WILLIAM’S INVASION OF ENGLAND.
AUGUST-DECEMBER 1066.
THE statesmanship of William had triumphed. The people of England had
chosen their king, and a large part of the world had been won over by the
arts of a foreign prince to believe that it was a righteous and holy work
to set him on the throne to which the English people had chosen the
foremost man among themselves. No diplomatic success was ever more
thorough. Unluckily we know nothing of the state of feeling in England
while William was plotting and pleading beyond the sea. Nor do we know
how much men in England knew of what was going on in other lands, or what
they thought when they heard of it. We know only that, after Harold had
won over Northumberland, he came back and held the Easter Gemót at
Westminster. Then in the words of the Chronicler, “it was known to him
that William Bastard, King Edward’s kinsman, would come hither and win
this land.” This is all that our own writers tell us about William
Bastard, between his peaceful visit to England in 1052 and his warlike
visit in 1066. But we know that King Harold did all that man could do to
defeat his purposes, and that he was therein loyally supported by the
great mass of the English nation, we may safely say by all, save his two
brothers-in-law and so many as they could influence.
William’s doings we know more fully. The military events of this
wonderful year there is no need to tell in detail. But we see that
William’s generalship was equal to his statesmanship, and that it was met
by equal generalship on the side of Harold. Moreover, the luck of
William is as clear as either his statesmanship or his generalship. When
Harold was crowned on the day of the Epiphany, he must have felt sure
that he would have to withstand an invasion of England before the year
was out. But it could not have come into the mind of Harold, William, or
Lanfranc, or any other man, that he would have to withstand two invasions
of England at the same moment.
It was the invasion of Harold of Norway, at the same time as the invasion
of William, which decided the fate of England. The issue of the struggle
might have gone against England, had she had to strive against one enemy
only; as it was, it was the attack made by two enemies at once which
divided her strength, and enabled the Normans to land without resistance.
The two invasions came as nearly as possible at the same moment. Harold
Hardrada can hardly have reached the Yorkshire coast before September;
the battle of Fulford was fought on September 20th and that of
Stamfordbridge on September 25th. William landed on September 28th, and
the battle of Senlac was fought on October 14th. Moreover William’s
fleet was ready by August 12th; his delay in crossing was owing to his
waiting for a favourable wind. When William landed, the event of the
struggle in the North could not have been known in Sussex. He might have
had to strive, not with Harold of England, but with Harold of Norway as
his conqueror.
At what time of the year Harold Hardrada first planned his invasion of
England is quite uncertain. We can say nothing of his doings till he is
actually afloat. And with the three mighty forms of William and the two
Harolds on the scene, there is something at once grotesque and perplexing
in the way in which an English traitor flits about among them. The
banished Tostig, deprived of his earldom in the autumn of 1065, had then
taken refuge in Flanders. He now plays a busy part, the details of which
are lost in contradictory accounts. But it is certain that in May 1066
he made an ineffectual attack on England. And this attack was most
likely made with the connivance of William. It suited William to use
Tostig as an instrument, and to encourage so restless a spirit in
annoying the common enemy. It is also certain that Tostig was with the
Norwegian fleet in September, and that he died at Stamfordbridge. We
know also that he was in Scotland between May and September. It is
therefore hard to believe that Tostig had so great a hand in stirring up
Harold Hardrada to his expedition as the Norwegian story makes out. Most
likely Tostig simply joined the expedition which Harold Hardrada
independently planned. One thing is certain, that, when Harold of
England was attacked by two enemies at once, it was not by two enemies
acting in concert. The interests of William and of Harold of Norway were
as much opposed to one another as either of them was to the interests of
Harold of England.
One great difficulty beset Harold and William alike. Either in Normandy
or in England it was easy to get together an army ready to fight a
battle; it was not easy to keep a large body of men under arms for any
long time without fighting. It was still harder to keep them at once
without fighting and without plundering. What William had done in this
way in two invasions of Normandy, he was now called on to do on a greater
scale. His great and motley army was kept during a great part of August
and September, first at the Dive, then at Saint Valery, waiting for the
wind that was to take it to England. And it was kept without doing any
serious damage to the lands where they were encamped. In a holy war,
this time was of course largely spent in appeals to the religious
feelings of the army. Then came the wonderful luck of William, which
enabled him to cross at the particular moment when he did cross. A
little earlier or later, he would have found his landing stoutly
disputed; as it was, he landed without resistance. Harold of England,
not being able, in his own words, to be everywhere at once, had done what
he could. He and his brothers Gyrth and Leofwine undertook the defence
of southern England against the Norman; the earls of the North, his
brothers-in-law Edwin and Morkere, were to defend their own land against
the Norwegians. His own preparations were looked on with wonder. To
guard the long line of coast against the invader, he got together such a
force both by sea and land as no king had ever got together before, and
he kept it together for a longer time than William did, through four
months of inaction, save perhaps some small encounters by sea. At last,
early in September, provisions failed; men were no doubt clamouring to go
back for the harvest, and the great host had to be disbanded. Could
William have sailed as soon as his fleet was ready, he would have found
southern England thoroughly prepared to meet him. Meanwhile the northern
earls had clearly not kept so good watch as the king. Harold Hardrada
harried the Yorkshire coast; he sailed up the Ouse, and landed without
resistance. At last the earls met him in arms and were defeated by the
Northmen at Fulford near York. Four days later York capitulated, and
agreed to receive Harold Hardrada as king. Meanwhile the news reached
Harold of England; he got together his housecarls and such other troops
as could be mustered at the moment, and by a march of almost incredible
speed he was able to save the city and all northern England. The fight
of Stamfordbridge, the defeat and death of the most famous warrior of the
North, was the last and greatest success of Harold of England. But his
northward march had left southern England utterly unprotected. Had the
south wind delayed a little longer, he might, before the second enemy
came, have been again on the South-Saxon coast. As it was, three days
after Stamfordbridge, while Harold of England was still at York, William
of Normandy landed without opposition at Pevensey.
Thus wonderfully had an easy path into England been opened for William.
The Norwegian invasion had come at the best moment for his purposes, and
the result had been what he must have wished. With one Harold he must
fight, and to fight with Harold of England was clearly best for his ends.
His work would not have been done, if another had stepped in to chastise
the perjurer. Now that he was in England, it became a trial of
generalship between him and Harold. William’s policy was to provoke
Harold to fight at once. It was perhaps Harold’s policy—so at least
thought Gyrth—to follow yet more thoroughly William’s own example in the
French invasions. Let him watch and follow the enemy, let him avoid all
action, and even lay waste the land between London and the south coast,
and the strength of the invaders would gradually be worn out. But it
might have been hard to enforce such a policy on men whose hearts were
stirred by the invasion, and one part of whom, the King’s own thegns and
housecarls, were eager to follow up their victory over the Northern with
a yet mightier victory over the Norman. And Harold spoke as an English
king should speak, when he answered that he would never lay waste a
single rood of English ground, that he would never harm the lands or the
goods of the men who had chosen him to be their king. In the trial of
skill between the two commanders, each to some extent carried his point.
William’s havoc of a large part of Sussex compelled Harold to march at
once to give battle. But Harold was able to give battle at a place of
his own choosing, thoroughly suited for the kind of warfare which he had
to wage.
Harold was blamed, as defeated generals are blamed, for being too eager
to fight and not waiting for more troops. But to any one who studies the
ground it is plain that Harold needed, not more troops, but to some
extent better troops, and that he would not have got those better troops
by waiting. From York Harold had marched to London, as the meeting-place
for southern and eastern England, as well as for the few who actually
followed him from the North and those who joined him on the march. Edwin
and Morkere were bidden to follow with the full force of their earldoms.
This they took care not to do. Harold and his West-Saxons had saved
them, but they would not strike a blow back again. Both now and earlier
in the year they doubtless aimed at a division of the kingdom, such as
had been twice made within fifty years. Either Harold or William might
reign in Wessex and East-Anglia; Edwin should reign in Northumberland and
Mercia. William, the enemy of Harold but no enemy of theirs, might be
satisfied with the part of England which was under the immediate rule of
Harold and his brothers, and might allow the house of Leofric to keep at
least an under-kingship in the North. That the brother earls held back
from the King’s muster is undoubted, and this explanation fits in with
their whole conduct both before and after. Harold had thus at his
command the picked men of part of England only, and he had to supply the
place of those who were lacking with such forces as he could get. The
lack of discipline on the part of these inferior troops lost Harold the
battle. But matters would hardly have been mended by waiting for men who
had made up their minds not to come.
The messages exchanged between King and Duke immediately before the
battle, as well as at an earlier time, have been spoken of already. The
challenge to single combat at least comes now. When Harold refused every
demand, William called on Harold to spare the blood of his followers, and
decide his claims by battle in his own person. Such a challenge was in
the spirit of Norman jurisprudence, which in doubtful cases looked for
the judgement of God, not, as the English did, by the ordeal, but by the
personal combat of the two parties. Yet this challenge too was surely
given in the hope that Harold would refuse it, and would thereby put
himself, in Norman eyes, yet more thoroughly in the wrong. For the
challenge was one which Harold could not but refuse. William looked on
himself as one who claimed his own from one who wrongfully kept him out
of it. He was plaintiff in a suit in which Harold was defendant; that
plaintiff and defendant were both accompanied by armies was an accident
for which the defendant, who had refused all peaceful means of
settlement, was to blame. But Harold and his people could not look on
the matter as a mere question between two men. The crown was Harold’s by
the gift of the nation, and he could not sever his own cause from the
cause of the nation. The crown was his; but it was not his to stake on
the issue of a single combat. If Harold were killed, the nation might
give the crown to whom they thought good; Harold’s death could not make
William’s claim one jot better. The cause was not personal, but
national. The Norman duke had, by a wanton invasion, wronged, not the
King only, but every man in England, and every man might claim to help in
driving him out. Again, in an ordinary wager of battle, the judgement
can be enforced; here, whether William slew Harold or Harold slew
William, there was no means of enforcing the judgement except by the
strength of the two armies. If Harold fell, the English army were not
likely to receive William as king; if William fell, the Norman army was
still less likely to go quietly out of England. The challenge was meant
as a mere blind; it would raise the spirit of William’s followers; it
would be something for his poets and chroniclers to record in his honour;
that was all.
* * * * *
The actual battle, fought on Senlac, on Saint Calixtus’ day, was more
than a trial of skill and courage between two captains and two armies.
It was, like the old battles of Macedonian and Roman, a trial between two
modes of warfare. The English clave to the old Teutonic tactics. They
fought on foot in the close array of the shield-wall. Those who rode to
the field dismounted when the fight began. They first hurled their
javelins, and then took to the weapons of close combat. Among these the
Danish axe, brought in by Cnut, had nearly displaced the older English
broadsword. Such was the array of the housecarls and of the thegns who
had followed Harold from York or joined him on his march. But the
treason of Edwin and Morkere had made it needful to supply the place of
the picked men of Northumberland with irregular levies, armed almost
anyhow. Of their weapons of various kinds the bow was the rarest. The
strength of the Normans lay in the arms in which the English were
lacking, in horsemen and archers. These last seem to have been a force
of William’s training; we first hear of the Norman bowmen at Varaville.
These two ways of fighting were brought each one to perfection by the
leaders on each side. They had not yet been tried against one another.
At Stamfordbridge Harold had defeated an enemy whose tactics were the
same as his own. William had not fought a pitched battle since
Val-ès-dunes in his youth. Indeed pitched battles, such as English and
Scandinavian warriors were used to in the wars of Edmund and Cnut, were
rare in continental warfare. That warfare mainly consisted in the attack
and defence of strong places, and in skirmishes fought under their walls.
But William knew how to make use of troops of different kinds and to
adapt them to any emergency. Harold too was a man of resources; he had
gained his Welsh successes by adapting his men to the enemy’s way of
fighting. To withstand the charge of the Norman horsemen, Harold clave
to the national tactics, but he chose for the place of battle a spot
where those tactics would have the advantage. A battle on the low ground
would have been favourable to cavalry; Harold therefore occupied and
fenced in a hill, the hill of Senlac, the site in after days of the abbey
and town of Battle, and there awaited the Norman attack. The Norman
horsemen had thus to make their way up the hill under the shower of the
English javelins, and to meet the axes as soon as they reached the
barricade. And these tactics were thoroughly successful, till the
inferior troops were tempted to come down from the hill and chase the
Bretons whom they had driven back. This suggested to William the device
of the feigned flight; the English line of defence was broken, and the
advantage of ground was lost. Thus was the great battle lost. And the
war too was lost by the deaths of Harold and his brothers, which left
England without leaders, and by the unyielding valour of Harold’s
immediate following. They were slain to a man, and south-eastern England
was left defenceless.
* * * * *
William, now truly the Conqueror in the vulgar sense, was still far from
having full possession of his conquest. He had military possession of
part of one shire only; he had to look for further resistance, and he met
with not a little. But his combined luck and policy served him well. He
could put on the form of full possession before he had the reality; he
could treat all further resistance as rebellion against an established
authority; he could make resistance desultory and isolated. William had
to subdue England in detail; he had never again to fight what the English
Chroniclers call a _folk-fight_. His policy after his victory was
obvious. Still uncrowned, he was not, even in his own view, king, but he
alone had the right to become king. He had thus far been driven to
maintain his rights by force; he was not disposed to use force any
further, if peaceful possession was to be had. His course was therefore
to show himself stern to all who withstood him, but to take all who
submitted into his protection and favour. He seems however to have
looked for a speedier submission than really happened. He waited a while
in his camp for men to come in and acknowledge him. As none came, he set
forth to win by the strong arm the land which he claimed of right.
Thus to look for an immediate submission was not unnatural; fully
believing in the justice of his own cause, William would believe in it
all the more after the issue of the battle. God, Harold had said, should
judge between himself and William, and God had judged in William’s
favour. With all his clear-sightedness, he would hardly understand how
differently things looked in English eyes. Some indeed, specially
churchmen, specially foreign churchmen, now began to doubt whether to
fight against William was not to fight against God. But to the nation at
large William was simply as Hubba, Swegen, and Cnut in past times.
England had before now been conquered, but never in a single fight.
Alfred and Edmund had fought battle after battle with the Dane, and men
had no mind to submit to the Norman because he had been once victorious.
But Alfred and Edmund, in alternate defeat and victory, lived to fight
again; their people had not to choose a new king; the King had merely to
gather a new army. But Harold was slain, and the first question was how
to fill his place. The Witan, so many as could be got together, met to
choose a king, whose first duty would be to meet William the Conqueror in
arms. The choice was not easy. Harold’s sons were young, and not born
Æthelings. His brothers, of whom Gyrth at least must have been fit to
reign, had fallen with him. Edwin and Morkere were not at the battle,
but they were at the election. But schemes for winning the crown for the
house of Leofric would find no favour in an assembly held in London. For
lack of any better candidate, the hereditary sentiment prevailed. Young
Edgar was chosen. But the bishops, it is said, did not agree; they must
have held that God had declared in favour of William. Edwin and Morkere
did agree; but they withdrew to their earldoms, still perhaps cherishing
hopes of a divided kingdom. Edgar, as king-elect, did at least one act
of kingship by confirming the election of an abbot of Peterborough; but
of any general preparation for warfare there is not a sign. The local
resistance which William met with shows that, with any combined action,
the case was not hopeless. But with Edgar for king, with the northern
earls withdrawing their forces, with the bishops at least lukewarm,
nothing could be done. The Londoners were eager to fight; so doubtless
were others; but there was no leader. So far from there being another
Harold or Edmund to risk another battle, there was not even a leader to
carry out the policy of Fabius and Gyrth.
Meanwhile the Conqueror was advancing, by his own road and after his own
fashion. We must remember the effect of the mere slaughter of the great
battle. William’s own army had suffered severely: he did not leave
Hastings till he had received reinforcements from Normandy. But to
England the battle meant the loss of the whole force of the south-eastern
shires. A large part of England was left helpless. William followed
much the same course as he had followed in Maine. A legal claimant of
the crown, it was his interest as soon as possible to become a crowned
king, and that in his kinsman’s church at Westminster. But it was not
his interest to march straight on London and demand the crown, sword in
hand. He saw that, without the support of the northern earls, Edgar
could not possibly stand, and that submission to himself was only a
question of time. He therefore chose a roundabout course through those
south-eastern shires which were wholly without means of resisting him.
He marched from Sussex into Kent, harrying the land as he went, to
frighten the people into submission. The men of Romney had before the
battle cut in pieces a party of Normans who had fallen into their hands,
most likely by sea. William took some undescribed vengeance for their
slaughter. Dover and its castle, the castle which, in some accounts,
Harold had sworn to surrender to William, yielded without a blow. Here
then he was gracious. When some of his unruly followers set fire to the
houses of the town, William made good the losses of their owners.
Canterbury submitted; from thence, by a bold stroke, he sent messengers
who received the submission of Winchester. He marched on, ravaging as he
went, to the immediate neighbourhood of London, but keeping ever on the
right bank of the Thames. But a gallant sally of the citizens was
repulsed by the Normans, and the suburb of Southwark was burned. William
marched along the river to Wallingford. Here he crossed, receiving for
the first time the active support of an Englishman of high rank, Wiggod
of Wallingford, sheriff of Oxfordshire. He became one of a small class
of Englishmen who were received to William’s fullest favour, and kept at
least as high a position under him as they had held before. William
still kept on, marching and harrying, to the north of London, as he had
before done to the south. The city was to be isolated within a cordon of
wasted lands. His policy succeeded. As no succours came from the North,
the hearts of those who had chosen them a king failed at the approach of
his rival. At Berkhampstead Edgar himself, with several bishops and
chief men, came to make their submission. They offered the crown to
William, and, after some debate, he accepted it. But before he came in
person, he took means to secure the city. The beginnings of the fortress
were now laid which, in the course of William’s reign, grew into the
mighty Tower of London.
It may seem strange that when his great object was at last within his
grasp, William should have made his acceptance of it a matter of debate.
He claims the crown as his right; the crown is offered to him; and yet he
doubts about taking it. Ought he, he asks, to take the crown of a
kingdom of which he has not as yet full possession? At that time the
territory of which William had even military possession could not have
stretched much to the north-west of a line drawn from Winchester to
Norwich. Outside that line men were, as William is made to say, still in
rebellion. His scruples were come over by an orator who was neither
Norman nor English, but one of his foreign followers, Haimer Viscount of
Thouars. The debate was most likely got up at William’s bidding, but it
was not got up without a motive. William, ever seeking outward legality,
seeking to do things peaceably when they could be done peaceably, seeking
for means to put every possible enemy in the wrong, wished to make his
acceptance of the English crown as formally regular as might be. Strong
as he held his claim to be by the gift of Edward, it would be better to
be, if not strictly chosen, at least peacefully accepted, by the chief
men of England. It might some day serve his purpose to say that the
crown had been offered to him, and that he had accepted it only after a
debate in which the chief speaker was an impartial stranger. Having
gained this point more, William set out from Berkhampstead, already, in
outward form, King-elect of the English.
The rite which was to change him from king-elect into full king took
place in Eadward’s church of Westminster on Christmas day, 1066, somewhat
more than two months after the great battle, somewhat less than twelve
months after the death of Edward and the coronation of Harold. Nothing
that was needed for a lawful crowning was lacking. The consent of the
people, the oath of the king, the anointing by the hands of a lawful
metropolitan, all were there. Ealdred acted as the actual celebrant,
while Stigand took the second place in the ceremony. But this outward
harmony between the nation and its new king was marred by an unhappy
accident. Norman horsemen stationed outside the church mistook the shout
with which the people accepted the new king for the shout of men who were
doing him damage. But instead of going to his help, they began, in true
Norman fashion, to set fire to the neighbouring houses. The havoc and
plunder that followed disturbed the solemnities of the day and were a bad
omen for the new reign. It was no personal fault of William’s; in
putting himself in the hands of subjects of such new and doubtful
loyalty, he needed men near at hand whom he could trust. But then it was
his doing that England had to receive a king who needed foreign soldiers
to guard him.
* * * * *
William was now lawful King of the English, so far as outward ceremonies
could make him so. But he knew well how far he was from having won real
kingly authority over the whole kingdom. Hardly a third part of the land
was in his obedience. He had still, as he doubtless knew, to win his
realm with the edge of the sword. But he could now go forth to further
conquests, not as a foreign invader, but as the king of the land, putting
down rebellion among his own subjects. If the men of Northumberland
should refuse to receive him, he could tell them that he was their lawful
king, anointed by their own archbishop. It was sound policy to act as
king of the whole land, to exercise a semblance of authority where he had
none in fact. And in truth he was king of the whole land, so far as
there was no other king. The unconquered parts of the land were in no
mood to submit; but they could not agree on any common plan of resistance
under any common leader. Some were still for Edgar, some for Harold’s
sons, some for Swegen of Denmark. Edwin and Morkere doubtless were for
themselves. If one common leader could have been found even now, the
throne of the foreign king would have been in no small danger. But no
such leader came: men stood still, or resisted piecemeal, so the land was
conquered piecemeal, and that under cover of being brought under the
obedience of its lawful king.
* * * * *
Now that the Norman duke has become an English king, his career as an
English statesman strictly begins, and a wonderful career it is. Its
main principle was to respect formal legality wherever he could. All
William’s purposes were to be carried out, as far as possible, under
cover of strict adherence to the law of the land of which he had become
the lawful ruler. He had sworn at his crowning to keep the laws of the
land, and to rule his kingdom as well as any king that had gone before
him. And assuredly he meant to keep his oath. But a foreign king, at
the head of a foreign army, and who had his foreign followers to reward,
could keep that oath only in its letter and not in its spirit. But it is
wonderful how nearly he came to keep it in the letter. He contrived to
do his most oppressive acts, to deprive Englishmen of their lands and
offices, and to part them out among strangers, under cover of English
law. He could do this. A smaller man would either have failed to carry
out his purposes at all, or he could have carried them out only by
reckless violence. When we examine the administration of William more in
detail, we shall see that its effects in the long run were rather to
preserve than to destroy our ancient institutions. He knew the strength
of legal fictions; by legal fictions he conquered and he ruled. But
every legal fiction is outward homage to the principle of law, an outward
protest against unlawful violence. That England underwent a Norman
Conquest did in the end only make her the more truly England. But that
this could be was because that conquest was wrought by the Bastard of
Falaise and by none other.