- carnation of evil. Restless ambition, reckless contempt
of the rights of others, were common to him with many of his neighbours and contemporaries. But he stands almost alone in his habitual delight in the infliction of human suffering. The recklessness which lays waste houses and fields, the cruelty of passion or of policy which slays or mutilates an enemy, were common in his day. But even then we find only a few men of whom it was believed that the pangs of other men were to them a direct source of enjoyment. In Robert sheer love of cruelty displaced even greediness; he refused ransom for his prisoners that he might have the pleasure of putting them to lingering deaths.[1] The received forms of cruelty blinding and mutilation, were not enough for him; he brought the horrors of the East into Western Europe; men, and women too, were left at his bidding to writhe on the sharp stake.[2] Distrustful of all men, artful, flattering, courteous of speech, his profession of friendship was the sure path to destruction.[3] The special vices of William Rufus are not laid to his charge; it is at least to the credit of Latin Christendom in the eleventh century that it needs the union of its two worst sinners
- ↑ Ord. Vit. 707 D. "Magis affectabat supplicia miseris inferre quam per redemptionem captivorum pecunias augere." So Hen. Hunt. u. s. Yet, as some of his captives escaped, he lost the ransom for nothing.
- ↑ Ib. "Homines privatione oculorum et amputatione pedum manuumve deformare parvipendebat, sed inauditorum commeditatione suppliciorum in torquendis miseris more Siculi Phalaris tripudiabat. Quos in carcere pro reatu aliquo stringebat, Nerone seu Decio vel Diocletiano sævior, indicibiliter cruciabat, et inde jocos cum parasitis suis et cachinnos jactabundus exercebat. Tormentorum quæ vinctis inferebat delectatione gloriabatur, hominumque detractione pro pœnarum nimietate crudelis lætabatur." The special detail of the impaling comes from Henry of Huntingdon, who says also, "Erat ei cædes horribilis hominum cibus jucundus animæ."
- ↑ Will. Malms. v. 398. "Simulationis et argutiarum plenus, frontis sereno et sermonum affabilitate credulos decipiens, gnaros autem malitiæ exterritans, ut nullum esset majus futurae calamitatis indicium quam prætensæ affabilitatis eloquium." Something of the same kind was said of King Henry himself. See N. C. vol. v. p. 841.
