He inherited therewith any disputes as to the extent of the lands of the ANTECESSOR or as to the nature of his tenure.And new disputes arose in the process of transfer.One common source of dispute was when the former owner, besides lands which were strictly his own, held lands on lease, subject to a reversionary interest on the part of the Crown or the Church.The lease or sale--EMERE is the usual word--of Church lands for three lives to return to the Church at the end of the third life was very common.If the ANTECESSOR was himself the third life, the grantee, his HEIR, had no claim to the land; and in any case he could take in only with all its existing liabilities.But the grantee often took possession of the whole of the land held by the ANTECESSOR, as if it were all alike his own.Acrowd of complaints followed from all manner of injured persons and bodies, great and small, French and English, lay and clerical.The Commissioners seem to have fairly heard all, and to have fairly reported all for the King to judge of.It is their care to do right to all men which has given us such strange glimpses of the inner life of an age which had none like it before or after.
The general Survey followed by the general homage might seem to mark William's work in England, his work as an English statesman, as done.He could hardly have had time to redress the many cases of wrong which the Survey laid before him; but he was able to wring yet another tax out of the nation according to his new and more certain register.He then, for the last time, crossed to Normandy with his new hoard.The Chronicler and other writers of the time dwell on the physical portents of these two years, the storms, the fires, the plagues, the sharp hunger, the deaths of famous men on both sides of the sea.Of the year 1087, the last year of the Conqueror, it needs the full strength of our ancient tongue to set forth the signs and wonders.The King had left England safe, peaceful, thoroughly bowed down under the yoke, cursing the ruler who taxed her and granted away her lands, yet half blessing him for the "good frith" that he made against the murderer, the robber, and the ravisher.But the land that he had won was neither to see his end nor to shelter his dust.One last gleam of success was, after so many reverses, to crown his arms; but it was success which was indeed unworthy of the Conqueror who had entered Exeter and Le Mans in peaceful triumph.
And the death-blow was now to come to him who, after so many years of warfare, stooped at last for the first time to cruel and petty havoc without an object.
The border-land of France and Normandy, the French Vexin, the land of which Mantes is the capital, had always been disputed between kingdom and duchy.Border wars had been common; just at this time the inroads of the French commanders at Mantes are said to have been specially destructive.William not only demanded redress from the King, but called for the surrender of the whole Vexin.What followed is a familiar story.Philip makes a foolish jest on the bodily state of his great rival, unable just then to carry out his threats."The King of the English lies in at Rouen; there will be a great show of candles at his churching." As at Alencon in his youth, so now, William, who could pass by real injuries, was stung to the uttermost by personal mockery.By the splendour of God, when he rose up again, he would light a hundred thousand candles at Philip's cost.He kept his word at the cost of Philip's subjects.
The ballads of the day told how he went forth and gathered the fruits of autumn in the fields and orchards and vineyards of the enemy.But he did more than gather fruits; the candles of his churching were indeed lighted in the burning streets of Mantes.The picture of William the Great directing in person mere brutal havoc like this is strange even after the harrying of Northumberland and the making of the New Forest.Riding to and fro among the flames, bidding his men with glee to heap on the fuel, gladdened at the sight of burning houses and churches, a false step of his horse gave him his death-blow.Carried to Rouen, to the priory of Saint Gervase near the city, he lingered from August 15 to September 7, and then the reign and life of the Conqueror came to an end.
Forsaken by his children, his body stripped and well nigh forgotten, the loyalty of one honest knight, Herlwin of Conteville, bears his body to his grave in his own church at Caen.His very grave is disputed--a dispossessed ANTECESSOR claims the ground as his own, and the dead body of the Conqueror has to wait while its last resting-place is bought with money.Into that resting-place force alone can thrust his bulky frame, and the rites of his burial are as wildly cut short as were the rites of his crowning.With much striving he had at last won his seven feet of ground; but he was not to keep it for ever.Religious warfare broke down his tomb and scattered his bones, save one treasured relic.Civil revolution swept away the one remaining fragment.And now, while we seek in vain beneath the open sky for the rifled tombs of Harold and of Waltheof, a stone beneath the vault of Saint Stephen's still tells us where the bones of William once lay but where they lie no longer.
There is no need to doubt the striking details of the death and burial of the Conqueror.We shrink from giving the same trust to the long tale of penitence which is put into the mouth of the dying King.He may, in that awful hour, have seen the wrong-doing of the last one-and-twenty years of his life; he hardly threw his repentance into the shape of a detailed autobiographical confession.
But the more authentic sayings and doings of William's death-bed enable us to follow his course as an English statesman almost to his last moments.His end was one of devotion, of prayers and almsgiving, and of opening of the prison to them that were bound.
