Page:The reign of William Rufus and the accession of Henry the First.djvu/222

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up to vices at whose foulness ordinary sinners stood aghast. Yet nothing is plainer than that there was something in the character of William Rufus which made him not wholly hateful in the eyes of his own age. There was a side to him which, if we may not strictly call it virtuous, has yet in it something akin to virtue, as compared with other sides of him. There is, as I have already hinted, amidst all the general oppressions of his reign, amidst all the special outrages which he at least allowed to go unpunished, no sign in him of that direct delight in human suffering which marks some of his contemporaries. I have spoken of his dutiful obedience to his father while he lived; and the sentiment of filial duty lived on after his father's death, and showed itself in some singular forms of respect for his memory. Elsewhere the enemy and spoiler of the Church, towards his father's ecclesiastical foundations Rufus appears as a benefactor. Saint Stephen's, the monument of his father's penance, Battle, the monument of his father's victory, were both the objects of his bounty. But it is singularly characteristic that the means for bounty towards Saint Stephen at Caen were found in the plunder of the Holy Cross at Waltham. At York, strangely out of the common range of his actions, we find him counted as a second founder of the hospital of Saint Peter; we find him changing its site, enlarging its buildings and revenues, but specially setting forth that he was confirming the gifts of his father. We shall see that, in all his wars, it was his special ambition to keep whatever had been his father's; whatever he lost or won, it was a point of honour to hold the great trophy of his father's continental victories. In other warfare the Red King might halt or dally or put up with an imperfect conquest. But when Le Mans, castle and city, was to be kept or