The money which William Rufus paid to his brother for the possession of Normandy was obtained by inflicting new burdens and exactions upon his people. "All this," says Holinshed, "was grievous and intolerable, as well to the spirituality as temporality, so that divers bishops and abbesses, who had already made away with some of their chalices and church jewels to pay the king, made now plain answer that they were not able to help him with any more; unto whom, on the other side, as the report went, the king said again, 'Have you not, I beseech you, coffins of gold and silver, full of dead men's bones?' meaning the shrines in which the relics of saints were enclosed." The king also argued that there was no sacrilege in taking money obtained from such a source, for the purpose of prosecuting a holy war, and delivering the sepulchre of Christ from the hands of the infidel. He did not choose to remember that the expedition to the Holy Land was one in which he had no part, and that he required the money, not for that purpose, but to obtain a worldly possession. If the argument carried little weight, the force by which it was backed was not to be resisted, and the spoils of the altar, as well as the hoards of civilians, were seized in the king's name. Robert, having resigned his dukedom, and set out for the Holy Land, William passed over into Normandy to take possession. He was received with welcome by the Norman nobles, who, if not well disposed towards their new sovereign were overawed by his power or bought by his gold. The people of Maine, however, rose in revolt, and, headed by Helie, the Lord of La Flèche, the insurrection assumed an importance which rendered it necessary for Rufus to take energetic measures for its repression. He entered Maine at the head of a large force, but on the interference of the Count of Anjou and Philip of France, he consented to a truce with the insurgents, and Helie, having been taken prisoner, was set at liberty, on tendering his submission, and giving up of Le Mans into the king's hands. (A.D. 1099.)