William II., king of England, called Rufus, third, and second surviving, son of William the Conqueror, was born before 1066. On his father's death in 1087 he was crowned king at Westminster. The next year many of the Norman nobles in England, with the king's uncle Odo, Bishop of Bayeux and Earl of Kent, at their head, rebelled against him, in favour of his eldest brother Robert, Duke of Normandy; for they knew that Rufus would be a stern master, whereas in Robert they would have a king that would not trouble himself to enforce order. Rufus appealed to the English people for help, promising them good government and a relaxation of the forest laws and of fiscal burdens. They flocked to his standard, the bishops upheld his cause, and the rebellion was suppressed. He did not keep his promises; he taxed the people heavily, maintained the forests, and punished offences against the forest laws with death. He was an able man and a strong ruler, but was violent, boastful, profane, and unspeakably immoral. Always full of magnificent designs, he lacked stability of purpose, and consequently his achievements, though great in themselves, fell short of his plans. He largely employed mercenary soldiers, and allowed them to ill-use his people. By the agency of his justiciary, Randolf Flambard, he oppressed his tenants-in-chief by abusing his rights as feudal lord, making them pay him excessive sums by way of 'relief' on entering on their estates, and so on. The lesser people groaned under the harsh administration of the law, and seem to have had to suffer to make good what the king took from their lords. Treating ecclesiastical benefices as far as possible like lay fiefs, Rufus sold them, and kept them vacant, seizing their revenues during vacancy. Besides other bishoprics the see of Canterbury had been vacant for four years when, in 1093, he fell sick, repented, and appointed Anselm, a holy and learned man, to the archbishopric. When Rufus recovered he resumed his evil life, and quarrelled with Anselm because he maintained the rights and liberties of the church. At the Council of Rockingham, where in 1095 the king tried to crush his resistance, the primate, though deserted by his suffragans, was defended by the lay lords; but in 1097 Anselm, despairing of justice in England, departed to lay his cause before the pope, and did not return again until after the king's death.
Mindful of the trouble that Robert had brought upon him in England, Rufus made war upon him in Normandy, where the duke's lax rule had led to much confusion. Peace was made in 1091, and the duke and king joined in besieging their brother Henry in Mont St Michel, and forced him to surrender. In 1094 Rufus again invaded Normandy, which was rent by private wars. Impatient of his strong rule, some Norman lords in England, headed by Robert of Mowbray, Earl of Northumberland, raised a rebellion against him at home, which was speedily crushed. His power was strengthened in 1096 by the acquisition of Normandy, which was mortgaged to him by the duke, and which he soon brought into order. The feudal lords in England were no longer able to expect help against him from Normandy, and he gained a double hold over such of them as had lands on both sides of the Channel. The acquisition of Normandy led him to make an attempt to conquer the adjoining French district of Vexin, but in this he was unsuccessful. In 1098 he reconquered Maine, which Robert had lost. The next year its former count, Helias, recovered it, and
Rufus, though he again invaded Maine and won back its capital, Le Mans, did not complete the reconquest of the county. This was characteristic of him; he had wonderful energy, but little perseverance, and after entering on a war with vigour would let it die out before he had fully accomplished his purpose. At home he enlarged his kingdom by the conquest of Carlisle and its district from its Scandinavian lord. This conquest probably offended Malcolm, king of Scotland, who invaded Northumberland in 1093, and was slain at Alnwick. Rufus upheld the right of Malcolm's eldest son Duncan, who had lived at his court, against his uncle, and later favoured the cause of Duncan's half-brother Edgar, who, after gaining the kingdom, remained on good terms with England. Rufus thrice invaded Wales, twice with signal ill-success, and, finding that he could not subdue it by leading an army against it, built castles on the borders. The lords of the border castles kept up a continual warfare with the Welsh, conquering the land piecemeal without costing the king anything. Towards the end of the reign, however, the Welsh won back some districts that they had lost. In 1100 Rufus was planning the acquisition of Aquitaine, which its duke proposed to pledge to him. But as he was hunting in the New Forest on 2d August he was slain accidentally, as is most probable, by an arrow shot by one of his companions named Walter Tirel. He was buried in Winchester Cathedral without any religious service; for his wickedness had been great, and men looked on his death as a judgment of God. He was never married.
See 'Orderic,' ed. by Duchesne; Eadmer's Hist. Nov., ed. by Migne; Saxon Chronicle, ed. by Plummer; 'Henry of Huntingdon' (Rolls series); William of Malmesbury's Gesta Regum (Rolls series); and modern writers—Freeman's Reign of William Rufus; Lappenberg's Norman Kings, ed. by Thorpe.