Robert Curthose, 1087–1106 (with the Norman rule of William Rufus, 1096–1100)

IT is difficult to gain a clear picture of Robert Curthose as either a man or a ruler. Almost all the writers that wrote about his reign did so after he had lost his duchy, and that coloured their portraits of him. As God had chosen to punish Curthose and to promote Henry I, the monastic chroniclers in particular were left to find suitable explanations for these divine actions. They found them in Curthose's ineptitude and/or his failure to protect the Church, or else in his refusal to take the throne of Jerusalem when it was offered to him at the end of the First Crusade. Thus Orderic Vitalis, who wrote by far the fullest account of the reign, criticized Curthose's sloth, his prodigality, and lack of foresight, and remarked upon the duke's inability to garrison his subjects’ castles, uphold the Truce of God, and do justice in accordance with the obligations of Christian rulership and, more specifically, with the lists of ducal rights laid down in the Consuetudines et iusticie of 1091 or 1096. Orderic's condemnation of Curthose's rule was thus carefully constructed and intended to chime with contemporaries’ expectations of ducal power – especially after their long experience of Henry I's effective government. But some secular writers took a different tack and criticized the infidelity of Robert's supporters. Thus Serlo of Bayeux, writing immediately after Henry I's siege of Bayeux in 1105, condemned the defenders of the city for their failure to protect the city, but did not condemn Curthose in any way. Wace, writing in the 1170s, went even further. He portrayed Henry I as an unjustified usurper – although precisely why he did so may be obscured by the fact that his poem stops in its tracks at this point. Not everyone remembered Curthose as a poor ruler, then. To some, he was a victim of treachery and his brother's overweening ambition.

Nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century historians who first sketched out the shape of the reign were more inclined to follow Orderic than those quieter voices who defended Curthose's record.