[Illustration: 068.jpg WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR.]
WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR.
Contemporary Monarchs:
EMP. OF GERM. K. OF SCOTLAND K. OF FRANCE. Ks. OF SPAIN.
Henry IV. Malcolm III. 1093 Philip I. Sancho II. 1072
Alphonso VI.
POPES.
Alexander II.1073
Gregory VII. 1085
Victor III. 1087
{1066.} _Nothing_ could exceed the consternation which seized the
English when they received intelligence of the unfortunate battle of
Hastings, the death of their king, the slaughter of their principal
nobility and of their bravest warriors, and the rout and dispersion
of the remainder. But though the loss which they had sustained in that
fatal action was considerable, it might have been repaired by a great
nation; where the people were generally armed, and where there resided
so many powerful noblemen in every province, who could have assembled
their retainers, and have obliged the duke of Normandy to divide his
army, and probably to waste it in a variety of actions and rencounters.
It was thus that the kingdom had formerly resisted for many years its
invaders, and had been gradually subdued by the continued efforts of
the Romans, Saxons, and Danes; and equal difficulties might have been
apprehended by William in this bold and hazardous enterprise. But there
were several vices in the Anglo-Saxon constitution, which rendered it
difficult for the English to defend their liberties in so critical an
emergency. The people had in a great measure lost all national pride and
spirit by their recent and long subjection to the Danes; and as Canute
had, in the course of his administration, much abated the rigors of
conquest, and had governed them equitably by their own laws, they
regarded with the less terror the ignominy of a foreign yoke, and
deemed the inconveniences of submission less formidable than those of
bloodshed, war, and resistance. Their attachment also to the ancient
royal family had been much weakened by their habits of submission to
the Danish princes, and by their late election of Harold or their
acquiescence in his usurpation. And as they had long been accustomed
to regard Edgar Atheling, the only heir of the Saxon line, as unfit
to govern them even in times of order and tranquillity, they could
entertain small hopes of his being able to repair such great losses as
they had sustained, or to withstand the victorious arms of the duke of
Normandy.
That they might not, however, be altogether wanting to themselves in
this extreme necessity, the English took some steps towards adjusting
their disjointed government, and uniting themselves against the common
enemy. The two potent earls, Edwin and Morcar, who had fled to London
with the remains of the broken army, took the lead on this occasion: in
concert with Stigand, archbishop of Canterbury, a man possessed of great
authority and of ample revenues, they proclaimed Edgar, and endeavored
to put the people in a posture of defence, and encourage them to
resist the Normans.[*] But the terror of the late defeat, and the near
neighborhood of the invaders, increased the confusion inseparable from
great revolutions; and every resolution proposed was hasty, fluctuating,
tumultuary; disconcerted by fear or faction; ill planned, and worse
executed.
William, that his enemies might have no leisure to recover from their
consternation or unite their counsels, immediately put himself in motion
after his victory, and resolved to prosecute an enterprise which nothing
but celerity and vigor could render finally successful. His first
attempt was against Rornney, whose inhabitants he severely punished, on
account of their cruel treatment of some Norman seamen and soldiers, who
had been carried thither by stress of weather, or by a mistake in their
course;[**] and foreseeing that his conquest of England might still be
attended with many difficulties and with much opposition, he deemed it
necessary, before he should advance farther into the country, to make
himself master of Dover, which would both secure him a retreat in
cast of adverse fortune, and afford him a safe landing-place for such
supplies as might be requisite for pushing his advantages.
[* Gill. Pict. p. 205. Order. Vitaas, p. 502.
Hoveden, p. 449 Knygnton, p. 2343.]
[** Gul. Pict. p. 204]
The terror diffused by his victory at Hastings was so great that the
garrison of Dover, though numerous and well provided, immediately
capitulated; and as the Normans, rushing in to take possession of the
town, hastily set fire to some of the houses, William, desirous to
conciliate the minds of the English by an appearance of lenity and
justice, made compensation to the inhabitants for their losses.[*]
The Norman army, being much distressed with a dysentery, was obliged to
remain here eight days; but the duke, on their recovery, advanced
with quick marches towards London, and by his approach increased the
confusions which were already so prevalent in the English counsels. The
ecclesiastics in particular, whose influence was great over the people
began to declare in his favor; and as most of the bishops and dignified
clergymen were even then Frenchmen or Normans, the pope’s bull, by which
his enterprise was avowed and hallowed, was now openly insisted on as a
reason for general submission. The superior learning of those prelates,
which, during the Confessor’s reign, had raised them above the ignorant
Saxons, made their opinions be received with implicit faith; and a
young prince; like Edgar, whose capacity was deemed so mean, was but ill
qualified to resist the impression which they made on the minds of the
people. A repulse which a body of Londoners received from five hundred
Norman horse, renewed in the city the terror of the great defeat at
Hastings; the easy submission of all the inhabitants of Kent was an
additional discouragement to them; the burning of Southwark before
their eyes made them dread a like fate to their own city; and no man
any longer entertained thoughts but of immediate safety ana of
self-preservation. Even the Earls Edwin and Morcar, in despair of making
effectual resistance, retired with their troops to their own provinces;
and the people thenceforth disposed themselves unanimously to yield to
the victor. As soon as he passed the Thames at Wallingford, and reached
Berkhamstead, Stigand, the primate, made submissions to him: before
he came within sight of the city, all the chief nobility, and Edgar
Atheling himself, the new elected king, came into his camp, and declared
their intention of yielding to his authority.[**] They requested him to
mount their throne, which they now considered as vacant; and declare to
him, that as they had always been ruled by regal power, they desired to
follow, in this particular, the example of their ancestors, and knew of
no one more worthy than himself to hold the reins of government.[***]
[* Gul. Pict. p. 204.]
[** Hoveden, p. 450. Flor. Wigorn. p, 634]
[*** Gul. Pict. p. 205. Order. Vitalis, p. 503.]
Though this was the great object to which the duke’s enterprise tended,
he feigned to deliberate on the offer; and being desirous, at first, of
preserving the appearance of a legal administration, he wished to obtain
a more explicit and formal consent of the English nation;[*] but Aimar
of Aquitain, a man equally respected for valor in the field and for
prudence in council, remonstrating with him on the danger of delay in so
critical a conjuncture, he laid aside all further scruples, and accepted
of the crown which was tendered him. Orders were immediately issued to
prepare every thing for the ceremony of his coronation; but as he
was yet afraid to place entire confidence in the Londoners, who were
numerous and warlike, he meanwhile commanded fortresses to be erected,
in order to curb the inhabitants, and to secure his person and
government.[**]
Stigand was not much in the duke’s favor, both because he had intruded
into the see on the expulsion of Robert the Norman, and because he
possessed such influence and authority over the English[***] as might be
dangerous to a new-established monarch. William, therefore, pretending
that the primate had obtained his pall in an irregular manner from Pope
Benedict IX., who was himself a usurper, refused to be consecrated
by him, and conferred this honor on Aldred, arch bishop of York.
Westminster Abbey was the place appointed for that magnificent
ceremony; the most considerable of the nobility, both English and
Norman, attended the duke on this occasion; Aldred, in a short speech,
asked the former whether they agreed to accept of William as their king;
the bishop of Coutance put the same question to the latter; and both
being answered with acclamations,[****] Aldred administered to the duke
the usual coronation oath, by which he bound himself to protect the
church, to administer justice, and to repress violence; he then anointed
him, and put the crown upon his head.[*****] There appeared nothing but
joy in the countenance of the spectators; but in that very moment there
burst forth the strongest symptoms of the jealousy and animosity which
prevailed between the nations, and which continually increased during
the reign of this prince.
[* Gul. Pict. p. 205].
[** Gul. Pict. p. 205.]
[*** Eadmer, p. 6.]
[**** Order. Vitalis, p. 503.]
[***** Malmsbury (p. 271) says, that he also
promised to govern the Normans and English by equal laws;
and this addition to the usual oath seems not improbable,
considering the circumstances of the time!]
The Norman soldiers, who were placed without in order to guard the
church, hearing the shouts within, fancied that the English were
offering violence to their duke; and they immediately assaulted the
populace, and set fire to the neighboring houses. The alarm was conveyed
to the nobility who surrounded the prince; both English and Normans,
full of apprehensions, rushed out to secure themselves from the present
danger; and it was with difficulty that William himself was able to
appease the tumult.[*]
The king, thus possessed of the throne by a pretended descination of
King Edward, and by an irregular election of the people, but still more
by force of arms, retired from London to Berking, in Essex, {1067.} and
there received the submissions of all the nobility who had not attended
his coronation. Edric, surnamed the Forester, grand-nephew to that Edric
so noted for his repeated acts of perfidy during the reigns of Ethelred
and Edmond; Earl Coxo, a man famous for bravery; even Edwin and Morcar,
earls of Mercia and Northumberland; with the other principal noblemen
of England, came and swore fealty to him; were received into favor; and
were confirmed in the possession of their estates and dignities.[**]
Every thing bore the appearance of peace and tranquillity; and William
had no other occupation than to give contentment to the foreigners who
had assisted him to mount the throne, and to his new subjects, who had
so readily submitted to him.
He had got possession of the treasure of Harold, which was considerable;
and being also supplied with rich presents from the opulent men in all
parts of England, who were solicitous to gain the favor of their new
sovereign, he distributed great sums among his troops, and by this
liberality gave them hopes of obtaining at length those more durable
establishments which they had expected from his enterprise.[***] The
ecclesiastics, both at home and abroad, had much forwarded his success;
and he failed not, in return, to express his gratitude and devotion in
the manner which was most acceptable to them; he sent Harold’s
standard to the pope, accompanied with many valuable presents; all the
considerable monasteries and churches in France, where prayers had been
put up for his success, now tasted of his bounty;[****] the English
monks found him well disposed to favor their order; and he built a
new convent near Hastings, which he called Battle Abbey, and which on
pretence of supporting monks to pray lor his own soul, and for that of
Harold, served as a lasting memorial of his victory.[*****]
[* Gul Pict. p. 206. Order. Vitalis, p. 503.]
[** Gul. Pict. p. 208. Order. Vitalis, p. 506.]
[*** Gul. Pict. p. 206.]
[**** Gul. Pict. p. 205.]
[***** Gul. Gemet. p. 288. Chron. Sax. p. 189. M.
West. p. 226. M. Paris, p. 9. Diceto, p. 482. This convent
was freed by him from all episcopal jurisdiction. Monast.
Anglic, tom. i. p. 311, 312.]
He introduced into England that strict execution of justice, for which
his administration had been much celebrated in Normandy; and even during
this violent revolution, every disorder or oppression met with rigorous
punishment.[*]
[* Gul. Pict. p. 208. Order, Vitalis, p. 506.]
His army in particular was governed with severe discipline; and
notwithstanding the insolence of victory, care was taken to give as
little offence as possible to the jealousy of the vanquished. The king
appeared solicitous to unite in an amicable manner the Normans and the
English, by intermarriages and alliances; and all his new subjects who
approached his person were received with affability and regard. No signs
of suspicion appeared, not even towards Edgar Atheling, the heir of the
ancient royal family, whom William confirmed in the honors of earl of
Oxford, conferred on him by Harold, and whom he affected to treat with
the highest kindness, as nephew to the Confessor, his great friend and
benefactor. Though he confiscated the estates of Harold, and of those
who had fought in the battle of Hastings on the side of that prince,
whom he represented as a usurper, he seemed willing to admit of every
plausible excuse for past opposition to his pretensions, and he received
many into favor who had carried arms against him, He confirmed the
liberties and immunities of London and the other cities of England; and
appeared desirous of replacing every thing on ancient establishments.
In his whole administration, he bore the semblance of the lawful prince,
not of the conqueror; and the English began to flatter themselves, that
they had changed, not the form of their government, but the succession
only of their sovereigns; a matter which gave them small concern. The
better to reconcile his new subjects to his authority, William made a
progress through some parts of England; and besides a splendid court and
majestic presence, which overawed the people, already struck with his
military fame, the appearance of his clemency and justice gained the
approbation of the wise, attentive to the first steps of their new
sovereign.
But amidst this confidence and friendship which he expressed for the
English, the king took care to place all real power in the hands of his
Normans, and still to keep possession of the sword, to which, he
was sensible, he had owed his advancement to sovereign authority.
He disarmed the city of London and other places, which appeared most
warlike and populous; and building citadels in that capital, as well as
in Winchester, Hereford, and the cities best situated for commanding the
kingdom, he quartered Norman soldiers in all of them, and left nowhere
any power able to resist or oppose him. He bestowed the forfeited
estates on the most eminent of hia captains, and established funds for
the payment of his soldiers. And thus, while his civil administration
carried the face of a legal magistrate, his military institutions were
those of a master and tyrant; at least of one who reserved to himself,
whenever he pleased, the power of assuming that character.
By this mixture, however, of vigor and lenity, he had so soothed the
minds of the English, that he thought he might safely revisit his
native country, and enjoy the triumph and congratulation of his ancient
subjects. He left the administration in the hands of his uterine
brother, Odo, bishop of Baieux, and of William Fitz-Osberne. That their
authority might be exposed to less danger, he carried over with him all
the most considerable nobility of England, who, while they served to
grace his court by their presence and magnificent retinues, were in
reality hostages for the fidelity of the nation. Among these were Edgar
Atheling, Stigand the primate, the earls Edwin and Morcar, Waltheof, the
son of the brave Earl Siward, with others, eminent for the greatness
of their fortunes and families, or for their ecclesiastical and civil
dignities. He was visited at the abbey of Fescamp, where he resided
during some time, by Rodulph, uncle to the king of France, and by many
powerful princes and nobles, who, having contributed to his enterprise,
were desirous of participating in the joy and advantages of its success.
His English courtiers, willing to ingratiate themselves with their new
sovereign, outvied each other in equipages and entertainments; and
made a display of riches which struck the foreigners with astonishment.
William of Poictiers, a Norman historian,[*] who was present, speaks
with admiration of the beauty of their persons, the size and workmanship
of their silver plate, the costliness of their embroideries, an art in
which the English then excelled; and he expresses himself in such terms,
as tend much to exalt our idea of the opulence and cultivation of the
people.[**]
[* Page 211, 212.]
[** As the historian chiefly insists on the siver
plate, his panegyric on the English magnificence shows only
how incompetent a judge he was of the matter. Silver was
then of ten times the value, and was more than twenty times
more rare than at present; and consequently of all species
of luxury, plate must have been the rarest.]
But though every thing bure the face of joy and festivity, and William
himself treated nia new courtiers with great appearance of kindness, it
was impossible altogether to prevent the insolence of the Normans;
and the English nobles derived little satisfaction from those
entertainments, where they considered themselves as led in triumph by
their ostentatious conqueror.
In England affairs took still a worse turn during the absence of the
sovereign. Discontents and complaints multiplied every where; secret
conspiracies were entered into against the government; hostilities
were already begun in many places; and every thing seemed to menace a
revolution as rapid as that which had placed William on the throne. The
historian above mentioned, who is a panegyrist of his master, throws the
blame entirely on the fickle and mutinous disposition of the English,
and highly celebrates the justice and lenity of Odo’s and Fitz-Osborne’s
administration.[**] But other historians, with more probability, impute
the cause chiefly to the Normans; who, despising a people that had so
easily submitted to the yoke, envying their riches, and grudging the
restraints imposed upon their own rapine, were desirous of provoking
them to a rebellion, by which they expected to acquire new confiscations
and forfeitures, and to gratify those unbounded hopes which they had
formed in entering on this enterprise.[***]
[** Page 212.]
[*** Order. Vitalis, p. 507]
It is evident that the chief reason of this alteration in the sentiments
of the English must be ascribed to the departure of William, who was
alone able to curb the violence of his captains, and to overawe the
mutinies of the people. Nothing indeed appears more strange than that
this prince, in less than three months after the conquest of a great,
warlike, and turbulent nation, should absent himself in order to revisit
his own country, which remained in profound tranquillity, and was not
menaced by any of its neighbors; and should so long leave his jealous
subjects at the mercy of an insolent and licentious army. Were we not
assured of the solidity of his genius, and the good sense displayed in
all other circumstances of his conduct, we might ascribe this measure to
a vain ostentation, which rendered him impatient to display his pomp and
magnificence among his ancient subjects. It is therefore more natural to
believe that, in so extraordinary a step, he was guided by a concealed
policy; and that though he had thought proper at first to allure the
people to submission by the semblance of a legal administration, he
found that he could neither satisfy his rapacious captains, nor
secure his unstable government, without farther exerting the rights of
conquest, and seizing the possessions of the English. In order to have
a pretext for this violence, he endeavored without discovering his
intentions, to provoke and allure them into insurrections, which he
thought could never prove dangerous, while he detained all the principal
nobility in Normandy, while a great and victorious army was quartered
in England, and while he himself was so near to suppress any tumult or
rebellion. But as no ancient writer has ascribed this tyrannical purpose
to William, it scarcely seems allowable, from conjecture alone, to throw
such an imputation upon him.
But whether we are to account for that measure from the king’s vanity or
from his policy, it was the immediate cause of all the calamities which
the English endured during this and the subsequent reigns, and gave rise
to those mutual jealousies and animosities between them and the Normans,
which were never appeased till a long tract of time had gradually united
the two nations, and made them one people. The inhabitants of Kent, who
had first submitted to the conqueror, were the first that attempted to
throw off the yoke; and in confederacy with Eustace, count of Boulogne,
who had also been disgusted by the Normans, they made an attempt, though
without success, on the garrison of Dover.[*] Edric the Forester,
whose possessions lay on the banks of the Severn, being provoked at
the depredations of some Norman captains in his neighborhood, formed an
alliance with Blethyn and Rowallan, two Welsh princes; and endeavored,
with their assistance, to repel force by force.[**]
[* Gul. Gemet. p. 239. Order. Vitalis, p. 508.
Anglia Sacra, vol i. p, 245.]
[** Hoveden, p 450. M. West, p 226. Sim. Dunelm.
p. 197.]
But though these open hostilities were not very considerable, the
disaffection was general among the English, who had become sensible,
though too late, of their defenceless condition, and began already to
experience those insults and injuries, which a nation must always expect
that allows itself to be reduced to that abject situation. A secret
conspiracy was entered into, to perpetrate in one day, a general
massacre of the Normans, like that which had formerly been executed upon
the Danes; and the quarrel was become so general and national, that
the vassals of Earl Coxo, having desired him to head them in an
insurrection, and finding him resolute in maintaining his fidelity to
William, put him to death as a traitor to his country.
The king, informed of these dangerous discontents, hastened over
to England; and by his presence, and the vigorous measures which he
pursued, disconcerted all the schemes of the conspirators. Such of them
as had been more violent in their mutiny, betrayed their guilt by flying
or concealing themselves; and the confiscation of their estates, while
it increased the number of malecontents, both enabled William to gratify
farther the rapacity of his Norman captains, and gave them the prospect
of new forfeitures and attainders. The king began to regard all
his English subjects as inveterate and irreclaimable enemies; and
thenceforth either embraced, or was more fully confirmed in the
resolution of seizing their possessions, and of reducing them to the
most abject slavery. Though the natural violence and severity of his
temper made him incapable of feeling any remorse in the execution of
this tyrannical purpose, he had art enough to conceal his intention,
and to preserve still some appearance of justice in his oppressions. He
ordered all the English who had been arbitrarily expelled by the Normans
during his absence, to be restored to their estates;[*] but at the same
time he imposed a general tax on the people, that of danegelt, which
had been abolished by the Confessor, and which had always been extremely
odious to the nation.[**]
[* Chron. Sax. p. 173. This fact is a full proof
that the Normans had committed great injustice, and were the
real cause of the insurrections of the English.]
[** Hoveden, p. 450. Sim. Dunelm. p. 197. Alured.
Beverl. p. 127]
{1068.} As the vigilance of William overawed the malecontents, their
insurrections were more the result of an impatient humor in the people,
than of any regular conspiracy which could give them a rational hope of
success against the established power of the Normans. The inhabitants of
Exeter, instigated by Githa, mother to King Harold, refused to admit a
Norman garrison, and, betaking themselves to arms, were strengthened
by the accession of the neighboring inhabitants of Devonshire and
Cornwall.[*] The king hastened with his forces to chastise the revolt;
and on his approach, the wiser and more considerable citizens, sensible
of the unequal contest, persuaded the people to submit, and to deliver
hostages for their obedience. A sudden mutiny of the populace broke this
agreement; and William, appearing before the walls, ordered the eyes of
one of the hostages to be put out, as an earnest of that severity which
the rebels must expect, if they persevered in their revolt.[**]
The inhabitants were anew seized with terror, and surrendering at
discretion, threw themselves at the king’s feet, and supplicated his
clemency and forgiveness. William was not destitute of generosity,
when his temper was not hardened either by policy or passion: he was
prevailed on to pardon the rebels, and he set guards on all the gates,
in order to prevent the rapacity and insolence of his soldiery.[***]
[* Order. Vitalis, p. 510.]
[** Order. Vitalis, p. 510]
[*** Order. Vitalis, p. 510.]
Githa escaped with her treasures to Flanders. The malecontents of
Cornwall imitated the example of Exeter, and met with like treatment;
and the king having built a citadel in that city, which he put under
the command of Baldwin, son of Earl Gilbert, returned to Winchester, and
dispersed his army into their quarters. He was here joined by his wife,
Matilda, who had not before visited England, and whom he now ordered to
be crowned by Archbishop Aldred. Soon after she brought him an accession
to his family, by the birth of a fourth son, whom he named Henry.
His three elder sons, Robert, Richard, and William, still resided in
Normandy.
But though the king appeared thus fortunate both in public and domestic
life, the discontents of his English subjects augmented daily; and
the injuries committed and suffered on both sides rendered the quarrel
between them and the Normans absolutely incurable. The insolence of
victorious masters, dispersed throughout the kingdom, seemed intolerable
to the natives; and wherever they found the Normans separate or
assembled in small bodies, they secretly set upon them, and gratified
their vengeance by the slaughter of their enemies. But an insurrection
in the north drew thither the general attention, and seemed to threaten
more important consequences. Edwin and Morcar appeared at the head
of this rebellion; and these potent noblemen, before they took arms,
stipulated for foreign succors from their nephew Blethyn, prince of
North Wales, from Malcolm, king of Scotland and from Sweyn, king of
Denmark. Besides the general discontent which had seized the English,
the two earls were incited to this revolt by private injuries. William,
in order to insure them to his interests, had on his accession promised
his daughter in marriage to Edwin; but either he had never seriously
intended to perform this engagement, or, having changed his plan of
administration in England from clemency to rigor, he thought it was
to little purpose if he gained one family, while he enraged the whole
nation. When Edwin, therefore, renewed his applications, he gave him
an absolute denial;[*] and this disappointment, added to so many other
reasons of disgust, induced that nobleman and his brother to concur
with their incensed countrymen, and to make one general effort for the
recovery of their ancient liberties. William knew the importance of
celerity in quelling an insurrection supported by such powerful leaders,
and so agreeable to the wishes of the people; and having his troops
always in readiness, he advanced by great journeys to the north. On his
march he gave orders to fortify the castle of Warwick, of which he left
Henry de Beaumont governor, and that of Nottingham, which he committed
to the custody of William Peverell, another Norman captain.[**] He
reached York before the rebels were in any condition for resistance, or
were joined by any of the foreign succors which they expected, except a
small reënforcement from Wales;[***] and the two earls found no means
of safety but having recourse to the clemency of the victor. Archil, a
potent nobleman in those parts, imitated their example, and delivered
his son as a hostage for his fidelity;[****] nor were the people, thus
deserted by their leaders, able to make any farther resistance. But the
treatment which William gave the chiefs was very different from that
which fell to the share of their followers. He observed religiously
the terms which he had granted to the former, and allowed them for the
present to keep possession of their estates; but he extended the rigors
of his confiscations over the latter, and gave away their lands to his
foreign adventurers.
[* Order. Vitalis, p. 511.]
[** Order. Vitalis, p. 511.]
[*** Order. Vitalia, p. 511.]
[*** Order. Vitalis, p. 511.]
These, planted throughout the whole country, and in possession of the
military power, left Edwin and Morcar, whom he pretended to spare,
destitute of all support, and ready to fall whenever he should think
proper to command their ruin. A peace which he made with Malcolm, who
did him homage for Cumberland, seemed at the same time to deprive them
of all prospect of foreign assistance.[*]
The English were now sensible that their final destruction was intended;
and that instead of a sovereign, whom they had hoped to gain by their
submission, they had tamely surrendered themselves, without resistance,
to a tyrant and a conqueror. Though the early confiscation of Harold’s
followers might seem iniquitous, being inflicted on men who had
never sworn fealty to the duke of Normandy, who were ignorant of his
pretensions, and who only fought in defence of the government which they
themselves had established in their own country, yet were these rigors,
however contrary to the ancient Saxon laws, excused on account of the
urgent necessities of the prince; and those who were not involved in
the present ruin, hoped that they should thenceforth enjoy, without
molestation, their possessions and their dignities. But the successive
destruction of so many other families convinced them that the king
intended to rely entirely on the support and affections of foreigners;
and they foresaw new forfeitures, attainders, and acts of violence, as
the necessary result of this destructive plan of administration. They
observed that no Englishman possessed his confidence, or was intrusted
with any command or authority; and that the strangers, whom a rigorous
discipline could have but ill restrained, were encouraged in their
insolence and tyranny against them. The easy submission of the
kingdom on its first invasion had exposed the natives to contempt; the
subsequent proofs of their animosity and resentment had made them the
object of hatred; and they were now deprived of every expedient by which
they could hope to make themselves either regarded or beloved by their
sovereign. Impressed with the sense of this dismal situation, many
Englishmen fled into foreign countries, with an intention of passing
their lives abroad free from oppression, or of returning, on a favorable
opportunity, to assist their friends in the recovery of their native
liberties.[**] Edgar
[* Order. Vitalis, p. 511.]
[** Order. Vitalis, p. 508. M. West. p. 225. M.
Paris, p. 4. Sim Dunehn. p. 197.]
Atheling himself, dreading the insidious caresses of William, was,
persuaded by Cospatric, a powerful Northumbrian, to escape with him
into Scotland; and he carried thither his two sisters, Margaret and
Christina. They were well received by Malcolm, who soon after espoused
Margaret, the elder sister; and partly with a view of strengthening
his kingdom by the accession of so many strangers, partly in hopes
of employing them against the growing power of William, he gave great
countenance to all the English exiles. Many of them settled there, and
laid the foundation of families which afterwards made a figure in that
country.
While the English suffered under these oppressions, even the foreigners
were not much at their ease; but finding themselves surrounded on all
hands by engaged enemies, who took every advantage against them, and
menaced them with still more bloody effects of the public resentment,
they began to wish again for the tranquillity and security of their
native country. Hugh de Grentmesnil and Humphry de Teliol, though
intrusted with great commands, desired to be dismissed the service;
and some others imitated their example; a desertion which was highly
resented by the king, and which he punished by the confiscation of all
their possessions ii England.[*] But William’s bounty to his followers
could not fail of alluring many new adventurers into his service; and
the rage of the vanquished English served only to excite the attention
of the king and those warlike chiefs, and keep them in readiness to
suppress every commencement of domestic rebellion or foreign invasion.
[* Order. Vitalis, p. 512]
It was not long before they found occupation for their prowess and
military conduct. Godwin, Edmond, and Magnus, three sons of Harold, had,
immediately after the defeat at Hastings, sought a retreat in Ireland,
where, having met with a kind reception from Dermot and other princes of
that country, they projected an invasion on England, and they hoped that
all the exiles from Denmark, Scotland, and Wales, assisted by forces
from these several countries, would at once commence hostilities, and
rouse the indignation of the English against their haughty conquerors.
They landed in Devonshire; but found Brian, son of the count of
Brittany, at the head of some foreign troops, ready to oppose them; and
being defeated in several actions, they were obliged to retreat to their
ships, and to return with great loss to Ireland.[*] The efforts of the
Normans were now directed to the north, where affairs had fallen into
the utmost confusion. The more impatient of the Northumbrians had
attacked Robert de Comyn, who was appointed governor of Durham; and
gaining the advantage over him from his negligence, they put him to
death in that city, with seven hundred of his followers.[**] This
success animated the inhabitants of York, who, rising in arms, slew
Robert Fitz-Richard, their governor,[***] and besieged in the castle
William Mallet, on whom the command now devolved. A little after, the
Danish troops landed from three hundred vessels: Osberne, brother to
King Sweyn, was intrusted with the command of these forces, and he
was accompanied by Harold and Canute, two sons of that monarch. Edgar
Atheling appeared from Scotland, and brought along with him Cospatric,
Waltheof, Siward, Bearne, Merleswain, Adelin, and other leaders, who,
partly from the hopes which they gave of Scottish succors, partly
from their authority in those parts, easily persuaded the warlike and
discontented Northumbrians to join the insurrection. Mallet, that he
might better provide for the defence of the citadel of York, set fire
to some houses which lay contiguous; but this expedient proved the
immediate cause of his destruction. The flames, spreading into the
neighboring streets, reduced the whole city to ashes. The enraged
inhabitants, aided by the Danes, took advantage of the confusion to
attack the castle, which they carried by assault; and the garrison,
to the number of three thousand men, was put to the sword without
mercy.[****]
This success proved a signal to many other parts of England, and gave
the people an opportunity of showing their malevolence to the Normans.
Hereward, a nobleman in East Anglia, celebrated for valor, assembled his
followers, and taking shelter in the Isle of Ely, made inroads on all
the neighboring country.[*****] The English in the counties of Somerset
and Dorset rose in arms, and assaulted Montacute, the Norman governor;
while the inhabitants of Cornwall and Devon invested Exeter, which from
the memory of William’s clemency still remained faithful to him.
[* Gul. Gemet. p. 290. Order. Vitalis, p. 513.
Anglia Sacra, TO! I. p. 216.]
[** Order. Vitalis, p. 512. Chron. de Mailr. p.
116. Hoveden, p. 450. M. Paris, p. 5. Sim. Dunelm. p. 198.]
[*** Order. Vitalis, p. 512.]
[**** Order. Vitalis, p. 513. Hoveden, p. 451.]
[***** Ingulph. p. 71. Chron. Abb. St. Petri de
Burgo, p. 47.]
Edric the Forester, calling in the assistance of the Welsh, laid siege
to Shrewsbury, and made head against Earl Brient and Fitz-Osberne, who
commanded in those quarters.[*] The English, everywhere repenting their
former easy submission, seemed determined to make by concert one great
effort for the recovery of their liberties, and for the expulsion of
their oppressors.
William, undismayed amidst this scene of confusion, assembled. his
forces, and animating them with the prospect of new confiscations
and forfeitures, he marched against the rebels in the north, whom he
regarded as the most formidable, and whose defeat, he knew, would strike
a terror into all the other malecontents. Joining policy to force, he
tried, before his approach, to weaken the enemy, by detaching the Danes
from them; and he engaged Osberne, by large presents, and by offering
him the liberty of plundering the sea-coast, to retire without
committing farther hostilities into Denmark.[**] Cospatric also, in
despair of success, made his peace with the king, and paying a sum of
money as an atonement for his insurrection, was received into favor,
and even invested with the earldom of Northumberland. Waltheof, who long
defended York with great courage, was allured with this appearance of
clemency; and as William knew how to esteem valor, even in an enemy,
that nobleman had no reason to repent of this confidence.[***] Even
Edric, compelled by necessity, submitted to the conqueror, and received
forgiveness, which was soon after followed by some degree of trust
and favor. Malcolm, coming too late to support his confederates, was
constrained to retire; and all the English rebels in other parts, except
Hereward, who still kept in his fastnesses, dispersed themselves, and
left the Normans undisputed masters of the kingdom. Edgar Atheling, with
his followers, sought again a retreat in Scotland from the pursuit of
his enemies.
[* Order. Vitalis, p. 514.]
[** Hoveden, p. 451. Chron. Abb. St. Petri de
Burgo, p. 47. Sim Dunelm. p. 199.]
[*** W. Malms, p. 104. H. Hunting, p. 369.]
{1070.} But the seeming clemency of William toward the English leaders,
proceeded only from artifice, or from his esteem of individuals: his
heart, was hardened against all compassion towards the people, and he
scrupled no measure, however violent or severe, which seemed requisite
to support his plan of tyrannical administration. Sensible of the
restless disposition of the Northumbrians, he determined to incapacitate
them even after from giving him disturbance; and he issued orders for
laying entirely waste that fertile country, which, for the extent of
sixty miles, lies between the Humber and the Tees.[*] The houses were
reduced to ashes by the merciless Normans; the cattle seized and driven
away; the instruments of husbandry destroyed; and the inhabitants
compelled either to seek for a subsistence in the southern parts of
Scotland, or if they lingered in England, from a reluctance to abandon
their ancient habitations, they perished miserably in the woods from
cold and hunger. The lives of a hundred thousand persons are computed to
have been sacrificed to this stroke of barbarous policy,[**] which, by
seeking a remedy for a temporary evil, thus inflicted a lasting wound on
the power and populousness of the nation.
But William, finding himself entirely master of a people who had given
him such sensible proofs of their impotent rage and animosity, now
resolved to proceed to extremities against all the natives of England;
and to reduce them to a condition in which they should no longer be
formidable to his government. The insurrections and conspiracies in
so many parts of the kingdom had involved the bulk of the landed
proprietors, more or less, in the guilt of treason; and the king took
advantage of executing against them, with the utmost rigor, the laws of
forfeiture and attainder. Their lives were, indeed, commonly spared;
but their estates were confiscated, and either annexed to the royal
demesnes, or conferred with the most profuse bounty, on the Normans
and other foreigners.[***] While the king’s declared intention was to
depress, or rather entirely extirpate, the English gentry,[****] [8] it
is easy to believe that scarcely the form of justice would be observed
in those violent proceedings;[*****] and that any suspicions served as
the most undoubted proofs of guilt against a people thus devoted to
destruction.
[* Chron. Sax. p. 174. Ingulph. p. 79. W. Malms,
p. 103. Hoveden, p. 451. Chron. Abb. St. Petri de Burgo, p.
47. M. Paris, p. 5. Sim. Dunelm. p. 199. Brompton, p. 966.
Knyghton, p. 2344. Anglia Sacra, vol. i. p, 702.]
[** Order. Vitalis, p. 515.]
[*** W. Malms, p. 104.]
[**** H. Hunting, p. 370.]
[***** H See note H, at the end of the volume.]
It was crime sufficient in an Englishman to be opulent, or noble, or
powerful; and the policy of the king, concurring with the rapacity of
foreign adventurers, produced almost a total revolution in the landed
property of the kingdom. Ancient and honorable families were reduced to
beggary; the nobles themselves were every where treated with ignominy
and contempt; they had the mortification of seeing their castles and
manors possessed by Normans of the meanest birth and lowest stations;[*]
and they found themselves carefully excluded from every road which led
either to riches or preferment.[**] [9]
As power naturally follows property, this revolution alone gave great
security to the foreigners; but William, by the new institutions which
he established, took also care to retain forever the military authority
in those hands which had enabled him to subdue the kingdom. He
introduced into England the feudal law, which he found established in
France and Normandy, and which, during that age, was the foundation
both of the stability and of the disorders in most of the monarchical
governments of Europe. He divided all the lands of England, with
very few exceptions, beside the royal demesnes, into baronies; and he
conferred these, with the reservation of stated services and payments,
on the most considerable of his adventurers. These great barons, who
held immediately of the crown, shared out a great part of their lands to
other foreigners, who were denominated knights or vassals, and who paid
their lord the same duty and submission, in peace and war, which he
himself owed, to his sovereign. The whole kingdom contained about
seven hundred chief tenants, and sixty thousand two hundred and fifteen
knights’ fees;[***] and as none of the native English were admitted into
the first rank, the few who retained their landed property were glad to
be received into the second, and, under the protection of some powerful
Norman, to load themselves and their posterity with this grievous
burden, for estates which they had received free from their
ancestors.[****] The small mixture of English which entered into this
civil or military fabric, (for it partook of both species,) was so
restrained by subordination under the foreigners, that the Norman
dominion seemed now to be fixed on the most durable basis, and to defy
all the efforts of its enemies.
[* Order. Vitalis, p. 521. M. West, p. 229.]
[** See note I, at the end of the volume.]
[*** Order. Vitalis, p. 523. Secretum Abbatis,
apud Selden. Title of Honor, p. 573. Spel. Gloss, in verbo
Feodum. Sir Robert Cotton.]
[**** M. West. p. 225. M. Paris, p. 4. Bracton,
lib. i. cap. 11, num. I, Flets, lib, cap. 8, n. 2]
The better to unite the parts of the government, and to bind them into
one system, which might serve both for defence against foreigners
and for the support of domestic tranquillity, William reduced the
ecclesiastical revenues under the same feudal law; and though he had
courted the church on his invasion and accession, he now subjected it to
services which the clergy regarded as a grievous slavery, and as totally
unbefitting their profession. The bishops and abbots were obliged, when
required, to furnish to the king, during war, a number of knights or
military tenants, proportioned to the extent of property possessed by
each see or abbey; and they were liable, in case of failure, to the
same penalties which were exacted from the laity.[*] The pope and the
ecclesiastics exclaimed against this tyranny, as they called it; but the
king’s authority was so well established over the army, who held every
thing from his bounty, that superstition itself, even in that age,
when it was most prevalent, was constrained to bend under his superior
influence.
But as the great body of the clergy were still natives, the king had
much reason to dread the effects of their resentment; he therefore
used the precaution of expelling the English from all the considerable
dignities, and of advancing foreigners in their place. The partiality
of the Confessor towards the Normans had been so great, that, aided by
their superior learning, it had promoted them to many of the sees in
England; and even before the period of the conquest, scarcely more than
six or seven of the prelates were natives of the country. But among
these was Stigand, archbishop of Canterbury, a man who, by his address
and vigor, by the greatness of his family and alliances, by the extent
of his possessions, as well as by the dignity of his office, and his
authority among the English, gave jealousy to the king.[**] Though
William had, on his accession, affronted this prelate by employing the
archbishop of York to officiate at his consecration, he was careful,
on other occasions, to load him with honors and caresses, and to
avoid giving him farther offence till the opportunity should offer of
effecting his final destruction.[***]
[* M. Paris, p. 5. Anglia Sacra, vol. i. p. 248.]
[** Parker, p. 161.]
[*** Parker, p. 164.]
The suppression of the late rebellions, and the total subjection of the
English, made him hope that an attempt against Stigand, however violent,
would be covered by his great successes and be overlooked amidst the
other important revolutions, which affected so deeply the property and
liberty of the kingdom. Yet, notwithstanding these great advantages,
he did not think it safe to violate the reverence usually paid to the
primate, but under cover of a new superstition, which he was the great
instrument of introducing into England.
The doctrine which exalted the papacy above all human power, had
gradually diffused itself from the city and court of Rome; and was,
during that age, much more prevalent in the southern than in the
northern kingdoms of Europe. Pope Alexander, who had assisted William
in his conquests, naturally expected, that the French and Normans would
import into England the same reverence for his sacred character with
which they were impressed in their own country; and would break the
spiritual as well as civil independency of the Saxons who had hitherto
conducted their ecclesiastical government, with an acknowledgment indeed
of primacy in the see of Rome, but without much idea of its title to
dominion or authority. As soon, therefore, as the Norman prince seemed
fully established on the throne, the pope despatched Ermenfloy, bishop
of Sion, as his legate into England; and this prelate was the first
that had ever appeared with that character in any part of the British
islands. The king, though he was probably led by principle to pay this
submission to Rome, determined, as is usual, to employ the incident as a
means of serving his political purposes, and of degrading those English
prelates, who were become obnoxious to him. The legate submitted to
become the instrument of his tyranny; and thought, that the more violent
the exertion of power, the more certainly did it confirm the authority
of that court from which he derived his commission. He summoned,
therefore, a council of the prelates and abbots at Winchester; and
being assisted by two cardinals, Peter and John, he cited before him
Stigand, archbishop of Canterbury, to answer for his conduct. The
primate was accused of three crimes; the holding of the see of
Winchester together with that of Canterbury; the officiating in the pall
of Robert, his predecessor; and the having received his own pall from
Benedict IX., who was afterwards deposed for simony, and for intrusion
into the papacy.[*]
[* Hoveden, p. 453. Diceto, p. 482. Knyghton, p.
2345. Anglia Sacra, vol. i. p. 5, 6. Ypod. Neust. p. 438.]
These crimes of Stigand were mere pretences; since the first had been a
practice not unusual in England, and was never any where subjected to a
higher penalty than a resignation of one of the sees; the second was a
pure ceremonial; and as Benedict was the only pope who then officiated,
and his acts were never repealed, all the prelates of the church,
especially thope who lay at a distance, were excusable for making their
applications to him. Stigand’s ruin, however, was resolved on, and
was prosecuted with great severity. The legate degraded him from his
dignity; the king confiscated his estate, and cast him into prison,
where he continued in poverty and want during the remainder of his life.
Like rigor was exercised against the other English prelates: Agelric,
bishop of Selesey, and Agelmare, of Elmham, were deposed by the legate,
and imprisoned by the king. Many considerable abbots shared the same
fate: Egelwin, bishop of Durham, fled the kingdom Wulstan, of Worcester,
a man of an inoffensive character was the only English prelate that
escaped this general proscription,[*] and remained in possession of his
dignity. Aldred, archbishop of York, who had set the crown on William’s
head, had died a little before of grief and vexation, and had left his
malediction to that prince, on account of the breach of his coronation
oath, and of the extreme tyranny with which he saw he was determined to
treat his English subjects.[**]
It was a fixed maxim in this reign, as well as in some of the
subsequent, that no native of the island should ever be advanced to any
dignity, ecclesiastical, civil, or military[***]
[* Brompton relates, that Wulstan was also
deprived by the synod; out refusing to deliver his pastoral
staff and ring to any but the person from whom he first
received it, he went immediately to King Edward’s tomb, and
struck the staff so deeply into the stone, that none but
himself was able to pull it out; upon which he was allowed
to keep his bishopric. This instance may serve, instead of
many, as a specimen of the monkish miracles. See also the
Annals of Burton, p. 284.]
[** W. Malmes de Gest. Pont. p. 154.]
[*** Ingulph. p. 70, 71.]
The king, therefore, upon Stigand’s deposition, promoted Lanfranc, a
Milanese monk, celebrated for his learning and piety, to the vacant see.
This prelate was rigid in defending the prerogatives of his station; and
after a long process before the pope, he obliged Thomas, a Norman monk,
who had been appointed to the see of York, to acknowledge the primacy of
the archbishop of Canterbury. Where ambition can be so happy as to cover
its enterprises, even to the person himself, under the appearance
of principle, it is the most incurable and inflexible of all human
passions. Hence Lanfranc’s zeal in promoting the interests of
the papacy, by which he himself augmented his own authority, was
indefatigable, and met with proportionable success. The devoted
attachment to Rome continually increased in England and being favored
by the sentiments of the conquerors, as well as by the monastic
establishments formerly introduced by Edred and by Edgar, it soon
reached the same height at which it had, during some time, stood in
France and Italy.[*] It afterwards went much farther; being favored by
that very remote situation which had at first obstructed its progress;
and being less checked by knowledge and a liberal education, which were
still somewhat more common in the southern countries.
The prevalence of this superstitious spirit became dangerous to some
of William’s successors, and incommodious to most of them; but the
arbitrary sway of this king over the English, and his extensive
authority over the foreigners, kept him from feeling any immediate
inconveniences from it. He retained the church in great subjection, as
well as his lay subjects; and would allow none, of whatever character,
to dispute his sovereign will and pleasure. He prohibited his subjects
from acknowledging any one for pope whom he himself had not previously
received; he required that all the ecclesiastical canons, voted in
any synod, should first be laid before him, and be ratified by his
authority; even bulls or letters from Rome could not legally be
produced, till they received the same sanction; and none of his
ministers or barons, whatever offences they were guilty of, could be
subjected to spiritual censures, till he himself had given his consent
to their excommunication.[**] These regulations were worthy of a
sovereign, and kept united the civil and ecclesiastical powers, which
the principles, introduced by this prince himself, had an immediate
tendency to separate.
But the English had the cruel mortification to find that their king’s
authority, however acquired or however extended, was all employed in
their oppression; and that the scheme of their subjection, attended with
every circumstance of insult and indignity,[***] was deliberately formed
by the prince, and wantonly prosecuted by his followers.[****]
[* M. West, p. 228. Lanfranc wrote in defence of
the real presence against Berengarius; and in those ages of
stupidity and ignorance, he was greatly applauded for that
performance.]
[** Eadmer, p. 6]
[*** Order Vitalis, p. 523. H. Hunting, p. 370.]
[**** Ingulph. p. 71]
William had even entertained the difficult project of totally abolishing
the English language; and for that purpose he ordered, that in all
schools throughout the kingdom, the youth should be instructed in the
French tongue; a practice which was continued from custom till after
the reign of Edward III., and was never indeed totally discontinued
in England. The pleadings in the supreme courts of judicature were in
French:[*] the deeds were often drawn in the same language: the laws
were composed in that idiom:[**] no other tongue was used at court:
it became the language of all fashionable company; and the English
themselves, ashamed of their own country, affected to excel in that
foreign dialect. From this attention of William, and from the extensive
foreign dominions, long annexed to the crown of England, proceeded that
mixture of French which is at present to be found in the English tongue,
and which composes the greatest and best part of our language. But
amidst those endeavors to depress the English nation, the king, moved by
the remonstrances of some of his prelates, and by the earnest desires
of the people, restored a few of the laws of King Edward;[***] [11]
which, though seemingly of no great importance towards the protection of
general liberty, gave them extreme satisfaction, as a memorial of their
ancient government, and an unusual mark of complaisance in their
imperious conquerors.[****]
[* 36 Ed. III. cap. 15. Selden. Spicileg. ad Eadm.
p. 189. Fortesque de Laud. Leg. Angl. cap. 48.]
[** Chron. Rothom. A.D. 1066.]
[*** Ingulph. p. 88. Brompton, p. 982. Knyghton,
p. 2355 Hoveden, p. 600.]
[**** See note K, at the end of the volume.]
{1071.} The situation of the two great earls, Morcar and Edwin, became
now very disagreeable. Though they had retained their allegiance during
this general insurrection of their countrymen, they had not gained the
king’s confidence, and they found themselves exposed to the malignity
of the courtiers, who envied them on account of their opulence and
greatness, and at the same time involved them in that general contempt
which they entertained for the English. Sensible that they had entirely
lost their dignity, and could not even hope to remain long in safety,
they determined, though too kite, to share the same fate with their
countrymen. While Edwin retired to his estate in the north, with a view
of commencing an insurrection, Morcar took shelter in the Isle of Ely,
with the brave Hereward, who, secured by the inaccessible situation of
the place, still defended himself against the Normans. But this attempt
served only to accelerate the ruin of the few English who had hitherto
been able to preserve their rank or fortune during the past convulsions.
William employed all his endeavors to subdue the Isle of Ely; and having
surrounded it with flat-bottomed boats, and made a causeway through the
morasses to the extent of two miles, he obliged the rebels to surrender
at discretion. Hereward alone forced his way, sword in hand, through the
enemy; and still continued his hostilities by sea against the Normans,
till at last William, charmed with his bravery, received him into favor,
and restored him to his estate. Earl Morcar, and Egelwin, bishop of
Durham, who had joined the malecontents, were thrown into prison, and
the latter soon after died in confinement. Edwin, attempting to make
his escape into Scotland, was betrayed by some of his followers, and was
killed by a party of Normans, to the great affliction of the English,
and even to that of William, who paid a tribute of generous tears to
the memory of this gallant and beautiful youth. The king of Scotland,
in hopes of profiting by these convulsions, had fallen upon the northern
counties; but on the approach of William, he retired; and when the king
entered his country, he was glad to make peace, and to pay the usual
homage to the English crown. To complete the king’s prosperity, Edgar
Atheling himself, despairing of success, and weary of a fugitive
life, submitted to his enemy; and receiving a decent pension for his
subsistence, was permitted to live in England unmolested. But these acts
of generosity towards the leaders were disgraced, as usual, by William’s
rigor against the inferior malecontents. He ordered ihe hands to be
lopped off, and the eyes to be put out, of many of the prisoners whom
he had taken in the Isle of Ely; and he dispersed them in that miserable
condition throughout the country, as monuments of his severity.
{1073.} The province of Maine, in France, had, by the will of Herbert,
the last count, fallen under the dominion of William some years before
his conquest of England; but the inhabitants, dissatisfied with the
Norman government, and instigated by Fulk, count of Anjou, who had some
pretensions to the succession, now rose in rebellion, and expelled the
magistrates whom the king had placed over them. The full settlement of
England afforded him leisure to punish this insult on his authority; but
being unwilling to remove his Norman forces from this island, he carried
over a considerable army, composed almost entirely of English, and
joining them to some troops levied in Normandy, he entered the revolted
province. The English appeared ambitious of distinguishing themselves on
this occasion, and of retrieving that character of valor which had long
been national among them, but which their late easy subjection under the
Normans had some what degraded and obscured. Perhaps, too, they hoped
that, by their zeal and activity, they might recover the confidence of
their sovereign, as their ancestors had formerly, by like means, gained
the affections of Canute; and might conquer his inveterate prejudices
in favor of his own countrymen. The king’s military conduct, seconded
by these brave troops, soon overcame all opposition in Maine: the
inhabitants were obliged to submit, and the count of Anjou relinquished
his pretensions.
{1074.} But during these transactions, the government of England was
greatly disturbed; and that, too, by those very foreigners who owed
every thing to the king’s bounty, and who were the sole object of his
friendship and regard. The Norman barons, who had engaged with their
duke in the conquest of England, were men of the most independent
spirit; and though they obeyed their leader in the field, they would
have regarded with disdain the richest acquisitions, had they been
required, in return, to submit, in their civil government, to the
arbitrary will of one man. But the imperious character of William,
encouraged by his absolute dominion over the English, and often impelled
by the necessity of his affairs, had prompted him to stretch his
authority over the Normans themselves beyond what the free genius of
that victorious people could easily bear. The discontents were become
general among those haughty nobles; and even Roger, earl of Hereford,
son and heir of Fitz-Osberne, the king’s chief favorite, was strongly
infected with them. This nobleman, intending to marry his sister to
Ralph de Guader, earl of Norfolk, had thought, it his duty to inform the
king of his purpose, and to desire the royal consent; but meeting with
a refusal, he proceeded nevertheless to complete the nuptials, and
assembled all his friends, and those of Guader, to attend the solemnity.
The two earls, disgusted by the denial of their request, and dreading
William’s resentment for their disobedience, here prepared measures for
a revolt; and during the gayety of the festival, while the company was
heated with wine, they opened the design to their guests. They inveighed
against the arbitrary conduct of the king; his tyranny over the English,
whom they affected on this occasion to commiserate; his imperious
behavior to his barons of the noblest birth; and his apparent intention
of reducing the victors and the vanquished to a like ignominious
servitude. Amidst their complaints, the indignity of submitting to
a bastard[*] was not forgotten; the certain prospect of success in a
revolt, by the assistance of the Danes and the discontented English, was
insisted on; and the whole company, inflamed with the same sentiments,
and warmed by the jollity of the entertainment, entered, by a solemn
engagement, into the design of shaking off the royal authority.
Even Earl Waltheof, who was present, inconsiderately expressed his
approbation of the conspiracy, and promised his concurrence towards its
success.
This nobleman, the last of the English who for some generations
possessed any power or authority, had, after his capitulation at York,
been received into favor by the conqueror; had even married Judith,
niece to that prince; and had been promoted to the earldoms of
Huntingdon and Northampton.[**] Cospatric, earl of Northumberland,
having, on some new disgust from William, retired into Scotland, where
he received the earldom of Dunbar from the bounty of Malcolm, Waltheof
was appointed his successor in that important command, and seemed still
to possess the confidence and friendship of his sovereign.[***]
[* William was so little ashamed of his birth,
that he assumed the appellation of Bastard in some of his
letters and charters. Spel Gloss. in verbo Bastardus. Camden
in Richmondshire.]
[** Order. Vitalis, p. 522 Hoveden, p. 454.]
[*** Sim, Dunelm. p. 205.]
But as he was a man of generous principles, and loved his country, it is
probable that the tyranny exercised over the English lay heavy upon his
mind, and destroyed all the satisfaction which he could reap from his
own grandeur and advancement. When a prospect, therefore, was opened of
retrieving their liberty, he hastily embraced it; while the fumes of the
liquor and the ardor of the company prevented him from reflecting on the
consequences of that rash attempt. But after his cool judgment returned,
he foresaw that the conspiracy of those discontented barons was not
likely to prove successful against the established power of William; or,
if it did, that the slavery of the English, instead of being alleviated
by that event, would become more grievous under a multitude of foreign
leaders, factious and ambitious, whose union and whose discord would be
equally oppressive to the people. Tormented with these reflections, he
opened his mind to his wife Judith, of whose fidelity he entertained
no suspicion, but who, having secretly fixed her affections on another,
took this opportunity of ruining her easy and credulous husband. She
conveyed intelligence of the conspiracy to the king, and aggravated
every circumstance which she believed would tend to incense him against
Waltheof, and render him absolutely implacable.[*] Meanwhile the earl,
still dubious with regard to the part which he should act, discovered
the secret in confession to Lanfranc, on whose probity and judgment he
had a great reliance: he was persuaded by the prelate, that he owed
no fidelity to those rebellious barons, who had by surprise gained
his consent to a crime; that his first duty was to his sovereign and
benefactor, his next to himself and his family; and that if he seized
not the opportunity of making atonement for his guilt by revealing it,
the temerity of the conspirators was so great, that they would give
some other person the means of acquiring the merit of the discovery.
Waltheof, convinced by these arguments, went over to Normandy; but
though he was well received by the king, and thanked for his fidelity,
the account previously transmitted by Judith had sunk deep into
William’s mind, and had destroyed all the merit of her husband’s
repentance.
[* Order. Vitalis, p. 536.]
The conspirators, hearing of Waltheof’s departure, immediately concluded
their design to be betrayed; and they flew to arms before their schemes
were ripe for execution, and before the arrival of the Danes, in whose
aid they placed their chief confidence. The Earl of Hereford was checked
by Walter de Lacy, a great baron in those parts, who, supported by the
bishop of Worcester and the abbot of Evesham, raised some forces, and
prevented the earl from passing the Severn, or advancing into the
heart of the kingdom. The earl of Norfolk was defeated at Fagadun,
near Cambridge, by Odo the regent, assisted by Richard de Bienfaite and
William de Warrenne, the two justiciaries. The prisoners taken in this
action had their right foot cut off, as a punishment of their treason
the earl himself escaped to Norwich, thence to Denmark where the
Danish fleet, which had made an unsuccessful attempt upon the coast of
England,[*] soon after arrived, and brought him intelligence, that all
his confederates were suppressed, and were either killed, banished,
or taken prisoners.[**] Ralph retired in despair to Brittany, where he
possessed a large estate and extensive jurisdictions.
[* Chron. Sax. p. 183. M. Paris, p. 7.]
[** Many of the fugitive Normans are supposed to
have fled into Scotland, where they were protected, as well
as the fugitive English, by Malcolm; whence come the many
French and Norman families which are found at present in
that country.]
The king, who hastened over to England in order to suppress the
insurrection, found that nothing remained but the punishment of the
criminals, which he executed with great severity. Many of the rebels
were hanged; some had their eyes put out; others their hands cut off.
But William, agreeably to his usual maxims, showed more lenity to their
leader, the earl of Hereford, who was only condemned to a forfeiture of
his estate, and to imprisonment during pleasure. The king seemed even
disposed to remit this last part of the punishment; had not Roger, by
a fresh insolence, provoked him to render his confinement perpetual.
{1075.} But Waltheof, being an Englishman, was not treated with so much
humanity; though his guilt, always much inferior to that of the other
conspirators, was atoned for by an early repentance and return to his
duty. William, instigated by his niece, as well as by his rapacious
courtiers, who longed for so rich a forfeiture, ordered him to be tried,
condemned, and executed. The English, who considered this nobleman as
the last resource of their nation, grievously lamented his fate, and
fancied that miracles were wrought by his relics, as a testimony of his
innocence and sanctity. The infamous Judith, falling soon after under
the king’s displeasure, was abandoned by all the world, and passed the
rest of her life in contempt, remorse, and misery.
Nothing remained to complete William’s satisfaction but the punishment
of Ralph de Guader; and he hastened over to Normandy, in order to
gratify his vengeance on that criminal. But though the contest seemed
very unequal between a private nobleman and the king of England, Ralph
was so well supported both by the earl of Brittany and the king of
France that William, after besieging him for some time in Dol, was
obliged to abandon the enterprise, and make with those powerful princes
a peace, in which Ralph himself was included England, during his
absence, remained in tranquillity; and nothing remarkable occurred,
except two ecclesiastical synods, which were summoned, one at London,
another at Winchester. In the former, the precedency among the
episcopasees was settled, and the seat of some of them was removed from
small villages to the most considerable town within the diocese. In the
second was transacted a business of more importance.
{1076.} The industry and perseverance are surprising, with which the
popes had been treasuring up powers and pretensions during so many ages
of ignorance; while each pontiff employed every fraud for advancing
purposes of imaginary piety, and cherished all claims which might turn
to the advantage of his successors, though he himself could not expect
ever to reap any benefit from them. All this immense storm of spiritual
and civil authority was now devolved on Gregory VII., of the name of
Hildebrand, the most enterprising pontiff that had ever filled that
chair, and the least restrained by fear, decency, or moderation. Not
content with shaking off the yoke of the emperors, who had hitherto
exercised the power of appointing the pope on every vacancy, at least
of ratifying his election, he undertook the arduous task of entirely
disjoining the ecclesiastical from the civil power, and of excluding
profane laymen from the right which they had assumed, of filling the
vacancies of bishoprics, abbeys, and other spiritual dignities.[*] The
sovereigns, who had long exercised this power, and who had acquired
it, not by encroachments on the church, but on the people, to whom it
originally belonged,[**] made great opposition to this claim of the
court of Rome; and Henry IV., the reigning emperor, defended this
prerogative of his crown with a vigor and resolution suitable to its
importance.
[* L’Abbé Conc. tom. x. p. 371, 372, com, 2.]
[** Padre Paolo sopra Benef. Eccles. p. 30]
The few offices, either civil or military, which the feudal institutions
left the sovereign the power of bestowing, made the prerogative of
conferring the pastoral ring and staff the most valuable jewel of the
royal diadem: especially as the general ignorance of the age bestowed a
consequence on the ecclesiastical offices, even beyond the great extent
of power and property which belonged to them. Superstition, the child of
ignorance, invested the clergy with an authority almost sacred; and
as they engrossed the little learning of the age, their interposition
became requisite in all civil business, and a real usefulness in common
life was thus superadded to the spiritual sanctity of their character.
When the usurpations, therefore, of the church had come to such maturity
as to embolden her to attempt extorting the right of investitures from
the temporal power, Europe, especially Italy and Germany, was thrown
into the most violent convulsions, and the pope and the emperor waged
implacable war on each other. Gregory dared to fulminate the sentence
of excommunication against Henry and his adherents, to pronounce him
rightfully deposed, to free his subjects from their oath of allegiance;
and, instead of shocking mankind by this gross encroachment on the
civil authority, he found the stupid people ready to second his most
exorbitant pretensions. Every minister, servant, or vassal of the
emperor, who received any disgust, covered his rebellion under the
pretence of principle; and even the mother of this monarch, forgetting
all the ties of nature, was seduced to countenance the insolence of
his enemies. Princes themselves, not attentive to the pernicious
consequences of those papal claims, employed them for their present
purposes; and the controversy, spreading into every city of Italy,
engendered the parties of Guelf and Ghibbelin; the most durable and most
inveterate factions that ever arose from the mixture of ambition
and religious zeal. Besides numberless assassinations, tumults, and
convulsions, to which they gave rise, it is computed that the quarrel
occasioned no less then sixty battles in the reign of Henry IV., and
eighteen in that of his successor, Henry V., when the claims of the
sovereign pontiff finally prevailed.[*]
[* Padre Paolo sopra Eccles. Benef. p. 113.]
But the bold spirit of Gregory, not dismayed with the vigorous
opposition which he met with from the emperor, extended his usurpations
all over Europe; and well knowing the nature of mankind, whose
blind astonishment ever inclines them to yield to the most impudent
pretensions, he seemed determined to set no bounds to the spiritual, or
rather temporal monarchy which he had undertaken to erect. He pronounced
the sentence of excommunication against Nicephorus, emperor of the east;
Robert Guiscard, the adventurous Norman who had acquired the dominion of
Naples, was attacked by the same dangerous weapon: he degraded Boleslas,
king of Poland from the rank of king; and even deprived Poland of the
title of a kingdom: he attempted to treat Philip, king of France,
with the same rigor which he had employed against the emperor;[*] he
pretended to the entire property and dominion of Spain; and he parcelled
it out amongst adventurers, who undertook to conquer it from the
Saracens, and to hold it in vassalage under the see of Rome:[**] even
the Christian bishops, on whose aid he relied for subduing the temporal
princes, saw that he was determined to reduce them to servitude, and,
by assuming the whole legislative and judicial power of the church to
centre all authority in the sovereign pontiff.[***]
William the Conqueror, the most potent, the most haughty, and the most
vigorous prince in Europe, was not, amidst all his splendid successes,
secure from the attacks of this enterprising pontiff. Gregory wrote him
a letter, requiring him to fulfil his promise in doing homage for the
kingdom of England to the see of Rome, and to sent him over that tribute
which all his predecessors had been accustomed to pay to the vicar of
Christ. By the tribute, he meant Peter’s pence; which, though at first a
charitable donation of the Saxon princes, was interpreted, according
to the usual practice of the Romish court, to be a badge of subjection
acknowledged by the kingdom. William replied, that the money should
be remitted as usual; but that neither had he promised to do homage to
Rome, nor was it in the least his purpose to impose that servitude on
his state.[****] And the better to show Gregory his independence, he
ventured, notwithstanding the frequent complaints of the pope, to refuse
to the English bishops the liberty of attending a general council, which
that pontiff had summoned against his enemies.
[* Epist. Greg. VII. epist. 32, 35; lib. ii.
epist. 5]
[** Epist. Greg. VII. lib. i. epist. 7.]
[*** Epist. Greg. VII. lib. ii. epist. 55.]
[**** Seldini Spicileg. ad Eadm. p. 4.]
But though the king displayed this vigor in supporting the royal
dignity, he was infected with the general superstition of the age; and
he did not perceive the ambitious scope of those institutions, which
under color of strictness in religion, were introduced or promoted
by the court of Rome. Gregory, while he was throwing all Europe into
combustion by his violence and impostures, affected an anxious care for
the purity of manners; and even the chaste pleasures of the marriage bed
were inconsistent, in his opinion, with the sanctity of the sacerdotal
character. He had issued a decree prohibiting the marriage of priests,
excommunicating all clergymen who retained their wives, declaring such
unlawful commerce to be fornication, and rendering it criminal in the
laity to attend divine worship, when such profane priests officiated at
the altar.[*]
[* Hoveden, p. 455, 457. Flor. Wigorn. p. 638
Spel. Concil fol, 13, A. D. 1078.]
This point was a great object in the politics of the Roman pontiffs; and
it cost them infinitely more pains to establish it than the propagation
of any speculative absurdity which they had ever attempted to introduce.
Many synods were summoned in different parts of Europe before it was
finally settled; and it was there constantly remarked, that the
younger clergymen complied cheerfully with the pope’s decrees in this
particular, and that the chief reluctance appeared in those who were
more advanced in years; an event so little consonant to men’s natural
expectations, that it could not fail to be glossed on even in that blind
and superstitious age. William allowed the pope’s legate to assemble, in
his absence a synod at Winchester, in order to establish the celibacy of
the clergy; but the church of England could not yet be carried the whole
length expected. The synod was content with decreeing, that the bishops
should not thenceforth ordain any priests or deacons without exacting
from them a promise of celibacy; but they enacted that none, except
those who belonged to collegiate or cathedral churches, should be
obliged to separate from their wives.
The king passed some years in Normandy; but his long residence there
was not entirely owing to his declared preference of that duchy: his
presence was also necessary for composing those disturbances which
had arisen in that favorite territory, and which had even originally
proceeded from his own family. Robert, his eldest son, surnamed Gambaron
or Courthose, from his short legs, was a prince who inherited all
the bravery of his family and nation; but without that policy and
dissimulation by which his father was so much distinguished, and which,
no less than his military valor, had contributed to his great successes.
Greedy of fame, impatient of contradiction, without reserve in his
friendships, declared in his enmities, this prince could endure no
control even from his imperious father, and openly aspired to that
independence, to which his temper, as well as some circumstances in
his situation, strongly invited him.[*] When William first received the
submissions of the province of Maine, he had promised the inhabitants
that Robert should be their prince; and before he undertook the
expedition against England, he had, on the application of the French
court, declared him his successor in Normandy, and had obliged the
barons of that duchy to do him homage as their future sovereign. By this
artifice, he had endeavored to appease the jealousy of his neighbors,
as affording them a prospect of separating England from his dominions
on the continent; but when Robert demanded of him the execution of those
engagements, he gave him an absolute refusal, and told him, according to
the homely saying, that he never intended to throw off his clothes
till he went to bed.[**] Robert openly declared his discontent, and was
suspected of secretly instigating the king of France and the earl of
Brittany to the opposition which they made to William, and which had
formerly frustrated his attempts upon the town of Dol. And as the
quarrel still augmented, Robert proceeded to entertain a strong jealousy
of his two surviving brothers, William and Henry, (for Richard
was killed, in hunting, by a stag,) who, by greater submission and
complaisance, had acquired the affections of their father. In this
disposition, on both sides, the greatest trifle sufficed to produce a
rupture between them.
The three princes, residing with their father in the castle of L’Aigle,
in Normandy, were one day engaged in sport together, and after some
mirth and jollity, the two younger took a fancy of throwing over
some water on Robert as he passed through the court on leaving their
apartment;[***] a frolic which he would naturally have regarded as
innocent, had it not been for the suggestions of Alberic de Grentmesnil,
son of that Hugh de Grentmesnil whom William had formerly deprived
of his fortunes, when that baron deserted him during his greatest
difficulties in England. The young man, mindful of the injury, persuaded
the prince that this action was meant as a public affront, which it
behoved him in honor to resent; and the choleric Robert, drawing
his sword, ran up stairs, with an intention of taking revenge on his
brothers.[****]
[* Order. Vitalis, p. 545. Hoveden, p. 457. Flor.
Wigorn. p. 639.]
[** Chron. de Mailr. p. 160.]
[*** Order. Vitalis, p 545]
[**** Order. Vitalis, p 545]
The whole castle was filled with tumult, which the king himself, who
hastened from his apartment, found some difficulty to appease. But
he could by no means appease the resentment of his eldest son who,
complaining of his partiality, and fancying that no proper atonement
had been made him for the insult, left the court that very evening,
and hastened to Rouen, with an intention of seizing the citadel of that
place.[*] But being disappointed in this view by the precaution
and vigilance of Roger de Ivery, the governor, he fled to Hugh de
Neufchatel, a powerful Norman baron, who gave him protection in his
castles; and he openly levied war against his father.[**] The popular
character of the prince, and a similarity of manners, engaged all the
young nobility of Normandy and Maine, as well as of Anjou and Brittany,
to take part with him: and it was suspected that Matilda, his mother,
whose favorite he was, supported him in his rebellion by secret
remittances of money; and by the encouragement which she gave his
partisans.
[* Order. Vitalis, p. 545.]
[** Order. Vitalis, p. 545. Hoveden, 457, Sim.
Dunelm. p. 210. Diceto, p. 487]
All the hereditary provinces of William, as well as his family, were
during several years thrown into convulsions by this war; and he was at
last obliged to have recourse to England, where that species of military
government, which he had established, gave him greater authority than
the ancient feudal institutions permitted him to exercise in Normandy.
He called over an army of English under his ancient captains, who soon
expelled Robert and his adherents from their retreats, and restored the
authority of the sovereign in all his dominions. The young prince was
obliged to take shelter in the castle of Gerberoy, in the Beauvoisis,
which the king of France, who secretly fermented all these dissensions,
had provided for him. In this fortress he was closely besieged by his
father, against whom having a strong garrison, he made an obstinate
defence. There passed under the walls of this place many rencounters
which resembled more the single combats of chivalry than the military
actions of armies; but one of them was remarkable for its circumstances
and its event. Robert happened to engage the king, who was concealed
by his helmet, and, both of them being valiant, a fierce combat ensued,
till at last the young prince wounded his father in the arm and unhorsed
him. On his calling out for assistance, his voice discovered him to his
son, who, struck with remorse for his past guilt, and astonished with
the apprehensions of one much greater, which he had so nearly incurred,
instantly threw himself at his father’s feet, craved pardon for his
offences, and offered to purchase forgiveness by any atonement.[*]
The resentment harbored by William was so implacable, that he did not
immediately correspond to this dutiful submission of his son with like
tenderness; but, giving him his malediction, departed for his own camp,
on Robert’s horse, which that prince had assisted him to mount, He soon
after raised the siege, and marched with his army to Normandy; where
the interposition of the queen and other common friends brought about
a reconcilement, which was probably not a little forwarded by the
generosity of the son’s behavior in this action, and by the returning
sense of his past misconduct. The king seemed so fully appeased that he
even took Robert with him into England, where he intrusted him with
the command of an army, in order to repel an inroad of Malcolm, king
of Scotland, and to retaliate by a like inroad into that country. The
Welsh, unable to resist William’s power, were, about the same time,
necessitated to pay a compensation for their incursions; and every thing
was reduced to full tranquillity in this island.
[* W. Malms, p. 106. H. Hunting, p. 369. Hoveden,
p. 457. Flor Wigorn. p. 639. Sim. Dunelm. p. 210. Diceto, p.
287. Knyghton, p. 2351. Alured. Beverl. p. 135.]
{1081.} This state of affairs gave William leisure to begin and finish
an undertaking, which proves his extensive genius and does honor to his
memory; it was a general survey of all the lands in the kingdom, their
extent in each district, their proprietors, tenures, value; the quantity
of meadow, pasture, wood, and arable land, which they contained; and
in some counties, the number of tenants, cottagers, and slaves of all
denominations, who lived upon them. He appointed commissioners for this
purpose, who entered every particular in their register by the verdict
of juries; and after a labor of six years, (for the work was so long in
finishing,) brought him an exact account of all the landed property of
his kingdom.[*]
[* Chron. Sax. p. 190. Ingulph. p. 79. Chron. T.
Wykes, p. 23. H. Hunting, p. 370. Hoveden, p. 460. M. West.
p. 229. Flor Wigorn. p. 641. Chron. Abb. St. Petri de Burgo,
p. 51. M. Paris p. 8. The more northern counties were not
comprehended in this survey; I suppose because of their
wild, uncultivated state.]
This monument, called domesday-book, the most valuable piece of
antiquity possessed by any nation, is still preserved in the exchequer;
and though only some extracts of it have hitherto been published, it
serves to illustrate to us, in many particulars, the ancient state of
England. The great Alfred had finished a like survey of the kingdom in
his time, which was long kept at Winchester, and which probably served
as a model to William in this undertaking.[*]
The king was naturally a great economist; and though no prince had ever
been more bountiful to his officers and servants, it was merely because
he had rendered himself universal proprietor of England, and had a whole
kingdom to bestow. He reserved an ample revenue for the crown; and in
the general distribution of land among his followers, he kept possession
of no less than one thousand four hundred and twenty--two manors in
different parts of England,[**] which paid him rent either in money, or
in corn, cattle, and the usual produce of the soil. An ancient historian
computes that his annual fixed income, besides escheats, fines, reliefs,
and other casual profits to a great value, amounted to near four hundred
thousand pounds a year;[***] a sum which, if all circumstances be
attended to, will appear wholly incredible. A pound in that age, as we
have already observed, contained three times the weight of silver that
it does at present; and the same weight of silver, by the most probable
computation, would purchase near ten times more of the necessaries of
life, though not in the same proportion of the finer manufactures. This
revenue, therefore, of William, would be equal to at least nine or ten
millions at present; and as that prince had neither fleet nor army to
support, the former being only an occasional expense, and the latter
being maintained, without any charge to him, by his military vassals,
we must thence conclude that no emperor or prince, in any age or nation,
can be compared to the Conqueror for opulence and riches. This leads us
to suspect a great mistake in the computation of the historian; though,
if we consider that avarice is always imputed to William as one of his
vices, and that, having by the sword rendered himself master of all the
lands in the kingdom, he would certainly, in the partition, retain a
great proportion for his own share, we can scarcely be guilty of any
error in asserting, that perhaps no king of England was ever more
opulent, was more able to support by his revenue the splendor and
magnificence of a court, or could bestow more on his pleasures, or in
liberalities to his servants and favorites.[****]
[* Ingulph. p. 8.]
[** West’s Inquiry into the Manner of creating
Peers, p. 24.]
[*** Order. Vitalis, p. 523. He says, one thousand
and sixty pounds and some odd shillings and pence a day.]
[**** Fortescue, de Dom. Reg. el Politic, cap.
111.]
There was one pleasure to which William, as well as all the Normans and
ancient Saxons, was extremely addicted, and that was hunting; but this
pleasure he indulged more at the expense of his unhappy subjects, whose
interests he always disregarded, than to the loss or diminution of his
own revenue. Not content with those large forests which former kings
possessed in all parts of England, he resolved to make a new forest near
Winchester, the usual place of his residence; and for that purpose,
he laid waste the country in Hampshire for an extent of thirty miles,
expelled the inhabitants from their houses, seized their property, even
demolished churches and convents, and made the sufferers no compensation
for the injury.[*] At the same time, he enacted new laws, by which he
prohibited all his subjects from hunting in any of his forests, and
rendered the penalties more severe than ever had been inflicted for such
offences. The killing of a deer or boar, or even a hare, was punished
with the loss of the delinquent’s eyes; and that at a time when the
killing of a man could be atoned for by paying a moderate fine or
composition.
[* W. Malms, p. 3. H. Hunting, p. 731. Anglia
Sacra, vol. i. p. 258]
The transactions recorded during the remainder of this reign may be
considered more as domestic occurrences, which concern the prince, than
as national events, which regard England. Odo, bishop of Baieux, the
king’s uterine brother, whom he had created earl of Kent, and intrusted
with a great share of power during his whole reign, had amassed immense
riches; and agreeably to the usual progress of human wishes, he began
to regard his present acquisitions but as a step to further grandeur.
He had formed the chimerical project of buying the papacy; and though
Gregory, the reigning pope, was not of advanced years, the prelate had
confided so much in the predictions of an astrologer, that he reckoned
upon the pontiff’s death, and upon attaining, by his own intrigues and
money, that envied state of greatness. Resolving, therefore, to remit
all his riches to Italy, he had persuaded many considerable barons, and
among the rest Hugh, earl of Chester, to take the same course; in hopes
that, when he should mount the papal throne, he would bestow on them
more considerable establishments in that country. The king, from
whom all these projects had been carefully concealed, at last got
intelligence of the design, and ordered Odo to be arrested. His
officers, from respect to the immunities which the ecclesiastics now
assumed, scrupled to execute the command, till the king himself was
obliged in person to seize him; and when Odo insisted that he was a
prelate, and exempt from all temporal jurisdiction, William replied,
that he arrested him, not as bishop of Baieux, but as earl of Kent. He
was sent prisoner to Normandy; and notwithstanding the remonstrances and
menaces of Gregory, was detained in custody during the remainder of this
reign.
{1083.} Another domestic event gave the king much more concern: it was
the death of Matilda, his consort, whom he tenderly loved, and for
whom he had ever preserved the most sincere friendship. Three years
afterwards he passed into Normandy, and carried with him Edgar Atheling,
to whom he willingly granted permission to make a pilgrimage to the Holy
Land. He was detained on the continent by a misunderstanding which broke
out between him and the king of France, and which was occasioned by
inroads made into Normandy by some French barons on the frontiers.
{1087.} It was little in the power of princes at that time to restrain
their licentious nobility; but William suspected, that these barons
durst not have provoked his indignation, had they not been assured of
the countenance and protection of Philip. His displeasure was increased
by the account he received of some railleries which that monarch had
thrown out against him. William, who was become corpulent, had been
detained in bed some time by sickness; upon which Philip expressed
his surprise that his brother of England should be so long in being
delivered of his big belly. The king sent him word, that, as soon as he
was up, he would present so many lights at Notre-dame, as would perhaps
give little pleasure to the king of France; alluding to the usual
practice at that time of women after childbirth. Immediately on his
recovery, he led an army into L’Isle de France, and laid every thing
waste with fire and sword. He took the town of Mante, which he reduced
to ashes. But the progress of these hostilities was stopped by an
accident which soon after put an end to William’s life. His horse
starting aside of a sudden, he bruised his belly on the pommel of the
saddle; and being in a bad habit of body, as well as somewhat advanced
in years, he began to apprehend the consequences, and ordered himself
to be carried in a litter to the monastery of St Gervas. Finding his
illness increase, and being sensible of the approach of death, he
discovered at last the vanity of all human grandeur, and was struck with
remorse for those horrible cruelties and acts of violence, which, in the
attainment and defence of it, he had committed during the course of
his reign over England. He endeavored to make atonement by presents to
churches and monasteries; and he issued orders that Earl Morcar, Siward,
Bearne, and other English prisoners, should be set at liberty. He was
even prevailed on, though not without reluctance, to consent, with his
dying breath, to release his brother Odo, against whom he was extremely
incensed. He left Normandy and Maine to his eldest son, Robert: he
wrote to Lanfranc, desiring him to crown William king of England; he
bequeathed to Henry nothing but the possessions of his mother, Matilda;
but foretold that he would one day surpass both his brothers in power
and opulence. He expired in the sixty-third year of his age, in the
twenty-first year of his reign over England, and in the fifty-fourth of
that over Normandy.
Few princes have been more fortunate than this great monarch, or were
better entitled to grandeur and prosperity, from the abilities and the
vigor of mind which he displayed in all his conduct. His spirit was
bold and enterprising, yet guided by prudence; his ambition, which was
exorbitant, and lay little under the restraints of justice, still less
under those of humanity, ever submitted to the dictates of sound policy.
Born in an age when the minds of men were intractable, and unacquainted
with submission, he was yet able to direct them to his purposes, and,
partly from the ascendant of his vehement character, partly from art
and dissimulation, to establish an unlimited authority. Though not
insensible to generosity, he was hardened against compassion; and he
seemed equally ostentatious and equally ambitious of show and parade in
his clemency and in his severity. The maxims of his administration were
austere, but might have been useful, had they been solely employed to
preserve order in an established government:[*] they were ill calculated
for softening the rigors which, under the most gentle management, are
inseparable from conquest.
[* M. West. p. 230. Anglia Sacra, vol. i. p. 258.]
His attempt against England was the last great enterprise of the kind,
which, during the course of seven hundred years, has fully succeeded
in Europe, and the force of his genius broke through those limits which
first the feudal institutions, chen the refined policy of princes, have
fixed to the several states of Christendom. Though he rendered himself
infinitely odious to his English subjects, he transmitted his power
to his posterity, and the throne is still filled by his descendants; a
proof that the foundations which he laid were firm and solid, and that,
amidst all his violence, while he seemed only to gratify the present
passion, he had still an eye towards futurity.
Some writers have been desirous of refusing to this prince the title of
conqueror, in the sense which that term commonly bears; and on pretence
that the word is sometimes in old books applied to such as make an
acquisition of territory by any means, they are willing to reject
William’s title, by right of war, to the crown of England. It is
needless to enter, into a controversy, which, by the terms of it, must
necessarily degenerate into a dispute of words. It suffices to say, that
the duke of Normandy’s first invasion of the island was hostile; that
his subsequent administration was entirely supported by arms; that in
the very frame of his laws he made a distinction between the Normans and
English, to the advantage of the former;[*] that he acted in every thing
as absolute master over the natives, whose interests and affections he
totally disregarded; and that if there was an interval when he assumed
the appearance of a legal sovereign, the period was very short, and was
nothing but a temporary Sacrifice, which he, as has been the case with
most conquerors, was obliged to make, of his inclination to his present
policy.
[* Hoveden, p. 600.]
Scarce any of those revolutions, which, both in history and in common
language, have always been denominated conquests, appear equally
violent, or were attended with so sudden an alteration both of power and
property. The Roman state, which spread its dominion over Europe,
left the rights of individuals in a great measure untouched; and those
civilized conquerors, while they made their own country the seat of
empire, found that they could draw most advantage from the subjected
provinces, by securing to the natives the free enjoyment cf their own
laws and of their private possessions. The barbarians who subdued the
Roman empire, though they settled in the conquered countries, yet being
accustomed to a rude, uncultivated life, found a part only of the land
sufficient to supply all their wants; and they were not tempted to seize
extensive possessions, which they knew neither how to cultivate nor
enjoy. But the Normans and other foreigners who followed the standard of
William while they made the vanquished kingdom the seat of government,
were yet so far advanced in arts as to be acquainted with the advantages
of a large property; and having totally subdued the natives, they
pushed the rights of conquest (very extensive in the eyes of avarice
and ambition, however narrow in those of reason) to the utmost extremity
against them. Except the former conquest of England by the Saxons
themselves, who were induced, by peculiar circumstances, to proceed even
to the extermination of the natives, it would be difficult to find
in all history a revolution more destructive, or attended with a more
complete subjection of the ancient inhabitants. Contumely seems even
co have been wantonly added to oppression;[*] and the natives were
universally reduced to such a state of meanness and poverty, that the
English, name became a term of reproach; and several generations elapsed
before one family of Saxon pedigree was raised to any considerable
honors, or could so much as attain the rank of baron of the realm.[**]
These facts are so apparent from the whole tenor of the English history,
that none would have been tempted to deny or elude them, were they no
heated by the controversies of faction; while one party was absurdly
afraid of those absurd consequences which they saw the other party
inclined to draw from this event. But it is evident that the present
rights and privileges of the people, who are a mixture of English and
Normans, can never be affected by a transaction which passed seven
hundred years ago; and as all ancient authors,[***] [12] who lived
nearest the time, and best knew the state of the country, unanimously
speak of the Norman dominion as a conquest by war and arms, no
reasonable man, from the fear of imaginary consequences, will ever be
tempted to reject their concurring and undoubted testimony.
[* H. Hunting, p. 370. Brompton, p. 980.]
[** So late as the reign of King Stephen, the earl
of Albemarle, before the battle of the Standard, addressed
the officers of his army in these terms: “Proceres Angliae
clarissimi, et genere Normanni, etc.” Brompton, p. 1026. See,
further, Abbas Rieval, p. 339, etc All the barons and
military men of England still called themselves Normans.]
[*** See note L. at the end of the volume.]
King William had issue, besides his three sons who survived him, five
daughters, to wit, first, Cicily, a nun in the monastery of Feschamp,
afterwards abbess in the Holy Trinity at Caen, where she died in 1127.
Second, Constantia, married to Alan Fergant, earl of Brittany: she died
without issue. Third Alice, contracted to Harold. Fourth, Adela, married
to Stephen, earl of Blois, by whom she had four sons, William, Theobold,
Henry, and Stephen; of whom the elder was neglected, on account of the
imbecility of his understanding. Fifth, Agatha, who died a virgin; but
was betrothed to the king of Gallicia. She died on her journey thither
before she joined her bridegroom.