Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 1.djvu/147

A.D. 1095.], so that divers bishops and abbesses, who had already made away with some of their chalices and church jewels to pay the king, made now plain answer that they were not able to help him with any more; unto whom, on the other side, as the report went, the king said again, 'Have you not, I beseech you, coffins of gold and silver, full of dead men's bones?'—meaning the shrines in which the relics of saints were enclosed."

The king also argued that there was no sacrilege in taking money obtained from such a source, for the purpose of prosecuting a holy war, and delivering the sepulchre of Christ from the hands of the infidel. He did not choose to remember that the expedition to the Holy Land was one in which he had no part, and that he required the money, not for that purpose, but to obtain a worldly possession. If the argument carried little weight, the force by which it was backed was not to be resisted, and the spoils of the altar, as well as the hoards of civilians, were seized in the king's name.



Robert having resigned his dukedom, and set out for the Holy Land, William passed over into Normandy to take possession. He was received with welcome by the Norman nobles, who, if not well disposed towards their new sovereign, were overawed by his power or bought by his gold. The people of Maine, however, rose in revolt, and, headed by Helie, the Lord of La Flêche, the insurrection assumed an importance which rendered it necessary for Rufus to take energetic measures for its repression. He entered Maine in person at the head of a large force, but on the interference of the Count of Anjou and Philip of France, he consented to a truce with the insurgents, and Helie, having been taken prisoner, was set at liberty, on tendering his submission, and giving up the town of Mans into the king's hands, (A.D.1099.)

The people, however, remained disaffected towards the English king, and his government was odious to them. A year passed away without any change in this state of things, when one day, as William was hunting in the New Forest, a messenger came to him from beyond sea with the intelligence that Helie had obtained possession of the town of Mans, that the inhabitants had joined his standard, and were besieging the castle containing the Norman garrison. Rufus immediately set off for the sea-coast, without waiting for an escort; and when some of his lords came up with him, as he was about to embark, they counselled him to wait until troops could be summoned to accompany him, William replied, "Such as love me, I know well, will follow me," and went at once on shipboard. A storm was blowing so violently that even the sailors hesitated to set sail; but the king was determined to proceed, and cried out to the master to weigh anchor, asking him if he had ever heard of a king that was drowned?