THE REVOLTS AGAINST WILLIAM.
1070–1086.
THE years which saw the settlement of England, though not years of
constant fighting like the two years between the march to Exeter and the
fall of Chester, were not years of perfect peace. William had to
withstand foes on both sides of the sea, to withstand foes in his own
household, to undergo his first defeat, to receive his first wound in
personal conflict. Nothing shook his firm hold either on duchy or
kingdom; but in his later years his good luck forsook him. And men did
not fail to connect this change in his future with a change in himself,
above all with one deed of blood which stands out as utterly unlike all
his other recorded acts.
But the amount of warfare which William had to go through in these later
years was small compared with the great struggles of his earlier days.
There is no tale to tell like the war of Val-ès-dunes, like the French
invasions of Normandy, like the campaigns that won England. One event
only of the earlier time is repeated almost as exactly as an event can be
repeated. William had won Maine once; he had now to win it again, and
less thoroughly. As Conqueror his work is done; a single expedition into
Wales is the only campaign of this part of his life that led to any
increase of territory.
When William sat down to the settlement of his kingdom after the fall of
Chester, he was in the strictest sense full king over all England. For
the moment the whole land obeyed him; at no later moment did any large
part of the land fail to obey him. All opposition was now revolt. Men
were no longer keeping out an invader; when they rose, they rose against
a power which, however wrongfully, was the established government of the
land. Two such movements took place. One was a real revolt of
Englishmen against foreign rule. The other was a rebellion of William’s
own earls in their own interests, in which English feeling went with the
King. Both were short sharp struggles which stand out boldly in the
tale. More important in the general story, though less striking in
detail, are the relations of William to the other powers in and near the
isle of Britain. With the crown of the West-Saxon kings, he had taken up
their claims to supremacy over the whole island, and probably beyond it.
And even without such claims, border warfare with his Welsh and Scottish
neighbours could not be avoided. Counting from the completion of the
real conquest of England in 1070, there were in William’s reign three
distinct sources of disturbance. There were revolts within the kingdom
of England. There was border warfare in Britain. There were revolts in
William’s continental dominions. And we may add actual foreign warfare
or threats of foreign warfare, affecting William, sometimes in his
Norman, sometimes in his English character.
With the affairs of Wales William had little personally to do. In this
he is unlike those who came immediately before and after him. In the
lives of Harold and of William Rufus personal warfare against the Welsh
forms an important part. William the Great commonly left this kind of
work to the earls of the frontier, to Hugh of Chester, Roger of
Shrewsbury, and to his early friend William of Hereford, so long as that
fierce warrior’s life lasted. These earls were ever at war with the
Welsh princes, and they extended the English kingdom at their cost. Once
only did the King take a personal share in the work, when he entered
South Wales, in 1081. We hear vaguely of his subduing the land and
founding castles; we see more distinctly that he released many subjects
who were in British bondage, and that he went on a religious pilgrimage
to Saint David’s. This last journey is in some accounts connected with
schemes for the conquest of Ireland. And in one most remarkable passage
of the English Chronicle, the writer for once speculates as to what might
have happened but did not. Had William lived two years longer, he would
have won Ireland by his wisdom without weapons. And if William had won
Ireland either by wisdom or by weapons, he would assuredly have known
better how to deal with it than most of those who have come after him.
If any man could have joined together the lands which God has put
asunder, surely it was he. This mysterious saying must have a reference
to some definite act or plan of which we have no other record. And some
slight approach to the process of winning Ireland without weapons does
appear in the ecclesiastical intercourse between England and Ireland
which now begins. Both the native Irish princes and the Danes of the
east coast begin to treat Lanfranc as their metropolitan, and to send
bishops to him for consecration. The name of the King of the English is
never mentioned in the letters which passed between the English primate
and the kings and bishops of Ireland. It may be that William was biding
his time for some act of special wisdom; but our speculations cannot go
any further than those of the Peterborough Chronicler.
Revolt within the kingdom and invasion from without both began in the
year in which the Conquest was brought to an end. William’s
ecclesiastical reforms were interrupted by the revolt of the Fenland.
William’s authority had never been fully acknowledged in that corner of
England, while he wore his crown and held his councils elsewhere. But
the place where disturbances began, the abbey of Peterborough, was
certainly in William’s obedience. The warfare made memorable by the name
of Hereward began in June 1070, and a Scottish harrying of Northern
England, the second of five which are laid to the charge of Malcolm, took
place in the same year, and most likely about the same time. The English
movement is connected alike with the course of the Danish fleet and with
the appointment of Turold to the abbey of Peterborough. William had
bribed the Danish commanders to forsake their English allies, and he
allowed them to ravage the coast. A later bribe took them back to
Denmark; but not till they had shown themselves in the waters of Ely.
The people, largely of Danish descent, flocked to them, thinking, as the
Chronicler says, that they would win the whole land. The movement was
doubtless in favour of the kingship of Swegen. But nothing was done by
Danes and English together save to plunder Peterborough abbey. Hereward,
said to have been the nephew of Turold’s English predecessor, doubtless
looked on the holy place, under a Norman abbot, as part of the enemy’s
country.
The name of Hereward has gathered round it such a mass of fiction, old
and new, that it is hard to disentangle the few details of his real
history. His descent and birth-place are uncertain; but he was assuredly
a man of Lincolnshire, and assuredly not the son of Earl Leofric. For
some unknown cause, he had been banished in the days of Edward or of
Harold. He now came back to lead his countrymen against William. He was
the soul of the movement of which the abbey of Ely became the centre.
The isle, then easily defensible, was the last English ground on which
the Conqueror was defied by Englishmen fighting for England. The men of
the Fenland were zealous; the monks of Ely were zealous; helpers came in
from other parts of England. English leaders left their shelter in
Scotland to share the dangers of their countrymen; even Edwin and Morkere
at last plucked up heart to leave William’s court and join the patriotic
movement. Edwin was pursued; he was betrayed by traitors; he was
overtaken and slain, to William’s deep grief, we are told. His brother
reached the isle, and helped in its defence. William now felt that the
revolt called for his own presence and his full energies. The isle was
stoutly attacked and stoutly defended, till, according to one version,
the monks betrayed the stronghold to the King. According to another,
Morkere was induced to surrender by promises of mercy which William
failed to fulfil. In any case, before the year 1071 was ended, the isle
of Ely was in William’s hands. Hereward alone with a few companions made
their way out by sea. William was less merciful than usual; still no man
was put to death. Some were mutilated, some imprisoned; Morkere and
other chief men spent the rest of their days in bonds. The temper of the
Conqueror had now fearfully hardened. Still he could honour a valiant
enemy; those who resisted to the last fared best. All the legends of
Hereward’s later days speak of him as admitted to William’s peace and
favour. One makes him die quietly, another kills him at the hands of
Norman enemies, but not at William’s bidding or with William’s knowledge.
Evidence a little better suggests that he bore arms for his new sovereign
beyond the sea; and an entry in Domesday also suggests that he held lands
under Count Robert of Mortain in Warwickshire. It would suit William’s
policy, when he received Hereward to his favour, to make him exchange
lands near to the scene of his exploits for lands in a distant shire held
under the lordship of the King’s brother.
Meanwhile, most likely in the summer months of 1070, Malcolm ravaged
Cleveland, Durham, and other districts where there must have been little
left to ravage. Meanwhile the Ætheling Edgar and his sisters, with other
English exiles, sought shelter in Scotland, and were hospitably received.
At the same time Gospatric, now William’s earl in Northumberland,
retaliated by a harrying of Scottish Cumberland, which provoked Malcolm
to greater cruelties. It was said that there was no house in Scotland so
poor that it had not an English bondman. Presently some of Malcolm’s
English guests joined the defenders of Ely; those of highest birth stayed
in Scotland, and Malcolm, after much striving, persuaded Margaret the
sister of Edgar to become his wife. Her praises are written in Scottish
history, and the marriage had no small share in the process which made
the Scottish kings and the lands which formed their real kingdom
practically English. The sons and grandsons of Margaret, sprung of the
Old-English kingly house, were far more English within their own realm
than the Norman and Angevin kings of Southern England. But within the
English border men looked at things with other eyes. Thrice again did
Malcolm ravage England; two and twenty years later he was slain in his
last visit of havoc. William meanwhile and his earls at least drew to
themselves some measure of loyalty from the men of Northern England as
the guardians of the land against the Scot.
For the present however Malcolm’s invasion was only avenged by
Gospatric’s harrying in Cumberland. The year 1071 called William to Ely;
in the early part of 1072 his presence was still needed on the mainland;
in August he found leisure for a march against Scotland. He went as an
English king, to assert the rights of the English crown, to avenge wrongs
done to the English land; and on such an errand Englishmen followed him
gladly. Eadric, the defender of Herefordshire, had made his peace with
the King, and he now held a place of high honour in his army. But if
William met with any armed resistance on his Scottish expedition, it did
not amount to a pitched battle. He passed through Lothian into Scotland;
he crossed Forth and drew near to Tay, and there, by the round tower of
Abernethy, the King of Scots swore oaths and gave hostages and became the
man of the King of the English. William might now call himself, like his
West-Saxon predecessors, _Bretwalda_ and _Basileus_ of the isle of
Britain. This was the highest point of his fortune. Duke of the
Normans, King of the English, he was undisputed lord from the march of
Anjou to the narrow sea between Caithness and Orkney.
The exact terms of the treaty between William’s royal vassal and his
overlord are unknown. But one of them was clearly the removal of Edgar
from Scotland. Before long he was on the continent. William had not yet
learned that Edgar was less dangerous in Britain than in any other part
of the world, and that he was safest of all in William’s own court.
Homage done and hostages received, the Lord of all Britain returned to
his immediate kingdom. His march is connected with many legendary
stories. In real history it is marked by the foundation of the castle of
Durham, and by the Conqueror’s confirmation of the privileges of the
palatine bishops. If all the earls of England had been like the earls of
Chester, and all the bishops like the bishops of Durham, England would
assuredly have split up, like Germany, into a loose federation of
temporal and spiritual princes. This it was William’s special work to
hinder; but he doubtless saw that the exceptional privileges of one or
two favoured lordships, standing in marked contrast to the rest, would
not really interfere with his great plan of union. And William would
hardly have confirmed the sees of London or Winchester in the privileges
which he allowed to the distant see of Durham. He now also made a grant
of earldoms, the object of which is less clear than that of most of his
actions. It is not easy to say why Gospatric was deprived of his
earldom. His former acts of hostility to William had been covered by his
pardon and reappointment in 1069; and since then he had acted as a loyal,
if perhaps an indiscreet, guardian of the land. Two greater earldoms
than his had become vacant by the revolt, the death, the imprisonment, of
Edwin and Morkere. But these William had no intention of filling. He
would not have in his realm anything so dangerous as an earl of the
Mercian’s or the Northumbrians in the old sense, whether English or
Norman. But the defence of the northern frontier needed an earl to rule
Northumberland in the later sense, the land north of the Tyne. And after
the fate of Robert of Comines, William could not as yet put a Norman earl
in so perilous a post. But the Englishman whom he chose was open to the
same charges as the deposed Gospatric. For he was Waltheof the son of
Siward, the hero of the storm of York in 1069. Already Earl of
Northampton and Huntingdon, he was at this time high in the King’s
personal favour, perhaps already the husband of the King’s niece. One
side of William’s policy comes out here. Union was sometimes helped by
division. There were men whom William loved to make great, but whom he
had no mind to make dangerous. He gave them vast estates, but estates
for the most part scattered over different parts of the kingdom. It was
only in the border earldoms and in Cornwall that he allowed anything at
all near to the lordship of a whole shire to be put in the hands of a
single man. One Norman and one Englishman held two earldoms together;
but they were earldoms far apart. Roger of Montgomery held the earldoms
of Shrewsbury and Sussex, and Waltheof to his midland earldom of
Northampton and Huntingdon now added the rule of distant Northumberland.
The men who had fought most stoutly against William were the men whom he
most willingly received to favour. Eadric and Hereward were honoured;
Waltheof was honoured more highly. He ranked along with the greatest
Normans; his position was perhaps higher than any but the King’s born
kinsmen. But the whole tale of Waltheof is a problem that touches the
character of the king under whom he rose and fell. Lifted up higher than
any other man among the conquered, he was the one man whom William put to
death on a political charge. It is hard to see the reasons for either
his rise or his fall. It was doubtless mainly his end which won him the
abiding reverence of his countrymen. His valour and his piety are loudly
praised. But his valour we know only from his one personal exploit at
York; his piety was consistent with a base murder. In other matters, he
seems amiable, irresolute, and of a scrupulous conscience, and
Northumbrian morality perhaps saw no great crime in a murder committed
under the traditions of a Northumbrian deadly feud. Long before Waltheof
was born, his grandfather Earl Ealdred had been killed by a certain Carl.
The sons of Carl had fought by his side at York; but, notwithstanding
this comradeship, the first act of Waltheof’s rule in Northumberland was
to send men to slay them beyond the bounds of his earldom. A crime that
was perhaps admired in Northumberland and unheard of elsewhere did not
lose him either the favour of the King or the friendship of his neighbour
Bishop Walcher, a reforming prelate with whom Waltheof acted in concert.
And when he was chosen as the single exception to William’s merciful
rule, it was not for this undoubted crime, but on charges of which, even
if guilty, he might well have been forgiven.
* * * * *
The sojourn of William on the continent in 1072 carries us out of England
and Normandy into the general affairs of Europe. Signs may have already
showed themselves of what was coming to the south of Normandy; but the
interest of the moment lay in the country of Matilda. Flanders, long the
firm ally of Normandy, was now to change into a bitter enemy. Count
Baldwin died in 1067; his successor of the same name died three years
later, and a war followed between his widow Richildis, the guardian of
his young son Arnulf, and his brother Robert the Frisian. Robert had won
fame in the East; he had received the sovereignty of Friesland—a name
which takes in Holland and Zealand—and he was now invited to deliver
Flanders from the oppressions of Richildis. Meanwhile, Matilda was
acting as regent of Normandy, with Earl William of Hereford as her
counsellor. Richildis sought help of her son’s two overlords, King Henry
of Germany and King Philip of France. Philip came in person; the German
succours were too late. From Normandy came Earl William with a small
party of knights. The kings had been asked for armies; to the Earl she
offered herself, and he came to fight for his bride. But early in 1071
Philip, Arnulf, and William, were all overthrown by Robert the Frisian in
the battle of Cassel. Arnulf and Earl William were killed; Philip made
peace with Robert, henceforth undisputed Count of Flanders.
All this brought King William to the continent, while the invasion of
Malcolm was still unavenged. No open war followed between Normandy and
Flanders; but for the rest of their lives Robert and William were
enemies, and each helped the enemies of the other. William gave his
support to Baldwin brother of the slain Arnulf, who strove to win
Flanders from Robert. But the real interest of this episode lies in the
impression which was made in the lands east of Flanders. In the troubled
state of Germany, when Henry the Fourth was striving with the Saxons,
both sides seem to have looked to the Conqueror of England with hope and
with fear. On this matter our English and Norman authorities are silent,
and the notices in the contemporary German writers are strangely unlike
one another. But they show at least that the prince who ruled on both
sides of the sea was largely in men’s thoughts. The Saxon enemy of Henry
describes him in his despair as seeking help in Denmark, France,
Aquitaine, and also of the King of the English, promising him the like
help, if he should ever need it. William and Henry had both to guard
against Saxon enmity, but the throne at Winchester stood firmer than the
throne at Goslar. But the historian of the continental Saxons puts into
William’s mouth an answer utterly unsuited to his position. He is made,
when in Normandy, to answer that, having won his kingdom by force, he
fears to leave it, lest he might not find his way back again. Far more
striking is the story told three years later by Lambert of Herzfeld.
Henry, when engaged in an Hungarian war, heard that the famous Archbishop
Hanno of Köln had leagued with William _Bostar_—so is his earliest
surname written—King of the English, and that a vast army was coming to
set the island monarch on the German throne. The host never came; but
Henry hastened back to guard his frontier against _barbarians_. By that
phrase a Teutonic writer can hardly mean the insular part of William’s
subjects.
Now assuredly William never cherished, as his successor probably did, so
wild a dream as that of a kingly crowning at Aachen, to be followed
perhaps by an imperial crowning at Rome. But that such schemes were
looked on as a practical danger against which the actual German King had
to guard, at least shows the place which the Conqueror of England held in
European imagination.
For the three or four years immediately following the surrender of Ely,
William’s journeys to and fro between his kingdom and his duchy were
specially frequent. Matilda seems to have always stayed in Normandy; she
is never mentioned in England after the year of her coronation and the
birth of her youngest son, and she commonly acted as regent of the duchy.
In the course of 1072 we see William in England, in Normandy, again in
England, and in Scotland. In 1073 he was called beyond sea by a
formidable movement. His great continental conquest had risen against
him; Le Mans and all Maine were again independent. City and land chose
for them a prince who came by female descent from the stock of their
ancient counts. This was Hugh the son of Azo Marquess of Liguria and of
Gersendis the sister of the last Count Herbert. The Normans were driven
out of Le Mans; Azo came to take possession in the name of his son, but
he and the citizens did not long agree. He went back, leaving his wife
and son under the guardianship of Geoffrey of Mayenne. Presently the men
of Le Mans threw off princely rule altogether and proclaimed the earliest
_commune_ in Northern Gaul. Here then, as at Exeter, William had to
strive against an armed commonwealth, and, as at Exeter, we specially
wish to know what were to be the relations between the capital and the
county at large. The mass of the people throughout Maine threw
themselves zealously into the cause of the commonwealth. But their zeal
might not have lasted long, if, according to the usual run of things in
such cases, they had simply exchanged the lordship of their hereditary
masters for the corporate lordship of the citizens of Le Mans. To the
nobles the change was naturally distasteful. They had to swear to the
_commune_, but many of them, Geoffrey for one, had no thought of keeping
their oaths. Dissensions arose; Hugh went back to Italy; Geoffrey
occupied the castle of Le Mans, and the citizens dislodged him only by
the dangerous help of the other prince who claimed the overlordship of
Maine, Count Fulk of Anjou.
If Maine was to have a master from outside, the lord of Anjou hardly
promised better than the lord of Normandy. But men in despair grasp at
anything. The strange thing is that Fulk disappears now from the story;
William steps in instead. And it was at least as much in his English as
in his Norman character that the Duke and King won back the revolted
land. A place in his army was held by English warriors, seemingly under
the command of Hereward himself. Men who had fought for freedom in their
own land now fought at the bidding of their Conqueror to put down freedom
in another land. They went willingly; the English Chronicler describes
the campaign with glee, and breaks into verse—or incorporates a
contemporary ballad—at the tale of English victory. Few men of that day
would see that the cause of Maine was in truth the cause of England. If
York and Exeter could not act in concert with one another, still less
could either act in concert with Le Mans. Englishmen serving in Maine
would fancy that they were avenging their own wrongs by laying waste the
lands of any man who spoke the French tongue. On William’s part, the
employment of Englishmen, the employment of Hereward, was another stroke
of policy. It was more fully following out the system which led
Englishmen against Exeter, which led Eadric and his comrades into
Scotland. For in every English soldier whom William carried into Maine
he won a loyal English subject. To men who had fought under his banners
beyond the sea he would be no longer the Conqueror but the victorious
captain; they would need some very special oppression at home to make
them revolt against the chief whose laurels they had helped to win. As
our own gleeman tells the tale, they did little beyond harrying the
helpless land; but in continental writers we can trace a regular
campaign, in which we hear of no battles, but of many sieges. William,
as before, subdued the land piecemeal, keeping the city for the last.
When he drew near to Le Mans, its defenders surrendered at his summons,
to escape fire and slaughter by speedy submission. The new _commune_ was
abolished, but the Conqueror swore to observe all the ancient rights of
the city.
All this time we have heard nothing of Count Fulk. Presently we find him
warring against nobles of Maine who had taken William’s part, and
leaguing with the Bretons against William himself. The King set forth
with his whole force, Norman and English; but peace was made by the
mediation of an unnamed Roman cardinal, abetted, we are told, by the
chief Norman nobles. Success against confederated Anjou and Britanny
might be doubtful, with Maine and England wavering in their allegiance,
and France, Scotland, and Flanders, possible enemies in the distance.
The rights of the Count of Anjou over Maine were formally acknowledged,
and William’s eldest son Robert did homage to Fulk for the county. Each
prince stipulated for the safety and favour of all subjects of the other
who had taken his side. Between Normandy and Anjou there was peace
during the rest of the days of William; in Maine we shall see yet another
revolt, though only a partial one.
William went back to England in 1073. In 1074 he went to the continent
for a longer absence. As the time just after the first completion of the
Conquest is spoken of as a time when Normans and English were beginning
to sit down side by side in peace, so the years which followed the
submission of Ely are spoken of as a time of special oppression. This
fact is not unconnected with the King’s frequent absences from England.
Whatever we say of William’s own position, he was a check on smaller
oppressors. Things were always worse when the eye of the great master
was no longer watching. William’s one weakness was that of putting
overmuch trust in his immediate kinsfolk and friends. Of the two special
oppressors, William Fitz-Osbern had thrown away his life in Flanders; but
Bishop Ode was still at work, till several years later his king and
brother struck him down with a truly righteous blow.
The year 1074, not a year of fighting, was pro-eminently a year of
intrigue. William’s enemies on the continent strove to turn the
representative of the West-Saxon kings to help their ends. Edgar flits
to and fro between Scotland and Flanders, and the King of the French
tempts him with the offer of a convenient settlement on the march of
France, Normandy, and Flanders. Edgar sets forth from Scotland, but is
driven back by a storm; Malcolm and Margaret then change their minds, and
bid him make his peace with King William. William gladly accepts his
submission; an embassy is sent to bring him with all worship to the King
in Normandy. He abides for several years in William’s court contented
and despised, receiving a daily pension and the profits of estates in
England of no great extent which the King of a moment held by the grant
of a rival who could afford to be magnanimous.
* * * * *
Edgar’s after-life showed that he belonged to that class of men who, as a
rule slothful and listless, can yet on occasion act with energy, and who
act most creditably on behalf of others. But William had no need to fear
him, and he was easily turned into a friend and a dependant. Edgar,
first of Englishmen by descent, was hardly an Englishman by birth.
William had now to deal with the Englishman who stood next to Edgar in
dignity and far above him in personal estimation. We have reached the
great turning-point in William’s reign and character, the black and
mysterious tale of the fate of Waltheof. The Earl of Northumberland,
Northampton, and Huntingdon, was not the only earl in England of English
birth. The earldom of the East-Angles was held by a born Englishman who
was more hateful than any stranger. Ralph of Wader was the one
Englishman who had fought at William’s side against England. He often
passes for a native of Britanny, and he certainly held lands and castles
in that country; but he was Breton only by the mother’s side. For
Domesday and the Chronicles show that he was the son of an elder Earl
Ralph, who had been _staller_ or master of the horse in Edward’s days,
and who is expressly said to have been born in Norfolk. The unusual name
suggests that the elder Ralph was not of English descent. He survived
the coming of William, and his son fought on Senlac among the countrymen
of his mother. This treason implies an unrecorded banishment in the days
of Edward or Harold. Already earl in 1069, he had in that year acted
vigorously for William against the Danes. But he now conspired against
him along with Roger, the younger son of William Fitz-Osbern, who had
succeeded his father in the earldom of Hereford, while his Norman estates
had passed to his elder brother William. What grounds of complaint
either Ralph or Roger had against William we know not; but that the
loyalty of the Earl of Hereford was doubtful throughout the year 1074
appears from several letters of rebuke and counsel sent to him by the
Regent Lanfranc. At last the wielder of both swords took to his
spiritual arms, and pronounced the Earl excommunicate, till he should
submit to the King’s mercy and make restitution to the King and to all
men whom he had wronged. Roger remained stiff-necked under the Primate’s
censure, and presently committed an act of direct disobedience. The next
year, 1075, he gave his sister Emma in marriage to Earl Ralph. This
marriage the King had forbidden, on some unrecorded ground of state
policy. Most likely he already suspected both earls, and thought any tie
between them dangerous. The notice shows William stepping in to do, as
an act of policy, what under his successors became a matter of course,
done with the sole object of making money. The _bride-ale_—the name that
lurks in the modern shape of _bridal_—was held at Exning in
Cambridgeshire; bishops and abbots were guests of the excommunicated
Roger; Waltheof was there, and many Breton comrades of Ralph. In their
cups they began to plot how they might drive the King out of the kingdom.
Charges, both true and false, were brought against William; in a mixed
gathering of Normans, English, and Bretons, almost every act of William’s
life might pass as a wrong done to some part of the company, even though
some others of the company were his accomplices. Above all, the two
earls Ralph and Roger made a distinct proposal to their fellow-earl
Waltheof. King William should be driven out of the land; one of the
three should be King; the other two should remain earls, ruling each over
a third of the kingdom. Such a scheme might attract earls, but no one
else; it would undo William’s best and greatest work; it would throw back
the growing unity of the kingdom by all the steps that it had taken
during several generations.
Now what amount of favour did Waltheof give to these schemes? Weighing
the accounts, it would seem that, in the excitement of the bride-ale, he
consented to the treason, but that he thought better of it the next
morning. He went to Lanfranc, at once regent and ghostly father, and
confessed to him whatever he had to confess. The Primate assigned his
penitent some ecclesiastical penances; the Regent bade the Earl go into
Normandy and tell the whole tale to the King. Waltheof went, with gifts
in hand; he told his story and craved forgiveness. William made light of
the matter, and kept Waltheof with him, but seemingly not under
restraint, till he came back to England.
Meanwhile the other two earls were in open rebellion. Ralph, half Breton
by birth and earl of a Danish land, asked help in Britanny and Denmark.
Bretons from Britanny and Bretons settled in England flocked to him.
King Swegen, now almost at the end of his reign and life, listened to the
call of the rebels, and sent a fleet under the command of his son Cnut,
the future saint, together with an earl named Hakon. The revolt in
England was soon put down, both in East and West. The rebel earls met
with no support save from those who were under their immediate influence.
The country acted zealously for the King. Lanfranc could report that
Earl Ralph and his army were fleeing, and that the King’s men, French and
English, were chasing them. In another letter he could add, with some
strength of language, that the kingdom was cleansed from the filth of the
Bretons. At Norwich only the castle was valiantly defended by the newly
married Countess Emma. Roger was taken prisoner; Ralph fled to Britanny;
their followers were punished with various mutilations, save the
defenders of Norwich, who were admitted to terms. The Countess joined
her husband in Britanny, and in days to come Ralph did something to
redeem so many treasons by dying as an armed pilgrim in the first
crusade.
The main point of this story is that the revolt met with no English
support whatever. Not only did Bishop Wulfstan march along with his
fierce Norman brethren Ode and Geoffrey; the English people everywhere
were against the rebels. For this revolt offered no attraction to
English feeling; had the undertaking been less hopeless, nothing could
have been gained by exchanging the rule of William for that of Ralph or
Roger. It might have been different if the Danes had played their part
better. The rebellion broke out while William was in Normandy; it was
the sailing of the Danish fleet which brought him back to England. But
never did enterprise bring less honour on its leaders than this last
Danish voyage up the Humber. All that the holy Cnut did was to plunder
the minster of Saint Peter at York and to sail away.
His coming however seems to have altogether changed the King’s feelings
with regard to Waltheof. As yet he had not been dealt with as a prisoner
or an enemy. He now came back to England with the King, and William’s
first act was to imprison both Waltheof and Roger. The imprisonment of
Roger, a rebel taken in arms, was a matter of course. As for Waltheof,
whatever he had promised at the bride-ale, he had done no disloyal act;
he had had no share in the rebellion, and he had told the King all that
he knew. But he had listened to traitors, and it might be dangerous to
leave him at large when a Danish fleet, led by his old comrade Cnut, was
actually afloat. Still what followed is strange indeed, specially
strange with William as its chief doer.
At the Midwinter Gemót of 1075–1076 Roger and Waltheof were brought to
trial. Ralph was condemned in absence, like Eustace of Boulogne. Roger
was sentenced to forfeiture and imprisonment for life. Waltheof made his
defence; his sentence was deferred; he was kept at Winchester in a
straiter imprisonment than before. At the Pentecostal Gemót of 1076,
held at Westminster, his case was again argued, and he was sentenced to
death. On the last day of May the last English earl was beheaded on the
hills above Winchester.
Such a sentence and execution, strange at any time, is specially strange
under William. Whatever Waltheof had done, his offence was lighter than
that of Roger; yet Waltheof has the heavier and Roger the lighter
punishment. With Scroggs or Jeffreys on the bench, it might have been
argued that Waltheof’s confession to the King did not, in strictness of
law, wipe out the guilt of his original promise to the conspirators; but
William the Great did not commonly act after the fashion of Scroggs and
Jeffreys. To deprive Waltheof of his earldom might doubtless be prudent;
a man who had even listened to traitors might be deemed unfit for such a
trust. It might be wise to keep him safe under the King’s eye, like
Edwin, Morkere, and Edgar. But why should he be picked out for death,
when the far more guilty Roger was allowed to live? Why should he be
chosen as the one victim of a prince who never before or after, in
Normandy or in England, doomed any man to die on a political charge?
These are questions hard to answer. It is not enough to say that
Waltheof was an Englishman, that it was William’s policy gradually to get
rid of Englishmen in high places, and that the time was now come to get
rid of the last. For such a policy forfeiture, or at most imprisonment,
would have been enough. While other Englishmen lost lands, honours, at
most liberty, Waltheof alone lost his life by a judicial sentence. It is
likely enough that many Normans hungered for the lands and honours of the
one Englishman who still held the highest rank in England. Still
forfeiture without death might have satisfied even them. But Waltheof
was not only earl of three shires; he was husband of the King’s near
kinswoman. We are told that Judith was the enemy and accuser of her
husband. This may have touched William’s one weak point. Yet he would
hardly have swerved from the practice of his whole life to please the
bloody caprice of a niece who longed for the death of her husband. And
if Judith longed for Waltheof’s death, it was not from a wish to supply
his place with another. Legend says that she refused a second husband
offered her by the King; it is certain that she remained a widow.
Waltheof’s death must thus remain a mystery, an isolated deed of blood
unlike anything else in William’s life. It seems to have been impolitic;
it led to no revolt, but it called forth a new burst of English feeling.
Waltheof was deemed the martyr of his people; he received the same
popular canonization as more than one English patriot. Signs and wonders
were wrought at his tomb at Crowland, till displays of miraculous power
which were so inconsistent with loyalty and good order were straitly
forbidden. The act itself marks a stage in the downward course of
William’s character. In itself, the harrying of Northumberland, the very
invasion of England, with all the bloodshed that they caused, might be
deemed blacker crimes than the unjust death of a single man. But as
human nature stands, the less crime needs a worse man to do it. Crime,
as ever, led to further crime and was itself the punishment of crime. In
the eyes of William’s contemporaries the death of Waltheof, the blackest
act of William’s life, was also its turning-point. From the day of the
martyrdom on Saint Giles’ hill the magic of William’s name and William’s
arms passed away. Unfailing luck no longer waited on him; after
Waltheof’s death he never, till his last campaign of all, won a battle or
took a town. In this change of William’s fortunes the men of his own day
saw the judgement of God upon his crime. And in the fact at least they
were undoubtedly right. Henceforth, though William’s real power abides
unshaken, the tale of his warfare is chiefly a tale of petty defeats.
The last eleven years of his life would never have won him the name of
Conqueror. But in the higher walk of policy and legislation never was
his nobler surname more truly deserved. Never did William the Great show
himself so truly great as in these later years.
* * * * *
The death of Waltheof and the popular judgement on it suggest another act
of William’s which cannot have been far from it in point of time, and
about which men spoke in his own day in the same spirit. If the
judgement of God came on William for the beheading of Waltheof, it came
on him also for the making of the New Forest. As to that forest there is
a good deal of ancient exaggeration and a good deal of modern
misconception. The word _forest_ is often misunderstood. In its older
meaning, a meaning which it still keeps in some parts, a forest has
nothing to do with trees. It is a tract of land put outside the common
law and subject to a stricter law of its own, and that commonly, probably
always, to secure for the King the freer enjoyment of the pleasure of
hunting. Such a forest William made in Hampshire; the impression which
it made on men’s minds at the time is shown by its having kept the name
of the New Forest for eight hundred years. There is no reason to think
that William laid waste any large tract of specially fruitful country,
least of all that he laid waste a land thickly inhabited; for most of the
Forest land never can have been such. But it is certain from Domesday
and the Chronicle that William did _afforest_ a considerable tract of
land in Hampshire; he set it apart for the purposes of hunting; he fenced
it in by special and cruel laws—stopping indeed short of death—for the
protection of his pleasures, and in this process some men lost their
lands, and were driven from their homes. Some destruction of houses is
here implied; some destruction of churches is not unlikely. The popular
belief, which hardly differs from the account of writers one degree later
than Domesday and the Chronicle, simply exaggerates the extent of
destruction. There was no such wide-spread laying waste as is often
supposed, because no such wide-spread laying waste was needed. But
whatever was needed for William’s purpose was done; and Domesday gives us
the record. And the act surely makes, like the death of Waltheof, a
downward stage in William’s character. The harrying of Northumberland
was in itself a far greater crime, and involved far more of human
wretchedness. But it is not remembered in the same way, because it has
left no such abiding memorial. But here again the lesser crime needed a
worse man to do it. The harrying of Northumberland was a crime done with
a political object; it was the extreme form of military severity; it was
not vulgar robbery done with no higher motive than to secure the fuller
enjoyment of a brutal sport. To this level William had now sunk. It was
in truth now that hunting in England finally took the character of a mere
sport. Hunting was no new thing; in an early state of society it is
often a necessary thing. The hunting of Alfred is spoken of as a grave
matter of business, as part of his kingly duty. He had to make war on
the wild beasts, as he had to make war on the Danes. The hunting of
William is simply a sport, not his duty or his business, but merely his
pleasure. And to this pleasure, the pleasure of inflicting pain and
slaughter, he did not scruple to sacrifice the rights of other men, and
to guard his enjoyment by ruthless laws at which even in that rough age
men shuddered.
For this crime the men of his day saw the punishment in the strange and
frightful deaths of his offspring, two sons and a grandson, on the scene
of his crime. One of these himself he saw, the death of his second son
Richard, a youth of great promise, whose prolonged life might have saved
England from the rule of William Rufus. He died in the Forest, about the
year 1081, to the deep grief of his parents. And Domesday contains a
touching entry, how William gave back his land to a despoiled Englishman
as an offering for Richard’s soul.
* * * * *
The forfeiture of three earls, the death of one, threw their honours and
estates into the King’s hands. Another fresh source of wealth came by
the death of the Lady Edith, who had kept her royal rank and her great
estates, and who died while the proceedings against Waltheof were going
on. It was not now so important for William as it had been in the first
years of the Conquest to reward his followers; he could now think of the
royal hoard in the first place. Of the estates which now fell in to the
Crown large parts were granted out. The house of Bigod, afterwards so
renowned as Earls of Norfolk, owe their rise to their forefather’s share
in the forfeited lands of Earl Ralph. But William kept the greater part
to himself; one lordship in Somerset, part of the lands of the Lady, he
gave to the church of Saint Peter at Rome. Of the three earldoms, those
of Hereford and East-Anglia were not filled up; the later earldoms of
those lands have no connexion with the earls of William’s day.
Waltheof’s southern earldoms of Northampton and Huntingdon became the
dowry of his daughter Matilda; that of Huntingdon passed to his
descendants the Kings of Scots. But Northumberland, close on the
Scottish border, still needed an earl; but there is something strange in
the choice of Bishop Walcher of Durham. It is possible that this
appointment was a concession to English feeling stirred to wrath at the
death of Waltheof. The days of English earls were over, and a Norman
would have been looked on as Waltheof’s murderer. The Lotharingian
bishop was a stranger; but he was not a Norman, and he was no oppressor
of Englishmen. But he was strangely unfit for the place. Not a fighting
bishop like Ode and Geoffrey, he was chiefly devoted to spiritual
affairs, specially to the revival of the monastic life, which had died
out in Northern England since the Danish invasions. But his weak trust
in unworthy favourites, English and foreign, led him to a fearful and
memorable end. The Bishop was on terms of close friendship with Ligulf,
an Englishman of the highest birth and uncle by marriage to Earl
Waltheof. He had kept his estates; but the insolence of his Norman
neighbours had caused him to come and live in the city of Durham near his
friend the Bishop. His favour with Walcher roused the envy of some of
the Bishop’s favourites, who presently contrived his death. The Bishop
lamented, and rebuked them; but he failed to “do justice,” to punish the
offenders sternly and speedily. He was therefore believed to be himself
guilty of Ligulf’s death. One of the most striking and instructive
events of the time followed. On May 14, 1080, a full Gemót of the
earldom was held at Gateshead to deal with the murder of Ligulf. This
was one of those rare occasions when a strong feeling led every man to
the assembly. The local Parliament took its ancient shape of an armed
crowd, headed by the noblest Englishmen left in the earldom. There was
no vote, no debate; the shout was “Short rede good rede, slay ye the
Bishop.” And to that cry, Walcher himself and his companions, the
murderers of Ligulf among them, were slaughtered by the raging multitude
who had gathered to avenge him.
The riot in which Walcher died was no real revolt against William’s
government. Such a local rising against a local wrong might have
happened in the like case under Edward or Harold. No government could
leave such a deed unpunished; but William’s own ideas of justice would
have been fully satisfied by the blinding or mutilation of a few
ringleaders. But William was in Normandy in the midst of domestic and
political cares. He sent his brother Ode to restore order, and his
vengeance was frightful. The land was harried; innocent men were
mutilated and put to death; others saved their lives by bribes. Earl
after earl was set over a land so hard to rule. A certain Alberie was
appointed, but he was removed as unfit. The fierce Bishop Geoffrey of
Coutances tried his hand and resigned. At the time of William’s death
the earldom was held by Geoffrey’s nephew Robert of Mowbray, a stern and
gloomy stranger, but whom Englishmen reckoned among “good men,” when he
guarded the marches of England against the Scot.
* * * * *
After the death of Waltheof William seems to have stayed in Normandy for
several years. His ill luck now began. Before the year 1076 was out, he
entered, we know not why, on a Breton campaign. But he was driven from
Dol by the combined forces of Britanny and France; Philip was ready to
help any enemy of William. The Conqueror had now for the first time
suffered defeat in his own person. He made peace with both enemies,
promising his daughter Constance to Alan of Britanny. But the marriage
did not follow till ten years later. The peace with France, as the
English Chronicle says, “held little while;” Philip could not resist the
temptation of helping William’s eldest son Robert when the reckless young
man rebelled against his father. With most of the qualities of an
accomplished knight, Robert had few of those which make either a wise
ruler or an honest man. A brave soldier, even a skilful captain, he was
no general; ready of speech and free of hand, he was lavish rather than
bountiful. He did not lack generous and noble feelings; but of a steady
course, even in evil, he was incapable. As a ruler, he was no oppressor
in his own person; but sloth, carelessness, love of pleasure, incapacity
to say No, failure to do justice, caused more wretchedness than the
oppression of those tyrants who hinder the oppressions of others.
William would not set such an one over any part of his dominions before
his time, and it was his policy to keep his children dependent on him.
While he enriched his brothers, he did not give the smallest scrap of the
spoils of England to his sons. But Robert deemed that he had a right to
something greater than private estates. The nobles of Normandy had done
homage to him as William’s successor; he had done homage to Fulk for
Maine, as if he were himself its count. He was now stirred up by evil
companions to demand that, if his father would not give him part of his
kingdom—the spirit of Edwin and Morkere had crossed the sea—he would at
least give him Normandy and Maine. William refused with many pithy
sayings. It was not his manner to take off his clothes till he went to
bed. Robert now, with a band of discontented young nobles, plunged into
border warfare against his father. He then wandered over a large part of
Europe, begging and receiving money and squandering all that he got. His
mother too sent him money, which led to the first quarrel between William
and Matilda after so many years of faithful union. William rebuked his
wife for helping his enemy in breach of his orders: she pleaded the
mother’s love for her first-born. The mother was forgiven, but her
messenger, sentenced to loss of eyes, found shelter in a monastery.
At last in 1079 Philip gave Robert a settled dwelling-place in the
border-fortress of Gerberoi. The strife between father and son became
dangerous. William besieged the castle, to undergo before its walls his
second defeat, to receive his first wound, and that at the hands of his
own son. Pierced in the hand by the lance of Robert, his horse smitten
by an arrow, the Conqueror fell to the ground, and was saved only by an
Englishman, Tokig, son of Wiggod of Wallingford, who gave his life for
his king. It seems an early softening of the tale which says that Robert
dismounted and craved his father’s pardon; it seems a later hardening
which says that William pronounced a curse on his son. William Rufus
too, known as yet only as the dutiful son of his father, was wounded in
his defence. The blow was not only grievous to William’s feelings as a
father; it was a serious military defeat. The two wounded Williams and
the rest of the besiegers escaped how they might, and the siege of
Gerberoi was raised.
We next find the wise men of Normandy debating how to make peace between
father and son. In the course of the year 1080 a peace was patched up,
and a more honourable sphere was found for Robert’s energies in an
expedition into Scotland. In the autumn of the year of Gerberoi Malcolm
had made another wasting inroad into Northumberland. With the King
absent and Northumberland in confusion through the death of Walcher, this
wrong went unavenged till the autumn of 1080. Robert gained no special
glory in Scotland; a second quarrel with his father followed, and Robert
remained a banished man during the last seven years of William’s reign.
In this same year 1080 a synod of the Norman Church was held, the Truce
of God again renewed which we heard of years ago. The forms of outrage
on which the Truce was meant to put a cheek, and which the strong hand of
William had put down more thoroughly than the Truce would do, had clearly
begun again during the confusions caused by the rebellion of Robert.
The two next years, 1081–1082, William was in England. His home sorrows
were now pressing heavily on him. His eldest son was a rebel and an
exile; about this time his second son died in the New Forest; according
to one version, his daughter, the betrothed of Edwin, who had never
forgotten her English lover, was now promised to the Spanish King
Alfonso, and died—in answer to her own prayers—before the marriage was
celebrated. And now the partner of William’s life was taken from him
four years after his one difference with her. On November 3, 1083,
Matilda died after a long sickness, to her husband’s lasting grief. She
was buried in her own church at Caen, and churches in England received
gifts from William on behalf of her soul.
The mourner had soon again to play the warrior. Nearly the whole of
William’s few remaining years were spent in a struggle which in earlier
times he would surely have ended in a day. Maine, city and county, did
not call for a third conquest; but a single baron of Maine defied
William’s power, and a single castle of Maine held out against him for
three years. Hubert, Viscount of Beaumont and Fresnay, revolted on some
slight quarrel. The siege of his castle of Sainte-Susanne went on from
the death of Matilda till the last year but one of William’s reign. The
tale is full of picturesque detail; but William had little personal share
in it. The best captains of Normandy tried their strength in vain
against this one donjon on its rock. William at last made peace with the
subject who was too strong for him. Hubert came to England and received
the King’s pardon. Practically the pardon was the other way.
Thus for the last eleven years of his life William ceased to be the
Conqueror. Engaged only in small enterprises, he was unsuccessful in
all. One last success was indeed in store for him; but that was to be
purchased with his own life. As he turned away in defeat from this
castle and that, as he felt the full bitterness of domestic sorrow, he
may have thought, as others thought for him, that the curse of Waltheof,
the curse of the New Forest, was ever tracking his steps. If so, his
crimes were done in England, and their vengeance came in Normandy. In
England there was no further room for his mission as Conqueror; he had no
longer foes to overcome. He had an act of justice to do, and he did it.
He had his kingdom to guard, and he guarded it. He had to take the great
step which should make his kingdom one for ever; and he had, perhaps
without fully knowing what he did, to bid the picture of his reign be
painted for all time as no reign before or after has been painted.