Flambard takes away the soldiers' money. beyond sea. Nothing is said of any difficulty in getting this great force together. The troops were gathered at Hastings, ready to set sail. Each man had brought with him ten shillings, the contribution of his shire for his maintenance in the King's service. For the men who answered to Rufus' bidding were no mercenaries, not even housecarls; they were the fyrd of England, summoned, by a perhaps unjustifiable but not very wonderful stretch of authority, to serve their king beyond the sea. But, when they were ready to sail, Flambard came, and by the King's orders took away each man's money, and bade them all go home again.[1] One would like to know something of the feelings of the men who were thus strangely cheated; we should surely have heard if there had been any open resistance. Anyhow, by this amazing trick, the Red King had exchanged the arms of twenty thousand Englishmen for a sum of ten thousand pounds of English money. After all, the money might be of greater use than the men in a war with Philip of Paris.
Rufus buys off Philip. If William thus reckoned, he was not deceived. He was still at Eu. Philip was again in arms; his forces joined those of Robert; again King and Duke marched side by side, this time with the purpose of besieging the King of the English in his Norman stronghold. The ten thousand pounds now served William's turn quite as well as the twenty thousand men could have served it. The combined French and Norman host had reached
- [Footnote: abeodan út xx. þusenda Engliscra manna ['xx. millia pedonum' in Florence]
him to fultume to Normandig."]
- ↑ Chron. Petrib. 1094. "Ac þa hi to sæ coman, þa het hi man cyrran, and þæt feoh to þæs cynges behófe þe hi genumen hæfdon; þet wæs ælc man healf punda, and hi swa dydon." Florence tells us the place and the doer; "Quibus ut mare transirent Heastingæ congregatis, pecuniam quæ data fuerat eis ad victum Rannulphus Passeflambardus præcepto regis abstulit, scilicet unicuique decem solidos, et eos domum repedare mandavit, pecuniam vero regi transmisit."
