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WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR 


WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEKOE 


BY 

EDWAED   A.  FEEEMAN 

D.C.L.,  LL.D. 

REGIU8   PROFESSOR  OF  MODERN   HISTORY   IN   THE  UNIVERSITY   OF  OXFORD 


MACMILLAN  AND  CO.,  LIMITED 

NEW  YORK :  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 
1907 

A II  rights  reserved 


f\ 


I'irst  Edition  printed  March  1888 
Reprinted  July  1888,  1890,  1894,  1898,  1903,  1907 


PREFACE 

THIS  small  volume,  written  as  the  first  of  a  series,  is 
meant  to  fill  quite  another  place  from  the  Short  History 
of  the  Norman  Conquest,  by  the  same  author.  That  was 
a  narrative  of  events  reaching  over  a  considerable  time. 
This  is  the  portrait  of  a  man  in  his  personal  character, 
a  man  whose  life  takes  up  only  a  part  of  the  time 
treated  of  in  the  other  work.  We  have  now  to  look 
on  William  as  one  who,  though  stranger  and  conqueror, 
is  yet  worthily  entitled  to  a  place  on  the  list  of  English 
statesmen.  There  is  perhaps  no  man  before  or  after 
him  whose  personal  character  and  personal  will  have 
had  so  direct  an  effect  on  the  course  which  the  laws  and 
constitution  of  England  have  taken  since  his  time. 
Norman  as  a  Conqueror,  as  a  statesman  he  is  English, 
and,  on  this  side  of  him  at  least,  he  worthily  begins 
the  series. 

16  ST.  GILES',  OXFORD 
6th  February  1888. 


' 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTEK    I  PAQF 

INTRODUCTION      ....  1 


CHAPTER    II 

THE  EARLY  YEARS  OF  WILLIAM 


CHAPTER    III 
WILLIAM'S  FIRST  VISIT  TO  ENGLAND  .....       26 

CHAPTER    IV 
THE  REIGN  OF  WILLIAM  IN  NORMANDY    ....       34 

CHAPTER   V 
HAROLD'S  OATH  TO  WILLIAM 61 

CHAPTER    VI 
THE  NEGOTIATIONS  OF  DUKE  WILLIAM      ....       63 


viii  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER    VII 

WILLIAM'S  INVASION  or  ENGLAND  , .        .       82 

CHAPTER    VIII 

THE  CONQUEST  OF  ENGLAND       .        .         ,        .        .        .     100 

CHAPTER    IX 

THE  SETTLEMENT  OF  ENGLAND   .         .        .        .        .         .     122 

CHAPTER   X 
THE  REVOLTS  AGAINST  WILLIAM         ....  147 

CHAPTER   XI 
THE  LAST  YEARS  OF  WILLIAM 181 


CHAPTER  I. 

INTRODUCTION. 

THE  history  of  England,  like  the  land  and  its  people, 
has  been  specially  insular,  and  yet  no  land  has  under- 
gone deeper  influences  from  without.  No  land  has 
owed  more  than  England  to  the  personal  action  of  men 
not  of  native  birth.  Britain  was  truly  called  another 
world,  in  opposition  to  the  world  of  the  European 
mainland,  the  world  of  Rome.  In  every  age  the  history 
of  Britain  is  the  history  of  an  island,  of  an  island  great 
enough  to  form  a  world  of  itself.  In  speaking  of  Celts 
or  Teutons  in  Britain,  we  are  speaking,  not  simply  of 
Celts  and  Teutons,  but  of  Celts  and  Teutons  parted  from 
their  kinsfolk  on  the  mainland,  and  brought  under  the 
common  influences  of  an  island  world.  The  land  has 
seen  several  settlements  from  outside,  but  the  settlers 
have  always  been  brought  under  the  spell  of  their  insular 
position.  Whenever  settlement  has  not  meant  displace- 
ment, the  new  comers  have  been  assimilated  by  the 
existing  people  of  the  land.  When  it  has  meant 
displacement,  they  have  still  become  islanders,  marked  off 
from  those  whom  they  left  behind  by  characteristics  which 
were  the  direct  result  of  settlement  in  an  island  world. 

The  history  of  Britain  then,  and  specially  the  history 
of  England,  has  been  largely  a  history  of  elements 

(£  B 


2  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP. 

absorbed  and  assimilated  from  without.  But  each  of 
those  elements  has  done  somewhat  to  modify  the  mass 
into  which  it  was  absorbed.  The  English  land  and 
nation  are  not  as  they  might  have  been  if  they  had  never 
in  later  times  absorbed  the  Fleming,  the  French  Hugue- 
not, the  German  Palatine.  Still  less  are  they  as  they 
might  have  been,  if  they  had  not  in  earlier  times  absorbed 
the  greater  elements  of  the  Dane  and  the  Norman. 
Both  were  assimilated ;  but  both  modified  the  character 
and  destiny  of  the  people  into  whose  substance  they 
were  absorbed.  The  conquerors  from  Normandy  were 
silently  and  peacefully  lost  in  the  greater  mass  of  the 
English  people ;  still  we  can  never  be  as  if  the  Norman 
had  never  come  among  us.  We  ever  bear  about  us  the 
signs  of  his  presence.  Our  colonists  have  carried  those 
signs  with  them  into  distant  lands,  to  remind  men  that 
settlers  in  America  and  Australia  came  from  a  land 
which  the  Norman  once  entered  as  a  conqueror.  But 
that  those  signs  of  his  presence  hold  the  place  which 
they  do  hold  in  our  mixed  political  being,  that,  badges 
of  conquest  as  they  are,  no  one  feels  them  to  be  badges 
of  conquest — all  this  comes  of  the  fact  that,  if  the 
Norman  came  as  a  conqueror,  he  came  as  a  conqueror  of 
a  special,  perhaps  almost  of  an  unique  kind.  The 
Norman  Conquest  of  England  has,  in  its  nature  and  in 
its  results,  no  exact  parallel  in  history.  And  that  it  has 
no  exact  parallel  in  history  is  largely  owing  to  the 
character  and  position  of  the  man  who  wrought  it. 
That  the  history  of  England  for  the  last  eight  hundred 
years  has  been  what  it  has  been  has  largely  come  of  the 
personal  character  of  a  single  man.  That  we  are  what 
we  are  to  this  day  largely  comes  of  the  fact  that  there 


i.  INTRODUCTION.  3 

was  a  moment  when  our  national  destiny  might  be  said 
to  hang  on  the  will  of  a  single  man,  and  that  that  man 
was  William,  surnamed  at  different  stages  of  his  life  and 
memory,  the  Bastard,  the  Conqueror,  and  the  Great. 

With  perfect  fitness  then  does  William  the  Norman, 
William  the  Norman  Conqueror  of  England,  take  his  place 
in  a  series  of  English  statesmen.  That  so  it  should  be  is 
characteristic  of  English  history.  Our  history  has  been 
largely  wrought  for  us  by  men  who  have  come  in  from 
without,  sometimes  as  conquerors,  sometimes  as  the  oppo- 
site of  conquerors ;  but  in  whatever  character  they  came, 
they  had  to  put  on  the  character  of  Englishmen,  and  to 
make  their  work  an  English  work.  From  whatever  land 
they  came,  on  whatever  mission  they  came,  as  statesmen 
they  were  English.  William,  the  greatest  of  his  class,  is 
still  but  a  member  of  a  class.  Along  with  him  we  must 
reckon  a  crowd  of  kings,  bishops,  and  high  officials  in 
many  ages  of  our  history.  Theodore  of  Tarsus  and 
Cnut  of  Denmark,  Lanfranc  of  Pavia  and  Anselm  of 
Aosta,  Randolf  Flambard  and  Roger  of  Salisbury, 
Henry  of  Anjou  and  Simon  of  Montfort,  are  all  written 
on  a  list  of  which  William  is  but  the  foremost.  The 
largest  number  come  in  William's  own  generation  and 
in  the  generations  just  before  and  after  it.  But  the 
breed  of  England's  adopted  children  and  rulers  never 
died  out.  The  name  of  William  the  Deliverer  stands, 
if  not  beside  that  of  his  namesake  the  Conqueror,  yet 
surely  alongside  of  the  lawgiver  from  Anjou.  And  we 
count  among  the  later  worthies  of  England  not  a  few 
men  sprung  from  other  lands,  who  did  and  are  doing 
their  work  among  us,  and  who,  as  statesmen  at  least, 
must  count  as  English.  As  we  look  along  the  whole 


4  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP. 

line,  even  among  the  conquering  kings  and  their  imme- 
diate instruments,  their  work  never  takes  the  shape  of  the 
rooting  up  of  the  earlier  institutions  of  the  land.  Those 
institutions  are  modified,  sometimes  silently  by  the  mere 
growth  of  events,  sometimes  formally  and  of  set  purpose. 
Old  institutions  get  new  names ;  new  institutions  are 
set  up  alongside  of  them.  But  the  old  ones  are  never 
swept  away  ;  they  sometimes  die  out ;  they  are  never 
abolished.  This  comes  largely  of  the  absorbing  and 
assimilating  power  of  the  island  world.  But  it  comes 
no  less  of  personal  character  and  personal  circumstances, 
and  pre-eminently  of  the  personal  character  of  the  Nor- 
man Conqueror  and  of  the  circumstances  in  which  he 
found  himself. 

Our  special  business  now  is  with  the  personal  acts 
and  character  of  William,  and  above  all  with  his  acts 
and  character  as  an  English  statesman.  But  the  Eng- 
lish reign  of  William  followed  on  his  earlier  Norman 
reign,  and  its  character  was  largely  the  result  of  his 
earlier  Norman  reign.  A  man  of  the  highest  natural 
gifts,  he  had  gone  through  such  a  schooling  from  his 
childhood  upwards  as  falls  to  the  lot  of  few  princes. 
Before  he  undertook  the  conquest  of  England,  he  had 
in  some  sort  to  work  the  conquest  of  Normandy.  Of 
the  ordinary  work  of  a  sovereign  in  a  warlike  age,  the 
defence  of  his  own  land,  the  annexation  of  other  lands, 
William  had  his  full  share.  WTith  the  land  of  his  over- 
lord he  had  dealings  of  the  most  opposite  kinds.  He 
had  to  call  in  the  help  of  the  French  king  to  put  down 
rebellion  in  the  Norman  duchy,  and  he  had  to  drive 
back  more  than  one  invasion  of  the  French  king  at  the 


i.  INTRODUCTION.  5 

head  of  an  united  Norman  people.  He  added  Domfront 
and  Maine  to  his  dominions,  and  the  conquest  of  Maine, 
the  work  as  much  of  statesmanship  as  of  warfare,  was 
the  rehearsal  of  the  conquest  of  England.  There,  under 
circumstances  strangely  like  those  of  England,  he  learned 
his  trade  as  conqueror,  he  learned  to  practise  on  a 
narrower  field  the  same  arts  which  he  afterwards  prac- 
tised on  a  wider.  But  after  all,  William's  own  duchy 
was  his  special  school ;  it  was  his  life  in  his  own  duchy 
which  specially  helped  to  make  him  what  he  was.  Sur- 
rounded by  trials  and  difficulties  almost  from  his  cradle, 
he  early  learned  the  art  of  enduring  trials  and  over- 
coming difficulties  ;  he  learned  how  to  deal  with  men ;  he 
learned  when  to  smite  and  when  to  spare ;  and  it  is  not 
a  little  to  his  honour  that,  in  the  long  course  of  such  a 
reign  as  his,  he  almost  always  showed  himself  far  more 
ready  to  spare  than  to  smite. 

Before  then  we  can  look  at  William  as  an  English 
statesman,  we  must  first  look  on  him  in  the  land  in  which 
he  learned  the  art  of  statesmanship.  We  must  see  how 
one  who  started  with  all  the  disadvantages  which  are 
implied  in  his  earlier  surname  of  the  Bastard  came  to 
win  and  to  deserve  his  later  surnames  of  the  Conqueror 
and  the  Great. 


CHAPTEE  II. 

THE   EARLY  YEARS    OF   WILLIAM. 

A.D.  1028-1051. 

IF  William's  early  reign  in  Normandy  was  his  time  of 
schooling  for  his  later  reign  in  England,  his  school  was  a 
stern  one,  and  his  schooling  began  early.  His  nominal 
reign  began  at  the  age  of  seven  years,  and  his  personal 
influence  on  events  began  long  before  he  had  reached  the 
usual  years  of  discretion.  And  the  events  of  his  minority 
might  well  harden  him,  while  they  could  not  corrupt 
him  in  the  way  in  which  so  many  princes  have  been  cor- 
rupted. His  whole  position,  political  and  personal,  could 
not  fail  to  have  its  effect  in  forming  the  man.  He  was 
Duke  of  the  Normans,  sixth  in  succession  from  Rolf, 
tha.iQunder,jof  the  Norman  state.  At  the  time  of  his 
accession,  rather  more  than  a  hundred  and  ten  years  had 
passed  since  plunderers,  occasionally  settlers,  from  Scan- 
dinavia, had  changed  into  acknowledged  members  of 
the  Western  or  Karolingian  kingdom.  The  Northmen, 
changed,  name  and  thing,  into  Normans,  were  now 

in    all   things   members_c)f tlfe   Christian.  jandJFr ench: 

sI^.aMn£,world.  But  French  as  the  Normans  of  William's 
day  had  become,  their  relation  to  the  kings  and  people  of 
France  was  not  a  friendly  one.  At  the  time  of  the  settle- 


CHAP.  ii.        THE  EARLY  YEARS  OF  WILLIAM.  7 

ment  of  Eolf,  the  western  kingdom  of  the  Franks  had  not 
yet  finally  passed  to  the  Duces  Francorum  at  Paris ;  Rolf 
became  the  man  of  the  Karolingian  king  at  Laon.  France 
and  Normandy  were  two  great^  duchies,  each  owning  a 
precarious  supremacy  in  the  king  of  the  West-Franks.  On 
the  one  hand,  Normandy  had  been  called  into  being  by  a 
frightful  dismemberment  of  the  French  duchy,  from  which 
the  original  Norman  settlement  had  been  cut  off.  France 
had  lost  in  Rouen  one  of  her  greatest  cities,  and  she  was 
cut  off  from  the  sea  and  from  the  lower  course  of  her  own 
river.  On  the  other  hand,  the  French  and  the  Norman 
dukes  had  found  their  interest  in  a  close  alliance ;  Nor- 
man support  had  done  much  to  transfer  the  crown  from 
Laon  to  Paris,  and  to  make  the  Dux  Francorum  and  the 
Rex  Francorum  the  same  person.  It  was  the  adoption  of 
the  French  speech  and  manners  by  the  Normans,  and 
their  steady  alliance  with  the  French  dukes,  which  finally 
determined  that  the  ruling  element  in  Gaul  should  be 
Romance  and  not  Teutonic,  and  that,  of  its  Romance 
elements,  it  should  be  French  and  not  Aquitanian.  _If_the 
creation  of  Normandy  had  done  much  to  weaken  France 
as  a  duchy,  it  had  done  not  a  little  towards  the  making  of  . 
jFrance  as  akingdom.  Laon  and  its  crown,  the  unde- 
fined influence  that  went  with  the  crown,  the  prospect 
of  future  advance  to  the  south,  had  been  bought  by  the 
loss  of  Rouen  and  of  the  mouth  of  the  Seine. 

There  was  much  therefore  at  the  time  of  William's 
accession  to  keep  the  French  kings  and  the  Norman 
dukes  on  friendly  terms.  The  old  alliance  Had  TTeen 
strengthened  by  recent  good  offices.  The  reigning  king, 
Henry  the  First,  owed  his  crown  to  the  help  of  William's 
father  Robert.  On  the  other  hand,  the  original  ground 


8  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP. 

of  the  alliance,  mutual  support  against  the  Karolingian 
king,  had  passed  away.  A  King  of  the  French  reigning 
at  Paris  was  more  likely  to  remember  what  the  Normans 
had  cost  him  as  duke  than  what  they  had  done  for  him 
as  king.  And  the  alliance  was  only  an  alliance  of 
princes.  The  mutual  dislike  between  the  people  of  the 
two  countries  was  strong.  The  Normans  had  learned 
French  ways,  but  French  and  Normans  had  not  become 
countrymen.  And,  as  the  fame  of  Normandy  grew, 
jealousy  wa£jdoubtless  mingled  with  dislike.  William, 
in  short,  inherited  a  very  doubtful  and  dangerous  state 
of  relations  towards  the  king  who  was  at  once  his  chief 
neighbour  and  his  overlord. 

More  doubtful  and  dangerous  still  were  the  relations 
which  the  young  duke  inherited  towards  the  people  of 
his  own  duchy  "and  the  kinsfoIF~67~hIs"  "owliHEouse. 
William  was  not  as  yet  the  Great  or  the  Conqueror,  but 
he  was  the  Bastard  from  the  beginning.  There  was  then 
no  generally  received  doctrine  as  to  the  succession  to  king- 
doms and  duchies.  Everywhere  a  single  kingly  or 
princely  house  supplied,  as  a  rule,  candidates  for  the 
succession.  Everywhere,  even  where  the  elective  doctrine 
was  strong,  a  full-grown  son  was  always  likely  to  suc- 
ceed his  father.  The  growth  of  feudal  notions  too  had 
greatly  strengthened  the  hereditary  principle.  Still  no 
rule  had  anywhere  been  laid  down  for  cases  where  the 
late  prince  had  not  left  a  full-grown  son.  The  question 
as  to  legitimate  birth  was  equally  unsettled.  Irregular 
unions  of  all  kinds,  though  condemned  by  the  Church, 
were  tolerated  in  practice,  and  were  nowhere  more  com- 
mon than  among  the  Norman  dukes.  In  truth  the  feeling 
of  the  kingliness  of  the  stock,  the  doctrine  that  the  kine 


ir.        THE  EAKLY  YEARS  OF  WILLIAM.         9 

should  be  the  son  of  a  king,  is  better  satisfied  by  the 
succession  of  the  late  king's  bastard  son  than  by  sending 
for  some  distant  kinsman,  claiming  perhaps  only  through 
females.  Still  bastardy,  if  it  was  often  convenient  to 
forget  it,  could  always  be  turned  against  a  man.  The 
succession  of  a  bastard  was  never  likely  to  be  quite 
undisputed  or  his  reign  to  be  quite  undisturbed. 

Now  William  succeeded  to  his  duchy  under  the  double 
disadvantage  of  being  at  once  bastard  and  minor.  He  was 
born  at  Falaise  in  1027  or  1028,  being  the  son  of  Robert, 
afterwards  duke,  but  then  only  Count  of  Hiesmois, 
by  Herleva,  commonly  called  Arietta,  the  daughter  of 
Fulbert  the  tanner.  There  was  no  pretence  of  marriage 
between  his  parents ;  yet  his  father,  when  he  designed 
William  to  succeed  him,  might  have  made  him  legitimate, 
as  some  of  his  predecessors  had  been  made,  by  a  mar- 
riage with  his  mother.  In  1028  Robert  succeeded  his 
brother  Richard  in  the  duchy,  In  1034  or  1035  he  de- 
termined to  go  on  pilgrimage  to  Jerusalem.  He  called 
on  his  barons  to  swear  allegiance  to  his  bastard  of  seven 
years  old  as  his  successor  in  case  he  never  came  back. 
Their  wise  counsel  to  stay  at  home,  to  look  after  his 
dominions  and  to  raise  up  lawful  heirs,  was  unheeded. 
Robert  carried  his  point.  The  succession  of  young 
William  was  accepted  by  the  Norman  nobles,  and  was  con- 
ffffiecTBy  the  overlord  Henry  King  of  the  French.  The 
arrangement  soon  took  effect.  Robert  died  on  his  way 
back  before  the  year  1035  was  out,  ^H"TnT~sorrbegan,~Tn 
name  at  least,  his_reign  of  fifty-two  years  over  the 
Norman  duchy. 

The  suc'cession  of  one  who  was  at  once  bastard  and 
minor  could  happen  only  when  no  one  else  had  a  dis- 


10  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP. 

tinctly  better  claim.  William  could  never  have  held  his 
ground  for  a  moment  against  a  brother  of  his  father  of 
full  age  and  undoubted  legitimacy.  But  among  the  living 
descendants  of  former  dukes  some  were  themselves  of 
doubtful  legitimacy,  some  were  shut  out  by  their  pro- 
fession as  churchmen,  some  claimed  only  through  females. 
Robert  had  indeed  two  half-brothers,  but  they  were 
young  and  their  legitimacy  was  disputed ;  he  had  an 
uncle,  Eobert  Archbishop  of  Rouen,  who  had  been  legiti- 
mated by  the  later  marriage  of  his  parents.  The  rival 
who  in  the  end  gave  William  most  trouble  was  his  cousin 
Guy  of  Burgundy,  son  of  a  daughter  of  his  grandfather 
Richard  the  Good.  Though  William's  succession  was  not 
liked,  no  one  of  these  candidates  was  generally  preferred 
to  him.  He  therefore  succeeded ;  but  the  first  twelve 
years  of  his  reign  were  spent  in  the  revolts  and  con- 
spiracies of  unruly  nobles,  who  hated  the  young  duke  as 
the  one  representative  of  law  and  order,  and  who  were 
not  eager  to  set  any  one  in  his  place  who  might  be  better 
able  to  enforce  them. 

Nobility,  so  variously  defined  in  different  lands,  in 
JSTormandytook  in  two  "Ins^  of  men  All  were  noble 
who  had  any  kindred  or  affinity,  legitimate  or  otherwise, 
with  the  ducal  house.  The  natural  children  of  Richard 
the  Fearless  were  legitimated  by  his  marriage  with  their 
mother  Gunnor,  and  many  of  the  great  houses  of  Nor- 
mandy sprang  from  her  brothers  and  sisters.  The  mother 
of  William  received  no  such  exaltation  as  this.  Besides 
her  son,  she  had  borne  to  Robert  a  daughter  Adelaide, 
and,  after  Robert's  death,  she  married  a  Norman  knight 
named  Herlwin  of  Conteville.  To  him,  besides  a  daughter, 
she  bore  two  sons,  Odo  and  Robert.  They  rose  to  high 


ii.  THE  EARLY  YEARS  OF  WILLIAM.  11 

posts  in  Church  and  State,  and  played  an  important  part 
in  their  half-brother's  history.  Besides  men  whose 
nobility  was  of  this  kind,  there  were  also  Norman  houses 
whose  privileges  were  older  than  the  amours  or  marriages 
of  any  duke,  houses  whose  greatness  was  as  old  as  the 
settlement  of  Rolf,  as  old  that  is  as  the  ducal  power 
itself.  The  great  men  of  both  these  classes  were  alike 
hard  to  control.  A  Norman  baron  of  this  age  was  well 
employed  when  he  was  merely  rebelling  against  his 
prince  or  waging  private  war  against  a  fellow  baron. 
What  specially  marks  the  time  is  the  frequency  of 
treacherous  murders  wrought  by  men  of  the  highest  rank, 
often  on  harmless  neighbours  or  unsuspecting  guests. 
But  victims  were  also  found  among  those  guardians  of 
the  young  duke  whose  faithful  discharge  of  their  duties 
shows  that  the  Norman  nobility  was  not  wholly  corrupt. 
One  indeed  was  a  foreign  prince,  Alan  Count  of  the 
Bretons,  a  grandson  of  Richard  the  Fearless  through  a 
daughter.  Two  others,  the  seneschal  Osbern  and  Gilbert 
Count  of  Eu,  were  irregular  kinsmen  of  the  duke.  All 
these  were  murdered,  the  Breton  count  by  poison.  Such 
a  childhood  as  this  made  William  play  the  man  while  he 
was  still  a  child.  The  helpless  boy  had  to  seek  for  sup- 
port of  some  kind.  He  got  together  the  chief  men  of  his 
duchy,  and  took  a  new  guardian  by  their  advice.  But  it 
marks  the  state  of  things  that  the  new  guardian  was  one 
of  the  murderers  of  those  whom  he  succeeded.  This 
was  Ralph  of  Wacey,  son  of  William's  great-uncle,  Arch- 
bishop Robert.  Murderer  as  he  was,  he  seems  to  have 
discharged  his  duty  faithfully.  There  are  men  who  are 
careless  of  general  moral  obligations,  but  who  will  strictly 
carry  out  any  charge  which  appeals  to  personal  honour. 


12  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROE.  CHAP. 

Anyhow  Ralph's  guardianship  brought  with  it  a.  certain 
amount  of  calm.  But  men,  high  in  the  young  duke's 
favour,  were  still  plotting  against  him,  and  they  presently 
began  to  plot,  not  only  against  their  prince  but  against 
their  country.  The  disaffected  nobles  of  Normandy 
sought  for  a  helper  against  young  William  in  his  lord 
King  Henry  of  Paris. 

The  art  of  diplomacy  had  never  altogether  slumbered 
since  much  earlier  times.  The  king  who  owed  his  crown 
to  William's  father,  and  who  could  have  no  ground  of 
offence  against  William  himself,  easily  found  good  pre- 
texts for  meddling  in  Norman  affairs.  It  was  not  un- 

LJJl£--&i»g-^^ 


£-=sea-&Qard  which  had  J:)ej3n^gi#ma^  a  hundred 

JL&ajrs  before  to  an  aMen  power,  even  though  that  power 
s  had,  f  orimicTrmore  than  half  of  that  time,  acted  more 
than  a  friendly  part  towards  France.  It  was  not  un- 
natural that  the  French  people  should  cherish  a  strong 
national  dislike  to  the  Normans  and  a  strong  wish  that 
ffouen  should  again  be  a  French  ci&c,  But  such  motives 
were  not  openly  avowed  then  any  more  than  now.  The 
alleged  ground  was  quite  different.  The  counts  of 
Chartres  were  troublesome  neighbours  to  the  duchy,  and 
the  castle  of  Tillieres  had  been  built  as  a  defence  against 
them.  An  advance  of  the  King's  dominions  had  made 
Tillieres  a  neighbour  of  France,  and,  as  a  neighbour,  it 
was  said  to  be  a  standing  menace.  The  King  of  the 
French,  acting  in  concert  with  the  disaffected  -party  in 
Normandy,  was  a  dangerous  enemy,  and  the  young  Duke 
and  his  counsellors  determined  to  give  up  Tillieres.  Now 
comes  the  first  distinct  exercise  of  William's  personal 
will.  We  are  without  exact  dates,  but  the  time  can 


ir.  THE  EARLY  YEARS  OF  WILLIAM.  13 

be  hardly  later  than  1040,  when  William  was  from  twelve 
to  thirteen  years  old.  At  his  special  request,  the  de- 
fender of  Tillieres,  Gilbert  Crispin,  who  at  first  held  out 
against  French  and  Normans  alike,  gave  up  the  castle  to 
Henry.  The  castle  was  burned  ;  the  King  promised  not 
to  repair  it  for  four  years.  Yet  he  is  said  to  have 
entered  Normandy,  to  have  laid  waste  William's  native 
district  of  Hiesmois,  to  have  supplied  a  French  garrison 
to  a  Norman  rebel  named  Thurstan,  who  held  the  castle 
of  Falaise  against  the  Duke,  and  to  have  ended  by  restor- 
ing Tillieres  as  a  menace  against  Normandy.  And  now 
the  boy  whose  destiny  had  made  him  so  early  a  leader 
of  men  had  to  bear  his  first  arms  against  the  fortress 
which  looked  down  on  his  birth-place.  Thurstan  sur- 
rendered and  went  into  banishment.  William  could  set 
down  his  own-EaJaisa^ts_tha-first..Q.f  a  .long  list  .of  towns 
and  castles  which  he  knew  how  to  win  without  sheddin 
of  blood] 


next  see  William's  distinct  personal  action, 
he  is  still  young,  but  no  longer  a  child  or  even  a  boy. 
At  nineteen  or  thereabouts  he  is  a  wise  and  valiant  man, 
and  his  valour  and  wisdom  are  tried  to  the  uttermost. 
A  few  years  of  comparative  quiet  were  chiefly  occupied, 
as  a  quiet  time  in  those  days  commonly  was,  with 
ecclesiastical  affairs.  One  of  these  specially  illustrates 
the  state  of  things  with  which  William  had  to  deal.  In 
1042,  when  the_JDnke—  w^_ja^bojjJL  fourteen,  Normandy 
adopted  the  Truce  of  God  in  its  later  shape.  It  no 
longer  attempteoltoestablish  universal  peace  ;  it  satisfied 
itself  with  forbidding,  under^Jbhe  stronge£k_fic,cie§iastical 
censures,  all  private  war  and  violence  of  any  kind  on 
cie£tam_days  of  the  week.  Legislation  of  this  kind  has 


14  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP. 

two  sides.  It  was  an  immediate  gain  if  peace  was  really 
enforced  for  four  days  in  the  week ;  but  that  which  was 
not  forbidden  on  the  other  three  could  no  longer  be 
denounced  as  in  itself  evil.  We  are  told  that  in  no  land 
was  the  Truce  more  strictly  observed  than  in  Normandy. 
But  we  may  be  sure  that,  when  William  was  in  the  ful- 
ness of  his  power,  the  stern  weight  of  the  ducal  arm  was 
exerted  to  enforce  peace  on  Mondays  and  Tuesdays  as 
well  as  on  Thursdays  and  Fridays. 

It  was  in  the  yeai-Qo47\that  William's  authority 
was  most  dangerously  threatened  and  that  he  was  first 
called  on  to  show  in  all  their  fulness  the  powers  that 
were  in  him.  He  who  was  to  be  conqueror  of  JVLaine 
and  conqueror  of  Englan3'was  first  to  be  conqueror  of 
his  own  duchy.  Therevplt  of  a _largej)art_oJE tliexxHintry, 
contrasted  with  thenrm  loyalty  of  another  part,  throws 
a  most  instructive  light  on  the  ^internal  state  of  the, 
duchy.  There  was,  as  there  still  is,  a  line  of  severance 
between  the  districts  which  formed  the  first  grant  to 
Rolf  and  those  which  were --afterwards  added.  In  these 
last  a  lingering  remnant  of  old  Teutonic  life  had  been 
called  into  fresh  strength  by  new  settlements  from 
Scandinavia.  At  the  beginning  of  the  reign  of  Richard 
the  Fearless,  Rouen,  the  French-speaking  city,  is  em- 
phatically contrasted  with  Bayeux,  the  once  Saxon  city 
and  land,  now  the  head-quarters  of  the  Danish  speech. 
At  that  stage  the  Danish  party  was  distinctly  a  heathen 
party.  We  are  not  told  whether  Danish  was  still  spoken 
so  late  as  the  time  of  William's  youth.  We  can  hardly 
believe  that  the  Scandinavian  gods  still  kept  any  avowed 
worshippers.  But  the  geographical  limits  of  the  revolt 
exactly  fall  in  with  the  boundary  which  had  once 


ii.        THE  EARLY  YEARS  OF  WILLIAM.        15 

divided  French  and  Danish  speech,  Christian  and  heathen 
worship.  There  was  a  wide  difference  in  feeling  on  the 
two  sides  of  the  Dive.  The  older  Norman  settlements, 
now  thoroughly  French  in  tongue  and  manners,  stuck 
faithfully  to  the  Duke  ;  the  lands  to  the  west  rose  against 
him.  Rouen  and  Evreux  were  firmly  loyal  to  William ; 
Saxon  Bayeux  and  Danish  Coutances  were  the  head- 
quarters of  his  enemies. 

When  the  geographical  division  took  this  shape,  we 
are  surprised  at  the  candidate  for  the  duchy  who  was 
put  forward  by  the  rebels.  William  was  a  Norman  born 
and  bred ;  his  rival  was  in  every  sense  a  Frenchman.  This 
was  William's  cousin  Guy  of  Burgundy,  whose  connexion 
with  the  ducal  house  was  only  by  the  spindle-side.  But 
his  descent  was  of  uncontested  legitimacy,  which  gave 
him  an  excuse  for  claiming  the  duchy  in  opposition  to 
the  bastard  grandson  of  the  tanner.  By  William  he  had 
been  enriched  with  great  possessions,  among  which  was 
the  island  fortress  of  Brionne  in  the  Eisle.  The  real 
object  of  the  revolt  was  the  partition  of  the  duchy. 
William  was  to  be  dispossessed ;  Guy  was  to  be  duke  in 
the  lands  east  of  Dive ;  the  great  lords  of  Western  Nor- 
mandy were  to  be  left  independent.  To  this  end  the 
lords  of  the  Bessin  and  the  Cotentin  revolted,  their 
leader  being  Neal,  Viscount  of  Saint-Sauveur  in  the 
Cotentin.  We  are  told  that  the  mass  of  the  people 
everywhere  wished  well  to  their  duke ;  in  the  common 
sovereign  lay  their  only  chance  of  protection  against 
their  immediate  lords.  But  the  lords  had  armed  force 
of  the  land  at  their  bidding.  They  first  tried  to  slay  or 
seize  the  Duke  himself,  who  chanced  to  be  in  the  midst 
of  them  at  Valognes.  He  escaped ;  we  hear  a  stirring 


16  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP. 

tale  of  his  headlong  ride  from  Valognes  to  Falaise.  Safe 
among  his  own  people,  he  planned  his  course  of  action. 
He  first  sought  help  of  the  man  who  could  give  him 
most  help,  but  who  had  most  wronged  him.  He  went 
into  France  ;  he  saw  King  Henry  at  Poissy,  and  the  King 
engaged  to  bring  a  French  force  to  AVilliam's  help  under 
his  own  command. 

This  time  Henry  kept  his  promise.  The  dismember- 
ment of  Normandy  might  have  been  profitable  to  France 
by  weakening  the  power  which  had  become  so  special  an 
object  of  French  jealousy  ;  but  with  a  king  the  common 
interest  of  princes  against  rebellious  barons  came  first. 
Henry  came  with  a  French  army,  and  fought  well  for 
his  ally  on  the  field  of  Val-es-dunes.  Now  came  the 
Conqueror's  first  battle,  a  tourney  of  horsemen  on  an 
open  table-land  just  within  the  land  of  the  rebels  between 
Caen  and  Mezidon.  The  young  duke  fought  well  and 
manfully ;  but  the  Norman  writers  allow  that  it  was 
French  help  that  gained  him  the  victory.  Yet  one  of  the 
many  anecdotes  of  the  battle  points  to  a  source  of 
strength  which  was  always  ready  to  tell  for  any  lord 
against  rebellious  vassals.  One  of  the  leaders  of  the 
revolt,  Ralph  of  Tesson,  struck  with  remorse  and  stirred 
by  the  prayers  of  his  knights,  joined  the  Duke  just  before 
the  battle.  He  had  sworn  to  smite  William  wherever  he 
found  him,  and  he  fulfilled  his  oath  by  giving  the  Duke  a 
harmless  blow  with  his  glove.  How  far  an  oath  to  do 
an  unlawful  act  is  binding  is  a  question  which  came  up 
again  at  another  stage  of  William's  life. 

Thfi-jvictory  _at_Valjs-diine_s_was  decisive,  and  the 
French  King,  whose  help  had  done  so  much  to  win  it,  left 
William  to  follow  it  up.  He  met  with  but  little  re- 


ii.  THE  EARLY  YEARS  OF  WILLIAM.  17 

sistance  except  at  the  stronghold  of  Brionne.  Guy 
himself  vanishes  from  Norman  history.  William  had 
now  conquered  his  own  duchy,  and  conquered  it  by 
foreign  help.  For  the  rest  of  his  Norman  reign  he 
had  often  to  strive  with  enemies  at  home,  but  he 
had  never  to  put  down  such  a  rebellion  again  as  that 
of  the  lords  of  western  Normandy.  That  western 
Normandy,  the  truest  Normandy,  had  to  yield  to  the 
more  thoroughly  Romanized  lands  to  the  east.  The 
difference  between  them  never  again  takes  a  political 
shape.  William  was  now  lord  of  all  Normandy,  and  able 
to  put  down  all  later  disturbers  of  the  peace.  His  real 
reign  now  begins ;  from  the  age  of  nineteen  or  twenty,  his 
acts  are  his  own.  According  to  his  abiding  practice,  he 
showed  himself  a  merciful  conqueror.  Through  his 
whole  reign  he  shows  a  distinct  unwillingness  to  take 
human  life  except  in  fair  fighting  on  the  battle-field. 
No  blood  was  shed  after  the  victory  of  Val-es-dunes ; 
one  rebel  died  in  bonds ;  the  others  underwent  no 
harder  punishment  than  payment  of  fines,  giving  of 
hostages,  and  destruction  of  their  castles.  These  castles 
were  not  as  yet  the  vast  and  elaborate  structures  which 
arose  in  after  days.  A  single  strong  square  tower,  or 
even  a  defence  of  wood  on  a  steep  mound  surrounded  by 
a  ditch,  was  enough  to  make  its  owner  dangerous.  The 
possession  of  these  strongholds  made  every  baron  able  at 
once  to  defy  his  prince  and  to  make  himself  a  scourge  to 
his  neighbours.  Every  season  of  anarchy  is  marked  by 
the  building  of  castles  ;  every  return  of  order  brings  with 
it  their  overthrow  as  a  necessary  condition  of  peace. 

Thus,  in  his  lonely  and  troubled  childhood,  William 


18  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP. 

had  been  schooled  for  the  rule  of  men.  He  had  now,  in 
the  rule  of  a  smaller  dominion,  injvarf are  jand  conquest 
-on  a  smaIIeFscaIe7~tbnbe  schooled  for  the  conquest  and 
the  rule  of  a  greater  dominion.  "William  had  the  gifts 
of  a  bom_ruler,  and  he  walTin  no  way  disposed  to  abuse 
them.  We  know  his  rule  in  Normandy  only  through 
the  language  of  panegyric ;  but  the  facts  speak  for  them- 
selves. He  made  Normandy  peaceful  and  nourishing, 
more  peaceful  and  nourishing  perhaps  than  any  other 
state  of  the  European  mainland.  He  is  set  before  us  as  in 
everything  a  wise  and  beneficent  ruler,  the  protector  of 
the  poor  and  helpless,  the  patron  of  commerce  and  of  all 
that  mighTprofttriris  dominions.  For  defensive  wars,  for" 
wars-amged  as  the  faithful  mjin_^ln^__ojv^rjpj^ir-we  can- 
not blame  InnT  ButTnTmain  duty  lay  at  home.  He 
still  had  revolts  to  put  down,  and  he  ptttrthem  down. 
But  to  put  them  down  was  the  first  of  good  works.  He 
had  to  keep  the  peace  of  the  land,  to  put  some  check  on 
the  unruly  wills  of  those  turbulent  barons  on  whom  only 
an  arm  like  his  could  put  any  check.  He  had,  in  the 
language  of  his  day,  to  do  justice,  to  visit  wrong  with 
sure  and  speedy  punishment,  whoever  was  the  wrong- 
doer. If  a  ruler  did  this  first  of  duties  well,  much  was 
easily  forgiven  him  in  other  ways.  But  William  had  as 
yet  little  to  be  forgiven.  Throughout  life  he  steadily 
practised  some  unusual  virtues.  His  strict  attention  to 
religion  was  always  marked.  And  his  religion  was  not 
that  mere  lavish  bounty  to  the  Church  which  was  con- 
sistent with  any  amount  of  cruelty  or  license.  William's 
religion  really  influenced  his  life,  public  and  private.  He 
set  an  unusual  example  of  a  princely  household  governed 
according  to  the  rules  of  morality,  and  he  dealt  with 


IT.  THE  EARLY  YEARS  OF  WILLIAM.  19 

ecclesiastical  matters  in  the  spirit  of  a  true  reformer. 
He  did  not,  like  so  many  princes  of  his  age,  make  ecclesi- 
astical preferments  a  source  of  corrupt  gain,  but  pro- 
moted good  men  from  all  quarters.  His  own  education 
is  not  likely  to  have  received  much  attention ;  it  is  not 
clear  whether  he  had  mastered  the  rarer  art  of  writing 
or  the  more  usual  one  of  reading  ;  but  both  his  promotion 
of  learned  churchmen  and  the  care  given  to  the  education 
of  some  of  his  children  show  that  he  at  least  valued  the 
best  attainments  of  his  time.  Had  William's  whole  life 
been  spent  in  the  duties  of  a  Norman  duke,  ruling  his 
duchy  wisely,  defending  it  manfully,  the  world  might 
never  have  known  him  for  one  of  its  foremost  men,  but 
his  life  on  that  narrower  field  would  have  been  useful 
and  honourable  almost  without  a  drawback.  It  was  the 
fatal  temptation  of  princes,  the  temptation  to  territorial 
aggrandizement,  which  enabled  him  fully  to  show  the 
powers  that  were  in  him,  but  which  at  the  same  time  led 

"tb  htymoTaJnfeg^ftrlgf.inri        TVin   fldTniiiLil'  <tf  TTTTT^wn  land 

becamethelhvacTer  of  other  lands,  and  the  invader  could 
not  fail  often  to  sink  into  the  oppressor.  Each  step  in 
his  career  as  Conqueror  was  a  step  downwards.  Maine 
was  a  neighbouring  land,  a  land  of  the  same  speech,  a 
land  which,  if  the  feelings  of  the  time  could  have  allowed 
a  willing  union,  would  certainly  have  lost  nothing  by  an 
union  with  Normandy.  England,  a  land  apart,  a  land  of 
speech,  laws,  and  feelings,  utterly  unlike  those  of  any 
part  of  Gaul,  was  in  another  case.  There  the  Conqueror 
was  driven  to  be  the  oppressor.  Wrong,  as  ever,  was 
punished  by  leading  to  further  wrong. 

With  the  two  fields,  nearer  and  more  distant,  nar- 
rower and  wider,  on  which  William  was  to  appear  as 


20  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP. 

Conqueror  he  has  as  yet  nothing  to  do.     It  is  vain  to 
guess  at  what  moment  the  thought  of  the  English  succes- 
sion may  have  entered  his  mind  or  that  of  his  advisers. 
When  William  began  his  real  reign  after  Val-es-dunes, 
\   .         Norman  influence ...  was i .  high  in  England.     Edward  the 
Confessor  had  spent  his  youth  amongJiis,.N-O¥m3»-4dns- 
f oik;  he  loved  Norman  ways  anrtthe  company  of  Normans 
^  and  other  men  of  French  speech.     Strangers  from  the 

|££OjimM]U^ 

above  all,  Robert  of  Jumieges,  first  Bishop  of  London  and 
then  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  was  the  King's  special 
favourite  and  adviser.  These  men  may  have  suggested 
the  thought  of  William's  succession  very  early.  On  the 
other  hand,  at  this  time  it  was  by  no  means  clear  that 
Edward  might  not  leave  a  son  of  his  own.  He  had  been 
only  a  few  years  married,  and  his  alleged  vow  of  chas- 
tity is  very  doubtful.  William's  claim  was  of  the 
flimsiest  kind.  By  English  custom  the  king  was  chosen 
out  of  a  single  kingly  house,  and  only  those  who  were 
descended  from  kings  in  the  male  line  were  counted  as 
members  of  that  house.  William  was  not  descended, 
even  in  the  female  line,  from  any  English  king;  his 
whole  kindred  with  Edward  was  that  Edward's  mother 
Emma,  a  daughter  of  Richard  the  Fearless,  was  William's 
great-aunt.  Such  a  kindred,  to  say  nothing  of  AVilliam's 
bastardy,  could  give  no  right  to  the  crown  according  to 
any  doctrine  of  succession  that  ever  was  heard  of.  It 
could  at  most  point  him  out  as  a  candidate  for  adoption, 
in  case  the  reigning  king  should  be  disposed  and  allowed 
to  choose  his  successor.  William  or  his  advisers  may 
have  begun  to  weigh  this  chance  very  early;  but  all 
that  is  really  certain  is  that  William  was  a  friend  and 


ii.  THE  EARLY  YEARS  OF  WILLIAM.  21 

favourite  of  his  elder  kinsman,  and  that  events  finally 
brought  his  succession  to  the  English  crown  within  the 
range  of  things  that  might  be. 

But,  befcu?e-4ki%--:W:iH«^  himself  as  a 

Wrrior  beyond  the  bounds  of  his  own  juchyT  and  to 
Jbake  seizin,  as  jj-jyjpjffj. ,.9J  fr'*  great  Continental  conquest. 
William's  first  war  out  of  Normandy  was  waged  in  com- 
mon ^with  Kino-  Henry  against  Geoffrey  Martel  Count  of. 
Am'oua  and  waged  on  the  side  of  Maine.  William  un- 
doubtedly owed  a  debt  of  gratitude  to  his  overlord  for 
good  help  given  at  VaJ^esjdunes,  and  excuses  were  never 
lacking  for  a  quarrel  between  Anjou  and  Normandy. 
Both  powers  asserted  rights  over  the  intermediate  land  of 
Maine.  In  1048  we  find  William  giving  help  to  Henry  in 
a  war  with  Anjou,  and  we  hear  wonderful  but  vague  tales 
of  his  exploits.  The  really  instructive  part  of  the  story 
deals  with  two  border  fortresses  on  the  march  of  Nor- 
mandy and  Maine.  Alen^on  lay  on  the  Norman  side  of  the 
Sarthe  ;  but  it  was  disloyal  to  Normandy.  Brionne  was 
still  holding  out  for  Guy  of  Burgundy.  The  town  was  a 
lordship  of  the  house  of  Belleme,  a  house  renowned  for 
power  and  wickedness,  and  which,  as  holding  great  pos- 
sessions alike  of  Normandy  and  of  France,  ranked  rather 
with  princes  than  with  ordinary  nobles.  The  story 
went  that  William  Talvas,  lord  of  Belleme,  one  of  the 
fiercest  of  his  race,  had  cursed  William  in  his  cradle,  as 
one  by  whom  he  and  his  should  be  brought  to  shame. 
Such  a  tale  set  forth  the  noblest  side  of  William's 
character,  as  the  man  who  did  something  to  put  down 
such  enemies  of  mankind  as  he  who  cursed  him.  The 
possessions  of  William  Talvas  passed  through  his  daughter 
Mabel  to  Roger  of  Montgomery,  a  man  who  plays  a 


22  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP. 

great  part  in  William's  history  ;  but_jt  is^  jthe  disloyalty 
of^the  burgherSj  not  of  their  lord,  of  which  we  hear  just 
now.  They  willingly  admitted  an  Angevin_garrispn. 
W^lHaniJJL.rfitiirn  laid  siege  to.  Domfront  on  the  Varenne,, 
a  strong  castle  which  was  then  an  outpost  of  Maine 
against  Normandy.  A  long  skirmishing  warfare,  in 
which  William  won  for  himself  a  name  by  deeds  of 
personal  prowess,  went  on  during  the  autumn  and 
winter  (1048-49).  One  tale  specially  illustrates  more 
than  one  point  in  the  feelings  of  the  time.  The  two 
princes,  William  and  Geoffrey,  give  a  mutual  challenge  ; 
each  gives  the  other  notice  of  the  garb  and  shield  that  he 
will  wear  that  he  may  not  be  mistaken.  The  spirit  of 
knight-errantry  was  coming  in,  and  we  see  that  William 
himself  in  his  younger  days  was  touched  by  it.  But 
we  see  also  that  coat-armour  was  as  yet  unknown. 
Geoffrey  and  his  host,  so  the  Normans  say,  shrink  from 
the  challenge  and  decamp  in  the  night,  leaving  the  way 
open  for  a  sudden  march  upon  Alen^on.  The  disloyal 
burghers  received  the  duke  with  mockery  of  his  birth. 
They  hung  out  skins,  and  shouted,  "Hides  for  the 
Tanner."  Personal  insult  is  always  hard  for  princes  to 
bear,  and  the  wrath  of  William  was  stirred  up  to  a  pitch 
which  made  him  for  once  depart  fromhis~usual  mudeTa- 
tion  towards  conquered  enemies.  He  swore  that  the  men 
who  had  jeered  at  him  should  be  dealt  with  like  a  tree 
whose  branches  are  cut  off  with  the  pollarding-knife. 
-by-  --assault,..an.d  JWilljam  ke 


oath.  The  castle  held  out  ;  the  hands  and  feet  of  thirty- 
two  pollarded  burghers  of  Alenc/m  were  thrown  over  its 
walls,  and  the  threat  implied  drove  the  garrison  to  sur- 
render on  promise  of  safety  for  life  and  limb.  The 


ii.  THE  EARLY  YEARS  OF  WILLIAM.  23 

defenders  of  Domfront,  struck  with  fear,  surrendered  also, 
and  kept  their  arms  as  well  as  their  lives  and  limbs. 
William  had  thus  won  back  his  own  rebellious  town, 
and  had  enlarged  his  borders  by  his  first  conquest. 
He  went  farther  south,  and  fortified  another  castle  at 
Ambrieres ;  but  Ambrieres  was  only  a  temporary  con- 
quest. Domfront  has  ever  since  been  counted  as  part  of 
Normandy.  But,  as  ecclesiastical  divisions  commonly 
preserve  the  secular  divisions  of  an  earlier  time,  Dom- 
front remained  down  to  the  great  French  Revolution  in 
the  spiritual  jurisdiction  of  the  bishops  of  Le  Mans. 

William  had  now  shown  himself  in  Maine  as  con- 
queror, and  he  was  before  long  to  show  himself  in 
England,  though  not  yet  as  conqueror.  If  our  chrono- 
logy is  to  be  trusted,  he  had  still  in  this  interval  to  com- 
plete his  conquest  of  his  own  duchy  by  securing  the 
surrender  of  Brionne ;  and  two  other  events,  both  charac- 
teristic, one  of  them  memorable,  fill  up  the  same  time. 
William  now  banished  a  kinsm.an  of  his  own  name,  who 
held  the  great  county  of  Mortain,  Moretoliam  or  More- 
tonium,  in  the  diocese  of  Avranches,  which  must  be  care- 
fully distinguished  from  Mortagne-en-Perche,  Mauritania 
or  Moretonia  in  the  diocese  of  Seez.  This  act,  of  some- 
what doubtful  justice,  is  noteworthy  on  two  grounds. 
First,  the  accuser  of  the  banished  count  was  one  who 
was  then  a  poor  serving-knight  of  his  own,  but  who 
became  the  forefather  of  a  house  which  plays  a  great 
part  in  English  history,  Robert  surnamed  the  Bigod. 
Secondly,  the  vacant  county  was  granted  by  William  to 
his  own  half-brother  Robert.  He  had  already  in  1048 
bestowed  the  bishopric  of  Bayeux  on  his  other  half- 


24  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP. 

brother  Odo,  who  cannot  at  that  time  have  been  more 
than  twelve  years  old.  He  must  therefore  have  held 
the  see  for  a  good  while  without  consecration,  and  at  no 
time  of  his  fifty  years'  holding  of  it  did  he  show  any  very 
episcopal  merits.  This  was  the  last  case  in  William's 
reign  of  an  old  abuse  by  which  the  chief  church  prefer- 
ments in  Normandy  had  been  turned  into  means  of  pro- 
viding for  members,  often  unworthy  members,  of  the 
ducal  family ;  and  it  is  the  only  one  for  which  William 
can  have  been  personally  responsible.  Both  his  brothers 
were  thus  placed  very  early  in  life  among  the  chief  men 
of  Normandy,  as  they  were  in  later  years  to  be  placed 
among  the  chief  men  of  England.  But  William's  affec- 
tion for  his  brothers,  amiable  as  it  may  have  been  per- 
sonally, was  assuredly  not  among  the  brighter  parts  of 
his  character  as  a  sovereign. 

The  other  chief  event  of  this  time  also  concerns  the 
domestic  side  of  William's  life.  The  long  story  of  his 
marriage  now  begins"  THe^ate  is  fixed  by  one  of  the 
decrees  of  the  council  of  Kheims  held  in  1049  by  Pope 
Leo  the  Ninth,  in  which  Baldwin  Count  of  Flanders  is 
forbidden  to  give  his  daughter  to  William  the  Norman. 
This  implies  that  the  marriage  was  already  thought  of, 
and  further  that  it  was  looked  on  as  uncanonical.  The 
bride  whom  William  sought,  Matilda,  daughter  of 
Baldwin  the  Fifth,  was  connected  with  him  by  some  tie 
of  kindred  or  affinity  which  made  a  marriage  between 
them  unlawful  by  the  rules  of  the  Church.  But  no 
genealogist  has  yet  been  able  to  find  out  exactly  what 
the  canonical  hindrance  was.  It  is  hard  to  trace  the 
descent  of  William  and  Matilda  up  to  'any  common 
forefather.  But  the  light  which  the  story  throws  on 


ii.  THE  EARLY  YEARS  OF  WILLIAM.  25 

William's  character  is  the  same  in  any  case.  Whether 
he  was  seeking  a  wife  or  a  kingdom,  he  would  have  his 
will,  but  he  could  wait  for  it.  In  William's  doubtful 
position,  fl-jttfl.rnfl.gfi  -yyjth  thft  r|  ajighterj)f  the  Count  of 
^Flanders  would  be  useful  to  him  in  many  ways  ;  and 
Matilda  won  her  Tmsband's  abiding  love  am!  trust. 
Strange  tales  are  told  of  William's  wooing.  Tales  are 
told  also  of  Matilda's  earlier  love  for  the  Englishman 
Brihtric,  who  is  said  to  have  found  favour  in  her  eyes 
when  he  came  as  envoy  from  England  to  her  father's 
court.  All  that  is  certain  is  that  the  marriage  had  been 
thought  of  and  had  been  forbidden  before  the  next  im- 
portant event  in  William's  life  that  we  have  to  record. 

Was  William's  Flemish  marriage  in  any  way  con- 
nected with  his  hopes  of  succession  to  the  English 
crown  1  Had  there  been  any  available  bride  for  him 
in  England,  it  might  have  been  for  his  interest  to  seek 
for  her  there.  But  it  should  be  noticed,  though  no 
ancient  writer  points  out  the  fact,  that  Matilda  was 
actually  descended  from  Alfred  in  the  female  line  ;  so 
that  William's  children,  though  not  William  himself, 
had  some  few  drops  of  English  blood  in  their  veins. 
William  or  his  advisers,  in  weighing  every  chance  which 
might  help  his  interests  in  the  direction  of  England, 
may  have  reckoned  this  piece  of  rather  ancient  genealogy 
among  the  advantages  of  a  Flemish  alliance.  But  it  is 
far  more  certain  that,  between  the  forbidding  of  the 
marriage  and  the  marriage  itself,  a  direct  hope  of  suc- 
cession to  the  English  crown  had  been  opened  to  the 
Norman  duke. 


CHAPTER    III. 

WILLIAM'S  FIRST  VISIT  TO  ENGLAND. 

A.D.   1051-1052. 

WHILE  William  was  strengthening  himself  in  Normandy, 
Norman  influence  in  England  had  risen  to  its  full  height. 
The  king  was  surrounded  by  foreign  favourites. '  The 
only  foreign  earl  was  his  nephew  Ralph  of  Mentes,  the 
son  of  his  sister  Godgifu.  But  three  chief  bishoprics 
were  held  by  Normans,  Robert  of  Canterbury,  William 
of  London,  and  Ulf  of  Dorchester.  William  bears  a  good 
character,  and  won  the  esteem  of  Englishmen ;  but  the 
unlearned  Ulf  is  emphatically  said  to  have  done  "  nought 
bishoplike."  Smaller  preferments  in  Church  and  State, 
estates  in  all  parts  of  the  kingdom,  were  lavishly  granted 
to  strangers.  They  built  castles,  and  otherwise  gave 
offence  to  English  feeling.  Archbishop  Robert,  above 
all,  was  ever  plotting  against  Godwine,  Earl  of  the  West- 
Saxons,  the  head  of  the  national  party.  At  last,  in  the 
autumn  of  1051,  the  national  indignation  burst  forth. 
The  immediate  occasion  was  a  visit  paid  to  the  King  by 
Count  Eustace  of  Boulogne,  who  had  just  married  the 
widowed  Countess  Godgifu.  The  violent  dealings  of  his 
followers  towards  the  burgfiers  of  Dover  led  to  resistance 
on  their  part,  and  to  a  long  series  of  marches  and  negoti- 


CHAP.  in.     WILLIAM'S  FIEST  VISIT  TO  ENGLAND.          27 

ations,  which  ended  in  the  banishment  of  Godwine  and 
his  son,  and  the  parting  of  his  daughter  Edith,  the 
King's  wife,  from  her  husband.  JVom  October  1051  to 
September  1052,  the  Normans  had  their^  ojOL-jazayHrn 
E^IanXjAnd  during  that  time  King  Edward  received 
a  visitor  of  greater  fame  than  his  brother-in-law  from 
Boulogne  in  the  person  of  his  cousin  from  Rouen. 

Of  his  visit  we  only  read  that  "  William  Earl  came 
from  beyond  sea  with  mickle  company  of  Frenchmen, 
and  the  king  him  received,  and  as  many  of  his  comrades 
as  to  him  seemed  good,  and  let  him  go  again."  Another 
account  adds  that  William  received  great  gifts  from  the 
King.  But  Williaj:nJ:nm^^^^ 

he  must  therefore  at  some  time 


have  done  to  Edward_a.n  ant  of  liomfl.gp.^  and  there  is  no 
time  but  this  at  which  we  can  conceive  such  an  act  being 
done.  Now  for  what  was  the  homage  paid  1  Homage 
was  often  paid  on  very  trifling  occasions,  and  strange 
conflicts  of  allegiance  often  followed.  No  such  conflict 
was  likely  to  arise  if  the  Duke  of  the  Normans,  already 
the  man  of  the  King  of  the  French  for  his  duchy,  be- 
came the  man  of  the  King  of  the  English  on  any  other 
ground.  Eetwrat  England  and  France  there  was  as  yet 
,noeninity  or  rivalry.  England  and  France  became 

r'Tihe   Enlish 


, 
and  .the  JD^kej)^  And 

this  visit,  this^jioniage^  was  the  first  step  townrrls  making 
the  .King  of  the  English  and  the  Duke  of  the  Normans 
th^^^me.person^^  The  claim  William  had  to  the  English 
crown  rested  mainly  on  an  alleged  promise  of  the  suc- 
cession made  byEdwar^.  This  claim  is  not  likely  to 
been  aTnere^sIiameless  falsehood.  That  Edward 


28  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP. 

did  make  some  promise  to  William — as  that  Harold,  at  a 
later  stage,  did  take  some  oath  to  William — seems  fully 
proved  by  the  fact  that,  while  such  Norman  statements 
as  could  be  denied  were  emphatically  denied  by  the 
English  writers,  on  these  two  points  the  most  patriotic 
Englishmen,  the  strongest  partisans  of  Harold,  keep  a 
marked  silence.  We  may  be  sure  therefore  that  some 
promise  was  made ;  for  that  promise  a  time  must  be 
found,  and  no  time  seems  possible  except  this  time  of 
William's  visit  to  Edward.  The  date  rests  on  no  direct 
authority,  but  it  answers  every  requirement.  Those 
who  spoke  of  the  promise  as  being  made  earlier,  when 
William  and  Edward  were  boys  together  in  Normandy, 
forgot  that  Edward  was  many  years  older  than  William. 
The  only  possible  moment  earlier  than  the  visit  was 
when  Edward  was  elected  king  in  1042.  Before  that 
time  he  could  hardly  have  thought  of  disposing  of  a 
kingdom  which  was  not  his,  and  at  that  time  he  might 
have  looked  forward  to  leaving  sons  to  succeed  him. 
Still  less  could  the  promise  have  been  made  later  than 
the  visit.  From  1053  to  the  end  of  his  life  Edward 
was  under  English  influences,  which  led  him  first  to 
se*nd^ior  his  nephew  EcTward  from, ^Hungary.- as.-  his 
successor,  and  in  the  ^ejiT^_.ma^e-^jceiiQjnmendation  in 
favour  of  Harold.  But  in  1051-52  Edward,  whether 
under  a  vow  or  "not,  may  well  have  given  up  the  hope 
of  children  ;  he  was  surrounded  by  Norman  influences  ; 
and,  for  the  only  time  in  the  last  twenty-four  years  of 
their  joint  lives,  he  and  William  met  face  to  face.  The 
only  difficulty  is  one  to  which  no  contemporary  writer 
makes  any  reference.  If  Edward  wished  to  dispose  of  his 
crown  in  favour  of  one  of  his  French-speaking  kinsmen, 


in.  WILLIAM'S  FIRST  VISIT  TO  ENGLAND.  29 

he  had  a  nearer  kinsman  of  whom  he  might  more  natur- 
ally have  thought.  His  own  nephew  Ralph  was  living 
in  England  and  holding  an  English  earldom.  He  had  the 
advantage  over  both  William  and  his  own  older  brother 
Walter  of  Mantes,  in  not  being  a  reigning  prince  else- 
where. We  can  only  say  that  there  is  evidence  that 
Edward  did  think  of  William,  that  there  is  no  evidence 
that  he  ever  thought  of  Ralph.  And,  except  the  tie  of 
nearer  kindred,  everything  would  suggest  William  rather 
than  Ralph.  The  personal  comparison  is  almost  grotesque; 
and  Edward's  early  associations  and  the  strongest  influ- 
ences around  him,  were  not  vaguely  French  but  specially 
Norman.  Archbishop  Robert  would  plead  for  his  own 
native  sovereign  only.  In  short,  we  may  be  as  nearly 
sure  as  we  can  be  of  any  fact  for  which  there  is  no  direct 
authority,  that  Edward's  promise  to  William  was  made 
at  the  time  of  William's  visit  to  England,  and  that 
William's  homage  to  Edward  was  done  in  the  character 
of  a  destined  successor  to  the  English  crown. 
William  thencame  to  Engla 

Tormandy  a  king  expectant.  But  the  value  of 
hishopespTo  the  value""oF"the  promise  made  to  him,  are 
quite  another  matter.  Most  likely  they  were  rated  <on 
both  sides  far  above  their  real  value.  King  and  duke 
may  both  have  believed  that  they  were  making  a  settle- 
ment which  the  English  nation  was  bound  to  respect.  If 
so,  Edward  at  least  was  undeceived  within  a  few  months. 

The  notion  of  a  king  disposing  of  his  crown  by  his 
own  act  belongs  to  the  same  range  of  ideas  as  the  law  of 
strict  hereditary  succession.  It  implies  that  kingship  is 
a  possession  and  not  an  office.  Neither  the  heathen  nor 


30  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP. 

the  Christian  English  had  ever  admitted  that  doctrine ; 
but  it  was  fast  growing  on  the  continent.  Our  forefathers 
had  always  combined  respect  for  the  kingly  house  with 
some  measure  of  choice  among  the  members  of  that  house. 
E3!warirTiimseli  was  not  the  lawful  heir  according  to 
the  notions  of  a  modern  lawyer;  for  he  was  chosen 
while  the  son  of  his  elder  brother  was  living  Every 
English  king  held  his  crown  by  the  gift  of  the  great 
assembly  of  the  nation,  though  the  chorce~^riHe'natro"n 
was  usually  limited  to  the  descendants  of  former  kings, 
and  though  the  full-grown  son  of  the  late  king  was 
seldom  opposed.  Christianity  had  strengthened  the  elec- 
<JiOTi_j3ririciple.  The  king  lost  his  old  sanctity  as  the 
son  of  Woden ;  he  gained  a  new  sanctity  as  the  Lord's 
anointed.  But  kingship  thereby  became  more  distinctly 
an  office,  a  great  post,  like  a  bishopric,  to  which  its  holder 
and  admitted  by  solemn  rites. 
But  of  that  office  he  could  be  lawfully  deprived,  nor 
could  he  hand  it  on  to  a  successor  either  according  to  his 
own  will  or  according  to  any  strict  law  of  succession. 
The  wishes  of  the  late  king,  like  the  wishes  of  the  late 
bishop,  went  for  something  with  the  electors.  But  that 
was  all.  All  that  Edward  could  really  do  for  his  kins- 
men was  to  promise  to  make,  when  the  time  came,  a 
recommendation  to  the  Witan  in  life  favour..  The  Witan 
might  then  deal  as  they  thought  good  with  a  recom- 
mendation so  unusual  as  to  choose  to  the  kingship  of 
England  a  man  who  was  neither  a  native  nor  a  conqueror 
of  England  nor  the  descendant  of  any  English  king. 

When  the  time  came,  Edward  dicLmake  a  recommend- 
ationjto.  the  Witan,  but  it  "was  not  in  favour  of  William. 
The  English  influences  under  which  he  was  brought 


in.  WILLIAM'S  FIRST  VISIT  TO  ENGLAND.  31 

during  his  last  fourteen  years  taught  him  better  what  the 
law  of  England  was  and  what  was  the  duty  of  an  English 
king^»JSutLjitJbhe  time  of  William's  visit  Edward  may 
well  have  believed  that  he  could  by  his  own  act  settle 
his^  crown  on  his  Norman  kinsman  as  his  undoubted  suc- 
cessor in  case  he  died  withouFaTsoiL  And  it  may  be  that 
Edward  was  bound  by  a  vow  not  to  leave  a  son.  And  if 
Edward  so  thought,  William  naturally  thought  so  yet 
more ;  he  would  sincerely  believe  himself  to  be  the  law- 
ful heir  of  the  crown  of  England,  the  sole  lawful  successor, 
except  in  one  contingency  which  was  perhaps  impossible 
and  certainly  unlikely. 

The  memorials  of  these  times,  so  full  on  some  points, 
are  meagre  on  others.  Of  those  writers  who  mention  the 
bequest  or  promise  none  mention  it  at  any  time  when  it  is 
supposed  to  have  happened ;  they  mention  it  at  some  later 
time  when  it  began  to  be  of  practical  importance.  No 
English  writer  speaks  of  William's  claim  till  the  time 
when  he  was  about  practically  to  assert  it ;  no  Norman 
writer  speaks  of  it  till  he  tells  the  tale  of  Harold's  visit 
and  oath  to  William.  We  therefore  cannot  say  how  far 
the  promise  was  known  either  in  England  or  on  the 
qnnjhJTJf.Tit.  But  it  could  not  be  kept  altogether  hid,  even 
if  either  party  wished  it  to  be  hid.  English  statesmen 
must  have  known  of  it,  and  must  have  guided  their  policy 
accordingly,  whether  it  was  generally  known  in  the 
country  or  not.  William's  position,  both  in  hisjywn 
duchy  and  among  neighbouring  prmc~es,~would  be  greatly 
improved  if  "he  'could  be  lobFed  lipcftr-rts-trf  uture  king. 
As  heir  to  the  crown  of  England,  he  may  have  more 
earnestly  wooed  the  descendant  of  former  wearers  of 
the  crown ;  and  Matilda  and  her  father  may  have  looked 


32  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROE.  CHAP. 

more  favourably  on  a  suitor  to  whom  the  crown  of  Eng- 
land was  promised.  On  the  other  hand,  the  existence  of 
such  a  foreign  claimant  made  it  more  needful  than  ever 
for  Englishmen  to  be  ready  with  an  English  successor, 
in  the  royal  house  or  out  of  it,  the  moment  the  reigning 
king  should  pass  away. 

It  was  only  for  a  short  time  that  William  could  have 
had  any  reasonable  hope  of  a  peaceful  succession.  The 
time  of  Norman  influence  in  England  was  short.  The 
revolution  of  September  1052  brought  Godwine  back, 
and  placed  the  rule  of  England  again  in  English  hands. 
Many  Normans  were  banished,  above  all  Archbishop 
Eobert  and  Bishop  Ulf.  The  death  of  Godwine  the  next 
year  placed  the  chief  power  in  the  hands  of  his  son 
Harold.  This  change  undoubtedly  made  Edward  more 
disposed  to  the  national  cause.  Of  Godwine,  the  man  to 
whom  he  owed  his  crown,  he  was  clearly  in  awe ;  to 
Godwine's  sons  he  was  personally  attached.  We  know 
not  how  Edward  was  led  to  look  on  his  promise  to 
William  as  void.  That  he  was  so  led  is  quite  plain. 
He  sent  for  his  nephew  the  ^Etheling  Edward  from 
Hungary,  clearly  as  his  intended  successor.  When  the 
^Etheling  died  in  1057,  leaving  a  son  under  age,  men 
seem  to  have  gradually  come  to  look  to  Harold  as  the 
probable  successor.  He  clearly  held  a  special  position 
above  that  of  an  ordinary  earl ;  but  there  is  no  need  to 
suppose  any  formal  act  in  his  favour  till  the  time  of  the 
King's  death,  January  5,  1066.  On  his  deathbed  Edward 
did  all  that  he  legally  could  do  on  behalf  of  Harold  by 
recommending  him  to  the  Witan  for  election  as  the  next 
king.  That  he  then  either  made  a  new  or  renewed  an 


in.  WILLIAM'S  FIRST  VISIT  TO  ENGLAND.  33 

old  nomination  in  favour  of  William  is  a  fable  which  is 
set  aside  by  the  witness  of  the  contemporary  English 
writers.  William's  jkim,  rested-wkotirf-rei  that  earlier 
nomination  which  CQuld_hardly  have  been  made  at  any 
other  time  than  his  visit  to  England. 

We  have  now  to  follow  William  back  to  Normandy, 
for  the  remaining  years  of  his  purely  ducal  reign.  The 
expectant  king  had  doubtless  thoughts~and  hopes  which 
he  had  not  had  before.  But  we  can  guess  at  them  only : 
they  are  not  recorded. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

THE  REIGN  OF  WILLIAM  IN  NORMANDY. 

A.D.  1052-1063. 

IF  William  came  back  from  England  looking  forward  to 
a  future  crown,  the  thought  might  even  then  flash  across 
his  mind  that  he  was  not  likely  to  win  that  crown  with- 
out fighting  for  it.  As  yet  his  business  was  still  to 
fight  for  the  duchy  of  Normandy.  But  he  had  now  to 
fight,  not  to  win  his  duchy,  but  only  to  keep  it.  For 
five  years  he  had  to  strive  both  against  rebellious  subjects 
and  against  invading  enemies,  among  whom  King  Henry 
of  Paris  is  again  the  foremost.  Whatever  motives  had 
led  the  French  king  to  help  William  at  Val-es-dunes  had 
now  passed  away.  He  had  fallen  back  on  his  former 
state  of  abiding  enmity  towards  Normandy  and  her 
duke.  But  this  short  period  definitely  fixed  the  position 
of  Normandy  and  her  duke  in  Gaul  and  in  Europe. 
At  its  beginning  William  is  still  the  Bastard  of  Falaise, 
who  may  or  may  not  be  able  to  keep  himself  in  the  ducal 
chair,  his  right  to  which  is  still  disputed.  At  the  end 
of  it,  if  he  is  not  yet  the  Conqueror  and  the  Great,  he 
has  shown  all  the  gifts  that  were  needed  to  win  him 
either  name.  He  is  the  greatest  vassal  of  the  French 
crown,  a  vassal  more  powerful  than  the  overlord 


CHAP.  iv.     THE  REIGN  OF  WILLIAM  IN  NORMANDY.     35 

whose    invasions   of   his    duchy    he    has   had   to    drive 
back. 

These  invasions  of  Normandy  by  the  King  of  the 
French  and  his  allies  fall  into  two  periods.  At  first 
Henry  appears  in  Normandy  as  the  supporter  of  Nor- 
mans in  open  revolt  against  their  duke.  But  revolts 
are  personal  and  local ;  there  is  no  rebellion  like  that 
which  was  crushed  at  Val-es-dunes,  spreading  over  a 
large  part  of  the  duchy.  In  the  second  period,  the  in- 
vaders have  no  such  starting-point.  There  are  still 
traitors  ;  there  are  still  rebels  ;  but  all  that  they  can  do  is 
to  join  the  invaders  after  they  have  entered  the  land. 
William  is  still  only  making  his  way  to  the  universal 
good  will  joJTi^duch^  nrakmg4t: — 

There  is,  first  of  all,  an  obscure  tale "  ofa  revolfo'f  an  /«  , 
unfixeddate,  but  which  must  have  happened  between  ^ — 
1048  and  1053.  The  r^l^  William  _Busjac_o.lthe..lioiise 
of  Euj  is  said  to  have  defended  the  castle  of  Eu  against 
the  duke  and  to  have  gone  into  banishment  .in.  France. 
But  the  year  that  followed  William's  visit  to  England 
saw  the  far  more  memorable  revolt  g£.  William-  Co«nt  ^— ' 
of  Argues.  He  had  drawn  the  Duke's  suspicions  on 
him,  and  he  had  to  receive  a  ducal  garrison  in  his  great 
fortress  by  Dieppe.  But  the  garrison  betrayed  the 
castle  to  its  own  master.  Open  revolt  and  havoc  fol- 
lowed, in  which  Count  William  was  supposed  by  the 
king  and  by  several  other  princes.  Among  them  was 
Ingelram  Count  6r~Ponthieu,  ITustJand  of  the  duke's 
sister  Adelaide.  Another  enemy  was  Guy  Count  of 
Gascony,  afterwards  Duke  William  the  Eighth  of  Aqui- 
taine.  What  quarrel  a  prince  in  the  furthest  corner  of 
Gaul  could  have  with  the  Duke  of  the  Normans  does 


36  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP. 

not  appear ;  but  neither  Count  William  nor  his  allies 
could  withstand  the  loyal  Normans  and  their  prince. 
Count  Ingelram  was  killed ;  the  other  princes  withdrew 
to  devise  greater  efforts  against  Normandy.  Count 
William  lost  his  castle  and  part  of  his  estates,  and  left 
the  duchy  of  his  free  will.  The  Duke's  politic  forbearance 
at  last  won  him  the  general  good  will  of  his  subjects. 
We  hear  of  no  more  open  revolts  till  that  of  William's 
own  son  many  years  after.  But  the  assaults  of  foreign 
enemies,  helped  sometimes  by  Norman  traitors,  begin 
again  the  next  year  on  a  greater  scale. 

William  the  ruler  and  warrior  had  now  a  short 
breathing-space.  He  had  doubtless  come  back  from 
England  more  bent  than  ever  on  his  marriage  with 
Matilda  of  Flanders.  Notwithstanding  the  decree  of 
a  Pope  and  a  Council  entitled  to  special  respect,  the 
marriage  was  celebrated,  not  very  long  after  William's 
return  to  Normandy,  in  the  year  of  the  revolt  of  William 
of  Arques.  In  the  course  o^the^earJ.^53_ComitBaldwin 
brought  Eis  daughter  to  the  Norman  frontier  at  Eu,  and 
there  jie  -became  thle~t)fide"^^  not 

what  emboldened  William  to  risk  so  daring  a  step  at  this 
particular  time,  or  what  led  Baldwin  to  consent  to  it.  If 
it  was  suggested  by  the  imprisonment  of  Po£e_JLeo_hy 
William's  countrymen  in  Italy,  in  the  hope  that  a  con- 
sent to  the  marriage  would  be  wrung  out  of  the  captive 
pontiff,  that  hope  was  disappointed.  The  marriage 
raised  much  opposition  in  Normandy  It  was  denounced 
by  Archbishop  Malger  of  Eouen,  the  brother  of  the 
dispossessed  Count  of  Arques.  His  character  certainly 
added  no  weight  to  his  censures ;  but  the  same  act  in 


iv.         THE  REIGN  OF  WILLIAM  IN  NORMANDY.          37 

a  saint  would  have  been  set  down  as  a  sign  of  holy  bold- 
ness. Presently,  whether  for  his  faults  or  for  his  merits, 
Malger  was  deposed  in  a  synod  of  the  Norman  Church, 
and  William  found  him  a  worthier  successor  in  the  learned 
jmd  holy~MauriEus.  But  a  greater  man  than  Malger  also 
opposed  the  marriage,  and  the  controversy  thus  introduces 
us  to  one  who  fills  a  place  second  only  to  that  of  William 
himself  in  the  Norman  and  English  history  of  the  time. 
This  was  Lanfranc  of  Pavia,  the.  lawyer,  the  scholar,  the 
model  monk,  the  ecclesiastical  statesman,  who,  as  prior 
of  the  newly  founded  abbey  of  Bee,  was  already  one  of  the 
innermost,  counsellors  of  the  Duke.  As  duke  and  king, 
as  prior,  abbot,  and  archbishop,  William  and  Lanfranc^ 
ruled  side  by  side,  each  helping  the  work  of  the  other 
till  the  end  of  their  joint  livesT ""Once  onty,~ at  this~tmTe; 
was  their  friendship  broken  for  a  moment.  Lanfranc 
spoke  against  the  marriage,  and  ventured  to  rebuke  the 
Duke  himself.' ""'William's  wrath  was  kmdledrfKe" ordered 
Lanfranc  into  banishment  and  took  a  baser  revenge  by 
laying  waste  part  of  the  lands  of  the  abbey.  But  the 
quarrel  was  soon  made  up.  Lanfranc  presently  left 
Normandy,  not  as  a  banished  man,  but  as  the  envoy  of 
its  sovereign,  commissioned  to  work  for  the  confirma- 
tion of  the  marriage  at  the  papal  court.  He  worked, 
and  his  work  was  crowned  with  success,  but  not  with 
speedy  success.  It  was  not  till  six  years  after  the  mar- 
riage,not  till  the  year  1059,  that  Lanfranc  obtained  the 
wished  for  connrmationJ__jiQl--from  Leo^  but  from  his 
remote  successor  Nicolas  the  Second.  The  sin  of  those 
who  had  contracted  the  unlawful  union  was  purged  by 
various  good  works,  among  which  the  foundation  of  the 
two  stately  abbeys  of  Caen  was  conspicuous. 


38  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP. 

This  story  illustrates  many  points  in  the  character  of 
William  and  of  his  time.  His  will  is  not  to  be  thwarted, 
whether  in  a  matter  of  marriage  or  of  any  other.  But 
he  does  not  hurry  matters ;  he  waits  for  a  favourable 
opportunity.  Something,  we  know  not  what,  must  have 
made  the  year  1053  more  favourable  than  the  year 
1049.  We  mark  also  William's  relations  to  the  Church. 
He  is  at  no  time  disposed  to  submit  quietly  to  the  bid- 
ding of  the  spiritual  power,  when  it  interferes  with  his 
rights  or  even  when  it  crosses  his  will.  Yet  he  is  really 
anxious  for  ecclesiastical  reform ;  he  promotes  men  like 
Maurilius  and  Lanfranc ;  perhaps  he  is  not  displeased 
when  the  exercise  of  ecclesiastical  discipline,  in  the 
case  of  Malger,  frees  him  from  a  troublesome  censor. 
But  the  worse  side  of  him  also  comes  out.  William 
could  forgive  rebels,  but  he  could  not  bear  the  personal 
rebuke  even  of  his  friend.  Under  this  feeling  he  pun- 
ishes a  whole  body  of  men  for  the  offence  of  one.  To 
lay  waste  the  lands  of  Bee  for  the  rebuke  of  Lanfranc 
was  like  an  ordinary  prince  of  the  time ;  it  was  unlike 
William,  if  he  had  not  been  stirred  up  by  a  censure 
which  touched  his  wife  as  well  as  himself.  But  above 
all,  the  bargain  between  William  and  Lanfranc  is 
characteristic  of  the  man  and  the  age.  Lanfranc  goes 
to  Rome  to  support  a  marriage  which  he  had  censured 
in  Normandy.  But  there  is  no  formal  inconsistency,  no 
forsaking  of  any.  principle.  Lanfranc  holds  an  uncanon- 
ical  marriage  to  be  a  sin,  and  he  denounces  it.  He  does 
not  withdraw  his  judgement  as  to  its  sinfulness.  He 
simply  uses  his  influence  with  a  power  that  can  forgive 
the  sin  to  get  it  forgiven. 


iv.         THE  REIGN  OF  WILLIAM  IN  NORMANDY.          39 

While  William's  marriage  was  debated  at  Rome,  he 
had  to  fi^dlL£ir^^''ifariimndy.  His  warfare  and  his 
negotiations  ended  about  the  same  time,  and  the  two 
things  may  have  had  their  bearing  on  one  another. 
William  had  now  to  undergo  a  new  form  of  trial.  The 
King  of  the  French  had  never  put  forth  hisfull  strength 
wEen"~Ee  was  simply  backing  Norman  rebels.  William 
had  now,  in  two  successive  invasions,  tp^withstand  the 
whole  power  of  the  King,  and  of  as  many  of  his  vassals 
as,  the  King  could  bring  to  his  standard.  In  the  first 
invasion,  iuJOS^the  Norman  writers  speak  rhetorically 
of  warriors  from  Burgundy,  Auveiyne,  and  Gascony,; 
but  it  is  hard  to  see  any  troops  from  a  greater  distance 
than  Bourges.  The  princes  who  followed  Henry  seem  to 
have  been  only  the  nearer  vassals  of  the  Crown.  Chief 
among  them  are  Theobald  Count  of  Chartres,  of  a 
house  of  old  hostile  to  Normandy,  and  Guy  the  new 
Count  of  Ponthieu,  to  be  often  heard  of  again.  If  not 
Geoffrey  of  Anjou  himself,  his  subjects  from  Tours  were 
also  there.  Normandy  was  to  be  invaded  on  two  sides, 
on  both  banks  of  the  Seine.  The  King  and  his  allies 
sought  to  wrest  from  William  the  western  part  of  Nor- 
mandy, the  older  and  the  more  thoroughly  French  part, 
No  attack  seems  to  have  been  designed  on  the  Bessiri  or 
the  Cotentin.  William  was  to  be  allowed  to  keep  those 
parts  of  his  duchy,  against  which  he  had  to  fight  when 
the  King  was  his  ally  at  Val-es-dunes.  . 

The  two  armies  entered  Normandy  ;  that  which  was 
to  act  on  the  left  of  the  Seine  was  led  by  the  King,  the 
other  by  his  brother  Odo.  Against  the  King  William 
made  ready  to  act  himself  ;  eastern  Normandy  was  left  to 
its  own  loyalnobles.  But  all  Normandy  was  now  loyal ; 


40  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP. 

the  men  of  the  Saxon  and  Danish  lands  were  as  ready 
to  fight  for  their  duke  against  the  King  as  they  had  been 
to  fight  against  King  and  Duke  together.  But  William 
avoided  pitched  battles ;  indeed  pitched  battles  are  rare 
in  the  continental  warfare  of  the  time.  War  consists 
largely  in  surprises,  and  still  more  in  the  attack  and  de- 
fence of  fortified  places.  The  plan  of  William's  present 
campaign  was  wholly  defensive ;  provisions  and  cattle 
were  to  be  carried  out  of  the  French  line  of  march ;  the 
Duke  on  his  side,  the  other  Norman  leaders  on  the  other 
side,  were  to  watch  the  enemy  and  attack  them  at  any 
favourable  moment.  The  commanders  east  of  the  Seine, 
Count  Robert  of  Eu,  Hugh  of  Gournay,  William  Crispin, 
and  Walter  Giffard,  found  their  opportunity  when  the 
French  had  entered  the  unfortified  town  of  Mortemer 
and  had  given  themselves  up  to  revelry.  Fire  and  sword 
did  the  work.  The  whole  French  army  was  slain,  scat- 
tered, or  taken  prisoners.  Odo  escaped  ;  Guy  of  Ponthieu 
was  taken.  The  Duke's  success  was  still  easier.  The 
tale  runs  that  the  news  from  Mortemer,  suddenly  an- 
nounced to  the  King's  army  in  the  dead  of  the  night, 
struck  them  with  panic,  and  led  to  a  hasty  retreat  out 
of  the  land. 

This  campaign  is  truly  Norman ;  it^j^wholly  unlike 
the  simple  waxfftre-elJEiigland.  A  traitorous  Englishman 
dfcTnothing  or  helped  the  enemy  ;  a  patriotic  Englishman 
gave  battle  to  the  enemy  the  first  time  he  had  a  chance. 
But  no  English  commander  of  the  eleventh  century 
was  likely  to  lay  so  subtle  a  plan  as  this,  and,  if  he  had 
laid  such  a  plan,  he  would  hardly  have  found  an  English 
army  able  to  carry  it  out.  Harold,  who  refused  to  lay 
waste  a  rood  of  English  ground,  would  hardly  have 


iv.         THE  REIGN  OF  WILLIAM  IN  NORMANDY.          41 

looked  quietly  on  while  many  roods  of  English  ground 
were  wasted  by  the  enemy.  With  all  the  valour  of  the 
Normans,  what  before  all  things  distinguished  them 
from  other  nations  was  their  craft.  William  could  in- 
deed fight  a  pitched  battle  when  a  pitched  battle  served 
his^purpose  ;  but  he  could  control  Tiiinseltu,~Ke""could  con- 
trol  his  followers,  even  to  the  point  of  enduring  to  look 
quietly  on  the  havoc  of  their  own  land  till  the  right 
moment.  He  who  could  do  this  was  indeed  practising 
for  his  calling  as  Conqueror.  And  if  the  details  of  the 
story,  details  specially  characteristic,  are  to  be  believed, 
William  showed  something  also  of  that  grim  pleasantry 
which  was  another  marked  feature  in  the  Norman  char- 
acter. The  startling  message  which  struck  the  French 
army  with  panic  was  deliberately  sent  with  that  end. 
The  messenger  sent  climbs  a  tree  or  a  rock,  and,  with  a 
voice  as  from  another  world,  bids  the  French  awake  ; 
they  are  sleeping  too  long ;  let  them  go  and  bury  their 
friends  who  are  lying  dead  at  Mortemer.  These  touches 
bring  home  to  us  the  character  of  the  man  and  the 
people  with  whom  our  forefathers  had  presently  to  deal. 
William  was  the  greatest  of  his  race,  but .hie_ was. .essen- 
tially of  his  race ;  he  was  Norman  to  the  backbone. 

Of  the~Weirc1r^nnxT^ 

and  cut  to  pieces,  the  other  had  left  Normandy  without 
striking  a  blow.  The  war  was  not  yet  quite  over  ;  the 
French  still  kept  Tillieres  :  William  accordingly  forti- 
fied the  stronghold  of  Breteuil  as  a  check  upon  it. 
And  he  entrusted  the  command  to  a  man  who  will  soon 
be  memorable,  his  personal  friend  William,  son  of  his 
old  guardian  Osbern.  King  Henry  was  now  glad 
to  conclude  a  peace  on  somewhat  remarkable  terms. 


42  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP. 


William   had  the  kings   leave  to  take  what  he  could 


Cenomannian — that  is  just  now  Angevin — territory  at 
more  points  than  one,  but  chiefly  on  the  line  of  his 
earlier  advances  to  Domfront  and  Ambrieres.  Ambrieres 
had  perhaps  been  lost ;  for  William  now  sent  Geoffrey 
a  challenge  to  come  on  the  fortieth  day.  He  came  on 
the  fortieth  day,  and  found  Ambrieres  strongly  forti- 
fied and  occupied  by  a  Norman  garrison.  With 
Geoffrey  came  the  Breton  prince  Odo,  and  William  or 
Peter  Duke  of  Aquitaine.  They  besieged  the  castle ; 
but  Norman  accounts  add  that  they  all  fled  on  William's 
approach  to  relieve  it. 

Three_years  of  peace  now  followed,  but  in  1058 
King  Henry,  this  time  in  partnership  witk-Geoffrey  of 
Anjou,  ventured  another  invasion  of  Normandy.  He 
might  say  that  he  had  never  been  fairly  beateiTin  his  for- 
mer campaign,  but  that  he  had  been  simply  cheated  out 
of  the  land  by  Norman  wiles.  This  time  he  had  a  second 
experience  of  Norman  wiles  and  of  Norman  strength 
too.  King  and  Count  entered  the  land  and  ravaged 
..  far ..aniLwide.  William,  as  before,  allowed  the  enemy  to 
waste  the  land.  He  watched  and  followed  them  till 
he  found  a  fayourable_  moment  for  attack.  The  people 
in  general  zealously  helped  the  Duke's  schemes,  but 
some  traitors  of  rank  were  still  leagued  with  the  Count 
of  Anjou.  While  William  bided  his  time,  the  invaders 
burnedJJaen.  This  place,  so  famous  in  Norman  history, 
was  not  one  of  the  ancient  cities  of  the  land.  It  was 
now  merely  growing  into  importance,  and  it  was  as  yet 
undefended  by  walls  or  castle.  But  when  the  ravagers 


iv.         THE  REIGN  OF  WILLIAM  IN  NORMANDY.          43 

turned  eastward,  William  found  the  opportunity  that  he 
had  waited  for.  As  the  French  were  crossing  the  ford  of 
Varaville  on  the  Dive,  near  the  mouth  of  that  river,  he 
came  suddenly  on  them,  and  slaughtered  a  large  part  of 
the  army  under_the  eyes  of  the  king  who  had  already 
.crossed.  The  rgrnrm/nt  marcher!  out  of  Normandy. 

Henry  now  made  peace,  and  restored  Tillieres.  Not 
long  after,  in  .lOGO^the  King  died,  leaving  his  young 
son  Philip^,  who  had  been  already  crowned,  as  his 
successor,  under  the  guardianship  of  William's  father- 
in-law  Baldwin.  Geoffrey  of  Anjou  and  William  of 
Aquitaine  also  died,  and  the  Angevin  power  was  weak- 
ened by  the  division  of  Geoffrey's  dominions  between  his 
nephews.  William's  position  was  greatly  strengthened, 
now  that  France,  under  the  new  regent,  had  become 
friendly,  while  Anjou  was  no  longer  able  to  do  mischief. 
William  had  now  nothing  to  fear  from  his  neighbours, 
and  the  way  was  soon  opened  for  his  great  continental 
conquest.  But  what  effect  had  these  events  on  Wil- 
liam's views  on  England  2  About  the  time  of  the  second 
French  invasion  of  Normandy  Earl  Harold  became 
beyond  doubt  the  first  man  in  England,  and  for 
the  first  time  a  chance  of  the  royal  succession  was 
opened  to  him.  In  1057,  the  year  before  Varaville, 
the  ^Etheling  Edward,  the  King's  selected  successor, 
died  soon  after  his  coming  to  England  ;  in  the  same 
year  died  the  King's  nephew  Earl  Ralph  and  Leofric 
Earl  of  the  Mercians,  the  only  Englishmen  whose 
influence  could  at  all  compare  with  that  of  Harold. 
Harold's  succession  now  became  possible ;  it  became 
even  likely,  if  Edward  should  die  while  jEdgar  the 
sonTjf  tEe  ^th~eTin^'^a^~sl:Iir"uhcLer  age.  William 


44  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP. 

had  no  sbadowjnf  excuse  for  interferingT  but—he 
was  watching  the  internal  affairs  of  England. 
Harold  was  certainly  watching  the  affairs  of  Gaul. 
About  this  time,  most  likely  in  the  year  1058,  he  made 
a  pilgrimage  to  Rome,  and  on  his  way  back  he  looked 
diligently  into  the  state  of  things  among  the  various 
vassals  of  the  French  crown.  His  exact  purpose  is  veiled 
in  ambiguous  language  ;  but  we  can  hardly  doubt  that 
his  object  was^  to  contract  alliances  with  the  continental 
enemies  of  Normandy.  Buch  views'tootedrto  the  distant 
future,  as  William  had  as  yet  been  guilty  of  no  un- 
friendly act  towards  England.  But  it  was  well  to  come 
fy)  .an  understanding  with  King  Henry^  CoimtjGeg.ffrey, 
and  Duke  William  of  ....Aquitaine,  in  case  a  time  should 
come  when  their  interests  and  those  of  England  would 
be  the  same.  But  the  deaths  of  all  those  princes  must 
have  put  an  end  to  all  hopes  of  common  action  between 
England  and  any  Gaulish  power.  The  Emperor  Henry 
also,  the  firm  ally  of  England,  was  dead.  It  was  now 
clear  that,  if  England  should  ever  have  to  withstand  a 
Norman  attack,  she  would  have  to  withstand  it 
wholly  by  her  own  strength,  or  with  such  help  as  she 
might  find  among  the  kindred  powers  of  the  North. 

William's  great  continental  conquest  is  drawing  nigh ; 
but  between  the  campaign  of  Varaville  and  the  cam- 
paign of  Le  Mans  came  the  tardy  papal  confirmation 
of  William's  marriage.  The  Duke  and  Duchess,  now 
at  last  man  and  wife  in  the  e'ye  61  the  Church,  began~to 
^carry  out  the  works  of  penance.  wEJch^were  allotted  to 
them.  The  abbeys  of  Caen,  William's  Saint  Stephen's, 
Matilda's  Holy  Trinity,  now  began  to  arise.  Yet,  at 


iv.         THE  REIGN  OF  WILLIAM  IN  NORMANDY.          45 

this  moment  of  reparation,  one  or  two  facts  seem  to 
place  William's  government  of  his  duchy  in  a  less 
favourable  light  than  usual.  Thejast  French  invasion 
was  followed  by  confiscations  and  banishments  among 
the  jchieLmeji._oi_  No£manHyr'""lloger  of  Montgomery 
and  his  wife  Mabel,  who  certainly  was  capable  of  any 
deed  of  blood  or  treachery,  are  charged  with  acting  as 
false  accusers.  We  see  also  that,  as  late  as  the  day  of 
Varaville,  there  were  Norman  traitors.  Robert  of 
Escalfoy  had  taken  the  Angevin  side,  and  had  defended 
his  castle  against  the  Duke.  He  died  in  a  strange  way, 
after  snatching  an  apple  from  the  hand  of  his  own 
wife.  His  nephew  Arnold  remained  in  rebellion  three 
years,  and  was  simply  required  to  go  to  the  wars  in 
Apulia.  It  is  hard  to  believe  that  the  Duke  had 
poisoned  the  apple,  if  poisoned  it  was  ;  but  finding 
treason  still  at  work  among  his  nobles,  he  may  have 
too  hastily  listened  to  charges  against  men  who  had 
done  him  good  service,  and  who  were  to  do  him  good 
service  again. 

Five  years  after  the  combat  at  Varaville,  William 
really  began  to  deserve,  though  not  as  yet  to  receive,  the 
name  of  Conqueror^    For  he  now  ;_didjjLwork_second  only 
to  the  conquest  of  England.     He  won  the  city  of  Le  Mans. 
e  whole  Tandjof  Maih'eT    Between  the  tale  of  Maine 


and  the  tale  of  England  there  is  much  of  direct  likeness. 
Both  lands  were  won  against  the  will  of  their  inhabitants  ; 
but  both  conquests  were  made  with  an  elaborate  show  of 
legal  right.  William's  earlier  conquests  in  Maine  had 
been  won,  not  from  any  count  of  Maine,  but  from 
Geoffrey  of  Anjou,  who  had  occupied  the  country  to  the 
prejudice  of  two  successive  counts,  Hugh  and  Herbert. 


46  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP. 

He  had  further  imprisoned  the  Bishop  of  Le  Mans, 
Gervase  of  the  house  of  Belleme,  though  the  King  of 
the  French  had  at  his  request  granted  to  the  Count  of 
Anjou  for  life  royal  rights  over  the  bishopric  of  Le 
Mans.  The  bishops  of  Le  Mans,  who  thus,  unlike  the 
bishops  of  Normandy,  held  their  temporalities  of  the 
distant  king  and  not  of  the  local  count,  held  a  very 
independent  position.  The  citizens  of  Le  Mans  too 
had  large  privileges  and  a  high  spirit  to  defend  them ; 
the  city  was  in  a  marked  way  the  head  of  the  district. 
Thus  it  commonly  carried  with  it  the  action  of  the 
whole  country.  In  Maine  there  were  three  rival  powers, 
the  prince,  the  Church,  and  the  people.  The  position 
of  the  counts  was  further  weakened  by  the  claims  to 
their  homage  made  by  the  princes  on  either  side  of 
them  in  Normandy  and  Anjou  ;  the  position  of  the 
Bishop,  vassal,  till  Gervase's  late  act,  of  the  King  only, 
was  really  a  higher  one.  Geoffrey  had  been  received  at 
Le  Mans  with  the  good  will  of  the  citizens,  and  both 
Bishop  and  Count  sought  shelter  with  William.  Gervase 
was  removed  from  the  strife  by  promotion  to  the  highest 
place  in  the  French  kingdom,  the  archbishopric  of 
Rheims.  The  young  Count  Herbert,  driven  from  his 
county,  commended  himself  to  William.  He  became 
his  man  ;  he  agreed  to  hold  his  dominions  of  him,  and 
to  marry  one  of  his  daughters.  If  he  died  childless,  his 
father-in-law  was  to  take  the  fief  into  his  own  hands. 
But  to  unite  the  old  and  new  dynasties,  Herbert's 
youngest  sister  Margaret  was  to  marry  William's  eldest 
son  Robert.  If  female  descent  went  for  anything,  it 
is  not  clear  why  Herbert  passed  by  the  rights  of  his 
two  elder  sisters,  Gersendis,  wife  of  Azo  Marquess  of 


iv.         THE  REIGN  OF  WILLIAM  IN  NORMANDY.          47 

Liguria,  and  Paula,  wife  of  John  of  La  Fleche  on 
the  borders  of  Maine  and  Anjou.  And  sons  both  of 
Gersendis  and  of  Paula  did  actually  reign  at  Le  Mans, 
while  no  child  either  of  Herbert  or  of  Margaret  ever 
came  into  being. 

If  Herbert  ever  actually  got  possession  of  his  country, 
his  possession  of  it  was  short.  He  died  in  1063  before 
either  of  the  contemplated  marriages  had  been  carried 
out.  William  therefore  stood  towards  Maine  as  he 
expected  to  stand  with  regard  to  England.  The  sove- 
reign of  each  country  had  made  a  formal  settlement  of 
his  dominions  in  his  favour.  It  was  to  be  seen  whether 
those  who  were  most  imniediately  concerned  would 
accept  that  settlement.  Was  the  rule  either  of  Maine 
or  of  England  to  be  handed  over  in  this  way,  like  a 
mere  property,  without  the  people  who  were  to  be 
ruled  speaking  their  minds  on  the  matter  ?  What  the 
people  of  England  said  to  this  question  in  1066  we  shall 
hear  presently ;  what  the  people  of  Maine  said  in  1063 
we  hear  now.  We  know  not  why  they  had  submitted 
to  the  Angevin  count ;  they  had  now  no  mind  to  merge 
tfreir  .country  in  the  dominions  of  the  Norman  duke. 
TKe~BisE6jp"was  neutral ;  but  the  nobles  and  the  citizens 
of  Le  Mans  were  of  one  mind  in  refusing  William's 
demand  to  be  received  as  count  by  virtue  of  the  agree- 
ment with  Herbert.  They  chose  rulers  for  themselves. 
Passing  by  Gersendis  and  Paula  and  their  sons,  they 
sent  for  Herbert's  aunt  Biota  and  her  husband  Walter 
Count  of  Mantes.  Strangely  enough,  Walter,  son  of 
Godgifu  daughter  of  ^Ethelred,  was  a  possible,  though 
not  a  likely,  candidate  for  the  rule  of  England  as  well 
as  of  Maine,  The  people  of  Maine  are  not  likely 


48  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP. 

to  have  thought  of  this   bit  of  genealogy.     But  it  was 
doubtless  present  to  the  minds  alike  of  William  and  of 


""  William  thus,  for  the  first  but  not  for  the  last  time, 
claimed  the  rule  of  ji_people  who  had  no  mind  to  have 
him  as  their  jruler.  Yet,  morally  worthless  as  were  his 
claims  over  Maine,  in  the  merely  technical  way-of  look- 
ing at  things,  he  had  more  to  say  than  most  princes 
have  who  annex.  the.-Jands,._oJL_  their  neighbours.  He 
had  a  perfectly  good  right  by  the  terms  of  the  agree- 
ment with  Herbert.  And  it  might  be  argued  by  any 
who  admitted  the  Norman  claim  to  the  homage  of 
Maine,  that  on  the  _failure  of  male  heirs  the  country 
reverted  to  the  overlord.  Yet  female  suc&essioir"was 
How  coming  in.  Anjou  had  passed  to  the  sons  of 
Geoffrey's  sister  ;  it  had  not  fallen  back  to  the  French 
king.  There  was  thus  a  twofold  answer  to  William's 
claim,  that  Herbert  could  not  grant  away  even  the 
rights  of  his  sisters,  still  less  the  rights  of  his  people. 
Still  it  was  characteristic  of  William  that  he  had  a  case 
that  might  be  plausibly  argued.  *  The  people  of  Maine 
had  fallen  back  on  the  old  Teutonic  right.  They  had 
chosen  a  prince  connected  with  the  old  stock,  but  who 
was  not  the  next  heir  according  to  any  rule  of  succes- 
sion. Walter  was  hardly  worthy  of  such  an  exceptional 
honour  ;  he  showed  no  more  energy  in  Maine  than  his 
brother  Ralph  had  shown  in  England.  The  city  was 
defended  by  Geoffrey,  lord  of  Mayenne,  a  valiant  man 
who  fills  a  large  place  in  the  local  history.  But  no 
valour  or  skill  could  withstand  William's  plan  of  war- 
fare. He  Jnvaded  Maine  in  much  the  same  sort  in 
which  he  hadLj.efeiided  Normandy.  He  gave  out  that 


iv.         THE  REIGN  OF  WILLIAM  IN  NORMANDY.          49 

he  wished  to  win  Maine  without  shedding  man's  blood. 
He  fought  no  battles ;  he  did  not  attack  the  city,  which 
he  left  to  be  the  last  spot  that  should  be  devoured.  He 
harried  the  open  country,  he  occupied  the  smaller  posts, 
till  the  citizens  were  driven,  against  Geoffrey's  will,  to 
surrender.  William  entered  Le  Mans  ;  he  was  received, 
we  are  told,  ^witlTJoy."  W  hen  men  make  the  best  of  a  bad 
bargain,  they  sometimes  persuade  themselves  that  they 
are  really  pleased.  William,  jj£  evej,  shed  no  blood  ; 
he  harmed  none  of  the  men  who  had  become  his  sub- 
jects ;  but  Le  Mans  was  to  be  bridled  ;  its  citizens  needed 
a  castle  and  a  Norman  garrison  to  keqTthem  in  their" 
new"  allegiance.  Walter  and  Biota  surrendered  "their 
claims  on  Maine  and  became  William's  guests  at  Falaise. 
Meanwhile  Geoffrey  of  Mayenne  refused  to  submit,  and 
withstood  the  new  Count  of  Maine  in  his  stronghold. 
William  laid  siege  to  Mayenne,  and  took  it  by  the 
favoured  Norman  argument  of  fire.  All  Maine  was  now 
in  the  hands  of  the  Conqueror. 

William  had  now  made  a  greater  conquest  than  any 
Norman  duke  had  made  before  "Kim  He  had  won  a 
'fertile  cojimtyla^la^JioIjTeTity, Imcl he  had  won  them,  in 
the_^eas_o_l.his,i),wa..agei  with  honour.  Are  we  to  believe 
that  he  sullied  his  conquest  by  putting  his  late  com- 
petitors, his  present  guests,  to  death  by  poison?  They 
died  conveniently  for  him,  and  they  died  in  his  own 
house.  Such  a...,iieaJjl,wjis_§ii^nge ;  but  strange  things 
do  happen.  William  gradually  came  to  shrink  from  no 
crime  for  which  he  could  find  a  technical  defence  ;  but 
no  advocate  could  have  said  anything  on  behalf  of  the 
poisoning  of  Walter  and  Biota.  Another  member  of  the 
house  of  Maine,  Margaret  the  betrothed  of  his  son  Robert, 

E 


50  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP.  iv. 

died  about  the  same  time ;  and  her  at  least  William  had 
every  motive  to  keep  alive.  One  who  was  more  danger- 
ous than  Walter,  if  he  suffered  anything,  only  suffered 
banishment.  Of  Geoffrey  of  Mayenne  we  hear  no  more 
till  William  had  again  to  fight  for  the  possession  of 
Maine. 

William  had  thus,  in  the  year  1063,  reached  the 
height  of  his  power^an4Jam^-^B--a-eeB^ttentaI^iince.  In 
a  conquest  on  Gaulish  soil  he  had  rehearsed  the  greater 
coh^uesT which  he  was  before  long  to  makaJaeyondjaea.. 
""Three  years,  eventful  in  England,  outwardly  uneventful 
in  Normandy,  still  part  us  from  William's  second  visit  to 
our  shores.  But  in  the  course  of  these  three  years  one 
event  must  have  happened,  which,  without  a  blow  being 
struck  or  a  treaty  being  signed,  did  more  for  his  hopes 
than  any  battle  or  any  treaty.  At  some  unrecorded 
time,  but  at  a  time  which  must  come  within  these  years, 
Harold_Earl  of  theyVe'st-Saxons  l^came  the  guest  and 
the  man  of  William  Duke  of  the  NorinansT 


CHAPTER  Y. 

.    HAROLD'S  OATH  TO  WILLIAM. 

A.D.  1064? 

THE  lord  of  Normandy  and  Maine  could  now  stop  and 
reckon  "InsTchances  of  becoming  .....  lord,  of  England  also. 
While  our  authorities  enable  us  to  put  together  a  fairly 
full  account  of  both  Norman  and  English  events,  they 
throw  no  light  on  the  way  in  which  men  in  either  land 
looked  at  events  in  the  other.  Yet  we  might  give  much 
to  know  what  William  and  Harold  at  this  time  thought 
of  one  another.  Nothing  had  as  yet  happened  to  make 
the  two  great  rivals  either  national  or  personal  enemies. 
England  and  Normandy  were  at  peace,  and  the  great 
duke  and  the  great  earl  had  most  likely  had  no  personal 
dealings  with  one  another.  They  were  rivals  in  the  sense 
that  each  looked  forward  to  succeed  to  the  English  crown 
whenever  the  reigning  king  should  die.  But  neither  had 
as  yet  put  forward  his  claim  in  any  shape  that  the  other 
could  look  on  as  any  formal  wrong  to  himself.  JJ  Wil- 
Iiain_and_Harold  hadeyer  met,  it  could  have  been  only 

Whatever  negotiations 


Harold  made  during  that  journey  were  negotiations  un- 
friendly to  William  ;  still  he  may,  in  the  course  of  that 
journey,  have  visited  Normandy  as  well  as  France  or 


52  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP. 

Anjou.  It  is  hard  to  avoid  the  thought  that  the  tale  of 
Harold's  visit  to  William,  of  his  oath  to  William,  arose 
out  of  something  that  happened  on  Harold's  way  back 
from  his  Roman  pilgrimage.  To  that  journey  we  can 
give  an  approximate  date.  Of  any  other  journey  we  have 
no  date  and  no  certain  detail.  We  can  say  only  that  the 
fact  that  no  English  writer  makes  any  mention  of  any 
such  visit,  of  any  such  oath,  is,  under  the  circumstances, 
the  strongest  proof  that  the  story  of  the  visit  and  the 
oath  has  some  kind  of  foundation.  Yet  if  we  grant  thus 
much,  the  story  reads  on  the  whole  as  if  it  happened 
a  few  years  later  than  the  English  earl's  return  from 
Rome. 

It  is  therefore  most  likelyJJaaJbJHarold  did  pay  a  second 
visit  to  Gaul,  whether  a  first  or  a  second  vSrI~to~^oT- 
mandy,  at  sometime  nfiamc. to  Edward's  death  than  the 
year  ±058.  The  English  writers  are  silent ;  the  Norman 
'writers  give  no  date  or  impossible  dates  ;  they  connect 
the  visit  with  a  war  in  Britanny ;  but  that  war  is  with- 
out a  date.  We  are  driven  to  choose  the  year  which  is 
least  rich  in  events  in  the  English  annals.  Harold  could 
not  have  paid  a  visit  of  several  months  to  Normandy 
either  in  1063  or  in  1065.  Of  those  years  the  first  was 
the  year  of  Harold's  great  war  in  Wales,  when  he  found 
how  the  Britons  might  be  overcome  by  their  own  arms, 
when  he  broke  the  power  of  Gruffydd,  and  granted  the 
Welsh  kingdom  to  princes  who  became  the  men  of  Earl 
Harold  as  well  as  of  King  Edward.  Harold's  visit  to 
Normandy  is  said  to  have  taken  place  in  the  summer  and 
autumn  months;  but  the  summer  and  autumn  of  1065 
were  taken  up  by  the  building  and  destruction  of  Harold's 
hunting-seat  in  Wales  and  by  the  greater  events  of  the 


v.  HAROLD'S  OATH  TO  WILLIAM.  53 

revolt  and  pacification  of  Northumberland.  But  the  year 
1064  is  a  blank  in  the  English  annals  till  the  last  days  of 
December,  and  no  action  of  Harold's  in  that  year  is 
recorded.  It  is  therefore  the  only  possible  year  among 
those  just  before  Edward's  death.  Harold's  visit  and 
oath  to  William  may  very  well  have  taken  place  in  that 
year ;  but  that  is  all. 

We  know  as  little  for  certain  as  to  the  circumstances 
of  the  visit  or  the  nature  of  the  oath.  We  can  say  only 
that  Harold  did  something  which  enabled  ^William  to 
charge  him  with  perjury  and  breach  of  the  duty  of  a 
vassal.  It  is  inconceivable  in  itself,  and  unlike  the  forma] 
scrupulousness  of  William's  character,  to  fancy  that  he 
made  his  appeal  to  all  Christendom  without  any  ground 
at  all.  The  Norman  writers  contradict  one  another  so 
thoroughly  in  every  detail  of  the  story  that  we  can  look 
on  no  part  of  it  as  trustworthy.  Yet  such  a  story  can 
hardly  have  grown  up  so  near  to  the  alleged  time  without 
some  kernel  of  truth  in  it.  And  herein  comes  the  strong 
corroborative  witness  that  the  English  writers,  denying 
every  other  charge  against  Harold,  pass  this  one  by 
without  notice.  We  can  hardly  doubt  that  Harold  swore 
some  oath  to  William  which  he  did  not  keep.  More 
than  this  it  would  be  rash  to  say  except  as  an  avowed 
guess. 

As  our  nearest  approach  to  fixing  the  date  is  to  take 
that  year  which  is  not  impossible,  so,  to  fix  the  occasion 
of  the  visit,  we  can  only  take  that  one  among  the  Nor- 
man versions  which  is  also  not  impossible.  All  the 
main  versions  represent  Harold  as  wrecked  on  the  coast 
of  Ponthieu,  as  imprisoned,  according  to  the  barbarous 
law  of  wreck,  by  Count  Guy,  and  as  delivered  by  the 


54  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP. 

intervention  of  William.  If  any  part  of  the  story  is  true, 
this  is.  But  as  to  the  circumstances  which  led  to  the 
shipwreck  there  is  no  agreement.  Harold  assuredly  was 
not  sent  to  announce  to  William  a  devise  of  the  crown 
in  his  favour  made  with  the  consent  of  the  Witan  of 
England  and  confirmed  by  the  oaths  of  Stigand,  God  wine, 
Siward,  and  Leofric.  Stigand  became  Archbishop  in 
September  1052  :  Godwine  died  at  Easter  1053.  The 
devise  must  therefore  have  taken  place,  and  Harold's 
journey  must  have  taken  place,  within  those  few  most 
unlikely  months,  the  very  time  when  Norman  influence 
was  overthrown.  Another  version  makes  Harold  go, 
against  the  King's  warnings,  to  bring  back  his  brother 
Wulfnoth  and  his  nephew  Hakon,  who  had  been  given 
as  hostages  on  the  return  of  Godwine,  and  had  been 
entrusted  by  the  King  to  the  keeping  of  Duke  William. 
This  version  is  one  degree  less  absurd ;  but  no  such 
hostages  are  known  to  have  been  given,  and  if  they  were, 
the  patriotic  party,  in  the  full  swing  of  triumph,  would 
hardly  have  allowed  them  to  be  sent  to  Normandy.  A 
third  version  makes  Harold's  presence  the  result  of  mere 
accident.  He  is  sailing  to  Wales  or  Flanders,  or  simply 
taking  his  pleasure  in  the  Channel,  when  he  is  cast  by  a 
storm  on  the  coast  of  Ponthieu.  Of  these  three  accounts 
we  may  choose  the  third  as  the  only  one  that  is  possible. 
It  is  also  one  out  of  which  the  others  may  have  grown, 
while  it  is  hard  to  see  how  the  third  could  have  arisen 
out  of  either  of  the  others.  Harold  then,  we  may  suppose, 
fell  accidentally  into  the  clutches  of  Guy,  and  was  rescued 
from  them,  at  some  cost  in  ransom  and  in  grants  of  land, 
by  Guy's  overlord  Duke  William. 

The  whole  story  is  eminently  characteristic  of  William. 


v.  HAROLD'S  OATH  TO  WILLIAM.  55 

He  would  be  honestly  indignant  at  Guy's  base  treatment 
of  Harold,  and  he  would  feel  it  his  part  as  Guy's  over- 
lord to  redress  the  wrong.  But  he  would  also  be  alive 
to  the  advantage  of  getting  his  rival  into  his  power  on  so 
honourable  a  pretext.  Simply  to  establish  a  claim  to  grati- 
tude on  the  part  of  Harold  would  be  something.  But  he 
might  easily  do  more,  and,  according  to  all  accounts,  he 
did  more.  Harold,  we  are  told,  as  the  Duke's  friend 
and  guest,  returns  the  obligation  under  which  the  Duke 
has  laid  him  by  joining  him  in  one  or  more  expeditions 
against  the  Bretons.  The  man  who  had  just  smitten  the 
Bret- Welsh  of  the  island  might  well  be  asked  to  fight,  and 
might  well  be  ready  to  fight,  against  the  Bret-Welsh  of  the 
mainland.  The  services  of  Harold  won  him  high  honour  : 
he  was  admitted  into  the  ranks  of  Norman  knighthood, 
and  engaged  to  marry  one  of  William's  daughters.  Now, 
at  any  time  to  which  we  can  fix  Harold's  visit,  all 
William's  daughters  must  have  been  mere  children. 
Harold,  on  the  other  hand,  seems  to  have  been  a  little 
older  than  William.  Yet  there  is  nothing  unlikely  in 
the  engagement,  and  it  is  the  one  point  in  which  all  the 
different  versions,  contradicting  each  other  on  every  other 
point,  agree  without  exception.  Whatever  else  Harold 
promises,  he  promises  this,  and  in  some  versions  he  does 
not  promise  anything  else. 

Here  then  we  surely  have  the  kernel  of  truth  round 
which  a  mass  of  fable,  varying  in  different  reports,  has 
gathered.  On  no  other  point  is  there  any  agreement. 
The  place  is  unfixed ;  half  a  dozen  Norman  towns  and 
castles  are  made  the  scene  of  the  oath.  TWiarm  nf  t.Tip. 
oathk  unfixed  ;  Jn_j5ome— accounts.  ..iL-Js  the  ordinary 
oath  of  homage ;  in  others  it  is  an  oath  of  fearful  solem- 


56  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP. 

nity,  taken  on  the  holiest  relics.  In  one  well-known 
account,  Harold  is  even  made  to  swear  on  hidden  relics, 
not  knowing  on  what  he  is  swearing.  Here  is  matter 
for  much  thought.  To  hold  that  one  form  of  oath  or 
promise  is  more  binding  than  another  upsets  all  true 
confidence  between  man  and  man.  The  notion  of  the 
specially  binding  nature  of  the  oath  by  relics  assumes 
that,  in  case  of  breach  of  the  oath,  every  holy  person  to 
whose  relics  despite  has  been  done  will  become  the  per- 
sonal enemy  of  the  perjurer.  But  the  last  story  of  all 
is  the  most  instructive.  William's  formal,  and  more 
than  formal,  religion  abhorred  a  false  oath,  in  himself  or 
in  another  man.  But,  so  long  as  he  keeps  himself  per- 
sonally clear  from  the  guilt,  he  does  not  scruple  to  put 
another  man  under  special  temptation,  and,  while  believ- 
ing in  the  power  of  the  holy  relics,  he  does  not  scruple 
to  abuse  them  to  a  purpose  of  fraud.  Surely,  if  Harold 
did  break  his  oath,  the  wrath  of  the  saints  would  fall 
more  justly  on  William.  Whether  the  tale  be  true  or 
false,  it  equally  illustrates  the  feelings  of  the  time,  and 
assuredly  its  truth  or  falsehood  concerns  the  character 
of  William  far  more  than  that  of  Harold. 

What  it  was  that  Harold  swore,  whether  in  this 
specially  solemn  fashion  or  in  any  other,  is  left  equally 
uncertain.  In  any  case  he  engages  to  marry  a  daughter 
as  to  which  claurIteT~r£Ee  statements  are 


endless—  and  in  most  versions  he  engages  to  do  some- 
thing more.  He  becomes  the  man  of  William,  much  as 
William  had  become  the  man  of  Edward.  He  promises 
to  give  his  sister  in  marriage  to  an  unnamed  Norman 
baron.  Moo^over  he  promises  to  secure  the  kingdom  of 
England  for  WiHiaiil  aL  Edward^  deaftT  Perhaps  he  is 


V.  HAROLD'S  OATH  TO  WILLIAM.  57 

himself  to  hold  the  kingdom  or  part  of  it  under  William ; 
4n  anytraser  Wiifetm-  ia  to  be  thu  overlord;  in  the  more 
usual  story,  William  is"  to  be  himself  the  immediate  king^ 
with  Harold  as  his  highest  and  most  favoured  subject. 
Meanwhile ...  JJaiold  is  to  act  -in-  -WiffittraV  -iftter-esty-t0 
receive &  Norman,  garrison  in  .Dover „ castle,  and  to  build 
other  jcastles  at  other  points.  But  no  two  stories  agree, 
and  not  a  few  know  nothing  of  anything  beyond  the 
promise  of  marriage. 

Now  if  William  really  required  Harold  to  swear  to 
all  these  things,  it  must  have  been  simply  in  order  to 
have  an  occasion  against  him.  If  Harold  really  swore  to 
all  of  them,  it  must  have  been  simply  because  he  felt  that 
he  was  practically  in  William's  power,  without  any  serious 
intention  of  keeping  the  oath.  If  Harold  took  any  such 
oath,  he  undoubtedly  broke  it;  but  we  may  safely  say  that 
any  guilt  on  his  part  lay  wholly  in  taking  the  oath,  not  in 
breaking  it.  For  he  swore  to  do  what  he  could  not  do, 
and  what  it  would  have  been  a  crime  to  do,  if  he  could. 
If  the  King  himself  could  not  dispose  of  the  crown,  still 
less  could  the  most  powerful  subject.  Harold  could  at 
most  promise  William  his  "vote  and  interest,"  whenever 
the  election  came.  But  no  one  can  believe  that  even 
Harold's  influence  could  have  obtained  the  crown  for 
William.  His  influence  lay  in  his  being  the  embodiment 
of  the  national  feeling ;  for  him  to  appear  as  the  sup- 
porter of  William  would  have  been  to  lose  the  crown  for 
himself  without  gaining  it  for  William.  Others  in  Eng- 
land and  in  Scandinavia  would  have  been  glad  of  it. 
And  the  engagements  to  surrender  Dover  castle  and  the 
like  were  simply  engagements  on  the  part  of  an  English 
earl  to  play  the  traitor  against  England.  If  William 


58  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP. 

really  called  on  Harold  to  swear  to  all  this,  he  did  so, 
not  with  any  hope  that  the  oath  would  be  kept,  but 
simply  to  put  his  competitor  as  far  as  possible  in  the 
wrong.  But  most  likely  Harold  swore  only  to  some- 
thing much  simpler.  Next  to  the  universal  agreement 
about  the  marriage  comes  the  very  general  agreement 
that  Harold  became  William's  m^i  In  these  two  state- 
ments  we  have  probably  the  whole  truth.  In  those  days 
men  took  the  obligation  of  homage  upon  themselves 
very  easily.  Homage  was  no  degradation,  even  in  the 
highest;  a  man  often  did  homage"To~~~!my  one  from 
whom  he  had  received  any  great  benefit,  and  Harold  had 
received  a  very  great  benefit  from  William.  Nor  did 
homage  to  a  new  lord  imply  treason  to  the  old  one. 
Harold,  delivered  by  William  from  Guy's  dungeon, 
would  be  eager  to  do  for  William  any  act  of  friendship. 
The  homage  would  be  little  more  than  binding  himself 
in  the  strongest  form  so  to  do.  The  relation  of  homage 
could  be  made  to  mean  anything  or  nothing,  as  might 
be  convenient.  The  man  might  often  understand  it  in 
one  sense  and  the  lord  in  another.  If  Harold  became  the 
man  of  William,  he  would  look  on  the  act  as  little  more 
than  an  expression  of  good  will  and  gratitude  towards 
his  benefactor,  his  future  father-in-law,  his  commander 
in  the  Breton  war.  He  would  not  look  on  it  as  for- 
bidding him  to  accept  the  English  crown  if  it  were 
offered  to  him.  Harold,  the  man  of  Duke  William, 
might  become  a  king,  if  he  could,  just  as  William,  the 
man  of  King  Philip,  might  become  a  king,  if  he  could. 
As  things  went  in  those  days,  both  the  homage  and  the 
promise  of  marriage  were  capable  of  being  looked  on 
very  lightly. 


v.  HAROLD'S  OATH  TO  WILLIAM.  59 

But  it  was  not  in  the  temper  or  in  the  circumstances 
of  William  to  put  any  such  easy  meaning  on  either 
promise.  The  oath  might,  if  needful,  be  construed  very 
strictly,  and  William  was  disposed  to  construe  it  very 
strictly.  Harold  had  not  promised  William  a  crown, 
which  was  not  his  to  promise  ;  but  he  had  promised  to  do 
that  which  might  be  held  to  forbid  him  to  take  a  crown 
which  William  held  to  be  his  own.  If  the  man  owed 
his  lord  any  duty  at  all,  it  was  surely  his  duty  not  to 
thwart  his  lord's  wishes  in  such  a  matter.  If  therefore, 
when  the  vacancy  of  the  throne  came,  Harold  took  the 
crown  himself,  or  even  failed  to  promote  William's  claim 
to  it,  William  might  argue  that  he  had  not  rightly  dis- 
charged the  duty  of  a  man  to  his  lord.  He  could  make 
an  appeal  to  the  world  against  the  new  king,  as  a  perjured 
man,  who  had  failed  to  help  his  lord  in  the  matter  where 
his  lord  most  needed  his  help.  And,  if  the  oath  really 
had  been  taken  on  relics  of  special  holiness,  he  could 
further  appeal  to  the  religious  feelings  of  the  time  against 
the  man  who  had  done  despite  to  the  saints.  If  he  should 
be  driven  to  claim  the  crown  by  arms,  he  could  give  the 
war  the  character  of  a  crusade.  All  this  in  the  end 
William  did,  and  all  this,  we  may  be  sure,  he  looked  for- 
ward to  doing,  when  he  caused  Harold  to  become  his  man. 
The  mere  obligation  of  homage  would,  in  the  skilful 
hands  of  William  and  Lanfranc,  be  quite  enough  to 
work  on  men's  minds,  as  William  wished  to  work  on 
them.  To  Harold  meanwhile  and  to  those  in  Eng- 
land who  heard  the  story,  the  engagement  would  not 
seem  to  carry  any  of  these  consequences.  The  mere 
homage  then,  which  Harold  could  hardly  refuse,  would 
answer  William's  purpose  nearly  as  well  as  any  of  these 


60  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR,  CHAI>. 

fuller  obligations  which  Harold  would  surely  have  re- 
fused. And  when  a  man  older  than  William  engaged  to 
marry  William's  child-daughter,  we  must  bear  in  mind  the 
lightness  with  which  such  promises  were  made.  William 
could  not  seriously  expect  that  this  engagement  would 
be  kept,  if  anything  should  lead  Harold  to  another  mar- 
riage. The  promise  was  meant  simply  to  add  another 
count  to  the  charges  against  Harold  when  the  time  should 
come.  Yet  on  this  point  it  is  not  clear  that  the  oath 
was  broken.  Harold  undoubtedly  married  Ealdgyth, 
daughter  of  ^Elfgar  and  widow  of  Gruffydd,  and  not 
any  daughter  of  William.  But  in  one  version  Harold 
is  made  to  say  that  the  daughter  of  William  whom  he 
had  engaged  to  marry  was  dead.  And  that  one  of 
William's  daughters  did  die  very  early  there  seems  little 
doubt. 

Whatever  William  did  Lanfranc  no  doubt  at  least 
helped  to  plan.      The  Norman  duke  was  subtle,  but  the 
was  subtler  still.     In  this  long  series 


of  schemes  and  negotiations  which  led  to  the  conquest  of 
England,  we  are  dealing  with  two  of  the  greatest  recorded 
masters  of  statecraft.  We  may  call  their  policy  dishonest 
and  immoral,  and  so  it  was.  But  it  was  hardly  more 
dishonest  and  immoral  than  most  of  the  diplomacy  of 
later  times.  William's  object  was,  without  any  formal 
breach  of  faith  on  his  own  part,  to  entrap  Harold  into 
an  engagement  which  might  be  understood  in  different 
senses,  and  which,  in  the  sense  which  William  chose  to 
put  upon  it,  Harold  was  sure  to  break.  Two  men, 
themselves  of  virtuous  life,  a  rigid  churchman  and  a 
layman  of  unusual  religious  strictness,  do  not  scruple  to 


v.  HAROLD'S  OATH  TO  WILLIAM.  61 

throw  temptation  in  the  way  of  a  fellow  man  in  the  hope 
that  he  will  yield  to  that  temptation.  They  exact  a 
promise,  because  the  promise  is  likely  to  be  broken,  and 
because  its  breach  would  suit  their  purposes.  Through 
all  William's  policy  a  strong  regard  for  formal  right  as 
he  chose  to  understand  formal  right,  is  not  only  found 
in  company  with  much  practical  wrong,  but  is  made  the 
direct  instrument  of  carrying  out  that  wrong.  Never 
was  trap  more  cunningly  laid  than  that  in  which  William 
now  entangled  Harold.  Never  was  greater  wrong  done 
without  the  breach  of  any  formal  precept  of  right. 
William  and  Lanfranc  broke  no  oath  themselves,  and  that 
was  enough  for  them.  But  it  was  no  sin  in  their  eyes 
to  beguile  another  into  engagements  which  he  would 
understand  in  one  way  and  they  in  another;  they 
even,  as  their  admirers  tell  the  story,  beguile  him  into 

it.q   at,   nnra   unlawful    n.nfl  impossible,    because 


their  interests  would  be  promoted  by  his  breach  of 
those  engagements!  William,  in  short,  under  the  spirit- 
ual guidance  of  Xanfranc,  made  Harold  swear  because 
he  himself  would  gain  by  being  able  to  denounce  Harold 
as  perjured. 

The  moral  question  need  not  be  further  discussed  ; 
but  we  should  greatly  like  to  know  how  far  the  fact  of 
Harold's  oath,  whatever  its  nature,  was  known  in  Eng- 
land ?  On  this  point  we  have  no  trustworthy  authority. 
The  English  writers  say  nothing  about  the  whole 
matter  ;  to  the  Norman  writers  this  point  was  of  no  in- 
terest. No  one  mentions  this  point,  except  Harold's 
romantic  biographer  at  the  beginning  of  the  thirteenth 
century.  His  statements  are  of  no  value,  except  as 
showing  how  long  Harold's  memory  was  cherished. 


62  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP.V. 

According  to  him,  Harold  formally  laid  the  matter  before 
the  Witan,  and  they  unanimously  voted  that  the  oath 
— more,  in  his  version,  than  a  mere  oath  of  homage — 
was  not  binding.  It  is  not  likely  that  such  a  vote  was 
ever  formally  passed,  but  its  terms  would  only  express 
what  every  Englishman  would  feel.  The  oath,  whatever 
its  terms,  had  given  William  a  great  advantage  ;  but 
every  Englishman  would  argue  both  that  the  oath, 
whatever  its  terms,  could  not  hinder  the  English  nation 
from  offering  Harold  the  crown,  and  that  it  could  not 
bind  Harold  to  refuse  the  crown  if  it  should  be  so 
offered. 


CHAPTEE  VI. 

THE   NEGOTIATIONS   OF  DUKE   WILLIAM. 
JANUARY-OCTOBER  1066. 

IF  the  time  that  has  been  suggested  was  the  real  time 
of  Harold's  oath  to  William,  its  fulfilment  became  a 
practical  question  in  little  more  than  a  year.  How  the 
year  1065  passed  in  Normandy  we  have  no  record  ;  in 
England  its  later  months  saw  the  revolt  of  Northumber- 
land against  Harold's  brother  Tostig,  and  the  reconcilia- 
tion which  Harold  made  between  tne  revolters  and  the 
king  to  the  damage  of  his  brother's  interests.  Then 
came  Edward^s  sickness,  of  which  he  died  on  January 
5,  1066.  Ha^jiad  on  his  deathbed  recommended 
to  the  assembled  Witan  as  his  successor  in  the 


kingdom.  The  candidate  was  at  once  elected.  Whether 
William^  Edgar,  or  any  other,  was  spoken  of  we  know 
not  ;  but  as  to  the  recommendation  of  Edward  and  the 
consequent  election  of  Harold  the  English  writers  are 
express.  The  next  day  Edward  was  buried,  and 
I^afold  was  crowned  in  regular  form  by  Ealdred  Arch- 
bishop of  York  in  Edward's  new  church  at  West- 
minster. Northumberland  refused  to  acknowledge  him  ; 
but  the  malcontents  were  won  over  by  the  coming  of 
the  king  and  his  friend  Saint  Wulfstan  Bishop  of  Wor- 


64  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP. 

cester.  It  was  most  likely  now,  as  a  seal  of  this  recon- 
ciliation, that  Harold  married  Ealdgyth,  the  sister  of  the 
two  northern  earls  Edwin  and  Morkere,  and  the  widow 
of  the  Welsh  king  Gruffydd.  He  doubtless  hoped  in 
this  way  to  win  the  loyalty  of  the  earls  and  their 
followers. 

The  accession  of  Harold  was  perfectly  regular  accord- 
ing to  English  law.  In  later  times  endless  fables  arose  ; 
but  the  Norman  writers  o£  the__tim^^^jnjp_t_denyjb]ifi. .facts 
of  the  recommendation,  election,  and  coronation.  They 
slur  them  over,  or,  while  admitting  the  mere  facts,  they 
represent  each  act  as  in  some  way  invalid.  No 
writer  near  the  time  asserts  a  deathbed  nomination  of 
William ;  they  speak  only  of  a  nomination  at  some 
earlier  time.  But  some  Norman  writers  represent  Harold 
as  crowned  by  Stigand  Archbishop  of  Canterbury. 
This  was  not,  in  the  ideas  of  those  times,  a  trifling  ques- 
tion. A  coronation  was  then  not  a  mere  pageant ;  it 
was  the  actual  admission  to  the  kingly  office.  Till  his 
crowning  and  anointing,  the  claimant  of  the  crown  was 
like  a  bishop-elect  before  his  consecration.  He  had,  by 
birth  or  election,  the  sole  right  to  become  king ;  it  was 
the  coronation  that  made  him  king.  And  as  the  cere- 
mony took  the  form  of  an  ecclesiastical  sacrament,  its 
validity  might  seem  to  depend  on  the  lawful  position  of 
the  officiating  bishop.  In  England  to  perform  that 
ceremony  was  the  right  and  duty  of  the  Archbishop  of 
Canterbury ;  but  the  canonical  position  of  Stigand  was 
doubtful.  He  had  been  appointed  on  the  flight  of 
Robert ;  he  had  received  the  pallium,  the  badge  of  archi- 
episcopal  rank,  only  from  the  usurping  Benedict  the 
Tenth.  It  was  therefore  good  policy  in  Harold  to  be 


vi.          THE  NEGOTIATIONS  OF  DUKE  WILLIAM.          65 

crowned  by  Ealdred,  to  whose  position  there  was  no  ob- 
jection. This  is  the  only  difference  of  fact  between  the 
English  and  Norman  versions  at  this  stage.  And  the 
difference  is  easily  explained.  At  William's  coronation 
the  king  walked  to  the  altar  between  the  two  arch- 
bishops, but  it  was  Ealdred  who  actually  performed  the 
ceremony.  Harold's  coronation  doubtless  followed  the 
same  order.  But  if  Stigand  took  any  part  in  that  coron- 
ation, it  was  easy  to  give  out  that  he  took  that  special 
part  on  which  the  validity  of  the  rite  depended. 

Still,  if  Harold's  accession  was  perfectly  lawful,  it 
was  none  the  less  strange  and  unusual.  Except  the 
Danish  kings  chosen  under  more  or  less  of  compulsion, 
he  was  the  first  king  who  did  not  belong  to  the  West- 
Saxon  kingly  house.  Such  a  choice  could  be  justified 
only  on  the  ground  that  that  house  contained  no  quali- 
fied candidate.  Its  only  known  members  were  the 
children  of  the  ^Etheling  Edward,  young  Edgar  and 
his  sisters.  Now  Edgar  would  certainly  have  been 
passed  by  in  favour  of  any  better  qualified  member  of 
the  kingly  house,  as  his  father  had  been  passed  by  in 
favour  of  King  Edward.  And  the  same  principle  would, 
as  things  stood,  justify  passing  him  by  in  favour  of 
a  qualified  candidate  not  of  the  kingly  house.  But 
Edgar's  right  to  the  crown  is  never  spoken  of  till  a 
generation  or  two  later,  when  the  doctrines  of  hereditary 
right  had  gained  much  greater  strength,  and  when 
Henry  the  Second,  great-grandson  through  his  mother 
of  Edgar's  sister  Margaret,  insisted  on  his  descent  from 
the  old  kings.  This  distinction  is  important,  because 
Harold  is  often  called  an  usurper,  as  keeping  out  Ed- 
gar the  heir  by  birth.  But  those  who  called  him  an 

F 


66  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP. 

usurper  at  the  time  called  him  so  as  keeping  out  Wil- 
liam the  heir  by  bequest.  William's  own  election  was 
out  of  the  question.  He  was  no  more  of  the  English 
kingly  house  than  Harold  ;  he  was  a  foreigner  and  an 
utter  stranger.  Had  Englishmen  been  minded  to  choose 
a  foreigner,  they  doubtless  would  have  chosen  Swegen 
of  Denmark.  He  had  found  supporters  when  Edward 
was  chosen ;  he  was  afterwards  appealed  to  to  deliver 
England  from  William.  He  was  no  more  of  the  Eng- 
lish kingly  house  than  Harold  or  William ;  but  he  was 
grandson  of  a  man  who  had  reigned  over  England, 
Northumberland  might  have  preferred  him  to  Harold ; 
any  part  of  England  would  have  preferred  him  to 
William.  In  fact  any  choice  that  could  have  been 
made  must  have  had  something  strange  about  it.  Ed- 
gar himself,  the  one  surviving  male  of  the  old  stock, 
besides  his  youth,  was  neither  born  in  the  land  nor  the 
son  of  a  crowned  king.  Those  two  qualifications  had 
always  been  deemed  of  great  moment;  an  elaborate 
pedigree  went  for  little  ;  actual  royal  birth  went  for  a 
great  deal.  There  was  now  no  son  of  a  king  to  choose. 
Had  there  been  even  a  child  who  was  at  once  a  son  of 
Edward  and  a  sister's  son  of  Harold,  he  might  have 
reigned  with  his  uncle  as  his  guardian  and  counsellor. 
As  it  was,  there  was  nothing  to  do  but  to  choose  the 
man  who,  though  not  of  kingly  blood,  had  ruled  England 
well  for  thirteen  years. 

The  case  thus  put  seemed  plain  to  every  Englishman, 
at  all  events  to  every  man  in  Wessex,  East-Anglia,  and 
southern  Mercia.  But  it  would  not  seem  so  plain  in 
other  lands.  To  the  greater  part  of  Western  Europe 
William's  claim  might  really  seem  the  better.  William 


vi.          THE  NEGOTIATIONS  OF  DUKE  WILLIAM.          67 

himself  doubtless  thought  his  own  claim  the  better ;  he 
deluded  himself  as  he  deluded  others.  But  we  are  more 
concerned  with  William  as  a  statesman ;  and  if  it  be 
statesmanship  to  adapt  means  to  ends,  whatever  the 
ends  may  be,  if  it  be  statesmanship  to  make  men  believe 
that  the  worse  cause  is  the  better,  then  no  man  ever 
showed  higher  statesmanship  than  William  showed  in 
his  great  pleading  before  all  Western  Christendom.  It 
is  a  sign  of  the  times  that  it  was  a  pleading  before 
all  Western  Christendom.  Others  had  claimed  crowns  ; 
none  had  taken  such  pains  to  convince  all  mankind  that 
the  claim  was  a  good  one.  Such  an  appeal  to  public 
opinion  marks  on  one  side  a  great  advance.  It  was  a 
great  step  towards  the  ideas  of  International  Law  and  even 
of  European  concert.  It  showed  that  the  days  of  mere 
force  were  over,  that  the  days  of  subtle  diplomacy  had 
begun.  Possibly  the  change  was  not  without  its  dark 
side  ;  it  may  be  doubted  whether  a  change  from  force  to 
fraud  is  wholly  a  gain.  Still  it  was  an  appeal  from  the 
mere  argument  of  the  sword  to  something  which  at  least 
professed  to  be  right  and  reason.  William  does  not 
draw  the  sword  till  he  has  convinced  himself  and  every- 
body else  that  he  is  drawing  it  in  a  just  cause.  In  that 
age  the  appeal  naturally  took  a  religious  shape.  Herein 
lay  its  immediate  strength ;  herein  lay  its  weakness  as 
regarded  the  times  to  come.  William  appealed  to 
Emperor,  kings,  princes,  Christian  men  great  and  small, 
in  every  Christian  land.  He  would  persuade  all ;  he 
would  ask  help  of  all.  But  above  all  he  appealed  to  the 
head  of  Christendom,  the  Bishop  of  Eome.  William  in 
his  own  person  could  afford  to  do  so ;  where  he  reigned, 
in  Normandy  or  in  England,  there  was  no  fear  of 


68  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP. 

Roman  encroachments ;  he  was  fully  minded  to  be  in 
all  causes  and  over  all  persons  within  his  dominions 
supreme.  While  he  lived,  no  Pope  ventured  to  dispute 
his  right.  But  by  acknowledging  the  right  of  the  Pope 
to  dispose  of  crowns,  or  at  least  to  judge  as  to  the  right 
to  crowns,  he  prepared  many  days  of  humiliation  for 
kings  in  general  and  specially  for  his  own  successors. 
One  man  in  Western  Europe  could  see  further  than 
William,  perhaps  even  further  than  Lanf ranc.  The  chief 
couns^lloxjof^Po^e  Alexander  the  Second. .was .ike... Arch- 
deacon  Hildebrancf  the  future  Gregory  the  Seventh.  If 
William  outwitted  the  world,  Hildebrand  outwitted 
grjUJam..  William's  appeal  to  tl^Pope^to~~3ecidF--be"-" 
tween  two^claimants  jor^the  English  crown  strengthened 

of   T?,nmft3  of  Jtajy^mj__n£  H^rma,^       Still 

this  recognition  of  Konian~claims  led  more  directly 
to  the  humiliation  of  William's  successor  in  his  own 
kingdom.  Moreover  William's  successful  attempt  to 
represent  his  enterprise  as  a  holy  war,  a  crusade  before 
crusades  were  heard  of,  did  much  to  suggest  and  to 
make  ready  the  way  for  the  real  crusades  a  generation 
later.  It  was  not  till  after  William's  death  that  Urban 
preached  the  crusade,  but  it  was  during  William's  life 
that  Gregory  planned  it. 

The  appeal  was  strangely  successful.  William  con- 
vinced, or  seemed  to  convince,  all  men  out  of  England 
and  Scandinavia  that  his  claim  to  the  English  crown  was 
just  and  holy,  and  that  it  was  a  good  work  to  help  him 
to  assert  it  in  arms.  He  persuaded  his  own  subjects ; 
he  certainly  did  not  constrain  them.  He  persuaded 
some  foreign  princes  to  give  him  actual  help,  some  to 


vi.          THE  NEGOTIATIONS  OF  DUKE  WILLIAM.  69 

join  his  muster  in  person ;  he  persuaded  all  to  help  him 
so  far  as  not  to  hinder  their  subjects  from  joining  him 
as  volunteers.  And  all  this  was  done  by  sheer  per- 
suasion, by  argument  good  or  bad.  In  adapting  of 
means  to  ends,  in  applying  to  each  class  of  men  that 
kind  of  argument  which  best  suited  it,  the  diplomacy, 
the  statesmanship,  of  William  was  perfect.  Again  we 
ask,  How  far  was  it  the  statesmanship  of  William,  how 
far  of  Lanfranc  1  But  a  prince  need  not  do  everything 
with  his  own  hands  and  say  everything  with  his  own 
tongue.  It  was  no  small  part  of  the  statesmanship  of 
William  to  find  out  Lanfranc,  to  appreciate  him  and  to 
trust  him.  And  when  two  subtle  brains  were  at  work, 
more  could  be  done  by  the  two  working  in  partnership 
than  by  either  working  alone. 

By  what  arguments  did  the  Duke  of  the  Normans 
and  the  Prior  of  Bee  convince  mankind  that  the  worse 
cause  was  the  better  1  We  must  always  remember  the 
transitional  character  of  the  age.  England  was  in  poli- 
tical matters  in  advance  of  other  Western  lands  ;  that  is, 
it  lagged  behind  other  Western  lands.  It  had  not  gone 
so  far  on  the  downward  course.  It  kept  far  more  than 
Gaul  or  even  Germany  of  the  old  Teutonic  institutions, 
the  substance  of  which  later  ages  have  won  back  under 
new  shapes.  Many  things  were  understood  in  Eng- 
land which  are  now  again  understood  everywhere, 
but  which  were  no  longer  understood  in  France  or  in 
the  lands  held  of  the  French  crown.  The  popular 
election  of  kings  comes  foremost.  Hugh  Capet  was  an 
elective  king  as  much  as  Harold ;  but  the  French  kings 
had  made  their  crown  the  most  strictly  hereditary  of  all 
crowns.  They  avoided  any  interregnum  by  having  their 


70  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP. 

sons  crowned  in  their  lifetime.  So  with  the  great  fiefs 
of  the  crown.  The  notion  of  kingship  as  an  office  con- 
ferred by  the  nation,  of  a  duchy  or  county  as  an  office 
held  under  the  king,  was  still  fully  alive  in  England ;  in 
Gaul  it  was  forgotten.  Kingdom,  duchies,  counties,  had 
all  become  possessions  instead  of  offices,  possessions 
passing  by  hereditary  succession  of  some  kind.  But  no 
rule  of  hereditary  succession  was  universally  or  generally 
accepted.  To  this  day  the  kingdoms  of  Europe  differ  as 
to  the  question  of  female  succession,  and  it  is  but  slowly 
that  the  doctrine  of  representation  has  ousted  the  more 
obvious  doctrine  of  nearness  of  kin.  All  these  points 
were  then  utterly  unsettled ;  crowns,  save  of  course 
that  of  the  Empire,  were  to  pass  by  hereditary  right ; 
only  what  was  hereditary  right  1  At  such  a  time  claims 
would  be  pressed  which  would  have  seemed  absurd  either 
earlier  or  later.  To  Englishmen,  if  it  seemed  strange  to 
elect  one  who  was  not  of  the  stock  of  Cerdic,  it  seemed 
much  more  strange  to  be  called  on  to  accept  without 
election,  or  to  elect  as  a  matter  of  course,  one  who  was 
not  of  the  stock  of  Cerdic  and  who  was  a  stranger  into 
the  bargain.  Out  of  England  it  would  not  seem  strange 
when  William  set  forth  that  Edward,  having  no  direct 
heirs,  had  chosen  his  near  kinsman  William  as  his  suc- 
cessor. Put  by  itself,  that  statement  had  a  plausible 
sound.  The  transmission  of  a  crown  by  bequest  belongs 
to  the  same  range  of  ideas  as  its  transmission  by  hered- 
itary right;  both  assume  the  crown  to  be  a  property 
and  not  an  office.  Edward's  nomination  of  Harold,  the 
election  of  Harold,  the  fact  that  William's  kindred  to 
Edward  lay  outside  the  royal  line  of  England,  the 
fact  that  there  was,  in  the  person  of  Edgar,  a  nearer 


vi.  THE  NEGOTIATIONS  OF  DUKE  WILLIAM.  71 

kinsman  within  that  royal  line,  could  all  be  slurred  over 
or  explained  away  or  even  turned  to  William's  profit.  Let 
it  be  that  Edward  on  his  death-bed  had  recommended 
Harold,  and  that  the  Witan  had  elected  Harold.  The 
recommendation  was  wrung  from  a  dying  man  in  opposi- 
tion to  an  earlier  act  done  when  he  was  able  to  act 
freely.  The  election  was  brought  about  by  force  or 
fraud ;  if  it  was  free,  it  was  of  no  force  against  William's 
earlier  claim  of  kindred  and  bequest.  As  for  Edgar,  as 
few  people  in  England  thought  of  him,  still  fewer  out  of 
England  would  have  ever  heard  of  him.  It  is  more 
strange  that  the  bastardy  of  William  did  not  tell  against 
him,  as  it  had  once  told  in  his  own  duchy.  But  this  fact 
again  marks  the  transitional  age.  Altogether  the  tale 
that  a  man  who  was  no  kinsman  of  the  late  king  had 
taken  to  himself  the  crown  which  the  king  had  be- 
queathed to  a  kinsman,  might,  even  without  further 
aggravation,  be  easily  made  to  sound  like  a  tale  of 
wrong. 

But  the  case  gained  tenfold  strength  when  William 
added  that  the  doer  of  the  wrong  was  of  all  men  the  one 
most  specially  bound  not  to  do  it.  The  usurper  was  in 
any  case  William's  man,  bound  to  act  in  all  things  for  his 
lord.  Perhaps  he  was  more ;  perhaps  he  had  directly  sworn 
to  receive  William  as  king.  Perhaps  he  had  promised  all 
this  with  an  oath  of  special  solemnity.  It  would  be  easy 
to  enlarge  on  all  these  further  counts  as  making  up  an 
amount  of  guilt  which  William  not  only  had  the  right  to 
chastise,  but  which  he  would  be  lacking  in  duty  if  he  failed 
to  chastise.  He  had  to  punish  the  perjurer,  to  avenge  the 
wrongs  of  the  saints.  Surely  all  who  should  help  him 
in  so  doing  would  be  helping  in  a  righteous  work. 


72  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP. 

The  answer  to  all  this  was  obvious.  Putting  the  case 
at  the  very  worst,  assuming  that  Harold  had  sworn  all 
that  he  is  ever  said  to  have  sworn,  assuming  that  he 
swore  it  in  the  most  solemn  way  in  which  he  is  ever  said 
to  have  sworn  it,  William's  claim  was  not  thereby  made 
one  whit  better.  Whatever  Harold's  own  guilt  might 
be,  the  people  of  England  had  no  share  in  it.  Nothing 
that  Harold  had  done  could  bar  their  right  to  choose 
their  king  freely.  Even  if  Harold  declined  the  crown, 
that  would  not  bind  the  electors  to  choose  William.  But 
when  the  notion  of  choosing  kings  had  begun  to  sound 
strange,  all  this  would  go  for  nothing.  There  would  be 
no  need  even  to  urge  that  in  any  case  the  wrong  done 
by  Harold  to  William  gave  William  a  casus  belli  against 
Harold,  and  that  William,  if  victorious,  might  claim  the 
crown  of  England,  as  a  possession  of  Harold's,  by  right 
of  conquest.  In  fact  William  never  claimed  the  crown 
by  conquest,  as  conquest  is  commonly  understood.  IJe_ 


always  rp.prp.sftritprlJhmi?^l£-ftfr4Jia.  lawful  Tifirr^jTrfl.ppiy 
dHveTrtiTTT;Se"'lorce  to  obtain  hisrights.  The  other  pleas 
^were  quite  enough  to  satisi3r"~most  men  out  of  England 
and  Scandinavia.  William's  work  was  to  claim  the  crown 
of  which  he  was  unjustly  deprived,  and  withal  to  deal 
out  a  righteous  chastisement  on  the  unrighteous  and 
ungodly  man  by  whom  he  had  been  deprived  of  it. 

In  the  hands  of  diplomatists  like  William  and  Lan- 
franc,  all  these  arguments,  none  of  which  had  in  itself 
the  slightest  strength,  were  enough  to  turn  the  great 
mass  of  continental  opinion  in  William's  favour.  But 
he  could  add  further  arguments  specially  adapted  to 
different  classes  of  minds.  He  could  hold  out  the  pros- 
pect of  plunder,  the  prospect  of  lands  and  honours  in  a 


vi.  THE  NEGOTIATIONS  OF  DUKE  WILLIAM.  73 

land  whose  wealth  was  already  proverbial.  It  might  of 
course  be  answered  that  the  enterprise  against  England 
was  hazardous  and  its  success  unlikely.  But  in  such 
matters,  men  listen  rather  to  their  hopes  than  to  their 
fears.  To  the  Normans  it  would  be  easy,  not  only  to 
make  out  a  case  against  Harold,  but  to  rake  up  old 
grudges  against  the  English  nation.  Under  Harold  the 
son  of  Cnut,  Alfred,  a  prince  half  Norman  by  birth, 
wholly  Norman  by  education,  the  brother  of  the  late 
king,  the  lawful  heir  to  the  crown,  had  been  betrayed 
and  murdered  by  somebody.  A  wide-spread  belief  laid 
the  deed  to  the  charge  of  the  father  of  the  new  king. 

^This  story  might  easily  be  made  a  ground  of  national 
complaint  by  NormariTI^a^ln^ETigte^ 

lierilifui  tluiLHuiuld  had  t,uiim"sfaafe'Th"the  alleged  crime 
ofMarodwine.  -Jt-wa»e--^ay)r-ttr'ii'We'l'I'  on  Iat6r  events,  on 
the  driving  of  so  many  Normans  out  of  England,  with 
Archbishop  Robert  at  their  head.  Nay,  not  only  had 
the  lawful  primate  been  driven  out,  but  an  usurper  had 
been  set  in  his  place,  and  this  usurping  archbishop  had 
been  made  to  bestow  a  mockery  of  consecration  on  the 
usurping  king.  The  proposed  aggression  on  England 
was  even  represented  as  a  missionary  work,  undertaken 
for  the  good  of  the  souls  of  the  benighted  islanders.  For, 
though  the  English  were  undoubtedly  devout  after  their 
own  f  ashion7  there  was  much  in  the~^ecclesiastical  state 

beyond 


sea,  much  that  William,  when  he  had  the  power,  deemed 
it  hilTduty  to  reformj,  The  insular  position  of  England 
naturally  partell~ttf'm  many  things  from  the  usages  and 
feelings  of  the  mainland,  and  it  was  not  hard  to  get  up 
a  feeling  against  the  nation  as  well  as  against  its  king. 


74  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP. 

All  this  could  not  really  strengthen  William's  claim; 
but  it  made  men  look  more  favourably  on  his  enter- 
prise. 

The  fact  that  the  Witan  were  actually  in  session  at 
Edward's  death  had  made  it  possible  to  carry  out  Harold's 
election  and  coronation  with  extreme  speed.  The 
electors  had  made  their  choice  before  William  had  any 
opportunity  of  formally  laying  his  claim  before  them. 
This  was  really  an  advantage  to  him;  he  could  the 
better  represent  the  election  and  coronation  as  invalid. 
His  first  step  was  of  course  to  send  an  embassy  to 
Harold  to  call  on  him  even  now  to  fulfil  his  oath.  The 
accounts  of  this  embassy,  of  which  we  have  no  English 
account,  differ  as  much  as  the  different  accounts  of  the 
oath.  Each  version  of  course  makes  William  demand 
and  Harold  refuse  whatever  it  had  made  Harold  swear. 
These  demands  and  refusals  range  from  the  resignation  of 
the  kingdom  to  a  marriage  with  William's  daughter. 
And  it  is  hard  to  separate  this  embassy  from  later 
messages  between  the  rivals.  In  all  William  demands, 
Harold  refuses^  the  arguments  on  each  side  are_Jik§lyJ>o 
be  genuine.  Harold  is  called  on  to  give  up  theLcrown  to 
William,  to  hold  it  of  William,  to  hold  part  of  the  kingdom 
of  ~^WTITialn7To~sul3TiiiL  the  question  to  the  'Tu^genTenTof 
the  Fop~e71astly,  it  he  wTill  do  nothmgelse,  at  least  to 
marrvWil'Tia.Tn'q  rTflTugvg^'  DitterenTTVTTl^fs^Tacethese 
demands  at  different  times,  immediately  after  Harold's 
election  or  immediately  before  the  battle.  The  last 
challenge  tojt_smgle  combat  between  Harold  and  William 

ev    of  the  battle.     Now 


none  of  these  accounts  come  from  contemporary  partisans 


vi.  THE  NEGOTIATIONS  OF  DUKE  WILLIAM.  75 

of  Harold ;  every  one  is  touched  by  hostile  feeling 
towards  him.  Thus  the  constitutional  language  that  is 
put  into  his  mouth,  almost  startling  from  its  modern 
sound,  has  greater  value.  A  King  of  the  English  can  do 
nothing  without  the  consent  of  his  Witan.  They  gave 
him  the  kingdom ;  without  their  consent,  he  cannot  resign 
it  or  dismember  it  or  agree  to  hold  it  of  any  man ;  with- 
out their  consent,  he  cannot  even  marry  a  foreign  wife. 
Or  he  answers  that  the  daughter  of  William  whom  he 
promised  to  marry  is  dead,  and  that  the  sister  whom  he 
promised  to  give  to  a  Norman  is  dead  also.  Harold 
does  not  deny  the  fact  of  his  oath — whatever  its  nature ; 
he  justifies  its  breach  because  it  was  taken  against 
his  will,  and  because  it  was  in  itself  of  no  strength, 
as  binding  him  to  do  impossible  things.  He  does 
not  deny  Edward's  earlier  promise  to  William ;  but,  as  a 
testament  is  of  no  force  while  the  testator  liveth,  he 
argues  that  it  is  cancelled  by  Edward's  later  nomination 
of  himself.  In  truth  there  is  hardly  any  difference 
between  the  disputants  as  to  matters  of  fact.  One  side 
admits  at  least  a  plighting  of  homage  on  the  part  of 
Harold ;  the  other  side  admits  Harold's  nomination  and 
election.  The  real  difference  is  as  to  the  legal  effect  of 
either.  Herein  comes  William's  policy.  The  question 
was  one  of  English  law  and  of  nothing  else,  a  matter  for 
the  Witan  of  England  and  for  no  other  judges.  William, 
Iw  ingeniously  mixing  all  kinds  of  irrelevant  issues,  con- 
tnveeTto  remuve1fceniispuTc~from  the  region  of  municipal 
Jnto_^that  of  international  law,  a Jawjwhose  chiei~re£re- 
-Sentative  was  the  Bishop  of  Rome.  By  winning  the 
Pope~to~nTs~sicIe,  VV  illiam"could  give  his^ggression  the 
air  of  a  religious  war ;  but  in  so  doing,  he  unwittingly 


76  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP. 

undermined  the  throne  that  he  was  seeking   and   the 
thrones  of  all  other  princes. 

The  answers  which  Harold  either  made,  or  which 
writers  of  his  time  thought  that  he  ought  to  have  made, 
are  of  the  greatest  moment  in  our  constitutional  history. 
The  King  is  the  doer  of  everything;  but  he  can  do 
nothing  of  moment  without  the  consent  of  his  Witan. 
They  can  say  Yea  or  Nay  to  every  proposal  of  the  King. 
An  energetic  and  popular  king  would  get  no  answer 
but  Yea  to  whatever  he  chose  to  ask.  A  king  who  often 
got  the  answer  of  Nay,  Nay,  was  in  great  danger  of  losing 
his  kingdom.  %ke  statesmanship  of  Williajn  knew-feew 
J,o  jurn  Jhisjaan .st.U.n t.i onSTsystem^'without  making_any^ 
change  in  the  letter,  into  a  despotism  like  that  of  Con- 
stantinople or  Dor3oval  "Bat  the  letter  livecf^to  come" 
to~BgnT"agaiii  on  occasion.  The  Eevolution  of  1399 
was  a  falling  back  on  the  doctrines  of  1066,  and  the 
Eevolution  of  1688  was  a  falling  back  on  the  doc- 
trines of  1399.  The  principle  at  all  three  periods  is 
that  the  power  of  the  King  is  strictly  limited  by  law, 
but  that,  within  the  limits  which  the  law  sets  to  his 
power,  he  acts  according  to  his  own  discretion.  King 
and  Witan  stand  out  as  distinct  powers,  each  of  which 
needs  the  assent  of  the  other  to  its  acts,  and  which  may 
always  refuse  that  assent.  The  political  work  of  the 
last  two  hundred  years  has  been  to  hinder  these  direct 
collisions  between  King  and  Parliament  by  the  ingeni- 
ous conventional  device  of  a  body  of  men  who  shall  be 
in  name  the  ministers  of  the  Crown,  but  in  truth  the 
ministers  of  one  House  of  Parliament.  We  do  not 
understand  our  own  political  history,  still  less  can  we 
understand  the  position  and  the  statesmanship  of  the 


vi.          THE  NEGOTIATIONS  OF  DUKE  WILLIAM.  77 

Conqueror,  unless  we  fully  take  in  what  the  English 
constitution  in  the  eleventh  century  really  was,  how 
very  modern-sounding  are  some  of  its  doctrines,  some  of 
its  forms.  Statesmen1' of  our  own  day  might  do  well  to 
study  the  meagre  records  of  the  Gem6t  of  1047.  There 
is  the  earliest  recorded  instance  of  a  debate  on  a  ques- 
tion of  foreign  policy.  Earl  Godwine  proposes  to  give 
help  to  Denmark,  then  at  war  with  Norway.  He  is 
outvoted  on  the  motion  of  Earl  Leofric,  the  man  of 
moderate  politics,  who  appears  as  leader  of  the  party  of 
non-intervention.  It  may  be  that  in  some  things  we 
have  not  always  advanced  in  the  space  -of.  eight  hundred 
years. 

The  negotiations  of  William  with  his  own  subjects, 
with  foreign  powers,  and  with  the  Pope,  are  hard  to 
arrange  in  order.  Several  negotiations  were  doubtless 
going  on  at  the  same  time.  The  embassy  to  Harold 
would  of  course  come  first  of  all.  Till  his  demand  had 
been  made  and  refused,  William  could  make  no  appeal 
elsewhere.  We  know  not  whether  the  embassy  was  sent 
before  or  after  Harold's  journey  to  Northumberland, 
before  or  after  his  marriage  with  Ealdgyth.  If  Harold 
was  already  married,  the  demand  that  he  should  marry 
William's  daughter  could  have  been  meant  only  in 
mockery.  Indeed,  the  whole  embassy  was  so  far  meant 
in  mockery  that  it  was  sent  without  any  expecta- 
tion that  its  demands  would  be  listened  to.  It  was 
sent  to  put  Harold,  from  William's  point  of  view,  more 
thoroughly  in  the  wrong,  and  to  strengthen  William's 
case  against  him.  It  would  therefore  be  sent  at  the 
first  moment ;  the  only  statement,  from  a  very  poor  au- 


78  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP. 

thority  certainly,  makes  the  embassy  come  on  the  tenth 
day  after  Edward's  death.  Next  after  the  embassy 
would  come  William's  appeal  to  his  own  subjects,  though 
Lanfranc  might  well  be  pleading  at  Rome  while  William 
was  pleading  at  Lillebonne.  The  Duke  first  consulted  a 
select  company,  who  promised  their  own  services,  but 
declined  to  pledge  any  one  else.  It  was  held  that  no 
Norman  was  bound  to  follow  the  Duke  in  an  attempt  to 
win  for  himself  a  crown  beyond  the  sea.  But  voluntary 
help  was  soon  ready.  A  meeting  of  the  whole  baronage 
of  Normandy  was  held  at  Lillebonne.  The  assembly 
declined  any  obligation  which  could  be  turned  into  a 
precedent,  and  passed  no  general  vote  at  all.  But  the 
barons  were  won  over  one  by  one,  and  each  promised 
help  in  men  and  ships  according  to  his  means. 

William  had  thus,  with  some  difficulty,  gained  the 
support  of  his  own  subjects;  but  when  he  had  once 
gained  it,  it  was  a  zealous  support.  And  as  the  flame 
spread  from  one  part  of  Europe  to  another,  the  zeal  of 
Normandy  would  wax  keener  and  keener.  The  dealings 
of  William  with  foreign  powers  are  told  us  in  a  con- 
fused, piecemeal,  and  sometimes  contradictory  way. 
ffia*-4reio'"~th^  to  theyouno;  King 

Henry_of  Germany,  son  of  the  great  Emperor,  the  friend 
ofJEngland,  and  a!sQ~To~^rwegon  of  Donmarkr^  The  JN  or^ 
man  storyruns  that  both  princes  pi  u  wised  \TTIliam  their 
active  support.  Yet  Swegen,  the  near  kinsman  of  Harold, 
was  a  friend  of  England,  and  the  same  writer  who  puts 
this  promise  into  his  mouth  makes  him  send  troops  to  help 
his  English  cousin.  Young  Henry  or  his  advisers  could 
have  no  motive  for  helping  William ;  but  subjects  of  the 
Empire  were  at  least  not  hindered  from  joining  his  banner. 


THE  NEGOTIATIONS  OF  DUKE  WILLIAM.  79 

h_king  Williamj)erhaps  offere^_th^_J)aiho^ 
ft  pi  rling  the  crown  of  England  of  him  ;  but  Philip  is 
said  to  have  discouraged  William's  enterprise  as  much 
as  he  could.  Still  he  did  not  hinder  French  subjectsfrom 
taking  a  part  in  it.  Of  the  princes  who  held  of  the  French 
crown,  Eustace  of  Boulogne,  who  joined  the  muster  in 
person,  and  Guy  of  Ponthieu,  William's  own  vassal,  who 
sent  his  son,  seem  to  have  been  the  only  ones  who  did 
more  than  allow  the  levying  of  volunteers  in  their 
dominions.  A  strange  tale  is  told  that  Conan  of  Brit- 
anny  took  this  moment  for  bringing  up  his  own  for- 
gotten pretensions  to  the  Norman  duchy.  If  William 
was  going  to  win  England,  let  him  give  up  Normandy 
to  him.  He  presently,  the  tale  goes,  died  of  a  strange 
form  of  poisoning,  in  which  it  is  implied  that  William 
had  a  hand.  This  is  the  story  of  Walter  and  Biota  over 
again.  It  is  perhaps  enough  to  say  that  the  Breton 
writers  know  nothing  of  the  tale. 

But  the  great  negotiation  of  all  was  with  the  Papal 
court.  We  might  have  thought  that  the  envoy  would 
be  Lanfranc,  so  well  skilled  in  Roman  ways ;  but 
William  perhaps  needed  him  as  a  constant  adviser  by 
his  own  person.  Gilbert,  Archdeacon  of  Lisieux,  was 
sent  to  Pope  Alexander.  No  application  could  better 
suit  papal  interests  than  the  one  that  was  now  made ; 
but  there  were  some  moral  difficulties.  Not  a  few  of 
the  cardinals,  Hildebrand  tells  us  himself,  argued, 
not  without  strong  language  towards  Hildebrand,  that 
the  Church  had  nothing  to  do  with  such  matters,  and 
that  it  was  sinful  to  encourage  a  claim  which  could 
not  be  enforced  without  bloodshed.  But  with  many, 
with  Hildebrand  among  them,  the  notion  of  the  Church 


80 


WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR. 


CHAP. 


as  a  party  or  a  power  came  'before  all  thoughts  of  its 
higher  duties.  One  side  was  carefully  heard  ;  the  other 
seems  not  to  have  been  heard  at  all.  We  hear  of  no 
summons  to  Harold,  and  the  King  of  the  English  could 
not  have  pleaded  at  the  Pope's  bar  without  acknow- 
ledging that  his  case  was  at  least  doubtful.  The  judge- 
ment of  Alexander  or  of  Hildebrand  was  given  for 
William.  Harold  was  7Ieclared~to^lTg~an  usurper,  per- 

crown  was  declared  to  be  in  the  Duke  of  the  Normans, 
and  William  was  JnfcrmTJy-t^ftssp.f)  intEe"  enterprise  jn 
whicTf"Ke"was  at  once  to  win  his  own  rights,  to  chastise 
the  wrong -doer,  to  reform  the  .spiritual  state  of  the 
misguided  islanders,  to  teach  them  fuller  obeclience"  to 
the  Roman  JSee  and  more  regular  payment  of  its  tem- 
poral du.es.  '  William  gained  his  immediate  point ;  but 
his  successors  on  the  English  throne  paid  the  penalty. 
Hildebrand  gained  his  point  for  ever,  or  for  as  long  a 
time  as  mcn~~mighL  be  willing  Lu  accept  llic  Dibliop^of 
Rome  as  a  judgefln  any  matters.  ^Th^~~pr5cecTent  by 
which  HildebrandT^uTid^r^nother  name,  took  on  him  to 
dispose  of  a  higher  crown  than  that  of  England  was 
now  fully  established. 

As  an  outward  sign  of  papal  favour,  William  received 
a  consecrated  banner  and  a  ring  containing  a  hair  of 
Saint  Peter.  Here  was  something  for  men  to  fight  for. 
The  war  was  now  a  holy  one.  All  who  were  ready  to 
promote  their  souls'  health  by  slaughter  and  plunder 
might  flock  to  William's  standard,  to  the  standard  of 
Saint  Peter.  Men  came  from  most  French-speaking 
lands,  the  Normans  of  Apulia  and  Sicily  being  of  course 
not  slow  to  take  up  the  quarrel  of  their  kinsfolk.  But> 


vi.          THE  NEGOTIATIONS  OF  DUKE  WILLIAM.  81 

next  to  his  own  Normandy,  the  lands  which  sent  most 
help  were  Flanders,  the  land  of  Matilda,  and  Britanny, 
where  the  name  of  the  Saxon  might  still  be  hateful. 
We  must  never  forget  that  the  host  of  William,  the  men 
who  won  England,  the  men  who  settled  in  England,  were 
not  an  exclusively  Norman  body.  Not  Norman,  but 
French,  is  the  name  most  commonly  opposed  to  English, 
as  the  name  of  the  conquering  people.  Each  Norman 
severally  would  have  scorned  that  name  for  himself 
personally ;  but  it  was  the  only  name  that  could  mark 
the  whole  of  which  he  and  his  countrymen  formed  a 
part.  Yet,  if  the  Normans  were  but  a  part,  they  were 
the  greatest  and  the  noblest  part ;  their  presence  alone 
redeemed  the  enterprise  from  being  a  simple  enterprise 
of  brigandage.  The  Norman  Conquest  was  after  all  a 
Norman  Conquest;  men  of  other  lands  were  merely 
helpers.  So  far  as  it  was  not  Norman,  it  was  Italian ; 
the  subtle  wit  of  Lombard  Lanfranc  and  Tuscan 
Hildebrand  did  as  much  to  overthrow  us  as  the  lance 
and  bow  of  Normandy. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

WILLIAM'S  INVASION  OF  ENGLAND. 

AUGUST-DECEMBER  1066. 

THE  statesmanship  of  William  had  triumphed.  The 
people  of  England  had  chosen  their  king,  and  a  large 
part  of  the  world  had  been  won  over  by  the  arts  of  a 
foreign  prince  to  believe  that  it  was  a  righteous  and 
holy  work  to  set  him  on  the  throne  to  which  the  Eng- 
lish people  had  chosen  the  foremost  man  among  themu- 
selves.  No  diplomatic  success  was  ever  more  thorough. 
Unluckily  we  know  nothing  of  the  state  of  feeling  in 
England  while  "William  was  plotting  and  pleading 
beyond  the  sea.  Nor  do  we  know  how  much  men  in 
England  knew  of  what  was  going  on  in  other  lands,  or 
what  they  thought  when  they  heard  of  it.  We  know 
only  that,  after  Harold  had 


the  Easter  Gem6t  at  West- 
"mjnster.  Then  in  the  words  of  the  Chronicler,  "  it 
was  known  to  him  that  William  Bastard,  King  Ed- 
ward's kinsman,  would  come  hither  and  win  this  land." 
This  is  all  that  our  own  writers  tell  us  about  William 
Bastard,  between  his  peaceful  visit  to  Englamlin  1052 
and  JusJa^,rlike_yisit  jn_1066.  But  we  know  that  King 
Harold  did  all  that  man  could  do  to  defeat  his  purposes, 


CHAP.  vii.     WILLIAM'S  INVASION  OF  ENGLAND.  83 

and  that  he  was  therein  loyally  supported  by  the  great  mass 
of  the  English  nation,  we  may  safely  say  by  all,  save  his 
two  brothers-in-law  and  so  many  as  they  could  influence. 

William's  doings  we  know  more  fully.  The  military 
events  of  this  wonderful  year  there  is  no  need  to  tell 
in  detail.  But  we  see  that  William's-  generalship  was 
equal  to  his  statesmanship,  and  that  it  was  met  by  equal 
generalship  on  the  side  of  Harold.  Moreover,  the  luck 
of  William  is  as  clear  as  either  his  statesmanship  or  his 
generalship.  When  Harold  was  crowned  on  the  day  of 
the  Epiphany,  he  must  have  felt  sure  that  he  would 
have  to  withstand  an  invasion  of  England  before  the 
year  was  out.  But  it  could  not  have  come  into  the 
mind  of  Harold,  William,  or  Lanfranc,  or  any  other 
man,  that  he  would  have  to  withstand  two  invasions  of 
England  at  the  same  moment. 

It  was  the  invasion  of  Harold  of  Norway,  at  the 
same  time  as  the  invasion  of  William,  which  decided 
the  fate  of  England.  The  issue  of  the  struggle  might 
have  gone  against  England,  had  she  had  to  strive  against 
one  enemy  only ;  as  it  was,  it  was  the  attack  made  by 
two  enemies  at  once  which  divided  her  strength,  and 
enabled  the  Normans  to  land  without  resistance.  The 
two  invasions  came  as  nearly  as  possible  at  the  same 
moment.  Harold  Hardrada  can  hardly  have  reached 
the  Yorkshire  coast  before  September ;  the  battle  of  Ful- 
ford  was  fought  on  September  20th  and  that  of  Stam- 
fordbridge  on  September  25th.  William  landed  on 
September  28th,  and  the  battle  of  Senlac  was  fought  on 
October  14th.  Moreover  William's  fleet  was  ready  by 
August  1 2th ;  his  delay  in  crossing  was  owing  to  his 
waiting  for  a  favourable  wind.  When  William  landed, 


84  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP. 

the  event  of  the  struggle  in  the  North  could  not  have 
been  known  in  Sussex.  He  might  have  had  to  strive, 
not  with  Harold  of  England,  but  with  Harold  of  Nor- 
way as  his  conqueror. 

At  what  time  of  the  year  Harold  Hardrada  first 
planned  his  invasion  of  England  is  quite  uncertain.  We 
can  say  nothing  of  his  doings  till  he  is  actually  afloat. 
And  with  the  three  mighty  forms  of  William  and  the 
two  Harolds  on  the  scene,  there  is  something  at  once 
grotesque  and  perplexing  in  the  way  in  which  an  English 
traitor  flits  about  among  them.  The  banished  Tostig, 
deprived  of  his  earldom  in  the  autumn  of  1065,  had  then 
taken  refuge  in  Flanders.  He  now  plays  a  busy  part, 
the  details  of  which  are  lost  in  contradictory  accounts. 
But  it  is  certain  that  in  May  1066  he  made  an  ineffectual 
attack  on  England.  And  this  attack  was  most  likely 
made  with  the  connivance  of  William.  It  suited  William 
to  use  Tostig  as  an  instrument,  and  to  encourage  so  rest- 
less a  spirit  in  annoying  the  common  enemy.  It  is  also 
certain  that  Tostig  was  with  the  Norwegian  fleet  in  Sep- 
tember, and  that  he  died  at  Stamfordbridge.  We  know 
also  that  he  was  in  Scotland  between  May  and  Septem- 
ber. It  is  therefore  hard  to  believe  that  Tostig  had  so 
great  a  hand  in  stirring  up  Harold  Hardrada  to  his  ex- 
pedition as  the  Norwegian  story  makes  out.  Most 
l^Jyjrpjsti^jd^^  expedition  which  Harold 

-Hardrada  independently  planned.  Dne'tBTng~is  certain^ 
thatpwfruu  Humid  of  Engl^d'^^asualtacked  by  two 
enemieEUiJL.OT]flft,  ..il^jwas  not  by  two  enemies  acting  in 
concert.  The  interests^o 


Norway  were  as  much  opposed  to  one  another  as  either 
of  them  was  to  the  interests  of  Harold  of  England. 


WILLIAM'S  INVASION  OF  ENGLAND. 


85 


One  great  difficulty  beset  Harold  and  William  alike. 
Either  in  Normandy  or  in  England  it  was  easy  to  get 
togetjbex_an__army  ready  to  fight  a  '"Battle  ;  it  was  not 
easy  to  keep  a  large~Body"of  men  under  arms  for  any 
long  tj  me  withont  fighting.  It  was  stilTTiarder  to  keep 
them  at  once  without  fighting  and  without  plundering. 
What  William  had  done  in  this  way  in  two  invasions  of 
Normandy,  he  was  now  called  on  to  do  on  a  greater 
scale.  His  grp.fl.t.  a-nfl  Tri^tl1p,y_aTniy,..was_kept  Lduring^a 
greatjD_art  of  August  and  September,  first  at  the  Dive, 
then  at  SamTTatei  v  ,  vvaiLing^foi'""the  wind  that  was  to 
take  it  to  England.  And  it  was  kept  without  doing 
any  serious  damage  to  the  lands  where  they  were  en- 
camped. -  -fe-a  holy  war,  this  time  was  of  course  largely 
spent  .....  in--a-ppeal^-to.^Jb,e_rjeljgious  feelings  of  the  army. 
Then  came  the  wonderful  luck  of  AYiIEam^wliich^en- 
abled  him  to  cross  at  the  particular  moment  when  he 
did  cross.  A  little  earlier  or  later,  he  would  have  found 
his  landing  stoutly  disputed  ;  as  it  was,  he  landed  with- 
out resistance.  Harold  of  England,  not  being  .able^n 
iis  own  wojdsJooJ^fi-JiYeiv  oncehad  done  what 


^ 


He  and  his  brothers  Gyrth  and  Leofwine 
undertook  the  defence  of  ^QjiitiherilJ<ng1n,n^  g.<ya.ipfttLj;bf 
Npj:rnanjthe  earls  of  the  North*  ...Jbis-J3ixxth©ps-4ft4a«t- 
Edjyin--&nd  ..Morkerej^were  to  defend  their  own  JLand 
against  the  Norwegians.  His  own  preparations  were 
looked  on  with  wonder.  To  guard  the  long  line  of 
coast  against  the  invader,  he  got  together  such  a  force 
both  by  sea  and  land  as  no  king  had  ever  got  together 
before,  and  he  kept  it  together  for  a  longer  time  than 
William  did,  through  four  months  of  inaction,  save  per- 
haps some  small  encounters  by  sea.  At  last,  early  in  Sep- 


86  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP. 

tember,  provisions  failed;  men  were  no  doubt  clamouring 
to  go  back  for  the  harvest,  and  the  great  host  had  to  be 
disbanded.  Could  William  have  sailed  as  soon  as  his 
fleet  was  ready,  he  would  have  found  southern  England 
thoroughly  prepared  to  meet  him.  Meanwhile  the 
northern  earls  had  clearly  not  kept  so  good  watch  as 
the  king.  Harold  Hardrada  harried  the  Yorkshire  coast ; 
he  sailed  up  the  Ouse,  and  landed  without  resistance. 
At  last  the  earls  met  him  in  arms  and  were  defeated  by 
the  Northmen  at  Fulford  near  York.  Four  days  later 
York  capitulated,  and  agreed  to  receive  Harold  Hardrada 
as  king.  Meanwhile  the  news  reached  Harold  of  Eng- 
land; he  got  together  his  housecarls  and  such  other 
troops  as  could  be  mustered  at  the  moment,  and  by  a 
march  of  almost  incredible  speed  he  was  able  to  save 
the  city  and  all  northern  England.  The  fight  of  Stain- 
fordbridge,  the  defeat  and  death  of  the  most  famous 
warrior  of  the  North,  was  the  last  and  greatest  success  of 
Harold  of  England.  But  his  northward  march  had  left 
southern  England  utterly  unprotected.  Had  the  south 
wind  delayed  a  little  longer,  he  might,  before  the  second 
enemy  came,  have  been  again  on  the  South-Saxon  coast. 
^Asjt^was,  three  days  after  Stamf ordbridge,  \£bilo  Harold 
of  England  was^stillat  York,  William  of  Normandy 
landed  without  apposition  at  Pevensey. 

Thus  wonderfully  had  an  easypallrlnto  England  been 
opened  for  William.  The  Norwegian  invasion  had  come 
at  the  best  moment  for  his  purposes,  and  the  result  had 
been  what  he  must  have  wished.  With  one  Harold  he 
must  fight,  and  to  fight  with  Harold  of  England  was 
clearly  best  for  his  ends.  His  work  would  not  have 
been  done,  if  another  had  stepped  in  to  chastise  the 


vii.  WILLIAM'S  INVASION  OF  ENGLAND.  87 

perjurer.  Now  that  he  was  in  England,  it  became  a 
trial  of  generalship  between  him  and  Harold.  Wil- 
liam's policy  was  to  provoke  Harold  to  fight  at  once. 
It  was  perhaps  Harold's  policy — so  at  least  thought 
Gyrth — to  follow  yet  more  thoroughly  William's  own 
example  in  the  French  invasions.  Let  him  watch  and 
follow  the  enemy,  let  him  avoid  all  action,  and  even  lay 
waste  the  land  between  London  and  the  south  coast, 
and  the  strength  of  the  invaders  would  gradually  be 
worn  out.  But  it  might  have  been  hard  to  enforce  such 
a  policy  on  men  whose  hearts  were  stirred  by  the  in- 
vasion, and  one  part  of  whom,  the  King's  own  thegns  and 
housecarls,  were  eager  to  follow  up  their  victory  over 
the  Northern  with  a  yet  mightier  victory  over  the 
Norman.  And  Harold  spoke  as  an  English  king  should 
speak,  when  he  answered  that  he  would  never  lay  waste 
a  single  rood  of  English  ground,  that  he  would  never 
harm  the  lands  or  the  goods  of  the  men  who  had  chosen 
him  to  be  their  king.  In  the  trial  of  skill  between  the 
two  commanders,  each  to  some  extent  carried  his  point. 
William's  havoc  of  a  large  part  of  Sussex  compelled 
Harold  to  march  at  once  to  give  battle.  But  Harold 
was  able  to  give  battle  at  a  place  of  his  own  choosing, 
thoroughly  suited  for  the  kind  of  warfare  which  he  had 
to  wage. 

Harold  was  blamed,  as  defeated  generals  are  blamed, 
for  being  too  eager  to  fight  and  not  waiting  for  more 
troops.  But  to  any  one  who  studies  the  ground  it  is 
plain  that  Harold  needed,  not  more  troops,  but  to  some 
extent  better  troops,  and  that  he  would  not  have  got 
those  better  troops  by  waiting.  From  York  Harold  had 
marched  to  London,  as  the  meeting-place  for  southern 


88  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP. 

and  eastern  England,  as  well  as  for  the  few  who  actually 
followed  him  from  the  North  and  those  who  joined  him 
on  the  march.  Edwin  and  Morkere  were  bidden  to 
follow  with  the  full  force  of  their  earldoms.  This  they 
took  care  not  to  do.  Harold  and  his  West-Saxons  had 
saved  them,  but  they  would  not  strike  a  blow  back 
again.  Both  now  and  earlier  in  the  year  they  doubtless 
aimed  at  a  division  of  the  kingdom,  such  as  had  been 
twice  made  within  fifty  years.  Either  Harold  or  William 
might  reign  in  Wessex  and  East-Anglia ;  Edwin  should 
reign  in  Northumberland  and  Mercia.  William,  the 
enemy  of  Harold  but  no  enemy  of  theirs,  might  be  satis- 
fied with  the  part  of  England  which  was  under  the 
immediate  rule  of  Harold  and  his  brothers,  and  might 
allow  the  house  of  Leofric  to  keep  at  least  an  under- 
kingship  in  the  North.  That  the  brother  earls  held  back 
from  the  King's  muster  is  undoubted,  and  this  explana- 
tion fits  in  with  their  whole  conduct  both  before  and 
after.  Harold  had  thus  at  his  command  the  picked  men 
of  part  of  England  only,  and  he  had  to  supply  the  place 
of  those  who  were  lacking  with  such  forces  as  he  could 
get.  The  lack  of  discipline  on  the  part  of  these  inferior 
troops  lost  Harold  the  battle.  But  matters  would 
hardly  have  been  mended  by  waiting  for  men  who  had 
made  up  their  minds  not  to  come. 

The  messages  exchanged  between  King  and  Duke 
immediately  before  the  battle,  as  well  as  at  an  earlier 
time,  have  been  spoken  of  already.  The  challenge  to 
single  combat  at  least  comes  now.  When  Harold  re- 
fused every  demand,  William  called  on  Harold  to  spare  the 
blood  of  his  followers,  and  decide  his  claims  by  battle  in 
his  own  person.  Such  a  challenge  was  in  the  spirit  of 


vii.  WILLIAM'S  INVASION  OF  ENGLAND.  89 

Norman  jurisprudence,  which  in  doubtful  cases  looked 
for  the  judgement  of  God,  not,  as  the  English  did,  by 
the  ordeal,  but  by  the  personal  combat  of  the  two  parties. 
Yet  this  challenge  too  was  surely  given  in  the  hope  that 
Harold  would  refuse  it,  and  would  thereby  put  himself, 
in  Norman  eyes,  yet  more  thoroughly  in  the  wrong. 
For  the  challenge  was  one  which  Harold  could  not  but 
refuse.  William  looked  on  himself  as  one  who  claimed 
his  own  from  one  who  wrongfully  kept  him  out  of  it.  He 
was  plaintiff  in  a  suit  in  which  Harold  was  defendant  ; 
that  plaintiff  and  defendant  were  both  accompanied  by 
armies  was  an  accident  for  which  the  defendant,  who 
had  refused  all  peaceful  means  of  settlement,  was  to 
blame.  But  Harold  and  his  people  could  not  look  on 
the  matter  as  a  mere  question  between  two  men.  The 
crown  was  Harold's  by  the  gift  of  the  nation,  and  he 
could  not  sever  his  own  cause  from  the  cause  of  the 
nation.  The  crown  was  his  ;  but  it  was  not  his  to  stake 
on  the  issue  of  a  single  ~comBa^  If~ 


the  nation^might  give  fEcT  crown  to  whom  they  thought 
good  ;  Harold's  death  could  not  make  William's  claim 
"one  jot  better.  The  cause  was  not  personal,  but 
national.  The  Norman  duke  had,  by  a  wanton  invasion^ 
jwrongedj  not  the,  King,...Qnly4..hilt.  jBYfiry-man  fin  England, 

_tp  help  in  driving  him.  out. 


Again,  in  _an  ordinary  wager  of  battle,  t^A  jii 
can  be  enforced  ;  here,  whether  William  slew  Harold  or 
Harold  slew  William,  there  was  no  means  of  enforcing 
the  judgement  except  by  the  strength  of  the  two  armies. 
If  Harold  fell,  the  English.  army_  were  not  likely  to  receive 
WiUiam.-a£..king  ;  if  William  fell,  the  Norm^L_&no:^_ss^& 
still  less  J^ely^^oietly  out  of  England.  The  chal- 


90  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP. 

lenge  was  meant  as  a  mere  blind ;  it  would  raise  the 
spirit  of  William's  followers ;  it  would  be  something  for 
his  poets  and  chroniclers  to  record  in  his  honour ;  that 
was  all. 

The  actual  battle,  fought  on  Senlac,  on  Saint  Calixtus' 
day,  was  more  than  a  trial  of  skill  and  courage  between 
two.captams  and  twpjirniies:_It  was,  like  the  old  battles  of 
Macedonian  and  Roman,  a  trial  between  two  modes  of  war- 
fare. The  English  clave  to  j:he  old  Teutonic  tactics.  They 
fought  on  foot  in  the  close  array  ot  the  shield:wall.  Those 
who  rode  to  the  field  dismounted  when  the  fight  began. 
They  first  hurled  their  javelins,  and  then  took  to  the 
weapons  of  close  combat.  Among  these  the  Danish  axe, 
brought  in  by  Cnut,  had  nearly  displaced  the  older  English 
broadsword.  Such  was  the  array  of  the  housecarls  and  of 
the  thegns  who  had  followed  Harold  from  York  or  joined 
him  on  his  march.  But  the  treason  of  Edwin  and 
Mork'ere  had  made  it  needful  to  supply  the  place  of  the 
picked  men  of  Northumberland  with  irregular  levies, 
armed  almost  anyhow.  Of  their  weapons  of  various 
kinds  the  bow  was  the  rarest.  The  strength  of  the  Nor- 
mans lay  in  the  arms  in  which  the  English  were  lacking, 
in  horsemen  and  archers.  These  last  seem  to  have  been 
a  force  of  William's  training ;  we  first  hear  of  the  Norman 
bowmen  at  Varaville.  These  two  ways  of  fighting  were 
brought  each  one  to  perfection  by  the  leaders  on  each 
side.  They  had  not  yet  been  tried  against  one  another. 
AL^.tainfoi4%r}4ge-~^fewM-4ad-  defeated- ---as — esemy 
whose  tactics  were  the  same  as  his  own.  William  had 
not.  fought-a.-.pii£h£d.-Jb^ 
youth.  Indeed  pitched  battles,  such  as  English  and 


vii.  WILLIAM'S  INVASION  OF  ENGLAND.  91 

Scandinavian  warriors  were  used  to  in  the  wars  of 
Edmund  and  Cnut,  were  rare  in  continental  warfare. 
That  warfare  mainly  consisted  in  the  attack  and  defence 
of  strong  places,  and  in  skirmishes  fought  under  their 
walls.  Bu^LW^illiam  knew  how  to  make  use  of  troops  of 
different  kinds  and  to  adapt  them  to  any  emergency. 
Harold  too  was  a  man  of  resources  ;  he  had  gained  his 
We^ilnniCC^  to  the  enemy's  way 

of  fighting.  To  withstand  the  charge  of  the  Norman 
horsemen,  Harold  clave  to  the  national  tactics,  but  he 
chose  for  the  place  of  battle  a  spot  where  those  tactics 
would  have  the  advantage.  A  battle  on  the  low  ground 
would  have  been  favourable  to  cavalry  ;  Harold  there- 
fore occupied  and  fenced  in  a  hill,  the  hill  of  Senlac,  the 
site  in  after  days  of  the  abbey  and  town  of  Battle,  and 
there  awaited  the  Norman  attack.  The  Norman  horse- 
men had  thus  to  make  their  way  up  the  hill  under  the 
shower  of  the  English  javelins,  and  to  meet  the  axes  as 
soon  as  they  reached  the  barricade.  And  these  tactics 
were  thoroughly  successful,  till  the  inferior  troops  were 
tempted  to  come  down  from  the  hill  and  chase  the 
Bretons  whom  they  had  driven  back.  This  suggested  to 

\Villi^.nv^iLA-4^V^-   nf  JhViP.    fp.jprnp.fi    flight  •    t.hfl   English 

line  of  defence.^asJjxokeiij.  and  .the  advantage  of  _ground 
wagjost.  Thus  was  the  great_battle  lost.  And  the 
war  too  was  lost  by  the  deaths  of  Harold^ami  his 
brothers,  which  left  Tj/nglaml  without  leaders,  and  by  the 
Harold's  immediate^  following. 


They  were  slain  to  a  man,  and  south-eastern  England 
was  left  defenceless. 

William,  now  truly  the  Conqueror  in  the  vulgar  sense, 


92  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP. 

was  still  far  from  having  full  possession  of  his  conquest. 
He  had  military ..possefiS.on.of_part  of  one  shire  only ;  he 
had  to  look  for  further  resistance,  ancLhe  Jgiek  with-  no]f 
a  little..  But  his  combined  luck  and  policy  served 
him  well.  He  could  put  on  the  form  of  full  possession 
before  he  had  the  reality;  he  could  treat  all -further 
resistance  as  rebellion  against  an  establisliecl  authority; 
he  could  make  resistance  desultory  and  isolated.  William 
had  to  subdue  England  in  detaiTf  he  had  never  again  to 
fight  what  the  English  Chroniclers  call  a  folk-fight.  His 
policy  after  his  victory  was  obvious.  Still  uncrowned, 
he  was  not,  even  in  his  own  view,  king,  but  he  alone 
had  the  right  to  become  king.  He  had  thus  far  been 
driven  to  maintain  his  rights  by  force ;  be  was  not  dis- 
posed to  use  force  any  further,  if  peaceful  possession  was 
to  be  had.  His  course  was  therefore  to  show  himself 
stern  to  all  who  withstood  him,  but  to  take  all  who 
submitted  into  his  protection  and  favour.  He  seems 
however  to  have  looked  for  a  speedier  submission  than 
really  happened.  He  waited  a  while  in  his  camp  for 
men  to  come  in  and  acknowledge  him.  As  none  came, 
he  set  forth  to  win  by  the  strong  arm  the  land  which  he 
claimed  of  right. 

Thus  to  look  for  an  immediate  submission  was  not 
unnatural ;  fully  believing  in  the  justice  of  his  own  cause, 
William  would  believe  in  it  all  the  more  after  the  issue  of 
the  battle.  God,  Harold  had  said,  should  judge  between 
himself  and  William,  and  God  had  judged  in  William's 
favour.  With  all  his  clear-sightedness,  he  would  hardly 
understand  how  differently  things  looked  in  English 
eyes.  Some  indeed,  specially  churchmen,  specially 
foreign  churchmen,  now  began  to  doubt  whether  to  fight 


vii.  WILLIAM'S  INVASION  OF  ENGLAND.  93 

against  William  was  not  to  fight  against  God.  But  to  the 
nation  at  large  William  was  simply  as  Hubba,  Swegen,  and 
Cnut  in  past  times.  England  had  before  now  been  con- 
quered, but  never  in  a  single  fight.  Alfred  and  Edmund 
had  fought  battle  after  battle  with  the  Dane,  and  men 
had  no  mind  to  submit  to  the  Norman  because  he  had  been 
once  victorious.  But  Alfred  and  Edmund,  in  alternate 
defeat  and  victory,  lived  to  fight  again  ;  their  people  had 
not  to  choose  a  new  king  ;  the  King  had  merely  to  gather 
a  new  army.  But  Harold  was  slain,  and  the  first 
question  was  how  to  fill  his  place.  The  Witan,  so  many 
as  could  be  got  together,  met  to  choos£a'iingt.MLhjQS£L  first 
cTuty  would  ^e_tojneet  William  the  Conqueror  in  arms. 
The  choice  was  not  easy.  Harold's  sons  were  young, 
and  not  born  ^Ethelings.  His  brothers,  of  whom  Gyrth 
at  least  must  have  been  fit  to  reign,  had  fallen  with  him. 
Edwin  and  Morkere  were  not  at  the  battle,  but  they 
were  at  the  election.  But  schemes  for  winning  the  crown 
for  the  house  of  Leofric  would  find  no  favour  in  an 
assembly  held  in  London.  For  lack  of  any  better  candi- 
date, tlie^hereditary  sentiment  prevailed  Young  Edgar 
was  chosen.  But  the  bishops,  it  is  said,  did  not  agree  ; 
they  must  have  held  that  God  had  declared  in  favour 
of  William.  Edwin  and  Morkere  did  agree  ;  but  they 
withdrew  to  their  earldoms,  still  perhaps  cherishing 
hopes  of  a  divided  kingdom.  Edgar,  as  king-elect,  did 
at  least  one  act  of  kingship  by  confirming  the  election  of 
an  abbot  of  Peterborough  ;  but  of  any  general  prepara- 
tion for  warfare  there  is  not  a  sign.  The  local  resistance 
™  Tnp.t,  with  shows  that,  with  any  combined^ 


action,  _the^  case  was  not  hopeless.     But  with  Edgar  for 
long,  with  the  northern  earls  withdrawing  their  forces, 


94  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP. 

with  the  bishops  at  least  lukewarm,  nothing  could  be 
done.  TheJjQiLd.Qn.ers .wjr.gje.agnr  to  fight ;  so  doubtless 
were  others ;  but  there  was  no  leader.  So  far  from 
there  being  another  Harold  or  Edmund  to  risk  another 
battle,  there  was  not  even  a  leader  to  carry  out  the 
policy  of  Fabius  and  Gyrth. 

Meanwhile  the  Conqueror  was  advancing,  by  his  own 
road^"andr'"after  his"Wn  fashion.  We  inust  remembef 
the  effect  of  tEe~mere~sIaugEter  of  the  great  battle. 
William's  own  army  had  suffered  severely  :  he  did  not 
leave  Hastings  till  he  had  received  reinforcements  from 
Normandy.  But  to  England  the  battle  meant  the  loss 
of  the  whole  force  of  the  south-eastern  shires.  A  large 

part  of  England  waTTerTTielpte^ William  followed 

much  the  same  course  as  he  hadTf ollowed  in  Maine.  A 
legal  claimant  of  the  crown,  it  was  his  interest  as  soon 
as  possible  to  become  a  crowned  king,  and  that  in  his 
kinsman's  church  at  Westminster.  But  it  was  not  his 
interest  to  march  straight  on  London  and  demand  the 
crown,  sword  in  hand.  He  saw  that,  without  the  sup- 
port of  the  northern  earls,  Iffigar '  could  hot  possibly 
stand,  and  thaT"~submission  fio  himself  was~only  a 
question  of  time.  He  therefore  chose  a  roundabout 
course  tlirough1  lllose  south-eastern  shires  whicn**were 
wholly  without  means  of  resisting  him.  He  marched 
from  Sussex  into  Kent,  harrying;  t.hp.  la.nrl  n«  IIP  WA^ 
to  frighten  thepeople  into  submission.  The  men  of 
Romney  had  before  the  battle  cut  in  pieces  a  party  of 
Normans  who  had  fallen  into  their  hands,  most  likely 
by  sea.  William  took  some  undescribed  vengeance 
for  their  slaughter.  Dover  and  its  castle,  the  castle 
which,  in  some  accounts,  Harold  had  sworn  to  surrender 


vii.  WILLIAM'S  INVASION  OF  ENGLAND.  95 

to  William,  yielded  without  a  blow.  Here  then  he 
was  gracious.  When  some  of  his  unruly  followers  set 
fire  to  the  houses  of  the  town,  William  made  good  the 
losses  of  their  owners.  Canterbury  submitted  j  from 
thence,  by  a  bold  stroke,  he  sent  messengers  who  received 
the  submission  of  Winchester.  He  marched  on,  ravaging 
as  he  went,  to  the  immediate  neighbourhood  of  London, 
but  keeping  ever  on  the  right  bank  of  lKe~Tliames. 
But  a  gallant  sally  of  the  citizens  was  repulsed  by  the 
Normans,  and  the  suburb  of  Southwark  was  burned. 
William  marched  along  the  river  to  Wallingford.  Here 
he  crossed,  receiving  for  the  first  time  the  active  support 
of  an  Englishman  of  high  rank,  Wiggod  of  Wallingford, 
sheriff  of  Oxfordshire.  He  became  one  of  a  small  class 
of  Englishmen  who  were  received  to  William's  fullest 
favour,  and  kept  at  least  as  high  a  position  under  him 
as  they  had  held  before.  William  still  kept  on,  march- 
ing and  harrying,  to  the  north  of  London,  as  he  had 
before  done  to  the  south.  The  city  was  to  be  isolated 
within  a  cordon  of  wasted  lands.  His  policy  succeeded. 
As  no  succours  came  from  the  North,  the  hearts  of  those 
who  had  chosen  them  a  king  failed  at  the  approach  of  his 
rival.  At  Berkhampstead  Edgar  himself,  with  several 

~tli'e'Tf  "subgrfsskmr- 


They  offered  the  crown  to  William,  and,  after  some 
debate,  he  accepted  it.  Eut  "beTofc'"li'e~c'ame  in  "per  son, 
ja^  r.ity.  The  beginnings  of 


the   fortress   were   now   laid  which,   in  the   course    of 
William's  reign,  grew  into  the  mightvJTower  of  London.^ 
It  may  seem  strange  that  when  his  great  object  was 
at  last  within  his  grasp,  William  should  have  made  his 
a  matter  of   debate.     He  claims  the 


96  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP. 

crown  as  his  right  ;  the  crown  is  offered  to  him  ;  and 
y&t  .Jw-doub.tsL_about  taking  it.  _  Ought  he,  he  asks,  to 
take  the  crown  of_a  kingdom  of  which  he  has  not  as 
...y..etXuil  p.ossessionJ__At  that  time  the  territory  of  which 
William  had  even  military  possession  could  not  have 
stretched  much  to  the  north-west  of  a  line  drawn 
from  Winchester  to  Norwich.  Outside  that  line  men 
were,  as  William  is  made""  to  say,  still  in  rebellion. 
His  scruples  were  come  over  by  an  orator  who  was 
neither  Norman  nor  English,  but  one  of  his  foreign 
followers,  Haimer  Viscount  of  Thouars.  The  debate 
was  most  likely  got  up  at  William's  bidding,  but  it  was 
not  got  up  without  a  motive.  William^ 


outward  legality,  seeking  to  do  things  peaceably  when 
they  could  be  done  peaceably,  seeking  for  means  to 
put  every  possible  enemy  in  the  wrong,  wished  to  make 
his  acceptance  of  the  English  crown  as  formally  regular 
as  might  be.  Strong  as  he  held  his  claim  to  be  by  the 
gift  of  Edward,  it  would  be  better  to  be,  if  not  strictly 
chosen,  at  least  peacefully  accepted,...  by-  the,  r.hi'p.f  men 
oLEligland.__It  might  some  day  serve  his  purpose  to  say 
that  the  crown  had  been  offered  to  him,  and  that  he  had 
accepted  it  only  after  a  debate  in  which  the  chief  speaker 
was  an  impartial  stranger.  Having  gained  this  point 
more,  William  set  out  from  Berkhampstead,  already,  in 
outward  form,  King-elecLoXthe  English. 

The  rite  which  was  to  change  him  from  king-elect 
into  full  king  took  place  in  Ead  ward's  church  of  West- 
minsiBjnon  Christmas  day,  1066,  somewhat  more  than  two 
months  after  the  great  battle,  somewhat  less  than  twelve 
months  after  the  death  of  Edward  and  the  corona- 
tion of  Harold.  Nothing  that  was  needed  for  a  lawful 


vii.  WILLIAM'S  INVASION  OF  ENGLAND.  97 

crowningjrasjacking.     The  consent  of  the  people,  the 
*6atji  of  the  king,  the  anointing  by  the  hands  of  a  lawful 

the 


actual  celebrant,  while  Stigand  took  the  second  place  in 
the  ceremony.  But  this  outward  harmony  between  the 
nation  and  its  new  king  was  marred  by  an  unhappy 
accident.  Norman  horsemen  stationed  outside  the 
'church  mistook  the  shout  with  which  the  people  ac- 
cepted the  new  king  for  the  shout  of  men  who  were 
doing  him  damage.  But  instead  of  going  to  his  help, 
they  began,  in  true  Norman  fashion,  to  set  fire  to  the 
neighbouring  houses.  The  havoc  and  plunder  that  fol- 
lowed disturbed  the  solemnities  of  the  day  and  were  a 
bad  omen  for  the  new  reign.  It  was  no  personal  fault 
of^^iriialn^s^Trr-pttt  ting  -himself  in  the  hands  of  subjects 
of  such  new  and  doubtful  loyalty,  he  needed  men  near 
at  hand  whom  he  could  trust.  But  then  it  was  his 
doing  that  England  had  to  receive  a  king  who  needed 
foreign  soldiers  to  guard  him. 

William  was  now  lawful  King  of  the  English,  so  far 
as  outward  ceremonies  could  make  him  so.  But  he 
knew  well  how  far  he  was  from  having  won  real 
kingly  authority  over  the  whole  kingdom.  Hardly  a 

He  had 


still,  as  he  doubtless  knew,  to  win  his  realm  with  the 
edge  of  the  sword.  But  he  could  now  go  forth  to 
further  conquests,  not  as  a  foreign  invader,  but  as  the 
king  of  the  land,  putting  down  rebellion  among  his  own 
subjects.  If  the  men  of  Northumberland  should  refuse 
to  receive  him,  he  could  tell  them  that  he  was  their 
lawful  king,  anointed  by  their  own  archbishop.  It  was 

H 


98  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP. 

sound  policy  to  act  as  king  of  the  whole  land,  to  exer- 
cise a  semblance  of  authority  where  he  had  none  in  fact. 
And  in  truth  he  was  king  of  the  whole  land,  so  far  as 
there  was  no  other  king.  The  unconquered  parts  of  the 
land  were  in  no  mood  to  submit ;  but  they  could  not 
agree  on  any  common  plan  of  resistance  under  any 
common  leader.  Some  were  still  for  Edgar,  some  for 
Harold's  sons,  some  for  Swegen  of  Denmark.  Edwin 
and  Morkere  doubtless  were  for  themselves.  If  one 
common  leader  could  have  been  found  even  now,  the 
throne  of  the  foreign  king  would  have  been  in  no  small 
danger.  But  no  such  leader  came  :  men  stood  still,  or 
resisted  piecemeal,  so  the  land  was  conquered  piecemeal, 
and  that  under  cover  of  being  brought  urideT  the  ubedi- 
ence  of  its  lawful  king. 

Now  that  the  Norman  duke  has  become  an  English 
king,  his  career  as  an  English  statesman  strictly  begins, 
and  a  wonderful  career  it  is.  Its  main  principle  was  to 
respect  formal  legality  wherever  "he  could.  All  William's 
purposes  were  tojbe  carried  out,  as  far  as  possible,  under 
cover  of  strict  adherence  to  the"law  of  the  lanjrof_which 
JijThad  become  the  lawful  ruler.  He  had  sworn  at  his 
crowning  to  keep  the  laws  of  the  land,  and  to  rule  his 
kingdom  as  well  as  any  king  that  had  gone  before  him. 
And  assuredly  he  meant  to  keep  his  oath.  But  a  foreign 
king,  at  the  head  of  a  foreign  army,  and  who  had  his 
fo^ign^Ionowers  to  rewattd,~co~uld  keep  that  6at!TonTy 
injts  letter  and"  not  in  its  spirit.  But  iFls~lFolE3erTul 
how  nearly  he  came"  to  keep  it  in  the  letter.  He 
contrived  to  do  his  most  oppressive  acts,  to  deprive 
Englishmen  of  their  lands  and  offices,  and  to  part  them 


vii.  WILLIAM'S  INVASION  OF  ENGLAND.  99 

out  among  strangers,  under  cover  of  English  law. 
He  could  do  this.  A  smaller  man  would  either  have 
failed  to  carry  out  his  purposes  at  all,  or  he  could  have 
carried  them  out  only  by  reckless  violence.  When  we 

examine  the,  administration .  of  William. morejnjletail, 

we  shall  see  that  its  effects  in  the  long  run  were  rather  to 
preservejbhan  J^_dj^troy_ou£__ancient  institutions.  He 
knew  the  strength  of  legal  fictions ;  by  legal  fictions 
he  conquered  and  he  ruled.  But  every  legal  fiction  is 
outward  homage  to  the  principle  of  law,  an  outward 
protest  against  unlawful jf  iolence.  That  England  under- 
went a  Norman  Conquest  did  in  the  end  only  make  her 
the  more  truly  England.  But  that  this  could  be  was 
because  that  conquest  was  wrought  by  the  Bastard  of 
Falaise  and  by  none  other. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

THE  CONQUEST  OF  ENGLAND. 

DECEMBER  1066-MARCH  1070. 

THE  coronation  of  William  had  its  effect  in  a  moment. 
It  made  him  really  king  over  part  of  England ;  it  put 
him  into  a  new  position  with  regard  to  the  rest.  As 
soon  as  there  was  a  king,  men  flocked  to  swear 
oaths  to  him  and  become  his  men.  They  came  from 
shires  where  he  had  no  real  authority.  It  was  most 
likely  now,  rather  than  at  Berkhampstead,  that  Edwin 
and  Morkere  at  last  made  up  their  minds  to  acknowledge 
some  king.  They  became  William's  men  and  received 
again  their  lands  and  earldoms  as  his  grant.  Other 
chief  men  from  the  North  also  submitted  and  received 
their  lands  and  honours  again.  But  Edwin  and  Mor- 
kere were  not  allowed  to  go  back  to  their  earldoms. 
William  thought  it  safer  to  keep  them  near  himself, 
under  the  guise  of  honour — Edwin  was  even  promised 
one  of  his  daughters  in  marriage — but  really  half  as 
prisoners,  half  as  hostages.  Of  the  two  other  earls,  Wal- 
theof  son  of  Siward,  who  held  the  shires  of  Northampton 
and  Huntingdon,  and  Oswulf  who  held  the  earldom  of 
Bernicia  or  modern  Northumberland,  we  hear  nothing  at 
this  moment.  As  for  Waltheof,  it  is  strange  if  he  were 


CHAP.  vin.        THE  CONQUEST  OF  ENGLAND.  101 

not  at  Senlac  ;  it  is  strange  if  he  were  there  and  came 
away  alive.  But  we  only  know  that  he  was  in  William's 
allegiance  a  few  months  later.  Oswulf  must  have  held 
out  in  some  marked  way.  It  was  William's  policy  to  act 
as  king  even  where  he  had  no  means  of  carrying  out  his 
kingly  orders.  He  therefore  in  February  1067  granted 
the  Bernician  earldom  to  an  Englishman  named  Copsige, 
who  had  acted  as  Tostig's  lieutenant.  This  implies  the 
formal  deprivation  of  Oswulf.  But  William  sent  no 
force  with  the  new  earl,  who  had  to  take  possession  as 
he  could.  That  is  to  say,  of  two  parties  in  a  local 
quarrel,  one  hoped  to  strengthen  itself  by  making  use  of 
William's  name.  And  William  thought  that  it  would 
strengthen  his  position  to  let  at  least  his  name  be  heard 
in  every  corner  of  the  kingdom.  The  rest  of  the  story 
stands  rather  aloof  from  the  main  history.  Copsige  got 
possession  of  the  earldom  for  a  moment.  He  was  then 
killed  by  Oswulf  and  his  partisans,  and  Oswulf  himself 
was  killed  in  the  course  of  the  year  by  a  common  robber. 
At  Christmas,  1067,  William  again  granted  or  sold 
the  earldom  to  another  of  the  local  chiefs,  Gospatric. 
But  he  made  no  attempt  to  exercise  direct  authority  in 
those  parts  till  the  beginning  of  the  year  1069. 

All  this  illustrates  William's  general  course.  Crowned 
king  over  the  land,  he  would  first  strengthen  himself  in 
that  part  of  the  kingdom  which  he  actually  held.  Of 
the  passive  disobedience  of  other  parts  he  would  take  no 
present  notice.  In  northern  and  central  England  William 
could  exercise  no  authority  ;  but  those  lands  were  not 
in  arms  against  him,  nor  did  they  acknowledge  any 
other  king.  Their  earls,  now  his  earls,  were  his  favoured 
courtiers.  He  could  afford  to  be  satisfied  with  this 


102  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP. 

nominal  kingship,  till  a  fit  opportunity  came  to  make  it 
real.  He  could  afford  to  lend  his  name  to  the  local 
enterprise  of  Copsige.  It  would  at  least  be  another 
count  against  the  men  of  Bernicia  that  they  had  killed 
the  earl  whom  King  William  gave  them. 

Meanwhile  William  was  taking  very  practical  pos- 
session in  the  shires  where  late  events  had  given  him  real 
authority.  His  policy  was  to  assert  his  rights  in  the 
strongest  form,  but  to  show  his  mildness  and  good  will 
by  refraining  from  carrying  them  out  to  the  uttermost. 
By  right  of  conquest  William  claimed  nothing.  He 
had  come  to  take  his  crown,  and  he  had  unluckily  met 
with  some  opposition  in  taking  it.  The  crown  lands  of 
King  Edward  passed  of  course  to  his  successor.  As 
for  the  lands  of  other  men,  in  William's  theory  all  was 
forfeited  to  the  crown.  The  lawful  heir  had  been  driven 
to  seek  his  kingdom  in  arms  ;  no  Englishman  had  helped 
him  ;  many  Englishmen  had  fought  against  him.  All 
then  were  directly  or  indirectly  traitors.  The  King  might 
lawfully  deal  with  the  lands  of  all  as  his  own.  But  in 
the  greater  part  of  the  kingdom  it  was  impossible,  in  no 
part  was  it  prudent,  to  carry  out  this  doctrine  in  its  ful- 
ness. A  passage  in  Domesday,  compared  with  a  passage 
in  the  English  Chronicles,  shows  that,  soon  after  William's 
coronation,  the  English  as  a  body,  within  the  lands  already 
conquered,  redeemed  their  lands.  They  bought  them 
back  at  a  price,  and  held  them  as  a  fresh  grant  from 
King  William.  Some  special  offenders,  living  and  dead, 
were  exempted  from  this  favour.  The  King  took  to 
himself  the  estates  of  the  house  of  Godwine,  save  those 
of  Edith,  the  widow  of  his  revered  predecessor,  whom 
it  was  his  policy  to  treat  with  all  honour.  The  lands 


vin.  THE  CONQUEST  OF  ENGLAND.  103 

too  of  those  who  had  died  on  Senlac  were  granted 
back  to  their  heirs  only  of  special  favour,  sometimes 
under  the  name  of  alms.  Thus,  from  the  beginning  of 
his  reign,  William  began  to  make  himself  richer  than 
any  king  that  had  been  before  him  in  England  or  than 
any  other  Western  king  of  his  day.  He  could  both 
punish  his  enemies  and  reward  his  friends.  Much  of 
what  he  took  he  kept ;  much  he  granted  away,  mainly 
to  his  foreign  followers,  but  sometimes  also  to  English- 
men who  had  in  any  way  won  his  favour.  Wiggod  of 
Wallingford  was  one  of  the  very  few  Englishmen  who 
kept  and  received  estates  which  put  them  alongside  of 
the  great  Norman  landowners.  The  doctrine  that  all 
land  was  held  of  the  King  was  now  put  into  a  practical 
shape.  All,  Englishmen  and  strangers,  not  only  became 
William's  subjects,  but  his  men  and  his  grantees.  Thus  he 
went  on  during  his  whole  reign.  There  was  no  sudden 
change  from  the  old  state  of  things  to  the  new.  After 
the  general  redemption  of  lands,  gradually  carried  out 
as  William's  power  advanced,  no  general  blow  was  dealt 
at  Englishmen  as  such.  They  were  not,  like  some  con- 
quered nations,  formally  degraded  or  put  under  any  legal 
incapacities  in  their  own  land.  William  simply  distin- 
guished between  his  loyal  and  his  disloyal  subjects,  and 
used  his  opportunities  for  punishing  the  disloyal  and 
rewarding  the  loyal.  Such  punishments  and  rewards 
naturally  took  the  shape  of  confiscations  and  grants  of 
land.  If  punishment  was  commonly  the  lot  of  the 
Englishman,  and  reward  was  the  lot  of  the  stranger, 
that  was  only  because  King  William  treated  all  men  as 
they  deserved.  Most  Englishmen  were  disloyal ;  most 
strangers  were  loyal.  But  disloyal  strangers  and  loyal 


104  AVILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP. 

Englishmen  fared  according  to  their  deserts.  The  final 
result  of  this  process,  begun  now  and  steadily  carried  on, 
was  that,  by  the  end  of  William's  reign,  the  foreign  king 
was  surrounded  by  a  body  of  foreign  landowners  and 
office-bearers  of  foreign  birth.  When,  in  the  early  days 
of  his  conquest,  he  gathered  round  him  the  great  men 
of  his  realm,  it  was  still  an  English  assembly  with  a 
sprinkling  of  strangers.  By  the  end  of  his  reign  it  had 
p.Tiamyflr^  stpp  by  sj^ymtn .an  assembly  of  st.rangftrs  wif.b 
a  sjmnkjin£^J^^lun£n-. 

This  revolution,  which  practically  transferred  the 
greater  jgart  ..ojL.the-acdl  of  England  to  the  hands  of 
strangers,  was  great  indeed.  But  it  must  not  Be"  mis- 
taken for  a  sudden  blow,  for  an  irregular  scramble,  for  a 
formal  proscription  of  Englishmen  as  such.  William, 
according  to  his  character  and  practice,  was  able  to  do 
all  this  gradually,  according  to  legal  forms,  and  without 
drawing  any  formal  distinction  between  natives  and 
strangers.  "All  land  was  "held- of  the  King  of  DfreTTnglish, 
according  to  the  law  of  England.  It  may  seem  strange 
how  such  a  process  of  spoliation,  veiled  under  a  legal  fiction, 
could  have  been  carried  out  without  resistance.  It  was 
easier  because  it  was^^adiialjanjljDJ^c^meal.  The  whole 
country  was  not  touched  at  once,  nor  even  the  whole  of 
any  one  district.  One  man  lost  ..Ms_Jand~4SLhUiL_  his. 
neighbour  kept-Ms,  and  he  who  kept  his  land  was  not 
likely  to  join  in  the  possible  plots  of  the  other.  And 
though  the  land  had  never  seen  so  great  a  confiscation, 
or  one  so  largely  for  the  behoof  ..of  foreigners,  yekJbhere 
was  nothing  new  in  the  thing  itself.  Danes  had  settled 
under  Cnut,  and  Normans  ancTotEer  Frenchmen  under 
Edward.  Confiscation  of  land  was  the  everyday  pun- 


viii.  THE  CONQUEST  OF  ENGLAND.  105 

ishment  for  various  public  and  private  crimes.  In  any 
change,  such  as  we  should  call  a  change  of  ministry,  as 
at  the  fall  and  the  return  of  Godwine,  outlawry  and 
forfeiture  of  lands  was  the  usual  doom  of  the  weaker 
party,  a  milder  doom  than  the  judicial  massacres  of 
later  ages.  Even  a  conquest  of  England  was  nothing 
new,  and  William  at  this  stage  contrasted  favourably 
with  Cnut,  whose  early  days  were  marked  by  the  death 
of  not  a  few.  William,  at  any  rate  since  his  crowning, 
had  shed  the  blood  of  no  man.  Men  perhaps  thought 
that  things  might  have  been  much  worse,  and  that  they 
were  not  unlikely  to  mend.  Anyhow,  weakened,  cowed, 
isolated,  the  people  of  the  conquered  shires  submitted 
humbly  to  the  Conqueror's  will.  It  needed  a  kind  of 
oppression  of  which  William  himself  was  never  guilty 
to  stir  them  into  actual  revolt. 

The  provocation  was  not  long  in  coming.  Within 
three  months  after  his  coronation,  William  paid  a  visit 
to  his  native  duchy.  The  ruler  of  two  states  could  not 
be  always  in  either ;  he  owed  it  to  his  old  subjects  to 
show  himself  among  them  in  his  new  character ;  and 
his  absence  might  pass  as  a  sign  of  the  trust  he  put 
in  his  new  subjects.  But  the  means  which  he  took 
to  secure  their  obedience  brought  out  his  one  weak 
point.  We  cannot  believe  that  he  really  wished  to 
goad  the  people  into  rebellion ;  yet  the  choice  of  his 
lieutenants  might  seem  almost  like  it.  He  was  led 
astray  by  partiality  for  his  brother  and  for  his  dearest 
friend.  To  Bishop  Odo  of  Bayeux,  and  to  William 
Fitz-Osbern,  the  son  of  his  early  guardian,  he  gave 
earldoms,  that  of  Kent  to  Odo,  that  of  Hereford  to 


106  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP. 

William.      The  Conqueror  was  determined   before   all 

things  that  hjg  kir1^"™  ^rmlrl  LP  nnif.prl  and   r>f^Tp.nt  ^ 

England  should  not  be  spli.^up.Jike  Gaul  and  Germany  ; 
Ee  i  would  have  no  man  in  England  whose~Iofmat~hoTnage-- 
should  carry  with  it  as  little  of  practical  obedience  as 
his  own  homage  to  the  King  of  the  French.  A  Norman 
earl  of  all  Wessex  or  all  Mercia  might  strive  after 
such  a  position.  William  therefore  forsook  Jjie  ojd^ 
practice  of  dividing  the  wirote--4angdojn_  jnto  earldoms. 
Tn  the  peaceful  central  shires  he  would  himself  rule 
through  his  sheriffs  and  other  immediate  officers;  he 
would  appoint  earls  only  in  dangerous  border  districts 
where  they  were  needed  as  military  commanders.  All 
William's  earls  were  in  fact  marquesses,  guardians  of  a 
march  or  frontier.  Odo  had  to  keep  Kent  against  attacks 
from  the  continent;  William  Fitz-Osbern  had  to  keep  Here- 
fordshire against  the  Welsh  and  the  independent  English. 
This  last  shire  had  its  own  local  warfare.  William's 
authority  did  not  yet  reach  over  all  the  shires  beyond 
London  and  Hereford;  Tint.  Harn1j_Jia,H 


Edward's  Norman  favourites  to  keep  power  there.  Here- 
ford then  and  part  of  its  shire  lormed_an~isolated  part  of 
William^-^mmions,  while  the  lands  around  remained 
unsubdued.  William  Fitz-Osbern  had  to  guard  this 
dangerous  land  as  earl.  But  during  the  King's  absence 
both  he  and  Odo  received  larger  commissions  as  viceroys 
over  the  whole  kingdom.  Odo  guarded  the  South  and 
William  the  North  and  North-East.  Norwich,  a  town 
dangerous  from  its  easy  communication  with  Denmark, 
was  specially  under  his  care.  The  nominal  earls  of  the 
rest  of  the  land,  Edwin,  Morkere,  and  Waltheof,  with 
Edgar,  King  of  a  moment,  Archbishop  Stigand,  and  a 


viii.  THE  CONQUEST  OF  ENGLAND.  107 

number  of  other  chief  men,  William  took  with  him  to 
Normandy  Nominally  his  cherished  friends  and  guests, 
they  went  in  truth,  as  one  of  the  English  Chroniclers 
calls  them,  as  hostages.  ? 

WilliariTs  stay  in  Normandy  lasted  about  six  months.     £ 
It  was  chiefly  devoted  to  rejoicings  and  religious_cerfi^_ 
mj^nies^  but  partly  to  Norman  legislation.     Rich  gifts  (\  ) 
from  the  spoils  of  England  were  given  to  the  churches 
of  Normandy  '•'"  gifts  richer  still  were  sent  fcTthe  Church   2- 
otEomfi.  whose    favour    had    wrought    so    much    for 
William.      In  exchange  for  the  banner  of  Saint  Peter, 
Harold's  standard  of  the  Fighting-man  was  sent  as  an 
offering  to  the  head  of  all  churches.     While  William 
was  in  Normandy,  Archbishop  Mauritius  of  Rouen  died. 
The  whole  duchy  named  Lanfranc  as  his  successor ;  but 
he  declined  the  post,  and  was  himself  sent  to  Rome  to 
bring  the  pallium  for  the  new  archbishop  John,  a  kins- 
man of  the  ducal  house.     Lanfranc  doubtless  refused  the 
see  of  Rouen  only  because  he  was_  designed^for^ji^et 
greater   post  in  England ;    the   subtlest  diplomatist  in 
Europe  was  not  sent  to  Rome  merely  to  ask  for  the  pal- 
lium for  Archbishop  John. 

Meanwhile  William's  choice  of  lieutenants  bore  its 
fruit  in  England.  They  wrought  such  oppression  as 
William  himself  never  wrought.  The  inferior  leaders 
did  as  they  thought  good,  and  the  two  earls  restrained 
them  not.  The  earls  meanwhile  were  in  one  point  there 
faithfully  carrying  out  the  policy  of  their  master  in  the 
building  of  castles;  a  work,  which  specially  when  the 
work  of  Odo  and  William  Fitz-Osbern,  is  always  spoken 
of  by  the  native  writers  with  marked  horror.  The 
castles  were  the  badges  and  the  instruments  of  the  Con- 


108  WILLIAM  THK  CONQUEROR.  CHAP. 

quest,  the  special  means  of  holding  the  land  in  bondage.. 
Meanwhile  tumults  broke  forth  in  various  parts.  The 
slaughter  of  Copsige,  William's  earl  in  Northumberland, 
took  place  about  the  time  of  the  King's  sailing  for 
Normandy.  In  independent  Herefordshire  the  leading 
Englishman  in  those  parts,  Eadric,  whom  the  Normans 
called  the  Wild,  allied  himself  with  the  Welsh,  harried 
the  obedient  lands,  and  threatened  the  castle  of  Here- 
ford. Nothing  was  done  on  either  side  beyond  harrying 
and  skirmishes  ;  but  Eadric's  corner  of  the  land  remained 
unsubdued.  The  men  of  Kent  made  a  strange  foreign 
alliance  with  Eustace  of  Boulogne,  the  brother-in-law 
of  Edward,  the  man  whose  deeds  had  led  to  the 
great  movement  of  Edward's  reign,  to  the  banishment 
and  the  return  of  Godwine.  He  had  fought  against 
England  on  Senlac,  and  was  one  of  four  who  had  dealt 
the  last  blow  to  the  wounded  Harold.  But  the  oppres- 
sion of  Odo  made  the  Kentishmen  glad  to  seek  any  help 
against  him.  Eustace,  now  William's  enemy,  came  over, 
and  gave  help  in  an  unsuccessful  attack  on  Dover  castle. 
Meanwhile  in  the  obedient  shires  men  were  making 
ready  for  revolt;  in  the  unsubdued  lands  they  were 
making  ready  for  more  active  defence.  Many  went 
beyond  sea  to  ask  for  foreign  hclj3,  specially  in  the 
kindred  lands  of  Denmark  and  Northern  Germany. 
Against  this  threatening  movement  William's  strength 
lay  in  the  incapacity  of  his  enemies  for  combined  action. 
The  whole  land  never  rose  at  once,  and  Danish  help  did 
not  come  at  the  times  or  in  the  shape  when  it  could 
have  done  most  good. 

The  news  of  these  movements  brought  William  back 


/THE  CONQUEST  OF  ENGLAND.  109 


to  Englanc^  in  December.^  He  kept  the  Midwinter  feast 
and  assembly  at  Westminster  ;  there  the  absent  Eustace 
was,  by  a  characteristic  stroke  of  policy,  arraigned  as  a 
traitor.  He  was  a  foreign  prince  against  whom  the  Duke 
of  the  Normans  might  have  led  a  Norman  army.  But 
he  had  also  become  an  English,  landowner,  and  in  that 
character  he  was  ^a^€euntable.^to-.lhe_I£mg^jjQ(L3Yitan  of 
England--  He  suffered  the  traitor's  punishment  of  cojcb__ 
fiscation  of  lands.  Afterwards  he  contrived  to  win  back 
William's  favour,  and  he  left  great  English  possessions 
to  his  second  wife  and  his  son.  Another  stroke  of  policy 
was  to  send  an  embassy  to  Denmark,  to  ward  off  the 
hostile  purposes  of  Swegen,  and  to  choose  as  ambassador 
an  English  prelate  who  had  been  in  high  favour  with 
both  Edward  and  Harold,  ^thelsige,  Abbot  of  Ramsey. 
It  came  perhaps  of  his  mission  that  Swegen  practically 
did  nothing  for  two  years.  The  envoy's  own  life  was 
a  chequered  one.  He  lost  William's  favour,  and  sought 
shelter  in  Denmark.  He  again  regained  William's  favour 
—perhaps  by  some  service  at  the  Danish  court—  and 
died  in  possession  of  his  abbey. 

It  is  instructive  to  see  how  in  this  same  assembly 
William  bestowed  several  great  offices.  The  earldom 
of  Northumberland  was  vacant  by  the  slaughter  of 
two  earls,  the  bishopric  of  Dorchester  by  the  peaceful 
death  of  its  bishop.  William  had  no_jejil^uthprity_in 
any  part  of  Northumberland,  or  in  more  than  a  small 
part  of  the  diocese  of  ^}orchester.  But  he  dealt  with 
both  earldom  and  bishopric  as  in  his  own  power.  It  was 
now  that  heTgranted  Northumberland  to  Gospatric.  The 
appointment  to  the  bishopric  _  wasjhe  beginning  of_a  new 
system.  Englishmen  were  now  to  give  way  step_by..stfip 


110  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP. 

to  strangers  iaJJiaJiighest  offices  andgreatest  estates  of 
ffliejand.  He  had  already  made  two  Gorman  earls,  but 
they  were  to  act  as  military  commanders.  He  now  made 
an  English  earl,  whose  earldom  was  likely  to  be  either 
nominal  or  fatal.  The  appointment  of  Remigius  of 
Fecamp  to  the  see  of  Dorchester  was  of  more  real  im- 
portance. It  is  the  beginning  of  William's  ecclesiastical 
reign,  the  first  step  in  William's  scheme  of  making  the 
Church  his  instrument  in  keeping  down  the  conquered. 
While  William  lived,  no  Englishman  was  appointed  to 
a  bishopric.  As  bishoprics  became  vacant  by  death, 
foreigners  were  nominated,  and  excuses  were  often  found 
for  hastening  a  vacancy  by  deprivation.  At  the  end  of 
William's  reign  one  English  bishop  only  was  left.  With 
abbots,  as  having  less  temporal  power  than  bishops,  the 
rule  was  less  strict.  Foreigners  were  preferred,  but 
Englishmen  were  not  wholly  shut  out.  And  the  general 
process  of  confiscation  and  regrant  of  lands  was  vigor- 
ously carried  out.  The  Kentish  revolt  and  the  general 
movement  must  have  led  to  many  forfeitures  and  to 
further  grants  to  loyal  men  of  either  nation.  As  the 
English  Chronicles  pithjly  puts  it,  "  the  King  gave  away 
every  man's  land." 

William  could  soon  grant  lands  in  new  parts  of  Eng- 
land. In  February  1068  he  for  the  first  time  went  forth 
to  warfare  with  those  whom  he  called  his  subjects,  but 
who  had  never  submitted  to  him.  In  the  course  of  the 
year  a  large  part  of  England  was  in  arms  against  him. 
But  there  was  no  concert ;  the  West  rose  and  the  North 
rose;  but  the  West  rose  first,  and  the  North  did  not 
rise  till  the  West  had  been  subdued.  Western  England 


viii.  THE  CONQUEST  OF  ENGLAND.  ill 

threw  off  the  purely  passive  state  which  had  lasted 
through  the  year  1067.  Hitherto  each  side  had  left  the 
other  alone.  But  now  the  men  of  the  West  made  ready 
for  a  more  direct  opposition  to  the  foreign  government. 
If  they  could  not  drive  William  out  of  what  he  had  al- 
ready won,  they  would  at  least  keep  him  from  coming 
any  further.  Exeter,  the  "greatest  city  of  the  West,  was 
the  natural  centre  of  resistance ;  the  smaller  towns,  at 
least  of  Devonshire  and  Dorset  entered  into  a  league 
with  the  capital.  They  seem  to  have  aimed,  like  Italian 
cities  in  the  like  case,  at  the  formation  of  a  civic  con- 
federation, which  might  perhaps  find  it  expedient  to  ac- 
knowledge William  as  an  external  lord,  but  which  would 
maintain  perfect  internal  independence.  Still,  as  Gytha, 
widow  of  Godwine,  mother  of  Harold,  was  within  the 
walls  of  Exeter,  the  movement  was  doubtless  also  in 
some  sort  on  behalf  of  the  House  of  Godwine.  In  any 
case,  Exeter  and  the  lands  and  towns  in  its  alliance  with 
Exeter  strengthened  themselves  in  every  way  against 
attack. 

Things  were  not  now  as  on  the  day  of  Senlac,  when 
Englishmen  on  their  own  soil  withstood  one  who,  however 
he  might  cloke  his  enterprise,  was  to  them  simply  a  foreign 
invader.  But  William  was  not  yet,  as  he  was  in  some 
later  struggles,  the  de  facto  king  of  the  whole  land,  whom 
all  had  acknowledged,  and  opposition  to  whom  was  in 
form  rebellion.  He  now  held  an  intermediate  position. 
He  was  still  an  invader  ;  for  Exeter  had  never  submitted 
"tcTlrim  •'  buTfOie f  crowned  King  of  the  English,  peacefully 
ruling  over  many  shires,  was  hardly  a  mere_ .invader ; 
resistance  to  him  would  have  the  air  of  rebellion  in  the 
eyes  of  many  besides  William  and  his  flatterers.  And 


112  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP. 

they  could  not  see,  what  we  plainly  see,  what  William 
perhaps  dimly  saw,  that  it  was  in  the  long  run  better 
for  Exeter,  or  any  other  part  of  England,  to  share,  even 
in  conquest,  the  fate  of  the  whole  land,  rather  than  to  keep 
on  a  precarious^  jndependence  to  the  aggravation  of  the 
common  bondage.  This  we  feel  throughout ;  William, 
with  whatever  motive,  is  fighting  for  the  unity  of  Eng- 
land.  We  therefore  cannot  seriously  regret  his  successes. 
But  none  the  less  honour  is  due  to  the  men  whom  the 
duty  of  the  moment  bade  to  withstand  him.  They  could 
not  see  things  as  we  see  them  by  the  light  of  eight 
hundred  years. 

The  movement  evidently  stirred  several  shires  ;  but  it 
is  only  of  Exeter  that  we  hear  any  details._  William  never 
fiaft(Tforfift  till  he  had  tried  negotiation.  He  sent  messen- 
gers demanding  that  the  citizens  should  take  oaths  to  him 
and  receive  him  within  their  walls.  The  choice  lay  now 
between  unconditional  submission  and  valiant  resistance. 
But  the  chief  men  of  the  city  chose  a  middle  course 
which  could  gain  nothing.  They  answered  as  an  Italian 
city  might  have  answered  a  Swabian  Emperor.  They 
would  not  receive .  the  _Kin^..mtliiix_their  walls  ;  they 
would  take  no  oaths  to  him ;  but  they  would  pay  him 
the  tribute  which  they  had  paid  to  earlier  kings.  That 
is,  they  would  not  have  him  as  king,  but  only_as_over-_ 

lord    over    a_jn(vmmO-n wealth otherwise    independent. 

William's  answer  was  short ;  "It  is  not  my  custom  to 
take  subjects  on  those  conditions."  He  set  out  on  his 
march ;  his  policy  was  to  overcome  the  rebellious  English, 
by  the  arms  of  the  loyal  English.  He  called  out  the 
fjjw$2  ^ne  militia,  of  all  or  some  of  the  shires  under  his 
obedience.  They  answered  his  call ;  to  disobey  it  would 


VTII.  THE  CONQUEST  OF  ENGLAND.  113 

have  needed  greater  courage  than  to  wield  the  axe  on 
Senlac.  This  use  of  English  troops  became  William's 
custom  in  all  his  later  wars,  in  England  and  on  the 
mainland ;  but  of  course  he  did  not  trust  to  English 
troops  only.  The  plan  of  the  campaign  was  that  which 
had  won  Le  Mans  and  London.  The  towns  of  Dorset 
were  frightfully  harried  on  the  march  to  the  capital  of 
the  West.  Diaunion_aionce  broke  out;  the  leading  men 
in^  Exeter  sent  to  offer  unconditional  submission _and  to 
give  hostages.  But  the  commonalty  disowned  the  agree- 
ment ;  notwithstanding  the  blinding  of  one  of  the  host- 
ages before  the  walls,  they  defended  the  city  valiantly 
for  eighteen  days.  It  was  only  when  the  walls  began 
to  crumble  away  beneath  William's  mining-engines  that 
the  men  of  Exeter  at  last  submitted  to  his  mercy.  And 
William's  mercy  could  be  trusted.  No  man  was  harmed 
in  life,  limb,  or  goods.  But,  to  hinder  further  revolts,  a 
castle  was  at  once  begun,  and  the  payments  made  by 
the  city  to  the  King  were  largely  raised. 

Gytha,  when  the  city  yielded,  withdrew  to  the  Steep 
Holm,  and  thence  to  Flanders.  Her  grandsons  fled  to 
Ireland ;  from  thence,  in  the  course  of  the  same  year 
and  the  next,  they  twice  tended  iii^SomersefcjmdJD^jarL. 
&hire._  The  Irish  Danes  who  followed  them  could  not 
be  kept  back  from  plunder.  Englishmen  as  well  as 
Normans  withstood  them,  and  the  hopes  of  the  House 
of  Godwine  came  to  an  end. 

u  On  the  conquest  of  Exeter  followed  the  submission  of 
the  whole  West.  _  All  the  land _  south  of  the  Thames 
was  now  in  William's  obedience.  Gloucestershire  seems 
to  have  submitted  at  the  same  time ;  the  submission  of 

I 


114  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR,  CHAP. 

Worcestershire  is  without  date.  A  vast  confiscation  of 
lands  followed,  most  likely  by  slow  degrees.  Its  most 
memorable  feature  is  that  nearly  all  Cornwall  was 
granted  tnJWjjljani'a  brnthpr  T?,nbp,rt  f!ormt  nf  Mnrtaln 
His  vast  estate  grew  into  the  famous  Cornish  earldom  and 
duchy  of  later  times.  Southern  England  was  now  con- 
quered, and,  as  the  North  had  not  stirred  during  the  stir- 
ring  of  the  West,  the  whole  land  was  outwardly  at  peace. 
William  now  deemed  it  safe  to  bring  his  wiitfto  share  his 
new  greatness.  The  Duchess  Matilda  came  over  to  Eng- 
land, and  was  hallowed  to  Queen  at  Westminster  by  Arch- 
bishop Ealdred.  We  may  believe  that  no  part  of  Ins 
success  gave  William  truer  pleasure.  But  the  presence 
of  the  Lady  was  important  in  another  way.  It  was 
doubtless  by  design  that  she  gave  birth  on  English  soil  to 
her  youngest  son,  afterwards  the  renowned  King  Henry 
the  First.  He  alone  of  William's  children  was  in  any 
sense  an  Englishman.  Born  on  English  ground,  son  of 
a  crowned  King  and  his  Lady,  Englishmen  looked  on 
him  as  a  countryman.  And  his  father  saw  the  wisdom 
of  encouraging  such  a  feeling.  Henry,  surnamed  in 
after  days  the  Clerk,  was  brought  up  with  special  care ; 
he  was  trained  in  many  branches  of  learning  unusual 
among  the  princes  of  his  age,  among  them  in  a  thorough 
knowledge  of  the  tongue  of  his  native  land. 

The  campaign  of  Exeter  is  of  all  William's  English 
campaigns  the  richest  in  political  teaching.  We  see 
how  near  the  cities  of  England  came  for  a  moment — as 
we  shall  presently  see  a  chief  city  of  northern  Gaul — 
to  running  the  same  course  as  the  cities  of  Italy  and 
Provence.  Signs  of  the  same  tendency  may  sometimes  be 


VIIL  THE  CONQUEST  OF  ENGLAND.  115 

suspected  elsewhere,  but  they  are  not  so  clearly  revealed. 
William's  later  campaigns  are  of  the  deepest  importance  in 
English  history  ;  they  are  far  richer  in  recorded  personal 
actors  than  the  siege  of  Exeter  ;  but  they  hardly  throw  so 
much  light  on  the  character  of  William  and  his  states- 
manship. William  is  throughout  ever  ready,  but  never 
hasty  —  always  willing  to  wait-when  waiting  seems  the 
best  policy  —  always  ready  to  accept  a  nominal  success 
when  there  is  a  chance  of  turning  it  into  a  real  one,  but 
never  accepting  nominal  success  as  a  cover  for  defeat, 
never  losing  an  inch  of  ground  without  at  once  taking 
measures  to  recover  it.  By  this  means,  he  has  in  the 
former  part  of  1068  extended  his  dominion  to  the 
Land's  End  ;  before  the  end  of  the  year  he  extends  it  to 
the  Tees.  In  the  next  year  he  has  indeed  to  win  it  back 
again  ;  but  he  does  win  it  back  and  more  also.  Early  in 
1070  he  was  at  last,  in  deed  as  weJL 
yjer~all  England. 


The  North  was  making  ready  for  war  while  the_war 
in  the  West  went  on,  but  one  part  of_England  did  nothing 
to  helpjbhe  other.  In  the  summer  the  movement  in  the 
North  took  shape.  The  nominal  earls  Edwin,  Morkere, 
and  Gospatric,  with  the  ^Etheling  Edgar  and  others, 
left  William's  court  to  put  themselves  at  the  head  of  the 
movement.  Edwin  was  specially  aggrieved,  because 
the  king  had  promised  him  one  of  his  daughters  in 
marriage,  but  had  delayed  giving  her  to  him.  The  Eng- 
lish formed  alliances  with  the  dependent  princj£s__of 
r  Wales  lmd~ScotIand,  "and  stood  ^ 
attack  William  set  forth  ;  as  he  had  taken  Exeter,  he 
took  Warwick,  perhaps  Leicester.  This  was  enough  for 
Edwin  and  Morkere.  They  submitted,  and  were  again 


116  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP. 

received  to  favour.  More  valiant  spirits  withdrew 
northward,  ready  to  defend  Durham  as  the  last  shelter 
of  independence,  while  Edgar  and  Gospatric  fled  to  the 
court  of  Malcolm  of  Scotland.  William  went  on,  receiv- 
ing the  submission  of  Nottingham  and  York ;  thence  he 
turned  southward,  receiving  on  his  way  the  submission 
of  Lincoln,  Cambridge,  and  Huntingdon.  Again  he 
deemed  it  his  policy  to  establish  his  power  in  the  lands 
which  he  had  already  won  rather  than  to  jeopard  matters 
by  at  once  pressing  farther.  In  the  conquered  towns 
he  built  castles,  and  he  placed  permanent  garrisons  in 
each  district  by  granting  estates  to  his  Norman  and 
other  followers.  Different  towns  and  districts  suffered 
in  different  degrees,  according  doubtless  to  the  measure 
of  resistance  met  with  in  each.  Lincoln  and  Lincoln- 
shire were  on  the  whole  favourably  treated.  An  unusual 
number  of  Englishmen  kept  lands  and  offices  in  city  and 
shire.  At  Leicester  and  Northampton,  and  in  their 
shires,  the  wide  confiscations  and  great  destruction  of 
houses  point  to  a  stout  resistance.  And  though  Durham 
was  still  untouched,  and  though  William  had  assuredly 
no  present  purpose  of  attacking  Scotland,  he  found  it 
expedient  to  receive  with  all  favour  a  nominal  submis- 
sion brought  from  the  King  of  Scots  by  the  hands  of  the 
Bishop  of  Durham. 

If  William's  policy  ever  seems  less  prudent  than  usual, 
it  was  at  the  beginning  of  the  next  year,  1069.  The 
extreme  North  still  stood  out.  William  had  twice  com- 
missioned English  earls  of  Northumberland  to  take  pos- 
session if  they  could.  He  now  risked  the  dangerous 
step  of  sending  a  stranger.  Eobert  of  Comines  was 
appointed  to  the  earldom  forfeited  by  the  flight  of 


viii.  THE  CONQUEST  OF  ENGLAND.  117 

G-ospatric.  While  it  was  still  winter,  he  went  with  his 
force  to  Durham.  By  help  of  the  Bishop,  he  was  ad- 
mitted into  the  city,  but  he  and  his  whole  force  were 
cut  off  by  the  people  of  Durham  and  its  neighbourhood. 
Robert's  expedition  in  short  led  only  to  a  revolt  of 
York,  where  Edgar  was  received  and  siege  was  laid  to 
the  castle.  William  marched  in  person  with  all  speed ; 
he  relieved  the  castle ;  he  recovered  the  city  and 
strengthened  it  by  a  second  castle  on  the  other  side  of 
the  river.  Still  he  thought  it  prudent  to  take  no  pre- 
sent steps  against  Durham.  Soon  after  this  came  the 
second  attempt  of  Harold's  sons  in  the  West. 

Later  in  fois  vear  William's  final  warfare  for  the 
Jdngdom  began.  In  August,  1069  the  Iong-promise7 
help  from  Denmark  came.  Swegen  sent  his  brother 
Osbeorn  and  his  sons  Harold  and  Cnut,  at  the  head  of  the 
whole  strength  of  Denmark  and  of  other  Northern  lands. 
If  the  two  enterprises  of  Harold's  sons  had  been  planned 
in  concert  with  their  Danish  kinsmen,  the  invaders  or 
deliverers  from  opposite  sides  had  failed  to  act  together. 
Nor  are  Swegen's  own  objects  quite  clear.  He  sought 
to  deliver  England  from  William  and  his  Normans,  but 
it  is  not  so  plain  in  whose  interest  he  acted.  He  would 
naturally  seek  the  English  crown  for  himself  or  for 
one  of  his  sons  ;  the  sons  of  Harold  he  would  rather 
make  earls  than  kings.  But  he  could  feel  no  interest 
in  the  kingship  of  Edgar.  Yet,  when  the  Danish  fleet 
entered  the  Humber,  and  the  whole  force  of  the  North 
came  to  meet  it,  the  English  host  had  the  heir  of  Cerdic 
at  its  head.  It  is  now  that  Waltheof  the  son  of  Siward, 
Earl  of  Northampton  and  Huntingdon,  first  stands  out 
as  a  leading  actor.  Gospatric  too  was  there  \  but  this 


118  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP. 

time  not  Edwin  and  Morkere.  Danes  and  English 
joined  and  marched  upon  York  ;  the  city  was  occupied  ; 
the  castles  were  taken ;  the  Norman  commanders  were 
made  prisoners,  but  not  till  they  had  set  fire  to  the 
city  and  burned  the  greater  part  of  it,  along  writh  the 
metropolitan  minster.  It  is  amazing  to  read  that,  after 
breaking  down  the  castles,  the  English  host  dispersed, 

into  the  Humber. 


England  was  again  ruined  by  lack  of  concert.  The 
news  of  the  coming  of  the  Danes  led  only  to  isolated 
movements  which  were  put  down  piecemeal.  The  men 
of  Somerset  and  Dorset  and  the  men  of  Devonshire 
and  Cornwall  were  put  down  separately,  and  the  move- 
ment in  Somerset  was  largely  put  down  by  English 
troops.  The  citizens  of  Exeter,  as  well  as  the  Norman 
garrison  of  the  castle,  stood  a  siege  on  behalf  of  William. 
A  rising  on  the  Welsh  border  under  Eadric  led  only  to 
the  burning  of  Shrewsbury ;  a  rising  in  Staffordshire 
was  held  by  William  to  call  for  his  own  presence.  But 
he  first  marched  into  Lindesey,  and  drove  the  crews  of 
the  Danish  ships  across  into  Holderness  ;  there  he  left 
two  Norman  leaders,  one  of  them  his  brother  Robert  of 
Mortain  and  Cornwall  ;  he  then  went  westward  and 
subdued  Staffordshire,  and  marched  towards  York  by 
way  of  Nottingham.  A  constrained  delay  by  the  Aire 
gave  him  an  opportunity  for  negotiation  with  the  Danish 
leaders.  Osbeorn  took  bribes  to  forsake  the  English 
cause,  and  William  reached  and  entered  York  without 
resistance.  He  restored  the  castles  and  kept  his  Christ- 
mas in  the  half-burned  city.  And  now  William  forsook 
his  usual  policy  of  clemency.  The  Northern  shires  had 
been  too  hard  to  win.  To  weaken  them,  he  decreed  a 


viii.  THE  CONQUEST  OF  ENGLAND.  119 

merciless  harrying  of  the  whole  land,  the  direct  effects  of 
which  were  seen  for  many  years,  and  which  left  its  mark 
on  English  history  for  ages.  Till  the  growth  of  modern 
industry  reversed  the  relative  position  of  Northern  and 
Southern  England,  the  old 
never  fully  recovered"  fi'om  the  blow  dealt  By 


and  remained  the  most  backward  part  of  the  land. 
Herein  comes  one  of  the  most  remarkable  results  of 
William's  coming.  His  greatest  work  was  to  make 
England  a  kingdom  which  no  man  henceforth  thought 
QJjEviding.  But  the  circumstances  of  his"c~6hquest  of 
Northern  England  ruled  that  for  several  centuries  the 
unity  of  England  should  take  the  form  of  a  distinct 
preponderance  of  Southern  England  over  Northern. 
William's  reign  strengthened  every  tendency  that  way, 
chiefly  by  the  fearful  blow  now  dealt  to  the  physical 
strength  and  well-being  of  the  Northern  shires.  From 
one  side  indeed  the  Norman  Conquest  was  trulv_a  Saxon 
conquest.  _  The  King  of  London  and  Winchester  became 
more  fully  than  ever  king  over  the  whole  land. 

The  Conqueror  had  now  only  to  gather  in  what  was 
still  left  to  conquer.  But,  as  military  exploits,  none 
are  more  memorable  than  the  winter  marches  which  put 
William  into  full  possession  of  England.  The  lands 
beyond  Tees  still  held  out;  in  January  1070  he  set 
forth  to  subdue  them.  The  Earls  Waltheof  and  Gospatric 
made  their  submission,  Waltheof  in  person,  Gospatric 
by  proxy.  William  restored  both  of  them  to  their 
earldoms,  and  received  Waltheof  to  his  highest  favour, 
giving  him  his  niece  Judith  in  marriage.  But  he 
systematically  wasted  the  land,  as  he  had  wasted 


120  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP. 

Yorkshire.  He  then  returned  to  York,  and  thence  set 
forth  to  subdue  the  last  city  and  shire  that  held 
out.  A  fearful  march  led  him  to  the  one  remaining 
fragment  of  free  England,  the  unconquered  land  of 
Chester.  We  know  not  how  Chester  fell ;  but  the  land 
was  not  won  withouT  fighting,  and  a  frightful  harrying 
was  the  punishment.  In  all  this  we  see  a  distinct  stage 
of  moral  downfall  in  the  character  of  the  Conqueror.  Yet 
it  is  thoroughly  characteristic.  All  is  calm,  deliberate, 
politic.  William  will  have  no  more  revolts,  and  he  will 
at  any  cost  make  the  land  incapable  of  revolt.  Yet,  as 
ever,  there  is  no  blood  shed  save  in  battle.  If  men 
died  of  hunger,  that  was  not  William's  doing ;  nay, 
charitable  people  like  Abbot  ^Ethelwig  of  Evesham 
might  do  what  they  could  to  help  the  sufferers.  But  the 
lawful  king,  kept  so  long  out  of  his  kingdom,  would, 
at  whatever  price,  be  king  over  the  whole  land.  And 
the  great  harrying  of  the  northern  shires  was  the  price 
paid  for  William's  kingship  over  them. 

At  Chester  the  work  was  ended  which  had  begun 
at  Pevensey.  Less  than  three  years  and  a  half,  with 
intervals  of  peace,  had  made  the  Norman  invader  king 
over  all  England.  He  had  won^Jhe  kingdom  'jrhe~5ad 
now  to  keep  it.  He  had  for  seventeen  years  to  deal 
with  revolts  on  both  sides  of  the  sea,  with  revolts  tfoffi" 


"and  of ~Kfs "own_-f ollow^rs, — But  in 
land  his  power  was  never  shaken  ;  in  England  he  never 
knew  defeat.  His  English  enemies  he  had  subdued  ; 
the  Danes  were  allowed  to  remain  and  in  some  sort  to 
help  in  his  work  by  plundering  during  the  winter. 
The  King  now  marched  to  the  Salisbury  of  that  day, 
the  deeply  fenced  hill  of  Old  Sarum.  The  men  who 


THE  CONQUEST  OF  ENGLAND.  121 

had  conquered  England  were  reviewed  in  the  great 
plain,  and  received  their  rewards.  Some  among  them 
had  by  failures  of  duty  during  the  winter  marches  lost 
their  right  to  reward.  Their  punishment  was  to  remain 
under  arms  forty  days  longer  than  their  comrades. 
William  could  trust  himself  to  the  very  mutineers  whom 
he  had  picked  out  for  punishment.  He  had  now  to 
begin  his  real  reign  ;  and  the  champion  of  the  Church 
had  before  all  things  to  reform  the  evil  customs  of  the 
benighted  islanders,  and  to  give  them  shepherds  of  their 
souls  who  might  guide  them  in  the  right  way. 


CHAPTER   IX. 

THE   SETTLEMENT   OF   ENGLAND. 

1070-1086. 

ENGLAND  was  now  fully  conquered,  and  William  could 
for  a  moment  sit  down  quietly  to  the  rule  of  the  king- 
dom that  he  had  won.  The  time  that  immediately 
followed  is  spoken  of  as  a  time  of  comparative  quiet,  and 
of  less  oppression  than  the  times  either  before  or  after. 
Before  and  after,  warfare,  on  one  side  of  the  sea  or  the 
other,  was  the  main  business.  Hitherto  William  has 
been  winning  his  kingdom  in  arms.  Afterwards  he 
was  more  constantly  called  away  to  his  foreign  domin- 
ions, and  his  absence  always  led  to  greater  oppression 
in  England.  Just  now  he  had  a  moment  of  repose, 
when  he  could  give  his  mind  to  the  affairs  of  Church 
and  State  in  England.  Peace  indeed  was  not  quite  un- 
broken. Events  were  tending  to  that  famous  revolt  in 
the  Fenland  which  is  perhaps  the  best  remembered  part 
of  William's  reign.  But  even  this  movement  was  merely 
local,  and  did  not  seriously  interfere  with  William's 
government.  He  was  now  striving  to  settle  the  land  in 
peace,  and  to  make  his  rule  as  little  grievous  to  the  con- 
quered as  might  be.  The  harrying  of  Northumberland 
showed  that  he  now  shrank  from  no  harshness  that  would 


CHAP.  ix.        THE  SETTLEMENT  OF  ENGLAND.  123 

serve  his  ends ;  but  from  mere  purposeless  oppression  he 
was  still  free.  Nor  was  he  ever  inclined  to  needless 
change  or  to  that  scorn  of  the  conquered  which  meaner 
conquerors  have  often  shown.  He  clearly  wished  both 
to  change  and  to  oppress  as  little  as  he  could.  This  is  a 
side  of  him  which  has  been  greatly  misunderstood, 
largely  through  the  book  that  passes  for  the  History  of 
Ingulf  Abbot  of  Crowland.  Ingulf  was  William's  Eng- 
lish secretary  ;  a  real  history  of  his  writing  would  be 
most  precious.  But  the  book  that  goes  by  his  name  is 
a  forgery  not  older  than  the  fourteenth  century,  and  is 
in  all  points  contradicted  by  the  genuine  documents  of 
the  time.  Thus  the  forger  makes  William  try  to 
3boHsh_Jbhe,  English  IgngnflQ-A  anH  nrrj^r_the  use~of 
French  in  legal  writings.  This  is  pure  fiction.  The 
truth  is  that,  from  the  time  of  William's  coming,  Eng- 
lish goes  out  of  use  in  legal  writings,  but  only  gradually, 
and  not  in  favour  of  French.  Ever  since  the  coming 
of  Augustme^ JSnglish  and  Latin  had  been  alternative 
tongues ;  after  the  coming  of  William  English  becomes 
less  usual,  and  injthe  course  of  the  twelfth  century  it 
goes  out  ofjisejn  favour  of  Latin.  There  are  no  French 
documents  till  the  thirteenth  century,  and  in  that  cen- 
tury English  begins  again.  Instead  of  abolishing  the 
English  tongue^William J^ook  care  that  his  English-born 
son  should  learn  it,  and  he  even  began  to  learn  it  himself. 
A  king  of  those  days  held  it  for  his  duty  to  hear  and 
redress  his  subjects'  complaints  ;  he  had  to  go  through 
the  land  and  see  for  himself  that  those  who  acted  in 
his  name  did  right  among  his  people.  This  earlier 
kings  had  done;  this  William  wished  to  do;  but  he 
found  his  ignorance  of  English  a  hindrance.  Cares  of 


124  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP. 

other  kinds  checked  his  English  studies,  but  he 
may  have  learned  enough  to  understand  the  meaning 
of  his  own  English  charters.  ^  Nor  did  William  try,  $.*_ 
h*Ljs_^frg^ma^ed^to  nave-dQneT  to  root  out_thg 
ancient  institutions  of  England,  and  to  set  up  in  their 
stead  either  the  existing  institutions  of  Normandy  or 
some  new  institutions  of  his  own  devising.  The  truth 
is  that  with  William  began  a  gradual  change  in  the 
laws  and^customs  of  England,  undoubtedly  great,  but  far 
less  than  is  jsommonly  ^thouglit.  French  names  have 
often  supplanted  English,  and  have  made  the  amount 
of  change  seem  greater  than  it  really  was.  Still  much 
change  did  follow  on  the  Norman  Conquest,  and  the 
Norman  Conquest  was  so  completely  William's  own 
act  that  all  that  came  of  it  was  in  some  sort  his  act 
also.  But  these  changes  were  mainly  the  gradual 
results  of  the  state  of  things  which  followed  William/s 
coming  ;  they  were  but  very  slightly  the  results  of  any 
formaTacts  of  his.  With  a  foreign  king  and  foreigners 
in  all  high  places,  much  practical  change  could  not 
fail  to  follow,  even  where  the  letter  of  the  law  was 
unchanged.  Still  the  practical  change  was  less  than 
if  the  letter  of  the  law  had  been  changed  as  well. 
English  law  was  administered  by  foreign  judges ;  the 
foreign  grantees  of  William  held  English  land  according 
to  English  law.  The  Norman  had  no  special  position 
as  a  Norman ;  in  eveiy  rank  except  perhaps  the 
very  highest  and  the  very  lowest,  he  had  Englishmen 
to  his  fellows.  All  this  helped  to  give  the  Norman 
Conquest  of  England  its  peculiar  character,  to  give  it 
an  air  of  having  swept  away  everything  English,  while 
its  real  work  was  to  turn  strangers  into  Englishmen. 


ix.  THE  SETTLEMENT  OF  ENGLAND.  125 

And  that  character  was  impressed  on  William's  work 
by  William  himsejf.  The  king  claiming  by  legal  right, 
but  driven  to  assert  his  right  by  the  sword,  was  unlike 
both  the  foreign  king  who  comes  in  by  peaceful  succes- 
sion and  the  foreign  king  who  comes  in  without  even 
the  pretext  of  law.  The  Normans  too,  if  born  soldiers, 
were  also  born  lawyers,  and  no  man  was  more  deeply 
impressed  with  the  legal  spirit  than  William  himself. 
He  loved  neither  to  change  the  law  nor  to  transgress  the 
law,  and  he  had  little  need  to  do  either.  He  knew  how 
to  make  the  law  his  instrument,  and,  without  either 
changing  or  transgressing  it,  to  use  it  to  make  himself 
all-powerful.  He  thoroughly  enjoyed  that  system  of  legal 
fictions  and  official  euphemisms  which  marks  his  reign. 
William  himself  became  in  some  sort  an  Englishman, 
and  those  to  whom  he  granted  English  lands  had  in 
some  sort  to  become  Englishmen  in  order  to  hold  them. 
The  Norman  stepped  into  the  exact  place  of  the  Eng- 
lishman whose  land  he  held ;  he  took  his  rights  and  his 
burthens,  and  disputes  about  those  rights  and  burthens 
were  judged  according  to  English  law  by  the  witness 
of  Englishmen.  Reigning  over  two  races  in  one  land, 
William  would  be  lord  of  both  alike,  able  to  use  either 
against  the  other  in  case  of  need.  He  would  make  the 
most  of  everything  in  the  feelings  and  customs  of  either 
that  tended  to  strengthen  his  own  hands.  And,  in  the 
state  of  things  in  which  men  then  found  themselves, 
whatever  strengthened  William's  hands  strengthened 
law  and  order  in  his  kingdom. 

There  was  therefore  nothing  to  lead  William  to 
make  any  large  changes  in  the  letter  of  the  English  law. 
The  powers  of  a  King  of  the  English,  wielded  as  he 


126  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP. 

knew  how  to  wield  them,  made  him  as  great  as  he 
could  wish  to  be.  Once  granting  the0  original  wrong  of 
his  coming  at  all  and  bringing  a  host  of  strangers  with 
him,  there  is  singularly  little  to  blame  in  the  acts  of  the 
Conqueror.  Of  bloodshed,  of  wanton  interference  with 
law  and  usage,  there  is  wonderfully  little.  Englishmen 
and  Normans_were  held  to  have  settled  downin  peace 
under  the  equal  protection  of  King  William.  The  two 
races  were  drawing  together  ;  the  process  was  beginning 
which,  a  hundred  years  later,  made  it  impossible,  in  any 
rank  but  the  highest  and  the  lowest,  to  distinguish  Nor- 
man from  Englishman.  Among  the  smaller  landowners 
and  the  townsfolk  this  intermingling  had  already  begun, 
while  earls  and  bishops  were  not  yet  so  exclusively  Nor- 
man, nor  had  the  free  churls  of  England  as  yet  sunk  so 
low  as  at  a  later  stage.  Still  some  legislation  was  needed 
to  settle  the  relations  of  the  two  races.  King  William 
proclaimed  the  "renewal  of  the  law  of  King  Edward." 
This  phrase  has  often  been  misunderstood  ;  it  is  a  com- 
mon form  when  peace  and  good  order  are  restored  after 
a  period  of  disturbance.  The  last  reign  which  is  looked 
back  to  as  to  a  time  of  good  government  becomes 
the  standard  of  good  government,  and  it  is  agreed 
between  king  and  people,  between  contending  races  or 
parties,  that  things  shall  be  as  they  were  in  the  days  of 
the  model  ruler.  So  we  hear  in  Normandy  of  the 
renewal  of  the  law  of  Rolf,  and  in  England  of  the 
renewal  of  the  law  of  Cnut.  So  at  an  earlier  time 
Danes  and  Englishmen  agreed  in  the  renewal  of  the  law 
of  Edgar.  So  now  Normans  and  Englishmen  agreed  in 
the  renewal  of  the  law  of  Edward.  There  was  no  code 
either  of  Edward's  or .  of  William's  making.  William 


ix.  THE  SETTLEMENT  OF  ENGLAND.  127 

simply  bound  himself   to  rule  as   Edward  had  ruled. 
But  in  restoring  the  law  of  Kin^'Edwardphe-  added,- 
"  with   the  additions  which  I  have  decreed  for 
vaiitagti_of  the  people  of  Ilia  EngH 

These  few  words  are  indeed  weighty.  The  little 
legislation  of  William's  reign  takes  throughout  the  shape 
of  additions.  Noting  old  is  repealed  ;  a  few  new  enact- 
ments are  set  up  by  the  side  of  the  old  ones.  And 
these  words  describe,  not  only  William's  actual  legisla- 
tion, but  the  widest  general  effect  of  his  coming.  The  '^ 
Norman  Conquest  did  little  towards  any  direct  abolition 
of  theolder  English  laws  or  institutions.  But  itset  up 
some  new  institutions  alongside  of  old  ones;  and  it 
brought  in  not  a  few  names,  habits,  and  ways  of  looking 
at  things,  which  gradually  did  their  work.  In  England 
no  man  has  pulled  down  ;  many  have  added  and  modified. 
Our  law  is  still  the  law  of  King  Edward  with  the 
additions  of  King  William.  Some  old  institutions  took 
new  names  ;  some  new  institutions  with  new  names 
sprang  up  by  the  side  of  old  ones.  Sometimes  the  old 
has  lasteM,  sometimes  the  new.  We  still  have  ajift£and 
not  a  roy ;  but  he  gathers  round  him  a  garlmmmL  and 
not  a  witenagemdt.  We  have  a. sheriff  and  not  a  viscount; 
but  his  district  is  more  commonly  called  &  county  than  a 
shire.  But  county  and  shire  are  French  and  English  for 
the  same  thing,  and  "parliament"  is  simply  French  for 
the  "deep  speech"  which  King  WTilliam  had  with  his 
Witan.  The  National  Assembly  of  England  has  changed^ 
Jts  name  and  its  constitution  more  than  once  ;  but  it  has 
never  been  changed  by  any  sudden  revolution,  never  till 
later  times  by  any  formal  enactment.  There  was  no 
moment  when  one  kind  of  assembly  supplanted  another. 


128  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR,  CHAP. 

And  this  has  come  because  our  Conqueror  was,  both  by 
his  disposition  and  his  circumstances,  led  tp_act  as  a  pre- 
^eryer^and  not  as  a_destroyer. 

The  greatest  recorded  acts  of  William,  administrative 
and  legislative,  come  in  the  last  days  of  his  reign.  But 
there  are  several  enactments  of  William  belonging  to 
various  periods  of  his  reign,  and  some  of  them  to  this 
first  moment  of  peace.  Here  we  distinctly  see  William 
as  an  English  statesman,  as  a  statesman  who  knew 
how  to  work  a  radical  change  under  conservative 
forms.  One  enactment,  perhaps  the  earliest  of  all,  pro- 
vided for  the  safety  of  the  strangers  who  had  come  with 
him  to  subdue  and  to  settle  in  the  land.  The  murder 
of  a  Norman  by  an  Englishman,  especially  of  a  Norman 
intruder  by  a  dispossessed  Englishman,  was  a  thing  that 
doubtless  often  happened.  William  therefore  provides 
for  the  safety  of  those  whom  he  calls  "  the  men  whom  I 
brought  with  me  or  who  have  come  after  me ; "  that  is, 
the  warriors  of  Senlac,  Exeter,  and  York.  These  men 
are  put  within  his  own  peace ;  wrong  done  to  them  is 
wrong  done  to  the  King,  his  crown  and  dignity.  If  the 
murderer  cannot  be  found,  the  lord  and,  failing  him,  the 
hundred,  must  make  payment  to  the  King.  Of  this 
grew  the  presentment  of  Englishry,  one  of  the  few  formal 
badges  of  distinction  between  the  conquering  and  the 
conquered  race.  Its  practical  need  could  not  have 
lasted  beyond  a  generation  or  two,  but  it  went  on 
as  a  form  ages  after  it  had  lost  all  meaning.  An  un- 
known corpse,  unless  it  could  be  proved  that  the  dead 
man  was  English,  was  assumed  to  be  that  of  a  man 
who  had  come  with  King  William,  and  the  fine  was 
levied.  Some  other  enactments  were  needed  when  two 


ix.  THE  SETTLEMENT  OF  ENGLAND.  129 

nations  lived  side  by  side  in  the  same  land.  As  in  earlier 
times,  Roman  and  barbarian  each  kept  his  own  law,  so 
now  for  some  purposes  the  Frenchman — "  Francigena" — 
and  the  Englishman  kept  their  own  law.  This  is  chiefly 
with  regard  to  the  modes  of  appealing  to  God's  judge- 
ment in  doubtful  cases.  The  English  did  this  by  ordeal, 
the  Normans  by  wage.r  of  battle.  When  a  man  of  one 
nation  appealed  a  man  of  the  other,  the  accused  chose 
the  mode  of  trial.  If  an  Englishman  appealed  a  French- 
man and  declined  to  prove  his  charge  either  way,  the 
Frenchman  might  clear  himself  by  oath.  But  these 
privileges  were  strictly  confined  to  Frenchmen  who  had 
come  with  William  and  after  him.  Frenchmen  who  had 
in  Edward's  time  settled  in  England  as  the  land  of  their 
own  choice,  reckoned  as  Englishmen.  Other  enactments, 
or  fresh  enactments  of  older  laws,  touched  both  races. 
TJje  slave  trade  was  rife  in  its  worst  form ;  men  were 
sold  out  of  the  land,  chiefly  to  the  Danes  of  Ireland. 
Earlier  kings  had  denounced  the  crime,  and  earlier 
bishops  had  preached  against  it.  WilliaJiL_denouj^jejl_it--, 
again  under  the  penalty  of  forfeiture  of  all  lands  and 
^oods,  and  Saint  Wulfstan,  the  BisTiop~of~W6rcester, 
persuaded  the  chief  offenders,  Englishmen  of  Bristol,  to 
give  up  their  darling  sin  for  a  season.  Yet  in  the  next 
reign  Anselm  and  his  synod  had  once  more  to  denounce 
the  crime  under  spiritual  penalties,  when  they  had  no 
longer  the  strong  arm  of  William  to  enforce  them. 

Another  law  bears  more  than  all  the  personal  impress 
of  William.  In  it  he  at  once,  on  one  side,  forestalls 
the  most  humane  theories  of  modern  times,  and  on  the 
other  sins  most  directly  against  them.  His  remark- 
able unwillingness  to  put  any  man  to  death,  except 


130  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP. 

among  the  chances  of  the  battle-field,  was  to  some  extent 
the  feeling  of  his  age.  With  him  the  feeling  takes  the 
shape  of  a  formal  law.  He  forbids  the  infliction  of 
death  for  any  crime  whatever.  But  those  who  may  on 
this  score  be  disposed  to  claim  the  Conqueror  as  a 
sympathizer  will  be  shocked  at  the  next  enactment. 
Those  crimes  which  kings  less  merciful  than  William 
would  have  punished  with  death  are  to  be  punished 
with  loss  of  eyes  or  other  foul  and  cruel  mutilations. 
Punishments  of  this  kind  now  seem  more  revolting  than 
death,  though  possibly,  now  as  then,  the  sufferer  himself 
might  think  otherwise.  But  in  those  days  to  substitute 
mutilation  for  death,  in  the  case  of  crimes  which  were 
held  to  deserve  death,  was  universally  deemed  an  act  of 
mercy.  Grave  men  shrank  from  sending  their  fellow- 
creatures  out  of  the  world,  perhaps  without  time  for 
repentance ;  but  physical  sympathy  with  physical  suffer- 
ing had  little  place  in  their  minds.  In  the  next  century 
a  feeling  against  bodily  mutilation  gradually  comes  in ; 
but  as  yet  the  mildest  and  most  thoughtful  men, 
Anselm  himself,  make  no  protest  against  it  when  it  is 
believed  to  be  really  deserved.  There  is  no  sign  of  any 
general  complaint  on  this  score.  The  English  Chronicler 
applauds  the  strict  police  of  which  mutilation  formed  a 
part,  and  in  one  case  he  deliberately  holds  it  to  be  the 
fitting  punishment  of  the  offence.  In  fact,  when  penal 
settlements  were  unknown  and  legal  prisons  were  few 
and  loathsome,  there  was  something  to  be  said  for  a 
punishment  which  disabled  the  criminal  from  repeating 
his  offence.  In  William's  jurisprudence  mutilation 
became  the  ordinary  sentence  of  the  murderer,  the 
robber,  the  ravisher,  sometimes  also  of  English  revolters 


ix.  THE  SETTLEMENT  OF  ENGLAND.  131 

against  William's  power.      We  must  in  short  balance 
his  mercy  against  the  mercy  of  Kirk  and  Jeffreys. 

The  ground  on  which  the  English  Chronicler  does 
raise  his  wail  on  behalf  of  his  countrymen  is  the  special 
jurisprudence  of  the  forests  and  the  extortions  of  money 
with  which  he  charges  the  Conqueror.  In  both  these 
points  the  royal  hand  became  far  heavier  under  the 
Norman  rule.  In  both  William's  character  grew  darker 
as  he  grew  older.  He  is  charged  with  unlawful  exac- 
tions of  money,  in  his  character  alike  of  sovereign  and 
of  landlord.  We  read  of  his  sharp  practice  in  dealing 
with  the  profits  of  the  royal  demesnes.  He  would  turn 
out  the  tenant  to  whom  he  had  just  let  the  land,  if 
another  offered  a  higher  rent.  But  with  regard  to  taxa- 
tion, we  must  remember  that  William's  exactions,  how- 
ever heavy  at  the  time,  were  a  step  in  the  direction  of 
regular  government.  In  those  days  all  taxation  was  dis- 
liked. Direct  taking  of  the  subject's  money  by  the  King 
was  deemed  an  extraordinary  resource  to  be  justified 
only  by  some  extraordinary  emergency,  to  buy  off  the 
Danes  or  to  hire  soldiers  against  them.  Men  long  after 
still  dreamed  that  the  King  could  "  live  of  his  own,"  that 
he  could  pay  all  expenses  of  his  court  and  government 
out  of  the  rents  and  services  due  to  him  as  a  landowner, 
without  asking  his  people  for  anything  in  the  character 
of  sovereign.  Demands  of  money  on  behalf  of  the  King 
now  became  both  heavier  and  more  frequent.  And 
another  change  which  had  long  been  gradually  work- 
ing now  came  to  a  head.  When,  centuries  later,  the 
King  was  bidden  to  "  live  of  his  own,"  men  had  forgotten 
fHat  the  land  of  the  Kins;  had  once  been  the  land  of 
the  nation.  In  all  Teutonic  communities,  great  and 


132  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP. 

small,  just  as  in  the  city  communities  of  Greece  and 
Italy,  the  community  itself  was  a  chief  landowner.  The 
nation  Had  its  foUdand,  its  ager  puUicus,  the  property  of 
no  one  man  but  of  the  whole  state.  Out  of  this,  by  the 
common  consent,  portions  might  be  cut  off  and  booked — 
granted  by  a  written  document — to  particular  men  as 
their  own  bookland.  The  King  might  have  his  private 
estate,  to  be  dealt  with  at  his  own  pleasure,  but  of  the 
folkland,  the  land  of  the  nation,  he  was  only  the  chief 


Administrator,  bound  to  act  by  the  advice  of  his  Witan. 
But  in  this  case  more  than  in  others,  the  advice  of  the 
Witan  could  not  fail  to  become  formal ;  the  folkland,  ever 
growing  through  confiscations,  ever  lessening  through 
grants,  gradually  came  to  be  looked  on  as  the  land  of 
the  King,  to  be  dealt  with  as  he  thought  good.  We 
must  not  look  for  any  change  formally  enacted  ;  but  in 
Edward's  day  the  notion  of  folkland,  as  the  possession  of 
the  nation  and  not  of  the  King,  could  have  been  only  a 
survival,  and  in  William's  day  even  the  survival  passed 
away.  The  land  which  was  practically  the  land  of  King 
Edward  Be7;ame7~as~a~niatter  of  course.  Terra  EegisTihe 
land  oi  King  William"^  That  land  was  now  enlarged  by 
greater  confiscations  and  lessened  by  greater  grants  than 
ever.  For  a  moment,  every  lay  estate  had  been  part  of 
the  land  of  William.  And  far  more  than  had  been  the 
land  of  the  nation  remained  the  land  of  the  King,  to  be 
dealt  with  as  he  thought  good. 

In  the  tenure  of  land  William  seems  to  have  made  no 
formal  change.  But  the  circumstances  of  his  reign  gave 
increased  strength  to  certain  tendencies  which  had  been 
long  afloat.  And  out  of  them,  in  the  next  reign,  the 
malignant  genius  of  Eandolf  Flambard  devised  a  system- 


ix.  THE  SETTLEMENT  OF  ENGLAND.  133 

atic  code  of  oppression.  Yet  even  in  his  work  there 
is  little  of  formal  change.  There  are  no  laws  of  William 
Rufus.  The  so  called  feudal  incidents,  the  claims  of 
marriage,  wardship,  and  the  like,  on  the  part  of  the  lord, 
the  ancient  heriot  developed  into  the  later  relief,  all  these 
things  were  in  the  germ  under  William,  as  they  had  been 
in  the  germ  long  before  him.  In  the  hands  of  Randolf 
Flambard  they  stiffen  into  established  custom;  their 
legal  acknowledgement  comes  from  the  charter  of  Henry 
the  First  which  promises  to  reform  their  abuses.  Thus 
t|ie_Coriqueror  clearly  claimed  the  right  to  interfere  with 
^he_mamages  ot  hisTnobles,  at  any  rate  to  torbi^aTmar- 
riage  to  wjbir^  V  objp^^1  ™  ty^"nr|p  of  policy.  Un'deF 


Randolf  Flambard  this  became  a  regular  claim,  which  of 
course  was  made  a  means  of  extorting  money.  Under 
Henry  the  claim  is  regulated  and  modified,  but  by  being 
regulated  and  modified,  it  is  legally  established. 

The  ordinary  administration  of  the  kingdom  went  on 
under  William,  greatly  modified  by  the  circumstances  of 
his  reign,  but  hardly  at  all  changed  in  outward  form. 
Like  the  kings  that  were  before  him,  he  "wore  his 
crown"  at  the  three  great  feasts,  at  Easter  at  Win- 
chester, at  Pentecost  at  Westminster,  at  Christmas  at 
Gloucester.  Like  the  kings  that  were  before  him,  he 
gathered  together  the  great  men  of  the  realm,  and  when 
need  was,  the  small  men  also.  Nothing  seems  to  have 
been  changed  in  the  constitution  or  the  powers  of  the 
assembly  ;  but  its  spirit  must  have  been  utterly  changed. 
The  innermost  circle,  earls,  bishops,  great  officers  of 
state  and  household,  gradually  changed  from  a  body  of 
Englishmen  with  a  few  strangers  among  them  into  a 
body  of  strangers  among  whom  two  or  three  Englishmen 


134  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP. 

still  kept  their  places.  The  result  of  their  "  deep 
speech  "  with  William  was  not  likely  to  be  other  than 
an  assent  to  William's  will.  The  ordinary  freeman  did 
not  lose  his  abstract  right  to  come  and  shout  "  Yea,  yea," 
to  any  addition  that  King  William  made  to  the  law  of 
King  Edward.  But  there  would  be  nothing  to  tempt  him 
to  come,  unless  King  William  thought  fit  to  bid  him.  But 
once  at  least  William  did  gather  together,  if  not  every 
freeman,  at  least  all  freeholders  of  the  smallest  account. 
On  one  point  the  Conqueror  had  fully  made  up  his 
mind ;  on  one  point  he  was  to  be  a  benefactor  to  his 
kingdom  through  all  succeeding  ages.  The  realm  of 
England  was  to  be  one  and  indivisible.  No  ruler  or  sub- 
ject in  the  kingdom  of  England  should  again  dream  that 
that  kingdom  could  be  split  asunder.  When  he  offered 
Harold  the  underkingship  of  the  realm  or  of  some  part 
of  it,  he  did  so  doubtless  only  in  the  full  conviction  that 
the  offer  would  be  refused.  No  such  offer  should  be 
heard  of  again.  There  should  be  no  such  division  as 
had  been  between  Cnut  and  Edmund,  between  Hartha- 
cnut  and  the  first  Harold,  such  as  Edwin  and  Morkere 
had  dreamed  of  in  later  times.  Nor  should  the  kingdom 
be  split  asunder  in  that  subtler  way  which  William  of 
all  men  best  understood,  the  way  in  which  the  Frankish 
kingdoms,  East  and  West,  had  split  asunder.  He  would 
have  no  dukes  or  earls  who  might  become  kings  in  all  but 
name,  each  in  his  own  duchy  or  earldom.  No  man  in 
his  realm  should  be  to  him  as  he  was  to  his  overlord  at 
Paris.  No  rqanjn  his  realm  should  plead  duty  towards 
an  immediate  lord  as  an  excuse  fol  bleach  uf  du"ty 
towards  ""the  lord  ot  that  immediate^  lord. Hence 
William's  policy  with  rejrard^  to  earldoms.  There  was 


ix.  THE  SETTLEMENT  OF  ENGLAND.  135 

tob^jiothing  like  the  great  governments  which  had 
been  held  by  Godwine,  Lenfr^i  fl-"d  Riwq.rrl  ;  flT1_j^l  of 
the  West-Saxons  or  the  Northumbrians  was  too  like  a 
Duke  of  the  Normans  to  be  endured  by  one  who  was 
Thikf^  of  the  Normans  himself.  Tlg^eftrl,  even  of  the 
king's  appointment,  still  represented  the  separate  being 
of  the  district  over  which  he  was  set.  He  was  the 
kin£^s_rerjresentative  rather_than  merely  his  officer;  if 
he  was  a  magi  strata  and  not  a  prince,  he  often  sat  in  the 
seat  of  former  princes,  and  might  easily  grow  into  a 
prince.  And  at  last,  at  the  very  end  of  his  reign, 
as  the  finishing  of  his  Avork,  he  took  the  final  step 
that  made  England  for  ever  one.  In  1086  every  land^ 
owner  in  England  swore  to  be  faithful  to  King  William 
within  and  without  England  and  to  defend  him  against 
all  his  enemies.  The  subject's  duty  to  the  King  was  to 
override  any  duty  which  the  vassal  might  owe  to  any 
inferior  lord.  When  the  King  was  the  embodiment  of 
national  unity  and  orderly  government,  this  was  the 
greatest  of  all  steps  in  the  direction  of  both.  Never  did 
William  or  any  other  man  act  more  distinctly  as  an  Eng- 
lish statesman,  never  did  any  one  act  tell  more  directly 
towards  the  later  making  of  England,  than  this  memor- 
able act  of  the  Conqueror.  Here  indeed  is  an  addition 
which  William  made  to  the  law  of  Edward  for  the  truest 
good  of  the  English  folk.  And  yet  no  enactment  has 
ever  been  more  thoroughly  misunderstood.  Lawyer 
after  lawyer  has  set  down  in  his  book  that,  at  the  as- 
sembly of  Salisburyjn_^086,  William  introduced  "the 
feudal  system."  If  the  words  "  feudal  system  "  have  any 
meaning,  the  object  of  the  law  now  made  was  to  hinder 
any  "  feudal  system  "  from  coming  into  England.  William 


136  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP. 

would  be  king  of  a  kingdom,  head  of  a  commonwealth, 
personal  lord  of  every  man  in  his  realm,  not  merely, 
like  a  King  of  the  French,  external  lord  of  princes  whose 
subjects  owed  him  no  allegiance.  This  greatest  monu- 
,  ment  of  the  Conqueror's  statesmanship  was  carried  into 
,  .J  effect  in  a  special  assembly  of  the  English  nation  gathered 
on  the  first  day  of  August  1086  on  the  great  plain  of 
Salisbury.  Now,  perhajjs  for  the  first  timeT  we  get  a 
distinct  foreshadowing;  of  Lords  and  Commons.  The 
Witan,  the  great  men  of  the  realm,  and  "the  landsitting 
men,"  the  whole  body  of  landowners,  are  now  distin- 
guished. The  point  is  that  William  required  the  per- 
sonal presence  of  every  man  whose  personal  allegiance 
he  thought  worth  having.  Every  man  in  the  mixed 
assembly,  mixed  indeed  in  race  and  speech,  the  King's 
own  men  and  the  men  of  other  lords,  took  the  oath  and 
became  the  man  of  King  William.  On  that  day  Eng- 
land became  for  ever  a  kingdom  one  and  indivisible, 
whicir~since  that  day  no  man  has  dreamed  of  parting 
asunder. 

The  great  assembly  of  1086  will  come  again  among 
the  events~~oT  William's  later  reign ;  it  comes  here  as  the 
last  act  of  that  general  settlement  which  began  in  1070. 
That  settlement,  besides  its  secular  side,  has  also  an 
ecclesiastical  side  of  a  somewhat  different  character. 
In  both  William's  coming  brought  the  island  kingdom 
into  a  closer  connexion  with  the  continent ;  and  brought 
a  large  displacement  of  Englishmen  and  a  large  promo- 
tion of  strangers.  But  on  the  ecclesiastical  side,  though 
the  changes  Avere  less  violent,There  was  a  more  marked 
beginning  of  a  new  state  of  things.  The  religious  mis- 


ix.  THE  SETTLEMENT  OF  ENGLAND.  137 

sionary  was  more  inclined  to  innovate  than  the  military 
conqueror.  Here  William  not  only  added  but  changed  ; 
on  one  point  he  even  proclaimed  that  the  existing  law 
of  England  was  bad.  Certainly  the  religious  state~of 
England  was  likely  to 


mainland.  The  English  Church,  so  directly  the  child  of 
the  Eoman,  was,  for  that  very  reason,  less  dependent 
on  her  parent.  She,.^was_a_free  colony,  not  a  con- 
quered province.  The  English  Church  too  was  most 
distinctly  national  ;  no  land  came  so  near  to  that  ideal 
state  of  things  in  which  the  Church  is  the  nation  on 
its  religious  side.  Papal  aut^oji^ 
in  England  than^else  where,  _an  d  a  less  careful  line  was 
drawn  between  spiritual  and  temporal  things  and  juris- 
dictions. Two  friendly  powers  could  take  liberties  with 
each  other.  The  national  assemblies  dealt  with  ecclesias- 


tical as  well  as  with  temporal  matters  ;  one  indeed  among 
our  ancienTTaws  blames  any  assembly  that  did  other- 
wise. Bishop  and  earl  sat  together  in  the  local  Gemdt, 
to  deal  with  many  matters  which,  according  to  con- 
tinental ideas,  should  have  been  dealt  with  in  separate 
courts.  And,  by  what  in  continental  eyes  seemed  a 
strange  laxity  of  rJismjilirij^  jmests,  bishopsr  members 
ofcaprtuIaF  bodies,  were  often  married.  The  English 
Tfiocesan  arrangements  were  unlike  continental  models. 
In  Gaul,  by  a  tradition  of  Eoman  date,  the  bishop  was 
bishop  of  the  city.  His  diocese  was  marked  by  the 
extent  of  the  civil  jurisdiction  of  the  city.  His  home, 
his  head  church,  his  Ushopstool  in  the  head  church,  were 
all  in  the  city.  In  Teutonic  England .Jhe_bi^hojD_was 
commonly  bishop,  not  of  a  city  but  of  a  tribe  or  district ; 
"his  style  was  that  of  a  tribe ;  his  home,  his  head  church, 


138  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP. 

his  bishopstool,  might  be  anywhere  within  the  territory 
of  that  tribe.  Still,  on  the  greatest  point  of  all,  matters 
in  England  were  thoroughly  to  William's  liking;  no- 
where did  the  King  stand  forth  more  distinctly  as  the 
Supreme  Governor  of  the  Church.  In  England,  as  in 
Normandy,  the  right  of  the  sovereign  to  the  investiture 
of  ecclesiastical  benefices  was  ancient  and  undisputed. 
What  Edward  had  freely  done,  William  went  on  freely 
doing,  and  Hildebrand  himself  never  ventured  on  a  word 
of  remonstrance  against  a  power  which  he  deemed  so 
wrongful  in  the  hands  of  his  own  sovereign.  William 
had  but  to  stand  on  the  rights  of  his  predecessors.  When 
Gregory  asked  for  homage  for  the  crown  which  he  had  in 
some  sort  given,  William  answered  indeed  as  an  English 
king.  What  the  kings  before  him  had  done  for  or  paid 
to  the  Roman  see,  that  would  he  do  and  pay ;  but  this 
no  king  before  him  had  ever  done,  nor  would  he  be  the 
first  to  do  it.  But  while  William  thus  maintained  the 
rights  of  his  crown,  he  was  willing  and  eager  to  do  all 
that  seemed  needful  for  ecclesiastical  reform.  And  the 
general  result  of  his  reform  was  to  weaken  the  insular 
"trnfepelicienceoi'  England,  to  make  her  Church  more  like 
the  Bother  Churches  of  the  West,  and  to  increase  the 
power  of  the  Roman  Bishop. 

William  had  now  a  fellow-worker  in  his  task.  The 
subtle  spirit  which  had  helped  to  win  his  kingdom  was 
now  at  his  side  to  help  him  to  rule  it.  Within  a  few 
months  after  the  taking  of  Chester  Lanfranc  sat  on  the 
throne  of  Augustine.  As  soon  as  the  actual  Conquest 
was  over,  William  began  to  give  his  mind  to  ecclesi- 
astical  matters!  It  might  look  like  sacrilege  when  he 
caused  all  the"  monasteries  of  England  to  be  harried. 


ix.  THE  SETTLEMENT  OF  ENGLAND.  139 

But  no  harm  was  done  to  the  monks  or  to  their  posses- 
sions. The  holy  houses  were  searched  for  the  hoards 
which  the  rich  men  of  England,  fearing  the  new  king, 
had  laid  up  in  the  monastic  treasuries.  William  looked 
on  these  hoards  as  part  of  the  forfeited  goods  of  rebels, 
and  carried  them  off  during  the  Lent  of  1070.  This 
done,hesat  steadily;  down  to  the  refprin_o£jJie  English 


He  had  three  papal  legates  to  guide  him,  one  of 
whom,  Ermenfrid,  Bishop  of  Sitten,  had  come  in  on  a 
like  errand  in  the  time  of  Edward.  It  was  a  kind  of 
solemn  confirmation  of  the  Conquest,  when,  at  the 
assembly  held  at  Winchester  in^lOTO^ the  King's 
crown_was  placed  on  his  head  by  Ermenfiid.  The 
work  of  deposing  English  prelates  and  appointing 
foreign__successors  now  began.  The  primacy  of  York 
was  regularly  vacant  ;~Ealdred  had  died  as  the  Danes 
sailed  up  the  Humber  to  assault  or  to  deliver  his  city. 
The  primacy  of  Canterbury  was  to  be  made  vacant  by 
the  deposition  of  Stigand.  His  canonical  position  had 
always  been  doubtful ;  neither  Harold  nor  William  had 
been  crowned  by  him;  yet  William  had  treated  him 
hitherto  with  marked  courtesy,  and  he  had  consecrated 
at  least  one  Norman  bishop,  Remigius  of  Dorchester. 
He  was  now  deprived  both  of  the  archbishopric  and  of 
the  bishopric  of  Winchester  which  he  held  with  it,  and 
was  kept  under  restraint  for  the  rest  of  his  life. 
According  to  foreign  canonical  rules  the  sentence  may 
pass  as  Just;  but  it  marked  a  stagejn  the  conquest  of__ 
England_when  a.st.aut-hjearted.  English  man  was,  removed 
from  the  highest  place  in  the  English  Church  to  make 
way  for  the  innermost  counsellor  of  the  Conqueror.  In 


140  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP. 

the  Pentecostal  assembly,  held  at  Windsor,  Lanfranc 
was  appointed  archbishop  ;  his  excuses  were  overcome 
by  his  old  master  Herlwin  of  Bee ;  he  came  to  England, 
and  on  August  15,  1070  he  was  consecrated  to  the 
primacy. 

Other  deprivations  and  appointments  took  place  in 
these  assemblies.  The  see  of  York  was  given  to  Thomas, 
a  canon  of  Bayeux,  a  man  of  high  character  and 
memorable  in  the  local  history  of  his  see.  The  abbey 
of  Peterborough  was  vacant  by  the  death  of  Brand,  who 
had  received  the  staff  from  the  uncrowned  Eadgar.  It 
was  only  by  rich  gifts  that  he  had  turned  away  the 
wrath  of  William  from  his  house.  The  Fenland  was 
perhaps  already  stirring,  and  the  Abbot  of  Peterborough 
might  have  to  act  as  a  military  commander.  In  this 
case  the  prelate  appointed,  a  Norman  named  Turold, 
was  accordingly  more  of  a  soldier  than  of  a  monk. 
From  fjiAJ^gjgfipmhliftfl  n^  1070  the  series  of  William's, 
ecclesiastical  changes  goes  on.  As  the  English  bishops 
die  or  are  deprived,  strangers  take  their  place.  They 
are  commonly  Normans,  but  Walcher,  who  became 
Bishop  of  Durham  in  1071,  was  one  of  those  natives 
of  Lorraine  who  had  been  largely  favoured  in  Edward's 
day.  At  the  time  of  William's  death  Wulfstan  was  the 
only  Englishman  who  ke.pt  a  bishopric.  Even  his  de- 
privation had  once  been  thought  of.  The  story  takes 
a  legendary  shape,  but  it  throws  an  important  light  on 
the  relations  of  Church  and  State  in  England.  In  an 
assembly  held  in  the  West  Minster  Wulfstan  is  called  on 
by  William  and  Lanfranc  to  give  up  his  staff.  He  re- 
fuses; he  will  give  it  back  to  him  who  gave  it,  and 
places  it  on  the  tomb  of  his  dead  master  Edward.  No 


ix.  THE  SETTLEMENT  OF  ENGLAND.  HI 

efforts  of  his  enemies  can  move  it.  The  sentence  is 
recalled,  and  the  staff  yields  to  his  touch.  Edward  was 
not  yet  a  canonized  saint ;  the  appeal  is  simply  from  the 
living  and  foreign  king  to  the  dead  and  native  king. 
This  legend,  growing  up  when  Western  Europe  was 
torn  in  pieces  by  the  struggle  about  investitures,  proves 
better  than  the  most  authentic  documents  how  the  risht 

C3 

which  Popes  denied  to  Emperors  was  taken  for  granted 
in  the  case  of  an  English  king.  But,  while  the  spoils  of 
England,  temporal  and  spiritual,  were  thus  scattered 
abroad  among  men  of  the  conquering  race,  two  men  at 
least  among  them  refused  all  share  in  plunder  which 
they  deemed  unrighteous.  One  gallant  Norman  knight, 
Gulbert  of  Hugleville,  followed  William  through  all  his 
campaigns,  but  when  English  estates  were  offered  as  his 
reward,  he  refused  to  share  in  unrighteous  gains,  and 
went  back  to  the  lands  of  his  fathers  which  he  could 
hold  with  a  good  conscience.  And  one  monk,  Wimund 
of  Saint -Leutfried,  not  only  refused  bishoprics  and 
abbeys,  but  rebuked  the  Conqueror  for  wrong  and 
robbery.  And  William  bore  no  grudge  against  his 
censor,  but,  when  the  archbishopric  of  Eouen  became 
vacant,  he  offered  it  to  the  man  who  had  rebuked  him. 
Among  the  worthies  of  England  Gulbert  and  Wimund 
can  hardly  claim  a  place,  but  a  place  should  surely  be 
theirs  among  the  men  whom  England  honours. 

The  primacy  of  Lanfranc  is  one  of  the  most  memor- 
able in  our  history.  In  the  words  of  the  parable  put  forth 
by  Anselm  in  the  next  reign,  the  plough  of  the  English 
Church  was  for  seventeen  years  drawn  by  two  oxen  of 
equal  strength.  By  ancient  English  custom  the  Arch- 


142  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP. 

bishop  of  Canterbury  was  the  King's  special  counsellor, 
the  special  representative  of  his  Church  and  people. 
Lanfranc  cannot  be  charged  with  any  direct  oppression ; 
yet  in  the  hands  of  a  stranger  who  had  his  spiritual  con- 
quest to  make,  the  tribunitian  office  of  former  arch- 
bishops was  lost  in  that  of  chief  minister  of  the  sovereign. 
In  the  first  action  of  their  joint  rule,  the  interest  of 
king  and  primate  was  the  same.  Lanfranc  sought  for 
a  more  distinct  acknowledgement  of  the  superiority  of 
Canterbury  over  the  rival  metropolis  of  York.  And  this 
fell  in  with  William's  schemes  for  the  consolidation  of 
the  kingdom.  The  political  motive  is  avowed.  Nort- 
humberland, which  had  been  so  hard  to  subdue  and 
which  still  lay  open  to  Danish  invaders  or  deliverers, 
was  still  dangerous.  An  independent  Archbishop  of 
York  might  consecrate  a  King  of  the  Northumbrians, 
native  or  Danish,  who  might  grow  into  a  King  of  the 
English.  The  Northern  metropolitan  had  unwillingly 
to  admit  the  superiority,  and  something  more,  of  the 
Southern.  The  caution  of  William  and  his  ecclesiastical 
adviser  reckoned  it  among  possible  chances  that  even 
Thomas  of  Bayeux  might  crown  an  invading  Cnut  or 
Harold  in  opposition  to  his  native  sovereign  and  bene- 
factor. 

For  some  of  his  own  purposes,  William  had  per- 
haps chosen  his  minister  too  wisely.  The  objects  of 
the  two  colleagues  were  not  always  the  same.  Lanfranc, 
sprung  from  Imperialist  Pavia,  was  no  zealot  for  extra- 
vagant papal  claims.  The  caution  with  which  he  bore 
himself  during  the  schism  which  followed  the  strife 
between  Gregory  and  Henry  brought  on  him  more  than 
omTpapal  censure.  Set  the  general  tendency  of  his  ad- 


ix.  THE  SETTLEMENT  OF  ENGLAND. 

ministration  was  towards  the  growth  of  ecclesiastical,  i 
even  of  papal,  claims.  William  never  dreamed  of  giving 
up  his  ecclesiastical  supremacy  or  of  exempting  church- 
men from  the  ordinary  power  of  the  law.  But  the  division 
ofthe^civtl  and~ecclesiastical  jurisdiction,  the  increased 
frequency  of  synods  distinct  from  the  general  assemblies 
of  the  realm—even  though  the  acts  of  those  synods 
needed  the  royal  assent — we.re_. 5±eps__towards  that  ex- 
emption of  churchmen  from  the  civil  power  which  mis 
asserted  in  one  memorable  saying  towards  the  end  of 
WHIi^Sl^m^BiguJ~~1^1iniam  could  lioTd""His~own 
against  Hildebrand  himself;  yet  the  increased  intercourse 
with  Rome,  the_jnore  frequent  presence  of  Roman 
Legates,  all  tended  to  increase  tliejQaj)al_  claims  and 
the  deference  yielded  to  them.  William j-efused  homage 
tojjregory  ;  but  it  is  significant  that  Gregory  asked  for 
it.  It  was  a  step  towards  the  day  when  a  King  of  Eng- 
land was  glad  to  offer  it.  The  increased  strictness  as  to 
the  marriage  of  the  clergy  tended  the  same  way.  Lan- 
franc  did  not  at  once  enforce  the  full  rigour  of  Hilde- 
brand's  decrees.  Marriage  was  forbidden  for  the  future ; 
the  capitular  clergy  had  to  part  from  their  wives ;  but 
the  vested  interest  of  the  parish  priest  was  respected. 
In  another  point  Williajn  directly  helped  to  undermine 
his. jQwii  authority  and  the  independence  of  his  kingdom. 
Hejjxempted  his  abbey jof_the_ Battle  from  the  authority 
ofjbhe  diocesan  bishop.  With  this  began  a  crowd  of 
such  exemptions,  which,  by  weakening  local  authority, 
strengthened  the  power  of  the  Roman  see.  All  these 
things  helped  on  Hildebjan'd?s"^e'aTJcpfifnfl  ""Jn'^h  made 
the  clergy  everywhere  members  of  one  distinct  and  ex- 
clusive body,  with  the  Roman  Bishop  at  their  head. 


144  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP. 

Whatever  tended  to  part  the  clergy  from  other  men 
tended  to  weaken  the  throne  of  every  king.  While 
William  reigned  with  Lanfranc  at  his  side,  these  things 
were  not  felt ;  but  the  ^seed  was  sown  for  the  contro- 
versy between  Henry  and  Thomas  and  for  the  humilia- 
tion ofjJohn. 

Even  those  changes  of  Lanfranc's  primacy  which 
seem  of  purely  ecclesiastical  concern  all  helped,  in  some 
way  to  increase  the  intercourse  between  England  and 
the  continent  or  to  break  down  some  insular  peculiarity. 
And  whatever  did  this  increased  the  power  of  Rome. 
Even  the  decree  of  1075  that  bishoprics  should  be 
removed  to  the  chief  cities  of  their  dioceses  helped  to 
make  England  more  like  Gaul  or  Italy.  So  did  the 
fancy  of  William's  bishops  and  abbots  for  rebuilding 
their  churches  on  a  greater  scale  and  in  the  last  devised 
continental  style.  All  tended  to  make  England  less  of 
another  world.  On  the  other  hand,  one  insular  peculi- 
arity well  served  the  purposes  of  the  new  primate. 
Monastic  chapters  in  episcopal  churches  were  almost 
unknown  out  of  England.  Lanfranc,  himself  a  monk, 
favoured  monks  in  this  matter  also.  In  several  churches 
the  secular  canons  were  displaced  by  monks.  The 
corporate  spirit  of  the  regulars,  and  their  dependence 
on  Rome,  was  far  stronger  than  that  of  the  secular 
clergy.  The  secular  chapters  could  be  refractory,  but 
the  disputes  between  them  and  their  bishops  were 
mainly  of  local  importance  ;  they  form  no  such  part  of 
the  general  story  of  ecclesiastical  and  papal  advance  as 
the  long  tale  of  the  quarrel  between  the  archbishops 
and  the  monks  of  Christ  Church. 

Lanfranc  survived  William,  and   placed   the  crown 


ix.  THE  SETTLEMENT  OF  ENGLAND.  145 

on  the  head  of  his  successor.  The  friendship  between 
king  and  archbishop  remained  unbroken  through  their 
joint  lives.  Lanfranc's  acts  were  William's  acts ;  what 
the  Primate  did  must  have  been  approved  by  the  Kino-. 
How  far  William's  acts  were  Lanfranc's  acts  it  is  less 
easy  to  say.  ,.But  the  Archbishop  was  ever  a  trusted 
minister,  and  a  trusted  counsellor,  anil  in  the  King?s -fre- 
quent  absences  from  England,  he  often  acted  as  his 
lieutenant.  We  do  not  find  him  actually  taking  a 
part  in  warfare,  but  he  duly  reports  military  successes 
to  his  sovereign.  It  was  William's  combined  wisdom 
and  good  luck  to  provide  himself  with  a  counsellor  than 
whom  for  his  immediate  purposes  none  could  be  better. 
A  man  either  of  a  higher  or  a  lower  moral  level  than 
Lanfranc,  a  saint  like  Anselm  or  one  of  the  mere  worldly 
bishops  of  the  time,  would  not  have  done  his  work  so 
well.  William  needed  an  ecclesiastical  statesman,  neither 
unscrupulous  nor  over-scrupulous,  and  he  found  him  in 
the  lawyer  of  Pavia,  the  doctor  of  Avranches,  the  monk 
of  Bee,  the  abbot  of  Saint  Stephen's.  If  Lanfranc  some- 
times unwittingly  outwitted  both  his  master  and  himself, 
if  his  policy  served  the  purposes  of  Rome  more  than 
suited  the  purposes  of  either,  that  is  the  common  course 
of  human  affairs.  Great  men  are  apt  to  forget  that 
systems  which  they  can  work  themselves  cannot  be 
worked  by  smaller  men.  From  this  error  neither 
William  nor  Lanfranc  was  free.  But,  from  their  own 
point  of  view,  it  was  their  only  error.  Their  work  was 
to  subdue  England,  soul  and  body ;  and  they  subdued  it. 
That  work  could  not  be  done  without  great  wrong :  but 
no  other  two  men  of  that  day  could  have  done  it  with 
so  little  wrong.  The  shrinking  from  needless  and 

L 


146  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP.  ix. 

violent  change  which  is  so  strongly  characteristic  of 
William,  and  less  strongly  of  Lanfranc  also,  made  their 
work  at  the  time  easier  to  be  done  ;  in  the  course  of 
ages  it  made  it  easier  to  be  undone. 


CHAPTEE  X. 

THE  REVOLTS  AGAINST   WILLIAM. 

1070-1086. 

THE  years  which  saw  the  settlement  of  England,  though 
s~\  not  years  of  constant  fighting  like  the  two  years  between 
the  march  to  Exeter  and  the  fall  of  Chester,  were  not 
years  of  perfect  peace.  William  had  to  withstand  foes 
on  both  sides  of  the  sea,  to  withstand  foes  in  his  own 
household,  to  undergo  his  first  defeat,  to  receive  his 
first  wound  in  personal  conflict.  Nothing  shook  his 
firm  hold  either  on  duchy  or  kingdom  ;  but  in  his  later 
years  his  good  luck  forsook  him.  And  men  did  not  fail 
to  connect  this  change  in  his  future  with  a  change  in 
himself,  above  all  with  one  deed  of  blood  which  stands 
out  as  utterly  unlike  all  his  other  recorded  acts. 

But  the  amount  of  warfare  which  William  had  to  go 
through  in  these  later  years  was  small  compared  with 
the  great  struggles  of  his  earlier  days.  There  is  no  tale 
to  tell  like  the  war  of  Val-es-dunes,  like  the  French  in- 
vasions of  Normandy,  like  the  campaigns  that  won  Eng- 
land. One  event  only  of  the  earlier  time  is  repeated 
almost  as  exactly  as  an  event  can  be  repeated.  William 
had  won  Maine  once  ;  he  had  now  to  win  it  again,  and 
less  thoroughly.  As  Conqueror  his  work  is  done  ;  a 


148  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP. 

single  expedition  into  Wales  is  the  only  campaign  of 
this  part  of  his  life  that  led  to  any  increase  of  territory. 
When  William  sat  down  to  the  settlement  of  his 
kingdom  af  te*-fehe  f  alHrf-Gtesterrlre  was  in  tfre~TtTXcrest 

For  "  the  moment  the 


whole  land  obeyed  him;  at  no  later  moment  did  any 
ge  part  of  the  land  fail  to  obey  him.  All  opposition 
wasnowrevolt.  Men  were  no  longer  keeping  out  an 
invader  ;  when  they  rose,  they  rose  against  a  power 
which,  however  wrongfully,  was  the  established  govern- 
ment of  the  land.  Two  such  movements  took  place. 
One  was  a  real  revolt  of  Englishmen  against  foreign  rule. 
The  other  was  a  rebellion  of  William's  own  earls  in  their 
own  interests,  in  which  English  feeling  went  with  the 
King.  Both  were  short  sharp  struggles  which  stand 
out  boldly  in  the  tale.  More  important  in  the  general 
story,  though  less  striking  in  detail,  are  the  relations  of 
William  to  the  other  powers  in  and  near  the  isle  of 
Britain.  With  the  crown  of  the  West-Saxon  kings,  he 
had  taken  up  their  claims  to  supremacy  over  tHe  whole 
island,  and  probably  beyond  it.  And  even  without  such 
claims,  border  warfare  with  his  Welsh  and  Scottish 
neighbours  could  not  be  avoided.  Counting  from  the 
completion  of  the  real  conquest  of  England  in  1070, 
there  were  in  William's  reign  three  distinct  sources  of 
disturbance.  There  were  revolts  within  the  kingdom  of 
England.  There  was  border  warfare  in  Britain.  TEere 
were  revolts  in  William's  continental  dominions.  And 
we  may  add  actual  foreign  warfare  or  threats  of  foreign 
warfare,,  affecting  William,  ^sometimes  in  Bis  Gorman, 
sometimes  in  his  English  character. 

With  the  affairs  of  Wales  William  had  little  personally 


\  : 


x.  THE  REVOLTS  AGAINST  WILLIAM.  149 

to  do.  In  this  he  is  unlike  those  who  came  immediately 
before  and  after  him.  In  the  lives  of  Harold  and  of 
William  Rufus  personal  warfare  against  the  Welsh  forms 
an  important  part.  William  the  Great  commonly  left  this 
kind  of  work  to  the  earls  of  the  frontier,  to  Hugh  of 
Chester,  Roger  of  Shrewsbury,  and  to  his  early  friend 
William  of  Hereford,  so  long  as  that  fierce  warrior's  life 
lasted.  These  earls  were  ever  at  war  with  the  Welsh 
princes,  and  they  extended  the  English  kingdom  at  their 
cost.  Once  only  did  the  King  take  a  personal  share  in 
the  work,  when  he  entered  South  Wales,  in  1081.  We 
hear  vaguely  of  his  subduing  the  land  and  founding 
castles ;  we  see  more  distinctly  that  he  released  many 
English  subjects  who  were  In  British  bondage,  arid  that  ~ 
he~weht  on  a  religious  pilgrimage  to  BamFTCvicPs.  This 
last  journey  is  in  some  accounts  connected  with  schemes 
for  the  conquest  of  Ireland.  And  in  one  most  remark- 
able passage  of  the  English  Chronicle,  the  writer  for 
once  speculates  as  to  what  might  have  happened  but  did 
not.  Had  William  lived  two  years  longer,  he  would 
have  won  Ireland  by  his  wisdom  without  weapons.  And 
if  William  had  won  Ireland  either  by  wisdom  or  by 
weapons,  he  would  assuredly  have  known  better  how  to 
deal  with  it  than  most  of  those  who  have  come  after  him. 
If  any  man  could  have  joined  together  the  lands  which 
God  has  put  asunder,  surely  it  was  he.  This  mysterious 
saying  must  have  a  reference  to  some  definite  act  or  plan 
of  which  we  have  no  other  record.  And  some  slight  ap- 
proach to  the  process  of  winning  Ireland  without  weapons 
does  appear  in  the  ecclesiastical  intercourse  between 
England  and  Ireland  which  now  begins.  Both  the  native 
Irish  princes  and  the  Danes  of  the  east  coast  begin  to 


150  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR,  CHAP. 

treat  Lanfranc  as  their  metropolitan,  and  to  send  bishops 
to  him  for  consecration.  The  name  of  the  King  of  the 
English  is  never  mentioned  in  the  letters  which  passed 
between  the  English  primate  and  the  kings  and  bishops 
of  Ireland.  It  may  be  that  William  was  biding  his  time 
for  some  act  of  special  wisdom;  but  our  speculations 
cannot  go  any  further  than  those  of  the  Peterborough 
Chronicler. 

Revolt  within  the  kingdom  and  invasion  from  without 
both  began  in  the  year  in  which  the  Conquest  was  brought 
to  an  end.  William's  ecclesiastical  reforms  were  inter- 
rupted by  the  revolt  of  the  Fenland.  William's  authority 
had  never  been  fully  acknowledged  in  that  corner  of 
England,  while  he  wore  his  crown  and  held  his  councils 
elsewhere.  But  the  place  where  disturbances  began, 
the  abbey  of  Peterborough,  was  certainly  in  William's 
obedience.  The  warfare  made  memorable  by  the  name 
of  Here  ward  began  in  June  1070,  and  a  Scottish  harrying 
of  Northern  England,  the  second  of  five  which  are  laid  to 
the  charge  of  Malcolm,  took  place  in  the  same  year,  and 
most  likely  about  the  same  time.  The  English  move- 
ment is  connected  alike  with  the  course  of  the  Danish 
fleet  and  with  the  appointment  of  Turold  to  the  abbey 
of  Peterborough.  William  had  bribed  the  Danish  com- 
manders to  forsake  their  English  allies,  and  he  allowed 
them  to  ravage  the  coast.  A  later  bribe  took  them  back 
to  Denmark;  but  not  till  they  had  shown  themselves 
in  the  waters  of  Ely.  The  people,  largely  of  Danish 
descent,  flocked  to  them,  thinking,  as  the  Chronicler 
says,  that  they  would  win  the  whole  land.  The  move- 
ment was  doubtless  in  favour  of  the  kingship  of  Swegen. 
But  nothing  was  done  by  Danes  and  English  together 


x.  THE  REVOLTS  AGAINST  WILLIAM.  151 

save  to  plunder  Peterborough  abbey.  Hereward,  said 
to  have  been  the  nephew  of  Turold's  English  predecessor, 
doubtless  looked  on  the  holy  place,  under  a  Norman 
abbot,  as  part  of  the  enemy's  country. 

The  name  of  Hereward  has  gathered  round  it  such  a 
mass  of  fiction,  old  and  new,  that  it  is  hard  to  disentangle 
the  few  details  of  his  real  history.  His  descent  and 
birth-place  are  uncertain ;  but  he  was  assuredly  a  man 
of  Lincolnshire,  and  assuredly  not  the  son  of  Earl  Leofric. 
For  some  unknown  cause,  he  had  been  banished  in  the 
days  of  Edward  or  of  Harold.  He  now  came  back  to  lead 
his  countrymen  against  William.  He  was  the  soul  of  the 
movement  of  which  the  abbey  of  Ely  became  the  centre. 
The  isle,  then  easily  defensible,  was  the  last  English 
ground  on  which  the  Conqueror  was  defied  by  English- 
men fighting  for  England.  The  men  of  the  Fenland 
were  zealous ;  the  monks  of  Ely  were  zealous ;  helpers 
came  in  from  other  parts  of  England.  English  leaders 
left  their  shelter  in  Scotland  to  share  the  dangers  of 
their  countrymen;  even  Edwin  and  Morkere  at  last 
plucked  up  heart  to  leave  William's  court  and  join  the 
patriotic  movement.  Edwin  was  pursued;  he  was 
betrayed  by  traitors ;  he  was  overtaken  and  slain,  to 
William's  deep  grief,  we  are  told.  His  brother  reached 
the  isle,  and  helped  in  its  defence.  William  now  felt 
that  the  revolt  called  for  his  own  presence  and  his  full 
energies.  The  isle  was  stoutly  attacked  and  stoutly  de- 
fended, till,  according  to  one  version,  the  monks  betrayed 
the  stronghold  to  the  King.  According  to  another, 
Morkere  was  induced  to  surrender  by  promises  of  mercy 
which  William  failed  to  fulfil.  In  any  case,  before  the 
year  1071  was  ended,  the  isle  of  Ely  was  in  William's 


152  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP. 

hands.  Hereward  alone  with  a  few  companions  made 
their  way  out  by  sea.  William  was  less  merciful  than 
usual ;  still  no  man  was  put  to  death.  Some  were 
mutilated,  some  imprisoned ;  Morkere  and  other  chief 
men  spent  the  rest  of  their  days  in  bonds.  The  temper 
of  the  Conqueror  had  now  fearfully  hardened.  Still  he 
could  honour  a  valiant  enemy;  those  who  resisted  to 
the  last  fared  best.  All  the  legends  of  Hereward's  later 
days  speak  of  him  as  admitted  to  William's  peace  and 
favour.  One  makes  him  die  quietly,  another  kills  him 
at  the  hands  of  Norman  enemies,  but  not  at  William's 
bidding  or  with  AVilliam's  knowledge.  Evidence  a  little 
better  suggests  that  he  bore  arms  for  his  new  sovereign 
beyond  the  sea ;  and  an  entry  in  Domesday  also  suggests 
that  he  held  lands  under  Count  Eobert  of  Mortain  in 
Warwickshire.  It  would  suit  William's  policy,  when  he 
received  Hereward  to  his  favour,  to  make  him  exchange 
lands  near  to  the  scene  of  his  exploits  for  lands  in  a 
distant  shire  held  under  the  lordship  of  the  King's 
brother. 

Meanwhile,  most  likely  in  the  summer  months  of 
1070,  Malcolm  ravaged  Cleveland,  Durham,  and  other 
districts  where  there  must  have  been  little  left  to  ravage. 
Meanwhile  the  .^Etheling  Edgar  and  his  sisters,  with 
other  English  exiles,  sought  shelter  in  Scotland,  and 
were  hospitably  received.  At  the  same  time  Gospatric, 
now  William's  earl  in  Northumberland,  retaliated  by 
a  harrying  of  Scottish  Cumberland,  which  provoked 
Malcolm  to  greater  cruelties.  It  was  said  that  there 
was  no  house  in  Scotland  so  poor  that  it  had  not 
an  English  bondman.  Presently  some  of  Malcolm's 
English  guests  joined  the  defenders  of  Ely;  those  of 


x.  THE  REVOLTS  AGAINST  WILLIAM.  153 

highest  birth  stayed  in  Scotland,  and  Malcolm,  after 
much  striving,  persuaded  Margaret  the  sister  of  Edgar 
to  become  his  wife.  Her  praises  are  written  in  Scottish 
history,  and  the  marriage  had  no  small  share  in  the  pro- 
cess which  made  the  Scottish  kings  and  the  lands  which 
formed  their  real  kingdom  practically  English.  The 
sons  and  grandsons  of  Margaret,  sprung  of  the  Old- 
English  kingly  house,  were  far  more  English  within  their 
own  realm  than  the  Norman  and  Angevin  kings  of 
Southern  England.  But  within  the  English  border  men 
looked  at  things  with  other  eyes.  Thrice  again  did 
Malcolm  ravage  England ;  two  and  twenty  years  later 
he  was  slain  in  his  last  visit  of  havoc.  William  mean- 
while and  his  earls  at  least  drew  to  themselves  some 
measure  of  loyalty  from  the  men  of  Northern  England 
as  the  guardians  of  the  land  against  the  Scot. 

For  the  present  however  Malcolm's  invasion  was 
only  avenged  by  Gospatric's  harrying  in  Cumberland, 
The  year  1071  called  William  to  Ely  ;  in  the  early 
part  of  1072  his  presence  was  still  needed  on  the  main- 
land ;  in  August  he  found  leisure  for  a  march  against 
Scotland.  He  went  as  an  English  king,  to  assert  the 
rights  of  the  English  crown,  to  avenge  wrongs  done  to 
the  English  land ;  and  on  such  an  errand  Englishmen 
followed  him  gladly.  Eadric,  the  defender  of  Here- 
fordshire, had  made  his  peace  with  the  King,  and  he 
now  held  a  place  of  high  honour  in  his  army.  But  if 
William  met  with  any  armed  resistance  on  his  Scottish 
expedition,  it  did  not  amount  to  a  pitched  battle.  He 
passed  through  Lothian  into  Scotland ;  he  crossed 
Forth  and  drew  near  to  Tay,  and  there,  by  the  round 
tower  of  Abernethy,  the  King  of  Scots  swore  oaths 


154  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP. 

and  gave  hostages  and  became  the  man  of  the  King  of 
the  English.  William  might  now  call  himself,  like 
his  West- Saxon  ' predecessor^_frefaKffifo_  and  Basikus' 
of  the  isle  of  Britain.  This  was  the  highest  point  of 
his  fortune.  Duke  of  the  Normans,  King  of  the  Eng- 
lish, he  was  undisputed  lord  from  the  march  of  Anjou 
to  the  narrow  sea  between  Caithness  and  Orkney. 

The  exact  terms  of  the  treaty  between  William's 
royal  vassal  and  his  overlord  are  unknown.  But  one  of 
them  was  clearly  the  removal  of  Edgar  from  Scot- 
land. Before  long  he  was  on  the  continent.  William 
had  not  yet  learned  that  Edgar  was  less  dangerous  in 
Britain  than  in  any  other  part  of  the  world,  and  that 
he  was  safest  of  all  in  William's  own  court.  Homage 
done  and  hostages  received,  the  Lord  of  all  Britain 
returned  to  his  immediate  kingdom.  His  march  is 
connected  with  many  legendary  stories.  In  real  history 
it  is  marked  by  the  foundation  of  the  castle  of  Durham, 
and  by  the  Conqueror's  confirmation  of  the  privileges 
of  the  palatine  bishops.  If  all  the  earls  of  England 
had  been  like  the  earls  of  Chester,  and  all  the  bishops 
like  the  bishops  of  Durham,  England  would  assuredly 
have  split  up,  like  Germany,  into  a  loose  federation  of 
temporal  and  spiritual  princes.  This  it  was  William's 
special__work_ tp__hin.dex-;  but  he  doubtless  saw  that  the 

exceptional...privileges   of  „.  one or.  .two.  favoured lord= 

.^ipsj^ta1^ 

not  really  interfere  with  his  great  plan  of  rnriorL_  And 
William  would  hardly  have  confirmed  the  sees  of  Lon- 
don or  Winchester  in  the  privileges  which  he  allowed 
to  the  distant  see  of  Durham.  He  now  also  made 
a  grant  of  earldoms,  the  object  of  which  is  less  clear 


x.  THE  REVOLTS  AGAINST  WILLIAM.  155 

than  that  of  most  of  his  actions.  It  is  not  easy  to  say 
why  Gospatric  was  deprived  of  his  earldom.  His 
former  acts  of  hostility  to  William  had  been  covered  by 
his  pardon  and  reappointment  in  1069  ;  and  since  then 
he  had  acted  as  a  loyal,,  if  perhaps  an  indiscreet, 
guardian  of  the  land.  Two  greater  earldoms  than  his 
had  become  vacant  by  the  revolt,  the  death,  the  im- 
prisonment, of  Edwin  and  Morkere.  But  these 
William  had  no  intention  of  filling.  He  would  not 
have  in  his  realm  anything  so  dangerous  as  an  earl  of 
the  Mercians  or  the  Northumbrians  in  the  old  sense, 
whether  English  or  Norman.  But  the  defence  of  the 
northern  frontier  needed  an  earl  to  rule  Northumber- 
land in  the  later  sense,  the  land  north  of  the  Tyne. 
And  after  the  fate  of  Bobert  of  Comines,  William 
could  not  as  yet  put  a  Norman  earl  in  so  perilous  a 
post.  But  the  Englishman  whom  he  chose  was  open 
to  the  same  charges  as  the  deposed  Gospatric.  For  he 
was  Waltheof  the  son  of  Siward,  the  hero  of  the  storm 
of  York  in  1069.  Already  Earl  of  Northampton  and 
Huntingdon,  he  was  at  this  time  high  in  the  King's 
personal  favour,  perhaps  already  the  husband  of  the 
King's  niece.  One  side  of  William's  policy  comes  out 
here.  Union  was  sometimes  helped  by  division.  There 
were  men  whom  William  loved  to  make  great,  but  whom 
he  had  no  mind  to  make  dangerous.  He  gave  them 
vast  estates,  but  estates  for  the  most  part  scattered  over 
different  parts  of  the  kingdom.  It  was  only  in  the 
border  earldoms  and  in  Cornwall  that  he  allowed  any- 
thing at  all  near  to  the  lordship  of  a  whole  shire  to  be 
put  in  the  hands  of  a  single  man.  One  Norman  and  one 
Englishman  held  two  earldoms  together  ;  but  they  were 


156  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP. 

earldoms  far  apart.  Roger  of  Montgomery  held  the 
earldoms  of  Shrewsbury  and  Sussex,  and  Waltheof  to 
his  midland  earldom  of  Northampton  and  Huntingdon 
now  added  the  rule  of  distant  Northumberland.  The  men 
who  had  fought  most  stoutly  against  William  were  the 
men  whom  he  most  willingly  received  to  favour.  Eadric 
and  Hereward  were  honoured  ;  Waltheof  was  honoured 
more  highly.  He  ranked  along  with  the  greatest  Nor- 
mans ;  his  position  was  perhaps  higher  than  any  but 
the  King's  born  kinsmen.  But  the  whole  tale  of  Wal- 
theof is  a  problem  that  touches  the  character  of  the  king 
under  Avhom  he  rose  and  fell.  Lifted  up  higher  than 
any  other  man  among  the  conquered,  he  was  the  one  man 
whom  William  put  to  death  on  a  political  charge.  It  is 
hard  to  see  the  reasons  for  either  his  rise  or  his  fall. 
It  was  doubtless  mainly  his  end  which  won  him  the 
abiding  reverence  of  his  countrymen.  His  valour  and 
his  piety  are  loudly  praised.  But  his  valour  we  know 
only  from  his  one  personal  exploit  at  York ;  his  piety 
was  consistent  with  a  base  murder.  In  other  matters, 
he  seems  amiable,  irresolute,  and  of  a  scrupulous  con- 
science, and  Northumbrian  morality  perhaps  saw  no 
great  crime  in  a  murder  committed  under  the  traditions 
of  a  Northumbrian  deadly  feud.  Long  before  Waltheof 
was  born,  his  grandfather  Earl  Ealdred  had  been  killed 
by  a  certain  Carl.  The  sons  of  Carl  had  fought  by  his 
side  at  York ;  but,  notwithstanding  this  comradeship, 
the  first  act  of  Waltheof 's  rule  in  Northumberland  was  to 
send  men  to  slay  them  beyond  the  bounds  of  his  earldom. 
A  crime  that  was  perhaps  admired  in  Northumberland 
and  unheard  of  elsewhere  did  not  lose  him  either  the 
favour  of  the  King  or  the  friendship  of  his  neighbour 


x.  THE  REVOLTS  AGAINST  WILLIAM.  157 

Bishop  Walcher,  a  reforming  prelate  with  whom  Wal- 
theof  acted  in  concert.  And  when  he  was  chosen  as  the 
single  exception  to  William's  merciful  rule,  it  was  not 
for  this  undoubted  crime,  but  on  charges  of  which,  even 
if  guilty,  he  might  well  have  been  forgiven. 

The  sojourn  of  William  on  the  continent  in  1072 
carries  _us  jout_of  England  .....  an_d_J^onnj^dj_into_  the 
general  affairs  ofEurope.  Signs  may  have  already 
showed  themselves~oT  what  was  coming  to  the  south  of 
Normandy.  ;  but  the  interest  of  the  mome"nt"Iay  in  the 
country  of  Matilda.  Flanders,  long  the  firm  ally  of  Nor- 
mandy, was  now  to  change  into  a  bitter  enemy.  Count 
in  1067  his  successor  of  Ther¥ame  name 


died  three  years  later,  and  a  war  followed  between  his 
widow  Richildis,  the  guardian  of  his  young  son.  Arnulf,* 
and  his  brother  Robert  the  Frisiaii.  Robert  had  won 
fame  in  the  East  ;  he  had  received  the  sovereignty  of 
Friesland  —  a  name  which  takes  in  Holland  and  Zealand 
—  and  he  was  now  invited  Jx)  deliver  Flanders  from  the 
qp£ressJMis_pj_Eicjiildis._  Meanwhile,  Matilda  was  acting 
as  regent  of  Normandy,  with  Earl  William  of  Here- 
ford as  her  counsellor.  Richildis  sought  help  of  her  son's  «/* 

two  overlords,  King__Henry  of  Germany  and  Ejng  (\</^ 
Philip  of  France.  Philip  came  in  person  ;  the  Ger- 
^mm~su"ccours  were  too  late.  From  Normandy  came 
Earl  William  with  a  small  party  of  knights.  The  kings 
had  been  asked  for  armies;  to  the  Earl  she  offered 
herself,  and  he  came  to  fight  for  his  bride.  But  early 
in  1071  Philip,  Arnulf,  and  William,  were  all  over- 
"h 


Arnulf   and  Earl   William    were   killed  ;    Philip  made 


158  VWILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP. 

peace    with    Robert,    henceforth    undisputed    Count   of 
Flanders. 

^All  this  brought  King    William  to    the  continent, 

was   stjll   unavened. 


No  open  war  followed  between  Normandy  and  Flanders; 
but  for  the  rest  of  their  lives  Robert  and  William  were 
enemies,  and  each  helped  the  enemies  of  the  other. 
William  gave  his  support  to  Baldwin  brother  of  the 
slain  Arnulf,  who  strove  to  win  Flanders  from  Robert. 
But  the  real  interest  of  this  episode  lies  in  the  impres- 
sion which  was  made  in  the  lands  east  of  Flanders.  In 
the  troubled  state  of  Germany,  when  Henry  the  Fourth 
was  striving  with  tlie  Saxons~~both  sides~~seem"^o'Trave 
looked  to  the  Conqueror  of  England  with  hope^and 
On  this  matter  our  Enlish  and  Norman 


authorities  are  silent,  and  the  notices  in  the  contem- 
porary German  writers  are  strangely  unlike  one  an- 
other. But  they  show  at  least  that  the  prince  who 
ruled  on  both  sides  of  the  sea  was  largely  in  men's 
thoughts.  The  Saxon  enemy  of  Henry  describes  him 
in  his  despair  as  seeking  help  in  Denmark,  France, 
Aquitaine,  and  also  of  the  King  of  the  English,  pro- 
mising him  the  like  help,  if  he  should  ever  need  it. 
William  and  Henry  had  both  to  guard  against  Saxon 
enmity,  "but  the  throne  at  Winchester  'stood  "firmer 
than  the  throne  at  Goslar.  But  the  historian  of  the 
continental  Saxons  puts  into  William's  mouth  an  answer, 
utterly  unsuited  to  his  position.  He  is  made,  when  in 
Normandy,  to  answer  that,  having  won  his  kingdom  by 
force,  he  fears  to  leave  it,  lest  he  might  not  find  his  way 
kack_again.  Par  more  striking  is  the  story  told  three 
years  later  by  Lambert  of  Herzfeld.  Henry,  when  en- 


x.  THE  REVOLTS  AGAINST  WILLIAM.  159 

gaged  in  an  Hungarian  war,  heard  that  the  famous  Arch- 
bishop Hanno  of  Koln  had  leagued  with  William  Bostar 
— so  is  his  earliest  surname  written — King;  of  the  Ens- 

O  o 

lish,  and  that  a  vast  army  was  coming  to  set  the  island 
monarch  on  the  German  throne.  The  host  never  came ; 
hut  Henry  hastened  back  to  guard  his  frontier  against 
barbarians.  By  that  phrase  a  Teutonic  writer  can 
hardly  mean  the  insular  part  of  William's  subjects. 

Now  assuredly  William  never  cherished,  as  his  suc- 
cessor probably  did,  so  wild  a  dream  as  that  of  a  kingly 
crowning  at  Aachen,  to  be  followed  perhaps  by  an 
imperial  crowning  at  Rome.  But  that  such  schemes 
were  looked  on  as  a  practical  danger  against  which  the 
actual  German  King  had  to  guard,  at  least  shows  the 
place  which  the  Conqueror  of  England  held  in  European 
imagination. 

For  the  three  or  four  years  immediately  following 
the  surrender  of  Ely,  William's  journeys  to  and  fro 
between  his  kingdom  and  his  duchy  were  specially 
frequent.  Matilda  seems  to  have  always  stayed  in 
Normandy ;  she  is  never  mentioned  in  England  after 
the  year  of  her  coronation  arid  the  birth  of  her  youngest  1 

son,  and  she  commonly  acted  as  regent  of  the  duchy. 
In  "the  course  of  1072  we  see  William  in  England,  in 
Normandy,  again  in  England,  and  in  Scotland.  In  1073 
he  was  called  beyond  sea  by  a  formidable  movement. 
^SL  grea^continental  ^wiqiifiati.had  risen^against  him ; 
Le  Mans  and  allMaine  were  again  independent.  City 
and  lancT"cKos(r  for  them  a  prince  who  came  by  female 
descent  from  the  stock  of  their  ancient  counts.  This 
was  Hugh  the  son  of  Azo  Marquess  of  Liguria  and  of 
Oersendis  the  sister  of  the  last  Count  Herbert.  The 


160  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP. 

Normans  were  driven  out  of  Le  Mans  ;  Azo  came  to  take 
possession  in  the  name  of  his  son,  but  he  and  the  citizens 
did  not  long  agree.  He  went  back,  leaving  his  wife  and 
son  under  the  guardianship  of  Geoffrey  of  Mayenne. 
Presently  the  men  of  Le  Mans  threw  off  princely  rule 
altogether  and  proclaimed  the  earliest  commune  in  North- 
ern Gaul.  Here  then,  as  at  Exeter,  William  had  to  strive 
against  an  armed  commonwealth,  and,  as  at  Exeter,  we 
specially  wish  to  know  what  were  to  be  the  relations  be- 
tween the  capital  and  the  county  at  large.  The  mass  of 
the  people  throughout  Maine  threw  themselves  zealously 
into  the  cause  of  the  commonwealth.  But  their  zeal 
might  not  have  lasted  long,  if,  according  to  the  usual 
run  of  things  in  such  cases,  they  had  simply  exchanged 
the  lordship  of  their  hereditary  masters  for  the  corporate 
lordship  of  the  citizens  of  Le  Mans.  To  the  nobles  the 
change  was  naturally  distasteful.  They  had  to  swear  to 
the  commune,  but  many  of  them,  Geoffrey  for  one,  had 
no  thought  of  keeping  their  oaths.  Dissensions  arose ; 
Hugh  went  back  to  Italy ;  Geoffrey  occupied  the  castle 
of  Le  Mans,  and  the  citizens  dislodged  him  only  by 
the  dangerous  help  of  the  other  prince  who  claimed 
the  overlordship  of  Maine,  Count  Fulk  of  Anjou. 

If  Maine  was  to  have  a  master  from  outside,  the  lord 
of  Anjou  hardly  promised  better  than  the  lord  of  Nor- 
mandy. But  men  in  despair  grasp  at  anything  The 
strange  thing  is  that  Fulk  disappears  now  from  the 
story  ;  William  steps  in  instead.  And  it  was  at  least  as 
much  in  his  English  as  in  his  Norman  character  that  the 
Duke  and  King  won  back  the  revolted  land.  A  place 
in  his  army  was  held  by  English  warriors,  seemingly 
under  the  command  of  Hereward  himself.  Men  who 


x.  THE  REVOLTS  AGAINST  WILLIAM.  161 

had  fought  for  freedom  in  their  own  land  now  fought  at 
the  bidding  of  their  Conqueror  to  put  down  freedom 
in  another  land.  They  went  willingly  ;  the  English 
Chronicler  describes  the  campaign  with  glee,  and  breaks 
into  verse — or  incorporates  a  contemporary  ballad — at 
the  tale  of  English  victory.  Few  men  of  that  day  would 
see  that  the  cause  of  Maine  was  in  truth  the  cause  of 
If  Y  ork  and  Exeter  could  not  act  in  concert 


rith  one  another,  still  less  could  either  act  in  concert 
with  Le  Mans.  Englishmen  serving  in  Maine  would 
fancy  that  they  were  avenging  their  own  wrongs  by 
laying  waste  the  lands  of  any  man  who  spoke  the  French 
tongue.  On  William's  part,  the  employment  of  English- 
men, the  employment  of  Hereward,  was  another  stroke 
of  policy.  It  was  more  fully  following  out  the  system 
which  led  Englishmen  against  Exeter,  which  led  Eadric 
and  his  comrades  into  Scotland.  For  in  every  English 
soldier  whom  William  carried  into  Maine  he  won  a  loyal 
English  subject.  To  men  who  had  fought  under  his 
banners  beyond  the  sea  he  would  be  no  longer  the  Con- 
queror but  the  victorious  captain ;  they  would  need 
some  very  special  oppression  at  home  to  make  them  revolt 
against  the  chief  whose  laurels  they  had  helped  to  win. 
As  our  own  gleeman  tells  the  tale,  they  did  little  beyond 
harrying  the  helpless  land ;  but  in  continental  writers 
we  can  trace  a  regular  campaign,  in  which  we  hear  of  no 
battles,  but  of  many  sieges.  William,  as  before,  subdued 
the  land  piecemeal,  keeping  the  city  for  the  last.  When 
he  drew  near  to  Le  Mans,  its  defenders  surrendered  at 
his  summons,  to  escape  fire  and  slaughter  by  speedy  sub- 
mission. The  new  commune  was  abolished,  but  the  Con- 
queror swore  to  observe  all  the  ancient  rights  of  the  city. 

M 


162  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP. 

All  this  time  we  have  heard  nothing  of  Count  Fulk. 
Presently  we  find  him  warring  against  nobles  of  Maine 
who  had  taken  William's  part,  and  leaguing  with  the 
Bretons  against  William  himself.  The  King  set  forth 
with  his  whole  force,  Norman  and  English ;  but  peace 
was  made  by  the  mediation  of  an  unnamed  Roman 
cardinal,  abetted,  we  are  told,  by  the  chief  Norman 
nobles.  Success  againsLcon federated. Anjou  and^jBritanny 
might  bfijloiibtf ill, jgith ... .Ma.jjn.e-.and.  England  waY£inig 
i n  their  allegiance,  and  France,  Scotland,  and  Fhmders, 
possible  enemies  in  the  distance.  The  rights  of  the 
Count  of  Anjou  over  Maine  were  formally  acknowledged^ 
and  William's  eldest  son  Robert  did  homage  to  Fulk  for 
'iLe  county.  Each  prince  stipulated  for  the  safety  and 
rfavour  of  all  subjects  of  the  other  who  had  taken  his 
side.  Eetw^enNormandy  and  Anjou  there  was  peace 
during  tne  rest  of  the  days  of  William  ;  in  Maine  we 
shall  see  yet  another  revolt,  though  only  a  partial  one. 

William  went  back  to  England  in  1073.  In  1074  he 
went  to  the  continent  for  a  longer  absence.  As  the  time 
just  after  the  first  completion  of  the  Conquest  is  spoken 
of  as  a  time  whei^Jiormaiisand  English  were  beginning 
to  sit-down  sidejjvjjde  m~peace.  so  the  years  which 
followed  the  submission  of  Ely  are  spoken  of  as  a  time 
of  special  oppression.  This  fact  is  not  unconnected  with 
the  King's  frequent  absences  from  England.  Whatever 
we  say  of  William's  own  position,  he  was  a  check  on 
smaller  oppressors.  Things  were  always  worse  when 
the  eye  of  the  great  master  was  no  longer  watching. 
William's  one  weakness  was  that  of  putting  overmuch 
trust  in  his  immediate  kinsfolk  and  friends.  Of  the 
two  special  oppressors,  William  Fitz-Osbern  had  thrown 


x.  THE  REVOLTS  AGAINST  WILLIAM.  163 

away  his  life  in  Flanders ;  but  Bishop  Odo  was  still  at 
work,  till  several  years  later  his  king  and  brother  struck 
him  down  with  a  truly  righteous  blow. 

The  year  1074,  not  a  year  of  fighting,  was  pre- 
eminently a  year  of  intrigue.  William's  enemies  on  the 
continent  strove  to  turn  the  representative  of  the  West- 
Saxon  kings  to  help  their  ends.  Edgar  flits  to  and 
fro  between  Scotland  and  Flanders,  and  the  King  of  the 
French  tempts  him  with  the  offer  of  a  convenient  settle- 
ment on  the  march  of  France,  Normandy,  and  Flanders. 
Edgar  sets  forth  from  Scotland,  but  is  driven  back  by  a 
storm ;  Malcolm  and  Margaret  then  change  their  minds, 
and  bid  him  make  his  peace  with  King  William.  Wil- 
liam gladly  accepts  his  submission ;  an  embassy  is  sent 
to  bring  him  with  all  worship  to  the  King  in  Normandy. 
He  abides  for  several  years  in  William's  court,  contented 
and  despised,  receiving  a  daily  pension  and  the  profits 
of  estates  in  England  of  no  great  extent  which  the  King 
of  a  moment  held  by  the  grant  of  a  rival  who  could 
afford  to  be  magnanimous. 

Edgar's  after-life  showed  that  he  belonged  to  that 
class  of  men  who,  as  a  rule  slothful  and  listless,  can  yet 
on  occasion  act  with  energy,  and  who  act  most  creditably 
on  behalf  of  others.  But  William  had  no  need  to  fear  him, 
and  he  was  easily  turned  into  a  friend  and  a  dependant. 
Edgar,  first  of  Englishmen  by  descent,  was  hardly  an 
Englishman  by  birth.  William  had  now  to  deal  with  the 
Englishman  who  stood  next  to  Edgar  in  dignity  and  far 
above  him  in  personal  estimation.  We  have  reached  the 
great  turning-point  in  William's  reign  and  character,  the 
black  and  mysterious  tale  of  the  fate  of  Waltheof.  The 


164  WILLTAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP. 

Earl  of  Northumberland,  Northampton,  and  Huntingdon, 
was  not  the  only  earl  in  England  of  English  birth.  The 
earldom  of  the  East-Angles  was  held  by  a  born  English- 
man who  was  more  hateful  than  a^y  stranger. Ralph 
of  Wader  was  the  one  Englishman  who  had  fought  at 
WiHianiVside  against  England.  He  often  passes  for  a 
native  of  Britanny,  and  he  certainly  held  lands  and 
castles  in  that  country ;  but  he  was  Breton  only  by  the 
mother's  side.  For  Domesday  and  the  Chronicles  show 
that  he  was  the  son  of  an  elder  Earl  Ralph,  who  had 
been  staller  or  master  of  the  horse  in  Edward's  days, 
and  who  is  expressly  said  to  have  been  born  in  Norfolk. 
The  unusual  name  suggests  that  the  eldeivRalph  was  not 
of  English  descent.  He  survived  the  coming ^of  William, 
and  his  son  fought  on  Senlac  among  the  countrymen  of  his 
mother.  This  treason  implies  an  unrecorded  banishment 
in  the  days  of  Edward  or  Harold.  Already  earl  in  1069, 
he  had  in  that  year  acted  vigorously  for  William  against 
the  Danes.  But  he  now  conspired  against  him  along  with 
Roger,  the  younger  son  of  William  Fitz-Osbern,  who  had 
succeeded  his  father  in  the^arldom^pf  JHereford,  while  his 
Norman  estates  had  passed  to  his  elder  brother  William. 
What  grounds  of  complaint  either  Ralph  or  Roger  had 
against  William  we  know  not ;  but  that  the  loyalty  of 
the  Earl  of  Hereford  was  doubtful  throughout  the  year 
1074  appears  from  several  letters  of  rebuke  and  counsel 
sent  to  him  by  the  Regent  Lanfranc.  At  last  the 
wielder  of  both  swords  took  to  his  spiritual  arms,  and 
pronounced  the  Earl  excommunicate,  till  he  should  submit 
to  the  King's  mercy  and  make  restitution  to  the  King 
and  to  all  men  whom  he  had  wronged.  Roger  remained 
stiff-necked  under  the  Primate's  censure,  and  presently 


x.  THE  REVOLTS  AGAINST  WILLIAM.  165 

committed  an  act  of  direct  disobedience.  The  next 
year,  1075,  he  gave  his  sister  Emma  in  marriage  to  Earl 
Ealph.  This  marriage  the  King  had  forbidden,  on 
some  unrecorded  ground  of  state  policy.  Most  likely 
he  already  suspected  both  earls,  and  thought  any  tie 
between  them  dangerous.  The  notice  shows  William 
stepping  in  to  do,  as  an  act  of  policy,  what  under  his 
successors  became  a  matter  of  course,  done  with  the  sole 
object  of  making  money.  The  bride-ale — the  name  that 
lurks  in  the  modern  shape  of  bridal — was  held  at  Exning 
in  Cambridgeshire ;  bishops  and  abbots  were  guests  of 
the  excommunicated  Koger;  Waltheof  was  there,  and 
many  Breton  comrades  of  Ralph.  In  their  cups  they 
began  to  plot  how  they  might  drive  the  King  out  of  the 
kingdom.  Charges,  both  true  and~TaTse,  wefe~t5r6ught 


against  William ;    in   a  mixed  gathering  of  Normans, 

English,  and  Bretons,  almost  jevery^  act  of ..William_'s_life, 

might  ^a^s_as_ja_wjQiig. .done  to  some  par-t-of  ihe..£Qm_- 

pany,  even  though  some  others  of  the  company  were  his 

accomrjlices.     Above  all,  the  two  earls  Ralph  and  Roger 

made  a  distinct  proposal  to  their  fellow-earl  Waltheof. 

King  William  should  be  driven  out  of  the  land;  one  of     ,- 

the  three  should  be  King  ;_the  other  two  should  remain  P-\_^5  \ 

earls,  ruling  each  over  a  third  oT~tEe~  kingdom.     Such  a  ^ 

sclieme^niigrit  attract  earls,  but  no  one  else ;  it  would 

undo  William's  best  and  greatest  work ;  it  would  throw 

back  the  growing  unity  of  the  kingdom  by  all  the  steps 

that  it  had  taken  during  several  generations. 

Now  what  amount  of  favour  did  Waltheof  give  to 
these  schemes  *?  Weighing  the  accounts,  it  would 
seem  that,  in  the  excitement  of  the  bride-ale,  he  con- 
sented to  the  treason,  but  that  he  thought  better  of  it 


166  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP. 

the  next  morning.  He  went  to  Lanfranc,  at  once  regent 
and  ghostly  father,  and  confessed  to  him  whatever  he 
had  to  confess.  The  Primate  assigned  his  penitent  some 
ecclesiastical  penances ;  the  Regent  bade  the  Earl  go  into 
Normandy  and  tell  the  whole  tale  to  the  King.  Waltheof 
went,  with  gifts  in  hand ;  he  told  his  story  and  craved 
forgiveness.  William  made  light  of  the  matter,  and 
kept  Waltheof  with  him,  but  seemingly  not  under 
restraint,  till  he  came  back  to  England. 

Meanwhile  the  other  two  earls  were  in  open  rebellion. 
Ralph,  half  Breton  by  birth  and  earl  of  a  Danish  land, 
asked  help  in  Britanny  and  Denmark.  Bretons  from 
Britanny  and  Bretons  settled  in  England  flocked  to  him. 
King  Swegen,  now  almost  at  the  end  of  his  reign  and 
life,  listened  to  the  call  of  the  rebels,  and  sent  a  fleet 
under  the  command  of  his  son  Cnut,  the  future  saint, 
together  with  an  earl  named  Hakon.  The  revolt  in 
England  was  soon  put  down,  both  in  East  and  West. 


rebel  earls  met  with"  no  support  save~  f roiu  those' 
who  were  under  their  immediate  influence.  The  country 
acted  zealously  for  the  King.  Lanfranc  could  report 
that  Earl  Ralph  and  his  army  were  fleeing,  and  that  the 
King's  men,  French  and  English,  were  chasing  them. 
In  another  letter  he  could  add,  with  some  strength  of 
language,  that  the  kingdom  was  cleansed  from  the  filth  of 
the  Bretons.  At  Norwich  only  the  castle  was  valiantly 
defended  by  the  newly  married  Countess  Emma.  Roger 
was  taken  prisoner ;  Ralph  fled  to  Britanny ;  their 
followers  were  punished  with  various  mutilations, 
save  the  defenders  of  Norwich,  who  were  admitted  to 
terms.  The  Countess  joined  her  husband  in  Britanny, 
and  in  days  to  come  Ralph  did  something  to  redeem 


x.  THE  REVOLTS  AGAINST  WILLIAM.  167 

so  many  treasons  by  dying  as  an  armed  pilgrim  in  the 
first  crusade. 

The  main  point  of  this  story  is  that  the  revolt  met 
with  no  English  support  whatever.  Not  only  did  Bishop 
Wulfstan  march  along  with  his  fierce  Norman  brethren 
Odo  and  Geoffrey  ;  the  English  people  everywhere  were 
against  the  rebels.  "For  fihTs  rev^~6^Eered"lTO~'a'ttfa"ct"i6n"'" 
to  English  feeling  ;  had  the  undertaking  been  less  hope- 
less, nothing  could  have  been  gained  by  exchanging  the 
rule  of  William  for  that  of  Ralph  or  Roger.  It  might 
have  been  different  if  the  Danes  had  played  their  part 
better.  The  rebellion  broke  out  while  "William  was  in 
&ormandy  ;*  it  was  the  sailjngjof  the  DamsTTrIeeF"wKicli 
Brought  him  back  to  England.  But  never  did  enterprise 
bring  lesjs  honour  on  its  leaders  than  this  last  Danish 
voyage  up  the  Humber.  All  that  the  holy  Cnut  did 
was  to  plunder  the  minster  of  Saint  Peter  at  York  and 
to  sail  away. 

His  coming  however  seems  to  have  altogether  changed 
^  Waltheof.     As  yet 


he  had  not  been  dealt  with  as  a  prisoner  or  an  enemy. 
He   now  came   back  to  England   with   the  King,   and 
William's  first  act  was  to  imprison  both  Waltfreof  and_ 
Jtoger.  -The  imprisonment  of  Roger,  a  rebel  taken  in 
arms,  was  a  matter  of  course.     As  for  Waltheof,  what- 
ever he  had  promised  at  the  bride-ale,  he  hadjdone  _no_ 
disloyal-acL^he  had  had  no  share  in  the  rebellion,  and 
he  had  told  the  King  all  that  he  knew.     But  he  had 
H^tenedjojm^^ 

him  at  large  when  a  Danish  fleet,  led  by  his  old  comrade 
Cnv^w^^^^_aS£^,  Still  what  followed  is  strange 
indeed,  specially  strange  with  William  as  its  chief  doer. 


168  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP. 

At  the  Midwinter  Gemot  of  1075-1076  Roger  and 
Waltheof  were  brought  to  trial.  Ralph  was  condemned 
in  absence,  like  Eustace  of  Boulogne.  Roger  was 
sentenced  to  forfeiture  and  imprisonment  for  life. 

Waltheof  made  his  defence ;  his  sentence  was de- 

ferrejJU— lie  ^w^-_kept-^LjWincl^s^er_m^^  straiter  im- 
prisonment than  before.  At  the  Pentecostal  Gem6t  of 
1076,  held  at  Westminster,  his  case  was  again  argued, 
and  he  was  sentenced  to  death.  On  the  last  day  of 
May  the  last  English  earl  was  beheaded  on  the  hills 
above.  Winchester. 

Such  a  sentence  and  execution,  strange  at  any  time, 
is  specially  strange  under  William.  Whatever  Waltheof 
had  done,  his  offence  was  lighter  than  that  of  Roger ; 
yet  Waltheof  has  the  heavier  and  Roger  the  lighter 
punishment.  With  Scroggs  or  Jeffreys  on  the  bench, 
it  might  have  been  argued  that  Waltheof  s  confession 
to  the  King  did  not,  in  strictness  of  law,  wipe  put  the 
guilt  of  his  original  promise  to  the  conspirators ;  but 
William  the  Great  did  not  commonly  act  after  the 
fashion  of  Scroggs  and  Jeffreys.  To  deprive  Waltheof 
of  his  earldom  might  doubtless  be  prudent ;  a  man  who 
had  even  listened  to  traitors  might  be  deemed  unfit  for 
such  a  trust.  It  might  be  wise  to  keep  him  safe  under 
the  King's  eye,  like  Edwin,  Morkere,  and  Edgar.  But 
why  should  he  be  picked  out  for  death,  when  the  far 
more  guilty  Roger  was  allowed  to  live  1  Why  should 
he  be  chosen  as  the  one  victim  of  a  prince  who  never 
before  or  after,  in  Normandy  or  in  England,  doomed 
any  man  to  die  on  a  political  charge  1  These  are  ques- 
tions hard  to  answer.  It  is  not  enough  to  say  that 
Waltheof  was  an  Englishman,  that  it  was  William's 


x.  THE  REVOLTS  AGAINST  WILLIAM.  l«9 

policy  gradually  to  get  rid  of  Englishmen  in  high 
places,  and  that  the  time  was  now  come  to  get  rid  of 
the  last.  For  such  a  policy  forfeiture,  or  at  most  im- 
prisonment, would  have  been  enough.  While  other 
Englishmen  lost  lands,  honours,  at  most  liberty,  Wal- 
theof  alone  lost  his  life  by  a  judicial  sentence.  It  is 
likely  enough  that  many  Normans  hungered  for  the 
lands  and  honours  of  the  one  Englishman  who  still 
held  the  highest  rank  in  England.  Still  forfeiture 
without  death  might  have  satisfied  even  them.  But 
Waltheof  was  not  only  earl  of  three  shires  ;  he  was  hus- 
band of  the  King's  near  kinswoman.  We  are  told  that 
Judith  was  the  enemy  and  accuser  of  her  husband. 
This  may  have  touched  William's  one  weak  point.  Yet 
he  would  hardly  have  swerved  from  the  practice  of  his 
whole  life  to  please  the  bloody  caprice  of  a  niece  who 
longed  for  the  death  of  her  husband.  And  if  Judith 
longed  for  Waltheof's  death,  it  was  not  from  a  wish  to 
supply  his  place  with  another.  Legend  says  that  she 
refused  a  second  husband  offered  her  by  the  King  ;  it 
is  certain  that  she  remained  a  widow. 

Waltheof's  death  must  thus  remain  a  mystery,  an 
isolated  deed  of  blood  unlike  anything  else  in  William's 
life.  It  seems  to  have  been  impolitic ;  it  led  to  no 
revolt,  but  it  called  forth  a  new  burst  of  English  feel- 
ing. Waltheof  was  deemed  the  martyr  of  his  people ; 
he  received  the  same  popular  canonization  as  more  than 
one  English  patriot.  Signs  and  wonders  were  wrought 
at  his  tomb  at  Crowland,  till  displays  of  miraculous 
power  which  were  so  inconsistent  with  loyalty  and  good 
order  were  straitly  forbidden.  The  act  itself  marks  a 
stage  in  the  downward  course  of  William's  character. 


170  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP. 

In  itself,  the  harrying  of  Northumberland,  the  very 
invasion  of  England,  with  all  the  bloodshed  that 
they  caused,  might  be  deemed  blacker  crimes  than  the 
unjust  death  of  a  single  man.  But  as  human  nature 
stands,  the  less  crime  needs  a  worse  man  to  do  it. 
Crime,  as  ever,  led  to  further  crime  and  was  itself  the 
punishment  of  crime.  In  the  eyes  of  William's  con- 
temporaries the  death  of  Waltheof,  the  blackest  act  of 
William's  life,  was  also  its  turning-point.  From  the 
day  of  the  martyrdom  on  Saint  Giles'  hill  the  magic  of 
William's  name  and  William's  arms  passed  away.  Un- 
failing luck  no  longer  waited  on  him ;  atter  Waltheof  ^ 
death  he  never,  till  his  last  campaign  of  all,  won  a  battle 
r_-orjtook  a  town.  In  this  change  of-  William's  fortunes 
the  men  of  his  own  day  saw^^he  judgement  of  God 
Ugon_jiis  crime.  And  in  the  fact  at  least  they  were 
undoubtedly  right.  Henceforth,  though  William's  real 
power  abides  unshaken,  the  tale  of  his  warfare  is  chiefly 
a  tale  of  petty  defeats.  The  last  eleven  years  of  his 
A  life  would  never  have  won  him  the  name  of  Conqueror. 
6-^  \j_  But  in  the  higher  walk  of_policy  and  legislation  never 
.  i  was  his  nobler  surname  more  truly~  deserved.  Never 
did  William  the  Great  show  himself  so  truly  great  as  in 
jthesejater  years. 

The  death  of  Waltheof  and  the  popular  judgement  on 
it  suggest  another  act  of  William's  which  cannot  have 
been  far  from  it  in  point  of  time,  and  about  which  men 
spoke  in  his  own  day  in  the  same  spirit.  If  the  judge- 
ment of  God  came  on  William  for  the  beheading  of 
Waltheof,  it  came  on  him  also  for  the  making  of  the 
New  Forest.  As  to  that  forest  there  is  a  good  deal 


x.  THE  REVOLTS  AGAINST  WILLIAM.  171 

of  ancient  exaggeration  and  a  good  deal  of  modern 
misconception.  The  word  forest  is  often  misunder- 
stood. In  its  older  meaning,  a  meaning  which  it  still 
keeps  in  some  parts,  a  forest  has  nothing  to  do  with 
trees.  It  is  a  tract  of  land  put  outside  the  common 
law  and  subject  to  a  stricter  law  of  its  own,  and  that 
commonly,  probably  always,  to  secure  for  the  King  the 
freer  enjoyment  of  the  pleasure  of  hunting.  Such  a 
forest  William  made  in  Hampshire ;  the  impression 
which  it  made  on  men's  minds  at  the  time  is  shown  by 
its  having  kept  the  name  of  the  New  Forest  for  eight 
hundred  years.  There  is  no  reason  to  think  that 
William  laid  waste  any  large  tract  of  specially  fruitful 
country,  least  of  all  that  he  laid  waste  a  land  thickly 
inhabited ;  for  most  of  the  Forest  land  never  can  have 
been  such.  But  it  is  certain  from  Domesday  and  the 
Chronicle  that  William  did  afforest  a  considerable  tract 
of  land  in  Hampshire  ;  he  set  it  apart  for  the  purposes 
of  hunting ;  he  fenced  it  in  by  special  and  cruel  laws — 
stopping  indeed  short  of  death — for  the  protection  of 
his  pleasures,  and  in  this  process  some  men  lost  their 
lands  and  were  driven  from  their  homes.  Some  de- 
struction of  houses  is  here  implied;  some  destruction 
of  churches  is  not  unlikely.  The  popular  belief,  which 
hardly  differs  from  the  account  of  writers  one  degree 
later  than  Domesday  and  the  Chronicle,  simply  exag- 
gerates the  extent  of  destruction.  There  was  no  such 
wide-spread  laying  waste  as  is  often  supposed,  because 
no  such  wide-spread  laying  waste  was  needed.  But 
whatever  was  needed  for  William's  purpose  was  done ; 
and  Domesday  gives  us  the  record.  And  the  act  surely 
makes,  like  the  death  of  Waltheof,  a  downward  stage 


172  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP. 

in  William's  character.  The  harrying  of  Northumber- 
land was  in  itself  a  far  greater  crime,  and  involved  far 
more  of  human '  wretchedness.  But  it  is  not  remem- 
bered in  the  same  way,  because  it  has  left  no  such 
abiding  memorial.  But  here  again  the  lesser  crime 
needed  a  worse  man  to  do  it.  The  harrying  of  Nort- 
humberland was  a  crime  done  with  a  political  object ; 
it  was  the  extreme  form  of  military  severity ;  it  was 
not  vulgar  robbery  done  with  no  higher  motive  than  to 
secure  the  fuller  enjoyment  of  a  brutal  sport.  To  this 
level  William  had  now  sunk.  It  was  in  truth  now  that 
hunting  in  England  finally  took  the  character  of  a  mere 
sport.  Hunting  was  no  new  thing ;  in  an  early  state 
of  society  it  is  often  a  necessary  thing.  The  hunting 
of  Alfred  is  spoken  of  as  a  grave  matter  of  business,  as 
part  of  his  kingly  duty.  He  had  to  make  war  on  the 
wild  beasts,  as  he  had  to  make  war  on  the  Danes.  The 
hunting  of  William  is  simply  a  sport,  not  his  duty  or 
his  business,  but  merely  his  pleasure.  And  to  this 
pleasure,  the  pleasure  of  inflicting  pain  and  slaughter, 
he  did  not  scruple  to  sacrifice  the  rights  of  other  men, 
and  to  guard  his  enjoyment  by  ruthless  laws  at  which 
even  in  that  rough  age  men  shuddered. 

For  this  crime  the  men  of  his  day  saw  the  punish- 
ment in  the  strange  and  frightful  deaths  of  his  offspring, 
two  sons  and  a  grandson,  on  the  scene  of  his  crime. 
One  of  these  himself  he  saw,  the  death  of  his  second 
son  Eichard,  a  youth  of  great  promise,  whose  pro- 
longed life  might  have  saved  England  from  the  rule  of 
William  liufus.  He  died  in  the  Forest,  about  the  year 
1081,  to  the  deep  grief  of  his  parents.  And  Domesday 
contains  a  touching  entry,  how  William  srave  back  his 


x.  THE  REVOLTS  AGAIXST  WILLIAM.  173 

land   to    a    despoiled    Englishman    as    an    offering   for 
Richard's  soul. 

The  forfeiture  of  three  earls,  the  death  of  one,  threw 
their  honours  and  estates  into  the  King's  hands.  An- 
other fresh  source  of  wealth  came  by  the  death  of  the 
Lady  Edith,  who  had  kept  her  royal  rank  and  her  great 
estates,  and  who  died  while  the  proceedings  against 
Waltheof  were  going  on.  It  was  not  now  so  important 
for  William  as  it  had  been  in  the  first  years  of  the 
Conquest  to  reward  his  followers ;  he  could  now  think 
of  the  royal  hoard  in  the  first  place.  Of  the  estates 
which  now  fell  in  to  the  Crown  large  parts  were  granted 
out.  The  house  of  Bigod,  afterwards  so  renowned  as 
Earls  of  Norfolk,  owe  their  rise  to  their  forefather's 
share  in  the  forfeited  lands  of  Earl  Ralph.  But  Wil- 
liam kept  the  greater  part  to  himself ;  one  lordship  in 
Somerset,  part  of  the  lands  of  the  Lady,  he  gave  to  the 
church  of  Saint  Peter  at  Rome.  Of  the  three  earldoms, 
those  of  Hereford  and  East-Anglia  were  not  filled  up  ; 
the  later  earldoms  of  those  lands  have  no  connexion 
with  the  earls  of  William's  day.  Waltheof  s  southern 
earldoms  of  Northampton  and  Huntingdon  became  the 
dowry  of  his  daughter  Matilda;  that  of  Huntingdon 
passed  to  his  descendants  the  Kings  of  Scots.  But 
Northumberland,  close  on  the  Scottish  border,  still 
needed  an  earl ;  but  there  is  something  strange  in  the 
choice  of  Bishop  Walcher  of  Durham.  It  is  possible 
that  this  appointment  was  a  concession  to  English  feel- 
ing stirred  to  wrath  at  the  death  of  Waltheof.  The 
days  of  English  earls  were  over,  and  a  Norman  would 
have  been  looked  on  as  Waltheof's  murderer.  The 


174  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP. 

Lotharingian  bishop  was  a  stranger ;  but  he  was  not  a 
Norman,  and  he  was  no  oppressor  of  Englishmen.  But 
he  was  strangely  unfit  for  the  place.  Not  a  fighting 
bishop  like  Odo  and  Geoffrey,  he  was  chiefly  devoted 
to  spiritual  affairs,  specially  to  the  revival  of  the 
monastic  life,  which  had  died  out  in  Northern  England 
since  the  Danish  invasions.  But  his  weak  trust  in 
unworthy  favourites,  English  and  foreign,  led  him  to  a 
fearful  and  memorable  end.  The  Bishop  was  on  terms 
of  close  friendship  with  Ligulf,  an  Englishman  of  the 
highest  birth  and  uncle  by  marriage  to  Earl  Waltheof. 
He  had  kept  his  estates ;  but  the  insolence  of  his  Nor- 
man neighbours  had  caused  him  to  come  and  live  in 
the  city  of  Durham  near  his  friend  the  Bishop.  His 
favour  with  Walcher  roused  the  envy  of  some  of  the 
Bishop's  favourites,  who  presently  contrived  his  death. 
The  Bishop  lamented,  and  rebuked  them  ;  but  he  failed 
to  "  do  justice,"  to  punish  the  offenders  sternly  and 
speedily.  He  was  therefore  believed  to  be  himself 
guilty  of  Ligulf  s  death.  One  of  the  most  striking 
and  instructive  events  of  the  time  followed.  On  May 
14,  1080,  a  full  Gemot  of  the  earldom  was  held  at 
Gateshead  to  deal  with  the  murder  of  Ligulf.  This 
was  one  of  those  rare  occasions  when  a  strong  feeling 
led  every  man  to  the  assembly.  The  local  Parliament 
took  its  ancient  shape  of  an  armed  crowd,  headed  by 
the  noblest  Englishmen  left  in  the  earldom.  There 
was  no  vote,  no  debate  ;  the  shout  was  "  Short  rede 
good  rede,  slay  ye  the  Bishop."  And  to  that  cry, 
Walcher  himself  and  his  companions,  the  murderers  of 
Ligulf  among  them,  were  slaughtered  by  the  raging 
multitude  who  had  gathered  to  avenge  him. 


X.  THE  REVOLTS  AGAINST  WILLIAM.  175 

The  riot  in  which  Walcher  died  was  no  real  revolt 
against  William's  government.  Such  a  local  rising 
against  a  local  wrong  might  have  happened  in  the  like 
case  under  Edward  or  Harold.  No  government  could 
leave  such  a  deed  unpunished  ;  but  William's  own  ideas 
of  justice  would  have  been  fully  satisfied  by  the  blind- 
ing or  mutilation  of  a  few  ringleaders.  But  William 
was  in  Normandy  in  the  midst  of  domestic  and  poli- 
tical cares.  He  sent  his  brother  Odo  to  restore  order, 
and  his  vengeance  was  frightful.  The  land  was  harried; 
innocent  men  were  mutilated  and  put  to  death  ;  others 
saved  their  lives  by  bribes.  Earl  after  earl  was  set  over 
a  land  so  hard  to  rule.  A  certain  Alberie  was  appointed, 
but  he  was  removed  as  unfit.  The  fierce  Bishop  Geoffrey 
of  Coutances  tried  his  hand  and  resigned.  At  the  time 
of  William's  death  the  earldom  was  held  by  Geoffrey's 
nephew  Robert  of  Mowbray,  a  stern  and  gloomy 
stranger,  but  whom  Englishmen  reckoned  among  "  good 
men,"  when  he  guarded  the  marches  of  England  against 
the  Scot. 

After  the  death  of  Waltheof  i\jnian^s^ejn^!iJiaie 
stayed  in  Normandy  for  several  years.  His  ill  luck 
now  began.  Before  the  year  1076  was  out,  he  entered, 
we  know  not  why,  on  a^Breton  campaign.  But  he  was 
driven  from  Dol  by  the  combined  forces  .of Britanay- 
_  and  France;  Philip  was  ready  to  help  any  enemy  of 
William.  The  Conqueror  had  now  for  the  first  time 
suffered  defeat  in  his  own  person.  He  made  peace 
with  both  enemies,  promising  his  daughter  Constance 
to  Alan  of  Britanny.  But  the  marriage  did  not  follow 
till  ten  years  later.  The  peace  with  France,  as  the 


176  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR  CHAP. 

English  Chronicle  says,  "  held  little  while ; "  Philip 
could  jTnt__rflsjifit,  thfl  tfimptatinn  of  helping  William's 
eldest  son  Robert  when  the  reckless  young;  man  rebelled. 
against  his  father.  With  most  of  the  qualities  of  an 
accomplished  knight,  Robert  had  few  of  those  which 
make  either  a  wise  ruler  or  an  honest  man.  A  brave 
soldier,  even  a  skilful  captain,  he  was  no  general ;  ready 
c  ±.  of  speech  and  free  of  hand,  he  was  lavish  rather  than 

f  A.  ^ bountiful.     He  did  not  lack  generous  and  noble  feelings ; 

K}^  ^      kut  °^  a  stea(ty  course,  eevenin  evil,  he  was  incapable. 

0  As  a  ruler,  he  was  no  oppressor  in  his  own  person ;  but 

sloth,  carelessness,  love  of  pleasure,  incapacity  to  say 
No,  failure  to  do  justice,  caused  more  wretchedness  than 
the  oppression  of  those  tyrants  who  hinder  the  oppres- 
sions of  others.  William  would  not  set  such  an  one 
over  any  part  of  his  dominions  before  his  time,  and  it 
was  his  policy  to  keep  his  children  dependent  on  him. 
While  he^enriched  his  brothers,  he  did  not  give  the 
smallest  scrap  of  the  spoils  of  England  to  his  sons.  But 
Robert  deemed  that  he  had  a  right  to  something  greater 
than  private  estates.  The  nobles  of  Normandy_hadjdone 
,  homage  to  him  as  William's  successor  ;  he  had  done 
homage  to  Fulk  for  Maine,  as  if  he  were  himself  its 
count.  He  was  now  stirred  up  by  evil  companions  to 
jie_mand  that,  jf_Jijs  father  would  not  give  him  part  of 
his  kingdom — the  spirit  of  Edwin  and  Morkere  had 
crossed  the  sea — -he  Avould  at  least  give  him  Normandy 
and  Maine.  William  refused  with  many  pithy  sayings. 
It  was  not  his  manner  to  take  off  his  clothes  till  he 
went  to  bed,  Robert  now,  with  a  band  of  discontented 
young  nobles,  plunged  into  border  warfare  against  his 
father.  He  then  wandered  over  a  large  part  of  Europe^ 


n 


x.  THE  REVOLTS  AGAINST  WILLIAM.  177 

begging  and  receiving  money  and  squandering  all  that 
he  got.  His  mother  too  sent  him  money,  which  led  to 
the  first  quarrel  between  William  and  Matilda  after  so 
many  years  of  faithful  union.  William  rebuked  his 
wife  for  helping  his  enemy  in  breach  of  his  orders  :  she 
pleaded  the  mother's  love  for  her  first-born.  The 
mother  was  forgiven,  but  her  messenger,  sentenced  to 
loss  of  eyes,  found  shelter  in  a  monastery. 

At  last  in  1079  Philip  gave  Robert  a  settled  dwelling- 
plaTce  in  tfie  border -fortresT^T  G"erbeTot: — Tire -strife 
between  father  and  son  became~Hangerous.  William 
besieged  the  castle,  to  undergo  before  its  walls  his  second 
defeat,  to  receive  his  first  wound,  and  that  at  the  hands 
of  his  own  son.  Pierced  in  the  hand  by  the  lance  of 
Robert,  his  horse  smitten  by  an  arrow,  the  Conqueror 
fell  to  the  ground,  and  was  saved  only  by  an  English- 
man, Tokig,  son  of  Wiggod  of  Wallingford,  who  gave 
his  life  for  his  king.  It  seems  an  early  softening  of  the 
tale  which  says  that  Robert  dismounted  and  craved  his 
father's  pardon  ;  it  seems  a  later  hardening  which  says 
that  William  pronounced  a  curse  on  his  son.  William 
Rufus  too,  known  as  yet  only  as  the  dutiful  son  of  his 
father,  w^sjvounded  in  his  defence.  The  blow  was  not 
olily  grievous  to  William's  feelings  as  a  father ;  it  was 
a  serious  military  defeat.  The  two  wounded  Wjljjmns. 
and  the  rest  of  the  besiegers  escaped  how  they  might, 
andthe  siege  of  Gerberoi  was  raiaaiL 

We  next  find  the  wise  men  of  Normandy  debating 
how  to  make  peace  between  father  and  son.  In  the 
course  of  the  year  1080  a  j^eace  was  patched  up,  and  a 
more  honourable  sphere  was  found  for  Robert's  energies 
in  an  expedition  into  Scotland.  In  the  autumn  of  the 

N 


178  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP. 

*year  of  Gerberoi  Malcolm  hadjnade  another  wasting 
inroad  into  Northumberland.  With  the  King  absent 
and  Northumberland  in  confusion  through  the  death 
of  Walcher,  this  wrong  went  unavenged  till  the  autumn 
of  1080.  Robert  gained  no  special  glory  in  Scotland; 
a  second  quarrel  with  his  father  followed,  and  Robert 
remained  a  banished  man  during  the  last  seven  years  of 
William's  rp.ign.  __ 

In  this  same  year  1080  \a  synod  qf  the  Norman 
Church  was  held,  the  Truce  of  God  again  renewed 
which  we  heard  of  years  ago.  The  forms  of  outrage 
on  which  the  Truce  was  meant  to  put  a  check,  and 
which  the  strong  hand  of  William  had  put  down  more 
thoroughly  than  the  Truce  would  do,  had  clearly  begun 
again  during  the  confusions  caused  by  the  rebellion  of 
Robert. 

The  two  next  years,  1081-1082,  William  was  in  Eng- 
land. His  homa  sorrows  were  now  pressing  heavily  on 
him.  His  eldest  sori  was  a^rp.bp.1  and  an  exile ;  about 
this  time  his  second  son  died  in  the  New  Forest;  ac- 
cording to  one  version,  his  daughter,  the  betrothed  of 
Edwin,  who  had  never  forgotten  her  English  lover,  was 
now  promised  to  the  Spanish  King  Alfonso,  and  died — 
in  answer  to  her  own  prayers — before  the  marriage  was 
celebrated.  And  now  the  partner  of  William's  life  was 
taken  from  him  four  years  after  his  one  difference 
with  her.  On  November  3,  1083,  Matilda  died  after 
ji  long  sickness,  to  her  husband's  lasting  grief.  She 
was  buried  in  her  own  churcJTat  Caen,  and  churches 
in  England  received  gifts  from  William  on  behalf  of 
her  soul. 

The  mourner   had   soon  again  to  play  the   warrior. 


x.  THE  REVOLTS  AGAIXST  WILLIAM.  179 

Nearly  the  whole  of  William's  few  remaining  years 
were  spent  in  a  struggle  which  in  earlier  times  he  would 
surely  have  ended  in  a  day.  Maine,  city  and  county, 
did  not  calMor  a  third  conquest  ;  but  a  single  baron  of 
Maine  defied  William's  power,  and  a  single  castle  of 
Maine  held  out  against  him  for  three  years.  Hubert, 
Viscount  of  Beaumont  and  Fresnay,  revolted  on  some 
slight  quarrel.  The  siege  of  his  castle  of  Sainte-Su- 
sanne  went  on  from  the  death  of  Matilda  till  the  last 
year  but  one  of  William's  reign.  The  tale  is  full  of 
picturesque  detail  ;  but  William  had  little  personal 
share  in  it.  The  best  captains  of  Normandy  tried  their 
strength  in  vain  against  this  one  donjon  on  its  rock. 
William  at  last  jnade  peace  with  the  subject  who  was 
[  him.  Hubert  came  to  Enland  and 


jgceived  the  King's  .....  pardon.      Practically  the  pardon 
was_the  other  way._ 

Thus  for  the  last  eleven  years  of  his  life  William 
ceased  to  be  the  Conqueror.  Engaged  only  in  small 
enterprises,  he  was  unsuccessful  in  all.  One  last  success 
was  indeed  in  store  for  him  ;  but  that  was  to  be  pur- 
chased with  his  own  life.  As  he  turned  away  in  defeat 
from  this  castle  and  that,  as  he  felt  the  full  bitterness 
of  domestic  sorrow,  he  may  have  thought,  as  others 
thought  for  him,  that  the  curse  of  Waltheof,  the  curse 
of  the  New  Forest,  was  ever  tracking  his  steps.  If  so, 
his  crimes  were  done  in  England,  and  their  vengeance 
came  in  Normandy.  In  England  there  was  no  further 
room-lo^-Jiis^jmssion  as  Conqueror  ;  he  Had  "no  longer 
foes  to  overcome.  He  had  an  act  of  justice  to  do,  and 
he  did  it.  He  had  his  kingdom  to  guard,  and  he 


180  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP.  x. 

guarded  it.  He  had  to  take  the  great  step  which  should 
make  his  kingdom  one  for  ever ;  and  he  had,  perhaps 
without  fully  knowing  what  he  did,  to  bid  the  picture 
of  his  reign  be  painted  for  all  time  as  no  reign  before  or 
after  has  been  painted. 


CHAPTER  XL 

THE   LAST   YEARS    OF   WILLIAM. 

1081-1087. 

OF  two  events  of  these  last  years  of  the  Conqueror's 
reign,  events  of  very  different  degrees  of  importance, 
we  have  already  spoken.  The  Welsh  expedition  of 
William  was  the  only  recorded  fighting  on  British 
Aground,  _  and  that  lay  without  the  hounds  of  the  king- 
dom of  England.  JWilliam  now  made  Normandy  his. 
chief  dwelling-placej  but  he  was  constantly  called  over  to 
England.  The  Welsh  campaign  proves  his  presence  in 
England  in  1081 ;  he  was  again  in  England  in  1082, 
but  he  went  back  to  Normandy  between  the  two  visits. 
The  visit  of  1082  was  a  memorable  one;  there  is  no 
more  characteristic  act  of  the  Conqueror  than  the  deed 
which  marks  it.  The  cruelty  and  insolence  of  his 
brother  Qdo.  whom  he  had  trusted  so  much  more  than 
he  deserved,  had  passed  all  bounds.  In  avenging  the 
death  of  Walcher  he  had  done  deeds  such  as  William 
never  did  himself  or  allowed  any  other  man  to  do. 
And  now,  beguiled  by  a  soothsayer  who  said  that  one 
of  his  name  should  be  the  next  Pope,  he  dreamed  of 
su(4ftfieding_ta,.the  throne.  of  jGregory  t^  Seventh.  He 
made  all  kinds  of  preparations  to  secure  his  succession, 


182  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP. 

and  he  was  at  last  about  to  set  forth  for  Italy  at  the 
head  of  something  like  an  army.  His  schemes  were  by 
no  means  to  the  liking  of  his  brother.  William  came 
suddenly  over  from  Normandy,  and  met  Odo  in  the  Isle 
of  Wight.  There  the.  King  got  together  as  many  as 
he  could  of  the  great  men  of  the  realm.  Before  them 
he  arraigned  Odo  for  all  his  crimes.  He  had  left  him 
as  the  lieutenant  of  his  kingdom,  and  he  had  shown  him- 
self the  common  oppressor  of  every  class  of  men  in  the 
realm.  Last  of  all,  he  had  beguiled  the  warriors  who 
were  needed  for  the  defence  of  England  against  the 
Danes  and  Irish  to  follow  him  on  his  wild  schemes  in 
Italy.  How  was  he  to  deal  with  such  a  brother,  Wil- 
liam asked  of  his  wise  men. 

He  had  to  answer  himself  ;  no  other  man  dared  to 
speak.  William  then  gave  his  judgement.  The  com- 
mon enemy  of  the  whole  realm  should  not  be  spared 
because  he  was  the  King's  brother.  He  should  be 
seized  and  put  in  ward.  As  none  dared  to  seize  him, 
the^  King  seized  him  with  his  own  hands.  And  now, 
for  thefirsTliniO  In  England,  we  hear  words  which  were 
often  heard  again.  The  bishop  stained  with  blood  and 
sacrilege  appealed  to  the  privileges  of  his  order.  He 
was  a  clerk,  a  bishop  ;  no  man  might  judge  him  but  the 
Pope!  William,  taught,  so  men  said,  by  Lanfranc,  had 
his  answer  ready.  "  I  d»-imLseize  a  clerk  or  a  bishop  ; 

jize_my  earl  whom  I  set  over  my  kingdom?" So  the 
Earl  of  Kent  was  carried  off  to  a  prison  in  Normandy, 
and  Pope  Gregory  himself  pleaded  in  vain  for  the  release 
of  the  Bishop  of  Bayeux. 

The  mind  of  William  was  just  now  mainly  given  to 
the  affairs  of  his  island  kingdom.  In  the  winter  of 


XL  THE  LAST  YEARS  OP  WILLIAM.  183 

1083  he  hastened  from  the  death-bed  of  his  wife  to  the 
siege  of  Sainte-Susanrie,  and  thence  to  the  Midwinter 
Gem6t  in  England,  The  chief  object  of  the  assembly 
was  the  specially  distasteful  one  of  laying  on~of"a  tax. 
In  the  course  of  the  next  year,  jgjx  shillings  was~TevieT 
gjk^on  every  hide  of  land  to  meet  a  pressing  need.  The 
(V)  powers  of  the  North  were_  again  threatening;  the 
danger,  if  it  was  danger,  was  greater  than  when  Wal- 
theof  smote  the  Normans  in  the  gate  at  York.  Swegen 
and  his  successor  Harold  were  dead.  Cnut  the  Saint 
reigned  in  Denmark,  the  son-in-law  of  Eobert  of 
Flanders.  This  alliance  with  William's  enemy  joined 
with  his  remembrance  of  his  own  two  failures  to  stir 
up  the  Danish  king  to  a  yearning  for  some  exploit  in 
England.  English  exiles  were  still  found  to  urge  him 
to  the  enterprise.  William's  conquest  had  scattered 
banished  or  discontented  Englishmen  over  all  Europe. 
Many  had  made  their  way  to  the  Eastern  Rome ;  they 
had  joined  the  Warangian  guard,  the  surest  support  of 
the  Imperial  throne,  and  at  Dyrrhachion,  as  on  Senlac, 
the  axe  of  England  had  met  the  lance  of  Normandy  in 
battle.  Others  had  fled  to  the  North;  they  prayed 
Cnut  to  avenge  the  death  of  his  kinsman  Harold  and 
to  deliver  England  from  the  yoke  of  men — so  an  Eng- 
lish writer  living  in  Denmark  spoke  of  them— of  Eoman 
speech.  Thus  the  Greek  at  one  end  of  Europe,  the 
Norman  at  the  other,  still  kept  on  the  name  of  Rome. 
The  fleet  of  Denmark  was  joined  by  the  fleet  of 
Flanders ;  a  smaller  contingent  was  promised  by  the 
devout  and  peaceful  Olaf  of  Norway,  who  himself  felt 
no  call  to  take  a  share  in  the  work  of  war. 

Against  this   danger  William   strengthened  himself 


184  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP. 

by  the  help  of  the  tax  that  he  had  just  levied.     He 
could    hardly   have    dreamed    of     defending    England 

English 


he  thought  as  little  of  trusting  the  work  to  his  own  Nor- 
mans. With  the  money  of  England  he  hired  a  host  of 
_and  fpptj  f^ 


even  from  Maine  where  Hubert  was  still  defying  him 
at  Sainte  -  Susanne.  He  gathered  this  Jorce  on  the 
mainland,  and  came  back  at  its  head,  a  force  such  "as 
^SSlM^lt1?^  PEI6!  "before  i  seen  •  men  wondered  how 
the  land  might  feed  them  all.  The  King's  men, 
French  and  English,  had  to  feed  them,  each  man  ac- 
cording to  the  amount  of  his  land.  And  now  William 
did  what  Harold  had  refused  to  do  ;  he  laid  waste  the 
whole  coast  that  lay  open  to  attack  from  Denmark  and 
Flanders.  But  no  Danes,  no  Flemings,  came.  Disputes 
arose  between  Cnut  and  his  brother  Olaf,  and  the  great 
enterprise  came  to  nothing.  William  kept  part  of  his 
mercenaries  in  England,  and  part  he  sent  to  their  homes. 
Cnut  was  murdered  in  a  church  by  his  own  subjects, 
and  was  canonized  as  Sanctus  Canutus  by  a  Pope  who 
could  not  speak  the  Scandinavian  name. 

Meanwhile,  at  the  Midwinter  Gemot  of  1085-1086, 
held  in  due  form  at  Gloucester,  William  did  one  of  his 
greatest  acts.  "  The  King  had  mickle  thought  and 
sooth  deep  speech  with  his  Witan  about  his  land,  how  it 
were  set  and  with  whilk  men."  In  that  "  deep  speech," 
so  called  in  our  own  tongue,  lurks  a  name  well  known 
and  dear  to  every  Englishman.  The  result  of  that  famous 
parliament  is  set  forth  at  length  by  the  Chronicler.  The 
King  sent  his  men  into  each  shire,  men  who  did  indeed 
set  down  in  their  writ  how  the  land  was  set  and  of 


xi.  THE  LAST  YEARS  OF  WILLIAM.  185 

what  men.  In  that  writ  we  have  a  record  in  the  Roman 
tongue  no  less  precious  than  the  Chronicles  in  our  own. 
For  that  writ  became  the  Book  of  Winchester,  the  book 
to  which  our  fathers  gave  the  name  of  Domesday,  the 
book  of  judgement  that  spared  no  man. 

The  Great  Survey  was  made  in  the  course  of  the  first 
sevenjnojiths  of  the  year  1086! Commissioners  were 
sent  into  every  shire,  who  inquired  by  the  oaths  of  the 
men  of  the  hundreds  by  whom  the  land  had  been  held  in 
King  Edward's  days  and  what  it  was  worth  then,  by 
whom  it  was  held  at  the  time  of  the  survey  and  what 
it  was  worth  then  ;  and  lastly,  whether  its  worth  could 
be  raised.  Nothing  was  to  be  left  out.  "So  sooth 
narrowly  did  he  let  spear  it  out,  that  there  was  not 
a  hide  or  a  yard  of  land,  nor  further — it  is  shame  to 
tell,  and  it  thought  him  no  shame  to  do — an  ox  nor 
a  cow  nor  a  swine  was  left  that  was  not  set  in  his  writ." 
This  kind  of  searching  inquiry,  never  liked  at  any 
time,  would  be  specially  grievous  then.  The  taking  of 
the  survey  led  to  disturbances  in  many  places,  in  which 
not  a  few  lives  were  lost.  While  the  work  was  going 
on,  William  went  to  and  fro  till  he  knew  thoroughly 
how  this  land  was  set  and  of  what  men.  He  had  now 
ajist  of  all  men,  Frennh  a.nri  English;  wTio  hfrM  land  in 
his  kingdom.  And  it  was  not  enough  to  have  their 
names  in  a  writ :  Jie  would  see  them  face  to  face^  On 
the  making  of  the  survey  followed  that  great  assembly, 
that  great  work  of  legislation,  which  was  the  crown  of 
William's  life  as  a  ruler  and  lawgiver  of  England.  The 
usual  assemblies  of  the  year  had  been  held  at  Win- 
chester and  Westminster.  An  extraordinary  assembly 
was  held  in  the  plain  of  Salisbury  on  the  first  day  of 


186  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP. 

August.  The  work  of  that  assembly  has  been  already 
spoken  of.  It  was  now  that  all  the  owners  of  land  in 
the  kingdom  became  the  men  of  the  King  ;  it  was  now 
that  England  became  one,  with  no  fear  of  being  again 
parted  asunder. 

The  close  connexion  between  the  Great  Survey  and 
the  law  and  the  oath  of  Salisbury  is  plain.  It  was  a 
great  matter  for  the  King  to  get  in  the  gold  certainly 
and,  we  may  add,  fairly.  William  would  deal  with  no 
man  otherwise  than  according  to  law  as  he  understood 
the  law.  But  he  sought  for  more  than  this.  He  would 
not  only  know  what  this  land  could  be  made  to  pay ;  he 
would  know  the  state  of  his  kingdom  in  every  detail : 
he  would  know  its  military  strength ;  he  would  know 
whether  his  own  will,  in  the  long  process  of  taking  from 
this  man  and  giving  to  that,  had  been  really  carried  out. 
Domesday  is  before_all  things jirecord  of  the  great  con- 
fiscatiojn,  a  record  of  that  gradual  change  by  which,  in 
.Jess  than  twenty  years,  the  greater  part  of  the  lajJcToT 
England  jmcTTee^Tf a^steffeor  from  native  to  foreign 
owners.  And  nothing  show¥n^e"T)bl^s~day~iir  "ivhat 
a  formally  legal  fashion  that  transfer  was  carried  out. 
What  were  the  principles  on  which  it  was  carried  out, 
we  have  already  seen.  All  private  property  in  land  came 
only  from  the  grant  of  King  William.  It  had  all  passed 
into  his  hands  by  lawful  forfeiture ;  he  might  keep  it 
himself ;  he  might  give  it  back  to  its  old  owner  or  grant 
it  to  a  new  one.  So  it  was  at  the  general  redemption 
of  lands ;  so  it  was  whenever  fresh  conquests  or  fresh 
revolts  threw  fresh  lands  into  the  King's  hands.  The 

taken  for  granted[jjliat  we 


XL  THE  LAST  YEARS  OF  WILLIAM.  187 

are  a  little  startled  to  find  it  incidentally  set  forth  in  so 
many  words  in  a  case  of  no  special  importance.  A  priest 
named  Eobert  held  a  single  yardland  in  alms  of  the 
King ;  he  became  a  monk  in  the  monastery  of  Stow-in- 
Lindesey,  and  his  yardland  became  the  property  of  the 
house.  One  hardly  sees  why  this  case  should  have  been 
picked  out  for  a  solemn  declaration  of  the  general  law. 
Yet,  as  "  the  day  on  which  the  English  redeemed  their 
lands  "  is  spoken  of  only  casually  in  the  case  of  a  par- 
ticular estate,  so  the  principle  that  no  man  could  hold 
lands  except  by  the  King's  grant  ("  Non  licet  terram 
alicui  habere  nisi  regis  concessu  ")  is  brought  in  only  to 
illustrate  the  wrongful  dealing  of  Eobert  and  the  monks 
of  Stow  in  the  case  of  a  very  small  holding  indeed. 

All  this  is  a  vast  system  of  legal  fictions;  for 
William's  whole  position,  the  whole  scheme  of  his 
government,  rested  on  a  system  of  legal  fictions. 
Domesday  is  full  of  them ;  one  might  almost  say  that 
there  is  nothing  else  there.  A  very  attentive  study  of 
Domesday  might  bring  out  the  fact  that  William  was 
a  foreign  conqueror,  and  that  the  book  itself  was  a 
record  of  the  process  by  which  he  took  the  lands  of  the 
natives  who  had  fought  against  him  to  reward  the 
strangers  who  had  fought  for  him.  But  nothing  of  this 
kind  appears  on  the  surface  of  the  record.  The  great 
facts  of  the  Conquest  are  put  out  of  sight.  William  is 
taken  for  granted,  not  only  as  the  lawful  king,  but  as 
the  immediate  successor  of  Edward.  The  "time  of 
King  Edward"  and  the  "time  of  King  William"  are 
the  two  times  that  the  law  knows  of.  The  compilers 
of  the  record  are  put  to  some  curious  shifts  to  describe 
the  time  between  "the  day  when  King  Edward  was 


188  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP. 

alive  and  dead"  and  the  day  "when  King  William 
came  into  England."  That  coming  might  have  been 
as  peaceful  as  the  coming  of  James  the  First  or  George 
the  First.  The  two  great  battles  are  more  than  once 
referred  to,  but  only  casually  in  the  mention  of  par- 
ticular persons.  A  very  sharp  critic  might  guess  that 
one  of  them  had  something  to  do  with  King  William's 
coming  into  England ;  but  that  is  all.  Harold  appears 
only  as  Earl ;  it  is  only  in  two  or  three. .places.,. that  we 
hear  of  a  "time  of  Harold,"  and  even  of  Harold  "seizing 
the  kingdgnv^jmd  "reigning. "  These  two  or  three 
places  stand  out  in  such  contrast  to  the  general  language 
of  the  record  that  we  are  led  to  think  that  the  scribe 
must  have  copied  some  earlier  record  or  taken  down  the 
words  of  some  witness,  and  must  have  forgotten  to 
translate  them  into  more  loyal  formulae.  So  in  recording 
who  held  the  land  in  King  Edward's  day  and  who  in 
King  William's,  there  is  nothing  to  show  that  in  so 
many  cases  the  holder  under  Edward  had  been  turned 
out  to  make  room  for  the  holder  under  William.  The 
former  holder  is  marked  by  the  perfectly  colourless 
word  "  ancestor  "  ("  antecessor  "),  a  word  as  yet  meaning, 
not  "forefather,"  but  "predecessor"  of  any  kind.  In 
Domesday  the  word  is  most  commonly  an  euphemism 
for  "dispossessed  Englishman."  It  is  a  still  more  dis- 
tinct euphemism  where  the  Norman  holder  is  in  more 
than  one  place  called  the  "heir"  of  the  dispossessed 
Englishmen. 

The  formulae  of  Domesday  are  the  most  speaking 
witness  to  the  spirit  of  outward  legality  which  ruled 
every  act  of  William.  In  this  way  they  are  wonder- 
fully instructive ;  but  from  the  formulas  alone  no  one 


xi.  THE  LAST  YEARS  OF  WILLIAM.  189 

could  ever  make  the  real  facts  of  William's  coming 
and  reign.  It  is  the  incidental  notices  which  make  us 
more  at  home  in  the  local  and  personal  life  of  this  reign 
than  of  any  reign  before  or  for  a  long  time  after.  The 
Commissioners  had  to  report  whether  the  King's  will 
had  been  everywhere  carried  out,  whether  every  man, 
great  and  small,  French  and  English,  had  what  the 
King  meant  him  to  have,  neither  more  nor  less.  And 
they  had  often  to  report  a  state  of  things  different  from 
what  the  King  had  meant  to  be.  Many  men  had  not 
all  that  King  William  had  meant  them  to  have,  and 
many  others  had  much  more.  Normans  had  taken 
both  from  Englishmen  and  from  other  Normans ; 
Englishmen  had  taken  from  Englishmen ;  some  had 
taken  from  ecclesiastical  bodies ;  some  had  taken  from 
King  William  himself ;  nay  King  William  himself  holds 
lands  which  he  ought  to  give  up  to  another  man.  This 
last  entry  at  least  shows  that  William  was  fully  ready  to 
do  right,  according  to  his  notions  of  right.  So  also  the 
King's  two  brothers  are  set  down  among  the  chief  offend- 
ers. Of  these  unlawful  holdings  of  land,  marked  in  the 
technical  language  of  the  Survey  as  inmsiones  and  occupa- 
tiones,  many  were  doubtless  real  cases  of  violent  seizure, 
without  excuse  even  according  to  William's  reading  of 
the  law.  But  this  does  not  always  follow,  even  when 
the  language  of  the  Survey  would  seem  to  imply  it. 
Words  implying  violence,  per  vim  and  the  like,  are  used 
in  the  legal  language  of  all  ages,  where  no  force  has 
been  used,  merely  to  mark  a  possession  as  illegal.  We 
are  startled  at  finding  the  Apostle  Paul  set  down  as  one 
of  the  offenders;  but  the  words  "sanctus  Paulus  in- 


190  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP. 

Paul's  church  in  London  held  lands  to  which  the  Com- 
missioners held  that  they  had  no  good  title.  It  is  these 
cases  where  one  man  held  land  which  another  claimed 
that  gave  opportunity  for  those  personal  details,  stories, 
notices  of  tenures  and  customs,  which  make  Domesday 
the  most  precious  store  of  knowledge  of  the  time. 

One  fruitful  and  instructive  source  of  dispute  comes 
from  the  way  in  which  the  lands  in  this  or  that  district 
were  commonly  granted  out.  The  in-comer,  commonly 
a  foreigner,  received  all  the  lands  which  such  and  such 
a  man,  commonly  a  dispossessed  Englishman,  held  in 
that  shire  or  district.  The  grantee  stepped  exactly 
into  the  place  of  the  antecessor  ;  he  inherited  all  his  rights 
and  all  his  burthens.  He  inherited  therewith  any  dis- 
putes as  to  the  extent  of  the  lands  of  the  antecessor  or 
as  to  the  nature  of  his  tenure.  And  new  disputes  arose 
in  the  process  of  transfer.  One  common  source  of  dis- 
pute was  when  the  former  owner,  besides  lands  which 
were  strictly  his  own,  held  lands  on  lease,  subject  to  a 
reversionary  interest  on  the  part  of  the  Crown  or  the 
Church.  The  lease  or  sale — emere  is  the  usual  word — of 
Church  lands  for  three  lives  to  return  to  the  Church  at 
the  end  of  the  third  life  was  very  common.  If  the  ante- 
cessor was  himself  the  third  life,  the  grantee,  his  heir, 
had  no  claim  to  the  land  ;  and  in  any  case  he  could  take 
in  only  with  all  its  existing  liabilities.  But  the  grantee 
often  took  possession  of  the  whole  of  the  land  held  by  the 
antecessor,  as  if  it  were  all  alike  his  own.  A  crowd  of 
complaints  followed  from  all  manner  of  injured  persons 
and  bodies,  great  and  small,  French  and  English,  lay  and 
clerical.  The  Commissioners  seem  to  have  fairly  heard 
all,  and  to  have  fairly  reported  all  for  the  King  to  judge 


xi.  THE  LAST  YEARS  OF  WILLIAM.  191 

of.  It  is  their  care  to  do  right  to  all  men  which  has 
given  us  such  strange  glimpses  of  the  inner  life  of  an 
age  which  had  none  like  it  before  or  after. 

The  general  Survey  followed  by  the  general  homage 
might  seem  to  mark  W  illiam's  work  in  England,  his  Work" 
"as  an  English  statesman,  as  done.  He  could  hardly  have 
had  time  to  redress  the  many  cases  of  wrong  which  the 
Survey  laid  before  him ;  but  he  was  able  to  wring  yet 
another  tax  out  of  the  nation  according  to  his  new  and 
more  certain  register.  He  then,  for  the  last  time,  crossed 
to  Normandy  with  his  new  hoard.  The  Chronicler  and 
other  writers  of  the  time  dwell  on  the  physical  portents 
of  these  two  years,  the  storms,  the  fires,  the  plagues,  the 
sharp  hunger,  the  deaths  of  famous  men  on  both  sides  of 
the  sea.  Of^  the  year  1087,  the  last  year  of  the  Con- 
queror, it  needs  the  full  strength  of  _onr  anm'p.nt.  trmc^ 
to  setjorth  the  signs  and  wonders.  The  King  had  left 
England  safe,  peaceful,  thoroughly  bowed  down  under 
the  yoke,  cursing  the  ruler  who  taxed  her  and  granted 
away  her  lands,  yet  half  blessing  him  for  the  "good 
frith  "  that  he  made  against  the  murderer,  the  robber,  and 
the  ravisher.  But  the  land  that  he  had  won  was  neither 
to  see  his  end  nor  to  shelter  his  dust.  One  last  gleam 
of  success  was,  after  so  many  reverses,  to  crown  his 
arms ;  but  it  was  success  which  was  indeed  unworthy 
of  the  Conqueror  who  had  entered  Exeter  and  Le  Mans 
in  peaceful  triumph.  And  the  death-blow  was  now  to 
come  to  him  who,  after  so  many  years  of  warfare, 
stooped  at  last  for  the  first  time  to  cruel  and  petty 
havoc  without  an  object. 

The    border -land    of    France    and    Normandy,    the 


192 


WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR. 


CHAP. 


French  Vexin,  the  land  of  which  Mantes  is  the  capital, 

Border  wars  had  been  common  ;  just  at  this  time  the 
inroads  of  the  French  commanders~~at  Mantes  are  said 
to  have  been  specially  destructive.  William  not  only 
demanded  redress  from  the  King,  but  called  for  the  sur- 
render of  the  whole  Vexin.  What  followed  is  a  familiar 
story.  <Eljilip  makes  a  foolish  jest  on  the  bodily  state  of 
his  great  rivid^umlJelJusj^then  to  carry  outfliis  threats. 
"Thp.  King  of  |,he  English  lies  in  at  Rouen  7~tEere~wffl~ire~ 
a  great  show  of  candles  at  his  churching."  As  at  ATen- 
9on  in  his  youth,  so  now,  William,  who  could  pass  by 
real  injuries,  was  stung  to  the  uttermost  by  personal 
mockery.  By  the  splendour  of  God,  when  he  rose  up 
again,  he  would  light  a  hundred  thousand  candles  at 
Philip's  cost.  He.,  ke^^lns.word^  at  the_cp^jt.Qf_JEliilin!s- 
subjects.  The  ballads  of  the  day  told  how  he  went 
forth  and  gathered  the  fruits  of  autumn  in  the  fields  and 
orchards  and  vineyards  of  the  enemy.  But  he  did 
more  than  gather  fruits  ;  the  candles  of  his  churching 
were  indeed  lighted  in  the  burning  streets  of  Mantes. 
The—  picture  of  Wiftram  ~tlre"-4*kmt-4lii££iin^ 

ike  this  is  strange  even  after  the 


liarrvjng  of  Northumberland  and  the  making  of  the 
_New  ^Forest.  Riding  to  and  fro  among  the  flames, 
bidding  his  men  with  glee  to  heap  on  the  fuel,  gladdened 
at  the  sight  of  burning  houses  and  churches,  a  false  step 
of  his  horse  gave  him  his  death-blow.  Carried  to  Rouen, 
to  the  priory  of  Saint  Gervase  near  the  city,  he  lingered 
from  August  15  to  September  7,  and  then  the  reign  and 
life  of  the  Conqueror  came  to  an  end.  Forsaken  by  his 
children,  his  body  stripped  and  well  nigh  forgotten,  the 


xi.  THE  LAST  YEARS  OF  WILLIAM.  193 

loyalty  of  one  honest  knight,  Herlwin  of  Conteville, 
bears  his  body  to  his  grave  in  his  own  church  at  Caen. 
His  very  grave  is  disputed ;  a  dispossessed  antecessor 
claims  the  ground  as  his  own,  and  the  dead  body  of  the 
Conqueror  has  to  wait  while  its  last  resting-place  is 
bought  with  money.  Into  that  resting-place  force  alone 
can  thrust  his  bulky  frame,  and  the  rites  of  his  burial  are 
as  wildly  cut  short  as  were  the  rites  of  his  crowning. 
With  much  striving  he  had  at  last  won  his  seven  feet  of 
ground ;  but  he  was  not  to  keep  it  for  ever.  Religious 
warfare  broke  down  his  tomb  and  scattered  his  bones, 
save  one  treasured  relic.  Civil  revolution  swept  away 
the  one  remaining  fragment.  And  now,  while  we  seek 
in  vain  beneath  the  open  sky  for  the  rifled  tombs  of 
Harold  and  of  Waltheof,  a  stone  beneath  the  vault  of 
Saint  Stephen's  still  tells  us  where  the  bones  of  William 
once  lay  but  where  they  lie  no  longer. 

There  is  no  need  to  doubt  the  striking  details  of  the 
death  and  burial  of  the  Conqueror.  We  shrink  from 
giving  the  same  trust  to  the  long  tale  of  penitence  which 
is  put  into  the  mouth  of  the  dying  King.  He  may,  in 
that  awful  hour,  have  seen  the  wrong-doing  of  the  last 
one-and-twenty  years  of  his  life;  he  hardly  threw  his 
repentance  into  the  shape  of  a  detailed  autobiographical 
confession.  But  the  more  authentic  sayings  and  doings 
of  William's  death-bed  enable  us  to  follow  his  course  as 
an  English  statesman  almost  to  his  last  moments.  His 
end  was  one  of  devotion,  of  prayers  and  almsgiving,  and 
of  opening  of  the  prison  to  them  that  were  bound.  All 
save  one  of  his  political  prisoners,  English  and  Norman, 
he  willingly  set  free.  Morkere  and  his  companions 

o 


194  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP. 

from  Ely,  Walfnoth  son  of  God  wine,  hostage  for  Harold's 
faith,  Wulf  son  of  Harold  and  Ealdgyth,  taken,  we  can 
hardly  doubt,  as  a  babe  when  Chester  opened  its  gates 
to  William,  were  all  set  free  ;  some  indeed  were  put  in 
bonds  again  by  the  King's  successor.  But  Odo  William 
would  not  set  free  ;  he  knew  too  well  how  many  would 
suffer  if  he  were  again  let  loose  upon  the  world.  But 
love  of  kindred  was  still  strong;  at  last  he  yielded, 
sorely  against  his  will,  to  the  prayers  and  pledges  of  his 
other  brother.  Odo  went  forth  from  his  prison,  again 
Bishop  of  Bayeux,  soon  again  to  be  Earl  of  Kent,  and 
soon  to  prove  William's  foresight  by  his  deeds. 

William's  disposal  of  his  dominions  on  his  death-bed 
carries  on  his  political  history  almost  to  his  last  breath. 
Robert,  the  banished  rebel,  might  seem  to  have  forfeited 
all  claims  to  the  succession.  But  the  doctrine  of  heredi- 
tary right  had  strengthened  during  the  sixty  years  of 
William's  life.  He  is  made  to  say  that,  though  he  fore- 
sees the  wretchedness  of  any  land  over  which  Robert 
should  be  the  ruler,  still  he  cannot  keep  him  out  of  the 
duchy  of  Normandy  which  is  his  birthright.  Of  England 
he  will  not  dare  to  dispose ;  he  leaves  the  decision  to 
God,  seemingly  to  Archbishop  Lanfranc  as  the  vicar  of 
God.  He  will  only  say  that  his  wish  is  for  his  son 
William  to  succeed  him  in  his  kingdom,  and  he  prays 
Lanfranc  to  crown  him  king,  if  he  deem  such  a  course 
to  be  right.  Such  a  message  was  a  virtual  nomination, 
and  William  the  Red  succeeded  his  father  in  England, 
but  kept  his  crown  only  by  the  help  of  loyal  Englishmen 
against  Norman  rebels.  William  Rufus,  it  must  be  re- 
membered, still  under  the  tutelage  of  his  father  and 
Lanfranc  had  not  yet  shown  his  bad  qualities ;  he  was 


XL  THE  LAST  YEARS  OF  WILLIAM.  195 

known  as  yet  only  as  the  dutiful  son  who  fought  for  his 
father  against  the  rebel  Eobert.  By  ancient  English  law, 
that  strong  preference  which  was  all  that  any  man  could 
claim  of  right  belonged  beyond  doubt  to  the  youngest 
of  William's  sons,  the  English  ^Etheling  Henry.  He 
alone  was  born  in  the  land ;  he  alone  was  the  son  of  a 
crowned  King  and  his  Lady.  It  is  perhaps  with  a  know- 
ledge of  what  followed  that  William  is  made  to  bid  his 
youngest  son  wait  while  his  eldest  go  before  him  •  that 
he  left  him  landless,  but  master  of  a  hoard  of  silver, 
there  is  no  reason  to  doubt.  English  feeling,  which 
welcomed  Henry  thirteen  years  later,  would  doubtless 
have  gladly  seen  his  immediate  accession ;  but  it  might 
have  been  hard,  in  dividing  William's  dominions,  to  have 
shut  out  the  second  son  in  favour  of  the  third.  And  in 
the  scheme  of  events  by  which  conquered  England  was 
to  rise  again,  the  reign  of  Rufus,  at  the  moment  the 
darkest  time  of  all,  had  its  appointed  share. 

That  England  could  rise  again,  that  she  could  rise 
with  a  new  life,  strengthened  by  her  momentary  over- 
throw, was  before  all  things  owing  to  the  lucky  destiny 
which,  if  she  was  to  be  conquered,  gave  her  William  the 
Great  as  her  Conqueror.  It  is  as  it  is  in  all  human  affairs. 
William  himself  could  not  have  done  all  that  he  did, 
*rwTttin.gly  and  unwittingly^janjtessjn^^ 
favourable  to  him ;  but  favourable  circumstances  would 
have  been  useless,  unless  there rTfad~l5elmnrTnan  like 
William  to  take  advantage  of  them.  What  he  did, 
wittingly  or  unwittingly,  he  did  by  virtue  of  his  special 
position,  the  position  of  a  foreign  conqueror  veiling  his 
conquest  under  a  legal  claim.  The  hour  and  the  man" 


196  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP. 

were  alike  needed.  The  man  in  his  own  hour  wrought 
a  work,  partly  conscious,  partly  unconscious.  The  more 
clearly  any  man  understands  his  conscious  work,  the 
more  sure  is  that  conscious  work  to  lead  to  further 
results  of  which  he  dreams  not.  So  it  was  with  the  Con- 
queror of  England.  His  purpose  was  to  win  and  to 
keep  the  kingdom  of  England,  and  to  hand  it  on  to  those 
who  should  come  after  him  more  firmly  united  than  it 
had  ever  been  before.  In  this  work  his  spirit  of  formal 
legality,  his  shrinking  from  needless  change,  stood  him 
in  good  stead.  He  saw  that  as  the  kingdom  of  England 
could  best  be  won  by  putting  forth  a  legal  claim  to  it,  so 
it  could  best  be  kept  by  putting  on  the  character  of  a 
legal  ruler,  and  reigning  as  the  successor  of  the  old 
kings  seeking  the  unity  of  the  kingdom ;  he  saw,  from 
the  example  both  of  England  and  of  other  lands,  the 
dangers  which  threatened  that  unity ;  he  saw  what 
'measures  were  needed  to  preserve  it  in  his  own  day, 
measures  which  have  preserved  it  ever  since.  Here  is  a 
work,  a  conscious  work,  which  entitles  the  foreign  Con- 
queror to  a  place  among  English  statesmen,  and  to  a 
place  in  their  highest  rank.  Further  than  this  we  can- 
not conceive  William  himself  to  have  looked.  All  that 
was  to  come  of  his  work  in  future  ages  was  of  necessity 
hidden  from  his  eyes,  no  less  than  from  the  eyes  of 
smaller  men.  He  had  assuredly  no  formal  purpose  to 
make  England  Norman ;  but  still  less  had  he  any 
thought  that  the  final  outcome  of  his  work  would 
make  England  on  one  side  more  truly  English  than  if 
he  had  never  crossed  the  sea.  In  his  ecclesiastical  work 
he  saw  the  future  still  less  clearly.  He  designed  to 
reform  what  he  deemed  abuses,  to  bring  the  English 


xi.  THE  LAST  YEARS  OF  WILLIAM.  197 

Church  into  closer  conformity  with  the  other  Churches 
of  the  West ;  he  assuredly  never  dreamed  that  the  issue 
of  his  reform  would  be  the  strife  between  Henry  and 
Thomas  and  the  humiliation  of  John.  His  error  was 
that^of  forgetting  that  he  himself  could  wield  powers, 
that  he  could  hoTcT  forces  in  clie^cTc7whicE"~w6uld  be  too 
strong  for  those  who  j&ouIcT  come  after ^  Hm.  AITns" 
purposes  with  regard  to  the  relations  of  England  and 
Normandy  it  would  be  vain  to  guess.  The  mere  leav- 
ing of  kingdom  and  duchy  to  different  sons  would  not 
necessarily  imply  that  he  designed  a  complete  or 

lasting    separation.       But    assuredly- Wilh'ain_did    not 

foresee  that  England^  dragged  into  wars  with  Franc 
as  the  ally  of  Normandy,  would  remain  the  lasting  rival 
of  France  after  Normandy  had  been  swallowecTup  in 
the  French  kingdom.  If  rivalry  between  England  and 
France  had  not  come  in  this  way,  it  would  doubtless 
have  come  in  some  other  way ;  but  this  is  the  way  in 
which  it  did  come  about.  As  a  result  of  the  union  of 
Normandy  and  England  under  one  raler,  Jt 
William's  woi^but  _a ...work_oj^ jvhic 
though^,.  So  it  was  with  the  increased  connexion  of 
every  kind  between  England  and  the  continent_jof 
Europe  which  followed  on  William's  coming.  With  one 
part  of  Europe  indeed  the  connexion  of  England  was 
lessened.  For  three  centuries  before  William's  coming, 
dealings  in  war  and  peace  with  the  Scandinavian  king- 
doms had  made  up  a  large  part  of  English  history. 
Since  the  baffled  enterprise  of  the  holy  Cnut,  our 
dealings  with  that  part  of  Europe  have  been  of  only 
secondary  account. 

But  in  our  view  of  William  as  an  English  statesman, 


198  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP. 

the  main  feature  of  all  is  that  spirit  of  formal  legality 
of  which  we  have  so  often  spoken.  Its  direct  effects, 
partly  designed,  portly  nmlrmVnHj  hnvn  nffrrtnfl  mrr 
wjinlft  history  f,o  this  day.  It  was  his  policy  to  disguise 

Vthe  fact  of  conquest,  to  cause  all  the  spoils  of  con- 
quest to  be  held,  in  outward  form,  according  to  the 
ancient  law  of  England.  The  fiction  became  a  fact, 
and  the  fact  greatly  helped  in  the  process  of  fusion 
between  Normans  and  English.  The  conquering  race 
could  not  keep  itself  distinct  from  the  conquered,  and 
the  form  which  the  fusion  took  was  for  the  conquerors 
to  be  lost  in  the  greater  mass  of  the  conquered.  Wil- 
liam founded  no  new  state,  no  new  nation,  no  new 
constitution ;  he  simply  kept  what  he  found,  with  such 
modifications  as  his  position  made  needful.  But  with- 
out any  formal  change  in  the  nature  of  English  king- 
ship, his  position  enabled  him  to  clothe  the  crown  with 
a  practical  power  such  as  it  had  never  held  before,  to 
make  his  rule,  in  short,  a  virtual  despotism.  These 
two  facts  determined  the  later  course  of  English  history, 
and  they  determined  it  to  the  lasting  good  of  the  Eng- 
lish nation.  The  conservative  instincts  of  William 
allowed  our  national  life  and  our  national  institutions 
to  live  on  unbroken  through  his  conquest.  But  it  was 
before  all  things  the  despotism  of  William,  his  despotism 
under  legal  forms,  which  preserved  our  national  institu- 
tions to  all  time.  As  a  less  discerning  conqueror 
might  have  swept  our  ancient  laws  and  liberties  away, 
so  under  a  series  of  native  kings  those  laws  and  liberties 
might  have  died  out,  as  they  died  out  in  so  many  con- 
tinental knds.  But  the  despotism  of  the  crown  called 
forth  the  national  spirit  in  a  conscious  and  antagonistic 


xi.  THE  LAST  YEARS  OF  WILLIAM.  199 

shape ;  it  called  forth  that  spirit  in  men  of  both  races 
alike,  and  made  Normans  and  English  one  people.  The 
old  institutions  lived  on,  to  be  clothed  with  a  fresh  life, 
to  be  modified  as  changed  circumstances  might  make 
needful.  The  despotism  of  the  Norman  kings,  the 
peculiar  character  of  that  despotism,  enabled  the  great 
revolution  of  the  thirteenth  century  to  take  the  forms, 
which  it  took,  at  once  conservative  and  progressive. 
So  it  was  when,  more  than  four  centuries  after  William's 
day,  England  again  saw  a  despotism  carried  on  under 
the  forms  of  law.  Henry  the  Eighth  reigned  as 
William  had  reigned ;  he  did  not  reign  like  his  brother 
despots  on  the  continent ;  the  forms  of  law  and  freedom 
lived  on.  In  the  seventeenth  century  therefore,  as  in 
the  thirteenth,  the  forms  stood  ready  to  be  again 
clothed  with  a  new  life,  to  supply  the  means  for  an- 
other revolution,  again  at  once  conservative  and  pro- 
gressive. It  has  been  remarked  a  thousand  times  that, 
while  other  nations  have  been  driven  to  destroy  and  to 
rebuild  the  political  fabric,  in  England  we  have  never 
had  to  destroy  and  to  rebuild,  but  have  found  it  enough 
to  repair,  to  enlarge,  and  to  improve.  This  character- 
istic of  English  history  is  mainly  owing  to  the  events 
of  the  eleventh  century,  and  owing  above  all  to  the 
personal  agency  of  William.  As  far  as  mortal  man  can 
guide  the  course  of  things  when  he  is  gone,  the  course 
of  our  national  history  since  William's  day  has  been 
the  result  of  William's  character  and  of  William's  acts. 
Well  may  we  restore  to  him  the  surname  that  men 
gave  him  in  his  own  day.  He  may  worthily  take  his 
place  as  William  the  Great  alongside  of  Alexander, 
Constantine,  and  Charles.  They  may  have  wrought  in 


200  WILLIAM  THE  CONQUEROR.  CHAP.  xi. 

some  sort  a  greater  work,  because  they  had  a  wider 
stage  to  work  it  on.  But  no  man  ever  wrought  a  greater 
and  more  abiding  work  on  the  stage  that  fortune  gave 
him  than  he  g 

"  Qui  dux  Normannis,  qui  Caesar  praefuit  Anglis." 

Stranger  and  conqueror,  his  deeds  won  him  a  right  to  a 
place  on  the  roll  of  English  statesmen,  and  no  man 
that  came  after  him  has  won  a  right  to  a  higher  place. 


THE    END. 


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dealt  with  the  life  and  deeds  of  that  '  bright  Occidental  Star,  Queen  Elizabeth 
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humane,  and  scrupulously  candid.  ...  It  is  not  only  a  luminous  estimate  of 
Pitt's  character  and  policy;  it  is  also  a  brilliant  gallery  of  portraits.  The 
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