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  As the afternoon wore on the king must have felt better for he had a meal with his guests in the hall, and it was recorded that he ate and drank more than usual, suggesting that his appetite had returned and he was making up for having missed his breakfast. And, although it was getting late, he decided to go hunting after all, though Robert Fitz-Hamon tried to talk him out of it. It was now around six o’clock, which meant it would be possible to hunt for a couple of hours at that time of the year. While a servant was attending to the king’s hunting boots a fletcher offered six new arrows to his lord.

  The king took them and selected two which he handed to Sir Walter Tirel saying, “It is right you should have the sharpest, you can fire deadly shots.”

  Soon afterwards the hunting party mounted with the customary jokes and laughter at the prospect of killing deer, and was about to ride off when a travel-weary monk arrived with a letter for the king from Serlo, the Abbot of St Peter’s Abbey at Gloucester. Impatiently William listened while the letter was read to him for he was illiterate as were most of the nobles of his day. Serlo’s message was that one of his monks had experienced a terrifying dream which ‘involved Jesus Christ and the Holy Virgin and which was seen as a warning that the king was in danger.

  At the conclusion William spurred his horse forward, shouting, “Does Serlo think that I believe in the dreams of every monk? Does he think I am an Englishman to put my trust in old wives’ tales?”

  One wonders whether it was a genuine dream or whether Abbot Serlo had got wind of a conspiracy and, wary of making dangerous accusations, had invented it as a pretext for putting William on his guard.

  Heedless of the warning, the king rode off at the head of the party to take up positions for shooting the deer when the beaters drove them through the trees. William of Malmes-bury wrote that “the party split up in the woods and the king was left alone with Tirel.” In the lurid light of the sinking sun the two men unslung their bows and waited in the glade where the “Rufus Stone” stands today, a short distance from the A31 near Stoney Cross.

  No one knows what happened next, but a traditional version is that the king and Sir Walter were in some bushes opposite each other when a beautiful stag bounded between them. William,raised his bow but the string snapped.

  “Shoot, Walter, in the Devil’s name,” shouted the king. The knight obeyed, but the arrow missed, glanced off the bole of a tree and thudded into the Red King’s chest.

  It is doubtful that an arrow, unlike a bullet, would still have killing power when deflected from its course. In his Gesta Regum, William of Malmesbury described the death of the king thus: “The sun was setting when a stag passed near by; and the King, drawing his bow, loosed an arrow which hit the mark but failed to kill. Slightly wounded, the animal ran off to the west while the King watched intently for some time, raising a hand to shield his eyes against the rays of the sun. Just then another stag passed by. Tirel shot at it and missed, but the arrow flew on and, by mischance, struck the King beyond. Clutching at the shaft where it protruded from his breast, the King fell forward, breaking the arrow in his body as he hit the ground and dying instantly without having uttered a word.”

  What we do know is that when Sir Walter saw the body of the king lying on the grass he immediately fled from the spot and crossed the Channel to claim the protection of the French king. He declared that King William had been struck by an arrow fired by an unseen bowman and, knowing that he would be the obvious suspect, he made his escape.

  * * *

  Legend says that after Henry joined his brother William Rufus at the fatal hunt in the New Forest, the string of his bow broke. Retiring to a forester’s hut to mend it, he encountered a witch-like hag who prophesied that soon he would be wearing the crown of England. Dramatic proof of her words came with breathless hunters who announced that the Red King was dead. Henry afterwards related how he had been so smitten with grief that he kept a sorrowful vigil in the glade where the mysterious arrow had transfixed his elder brother.

  In reality, he galloped to Winchester where he demanded the keys of the royal treasury. His brother’s example had shown him how important it was for a claimant to the throne to first make sure he had his hands on the country’s finance.

  William of Breteuil, the Royal Treasurer, refused to hand over the keys, saying that Henry’s brother Robert, at present returning from the Holy Wars, was the Conqueror’s eldest son and therefore the rightful successor by primogeniture.

  Henry’s furious shouts brought attendants running to support the treasurer, but Henry settled the matter by unsheathing his sword. William of Breteuil unlocked the treasury and on the third day after the death of the Red King, Henry was crowned at Westminster Abbey.

  Two points in particular are raised by the chroniclers’ accounts of William’s death. The first is the way the body was abandoned in the glade. The unpopularity of the king with the people and the Church has been explained by these writers, but surely this did not extend to the members of William’s hunting party, made up of personal friends, Norman lords with the same stern outlook as himself, and his brother, Henry, whom he had entertained at his court for the past six years. One imagines that they would at least have borne the corpse back to Castle Malwood, that they would have shown some respect to the body of their anointed king. Instead there was a stampede to get away from the place. Orderic Vitalis wrote that the dead king’s brother “immediately hurried to Winchester Castle where the royal treasure was kept.” Was it because the delay in the hunt caused by William’s indisposition had upset some secret schedule?

  Secondly, what stands out is the speed with which Henry acted to secure his succession. Despite his story that he remained praying in the glade — and if he was so concerned for his brother’s soul why did he allow his body to be taken without a guard of honour on a peasant’s cart? - he must have quit the scene of the “accident” within minutes in order to be able to leave the forest in the failing light and get on the Winchester road. There could have been no time lost in shocked confusion, no time wasted searching for the assassin or in trying to find Sir Walter Tirel who must have been the prime suspect. Instead Henry and the party rode straight to Winchester without even pausing at Castle Malwood. If Henry had not been prepared for the event, he showed remarkable coolness when it happened.

  Again it seems a remarkable feat of organisation for the new king to be elected and the coronation to be held so quickly after the death of the old one.

  “On the following Sunday (William Rufus died on the previous Thursday evening), before the altar at Westminster, Henry vowed to God and to all the people to abolish all the injustices which were prevalent during his brother’s reign,” states the Anglo Saxon Chronicle. “Thereafter, Maurice, Bishop of London, consecrated him King.”

  * * *

  Wisely the new king secured his popularity by issuing a charter stating that the laws of King Edward were to be restored and, by consent of the barons, laws relating to the forests were to be as they had been in the days of the Conqueror. This charter, and the release from the Red King’s tyranny were greeted with joy by the people, who were further pleased by the fact that Henry had been born in England and was therefore not regarded as a foreigner.

  Later Henry was to reorganise tax gathering methods and the English judicial system. He also reformed the coinage and saw to it that quick justice was meted out to forgers. Death and mutilation were the punishments for wrongdoers, and though Henry’s rule was harsh, it brought order and security to the country. He established the length of his arm as the universal unit of measurement.

  Meanwhile there was the problem posed by his elder brother Robert, newly returned from the Crusade. At Whitsun in 1101 rumours swept England that he was preparing to follow his father’s footsteps by invading the country. On July 21 he arrived with his fleet at Portsmouth and Henry’s army waited for him at Alton in Hampshire. Here Henry went to parley with his brother and as a result of their conversation the battle did not ta
ke place. Instead it was agreed that Henry would relinquish all rights to territory in Normandy and Duke Robert would renounce his claim to England. The Norman army sailed away and Henry methodically eliminated the nobles who had plotted against him on behalf of Robert.

  The feuding between the brothers was not yet over. On the pretext that he wanted to save the Norman people from Duke Robert’s misrule, Henry crossed the Channel and finally on September 28, 1106, a famous foot battle was fought outside Tinchebrai. This time it was the Norman banners which drooped in defeat.

  Duke Robert was captured and confined to a royal castle. One day, while being allowed to exercise on a horse, he attempted to escape. Galloping away from his attendants, he rode into marshland and his mount got trapped in a bog. After this he was taken to Cardiff Castle where he was locked in a foul cell. There is a story, probably apocrypal, that the king had him blinded with the rim of a red hot metal bowl.

  Whether this is true or not, Robert lived out the rest of his life in lonely misery.

  So that he could understand his simple jailers, he learned Welsh and passed many of his solitary hours writing poetry in the style of the Welsh bards. This fragmentary translation of one of his poems, written to an oak tree, tells of the despair he must have felt in his long captivity.

  Oak, placed in the midst of the woods

  which cover the promontory

  from whence thou see’st the

  waves of the Severn struggle

  against the sea; Misery to

  him who sees that which is

  not death.

  Oak, which has lived through

  storm and tempests in the

  midst of the tumult of war

  and the ravages of death;

  Misery to the man who is

  not old enough to die.

  Duke Robert’s release came in death at the age of eighty-thirty-four years after his brother had met his un-mourned fate in the New Forest.

  Contents

  CHAPTER TWO - The Murder of Thomas Becket

  “What a parcel of fools and dastards I have nourished in my house.

  Not one of them will avenge me of this one upstart clerk.”

  IF EVER ENGLAND was in desperate need of a strong ruler it was after the “nineteen long winters” of King Stephen’s reign. In his successor the groaning country found one. Henry Plantagenet was twenty-one when he and his wife Eleanor were crowned at Westminster on December 19, 1154. Within twelve months he brought peace and order to his new kingdom with a vigour that made him one of England’s outstanding sovereigns.

  He was not just king of an island realm. Earlier his mother had given him her Norman dominions, at nineteen he inherited Anjou from his father, Geoffrey Plantagenet, and soon after, his marriage to the ex-Queen of France brought him Aquitaine. Thus his “empire” stretched almost to the Mediterranean.

  Henry’s queen, Eleanor, Duchess of Aquitaine in her own right, was fifteen when she married Louis VII of France. She joined the Second Crusade with him, and her huge baggage train and army of servants were almost as famous as her many love affairs which, according to scandalous legend, included a black slave in Jerusalem.

  Back in France she began an intrigue with Geoffrey of Anjou, “the most accomplished knight of his day” and the father of Henry. Soon after Geoffrey’s death the French king, wearied of her infidelities, divorced her.

  Although young Henry had been warned against the wanton by his father, he married her — no doubt with an eye to her territory which spread between the Loire and the Pyrenees. Despite her reputation she was a popular queen in England. Henry, too, was hailed as a popular monarch by people weary of civil bloodshed and the tyranny of local nobles who held the power of life and death within their domains.

  This approval of Henry was also due to his Saxon blood traced to one of his remote ancestors, Alfred the Great. The fact that his great-grandfather had been William the Conqueror was inclined to be overlooked. Immediately after his coronation he began the restoration of Crown lands and the dismantling of the unlawful castles of rebellious nobles who had “filled them with devils”. The barons had minted their own money as they needed it, but now the only legal coin was to come from the royal mint. To great jubilation Stephen’s mercenaries were dismissed and royal justice was restored.

  The new king’s energy was reflected in his appearance. In a contemporary account, Peter of Blois wrote: “His eyes are full, guileless and dove-like when he is at peace, gleaming like fire when his temper is aroused, and in bursts of passion they flash like lightning. He has a broad, square, lion-like face. . . His broad chest and muscular arms show him to be strong, bold, active man. His hands show by their coarseness that he is careless and pays little attention to his person, for he never wears gloves except when he goes hawking. Although his legs are bruised and livid from hard riding, he never sits down except on horseback or at meals. He always has weapons in his hands when not engaged in consultation or at his books. When his cares and anxieties allow him to breathe, he occupies himself with reading.”

  So we glimpse the king as a man of action with an active mind. His household was always in a state of upheaval which he never seemed to notice, being more interested in reading or debating with the scholars who flocked to his court. It was said of him that he loved reading only less than hunting, and he and Queen Eleanor enthusiastically encouraged the wandering Provencal poets.

  In England it had been the custom for the king to wear a stately robe, but the young Plantagenet arrived at his coronation in such a short cloak that he was nick-named Curt Mantle. To the dismay of his courtiers, Curt Mantle cared nothing for comfort. Always on the move about his kingdom, he would sleep rough wherever darkness overtook him. It seemed that he could never be idle. During council sessions he would sit listening to speeches while repairing his hunting gear.

  At times he gave way to almost insane outbursts of passion in which he would hurl himself to the floor and gnaw the rushes, shout blasphemies and even bite his attendants. According to Gerald of Wales, St Bernard said of him: “From the Devil he comes, to the Devil he will go.” This refers to the odd legend that there was Satanic blood in the royal veins.

  After restoring order, Henry revived his grandfather’s system of sending judges on circuit. In their work they were to be assisted by twelve local men sworn to tell the truth and thus trial by jury was firmly established. He also began the abolition of trial by combat and trial by ordeal. In the latter the accused had to seize a piece of red hot iron or plunge his hand into boiling water. If his skin healed within a week he was considered innocent.

  Men who felt they had been wrongly treated had recourse to the royal court of five judges — the King’s Bench — which established a great reputation for impartial justice.

  In this work Henry was greatly helped by his boon companion Thomas Becket, who he made Chancellor soon after his coronation. In 1162 the king suggested that his Chancellor should become Archbishop of Canterbury for, with his friend in control, Henry felt he would be able to limit the vast power of the Church in England.

  Thomas Becket, the son of a Norman-born merchant who traded in London and a Saracen princess, was a good scholar, an experienced soldier and an immensely rich man of the world. When he was sent to France as an ambassador the magnificence of his train was such that the people cried out: “How splendid must the King of England be when this is only his Chancellor!” He had little desire to give up his sumptuous way of life even if it meant becoming the chief cleric in the country, and he warned Henry: “You will take your favour from me and our love will become hatred.”

  But the king insisted, and in May, 1162, Thomas was consecrated. Its effect on him was dramatic. From a jovial soldier-statesman, he became an ascetic priest ready to defend the Church against his old friend.

  The first major clash between the two came when Henry wanted to retain the royal right to appoint bishops and, more importantly, have clerics tried in civil courts. In those da
ys a cleric was anyone in holy orders and subject only to Church law. No matter what the crime, a Church court could only sentence a cleric to be degraded. Therefore any villain could escape the King’s Justice if he could prove he was one. The only requirement for this was for him to be able to read a Latin text, which became known as “neck verse”.

  The question became of great importance when a priest in Worcestershire committed a foul murder which aroused indignation throughout the country. Henry demanded that the man should be handed over for a civil trial, but the archbishop refused and kept him in a Church prison.

  On his side Thomas claimed various estates from nobles as being rightful Church property, and required the king to give up Rochester for the same reason.

  Henry was full of wrath. Instead of looking after his interests, Thomas was challenging him on behalf of the Church. In an assembly in Westminster Hall he demanded that all priests found guilty of a crime by their bishops be handed over to civil courts for sentence. Thomas, seeing it as a whittling away of Church privilege, refused.

  Then Henry turned to the clergy and demanded they should obey the laws of the land. Each replied in the words of Thomas, “Saving my order!” This meant they would obey laws which did not interfere with the rules of their own denominations. The lion face of the king was dark with anger as he stormed out of the hall.