, “Then he sent after the Englishmen and set forth to them his need and prayed their help and promised the best laws everywhere in this land and that he would forbid all unjust taxation and give them back their woods and their hunting.”

  It was to prove an empty promise, but in London enthusiastic crowds flocked to the Red King’s standard and marched behind him to attack the strongholds of the rebels in Kent, The campaign was successful, Odo was banished but the forest laws remained and popular disillusion with the king grew.

  Next William prepared to invade Robert’s dukedom of Normandy. The following campaign was not a success and uneasy peace was made between the two when they agreed to attack their third brother, Henry. He had used part of his inheritance to buy some territory from Robert, and into this he brothers marched while Henry locked himself up in Mont Saint Michel on the French coast.

  At one stage of the siege Henry’s water supply became .dangerously low. Robert, the most good natured of the Conqueror’s sons, not only allowed Henry’s men to get more, but sent wine from his own table. At this William was furious, but Robert said, “What! Shall we let out own brother die of thirst? Where shall we get another when he is gone? “

  The Red King had great faith in his royal authority. One day he rode out alone along the shore, looking at the castle held by Henry, when a small enemy party came stealthily over the dunes and overpowered him. As one was about to stab him he cried out, “Good knave, do you not recognise the King of England!” At these words the man-at-arms dropped his dagger and respectfully helped William to his feet.

  William showed his chivalrous side when he haughtily demanded who had brought him down, and when a knight admitted that he had done it the king used his favourite oath, declaring, “By the Face of Lucca, you shall be mine. Your name will be written in my book and you shall receive the reward of good service.”

  Unable to hold out indefinitely, Henry left Mont Saint Michel and William returned to England. In 1092, he carried out what has been described as the one good act of his reign. He went north to the ruins of Carlisle, which had been razed by his father, where he restored the city and built a castle there. Then he went south and sent many “churlish” folk to occupy the city and recolonise the district which, under the Conqueror’s mailed hand, had been made into a wilderness.

  Two years later William was once more at war with his brother Robert. Bribes and the payment of mercenaries had emptied his coffers and the crippling taxes imposed on his reluctant subjects were slow in coming in. Then he had a novel idea for replenishing his funds. An army of 20,000 Englishmen was ordered to assemble at Hastings, prior to embarking for the Normandy war. Each shire had to send a required number of men and supply each with ten shillings to cover his expenses. When the army was assembled the king’s favourite minister, Ranulf Flambard, collected each soldier’s ten shillings and sent him packing to his shire. The £10,000 thus raised was dispatched to William who used it to bribe the King of France to withhold support from Robert, and to pay his barons to continue the war while he returned to his kingdom.

  The fighting remained inconclusive and in 1096 Robert, having “taken the Cross”, and needing finance for his crusade, pledged Normandy to William for 10,000 marks. The need to raise this comparatively small sum gave William a fine excuse to levy so many taxes that even the barons were forced to extract every possible penny from their tenants. When some clergy protested that the common people were being driven to despair, they were told they could lessen the burden by selling Church treasure and adding it to the fund. They dared not refuse this royal suggestion and even jewellery which had adorned holy statues was tossed into the melting pot. William was soon able to go to Normandy, pay his brother and take temporary possession of the dukedom.

  In June, 1099, William was setting out to hunt in the New Forest when a messenger arrived with the news that the French had occupied Le Mans. He immediately galloped to Southampton and leapt on to the deck of the first ship he reached. He ordered the master to cast off, but the frightened mariner pointed out the unseaworthy state of the old vessel and the fact that a storm was blowing up in the Channel.

  “Cast off,” William ordered. “Kings never drown.”

  The leaking craft wallowed through the gale and the Red King won back Le Mans.

  In the summer of 1100 news came that Robert was returning from the Holy Wars to reclaim his dukedom. William, treacherously determining to hold on to it, ordered the construction of a fleet to carry a vast army to Normandy. During these preparations he went to Castle Malwood, a royal hunting lodge in the New Forest.

  * * *

  It was the end of July when the royal cavalcade of over a hundred members rode merrily out from Winchester along the 20 miles of road and dappled forest track to Malwood. Around the king were his special companions for the hunt — his brother Henry (old quarrels apparently forgotten now Robert was the enemy), Robert Fitz-Hamon, William’s most trusted friend, and William of Breteuil, Keeper of the Treasury at Winchester. There were also the barons Gilbert de Laigle and William de Monfichet, and Earl Gilbert of the House of Clare and his brother Robert. With them was their brother-in-law Sir Walter Tirel of Piox who, according to the contemporary historian Geoffrey Gaimar, was a stranger at court.

  The scene is set, the actors are assembled, and now is the time to consider Count Henry, brother of the king and destined to become Henry 1 of England, and already qualified to be listed as a royal murderer.

  When William the Conqueror died, his youngest son, Henry, inherited £5,000, of which he used £3,000 to buy territory, including Mont St Michel, from his brother Robert. It was said that he ruled the land he bought with zeal, an expression which has a slightly ominous ring about it. He was always strict over the carrying out of justice and he punished offences against the State or individuals by blinding or castration. As a result England became very law abiding when he duly crowned and was known as the Lion of Justice. In 1090 the citizens of Rouen revolted against Duke Robert in favour of William Rufus, and Henry went to Robert’s aid. The insurrection was suppressed and its leader, a man called Conan, was brought before Henry who took him to the top of the castle tower where he told him to look out over the fair dominion he had tried to seize and which he had now lost.

  The rebel appealed to Henry for clemency, only to be told to prepare himself for death. He then begged to be allowed to be shriven, but in a sudden burst of fury Henry murdered him by pushing him through the tower window, shouting after him, “By my mother’s soul there is no mercy for a traitor.”

  For a while Henry managed to hold the territory he had bought by skilfully playing his brothers off against each other, but when the two joined forces against him he was forced to quit Mont St Michel and wander like some landless pilgrim in Brittany and the Vexin, accompanied only by three men-at-arms, a knight and a clerk. The latter gives us a clue to his complex character as from an early age he had been fascinated by learning which earned him the nickname of Beauclerc. No doubt after the loss of
his land his feelings towards his brothers were deep and bitter, though his wanderings came to an end in 1094 when he was invited to the English court where he remained.

  He must have realised, when the news reached England that Robert was returning from the Holy Land to reclaim his realm, that with his arrival he would lose any chance of claiming the English throne should his brother William die.

  On the fatal day of August 2 the usual hunt was delayed because the king had been taken ill the night before, probably with a severe stomach upset. In those days any sudden royal sickness was usually given the most sinister interpretation, but on this occasion the chroniclers made no allusion to poison perhaps because they were too engrossed in looking for portents of divine displeasure.

  During the night William awoke with a great cry which brought his attendants running and which was said posthumously to have been the result of a nightmare in which the dreamer saw himself die in a welter of blood. The king sat up for several hours, then went back to bed and slept late, and when he did wake in the middle of the morning he was still so agitated that it was obvious he was unfit for the chase.

  A visitor to his chamber was his friend Robert Fitz-Hamon.

  “There’s a monk outside who begs to give you a warning.”

  “How like a monk,” William answered. “He’s dreaming of money. Give him a hundred shillings and tell him to go away.”

  If William had been in a mood to heed the premonition it is possible the history of England might have followed a different course.

  During the afternoon the king had a private conversation with Sir Walter Tirel, which has given rise to much speculation. Only the last words of the meeting were overheard in which William told Sir Walter to remember what he had been told and to carry out the necessary action, to which Tirel replied he would. An extraordinary view of this was given by the famous anthropologist Margaret Murray in her God of the Witches by suggesting that William Rufus had instructed the knight to slay him in a forest glade as the culmination of some ancient magic ritual. From what is known of the Norman kings in general and William II in particular the idea of such a sacrifice is out of character.