Читать книгу The Conquerors: The Pageant of England - Thomas B. Costain - Страница 19

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There is only one good thing to be said about the reign of William II, called Rufus or the Red. It was brief.

It was thirteen years of fighting with the Scots and the French, of crushing rebellions, of incarcerating political prisoners in deep dungeons (Robert de Mowbray, Earl of Northumberland, was kept for thirty years in a cell so far under the ground that the church counted him dead and granted his young wife a divorce), of extending the royal forests, of drawing more and more power and wealth into the royal maw.

William Rufus was cruel, false, avaricious, and with no sense of the responsibilities of a ruler. He had a good share of his father’s fighting quality but he lacked perseverance in the face of obstacles. When Peter the Hermit carried the fiery cross over Europe and stirred men to join in the First Crusade, the new English King saw in the religious zeal thus aroused nothing but a chance of profit for himself. He gave his brother Robert, who was a clod but the possessor of soldierly qualities, the sum of ten thousand marks to equip a force and join in the march to the Holy City, accepting the duchy of Normandy as security; a deal which cost poor Robert dear before he was through, and the people of England also, as a special tax was levied to raise the money.

He quickly undid the generous things his father had done. The political prisoners who had been released when the Conqueror was dying and trying to establish a credit entry in the books of the Recording Angel were promptly seized and sent back to their dungeons. The Conqueror had abolished the death penalty (but not the habit of blinding and mutilating wrongdoers), and his fiery-faced son restored it and proceeded to hang men for killing a rabbit or for other small offenses. The father had believed in keeping his word, but the son considered a promise worth observing if it had been pledged on some concern of chivalry (that iron code which was just beginning to take hold of bloodthirsty imaginations) but under no other circumstances. On his hurried arrival in England to claim the throne he had been supported by the native people against the barons and knights who thought the first-born Robert should have the preference, but when he had prevailed with their aid, he broke all the fair pledges he had made them. He quickly proceeded to show them, in fact, what oppression could mean. “No man can keep all his promises,” declared this knightly King.

The one great quality in which all men of that rough age shared was religious faith. All men, seemingly, but William the Red. “I have suffered too much at God’s hands,” he declared openly, “to be a good man.” He remained a bachelor king, and it is not on record that he begat any illegitimate children. Historians whisper primly of Eastern vices! The word bestial can most fittingly be employed to describe his court, a nest of favorites and catamites.

He was a big man and a striking figure when he rode out to show himself to the people with nothing on his flowing blond curls (his nickname was derived solely from his high complexion) but a narrow circlet of gold. He liked gay plumage and was generally seen in a rich green tunic with broad and elaborately embroidered bands. Over this he wore a cloak of light blue held at the shoulder with a jeweled clasp, its folds artfully arranged to conceal the fact that he had inherited his father’s tendency to a protuberance of stomach. His handsome legs were cross-gartered with cloth of gold, and his shoes were of rich green leather with toes which curled up. A squire rode behind him with his sword, a continental custom. William was always looking for new things like that, and it tickled his fancy to set a fashion. A final word of description: his high complexion was partly due to the fact that he drank with his favorites continuously, deeply, quarrelsomely, soddenly.

Perhaps no other king has ever shared William II’s conception of absolute rule. Countless tyrants have believed themselves the embodiment of the law and the sole arbiter of the lives and destinies of their subjects. William went beyond that. He believed that all England belonged to him, the land, the woods, the waters, the beasts of the field, the people, the revenues. He did not believe in private property. A man might be the holder of land, but only as a favor from him, William Rex. He even dipped his greedy hands into church funds.

One incident tells as much of the character of the Red King as a complete record of his reign. He accepted a fee of sixty silver marks from a wealthy Jew to persuade the latter’s son that he should not become a convert to Christianity; and this in the days of the First Crusade! His pleading had no effect. The young man, who had adopted the name of Stephen, remained firm in his purpose, and the interview ended with a wild outburst of profanity, the undignified King shouting at him, “Son of the dunghill!”