Eadmer's judgement of the campaign. partisans is set down simply as one among the many ways in which Normandy was torn in pieces by her own children.[1] An English writer meanwhile, on whose main subject the Norman campaigns of Rufus had but a very indirect bearing, speaks casually of this expedition as an undertaking on which a vast deal of money was spent, but by which very little was gained.[2]
Wretchedness of England.
Causes for the King's return.
It is indeed to be borne in mind, as supplying at least
a partial explanation of the way in which the second
Norman expedition comes to an end without any end,
that things in England were, just as they had been three
years and a half before, in a state which urgently called
for the presence of the King within his kingdom. We
know not whether it at all moved him that the heavy
taxation which had been laid on his kingdom for the
cost of his warfare had brought the land to the lowest
pitch of wretchedness. Men, we are told, had ceased to
till the ground; hunger followed; there were hardly left
any who could tend the dying or bury the dead.[3] These
things might not have greatly stirred the heart of the
Red King; but he may, like other tyrants, have felt
that there was a bound beyond which oppression could
not be safely carried. And there were political and
military reasons which called him back. He could not
afford to jeopard his undisputed possession of England
for the sake of a few more castles in Normandy. He
- ↑ Ord. Vit. 723 A. "Sic Normannia suis in se filiis furentibus miserabiliter turbata est, et plebs inermis sine patrono desolata est."
- ↑ Eadmer, Hist. Nov. 25. "Ipse quidem in Normanniam transiit, expensaque immensa pecunia eam sibi nullatenus subigere potuit. Infecto itaque negotio in Angliam reversus est."
- ↑ Will. Malms. iv. 327. "Septimo anno, propter tributa quæ rex in Normannia positus edixerat, agricultura defecit, qua fatiscente, fames e vestigio, ea quoque invalescente, mortalitas hominum subsecuta, adeo crebra ut deesset morituris cura, mortuis sepultura." This is copied by the Margam annalist.
