ENGLAND UNDER HENRY THE FIRST, CALLED FINE-SCHOLAR
Fine-scholar, on hearing of the Red King’s death, hurried to Winchester
with as much speed as Rufus himself had made, to seize the Royal
treasure. But the keeper of the treasure who had been one of the
hunting-party in the Forest, made haste to Winchester too, and,
arriving there at about the same time, refused to yield it up. Upon
this, Fine-Scholar drew his sword, and threatened to kill the
treasurer; who might have paid for his fidelity with his life, but that
he knew longer resistance to be useless when he found the Prince
supported by a company of powerful barons, who declared they were
determined to make him King. The treasurer, therefore, gave up the
money and jewels of the Crown: and on the third day after the death of
the Red King, being a Sunday, Fine-Scholar stood before the high altar
in Westminster Abbey, and made a solemn declaration that he would
resign the Church property which his brother had seized; that he would
do no wrong to the nobles; and that he would restore to the people the
laws of Edward the Confessor, with all the improvements of William the
Conqueror. So began the reign of King Henry the First.
The people were attached to their new King, both because he had known
distresses, and because he was an Englishman by birth and not a Norman.
To strengthen this last hold upon them, the King wished to marry an
English lady; and could think of no other wife than Maud the Good, the
daughter of the King of Scotland. Although this good Princess did not
love the King, she was so affected by the representations the nobles
made to her of the great charity it would be in her to unite the Norman
and Saxon races, and prevent hatred and bloodshed between them for the
future, that she consented to become his wife. After some disputing
among the priests, who said that as she had been in a convent in her
youth, and had worn the veil of a nun, she could not lawfully be
married—against which the Princess stated that her aunt, with whom she
had lived in her youth, had indeed sometimes thrown a piece of black
stuff over her, but for no other reason than because the nun’s veil was
the only dress the conquering Normans respected in girl or woman, and
not because she had taken the vows of a nun, which she never had—she
was declared free to marry, and was made King Henry’s Queen. A good
Queen she was; beautiful, kind-hearted, and worthy of a better husband
than the King.
For he was a cunning and unscrupulous man, though firm and clever. He
cared very little for his word, and took any means to gain his ends.
All this is shown in his treatment of his brother Robert—Robert, who
had suffered him to be refreshed with water, and who had sent him the
wine from his own table, when he was shut up, with the crows flying
below him, parched with thirst, in the castle on the top of St.
Michael’s Mount, where his Red brother would have let him die.
Before the King began to deal with Robert, he removed and disgraced all
the favourites of the late King; who were for the most part base
characters, much detested by the people. Flambard, or Firebrand, whom
the late King had made Bishop of Durham, of all things in the world,
Henry imprisoned in the Tower; but Firebrand was a great joker and a
jolly companion, and made himself so popular with his guards that they
pretended to know nothing about a long rope that was sent into his
prison at the bottom of a deep flagon of wine. The guards took the
wine, and Firebrand took the rope; with which, when they were fast
asleep, he let himself down from a window in the night, and so got
cleverly aboard ship and away to Normandy.
Now Robert, when his brother Fine-Scholar came to the throne, was still
absent in the Holy Land. Henry pretended that Robert had been made
Sovereign of that country; and he had been away so long, that the
ignorant people believed it. But, behold, when Henry had been some time
King of England, Robert came home to Normandy; having leisurely
returned from Jerusalem through Italy, in which beautiful country he
had enjoyed himself very much, and had married a lady as beautiful as
itself! In Normandy, he found Firebrand waiting to urge him to assert
his claim to the English crown, and declare war against King Henry.
This, after great loss of time in feasting and dancing with his
beautiful Italian wife among his Norman friends, he at last did.
The English in general were on King Henry’s side, though many of the
Normans were on Robert’s. But the English sailors deserted the King,
and took a great part of the English fleet over to Normandy; so that
Robert came to invade this country in no foreign vessels, but in
English ships. The virtuous Anselm, however, whom Henry had invited
back from abroad, and made Archbishop of Canterbury, was steadfast in
the King’s cause; and it was so well supported that the two armies,
instead of fighting, made a peace. Poor Robert, who trusted anybody and
everybody, readily trusted his brother, the King; and agreed to go home
and receive a pension from England, on condition that all his followers
were fully pardoned. This the King very faithfully promised, but Robert
was no sooner gone than he began to punish them.
Among them was the Earl of Shrewsbury, who, on being summoned by the
King to answer to five-and-forty accusations, rode away to one of his
strong castles, shut himself up therein, called around him his tenants
and vassals, and fought for his liberty, but was defeated and banished.
Robert, with all his faults, was so true to his word, that when he
first heard of this nobleman having risen against his brother, he laid
waste the Earl of Shrewsbury’s estates in Normandy, to show the King
that he would favour no breach of their treaty. Finding, on better
information, afterwards, that the Earl’s only crime was having been his
friend, he came over to England, in his old thoughtless, warm-hearted
way, to intercede with the King, and remind him of the solemn promise
to pardon all his followers.
This confidence might have put the false King to the blush, but it did
not. Pretending to be very friendly, he so surrounded his brother with
spies and traps, that Robert, who was quite in his power, had nothing
for it but to renounce his pension and escape while he could. Getting
home to Normandy, and understanding the King better now, he naturally
allied himself with his old friend the Earl of Shrewsbury, who had
still thirty castles in that country. This was exactly what Henry
wanted. He immediately declared that Robert had broken the treaty, and
next year invaded Normandy.
He pretended that he came to deliver the Normans, at their own request,
from his brother’s misrule. There is reason to fear that his misrule
was bad enough; for his beautiful wife had died, leaving him with an
infant son, and his court was again so careless, dissipated, and
ill-regulated, that it was said he sometimes lay in bed of a day for
want of clothes to put on—his attendants having stolen all his dresses.
But he headed his army like a brave prince and a gallant soldier,
though he had the misfortune to be taken prisoner by King Henry, with
four hundred of his Knights. Among them was poor harmless Edgar
Atheling, who loved Robert well. Edgar was not important enough to be
severe with. The King afterwards gave him a small pension, which he
lived upon and died upon, in peace, among the quiet woods and fields of
England.
And Robert—poor, kind, generous, wasteful, heedless Robert, with so
many faults, and yet with virtues that might have made a better and a
happier man—what was the end of him? If the King had had the
magnanimity to say with a kind air, ‘Brother, tell me, before these
noblemen, that from this time you will be my faithful follower and
friend, and never raise your hand against me or my forces more!’ he
might have trusted Robert to the death. But the King was not a
magnanimous man. He sentenced his brother to be confined for life in
one of the Royal Castles. In the beginning of his imprisonment, he was
allowed to ride out, guarded; but he one day broke away from his guard
and galloped off. He had the evil fortune to ride into a swamp, where
his horse stuck fast and he was taken. When the King heard of it he
ordered him to be blinded, which was done by putting a red-hot metal
basin on his eyes.
And so, in darkness and in prison, many years, he thought of all his
past life, of the time he had wasted, of the treasure he had
squandered, of the opportunities he had lost, of the youth he had
thrown away, of the talents he had neglected. Sometimes, on fine autumn
mornings, he would sit and think of the old hunting parties in the free
Forest, where he had been the foremost and the gayest. Sometimes, in
the still nights, he would wake, and mourn for the many nights that had
stolen past him at the gaming-table; sometimes, would seem to hear,
upon the melancholy wind, the old songs of the minstrels; sometimes,
would dream, in his blindness, of the light and glitter of the Norman
Court. Many and many a time, he groped back, in his fancy, to
Jerusalem, where he had fought so well; or, at the head of his brave
companions, bowed his feathered helmet to the shouts of welcome
greeting him in Italy, and seemed again to walk among the sunny
vineyards, or on the shore of the blue sea, with his lovely wife. And
then, thinking of her grave, and of his fatherless boy, he would
stretch out his solitary arms and weep.
At length, one day, there lay in prison, dead, with cruel and
disfiguring scars upon his eyelids, bandaged from his jailer’s sight,
but on which the eternal Heavens looked down, a worn old man of eighty.
He had once been Robert of Normandy. Pity him!
[Illustration: Duke Robert of Normandy]
At the time when Robert of Normandy was taken prisoner by his brother,
Robert’s little son was only five years old. This child was taken, too,
and carried before the King, sobbing and crying; for, young as he was,
he knew he had good reason to be afraid of his Royal uncle. The King
was not much accustomed to pity those who were in his power, but his
cold heart seemed for the moment to soften towards the boy. He was
observed to make a great effort, as if to prevent himself from being
cruel, and ordered the child to be taken away; whereupon a certain
Baron, who had married a daughter of Duke Robert’s (by name, Helie of
Saint Saen), took charge of him, tenderly. The King’s gentleness did
not last long. Before two years were over, he sent messengers to this
lord’s Castle to seize the child and bring him away. The Baron was not
there at the time, but his servants were faithful, and carried the boy
off in his sleep and hid him. When the Baron came home, and was told
what the King had done, he took the child abroad, and, leading him by
the hand, went from King to King and from Court to Court, relating how
the child had a claim to the throne of England, and how his uncle the
King, knowing that he had that claim, would have murdered him, perhaps,
but for his escape.
The youth and innocence of the pretty little William Fitz-Robert (for
that was his name) made him many friends at that time. When he became a
young man, the King of France, uniting with the French Counts of Anjou
and Flanders, supported his cause against the King of England, and took
many of the King’s towns and castles in Normandy. But, King Henry,
artful and cunning always, bribed some of William’s friends with money,
some with promises, some with power. He bought off the Count of Anjou,
by promising to marry his eldest son, also named William, to the
Count’s daughter; and indeed the whole trust of this King’s life was in
such bargains, and he believed (as many another King has done since,
and as one King did in France a very little time ago) that every man’s
truth and honour can be bought at some price. For all this, he was so
afraid of William Fitz-Robert and his friends, that, for a long time,
he believed his life to be in danger; and never lay down to sleep, even
in his palace surrounded by his guards, without having a sword and
buckler at his bedside.
To strengthen his power, the King with great ceremony betrothed his
eldest daughter Matilda, then a child only eight years old, to be the
wife of Henry the Fifth, the Emperor of Germany. To raise her
marriage-portion, he taxed the English people in a most oppressive
manner; then treated them to a great procession, to restore their good
humour; and sent Matilda away, in fine state, with the German
ambassadors, to be educated in the country of her future husband.
And now his Queen, Maud the Good, unhappily died. It was a sad thought
for that gentle lady, that the only hope with which she had married a
man whom she had never loved—the hope of reconciling the Norman and
English races—had failed. At the very time of her death, Normandy and
all France was in arms against England; for, so soon as his last danger
was over, King Henry had been false to all the French powers he had
promised, bribed, and bought, and they had naturally united against
him. After some fighting, however, in which few suffered but the
unhappy common people (who always suffered, whatsoever was the matter),
he began to promise, bribe, and buy again; and by those means, and by
the help of the Pope, who exerted himself to save more bloodshed, and
by solemnly declaring, over and over again, that he really was in
earnest this time, and would keep his word, the King made peace.
One of the first consequences of this peace was, that the King went
over to Normandy with his son Prince William and a great retinue, to
have the Prince acknowledged as his successor by the Norman Nobles, and
to contract the promised marriage (this was one of the many promises
the King had broken) between him and the daughter of the Count of
Anjou. Both these things were triumphantly done, with great show and
rejoicing; and on the twenty-fifth of November, in the year one
thousand one hundred and twenty, the whole retinue prepared to embark
at the Port of Barfleur, for the voyage home.
On that day, and at that place, there came to the King, Fitz-Stephen, a
sea-captain, and said:
‘My liege, my father served your father all his life, upon the sea. He
steered the ship with the golden boy upon the prow, in which your
father sailed to conquer England. I beseech you to grant me the same
office. I have a fair vessel in the harbour here, called The White
Ship, manned by fifty sailors of renown. I pray you, Sire, to let your
servant have the honour of steering you in The White Ship to England!’
‘I am sorry, friend,’ replied the King, ‘that my vessel is already
chosen, and that I cannot (therefore) sail with the son of the man who
served my father. But the Prince and all his company shall go along
with you, in the fair White Ship, manned by the fifty sailors of
renown.’
An hour or two afterwards, the King set sail in the vessel he had
chosen, accompanied by other vessels, and, sailing all night with a
fair and gentle wind, arrived upon the coast of England in the morning.
While it was yet night, the people in some of those ships heard a faint
wild cry come over the sea, and wondered what it was.
Now, the Prince was a dissolute, debauched young man of eighteen, who
bore no love to the English, and had declared that when he came to the
throne he would yoke them to the plough like oxen. He went aboard The
White Ship, with one hundred and forty youthful Nobles like himself,
among whom were eighteen noble ladies of the highest rank. All this gay
company, with their servants and the fifty sailors, made three hundred
souls aboard the fair White Ship.
‘Give three casks of wine, Fitz-Stephen,’ said the Prince, ‘to the
fifty sailors of renown! My father the King has sailed out of the
harbour. What time is there to make merry here, and yet reach England
with the rest?’
‘Prince!’ said Fitz-Stephen, ‘before morning, my fifty and The White
Ship shall overtake the swiftest vessel in attendance on your father
the King, if we sail at midnight!’
Then the Prince commanded to make merry; and the sailors drank out the
three casks of wine; and the Prince and all the noble company danced in
the moonlight on the deck of The White Ship.
When, at last, she shot out of the harbour of Barfleur, there was not a
sober seaman on board. But the sails were all set, and the oars all
going merrily. Fitz-Stephen had the helm. The gay young nobles and the
beautiful ladies, wrapped in mantles of various bright colours to
protect them from the cold, talked, laughed, and sang. The Prince
encouraged the fifty sailors to row harder yet, for the honour of The
White Ship.
Crash! A terrific cry broke from three hundred hearts. It was the cry
the people in the distant vessels of the King heard faintly on the
water. The White Ship had struck upon a rock—was filling—going down!
Fitz-Stephen hurried the Prince into a boat, with some few Nobles.
‘Push off,’ he whispered; ‘and row to land. It is not far, and the sea
is smooth. The rest of us must die.’
But, as they rowed away, fast, from the sinking ship, the Prince heard
the voice of his sister Marie, the Countess of Perche, calling for
help. He never in his life had been so good as he was then. He cried in
an agony, ‘Row back at any risk! I cannot bear to leave her!’
They rowed back. As the Prince held out his arms to catch his sister,
such numbers leaped in, that the boat was overset. And in the same
instant The White Ship went down.
Only two men floated. They both clung to the main yard of the ship,
which had broken from the mast, and now supported them. One asked the
other who he was? He said, ‘I am a nobleman, Godfrey by name, the son
of Gilbert de l’Aigle. And you?’ said he. ‘I am Berold, a poor butcher
of Rouen,’ was the answer. Then, they said together, ‘Lord be merciful
to us both!’ and tried to encourage one another, as they drifted in the
cold benumbing sea on that unfortunate November night.
By-and-by, another man came swimming towards them, whom they knew, when
he pushed aside his long wet hair, to be Fitz-Stephen. ‘Where is the
Prince?’ said he. ‘Gone! Gone!’ the two cried together. ‘Neither he,
nor his brother, nor his sister, nor the King’s niece, nor her brother,
nor any one of all the brave three hundred, noble or commoner, except
we three, has risen above the water!’ Fitz-Stephen, with a ghastly
face, cried, ‘Woe! woe, to me!’ and sunk to the bottom.
The other two clung to the yard for some hours. At length the young
noble said faintly, ‘I am exhausted, and chilled with the cold, and can
hold no longer. Farewell, good friend! God preserve you!’ So, he
dropped and sunk; and of all the brilliant crowd, the poor Butcher of
Rouen alone was saved. In the morning, some fishermen saw him floating
in his sheep-skin coat, and got him into their boat—the sole relater of
the dismal tale.
For three days, no one dared to carry the intelligence to the King. At
length, they sent into his presence a little boy, who, weeping
bitterly, and kneeling at his feet, told him that The White Ship was
lost with all on board. The King fell to the ground like a dead man,
and never, never afterwards, was seen to smile.
But he plotted again, and promised again, and bribed and bought again,
in his old deceitful way. Having no son to succeed him, after all his
pains (‘The Prince will never yoke us to the plough, now!’ said the
English people), he took a second wife—Adelais or Alice, a duke’s
daughter, and the Pope’s niece. Having no more children, however, he
proposed to the Barons to swear that they would recognise as his
successor, his daughter Matilda, whom, as she was now a widow, he
married to the eldest son of the Count of Anjou, Geoffrey, surnamed
Plantagenet, from a custom he had of wearing a sprig of flowering broom
(called Genêt in French) in his cap for a feather. As one false man
usually makes many, and as a false King, in particular, is pretty
certain to make a false Court, the Barons took the oath about the
succession of Matilda (and her children after her), twice over, without
in the least intending to keep it. The King was now relieved from any
remaining fears of William Fitz-Robert, by his death in the Monastery
of St. Omer, in France, at twenty-six years old, of a pike-wound in the
hand. And as Matilda gave birth to three sons, he thought the
succession to the throne secure.
He spent most of the latter part of his life, which was troubled by
family quarrels, in Normandy, to be near Matilda. When he had reigned
upward of thirty-five years, and was sixty-seven years old, he died of
an indigestion and fever, brought on by eating, when he was far from
well, of a fish called Lamprey, against which he had often been
cautioned by his physicians. His remains were brought over to Reading
Abbey to be buried.
You may perhaps hear the cunning and promise-breaking of King Henry the
First, called ‘policy’ by some people, and ‘diplomacy’ by others.
Neither of these fine words will in the least mean that it was true;
and nothing that is not true can possibly be good.
His greatest merit, that I know of, was his love of learning—I should
have given him greater credit even for that, if it had been strong
enough to induce him to spare the eyes of a certain poet he once took
prisoner, who was a knight besides. But he ordered the poet’s eyes to
be torn from his head, because he had laughed at him in his verses; and
the poet, in the pain of that torture, dashed out his own brains
against his prison wall. King Henry the First was avaricious,
revengeful, and so false, that I suppose a man never lived whose word
was less to be relied upon.