Welcome to the British History Podcast. My name is Jamie, and this is episode 484, Final Destination, The New Forest.

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Okay, when we left off, Rufus had just thrown himself a big look at me celebration.

And the prevailing response appears to have been, oh yeah, man, we see you.

And that wasn't even the worst part of his year.

Over in Maine, Helius was back to calling himself a count,

and it even started arming up for the fight that Rufus had promised him. Over in North Wales,

King Griffith was back on the throne, having ejected Earl Hugh Lupus from Gwyneth yet again.

And really, the only thing that had swung in the king's favor recently was all the way in Rome,

when Anselm had somehow managed to damage his own cause, and apparently the Pope's will to live.

So the point I'm getting at here is that in 1099, things were going great.

But while I think we can't all agree that Rufus was at a low point in terms of popularity and allies,

there was one person in England who was held in even less regard, Ranulf flambard. You see, folks were

pretty sure that Ranulf was behind a lot of the things that they hated about Rufus's government.

And frankly, even if he wasn't behind it, he was often the one implementing those things, which was just as bad.

And on top of that, a ton of the things that Anselm had traveled to Rome to complain to the Pope about

were things that Ranoff specifically had been doing.

But it had just gotten worse, because at that Whitsun party, where the king tried to look

cool and failed, and instead multiple earls were openly talking trash, and even the Pieda

...