was awakened from slumber by the sound of a church bell. ‘What
bell is that?’ he faintly asked. They told him it was the bell of
the chapel of Saint Mary. ‘I commend my soul,’ said he, ‘to Mary!’
and died.
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Think of his name, The Conqueror, and then consider how he lay in
death! The moment he was dead, his physicians, priests, and
nobles, not knowing what contest for the throne might now take
place, or what might happen in it, hastened away, each man for
himself and his own property; the mercenary servants of the court
began to rob and plunder; the body of the King, in the indecent
strife, was rolled from the bed, and lay alone, for hours, upon the
ground. O Conqueror, of whom so many great names are proud now, of
whom so many great names thought nothing then, it were better to
have conquered one true heart, than England!
By-and-by, the priests came creeping in with prayers and candles;
and a good knight, named HERLUIN, undertook (which no one else
would do) to convey the body to Caen, in Normandy, in order that it
might be buried in St. Stephen’s church there, which the Conqueror
had founded. But fire, of which he had made such bad use in his
life, seemed to follow him of itself in death. A great
conflagration broke out in the town when the body was placed in the
church; and those present running out to extinguish the flames, it
was once again left alone.
It was not even buried in peace. It was about to be let down, in
its Royal robes, into a tomb near the high altar, in presence of a
great concourse of people, when a loud voice in the crowd cried
out, ‘This ground is mine! Upon it, stood my father’s house. This
King despoiled me of both ground and house to build this church.
In the great name of GOD, I here forbid his body to be covered with
the earth that is my right!’ The priests and bishops present,
knowing the speaker’s right, and knowing that the King had often
denied him justice, paid him down sixty shillings for the grave.
Even then, the corpse was not at rest. The tomb was too small, and
they tried to force it in. It broke, a dreadful smell arose, the
people hurried out into the air, and, for the third time, it was
left alone.
Where were the Conqueror’s three sons, that they were not at their
father’s burial? Robert was lounging among minstrels, dancers, and
gamesters, in France or Germany. Henry was carrying his five
thousand pounds safely away in a convenient chest he had got made.
William the Red was hurrying to England, to lay hands upon the
Royal treasure and the crown.
CHAPTER IX – ENGLAND UNDER WILLIAM THE SECOND, CALLED RUFUS
WILLIAM THE RED, in breathless haste, secured the three great forts
of Dover, Pevensey, and Hastings, and made with hot speed for
Winchester, where the Royal treasure was kept. The treasurer
delivering him the keys, he found that it amounted to sixty
thousand pounds in silver, besides gold and jewels. Possessed of
this wealth, he soon persuaded the Archbishop of Canterbury to
crown him, and became William the Second, King of England.
Rufus was no sooner on the throne, than he ordered into prison
again the unhappy state captives whom his father had set free, and
directed a goldsmith to ornament his father’s tomb profusely with
gold and silver. It would have been more dutiful in him to have
attended the sick Conqueror when he was dying; but England itself,
like this Red King, who once governed it, has sometimes made
expensive tombs for dead men whom it treated shabbily when they
were alive.
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The King’s brother, Robert of Normandy, seeming quite content to be
only Duke of that country; and the King’s other brother, Fine-
Scholar, being quiet enough with his five thousand pounds in a
chest; the King flattered himself, we may suppose, with the hope of
an easy reign. But easy reigns were difficult to have in those