Dun. Eccles. i. 135). If so it was probably late in William I's days or early in those of William II that he acquired his surname or nickname, Flambard. The exact meaning of the epithet is very obscure, but appears to have some reference to Rannulf's ‘consuming’ greed and ambition (Ord. Vit. iii. 310–11; cf. Anselm, Epp. 1. iv. ep. ii. col. 201; see, too, Freeman, William Rufus, ii. 555).
All the direct contemporary evidence tends to show that it was in the early years of William II's reign that Rannulf came into prominence. He was plainly the prime mover of the shameless ecclesiastical policy which reached its climax when the see of Canterbury was left vacant for over four years, from 28 May 1089 to 20 Sept. 1093 (Florence of Worcester, ii. 45–6; William of Malmesbury, ii. 407–8; Simeon of Durham, ii. 231–2; cf. Henry of Huntingdon, pp. 232–3; and Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ii. 203–4). Hence it is almost certain that he is the ‘Rannulfus’ who was sent down by the king to open a plea against Anselm at Canterbury on the day of that archbishop's enthronement, 25 Sept. 1093 (Eadmer, Hist. Nov. pp. 41–2).
Rannulf does not seem to have borne as yet any distinct legal office or title. He may have been the king's chancellor, but in contemporary documents and chronicles he is generally styled ‘Rannulf the chaplain’ or ‘the king's clerk’ (Rannulfus Cappellanus) (Dugdale, i. 164, 174; cf. Cont. Hist. Dun. Eccles. i. 135; and the ‘Rannulfe his capellane’ of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, i. 364). Later he appears to have held all the authority of the twelfth-century justiciar, even if he did not enjoy this specific title, which is given him by Orderic Vitalis (iv. 107). But his position may very well have been somewhat abnormal, as the chroniclers give him various titles and run off into rhetorical phrases. In 1094 he sent back from Hastings twenty thousand English soldiers, whom William had summoned to Normandy, and confiscated the 10s. with which the shire had supplied each man for his expenses abroad (Florence of Worcester, ii. 35; Simeon of Durham, ii. 224; cf. Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ii. 197).
Rannulf seems to have been mainly occupied in supplying the king with the money he required for his court, his new buildings, the wages of his stipendiary soldiers, and, in the latter half of his reign, for the purchase of Normandy and Aquitaine from their crusading dukes (Ord. Vit. iii. 476, iv. 80). According to Orderic he urged William Rufus ‘to revise the description of all England,’ a phrase which has generally been interpreted as referring to the compilation of a new Domesday Book. Both Dr. Stubbs and Mr. Freeman consider this to be a misdated reference to the Great Survey of the previous reign, in which they admit that Rannulf took a more or less prominent part. Though this is not improbable, Orderic's words refer more naturally to a revision of a previous survey. Orderic seems to imply that the main offence of this survey lay in superseding the old and vague measures of land by new ones made after a fixed standard (Ord. Vit. iii. 311; William of Malmesbury, ii. 497; cf. also Stubbs, i. 298–9; Freemann, Norm. Conq. v. 377–8, 'Will. Rufus, i. 331, &c.). Mr. Round seems to have shown that there was a special levy of 4s. the hide imposed for the purchase of Normandy in 1096. This might imply such stringent application of the Domesday records as would justify Orderic's words with reference to its revision (cf. Round, ap. Domesday Studies, pp. 83–4).
Florence of Worcester probably gives the true chronology of Rannulf's rise when he tells us that he began by buying the custody of vacant bishoprics, abbeys, and other benefices. For these he paid not only a sum of ready money, but an annual rent, and this system continued till the end of the reign, when the king ‘had in his own hand the archbishopric of Canterbury, the bishoprics of Winchester and Salisbury, and eleven abbeys all set out to gafol’ (Florence of Worcester, ii. 46; Anglo-Saxon Chron. i. 364). With these sources of wealth Rannulf's ‘craft and guile’ raised him higher and higher, till the king made him the head of his realm, both in matters of finance and justice. Once in this position Rannulf turned his hands against laymen as well as clergy, the rich and the poor (Florence of Worcester, ii. 46).
All the chroniclers recognise Rannulf as the mainspring of the king's iniquity (William of Malmesbury, ii. 497, 619; cf. Ord. Vit. iii. 311). His rule was one of violence and legal chicanery; in those days ‘almost all justice slept, and money was lord’ in the great man's courts (Florence of Worcester, p. 46). When William Rufus laid a tax upon the land, Rannulf levied it at twofold or a threefold rate, thus winning from the king the dubious compliment of being the only man who would rack his brains without caring about other men's hatred so long as he pleased his lord (William of Malmesbury, Gesta Reg. ii. 497; cf. Gesta Pont. p. 274). So great was the terror of these days that there went abroad a rumour that the devil had shown himself in the woods to many Normans, and commented on the
