He died at Rouen, on the 9th of September, 1087, in the sixty-first year of his age, the twenty-first of his reign over England, and fifty-second over Normandy. Early in the morning the king heard the sound of a bell, and eagerly demanded what it meant. He was told that it sounded the hour of prime in the church of St. Mary. "Then," said he, "I commend my soul to my Lady, the mother of God, that by her holy prayers she may reconcile me to her son, my Lord Jesus Christ," and immediately expired.
From the events which followed the reader may judge of the unsettled nature of the time. The knights and prelates hastened to their respective homes to secure their property; the citizens of Rouen began to conceal their most valuable effects; the servants rifled the palace, and hurried away with the booty; and the royal corpse for three hours lay almost in a state of nudity on the ground. At length the archbishop ordered the body to be interred at Caen; and Herlwin, a neighbouring knight, out of compassion, conveyed it at his own expense to that city.
At the day appointed for the interment, Prince Henry, the Norman prelates, and a multitude of clergy and people, assembled in the church of St. Stephen, which the Conqueror had founded. The mass had been performed, the corpse was placed on the bier, and the Bishop of Evreux had pronounced the panegyric of the deceased, when a voice from the crowd exclaimed, "He whom you have praised was a robber. The very land on which you stand is mine. By violence he took it from my father; and in the name of God I forbid you to bury him in it." The speaker was Ascelin Fitz-Arthur, who had often, but fruitlessly, sought reparation from the justice of William. After some debate the prelates called him to them, paid him sixty shillings for the grave, and promised that he should receive the full value of his land. The ceremony was then continued, and the body of the king deposited in a coffin of stone.
[Illustration: ROBERT ASKING HIS FATHER'S PARDON. (_See p._ 118.)]
William's character has been drawn with apparent impartiality in the Saxon Chronicle by a contemporary and an Englishman. That the reader may learn the opinion of one who possessed the means of forming an accurate judgment, we have transcribed the passage, retaining, as far as it may be intelligible, the phraseology of the original:--