CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTION.
Character of the reign of William Rufus.
The Norman Conquest in one sense completed, in another undone.
The reign of the second Norman king is a period of
English history which may well claim a more
special and minute examination than could be given to
it when it took its place merely as one of the later
stages in the history of the Norman Conquest, after the
great work of the Conquest itself was done. There is
indeed a point of view in which the first years of the
reign of William the Red may be looked on as something
more than one of the later stages of the Conquest.
They may be looked on, almost at pleasure, either as
the last stage of the Conquest or as the reversal of the
Conquest. We may give either name to a struggle in
which a Norman king, the son of the Norman Conqueror,
was established on the English throne by warfare
which, simply as warfare, was a distinct victory
won by Englishmen over Normans on English soil.
The truest aspect of that warfare was that the Norman
Conquest of England was completed by English hands.
But, in so saying, we must understand by the Norman
Conquest of England all that is implied in that name
to its fullest extent. When Englishmen, by armed
support of a Norman king, accepted the fact of the
Norman Conquest, they in some measure changed its
nature. In the act of completing the Conquest, they
in some sort undid it. If we hold that the end of the
Conquest came in the days of Rufus, in the days of
