Chapter X - England Under Henry the First, Called Fine-Scholar

by Charles Dickens

　　Fine-Scholar, on hearing of the Red King's death, hurried toWinchester with as much speed as Rufus himself had made, to seizethe Royal treasure. But the keeper of the treasure who had beenone of the hunting-party in the Forest, made haste to Winchestertoo, and, arriving there at about the same time, refused to yieldit up. Upon this, Fine-Scholar drew his sword, and threatened tokill the treasurer; who might have paid for his fidelity with hislife, but that he knew longer resistance to be useless when hefound the Prince supported by a company of powerful barons, whodeclared they were determined to make him King. The treasurer,therefore, gave up the money and jewels of the Crown: and on thethird day after the death of the Red King, being a Sunday, Fine-Scholar stood before the high altar in Westminster Abbey, and madea solemn declaration that he would resign the Church property whichhis brother had seized; that he would do no wrong to the nobles;and that he would restore to the people the laws of Edward theConfessor, with all the improvements of William the Conqueror. Sobegan the reign of King Henry the First.

　　The people were attached to their new King, both because he hadknown distresses, and because he was an Englishman by birth and nota Norman. To strengthen this last hold upon them, the King wishedto marry an English lady; and could think of no other wife thanMaud the Good, the daughter of the King of Scotland. Although thisgood Princess did not love the King, she was so affected by therepresentations the nobles made to her of the great charity itwould be in her to unite the Norman and Saxon races, and preventhatred and bloodshed between them for the future, that sheconsented to become his wife. After some disputing among thepriests, who said that as she had been in a convent in her youth,and had worn the veil of a nun, she could not lawfully be married -against which the Princess stated that her aunt, with whom she hadlived in her youth, had indeed sometimes thrown a piece of blackstuff over her, but for no other reason than because the nun's veilwas the only dress the conquering Normans respected in girl orwoman, and not because she had taken the vows of a nun, which shenever had - she was declared free to marry, and was made KingHenry's Queen. A good Queen she was; beautiful, kind-hearted, andworthy of a better husband than the King.

　　For he was a cunning and unscrupulous man, though firm and clever.He cared very little for his word, and took any means to gain hisends. All this is shown in his treatment of his brother Robert -Robert, who had suffered him to be refreshed with water, and whohad sent him the wine from his own table, when he was shut up, withthe crows flying below him, parched with thirst, in the castle onthe top of St. Michael's Mount, where his Red brother would havelet him die.

　　Before the King began to deal with Robert, he removed and disgracedall the favourites of the late King; who were for the most partbase characters, much detested by the people. Flambard, orFirebrand, whom the late King had made Bishop of Durham, of allthings in the world, Henry imprisoned in the Tower; but Firebrandwas a great joker and a jolly companion, and made himself sopopular with his guards that they pretended to know nothing about along rope that was sent into his prison at the bottom of a deepflagon of wine. The guards took the wine, and Firebrand took therope; with which, when they were fast asleep, he let himself downfrom a window in the night, and so got cleverly aboard ship andaway to Normandy.

　　Now Robert, when his brother Fine-Scholar came to the throne, wasstill absent in the Holy Land. Henry pretended that Robert hadbeen made Sovereign of that country; and he had been away so long,that the ignorant people believed it. But, behold, when Henry hadbeen some time King of England, Robert came home to Normandy;having leisurely returned from Jerusalem through Italy, in whichbeautiful country he had enjoyed himself very much, and had marrieda lady as beautiful as itself! In Normandy, he found Firebrandwaiting to urge him to assert his claim to the English crown, anddeclare war against King Henry. This, after great loss of time infeasting and dancing with his beautiful Italian wife among hisNorman friends, he at last did.

　　The English in general were on King Henry's side, though many ofthe Normans were on Robert's. But the English sailors deserted theKing, and took a great part of the English fleet over to Normandy;so that Robert came to invade this country in no foreign vessels,but in English ships. The virtuous Anselm, however, whom Henry hadinvited back from abroad, and made Archbishop of Canterbury, wassteadfast in the King's cause; and it was so well supported thatthe two armies, instead of fighting, made a peace. Poor Robert,who trusted anybody and everybody, readily trusted his brother, theKing; and agreed to go home and receive a pension from England, oncondition that all his followers were fully pardoned. This theKing very faithfully promised, but Robert was no sooner gone thanhe began to punish them.

　　Among them was the Earl of Shrewsbury, who, on being summoned bythe King to answer to five-and-forty accusations, rode away to oneof his strong castles, shut himself up therein, called around himhis tenants and vassals, and fought for his liberty, but wasdefeated and banished. Robert, with all his faults, was so true tohis word, that when he first heard of this nobleman having risenagainst his brother, he laid waste the Earl of Shrewsbury's estatesin Normandy, to show the King that he would favour no breach oftheir treaty. Finding, on better information, afterwards, that theEarl's only crime was having been his friend, he came over toEngland, in his old thoughtless, warm-hearted way, to intercedewith the King, and remind him of the solemn promise to pardon allhis followers.

　　This confidence might have put the false King to the blush, but itdid not. Pretending to be very friendly, he so surrounded hisbrother with spies and traps, that Robert, who was quite in hispower, had nothing for it but to renounce his pension and escapewhile he could. Getting home to Normandy, and understanding theKing better now, he naturally allied himself with his old friendthe Earl of Shrewsbury, who had still thirty castles in thatcountry. This was exactly what Henry wanted. He immediatelydeclared that Robert had broken the treaty, and next year invadedNormandy.

　　He pretended that he came to deliver the Normans, at their ownrequest, from his brother's misrule. There is reason to fear thathis misrule was bad enough; for his beautiful wife had died,leaving him with an infant son, and his court was again socareless, dissipated, and ill-regulated, that it was said hesometimes lay in bed of a day for want of clothes to put on - hisattendants having stolen all his dresses. But he headed his armylike a brave prince and a gallant soldier, though he had themisfortune to be taken prisoner by King Henry, with four hundred ofhis Knights. Among them was poor harmless Edgar Atheling, wholoved Robert well. Edgar was not important enough to be severewith. The King afterwards gave him a small pension, which he livedupon and died upon, in peace, among the quiet woods and fields ofEngland.

　　And Robert - poor, kind, generous, wasteful, heedless Robert, withso many faults, and yet with virtues that might have made a betterand a happier man - what was the end of him? If the King had hadthe magnanimity to say with a kind air, 'Brother, tell me, beforethese noblemen, that from this time you will be my faithfulfollower and friend, and never raise your hand against me or myforces more!' he might have trusted Robert to the death. But theKing was not a magnanimous man. He sentenced his brother to beconfined for life in one of the Royal Castles. In the beginning ofhis imprisonment, he was allowed to ride out, guarded; but he oneday broke away from his guard and galloped of. He had the evilfortune to ride into a swamp, where his horse stuck fast and he wastaken. When the King heard of it he ordered him to be blinded,which was done by putting a red-hot metal basin on his eyes.

　　And so, in darkness and in prison, many years, he thought of allhis past life, of the time he had wasted, of the treasure he hadsquandered, of the opportunities he had lost, of the youth he hadthrown away, of the talents he had neglected. Sometimes, on fineautumn mornings, he would sit and think of the old hunting partiesin the free Forest, where he had been the foremost and the gayest.Sometimes, in the still nights, he would wake, and mourn for themany nights that had stolen past him at the gaming-table;sometimes, would seem to hear, upon the melancholy wind, the oldsongs of the minstrels; sometimes, would dream, in his blindness,of the light and glitter of the Norman Court. Many and many atime, he groped back, in his fancy, to Jerusalem, where he hadfought so well; or, at the head of his brave companions, bowed hisfeathered helmet to the shouts of welcome greeting him in Italy,and seemed again to walk among the sunny vineyards, or on the shoreof the blue sea, with his lovely wife. And then, thinking of hergrave, and of his fatherless boy, he would stretch out his solitaryarms and weep.

　　At length, one day, there lay in prison, dead, with cruel anddisfiguring scars upon his eyelids, bandaged from his jailer'ssight, but on which the eternal Heavens looked down, a worn old manof eighty. He had once been Robert of Normandy. Pity him!

　　At the time when Robert of Normandy was taken prisoner by hisbrother, Robert's little son was only five years old. This childwas taken, too, and carried before the King, sobbing and crying;for, young as he was, he knew he had good reason to be afraid ofhis Royal uncle. The King was not much accustomed to pity thosewho were in his power, but his cold heart seemed for the moment tosoften towards the boy. He was observed to make a great effort, asif to prevent himself from being cruel, and ordered the child to betaken away; whereupon a certain Baron, who had married a daughterof Duke Robert's (by name, Helie of Saint Saen), took charge ofhim, tenderly. The King's gentleness did not last long. Beforetwo years were over, he sent messengers to this lord's Castle toseize the child and bring him away. The Baron was not there at thetime, but his servants were faithful, and carried the boy off inhis sleep and hid him. When the Baron came home, and was told whatthe King had done, he took the child abroad, and, leading him bythe hand, went from King to King and from Court to Court, relatinghow the child had a claim to the throne of England, and how hisuncle the King, knowing that he had that claim, would have murderedhim, perhaps, but for his escape.

　　The youth and innocence of the pretty little William Fitz-Robert(for that was his name) made him many friends at that time. Whenhe became a young man, the King of France, uniting with the FrenchCounts of Anjou and Flanders, supported his cause against the Kingof England, and took many of the King's towns and castles inNormandy. But, King Henry, artful and cunning always, bribed someof William's friends with money, some with promises, some withpower. He bought off the Count of Anjou, by promising to marry hiseldest son, also named William, to the Count's daughter; and indeedthe whole trust of this King's life was in such bargains, and hebelieved (as many another King has done since, and as one King didin France a very little time ago) that every man's truth and honourcan be bought at some price. For all this, he was so afraid ofWilliam Fitz-Robert and his friends, that, for a long time, hebelieved his life to be in danger; and never lay down to sleep,even in his palace surrounded by his guards, without having a swordand buckler at his bedside.

　　To strengthen his power, the King with great ceremony betrothed hiseldest daughter Matilda, then a child only eight years old, to bethe wife of Henry the Fifth, the Emperor of Germany. To raise hermarriage-portion, he taxed the English people in a most oppressivemanner; then treated them to a great procession, to restore theirgood humour; and sent Matilda away, in fine state, with the Germanambassadors, to be educated in the country of her future husband.

　　And now his Queen, Maud the Good, unhappily died. It was a sadthought for that gentle lady, that the only hope with which she hadmarried a man whom she had never loved - the hope of reconcilingthe Norman and English races - had failed. At the very time of herdeath, Normandy and all France was in arms against England; for, sosoon as his last danger was over, King Henry had been false to allthe French powers he had promised, bribed, and bought, and they hadnaturally united against him. After some fighting, however, inwhich few suffered but the unhappy common people (who alwayssuffered, whatsoever was the matter), he began to promise, bribe,and buy again; and by those means, and by the help of the Pope, whoexerted himself to save more bloodshed, and by solemnly declaring,over and over again, that he really was in earnest this time, andwould keep his word, the King made peace.

　　One of the first consequences of this peace was, that the King wentover to Normandy with his son Prince William and a great retinue,to have the Prince acknowledged as his successor by the NormanNobles, and to contract the promised marriage (this was one of themany promises the King had broken) between him and the daughter ofthe Count of Anjou. Both these things were triumphantly done, withgreat show and rejoicing; and on the twenty-fifth of November, inthe year one thousand one hundred and twenty, the whole retinueprepared to embark at the Port of Barfleur, for the voyage home.

　　On that day, and at that place, there came to the King, Fitz-Stephen, a sea-captain, and said:

　　'My liege, my father served your father all his life, upon the sea.He steered the ship with the golden boy upon the prow, in whichyour father sailed to conquer England. I beseech you to grant methe same office. I have a fair vessel in the harbour here, calledThe White Ship, manned by fifty sailors of renown. I pray you,Sire, to let your servant have the honour of steering you in TheWhite Ship to England!'

　　'I am sorry, friend,' replied the King, 'that my vessel is alreadychosen, and that I cannot (therefore) sail with the son of the manwho served my father. But the Prince and all his company shall goalong with you, in the fair White Ship, manned by the fifty sailorsof renown.'

　　An hour or two afterwards, the King set sail in the vessel he hadchosen, accompanied by other vessels, and, sailing all night with afair and gentle wind, arrived upon the coast of England in themorning. While it was yet night, the people in some of those shipsheard a faint wild cry come over the sea, and wondered what it was.

　　Now, the Prince was a dissolute, debauched young man of eighteen,who bore no love to the English, and had declared that when he cameto the throne he would yoke them to the plough like oxen. He wentaboard The White Ship, with one hundred and forty youthful Nobleslike himself, among whom were eighteen noble ladies of the highestrank. All this gay company, with their servants and the fiftysailors, made three hundred souls aboard the fair White Ship.

　　'Give three casks of wine, Fitz-Stephen,' said the Prince, 'to thefifty sailors of renown! My father the King has sailed out of theharbour. What time is there to make merry here, and yet reachEngland with the rest?'

　　'Prince!' said Fitz-Stephen, 'before morning, my fifty and TheWhite Ship shall overtake the swiftest vessel in attendance on yourfather the King, if we sail at midnight!'

　　Then the Prince commanded to make merry; and the sailors drank outthe three casks of wine; and the Prince and all the noble companydanced in the moonlight on the deck of The White Ship.

　　When, at last, she shot out of the harbour of Barfleur, there wasnot a sober seaman on board. But the sails were all set, and theoars all going merrily. Fitz-Stephen had the helm. The gay youngnobles and the beautiful ladies, wrapped in mantles of variousbright colours to protect them from the cold, talked, laughed, andsang. The Prince encouraged the fifty sailors to row harder yet,for the honour of The White Ship.

　　Crash! A terrific cry broke from three hundred hearts. It was thecry the people in the distant vessels of the King heard faintly onthe water. The White Ship had struck upon a rock - was filling -going down!

　　Fitz-Stephen hurried the Prince into a boat, with some few Nobles.'Push off,' he whispered; 'and row to land. It is not far, and thesea is smooth. The rest of us must die.'

　　But, as they rowed away, fast, from the sinking ship, the Princeheard the voice of his sister Marie, the Countess of Perche,calling for help. He never in his life had been so good as he wasthen. He cried in an agony, 'Row back at any risk! I cannot bearto leave her!'

　　They rowed back. As the Prince held out his arms to catch hissister, such numbers leaped in, that the boat was overset. And inthe same instant The White Ship went down.

　　Only two men floated. They both clung to the main yard of theship, which had broken from the mast, and now supported them. Oneasked the other who he was? He said, 'I am a nobleman, Godfrey byname, the son of Gilbert de L'Aigle. And you?' said he. 'I amBerold, a poor butcher of Rouen,' was the answer. Then, they saidtogether, 'Lord be merciful to us both!' and tried to encourage oneanother, as they drifted in the cold benumbing sea on thatunfortunate November night.

　　By-and-by, another man came swimming towards them, whom they knew,when he pushed aside his long wet hair, to be Fitz-Stephen. 'Whereis the Prince?' said he. 'Gone! Gone!' the two cried together.'Neither he, nor his brother, nor his sister, nor the King's niece,nor her brother, nor any one of all the brave three hundred, nobleor commoner, except we three, has risen above the water!' Fitz-Stephen, with a ghastly face, cried, 'Woe! woe, to me!' and sunk tothe bottom.

　　The other two clung to the yard for some hours. At length theyoung noble said faintly, 'I am exhausted, and chilled with thecold, and can hold no longer. Farewell, good friend! God preserveyou!' So, he dropped and sunk; and of all the brilliant crowd, thepoor Butcher of Rouen alone was saved. In the morning, somefishermen saw him floating in his sheep-skin coat, and got him intotheir boat - the sole relater of the dismal tale.

　　For three days, no one dared to carry the intelligence to the King.At length, they sent into his presence a little boy, who, weepingbitterly, and kneeling at his feet, told him that The White Shipwas lost with all on board. The King fell to the ground like adead man, and never, never afterwards, was seen to smile.

　　But he plotted again, and promised again, and bribed and boughtagain, in his old deceitful way. Having no son to succeed him,after all his pains ('The Prince will never yoke us to the plough,now!' said the English people), he took a second wife - Adelais orAlice, a duke's daughter, and the Pope's niece. Having no morechildren, however, he proposed to the Barons to swear that theywould recognise as his successor, his daughter Matilda, whom, asshe was now a widow, he married to the eldest son of the Count ofAnjou, Geoffrey, surnamed Plantagenet, from a custom he had ofwearing a sprig of flowering broom (called Genêt in French) in hiscap for a feather. As one false man usually makes many, and as afalse King, in particular, is pretty certain to make a false Court,the Barons took the oath about the succession of Matilda (and herchildren after her), twice over, without in the least intending tokeep it. The King was now relieved from any remaining fears ofWilliam Fitz-Robert, by his death in the Monastery of St. Omer, inFrance, at twenty-six years old, of a pike-wound in the hand. Andas Matilda gave birth to three sons, he thought the succession tothe throne secure.

　　He spent most of the latter part of his life, which was troubled byfamily quarrels, in Normandy, to be near Matilda. When he hadreigned upward of thirty-five years, and was sixty-seven years old,he died of an indigestion and fever, brought on by eating, when hewas far from well, of a fish called Lamprey, against which he hadoften been cautioned by his physicians. His remains were broughtover to Reading Abbey to be buried.

　　You may perhaps hear the cunning and promise-breaking of King Henrythe First, called 'policy' by some people, and 'diplomacy' byothers. Neither of these fine words will in the least mean that itwas true; and nothing that is not true can possibly be good.

　　His greatest merit, that I know of, was his love of learning - Ishould have given him greater credit even for that, if it had beenstrong enough to induce him to spare the eyes of a certain poet heonce took prisoner, who was a knight besides. But he ordered thepoet's eyes to be torn from his head, because he had laughed at himin his verses; and the poet, in the pain of that torture, dashedout his own brains against his prison wall. King Henry the Firstwas avaricious, revengeful, and so false, that I suppose a mannever lived whose word was less to be relied upon.