Great Seal of King William II of England (reigned 1087 – 1100).
William II was the second son of William the Conqueror. When his father died in 1087, he bequeathed his native Normandy to Robert Curthose, England to William Rufus, and five thousand pounds to Henry, his youngest.
William Rufus took the throne at the age of thirty. He neither married nor had any children, and was probably gay. He was as brutal as his father had been, but lacked a level-headed strength of purpose, and could never be trusted to keep a treaty.
He desperately wanted to possess Normandy as well as England, and soon became known as an exceptionally greedy king who extracted as much money from the English as he could, and allowed his followers to to the same.
Lanfranc, the Archbishop of Canterbury, died in 1089. The last remaining influence on William was gone, and he proceeded to treat the Church's possessions as if they were his own. He fell ill shortly afterwards, and promised to mend his ways, but this did not last long.
In 1094, he organized an episode of Normandy, but the Normans (in Britain) greatly distrusted him, and refused to join in. William enlisted the English instead, but when they arrived at Hastings with 10 shillings each for provisions, William took the money and sent them all home.
In 1097, Robert Curthose joined the First Crusade. To raise the money, he leased Normandy to William for 10,000 marks. William got the money by acts of extortion against landlords (who robbed their peasants to pay), and by pillaging shrines of the Church. By now, he was on dreadful terms with just about anyone.
William II was killed (or possibly murdered) in 1100 while hunting in the New Forest. The clergy refused to carry out services for him. It was said that, “He was loathsome to almost all his people, and abominable to God.”
