The last year of the Red King's reign had been peaceful. The Witan gathered to meet him at Westminster and Winchester and Gloucester, and he reigned unchallenged from Scotland to Maine, and there was truce with the French king at Paris. One August morning he went out to the chase after a jolly night at one of the royal hunting-lodges. The party scattered in different directions, and the king and Sir Walter Tyrrel, a famous sportsman, were seen riding away together, and their dogs after them. That night a poor forester, a lime-burner, was going [Pg354] through the forest with his clumsy cart, and stumbled over the king's body, which lay among the ferns with an arrow deep in the breast. He lifted it into the cart and carried it to Winchester, where it was buried next day with little sorrow. There were few bells tolled and few prayers said, for the priests owed little to any friendliness of William Rufus. There were many stories told about his death. Tyrrel said that the arrow was shot by an unknown hand, and that he had run away for fear that people should accuse him of the murder, which they certainly did! Others said that Tyrrel shot at a stag and the arrow glanced aside from an oak, but nobody knows now, and in those days too many people were glad that the king was dead, to ask many questions or to try to punish any one. Robert might have claimed the kingdom now because of the old agreement, but he was still in the East fighting for Jerusalem. Henry Beauclerc had been one of the huntsmen that fatal morning, so he hurried to Winchester and claimed the crown. He made more good promises than any of his predecessors, and the people liked him because he was English-born, and so they made another Norman king. Henry Beauclerc reigned over England thirty-five years, and won himself another name of the Lion of Justice. He did not treat his brother Robert justly, however he may have deserved his title in other ways; but he had a zoölogical garden and brought wild beasts from different quarters of the earth, and he fostered a famous love of learning, [Pg355] and put Ralph Flambard in the Tower as soon as he possibly could, and more than all, chose an excellent woman for his wife, Maud, the good daughter of the Scottish King Malcolm. He was an untruthful man, but a great man for all that, and made a better king than some that England had already endured. In many ways his reign was a gain to England. There was a distinct advance in national life, and while the English groaned under his tyranny they could not help seeing that he sought for quietness and order and was their best champion against the worse tyranny of the nobles. Mr. Freeman believes that the Saxon element was the permanent one in English history, and that the Norman conquest simply modified it somewhat and was a temporary influence brought to bear for its improvement. It is useless to argue the question with such odds of learning and thought as his against