John Gillingham

As an investment on which he expected a good return, Robert Bloet had been willing to pay £5,000 for his bishopric. Henry of Huntingdon remembered being in Bishop Robert’s household: ‘the handsome knights, noble young men, expensive horses, his golden and gilt dishes, the number of courses, the splendour of his servants, the purple garments and the satins’.

The major churches were immensely rich. Approximately one-quarter of the wealth of all England as measured in Domesday Book belonged to them.

But despite dangers to themselves, rulers and would-be rulers were expected to share the risks when they sent their followers to fight, not stay behind their desks as rulers do today. For as long as this expectation prevailed, it was virtually impossible for women to become monarchs.

Hunting, like war, was dangerous. One of Rufus’ older brothers, Richard, died as a result of injuries suffered while hunting in the New Forest. In consequence Rufus became the second oldest of the three surviving brothers: Robert, William, Henry. Their rivalry was to shape the politics of a generation.

None of this is to say that Rufus was not homosexual. But if he were, there is no evidence for it. Too many historians—though not all, it should be said—have simply inherited a lurid tradition and embellished it.

In eleventh-century Europe, kingdoms, like other landed estates, were family firms and, as in modern family businesses, there was no fixed order of succession. At any time a struggle for control could pit brother against brother, nephew against uncle or, as here, son against father. Victory brought massive rewards. We know from Domesday Book (1086) that the winner in this game of thrones got no less than 20 per cent of all the land in England.

There is nothing to indicate that Rufus learned to read or write—unlike Henry, who did, whether because he had originally been intended for the priesthood, or because he was ten years younger than Rufus, in a world of changing expectations. By the 1120s the saying ‘an illiterate king is an ass wearing a crown’ had become proverbial.

Opinion against ordeals hardened during the twelfth century, and in 1215 the pope prohibited priests from taking part in them, a ban which effectively ended the practice, leading, in Britain, to trial by jury instead.