William II of England - England and France

England and France

The division of William the Conqueror's lands into two parts presented a dilemma for those nobles who held land on both sides of the Channel. Since the younger William and his brother Robert were natural rivals, these nobles worried that they could not hope to please both of their lords, and thus ran the risk of losing the favour of one ruler or the other, or both. The only solution, as they saw it, was to unite England and Normandy once more under one ruler. The pursuit of this aim led them to revolt against William in favour of Robert in the Rebellion of 1088, under the leadership of the powerful Bishop Odo of Bayeux, who was a half-brother of William the Conqueror. As Robert failed to appear in England to rally his supporters, William won the support of the English with silver and promises of better government, and defeated the rebellion, thus securing his authority. In 1091 he invaded Normandy, crushing Robert's forces and forcing him to cede a portion of his lands. The two made up their differences and William agreed to help Robert recover lands lost to France, notably Le Maine. This plan was later abandoned, but William continued to pursue a ferociously warlike defence of his French possessions and interests to the end of his life, exemplified by his response to the attempt by Elias de la Flèche, Count of Maine, to take Le Mans in 1099.

Thus William Rufus was secure in what was then the most powerful kingdom in Europe, given the contemporary eclipse of the Salian emperors. As in Normandy, his bishops and abbots were bound to him by feudal obligations; and his right of investiture in the Norman tradition prevailed within his kingdom, during the age of the Investiture Controversy that brought excommunication upon the Salian Emperor Henry IV. Anglo-Norman royal institutions reached an efficiency previously unknown in medieval Europe, and the king's personal power, through an effective and loyal chancery, penetrated to the local level to an extent unmatched in France. Without the Capetians' ideological trappings of an anointed monarchy forever entangled with the hierarchy of the Church, the king's administration and law unified the realm, rendering him relatively impervious to papal condemnation.