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innocent, and is consistent with Henry himself being the real assassin.
    Henry and Walter Tirel are not the only suspects. There were many barons who had plotted against William during the previous decade and some were in the hunting party; one of them could have been the assassin. One family in particular was suspected at the time, and for that reason should be given serious consideration. The Conqueror put his trust in Richard de Clare, appointing him to his ruling council and giving him the title Chief Justiciar. In this exalted position, Richard acted as the king’s regent while William was across the Channel in Normandy. Immediately after William the Conqueror’s death, Richard de Clare took part in a barons’ rebellion that was intended to oust William Rufus and put Robert on the English throne. The rebellion failed partly because Rufus was a powerful warrior, partly because a significant number of Norman barons in England still supported him at that time.
    William Rufus attacked the rebels’ strongholds at Rochester, Pevensey and Tonbridge. Tonbridge Castle was owned by Richard de Clare. After a two-day siege at Tonbridge, de Clare was obliged to surrender to the king and he was punished by having both his castle and the town of Tonbridge beside it burnt down. De Clare was in addition forced to retire to a monastery, where he died three years later. Richard de Clare’s daughter Adelize, interestingly, was married to Walter Tirel.
    Richard de Clare was succeeded by his son Gilbert, who was allowed to inherit the family estates, including the burnt-out town of Tonbridge and its wrecked castle. Gilbert was more circumspect than his father, though not necessarily out of any liking for the king. He fought beside the king in the campaign against the Scots and possibly against the Welsh, too. Gilbert de Clare and his younger brother Roger were both members of the fateful hunting party in the New Forest. Either one of them could have been persuaded to assassinate the king for Henry. Whether either of them fired the arrow, it is probable that they were privy to the conspiracy. There was a flurry of activity following William’s death. Henry rushed to Winchester to gain control of the royal treasury; he had himself crowned king as quickly as possible. In this race to present both England and his elder brother with a fait accompli, Henry was given conspicuous support by the de Clare brothers. Access to the treasury was vital for a number of reasons, not least to enable Henry to buy off his thwarted brother with an annual pension of £2,000, the price of his compliance with the coup.
    The de Clares were such conspicuous supporters of the new king, and their father Richard de Clare had been so flagrantly humiliated by William, that many people suspected at the time that the de Clares had plotted the murder with Henry. They were rewarded on a scale suggesting that this was the case.
    It seems unlikely that the official Henrician version of what happened is true. If Tirel and the king were really the only two men in that part of the wood, who were the witnesses who supplied the colourful details about the king’s death? Obviously the king himself did not live long enough to give any account of what happened, and we know from Abbot Suger’s comments that Tirel himself repeatedly denied that he was anywhere near the scene, so he could not possibly have supplied the circumstantial detail either.
    This is how William of Malmesbury described the event in the 1120s, just twenty years