Following the defeat of Harold Godwineson at Hastings, William, duke of Normandy, takes the throne and sets about dispossessing English landholders while making strenuous efforts to pacify his new realm with considerable violence, especially in the north. This brings about an uprising led by Hereward, who has some success in his East Anglian rebellion but is ultimately killed in a surprise attack by William’s forces (5457–710). His death spells the end of English dissent, and William Rufus, in Gaimar’s account, faces no such opposition upon his accession after his father’s passing in 1087. In the Estoire’s account, Rufus quickly asserts himself in his English domains, but Gaimar’s focus is on his struggle to keep the restive province of Maine under control. This process appears to be going well for the king, but his expansionist activities are brought to an abrupt halt with his death in the New Forest in 1100, slain by an arrow that appears to have been fired – allegedly in error – by his boon companion, Walter Tirel.

William I’s opportunism, brutal suppression of his new subjects, and readiness to break his word combine to form an unattractive portrait, and Gaimar’s focus during this reign on the outlawed Englishman Hereward is significant. Hereward’s depiction in the Estoire is not one of unqualified approbation, despite his courage. He too is capable of plunder and great violence, while his demise is brought about by the distracting romantic attentions of another Ælfthryth. His killing is an act of betrayal that prepares the way for the pacification of England under the Conqueror’s son, William Rufus.

Rufus is the last of England’s great eleventh-century statesmen, yet, as his biographer Emma Mason notes, he also displays traits that will come to characterise the rulers of the 1100s. His reign is the end point of the Estoire, and, as such, serves as the final exemplar of Gaimar’s views on kingship. All the models we have previously seen appear again in this account of his reign, the focus of which is on Rufus’s attempts to pacify his borders after the persistent unrest in England that has marred his father’s reign has been, in Gaimar’s account, swiftly quelled.