ever coming back, and smaller still of his coming back with ten thousand marks to spare out of the spoils of the infidels. If he ever did come so laden, William Rufus doubtless trusted that, by some means either of force or of fraud, his brother's restoration to his duchy might be either evaded or withstood.
The price not large.
Heavy taxation to raise the money.
Whitsun Assembly, 1096.
The price for which Normandy was thus handed over
does not, when compared with other payments of the
time, seem a large one. It was not very much higher
than the sums which Herbert Losinga was said to have
paid for a bishopric for himself and an abbey for his
father.[1] The price to be paid for at least a three years'
possession of all Normandy was not much more than
three times the sum which courtiers at least had looked
on as a reasonable contribution for an Archbishop of
Canterbury to make towards a single Norman expedition.[2]
Yet the sum which was now to be paid is
spoken of as a drain upon the whole kingdom. Rufus
had no thought of paying the money out of any rightful
revenues of the crown or out of any stores which he had
already wrung from his people. Something was to be
wrung from them yet again for the special object of the
moment. The time would seem to have been the summer
of the year which followed the gathering at Clermont,
the year which in England began with the death of
Bishop William of Durham and the frightful punishment
of Count William of Eu. The matter may have been
discussed at the Whitsun Assembly of that year, of
which we have no record. At any rate a heavy tax was
laid on the whole kingdom; we may be sure that the
Red King took the occasion to wring more out of the
land than the actual sum which he had to pay to his
brother. Otherwise, except on the view that everything
had been taken already, the payment of a sum less than
