THE YOUTH OF DUKE WILLIAM.
=1. The Birth, and Accession of Duke William.=--We have already
spoken of Duke Robert, and how he tried to bring back his cousins
the Æthelings to England. Towards the end of his reign Duke Robert
determined to go on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, to pray at the tomb of
Christ and win the forgiveness of his sins. Before he went, he wished
to settle the succession to his duchy, in case he should die on so
long and dangerous a journey. He had no lawful children, and it was
not at all clear who among his kinsfolk had the best right to succeed
him. So, after some difficulty, he was able to persuade the wise men
of Normandy to accept as their future duke his little son William,
who, as his parents had never been married, was called William the
Bastard, till he had won a right to be called William the Conqueror
and William the Great. William was born before his father became Duke,
while he was only Count of the land of Hiesmes, of which Falaise, the
town of the rocks, was the capital, where Count Robert had a castle.
There is a famous castle there still, but it is somewhat later than
William’s time, and he certainly was not born in it. But there is no
doubt that William was born at Falaise, and that his mother Herleva was
the daughter of a tanner of that town, whom Robert afterwards made his
chamberlain. Herleva had also a daughter Adelaide by Duke Robert, and
after his death she married a knight named Herlwin of Conteville, to
whom she bore two sons, Odo and Robert, William’s half-brothers, who
play a great part in our story. William was not at all ashamed of the
lowliness of his birth on the mother’s side, and, when he was duke,
he raised her sons to high honour. As he was not Duke Robert’s lawful
son, he had no right to succeed according to modern law; but the rules
of succession were then not at all fixed, and the Normans above all
thought but little of lawful marriage and birth in such matters. The
chief objection to William’s being acknowledged as the future duke was
that he was a mere child, about seven years old, so that, if his father
died while he was away, he would not be able to govern. But Duke Robert
said, “He is little, but he will grow,” and at last the wise men of
Normandy sware to him. Then Robert went on his pilgrimage and never
came back. He died on his way home, in 1035, a long way from his own
land, at Nikaia in Asia, where the famous Council of the Church was
held in the days of Constantine, and was buried there.
=2. William’s Childhood.=--It was after William became duke, but before
he was a full-grown man, that the Ætheling Alfred had come to his sad
end in England, and that the Ætheling Eadward had been chosen King
there. We cannot say how much William had personally to do with either
matter. He came to his duchy as a child; but his childhood and youth
were of a kind which made him a man, and a strong and wise man, very
early. The Norman nobles were very hard to govern at any time, and
when the prince was a child, they did whatever they chose. They were
always fighting with one another, and sometimes murdering one another
by craft. And they were always rebelling against their young duke, and
sometimes seeking his life. For it must be remembered that they had
not at all wished to have Herleva’s son for their lord, and there were
several kinsmen of Duke Robert who thought, and rightly according to
our notions, that they had a better right to the duchy than William.
The young duke had good and faithful guardians, but several of them
were murdered. The land in short was in a state of utter confusion.
And now that Normandy was divided and weak, the old friendship with
France began to give way, and the French and their kings began again to
remember that the settlement of the Normans had cut off France from the
sea. So Henry the King of the French joined himself to William’s other
enemies, and took his castle of Tillières on the French border. Thus he
was William’s enemy early in his reign, and he became his enemy again
afterwards; but in the most dangerous moment of William’s Norman reign,
the French king was his firm friend. This was in 1047, when a large
part of Normandy rose in rebellion against William, of which we must
say a little more.
=3. The Revolt of Western Normandy.=--It will be remembered that the
western part of Normandy, the lands of Bayeux and Coutances, were won
by the Norman dukes after the eastern part, the lands of Rouen and
Evreux. And it will be remembered that these western lands, won more
lately and fed by new colonies from the North, were still heathen and
Danish some while after eastern Normandy had become Christian and
French-speaking. Now we may be sure that, long before William’s day,
all Normandy was Christian, but it is quite possible that the old
tongue may have lingered on in the western lands. At any rate there
was a wide difference in spirit and feeling between the more French
and the more Danish districts, to say nothing of Bayeux, where, before
the Normans came, there had been a Saxon settlement. One part of the
duchy in short was altogether Romance in speech and manners, while
more or less of Teutonic character still clave to the other. So now
Teutonic Normandy rose against Duke William, and Romance Normandy was
faithful to him. The nobles of the _Bessin_ and _Côtentin_ made league
with William’s cousin Guy of Burgundy, meaning, as far as one can see,
to make Guy Duke of Rouen and Evreux, and to have no lord at all for
themselves. Their leader was Neal, the Viscount of the Côtentin, the
son of the Neal who had beaten back the English invasion in Æthelred’s
day. When the rebellion broke out, William was among them at Valognes,
and they tried to seize him. But his fool warned him in the night; he
rode for his life, and got safe to his own Falaise.
=4. The Battle of Val-ès-Dunes.=--All eastern Normandy was loyal; but
William doubted whether he could by himself overcome so strong an array
of rebels. So he went to Poissy, between Rouen and Paris, and asked his
lord King Henry to help him. So King Henry came with a French army;
and the French and those whom we may call the French Normans met the
Teutonic Normans in battle at Val-ès-dunes, not very far from Caen.
It was William’s first pitched battle, a battle of horsemen, in which
King and Duke fought hand to hand against the rebels, and each slew
some of their chief men. Yet King Henry was once thrown from his horse
by a spear from the Côtentin, a deed of which the men of the peninsula
sang in their rimes. But they were beaten none the less, and the whole
land which had rebelled submitted. Neal escaped, and was after a while
pardoned, nor was Duke William’s hand at all heavy on his vanquished
enemies. But he had vanquished them thoroughly. He was now fully
master of his own duchy; the battle of Val-ès-dunes finally fixed that
Normandy should take its character from Romance Rouen and not from
Teutonic Bayeux. William had in short overcome Saxons and Danes in Gaul
before he came to overcome them in Britain. He had to conquer his
own Normandy before he could conquer England, and we shall see that,
between these two conquests, he had in some sort to conquer France also.
=5. Duke William’s Visit to King Edward.=--Thus Duke William was for
the first time master in Normandy, and four years later it was no
doubt said that King Edward was for the first time master in England.
Godwine was gone, and the King’s Norman favourites had everything their
own way. And now the young Duke came to pay his cousin a visit. With
so many Normans at the court and in other parts of the land, it might
almost seem to him that he was still in his own duchy. Was it now
that the thought first came into his head that he might succeed his
childless kinsman in a kingdom which looked as if it had already become
Norman? Certain it is that William always said that Edward had promised
him the crown at his death; and this visit seems a more likely time
for such a promise than any time before or after. Of course we must
remember that Edward could not, by English law, really leave William
the crown; the utmost that he could do would be to recommend the Wise
Men to choose him at his death. But just at this time neither William
nor Edward was likely to think much about English law, and Edward’s
Norman counsellors were still less likely to think about it than either
of them. We cannot say for certain how it was; but we can hardly doubt
that Edward did make William some kind of promise, and this seems the
most likely time for it. At any rate William had now conquered Normandy
and had visited England. These are two steps towards the time when he
again came to England, not as guest but as Conqueror.
=6. Duke William in his own Duchy.=--We shall see presently that the
course of events in England must have altogether thrown back William’s
hopes with regard to the English crown. But he went on winning fame
and power in his own land beyond the sea. He ruled his duchy wisely
and well, and it flourished greatly under him. He promoted learned men
from other countries, above all two men who lived to play a greater
part in England than in Normandy. These were Lanfranc from Pavia in
Italy and Anselm from Aosta in Burgundy. They were both monks of the
newly-founded monastery of Bec in Normandy, which was at this time a
nursery of famous men. The Duke married Matilda, daughter of Baldwin
Count of Flanders, by whom he had several daughters and, for the
present, three sons, Robert, Richard, and William. The most famous of
his daughters was Adela, who married Stephen Count of Blois. But Duke
William did not reign without rebellions at home and wars abroad. For
a short time after the battle of Val-ès-dunes the friendship between
the Duke and King Henry of France went on. Both joined in a war against
Geoffrey Count of Anjou, who now held the land of Maine between Anjou
and Normandy. In 1049 Duke William for the first time extended his
dominions by winning the castles of Domfront and Ambrières in Maine, of
which Domfront has ever since been part of Normandy. But before long
King Henry got jealous of William’s power, and he was now always ready
to give help to any Norman rebels. Men in France began again to say
that Normandy was a land cut off from France, and that France should be
made again to reach to the sea as of old. And the other neighbouring
princes were jealous of him as well as the King. His neighbours in
Britanny, Anjou, Chartres, and Ponthieu, were all against him. But the
great Duke was able to hold his own against them all, and before long
to make a great addition to his dominions.
=7. Duke William’s Wars with France.=--The wars between Normandy
and France are very important, because they have so great a bearing
on English history. There was no quarrel between England and France
as long as Normandy lay between them. But France and Normandy had
many quarrels and wars; so, when the same prince ruled in England
and in Normandy, England was dragged into the quarrels of Normandy,
and there grew up a rivalry between England and France which went on
after Normandy was conquered by France. These wars therefore between
Duke William and King Henry are really the beginning of the long wars
between England and France. King Henry invaded Normandy three times.
The first time, in 1053, the King came to help a kinsman of the Duke’s,
William Count of Arques near Dieppe, where the castle with a very deep
ditch is still to be seen. This time the French army was caught in an
ambush and was utterly routed. In this battle was killed Ingelram Count
of Ponthieu, which made room for the accession of his brother Count
Guy. The next year, 1054, King Henry came again with a much greater
army, gathered from his own kingdom and from the dominions of many
of the other princes of Gaul. They came in two great divisions, to
attack Normandy on both sides of the Seine. That which came in on the
right bank was utterly cut to pieces in the town of Mortemer, which
they had occupied and where the Normans attacked them by night. Then
the Duke sent a messenger who crossed to the other side of the river
where the King’s own army was, where he climbed a tree and shouted
to them in the darkness to go bury their friends who were dead at
Mortemer. So they were seized with a panic and fled. In this battle
the new Count of Ponthieu, Guy, was taken prisoner, and was not let
go till he became Duke William’s man for his county. Peace was now
made with France, and Duke William was allowed to make some conquests
at the expense of Anjou. But very soon France and Anjou were again
allied against Normandy. In 1058 King Henry made his last invasion.
This time the French army was cut off by a sudden attack at the ford
of Varaville near the Dive. All these campaigns show that William, who
could fight so well in a pitched battle, was no less skilful in all
kinds of cunning enterprises. Soon after this, in 1060, both King Henry
and Geoffrey of Anjou died. William was now safe from all attacks on
that side, all the more so as the new King of the French, Philip, was a
child, and the Regent was William’s own father-in-law Count Baldwin of
Flanders.
=8. The Conquest of Maine.=--Thus William, who in some sort conquered
his own Normandy at Val-ès-dunes, did in some sort also conquer France
at Mortemer and Varaville. But he had not yet enlarged his dominions,
except at Domfront and Ambrières and one or two other points on the
frontier towards Maine. He was presently able to win the whole county.
And this part of William’s life should be carefully studied, because
his conquest of Maine is strikingly like his conquest of England.
In both cases he won a land against the will of its people, and yet
with some show of legal right. Maine had had counts of its own, some
of them famous men, as were also many of the bishops of the great
city of Le Mans; the citizens too were stout and jealous of their
freedom. But latterly the land of Maine had come under the power of
Geoffrey of Anjou. On Geoffrey’s death, the lawful Count Herbert, to
get back his county, commended himself to William, and they settled
that William’s son Robert should marry Herbert’s sister Margaret, and
that Maine should pass to their descendants. This was something like
Edward’s promise of the English crown to William. In 1063 Herbert
died childless, and William claimed the county on behalf of his son,
though he and Margaret were not yet married. But the people of Maine
chose for their count Walter Count of Mantes, who had married Count
Herbert’s aunt Biota. He was the son of King Edward’s sister Godgifu
and brother of Ralph of Hereford. This was like the English people
choosing Harold. Then William made war on Maine, and occupied the
county bit by bit, till the city surrendered and Walter submitted to
him. Soon after this Walter and Biota died; William’s enemies said that
he poisoned them, which is not in the least likely. But from this time
he ruled over Maine as well as over Normandy. We shall see that its
brave people revolted more than once against both him and his sons. But
the conquest of Maine raised William’s power and fame to a higher pitch
than it reached at any other time before his conquest of England. And,
soon after the conquest of Maine, the affairs of Normandy and England,
which have stayed apart ever since William’s visit to Edward, begin to
be joined together. It is time then to go back and see what had been
happening meanwhile in England.