William the Conqueror's funeral stopped when a man said the church stood on his father's stolen land

William was injured against the pommel of his saddle while taking the town of Mantes in July 1087. On his deathbed at Rouen he divided his estate: Normandy to his eldest son Robert, England to William Rufus, and to his youngest son Henry five thousand pounds of silver, according to the chronicler Orderic Vitalis. The sons left. The body was left unattended, and the Rouen clergy sent it to Caen, to the Abbaye-aux-Hommes he had founded. During the funeral a local man stood up and said the church was built on land seized from his father. The claim was accepted and he was paid on the spot, 60 shillings for the grave, with Henry paying more later. William of Malmesbury puts the payment at £100. Then the body would not fit the stone sarcophagus. Orderic writes that when it was forced in, "the swollen bowels burst, and an intolerable stench" filled the church. Orderic wrote about 65 years after the event. The tomb was opened on papal orders in 1522. In 1562, in the Wars of Religion, it was opened again and the bones were scattered except one thigh bone. The later monument was destroyed in the French Revolution. In 2026 a single thigh bone lies under a 19th-century marble slab in the Abbey of Saint-Étienne, Caen. The Bayeux Tapestry is on loan to the British Museum from 10 September 2026 to 11 July 2027.