repressed actual insurrections, the unconquered districts both of
the North and West of England were gloomy and threatening. Want
of union was still the bane of the English; the insurrection of
Exeter and the West had been suppressed before York and the North
moved. The party of Harold and his family was strong in Exeter
and the Western shires. At Exeter, indeed, it is probable that
what remained of the family of Godwine was at this time collected.
William marched against the city, harrying Dorset as he passed.
The position of Exeter was characteristic. As in the case of the
great earldoms, so in that of the great cities, the feeling of
local independence had been rising, and the chief men of Exeter
seem to have had some thought of making their city a free town.
They offered to own the King’s supremacy and to pay his taxes,
but refused to admit him within their walls. The one point of
William’s policy which is most prominent is his determination to
establish the strength of the monarchy, as against local interests.
He therefore rejected the proposition, and marched upon the city.
The civic chiefs offered to submit, but the people repudiated
their arrangements, and stood the siege. The city was captured by
means of a mine. Harold’s family fled--Gytha, his mother, to the
islands in the Bristol Channel, his sons to Ireland. As usual, a
castle was built in the city; the tribute of the town considerably
increased; both Devonshire and Cornwall completely subdued, and the
same process of partial confiscation which had marked the first
steps of the Conqueror carried out there. The earldom of Cornwall,
and a large quantity of property, was given to Robert of Mortain,
William’s half-brother. The conquest of the West was completed by
the subjugation of Gloucestershire and Worcestershire.
[Sidenote: Insurrection in the North.]
[Sidenote: William’s position in the North and West.]
This insurrection was hardly over when a general confederation
against the Conqueror was set on foot in the North. Edwin and
Morkere, and Eadgar, the nominal king, combined with Eadric the
Forester, and had good hopes of assistance from the Welsh, from
Malcolm Canmore of Scotland, and from Swend of Denmark. This help
was not forthcoming; civil war hindered the Welsh, and Malcolm and
Swend were not ready. The feeling against the Normans was, however,
very strong, many of the inhabitants of Yorkshire taking to the
woods rather than submit. The insurrection was a failure. Again
Edwin and Morkere showed complete want of energy, submitted, and
were received into favour. Such a desertion destroyed all unity of
action; their armies dispersed to their own homes. A certain number
of the insurgents retired and held Durham, others took refuge in
Scotland, but William found no opposition; York submitted, and the
usual castle, the constant badge of conquest, was built there.
On his homeward march through Lincolnshire, the town of Lincoln
and that part of England was also subjugated, while, at the same
time, Malcolm of Scotland sent an embassy, and commended himself
to William. At the close of 1068 William was actual possessor of
England as far northward as the Tees; but Cheshire, Shropshire,
Staffordshire, and part of Herefordshire were still unconquered;
Durham, Northumberland, and Scotland were his only by the tie of
homage.
At this time it is said that a considerable number of his Norman
followers, disliking to leave their homes so long, returned to
Normandy, throwing up their estates in England. This movement has
been exaggerated, as Hugh de Grantmesnil, who is mentioned as the
leader of the returning Normans, undoubtedly held property in
England afterwards. It is, however, probable that some returned,
for William at this time discharged many of his mercenaries, acting
henceforward more completely as English king.
[Sidenote: Revolt in the North.]
At the midwinter meeting of the Witan he proceeded to act as though
the North was completely conquered, and granted the earldom of
Northumberland, vacant by the flight of Gospatric, to his follower
Robert de Comines. But the reception of this new earl showed how
unsubdued as yet the northern earldom was. He reached Durham, and
was received by the Bishop Æthelwine; but when his troops treated
the city as though they had conquered it, the inhabitants rose and
put him and his men to death. The spirit of insurrection spread,
and the citizens of York at once also rose and slew one of the
commanders there, Robert Fitz-Richard. This blow, which seems
to have been concerted, was immediately followed by the return
of Eadgar and the other exiles from Scotland. William hurried
thither in person, re-established his authority, and built a second
castle, which he put into the hands of William Fitz-Osbern. He
then withdrew into the West of England, conscious probably that
the Northern insurrection was only one of his dangers, for Swend
of Denmark had at length sent a fleet to the assistance of the
English, the sons of Harold were landing in Devonshire, and Eadric
the Wild was threatening the north-west of his dominions. In fact,
we have in this year the great final struggle of the English, and
the Norman dominions were assaulted upon all sides.
[Sidenote: Futile insurrections against the Normans.]
[Sidenote: William’s devastation in Yorkshire.]
[Sidenote: Complete subjugation of the North. 1070]
As usual, however, the want of proper concert and of any
acknowledged and heroic leader rendered the English efforts futile.
The sons of Harold were disastrously defeated by Count Brian of
Brittany, their wandering and ill-disciplined troops conquered in
two battles in one day, and they themselves, escaping to Ireland,
are heard of no more. This was in July. In September the Danish
fleet approached. It touched, but was beaten off, both in Kent
and in East Anglia, and finally entered the Humber, where it was
joined by the great English exiles. Thence the combined English
and Danish army moved upon York, while Eadric, in Staffordshire
and the Welsh border, moved forward and besieged Shrewsbury, and
the men of the West, though unaided by the sons of Harold, rose
and besieged the castle of Montacute in Somersetshire. These
two lesser insurrections William could afford to leave to his
lieutenants; Bishop Geoffrey of Coutances relieved Montacute,
and William Fitz-Osbern and Earl Brian apparently completed the
subjugation of the West, compelling Eadric the Forester to retire
after he had destroyed Shrewsbury, and re-establishing the Norman
influence in Devonshire. William himself hastened to the scene
of greatest danger. Already the castles of York were taken, as
the story tells us chiefly by the prowess of Waltheof; but having
completed this object the army had foolishly dispersed, and the
Danes, lying in the Humber, were occupying Lindesey and the north
of Lincolnshire. There William’s sudden march surprised them, and
they were compelled to withdraw to the other side of the Humber.
William then set quietly to work, with his army, which had now
joined him, at the reconquest of Yorkshire. Staffordshire and
Nottingham were secured, and after a lengthened delay at the
passage of the Aire, during which he was probably engaged in
negotiations with the Danes, he moved on practically unopposed to
York. He there re-established his two castles, and proceeded to
give the inhabitants of the country a lesson they were not likely
to forget. He set to work systematically to lay waste the whole
of the territory from the Humber to the Tees. Every house, every
store of food, the very cattle themselves were included in the
great burning. The completeness of the destruction is marked by the
entries of “Waste,” following each other in unbroken succession in
the Domesday Book. For nine years the country was left untilled,
the towns wholly uninhabited, and the few survivors lived like
beasts of the field, feeding upon unclean animals, and reduced
even, in their utter want, to eat human flesh. Having completed
this terrible work, William kept his Christmas in state at York. He
pursued his advantage further, and, as the winter went on, advanced
and secured the hitherto unconquered town of Durham. The North of
England was at length completely conquered.
But the North-west, the counties of Cheshire and Shropshire, was
still unsubdued, and in the dead of the winter William made his
way, in the midst of unspeakable difficulties, through the wild
moorland and hill country which joins the Peak district with the
higher mountains of the Pennine range. The conquest of Chester, and
the ravaging of the neighbouring counties, completed his work. And
when, early in the year Osbern, the commander of Swend’s fleet,
yielding to the diplomacy and bribes of William, sailed away to his
own land, the conquest of England may be said to have been finished.
[Sidenote: William’s legislation.]
For the moment free from military difficulties, William proceeded
to the regulation of his Conquest. He is said now to have
re-enacted the laws of Edward, and although it is probably a legend
that he issued a complete code of laws, it is likely that he took
the opportunity of declaring the re-enactment of existing laws,
with such changes as he chose to introduce. Two ordinances which
seem to belong to this period exist. One, ordaining that peace and
security should be kept between English and Normans, and the laws
of Edward, with regard to land and other matters, upheld, with the
addition of such as the King had added for the advantage of the
English people. The second, enacting a heavy fine for the death
of any one of his soldiers, which fine is to be made good by the
Hundred in which the murder was committed; this was for the defence
of his troops against lawless patriotism, and grew into the law of
Englishry, by which an unknown corpse was always presumed to be
that of a Frenchman, and the fine inflicted, unless the English
nationality of the murdered man was proved.
[Sidenote: His reform of the Church. Appointment of foreign Bishops.]
[Sidenote: Stigand deposed.]
But William had always kept before him, as an object, the change
and reform of the English Church, which till this time had been
strictly national, its laws having been enacted by the mixed
secular and ecclesiastical Witan, and the bishop having presided
side by side with the secular judges in the shire gemot. The
intention of William, whose enterprise had been undertaken with
the full concurrence of the Roman See, whose interests he, as
well as the Normans of Sicily, had much at heart, was to Romanize
this national Church. For carrying out that scheme he looked
to the gradual displacement of bishops of English birth, whose
places could be filled with foreigners. This connection with Rome
is marked by the re-coronation of the King in 1070 by the Papal
Legates, immediately after which the attack upon the English Church
began. The Primate Stigand was the first victim. With him the King
had hitherto temporized; when he was charged with holding the See
of Winchester with his own archbishopric, with having obtained the
Pallium from the false Pope Benedict X., and with having accepted
his bishopric during the lifetime of his predecessor Robert. He was
deprived of both his bishoprics, and kept a prisoner at Winchester.
His brother Æthelmær was removed from the bishopric of the East
Angles. Æthelwine of Durham was also deprived and outlawed, and
Ethelric, Bishop of Selsey, deposed. The Archbishopric of York,
too, was vacant by the death of Ealdred, so that William had here
a good opportunity for carrying out his plans.
[Sidenote: Lanfranc made Archbishop.]
[Sidenote: Lanfranc’s legislation connects the Church with Rome.]
The most important appointments were the two archbishoprics. For
his new Primate he selected Lanfranc, an Italian priest, at this
time Abbot of the little monastery at Bec, whose learning and
importance were such that he had already been offered and had
refused the Primacy of Normandy. It was not without much show
of opposition on his part that he accepted the Archbishopric of
Canterbury; but, when once appointed, he proved himself a most
efficient instrument in carrying out the plans of the King. To
the other vacant bishoprics, in almost every case, chaplains of
the King were appointed. The changes thus begun were carried out
gradually during the whole reign, and were in fact an offshoot of
the great movement for the revival of the Papacy being carried
out in Europe by Hildebrand. Having first, for the purposes of
centralization, established the supremacy of the See of Canterbury
over that of York, Lanfranc set on foot the habit of holding
separate ecclesiastical councils after the great National Meetings
had been dissolved; the bishops withdrew from the county court, and
established ecclesiastical courts of their own; as far as possible
regular canons were put in the place of the secular canons, of whom
many of the chapters consisted; and although the archbishop had
sufficient sense to tolerate those of the clergy who were already
married, for the future such marriages were strictly prohibited.
[Sidenote: But William still head of the Church.]
[Sidenote: The change good on the whole.]
The effect of such legislation was to separate the clergy from
the laity, and to connect the Church much more nearly with Rome.
This policy, which in after times was the source of so much evil,
was rendered harmless during the reign of William by his great
power and decision. He always claimed the position of supreme head
of the Church in England, nor would he suffer any encroachments
from the Papal See. On more than one occasion he exhibited this
determination. To the end of his reign he insisted upon giving
the ring and staff to his bishops. He would not allow any of
his soldiers to be excommunicated without his leave, and when
Hildebrand, occupying the Papal throne as Gregory VII., demanded
that he should both pay Peter’s pence and declare himself the
Pope’s man, he replied, the money he would pay, as his predecessors
had, that the homage he would refuse, as he had neither himself
promised it, nor had his predecessors paid it. In many respects
the change was doubtless for the better. The bishops were on the
whole more learned men, and education was improved. The spirit
of self-denial for the sake of the Church, and the consequent
establishment of foundations and cathedrals, was revived, and the
Church, brought into better discipline, was more able to play its
proper part of mediator and peace-maker in an age of violence. The
distribution of patronage was not, however, without its dark side.
In many instances ecclesiastical position was given in reward of
services to men qualified rather to be soldiers than clergymen;
and complaints exist of the tyrannical manner in which these
soldier-abbots or bishops behaved to their English inferiors.
[Sidenote: Final struggle against the Normans under Hereward. 1070.]
[Sidenote: William conquers him. 1071.]
The conquest of England was completed, as we have seen, in 1070.
But it was six years more before William enjoyed the throne in
peace. The remnant of the conquered nation gathered around a
national hero, called Hereward, in the Fen country. His origin
is not certain, but he seems to have been a Lincolnshire man who
had been deprived of his property by a Norman intruder. He first
appears as assailing with a host of outlaws the monastery of
Peterborough, where one of those soldier abbots just mentioned,
Turold by name, had been lately appointed. He is next heard of
when, in 1071, the Earls Edwin and Morkere, who had seen the
destruction of their old earldoms, while living in inglorious ease,
half prisoners half guests at the Norman court, at length awoke
from their lethargy and attempted to renew the war. Edwin was
killed as he fled, stopped by the flooding of some river; Morkere
succeeded in joining the insurgents at Ely. Hereward’s fastness was
known by the name of the Camp of Refuge. There were collected many
of the noblest of the old English exiles; and legend speaks of the
presence of several people who were undoubtedly not there; but, at
all events, Æthelwine, the deposed Bishop of Durham, was with the
patriots.
The attack was intrusted to William of Warenne, Earl of Surrey, and
Ivo of Taillebois, under the superintendence of William himself,
who came to Cambridge. The difficulties of the situation were
overcome by the building of a great causeway across the fens. The
defence of the camp is described as lengthened and heroic, but
before the end of the year it seems to have been captured, and
Morkere and Æthelwine both prisoners. Hereward himself escaped, and
in 1073 is mentioned as leading the English contingent in William’s
attack on Maine. The legend describes how, while living in peace
with the king, he was surprised at his meals by a band of Normans,
and after a terrific combat, in which he slew fifteen or sixteen
Frenchmen, was finally overpowered by numbers. In sober fact, his
end seems to have been peaceful, as he appears in Domesday Book as
holding property both in Worcester and Warwick.
[Sidenote: Wales held in check by the Earls of Chester and
Shrewsbury.]
From the English William had no further trouble; with the
neighbouring kingdoms he had still some difficulties. With the
Britons in Wales, the old Earls of Mercia and the house of Leofric
had had friendly connection; but all sign of this had ceased upon
the Conquest. The wars carried on against them were however local
in character; for, contrary to his usual practice, William had
established upon the West March two palatine counties of Chester
and Shrewsbury. In these counties the whole of the land belonged to
the earl and his tenants, and the king had no domain. They were,
therefore, like the great feudal holdings of France. Chester he
at first placed in the hands of Gerbod the Fleming, his stepson,
and, upon his withdrawal to the Continent, in those of Hugh of
Avranches, surnamed Lupus, a man of whom the chroniclers speak
much evil as at once licentious and tyrannical. Together with
his lieutenant, Robert of Rhuddlan, he waged continual war with
the Welsh. The same task fell to Roger of Montgomery, Earl of
Shrewsbury, who took advantage of the disputes among the Welsh
Princes, and succeeded so far as to build and hold, far in Wales,
the castle of Montgomery, called after his own property in the
neighbourhood of Lisieux in Normandy.
[Sidenote: Scotland’s savage invasions.]
Malcolm Canmore had throughout appeared as the supporter of the
conquered English, and at his court the exiles had been constantly
received. This did not prevent him from pushing his ravages
into the Northern counties; nor did they cease when he received
Eadgar Ætheling and his sisters on their flight to the North
(1070). This was followed by acts of extraordinary barbarity.
Gospatric, who had found favour with William, and accepted the
Earldom of Northumberland, attempted a counter invasion into the
Scotch district of Cumberland. In rage at this Malcolm gave
orders to spare neither sex nor age. The old and the infants were
slaughtered, the able-bodied men and maidens were carried off
into slavery, so that there were few Scotch villages where there
were not English slaves. Malcolm, however, grew milder under the
influence of his wife Margaret, Eadgar’s sister, and the effect of
the presence of the numerous English, either refugees or slaves,
was such that the Lowlands became thoroughly Anglicised.
[Sidenote: William makes Malcolm swear fealty. 1072.]
In 1072, William himself revenged the inroad of the year 1070, by
marching into Scotland and receiving the oath of fealty of Malcolm
at Abernethy on the Tay. It is mentioned that the last great noble
who had held out against him, Eadric the Wild, accompanied him on
this expedition, which marks not only the Conquest of England, but
the assumption on the part of William of that Imperial position in
Great Britain which the great English kings had held.
[Sidenote: Trouble in Normandy. 1075.]
His foreign neighbours also gave William some trouble. The province
of Maine, which he had conquered in 1063, threw off his allegiance.
The citizens of Le Mans had risen in insurrection against their
lords, and formed themselves into a free commune; but Geoffrey
of Mayenne, a nobleman whose help they had sought, betrayed the
burghers in their efforts to reduce one of the neighbouring
nobility, and they were obliged to call in the assistance of
Fulk of Anjou, who had claims upon the province. William reduced
Le Mans, but was obliged to make a peace with Fulk, who had
strengthened himself by an alliance with the Bretons; and, by the
treaty of Blanchelande, William’s son Robert took the government of
Maine, but did homage for it to Anjou.
[Sidenote: Conspiracy of Norman nobles suppressed. 1076.]
[Sidenote: Waltheof executed. 1076.]
While affairs on the Continent were thus occupying his attention,
in 1075 a conspiracy of his own nobles in England broke out. Ralph
of Gwader (or Wader), the son of Ralph the Staller and a Breton
lady, had been intrusted with the Earldom of Norfolk. Roger,
the son of William Fitz-Osbern, had succeeded to the Earldom of
Hereford. These two nobles sought to ally their houses, and,
against the will of William, Ralph married Emma, Roger’s sister.
At the bridal feast Waltheof of Nottingham, the one remaining
English Earl, was present, and there a conspiracy was entered into,
apparently on account of the strong hold which William kept over
his nobles, and in the interests of more perfect feudalism. The
kingdom was to be divided among the three earls, one of whom was to
be king. Waltheof had been well treated by the King, and married
to his niece Judith. His conscience seems to have pricked him, and
he confessed all to Lanfranc, at that time governing England. The
conspiracy was at once suppressed; Norwich alone, under Emma, the
new married bride, made a brave defence. Ralph fled to Brittany.
Roger was taken prisoner, and spent his life in captivity. Waltheof
was at first received into favour, but afterwards, it is believed
at the instigation of his wife, he was tried before the Witan
and found guilty of death. The sentence was executed in secret
outside the town of Winchester. During his imprisonment the Earl’s
penitence had been deep, and it was while still on his knees
uttering the Lord’s Prayer that the impatient executioner smote off
his head. The national hero, dying in this religious state of mind,
speedily became the national saint. His remains were removed to
Crowland, which he had much benefited, and miracles were worked at
his tomb. The confiscation of the property of these two earldoms,
and the death of Queen Edith, the widow of the Confessor, threw
great property into the hands of William, who did not reappoint to
the earldoms.
[Sidenote: Quarrels between William and his sons.]
[Sidenote: Reconciliation at Gerberoi. 1079.]
From this time onward William lived generally in Normandy, leaving
England to the care of Lanfranc and Odo of Bayeux. The great
success of his reign had indeed been reached, and the remaining
years were disturbed by constant disputes with his sons and with
his suzerain the King of France. Already, when pursuing Ralph of
Gwader on his retreat into Brittany, and besieging him in the town
of Dol, he had found himself checked by the union of Philip of
France with Alan Fergant of Brittany, and had found it advisable
to marry his daughter Constance to that nobleman as the price of
peace. So, too, to lessen the jealousy the King of France might
naturally have felt at his vassal’s great aggrandisement, he had
made the Norman barons swear fealty to his son Robert as his heir,
and had caused him to do homage in his place for Maine. Robert
desired to make this nominal position real; and, as a part of the
same feudal movement perhaps which produced the conspiracy of
1075, he demanded Normandy and Maine of his father. His demand
was refused; and when, during an expedition of William against
the Count of Mortagne, an accidental quarrel arose between Robert
and his brothers, in company with many of the younger nobility
he broke into open rebellion. With these, after an unsuccessful
attempt at Rouen, he fled to Hugh of Neufchâtel. Beaten thence,
he wandered from court to court, assisted by his mother Matilda,
against William’s will. At length he found an ally in Philip, who
established him in 1079 in Gerberoi, near the borders of Normandy.
It was there that father and son met face to face, and that William
was unhorsed by Robert. The siege of Gerberoi had to be raised, and
William underwent the humiliation of seeking a reconciliation with
his son, a reconciliation which was of short duration, as in 1080
Robert again fled from court.
[Sidenote: Odo’s oppressive government.]