Old Dive's History of Norwich Castle - Part the First - The Rise of Castle Blanchefleur - Chapter III

Wherein William Rufus begins work on Norwich Castle.

So … September 1087.

We take leave of the bloated and burst body of William the Bastard, his stone sarcophagus closed and sealed leaving what was left of his corpse to marinate in a nasty soup of reeking intestinal fluids and turn once more to this sons, who gave us the magnificent stone castle we have today.

Eldest son Robert Short-Arse being passed over and compensated with the Dukedom of Normandy, the throne of England now bore the warm bottom of William the Second; William Rufus.

Of William Rufus, we have first the description handed down to us by Geoffrey of Monmouth: he had "a red face, yellow hair, different-coloured eyes, astonishing strength, though not very tall and his belly rather projecting."

Also that "he had a stutter, especially when angry". And he was angry a lot!

The Oxford History of England has this to say of him: "He was a cynical, vain, capricious, ill-tempered man. He was blasphemous and scoffed at religion. The money he extorted from his subjects he squandered on a mercenary army and a licentious court. The effeminate character of his court, the absence of any mention of paramours or bastards, the horror and reticence of the chroniclers regarding his personal conduct make it tolerably certain that he indulged in unnatural vice. From the moral standpoint he was probably the worst king that has occupied the throne of England."

My copy of the Oxford History is the 1951 edition … gay-friendly it is not! I do so enjoy reading successive histories, from primary sources down through the centuries; each generation of historians displaying its unique and wildly varying set of prejudices. Kinda hobby of mine …

So, like the Watchers on the Wall, William Rufus did not marry, nor did he father any offspring.

The mediæval historian Frank Barlow holds that Rufus was "a rumbustious, devil-may-care soldier without natural dignity or social graces, with no cultivated taste and little show of conventional religious piety or morality, addicted to every kind of vice, particularly lust and especially sodomy."

And so began the English aristocracy … plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

In 1094, William Rufus decided to replace the timber castle at Norwich with a stone keep and to make it his royal palace. Our current project is to restore the keep to its original glory.

T. A. Heslop calls it "a megalomaniac project" that "fits well with what we know of the ambitions of King William Rufus."

After Ralph's rebellion and Emma's heroic defence of Norwich Castle, William replaced Ralph with one Roger Bigot, who took over the running of Norwich Castle and the construction of its new keep and proceeded in typical Norman style to lay waste to the surrounding countryside, already depopulated by the depredations of Earl Ralph.

Bigot built himself a palace on Tombland with money extorted from the locals but in 1094 was forced to knock it down as it blocked the western entrance to the new cathedral. Bigot would continue to plague the city during the Great Anarchy and his descendants for many nasty generations more, but for our purposes he now passes out of the story for a bit. Regrettably we shall not see the last of him.

Alas and alack; on the second of August, 1100, with only the basement of the castle keep complete, while out hunting in the New Forest, King William Rufus was shot through the lung with an arrow by one Walter Tirel under … er … not at all suspicious circumstances.

The unfortunately pixellated death of William Rufus - courtesy of the interweb.

As with his father before him, the king's body was abandoned by the nobles and attendants at the place where it fell, even though his younger brother Henri was among the hunting party.

Hmm … curiouser and curiouser, especially as Henri had the most to gain by his brother's death and Tirel had a reputation as a crack bowman and was highly unlikely to have shot his king in the lung by accident.

A peasant later found the corpse of Rufus and a few countrymen carted it to Winchester Cathedral where it was interred, this time in a sufficiently large coffin.

By which time Henri, following his usual behaviour on the death of a family member (see below) had raced to Winchester to secure the royal treasury and thence on to London where he was crowned by the mob before either Archbishop could catch up with him.

William Rufus' death was, to the Bishops, an Act of God; a just end for a wicked king; to the chroniclers it was both fratricide and regicide, so business as usual.

Of Henri's character, the Oxford History of England: 1087 - 1216 records - though not in precisely these words - that back in 1087, on learning of his five-thousand-pound weight of silver inheritance he left his father dying in testicular agony and fled hurriedly back across the Channel to Winchester and to the treasury to make sure and count out every last ounce.

If anyone wonders where George R.R. Martin gets his wonderful characters, they need look no further than the Norman and Plantagenet kings of England: they give us a vertically-challenged drunken hero with father issues, bevies of bastards, backstabbing, bullshit and blame-throwing, heroic levels of alcohol consumption, sex of all varieties, mud, blood and murder - LOTS of murder.

Larks aplenty with Robert and Henri next time and at last the castle walls go up… and then immediately start falling down … er …

Sources:

Francis Blomefield: An Essay Towards a Topographical History of the County of Norfolk: Volume 3: The History of the City and County of Norwich: 1753 to 1775

The Oxford History of England: 1087-1216: From Domesday Book to Magna Carta: Austin Lane Poole (ed.) 1951

Frank Barlow: The Norman Conquest and Beyond: 1983

T. A. Heslop: Norwich Castle Keep: Romanesque Architecture and Social Context: Centre for East Anglian Studies: 1994

Elizabeth Popescu: The Norman Connections - Castles: Part 1; Norwich Castle: 2010

T. A. Heslop: The Shifting Structure of Norwich Castle Keep, 1096 to c.1230: 2011

James F. King: Norwich Castle Keep: Dates and Contexts: British Archæological Association: 2015