Tlie Er\(l<')i<-e of Alt mix. 



deuces point but one way. All tend to show, as plainly as 

 possible, that Rufus fell by no chance, but by a conspiracy of 

 his prelates, who held the crozier in one, and the battle-axe 



though he gives no other reason; and which by itself, resting on nothing 

 further, would carry no weight. His account, though, of the general 

 dett-station of the Red King immediately before his death, as also the 

 conversation of Hugh, Abbot of Cluny, with Ansehn (p. 68), is very sug- 

 gestive, especially by the way in which it is introduced. Alanus must 

 have possessed far too shrewd an intellect to have believed in Merlin; 

 though it might have suited his purpose to have appeared to have so done, 

 as a veil and a blin;3, so that he might better say what his high position 

 and authority would not in any other form have well permitted, but which 

 still give to many points, as here, enormous significance and weight. 



The first person besides Alanus who seems to hint at treachery is 

 Nicander Nucius {Second Book of Travels, published by the Camden 

 Society, pp. 34, 35), but his account is too vague to be of any service. We 

 should, however, constantly bear in mind, with Lappenberg, that the best 

 authority, The Chronicle, simply relates that the King was shot at the 

 chase by one of his friends, without any allusion to an accident. Not one 

 word or fact else is given, except the appearance of a pool of blood in 

 Berkshire (at Finchhamstead, according to William of Malmesbury), which 

 we know, from other sources, was supposed to foretell some calamity, and 

 which phenomenon science now resolves into merely some species of 

 alga, probably either Palmella cruerita or Hamatococcus sanguineus. 

 Eadmer, with some others, in his Historia Novorum, lib. ii. (IMigne : 

 Patrologicc Cursus Completus, torn. clix. p. 422 B) mentions a report, 

 prevalent at the time, that the King accidentally stumbled on an arrow. 

 Then follows, in the very next book (Migne, as before, p. 423 B), a 

 singular passage, to be found also in his Life of Anselm, book ii. ch. vi. 

 (Migne, as before, torn, clviii. p. 108 D), where, on the news of the Red 

 King's death, Anselm bursts into tears, and, with sobs, cries, " Quod si 

 hoc efficere posset, multo magis eligeret se ipsum corpore, quam illud, sicut 

 erat, mortuum esse." Whether this wish sprang from the effects of some 

 pangs of conscience as to William's death, or from an honourable feeling of 

 natural emotion under the circumstances, as suggested by Sharon Turner, 

 it is hard to determine. From John of Salisbury (Vita Anselmi, pars ii., 

 cap. xi., in Wharton's Anglia Sacra, torn. ii. p. 169), it would seem that 

 Anselm thought that he was the direct cause, through God, of his death. 



103 



