The second King William of England is more of an enigma than his father. The Conqueror was a determined man, who was always closely focused on what was before him. If he had contradictions of personality, and, if he had doubts, he had the ability to strangle them to leave him free to pursue his ambitions and agenda. But in fact the stability of the Conqueror’s personality and his supreme self-assurance left little room for doubt and none at all for flightiness. His son and namesake was another matter. He was remorseless, cruel and calculating but also at times facile, ironic and humorous. His political vision and military skill were quite equal to his father’s and may even have surpassed him, yet he failed to establish his line. He was as forgetful of his mortality as any twenty-first century man. Unusually for an educated medieval man, his gaze was less directed to the eternal than to the here and now. William the father was deeply and quietly pious, assiduous in his Christian duty; William the son only remembered God when it suited him, and seems to have had something very like contempt for theology and piety. He was generally called ‘William Longsword’ before he was king, and appears by that name in both the Welsh and Norman chronicles. This dynastic surname was an allusion to the man who was by now regarded as having been the second duke of the Norman dynasty, the son of Rollo. But William was also more commonly known as William Rufus, or in French ‘le Rou’ from his reddish hair. Reddish-blond hair - a characteristic of the Norman dynasty, which passed by marriage also into the Breton ducal house - was regarded as an unfortunate trait in a person’s appearance: a mark of the uncanny, or of wickedness. No one called him ‘Red William’ to his face.
The younger William was in his late twenties when he became king. He had apparently been at least partly brought up in the household of Archbishop Lanfranc, and had received arms from his patron when he came of age, perhaps around the year 1076. He had been at his father’s side during the disastrous battle outside the castle of Gerberoy in 1077, and had been one of his father’s principal military commanders since 1081, when we find him independently leading a tough campaign in south Wales against the princes of Gwent. It may have been the first campaign in which he was given an independent command and his early success there would account for his abiding interest in the extension of the Welsh March in his later career. In all things the younger William was loyal to his father, and hostile to his elder brother Robert. If it was William’s intention to spend his adult years at court transferring his father’s affections to him and away from Robert, he certainly succeeded. When his father lay dying in September 1087, circumstances were very favourable for Rufus. His elder brother Robert was estranged from their father and ignored the summons to return home. William Rufus therefore had uninterrupted access to the dying king’s ear, and, like Jacob, received from his father the misdirected blessing of Isaac. He had the nomination to succeed to England. So, carrying with him sealed letters to Archbishop Lanfranc directing his coronation as king, Rufus rode from Rouen to the coast a few days before his father died. While he was awaiting a ship at Bonneville-sur-Touques with his companions, the news followed him that the king was dead.
World History
