Back to the Mainly The Normans calendar
If you remember William I, the Conqueror, had designated the New Forest as a Royal Hunting area. The Norman kings and barons
loved to hunt and a forest, with wild deer and boar, allowed them to follow their passion. Sadly William’s second son, Richard, was killed in a shooting incident
which was why William Rufus, William II, had become King of England.
Tragedy happened again on August 2 1100 when William II was shot
in the New Forest while he was hunting. Actually, to be correct, he was shot in the chest while hunting in the New Forest. It seems that the arrow was fired by
one of the hunting party, the Anglo-Saxon chronicle naming the man as Walter Tirel. No one knows for sure if it was an accident or if someone paid Walter to do
it on purpose to get rid of William II.
William’s younger brother Henry, William the Conqueror’s fourth and last son, was in the hunting party and immediately set off for Winchester to
collect the royal money and then to London, where he was crowned on 5 August 1100, just 3 days after William II’s death.
If you have been following all of this you won’t be surprised that there was some dispute as to who should be the next King after William’s
unfortunate death. Some people felt Robert, King in Normandy, should now be King in England too but Robert was still coming back from his crusade to the Holy
Land.
William II had only ruled for 13 years and had spent much of that time putting down rebellions and upsetting the church. After the death, in 1089,
of the Archbishop of Canterbury who had crowned him, William waited for 4 years before appointing a new Archbishop and during this time took much of the
church’s money for himself.
William didn’t much like his new appointment either who was called Anselm. A clue was when he apparently said "Yesterday I hated him with great
hatred, today I hate him with yet greater hatred and he can be certain that tomorrow and thereafter I shall hate him continually with ever fiercer and more
bitter hatred". Eventually Anselm took the hint and went into exile and William continued to claim all money due to the Archbishop of Canterbury for the
rest of his reign.
Forward to 1101AD
