frauds the Church.

If in some respects William the Conqueror had been a harsh ruler, his
son was worse. His brother Robert had mortgaged Normandy to him in
order to get money to join the first crusade (S182). William Rufus
raised whatever funds he desired by the most oppressive and
unscrupulous means.

William's most trusted counselor was Ranulf Flambard. Flambard had
brains without principle. He devised a system of plundering both
Church and people in the King's interest. Lanfranc, Archbishop of
Canterbury, died three years after William's accession. Through
Flambard's advice the King left the archbishopric vacant and
appropriated its revenues to himself. He practiced the same course
with respect to every office of the Church.

132. The King makes Anselm Archbishop (1093).

While this process of systematized robbery was going on, the King
suddenly fell ill. In his alarm lest death was at hand, he determined
to make reparation to the defrauded and insulted priesthood. He
invited Anselm, the abbot of a famous monastery in Normandy, to accept
the archbishopric. Anselm, who was old and feeble, declined, saying
that he and the King could not work together. "It would be," said he,
"like yoking a sheep and a bull."

But the king would take no refusal. Calling Anselm to his bedside, he
forced the staff of office into his hands. Anselm became the champion
of the freedom of the Church. But when the King recovered, he resumed
his old practices and treated the Archbishop with such insult that he
left the country for a time.

133. William's Merit; his Death.

William II's one merit was that he kept England from being devoured
piecemeal by the Norman barons, who regarded her as a pack of hounds
in full chase regard the hare that is on the point of falling into
their rapacious jaws.

Like his father, he insisted on keeping the English Church independent
of the ever-growing power of Rome (S118). In both cases his motives
were purely selfish, but the result to the country was good.

His power came suddenly to an end (1100). He had gone in the morning
to hunt in the New Forest (S119) with his brother Henry. He was found
lying dead among the bushes, pierced by an arrow shot by an unknown
hand.

William's character speaks in his deeds. It was hard, cold, despotic,
yet in judging it we should consider the woulds of that quaint old
writer, Thomas Fuller, when he says, "No pen hath originally written
the life