Page:The reign of William Rufus and the accession of Henry the First.djvu/211

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formally examined, they were found to be unhurt. The King in his wrath uttered words of blasphemy. Men said that God was a just judge; he would believe it no longer. God was no judge of these matters; he would for the future take them into his own hands. To understand the full force of such words, we must remember that the ordeal was, in its own nature, an appeal to the judgement of God in cases when there was no evidence on which man could found a judgement. What happened further we are not told; it can hardly be meant that the men in whose favour the judgement of God was held to have been given were sent to the gallows all the same.

In this last story the most distinctive feature of the character of William Rufus comes out. In many of his recorded deeds we see the picture of an evil man and an evil king, but still of a man and a king whose deeds might find many parallels in other times and places. But the story in which he mocks at the ordeal leads us to those other points in him which give him a place of his own, a place which perhaps none other in the long roll-call of evil kings can dispute with him. Other kings have been cruel; others have been lustful; others have broken their faith with their people, and have said in their hearts that there was no God. But the Red King stands well nigh alone in bringing back the foulest vices of heathendom into a Christian land, and at the same