“After the death of his illustrious queen, Matilda, King William, who survived her for almost four years, was continually forced to struggle against the storms of troubles that rose up against him.”¹ This was no exaggeration on the part of Orderic Vitalis. The loss of Matilda caused a profound shift in her husband’s outlook. Grief turned to bitterness and made him even more intolerant than he had been before. His attitude toward his English dominions underwent a particularly dramatic shift. While Matilda had promoted peace and conciliation, “after her death, he [William] became a thorough tyrant,” according to one contemporary chronicler. It was suddenly obvious just how great a restraining influence she must have exercised over her husband in life. Deprived of her wise counsel, he became reckless and tyrannical, undoing much of the good work that Matilda had urged him to in fostering better relations between the Normans and Saxons in England.

Unchecked by Matilda’s benign influence, William fell into ever worse excesses. “The king and the principal men greatly loved, and over-greatly, greed in gold and in silver, and did not care how sinfully it was got as long as it came to them,” lamented theAnglo-Saxon Chronicle. “The greater the talk about just law, the more unlawful things were done. They levied unjust tolls and they did many other unjust things which are difficult to relate.”² Malmesbury concurs that the king was rightly criticized for his “passion for money, which no scruples restrained him from scraping together by seeking opportunities in all directions, doing and saying much—indeed everything—that was unworthy of so great a monarch, where dawned a glittering hope of gain.”³

It was at least partly William’s covetousness that inspired him to commission the great survey of his kingdom that became known as Domesday Book. The scale of this survey and the level of detail it entailed are staggering. William wanted to know how many hundreds of hides of land there were in each shire, how much land and livestock he possessed, and what annual dues were owed to him from all parts of the country. But his own holdings were only part of it, for he also ordered his surveyors to find out how much land and livestock the other landholders possessed and how much it was all worth. It was with some dismay that the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle describes the whole painstaking process: “He had it investigated so narrowly that there was not one single hide, not one yard of land, not even (it is shameful to tell—but it seemed no shame to him to do it) one ox, not one cow, not one pig was left out, that was not set down in his record.”⁴

William’s avarice was reflected by his growing corpulence. According to Malmesbury, this “gave him an unshapely and unkingly figure” and made him the butt of his enemies’ jokes. When he was obliged to take an unaccustomed period of rest at his palace in Rouen, King Philip scoffed: “The king of England lies at Rouen, keeping his bed like a woman who has just had her baby.”⁵

For the English, things seemed to go from bad to worse after Matilda’s death. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle describes 1087 as “a very heavy and pestiferous year in this land.” According to the account:

Such a disease came on men that very nearly every other man had the worst illness—that is the fever, and so severely that many men died from the illness. Afterwards, through the great bad weather which came as we already told, there came a very great famine over all England, so that many hundreds of men died wretched deaths through the famine. Alas! how wretched and how pitiful a time it was then! Then the miserable men lay well-nigh driven to death, and afterwards came the sharp famine and did for them completely. Who cannot pity such a time? Or who is so hard-hearted that he cannot weep for such misfortune?⁶

The author of this chronicle was in no doubt that England was being punished for the manifold sins of its people—and its king. Without Matilda there to boost her husband’s public image, he was more despised now than he had ever been.

The fate of Matilda’s sons—in particular her eldest—would have grieved her if she had lived to witness it. Robert’s rebellion against his father had been a source of great anxiety to her, but it was as nothing compared to the bitter infighting between her sons that would bring the empire she and William had created to the brink of ruin. The speed with which their relationships now completely unraveled again hints at the vital unifying role Matilda had played while she was alive.

Without her pacifying influence, the old hostilities between William and Robert flared anew.⁷ This time, Robert’s resentment was stoked by his father’s refusal to make clear his intentions with regard to the English succession. In theory, this should have passed to Robert, along with Normandy and Maine. But William himself had struggled to keep all three dominions under his control, and it was in large part thanks to the able government of his late wife that he had been able to do so. He was understandably reluctant to give England over to a son whose loyalty was highly questionable and whom he regarded as an incompetent fool.

In fact, the enmity was such that William was determined “Curthose” would never set foot on Norman soil again, and he banished him to permanent exile. Robert tried in vain to rally his former supporters within Normandy to his cause; none of them were interested. He had failed the last time, and there was no reason to suppose that this increasingly dissolute and ineffective exile now had either the means or the personal qualities to oust the formidable Conqueror from his duchy. Without their support, Robert was a good deal less appealing a prospect to William’s enemies.

With Robert apparently out of the picture, William focused on his younger sons. Having always favored William Rufus and Henry above their eldest brother, he was only too happy to install them in his place. Orderic Vitalis claims: “William Rufus and Henry who were obedient to their father earned his blessing, and for many years enjoyed the highest power in the kingdom and duchy.”⁸ The alacrity with which William arranged for the two young men to begin approving charters that would formerly have been Robert’s domain suggests that he had long wished (or even planned) to do so. William Rufus and Henry now became involved in the government of both Normandy and England, which made Robert’s prospects of inheriting anything seem distant indeed. The ease with which the duke was now able to supplant his eldest son proves just how great a role Matilda had played in protecting Robert’s rights. She had been his most powerful advocate at the ducal court, and without her influence, he found himself entirely at the mercy of his father’s will.

The life of the ducal family in the immediate aftermath of Matilda’s death may have been dominated by the revival of hostility between William and Robert, but there was also cause for celebration. In the autumn of 1086, William and Matilda’s daughter Constance was betrothed to Alan IV Fergant, Count of Brittany. The wedding, which took place in either Caen or Bayeux,⁹ brought Normandy an extremely valuable ally, for Brittany had long been a thorn in William’s side.¹⁰

But it would prove an all too brief respite. Around the time when his sister was exchanging her vows with the count of Brittany, Robert returned to northern France. It is an indication of just how embattled William now felt that, rather than dismissing his eldest son as ineffective, he immediately went on the offensive. The focus of the duke’s attack was the French Vexin, a strategically important region close to Rouen on the Norman border that was under King Philip’s authority.¹¹ In July 1087, his army sacked the town of Mantes, which had been used as a base from which to attack Normandy in the past. The ferocity with which William fought was astonishing for a man of sixty, and he was every bit as brutal—if not more so—as he had been during any of the campaigns he had fought throughout his long career.

However, during the sack, the great warrior was suddenly taken ill. He seems to have sustained an internal injury when his horse tried to leap a ditch and the pommel of his saddle was driven into his heavy stomach, which was protruding over the front.¹² Racked by pain, William was forced to order a retreat. Having left the field of conflict, he gave way to his injuries. Jumièges tells how he was “overcome by nausea; his stomach rejected food and drink, his breathing became increasingly difficult and, shaken by sobs, his strength deserted him.”¹³ The duke was taken back to his palace at Rouen, where “the malady increased” and he was obliged to retire to bed.¹⁴ A short while later, he was moved to the nearby priory of St.-Gervais. The official reason was that he needed some peace and quiet away from the city, but the choice of a religious house was significant. It was obvious to everyone around him that the great Conqueror was dying.

William himself knew it, and he railed against death as he would the bitterest of enemies.¹⁵ The prospect of what would happen to his dominions once he had gone intensified his anguish, for he lamented “that after his death his homeland of Normandy would be plunged into misery.”¹⁶ His rebellious son was no doubt foremost in his mind as he contemplated this gloomy prospect. Rather than halting his campaign upon hearing of his father’s illness, Robert was even now attacking Normandy’s borders with the aid of King Philip. His younger brothers, meanwhile, were playing the dutiful sons at St.-Gervais.

Summoning the archbishop of Rouen, the dying Conqueror decreed his wishes for the future of his dominions. He ordered that William Rufus should make haste to England to receive the crown. Triumphant at having superseded his elder brother, Rufus embarked for England straightaway. By contrast, the archbishop and the nobles who were present were aghast at William’s apparent resolve to deny Curthose his rightful inheritance, and “feared that he [William] would remain implacable towards his eldest son Robert, knowing that a wound frequently cut or cauterized causes sharper pain to the wounded.” They urged upon him the fact that they had already sworn oaths of allegiance to the young man, and that these could not be broken without a loss of honor. Eventually, and with great reluctance, William gave in to their persuasions. Mustering his strength, he told the anxious throng: “Because he does not want to come or he spurns to come in order to apologise, I shall do what I think is correct. With you and God as my witnesses I forgive him all the sins he has committed against me, and I grant him all the duchy of Normandy.”¹⁷

Shortly after making this bequest, in the early hours of September 9, the mighty Conqueror conceded defeat in this, his last earthly battle.¹⁸ Orderic describes how the late duke’s chamber was robbed by his servants, and his corpse was left “almost naked” on the floor.¹⁹ Such disrespect would never have been allowed if Matilda had been alive.

William had decreed that his final resting place should be his abbey of St.-Étienne in Caen. A country knight named Herluin²⁰ took on the task of organizing the funeral out of kindness, but it was hardly the lavish occasion that might be expected for such a formidable ruler. The duke’s body was conveyed “without any ceremony … in a small boat down the Seine.” Even the place that was chosen for the internment was disputed by a “yokel” named Ascelin fitzArthur, who claimed that William had stolen the land from him.²¹ Ascelin was pacified only when William’s youngest son, Henry, recompensed him for the loss.

The occasion fell woefully short of the dignity and honor that should have been accorded the late king. It was attended by scores of ecclesiastics but, according to Malmesbury, very few laymen. Neither was his family well represented. William Rufus was already on his way to England, “thinking it more to the purpose to secure his own future interests than to attend the burial of his father’s body.”²² Robert had not yet returned from waging war against Normandy. Only their younger brother, Henry, was at the ceremony.

As well as being poorly attended, the funeral also degenerated into the same chaos that had marked William’s coronation more than twenty years before. During the ceremony, one of the houses in the city caught fire, “sending up great balls of flame.”²³ The blaze quickly spread to neighboring houses, and the congregation of St.-Étienne was seized with panic. Many of the guests fled, leaving the monks to lay their late ruler hastily to rest.²⁴ Then, as they attempted to force William’s bloated corpse into a sarcophagus that was too small, the body suddenly burst open, emitting “an intolerable stench that soon filled the entire church.” The presiding ecclesiastics hastily concluded the last rites and took flight. In describing these events, Orderic mused that this once all-powerful Conqueror was reduced to nothing by such indignities.²⁵ Without Matilda, the calm and brilliant controller of public spectacle, William’s funeral had been a woeful ceremony, wholly unfit for a king.

Within weeks of the Conqueror’s death, Normandy was on the brink of civil war, and the fragile cross-Channel realm that he and Matilda had created looked set to collapse. Robert soon justified his father’s misgivings by proving a dissolute and ineffective ruler in Normandy, and his authority was easily circumvented by the nobility. Although he and William Rufus had reached an uneasy truce by agreeing to be each other’s heir, upon the latter’s untimely death in 1100, their younger brother Henry seized the crown of England. Robert made a number of unsuccessful attempts to claim what he saw as his rightful inheritance, but he could barely keep hold of Normandy, let alone wrest England from his much more capable brother.

The rapid disintegration of William’s regime during the last years of his life and in the immediate aftermath of his death reveals its underlying fragility. But this regime had been the envy of the world during Matilda’s lifetime. Her efficacy as regent of Normandy and queen of England had been essential to William’s exercise of power on both sides of the Channel. She was the vital ingredient in his success, and without her, the balance that was so crucial to his power broke down irretrievably. If Matilda had outlived her husband, it seems almost certain that his final years and the future of his domains would have been more secure.