Page:The reign of William Rufus and the accession of Henry the First.djvu/278

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between a King of the English and the Assembly of his kingdom. The piety may all come from the brain of the monk of Saint Evroul; but the constitutional doctrines which he has worked into the speech cannot fail to set forth the ordinary constitutional usage of the time. Even in the darkest hour in which England had any settled government at all, in the reign of the worst of all our kings, it was not the will of the King alone, not the will of any private cabal or cabinet, but the will of the Great Council of the nation, which, just as in the days of King Eadward, decided questions of peace and war.

The Witan unanimously agreed to the King's proposal, and applauded, so we are told, the lofty spirit—the technical name is used—of the King himself. War was at once voted, and it might have been expected that a brilliant campaign would at once have followed on the warlike vote. We might have looked to see the Red King, the mirror of chivalry, cross the sea, as his father had done on the opposite errand, at the head of the whole force of his realm. We might have looked to see a series of gallant feats of arms take place between the two hostile brothers. The real story is widely different. William Rufus did not cross the sea till a year after war had been declared, and remarkably little fighting happened, both while he stayed in England and after he set forth for Normandy. But we have seen that William Rufus, as a true Norman, was, with all his chivalry, at least as much fox as lion. And a ruler of England, above all, a son of William the