Source.—Florence of Worcester, Chronicon, ed. Thorpe, vol. ii., p. 44.

On 4 August ... William the younger, king of the English, while hunting in the New Forest, which is called Ytene in the language of the English, was struck by an arrow carelessly aimed by a Frenchman, Walter, surnamed Tyrel, and died; and his body was carried to Winchester and buried in the old minster in the church of St. Peter. His fate astonished none, for popular report affirmed it to proceed from the great strength and vengeance of God. For in ancient times, to wit, in the days of king Edward and other kings of England, his predecessors, the same district flourished exceedingly with God-fearing inhabitants and with churches; but, at the command of king William the elder, the men were driven away, the houses pulled down, the churches destroyed and the land given over to the habitation only of deer; and that was the cause, so folk believed, of the mischance. For Richard, brother of the same William the younger, had perished in the same forest some time before, and a little while afterward his nephew, Richard, son of Robert duke of the Normans, was struck, while hunting, by an arrow shot by one of his knights, and perished. In the place where the king fell a church had stood in former times, but, as we said before, it was destroyed in the time of his father.

In the days of the same king ... there were many portents in the sun, the moon and the stars; the sea, too, often overflowed the shore and drowned men and beasts, and swept away many towns and houses; in the county of Berkshire, before his death, blood flowed from a well for three weeks; the devil also showed himself to many Normans in horrible shape in the woods, and spoke with them touching the king and Ranulf (Flambard) and certain other persons. And no wonder, for in their time almost all legal justice was silenced, and in causes before the courts money alone swayed the powers that were. In truth at that time many obeyed the king’s will rather than justice, and Ranulf, contrary to ecclesiastical law and the rule of his order (for he was a priest), took from the king at farm first abbeys, and then bishoprics, the prelates whereof were lately dead, and paid to him yearly therefrom large sums of money. His ingenuity and shrewdness were so active and in a short time became so useful, that the king appointed him justiciar and collector of the whole realm. In the enjoyment of such wide powers, everywhere throughout England he exacted fines from the rich and wealthy, despoiling them of their possessions and lands; and incessantly burdened the poor with heavy and unjust taxes, and in many ways, both before he received his bishopric and after, oppressed great and small alike, and that too, until the king’s death.