Page:The reign of William Rufus and the accession of Henry the First.djvu/198

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He is spoken of as young at the time of his accession, and from the date of the marriage of the Conqueror and Matilda, it would seem likely that their third son would then be about twenty-seven years of age. He would therefore be hardly thirty at the time of the death of Lanfranc. The description of his personal appearance is not specially inviting. In his bodily form he seems, like his brother Robert, a kind of caricature of his father, as Rufus, though certainly not Robert, was also in some of his moral and mental qualities. He was a man of no great stature, of a thick square frame, with a projecting stomach. His bodily strength was great; his eye was restless; his speech was stammering, especially when he was stirred to anger. He lacked the power of speech which had belonged to his father and had even descended to his elder brother; his pent-up wrath or merriment, or whatever the momentary passion might be, broke out in short sharp sentences, often showing some readiness of wit, but no continued flow of speech. He had the yellow hair of his race, and the ruddiness of his countenance gave him the surname which has stuck to him so closely. The second William is yet more emphatically the Red King than his father is either the Bastard or the Conqueror. Unlike most other names of the kind, his surname is not only used by contemporary writers, but it is used by them almost as a proper name. Up to the time of his accession, he had played no part in public affairs; in truth he had no opportunity of*