Page:The New Forest - its history and its scenery.djvu/121

Rh point but one way. All tend to show, as plainly as possible, that Rufus fell by no chance, but by a conspiracy of his prelates, who held the crozier in one, and the battle-axe though he gives no other reason; and which by itself, resting on nothing further, would carry no weight. His account, though, of the general detestation of the Red King immediately before his death, as also the conversation of Hugh, Abbot of Cluny, with Anselm (p. 68), is very suggestive, especially by the way in which it is introduced Alanus must have possessed far too shrewd an intellect to have believed in Merlin; though it might have suited his purpose to have appeared to have so done, as a veil and a blind, so that he might better say what his high position and authority would not in any other form have well permitted, but which still give to many points, as here, enormous significance and weight.

The first person besides Alanus who seems to hint at treachery is Nicander Nucius (Second Book of Travels, published by the Camden Society, pp. 34, 35), but his account is too vague to be of any service. We should, however, constantly bear in mind, with Lappenberg, that the best authority. The Chronicle, simply relates that the King was shot at the chase by one of his friends, without any allusion to an accident. Not one word or fact else is given, except the appearance of a pool of blood in Berkshire (at Finchhamstead, according to William of Malmesbury), which we know, from other sources, was supposed to foretell some calamity, and which phenomenon science now resolves into merely some species of alga, probably either Palmella cruenta or Hæmatococcus sanguineus. Eadmer, with some others, in his Historia Novorum, lib. ii. (Migne: Patrolugiæ Cursus Completus, tom. clix. p. 422 B) mentions a report, prevalent at the time, that the King accidentally stumbled on an arrow. Then follows, in the very next book (Migne, as before, p. 423 B), a singular passage, to be found also in his Life of Anselm, book ii. ch. vi. (Migne, as before, tom. clviii. p. 108 D), where, on the news of the Red King's death, Anselm bursts into tears, and, with sobs, cries, "Quod si hoc efficere posset, multo magis eligeret se ipsum corpore, quam illud, sicut erat, mortuum esse." Whether this wish sprang from the effects of some pangs of conscience as to William's death, or from an honourable feeling of natural emotion under the circumstances, as suggested by Sharon Turner, it is hard to determine. From John of Salisbury (Vita Anselmi, pars ii., cap. xi,, in Wharton's Anglia Sacra, tom. ii. p. 169), it would seem that Anselm thought that he was the direct cause, through God, of his death. 103