William went away from the presence of Matilda full of resentment and anger. Of course he could do nothing in respect to her but reproach her, but he determined that the unlucky Sampson should suffer severely for the crime. He sent orders to the castle where he lay immured, requiring that his eyes should be put out. Matilda, however, discovered the danger which threatened her messenger in time to send him warning. He contrived to make his escape, and fled to a certain monastery which was under Matilda's special patronage and charge. A monastery was, in those days, a sanctuary into which the arm even of the most despotic authority scarcely dared to intrude in pursuit of its victim. To make the safety doubly sure, the abbot proposed that the trembling fugitive should join their order and become a monk. Sampson was willing to do any thing to save his life. The operation of putting out the eyes was very generally fatal, so that he considered his life at stake. He was, accordingly, shaven and shorn, and clothed in the monastic garb. He assumed the vows of the order, and entered, with his brother monks, upon the course of fastings, penances, and prayers which pertained to his new vocation; and William left him to pursue it in peace.
Things went on worse instead of better after this discovery of the mother's participation in the councils of the son. Either through the aid which his mother had rendered, or by other means, there seemed to be a strong party in and out of Normandy who were inclined to espouse Robert's cause. His friends, at length, raised a very considerable army, and putting him at the head of it, they advanced to attack Rouen. The king, greatly alarmed at this danger, collected all the forces that he could command, and went to meet his rebel son. William Rufus accompanied his father, intending to fight by his side; while Matilda, in an agony of terror and distress, remained, half distracted, within her castle walls-as a wife and mother might be expected to be, on the approach of a murderous conflict between her husband and her son. The thought that one of them might, perhaps, be actually killed by the other, filled her with dismay.
And, in fact, this dreadful result came very near being realized. Robert, in the castle at L'Aigle, had barely been prevented from destroying his brother, and now, on the plain of Archembraye, where this battle was fought, his father fell, and was very near being killed, by his hand. In the midst of the fight, while the horsemen were impetuously charging each other in various parts of the field, all so disguised by their armor that no one could know the individual with whom he was contending, Robert encountered a large and powerful knight, and drove his lance through his armor into his arm. Through the shock of the encounter and the faintness produced by the agony of the wound, the horseman fell to the ground, and Robert perceived, by the voice with which his fallen enemy cried out in his pain and terror, that it was his father that he had thus pierced with his steel. At the same moment, the wounded father, in looking at his victorious antagonist, recognized his son. He cursed his unnatural enemy with a bitter and terrible malediction. Robert was shocked and terrified at what he had done. He leaped from his horse, knelt down by the side of his father, and called for aid. The king, distracted by the anguish of his wound, and by the burning indignation and resentment which raged in his bosom against the unnatural hostility which inflicted it, turned away from his son, and refused to receive any succor from him.
Besides the misfortune of being unhorsed and wounded, the battle itself went that day against the king. Robert's army remained masters of the field. William Rufus was wounded too, as well as his father. Matilda was overwhelmed with distress and mental anguish at the result. She could not endure the idea of allowing so unnatural and dreadful a struggle to go on. She begged her husband, with the most earnest importunities and with many tears, to find some way of accommodating the dispute. Her nights were sleepless, her days were spent in weeping, and her health and strength were soon found to be wasting very rapidly away. She was emaciated, wan, and pale, and it was plain that such distress, if long continued, would soon bring her to the grave.
Matilda's intercessions at length prevailed. The king sent for his son, and, after various negotiations, some sort of compromise was effected. The armies were disbanded, peace was restored, and Robert and his father once more seemed to be friends. Soon after this, William, having a campaign to make in the north of England, took Robert with him as one of the generals in his army.
CHAPTER XII. THE CONCLUSION.
A.D. 1078-1087
William's reign in England.-His difficulties.-Feelings of the English people.-Rebellions.-Amalgamation of the English and Normans.-William's labors.-Necessity of bringing a large Norman force.-Providing for them.-The British realm Normanized.-O yes! O yes! O yes!-Relics of the past.-Their future preservation.-Point of view in which the Norman Conquest is regarded.-Domesday Book.-Its great obscurity.-Specimen of the Domesday Book.-Translation.-Matilda's health declines.-Death of her daughter.-Matilda retires to her palace at Caen.-Her distress of mind.-Matilda's health.-Memorials of her.-William's declining years.-His fitfulness and discontent.-Philip ridicules William.-William's rage.-William's threats.-Conflagration of Mantes.-William's injury.-His great danger.-William's remorse.-His last acts.-Robert absent.-He receives Normandy.-William Rufus and Henry.-The king's will.-William's death.-Abandonment of the body.-Apprehensions of the people.-The body removed to Caen.-Extraordinary scenes.-The body conveyed to the monastery on a cart.-The procession broken up.-Scene at the interment.-The sarcophagus too small.-The body burst.-William Rufus obtains possession of the English throne.
From the time of the battle of Hastings, which took place in 1066, to that of William's death, which occurred in 1087, there intervened a period of about twenty years, during which the great monarch reigned over his extended dominions with a very despotic sway, though not without a large share of the usual dangers, difficulties, and struggles attending such a rule. He brought over immense numbers of Normans from Normandy into England, and placed all the military and civil power of the empire in their hands; and he relied almost entirely upon the superiority of his physical force for keeping the country in subjugation to his sway. It is true, he maintained that he was the rightful heir to the English crown, and that, consequently, the tenure by which he held it was the right of inheritance, and not the right of conquest; and he professed to believe that the people of England generally admitted his claim. This was, in fact, to a considerable extent, true. At least there was probably a large part of the population who believed William's right to the crown superior to that of Harold, whom he had deposed. Still, as William was by birth, and education, and language a foreigner, and as all the friends and followers who attended him, and, in fact, almost the whole of the army, on which he mainly relied for the preservation of his power, were foreigners too-wearing a strange dress, and speaking in an unknown tongue-the great mass of the English people could not but feel that they were under a species of foreign subjugation. Quarrels were therefore continually breaking out between them and their Norman masters, resulting in fierce and bloody struggles, on their part, to get free. These rebellions were always effectually put down; but when quelled in one quarter they soon broke out in another, and they kept William and his forces almost always employed.
But William was not a mere warrior. He was well aware that the permanence and stability of his own and his successor's sway in England would depend finally upon the kind of basis on which the civil institutions of the country should rest, and on the proper consolidation and adjustment of the administrative and judicial functions of the realm. In the intervals of his campaigns, therefore, William devoted a great deal of time and attention to this subject, and he evinced a most profound and statesmanlike wisdom and sagacity in his manner of treating it.