Page:The reign of William Rufus and the accession of Henry the First.djvu/618

 ever coming back, and smaller still of his coming back with ten thousand marks to spare out of the spoils of the infidels. If he ever did come so laden, William Rufus doubtless trusted that, by some means either of force or of fraud, his brother's restoration to his duchy might be either evaded or withstood.

The price for which Normandy was thus handed over does not, when compared with other payments of the time, seem a large one. It was not very much higher than the sums which Herbert Losinga was said to have paid for a bishopric for himself and an abbey for his father. The price to be paid for at least a three years' possession of all Normandy was not much more than three times the sum which courtiers at least had looked on as a reasonable contribution for an Archbishop of Canterbury to make towards a single Norman expedition. Yet the sum which was now to be paid is spoken of as a drain upon the whole kingdom. Rufus had no thought of paying the money out of any rightful revenues of the crown or out of any stores which he had already wrung from his people. Something was to be wrung from them yet again for the special object of the moment. The time would seem to have been the summer of the year which followed the gathering at Clermont, the year which in England began with the death of Bishop William of Durham and the frightful punishment of Count William of Eu. The matter may have been discussed at the Whitsun Assembly of that year, of which we have no record. At any rate a heavy tax was laid on the whole kingdom; we may be sure that the Red King took the occasion to wring more out of the land than the actual sum which he had to pay to his brother. Otherwise, except on the view that everything had been taken already, the payment of a sum less than