THE LAST YEARS OF WILLIAM.
1081–1087.
OF two events of these last years of the Conqueror’s reign, events of
very different degrees of importance, we have already spoken. The Welsh
expedition of William was the only recorded fighting on British ground,
and that lay without the bounds of the kingdom of England. William now
made Normandy his chief dwelling-place, but he was constantly called over
to England. The Welsh campaign proves his presence in England in 1081;
he was again in England in 1082, but he went back to Normandy between the
two visits. The visit of 1082 was a memorable one; there is no more
characteristic act of the Conqueror than the deed which marks it. The
cruelty and insolence of his brother Ode, whom he had trusted so much
more than he deserved, had passed all bounds. In avenging the death of
Walcher he had done deeds such as William never did himself or allowed
any other man to do. And now, beguiled by a soothsayer who said that one
of his name should be the next Pope, he dreamed of succeeding to the
throne of Gregory the Seventh. He made all kinds of preparations to
secure his succession, and he was at last about to set forth for Italy at
the head of something like an army. His schemes were by no means to the
liking of his brother. William came suddenly over from Normandy, and met
Ode in the Isle of Wight. There the King got together as many as he
could of the great men of the realm. Before them he arraigned Ode for
all his crimes. He had left him as the lieutenant of his kingdom, and he
had shown himself the common oppressor of every class of men in the
realm. Last of all, he had beguiled the warriors who were needed for the
defence of England against the Danes and Irish to follow him on his wild
schemes in Italy. How was he to deal with such a brother, William asked
of his wise men.
He had to answer himself; no other man dared to speak. William then gave
his judgement. The common enemy of the whole realm should not be spared
because he was the King’s brother. He should be seized and put in ward.
As none dared to seize him, the King seized him with his own hands. And
now, for the first time in England, we hear words which were often heard
again. The bishop stained with blood and sacrilege appealed to the
privileges of his order. He was a clerk, a bishop; no man might judge
him but the Pope. William, taught, so men said, by Lanfranc, had his
answer ready. “I do not seize a clerk or a bishop; I seize my earl whom
I set over my kingdom.” So the Earl of Kent was carried off to a prison
in Normandy, and Pope Gregory himself pleaded in vain for the release of
the Bishop of Bayeux.
The mind of William was just now mainly given to the affairs of his
island kingdom. In the winter of 1083 he hastened from the death-bed of
his wife to the siege of Sainte-Susanne, and thence to the Midwinter
Gemót in England. The chief object of the assembly was the specially
distasteful one of laying on of a tax. In the course of the next year,
six shillings was levied on every hide of land to meet a pressing need.
The powers of the North were again threatening; the danger, if it was
danger, was greater than when Waltheof smote the Normans in the gate at
York. Swegen and his successor Harold were dead. Cnut the Saint reigned
in Denmark, the son-in-law of Robert of Flanders. This alliance with
William’s enemy joined with his remembrance of his own two failures to
stir up the Danish king to a yearning for some exploit in England.
English exiles were still found to urge him to the enterprise. William’s
conquest had scattered banished or discontented Englishmen over all
Europe. Many had made their way to the Eastern Rome; they had joined the
Warangian guard, the surest support of the Imperial throne, and at
Dyrrhachion, as on Senlac, the axe of England had met the lance of
Normandy in battle. Others had fled to the North; they prayed Cnut to
avenge the death of his kinsman Harold and to deliver England from the
yoke of men—so an English writer living in Denmark spoke of them—of Roman
speech. Thus the Greek at one end of Europe, the Norman at the other,
still kept on the name of Rome. The fleet of Denmark was joined by the
fleet of Flanders; a smaller contingent was promised by the devout and
peaceful Olaf of Norway, who himself felt no call to take a share in the
work of war.
Against this danger William strengthened himself by the help of the tax
that he had just levied. He could hardly have dreamed of defending
England against Danish invaders by English weapons only. But he thought
as little of trusting the work to his own Normans. With the money of
England he hired a host of mercenaries, horse and foot, from France and
Britanny, even from Maine where Hubert was still defying him at
Sainte-Susanne. He gathered this force on the mainland, and came back at
its head, a force such as England had never before seen; men wondered how
the land might feed them all. The King’s men, French and English, had to
feed them, each man according to the amount of his land. And now William
did what Harold had refused to do; he laid waste the whole coast that lay
open to attack from Denmark and Flanders. But no Danes, no Flemings,
came. Disputes arose between Cnut and his brother Olaf, and the great
enterprise came to nothing. William kept part of his mercenaries in
England, and part he sent to their homes. Cnut was murdered in a church
by his own subjects, and was canonized as _Sanctus Canutus_ by a Pope who
could not speak the Scandinavian name.
Meanwhile, at the Midwinter Gemót of 1085–1086, held in due form at
Gloucester, William did one of his greatest acts. “The King had mickle
thought and sooth deep speech with his Witan about his land, how it were
set and with whilk men.” In that “deep speech,” so called in our own
tongue, lurks a name well known and dear to every Englishman. The result
of that famous parliament is set forth at length by the Chronicler. The
King sent his men into each shire, men who did indeed set down in their
writ how the land was set and of what men. In that writ we have a record
in the Roman tongue no less precious than the Chronicles in our own. For
that writ became the Book of Winchester, the book to which our fathers
gave the name of Domesday, the book of judgement that spared no man.
The Great Survey was made in the course of the first seven months of the
year 1086. Commissioners were sent into every shire, who inquired by the
oaths of the men of the hundreds by whom the land had been held in King
Edward’s days and what it was worth then, by whom it was held at the time
of the survey and what it was worth then; and lastly, whether its worth
could be raised. Nothing was to be left out. “So sooth narrowly did he
let spear it out, that there was not a hide or a yard of land, nor
further—it is shame to tell, and it thought him no shame to do—an ox nor
a cow nor a swine was left that was not set in his writ.” This kind of
searching inquiry, never liked at any time, would be specially grievous
then. The taking of the survey led to disturbances in many places, in
which not a few lives were lost. While the work was going on, William
went to and fro till he knew thoroughly how this land was set and of what
men. He had now a list of all men, French and English, who held land in
his kingdom. And it was not enough to have their names in a writ; he
would see them face to face. On the making of the survey followed that
great assembly, that great work of legislation, which was the crown of
William’s life as a ruler and lawgiver of England. The usual assemblies
of the year had been held at Winchester and Westminster. An
extraordinary assembly was held in the plain of Salisbury on the first
day of August. The work of that assembly has been already spoken of. It
was now that all the owners of land in the kingdom became the men of the
King; it was now that England became one, with no fear of being again
parted asunder.
* * * * *
The close connexion between the Great Survey and the law and the oath of
Salisbury is plain. It was a great matter for the King to get in the
gold certainly and, we may add, fairly. William would deal with no man
otherwise than according to law as he understood the law. But he sought
for more than this. He would not only know what this land could be made
to pay; he would know the state of his kingdom in every detail; he would
know its military strength; he would know whether his own will, in the
long process of taking from this man and giving to that, had been really
carried out. Domesday is before all things a record of the great
confiscation, a record of that gradual change by which, in less than
twenty years, the greater part of the land of England had been
transferred from native to foreign owners. And nothing shows like
Domesday in what a formally legal fashion that transfer was carried out.
What were the principles on which it was carried out, we have already
seen. All private property in land came only from the grant of King
William. It had all passed into his hands by lawful forfeiture; he might
keep it himself; he might give it back to its old owner or grant it to a
new one. So it was at the general redemption of lands; so it was
whenever fresh conquests or fresh revolts threw fresh lands into the
King’s hands. The principle is so thoroughly taken for granted, that we
are a little startled to find it incidentally set forth in so many words
in a case of no special importance. A priest named Robert held a single
yardland in alms of the King; he became a monk in the monastery of
Stow-in-Lindesey, and his yardland became the property of the house. One
hardly sees why this case should have been picked out for a solemn
declaration of the general law. Yet, as “the day on which the English
redeemed their lands” is spoken of only casually in the case of a
particular estate, so the principle that no man could hold lands except
by the King’s grant (“Non licet terram alicui habere nisi regis
concessu”) is brought in only to illustrate the wrongful dealing of
Robert and the monks of Stow in the case of a very small holding indeed.
All this is a vast system of legal fictions; for William’s whole
position, the whole scheme of his government, rested on a system of legal
fictions. Domesday is full of them; one might almost say that there is
nothing else there. A very attentive study of Domesday might bring out
the fact that William was a foreign conqueror, and that the book itself
was a record of the process by which he took the lands of the natives who
had fought against him to reward the strangers who had fought for him.
But nothing of this kind appears on the surface of the record. The great
facts of the Conquest are put out of sight. William is taken for
granted, not only as the lawful king, but as the immediate successor of
Edward. The “time of King Edward” and the “time of King William” are the
two times that the law knows of. The compilers of the record are put to
some curious shifts to describe the time between “the day when King
Edward was alive and dead” and the day “when King William came into
England.” That coming might have been as peaceful as the coming of James
the First or George the First. The two great battles are more than once
referred to, but only casually in the mention of particular persons. A
very sharp critic might guess that one of them had something to do with
King William’s coming into England; but that is all. Harold appears only
as Earl; it is only in two or three places that we hear of a “time of
Harold,” and even of Harold “seizing the kingdom” and “reigning.” These
two or three places stand out in such contrast to the general language of
the record that we are led to think that the scribe must have copied some
earlier record or taken down the words of some witness, and must have
forgotten to translate them into more loyal formulæ. So in recording who
held the land in King Edward’s day and who in King William’s, there is
nothing to show that in so many cases the holder under Edward had been
turned out to make room for the holder under William. The former holder
is marked by the perfectly colourless word “ancestor” (“antecessor”), a
word as yet meaning, not “forefather,” but “predecessor” of any kind. In
Domesday the word is most commonly an euphemism for “dispossessed
Englishman.” It is a still more distinct euphemism where the Norman
holder is in more than one place called the “heir” of the dispossessed
Englishmen.
The formulæ of Domesday are the most speaking witness to the spirit of
outward legality which ruled every act of William. In this way they are
wonderfully instructive; but from the formulæ alone no one could ever
make the real facts of William’s coming and reign. It is the incidental
notices which make us more at home in the local and personal life of this
reign than of any reign before or for a long time after. The
Commissioners had to report whether the King’s will had been everywhere
carried out, whether every man, great and small, French and English, had
what the King meant him to have, neither more nor less. And they had
often to report a state of things different from what the King had meant
to be. Many men had not all that King William had meant them to have,
and many others had much more. Normans had taken both from Englishmen
and from other Normans. Englishmen had taken from Englishmen; some had
taken from ecclesiastical bodies; some had taken from King William
himself; nay King William himself holds lands which he ought to give up
to another man. This last entry at least shows that William was fully
ready to do right, according to his notions of right. So also the King’s
two brothers are set down among the chief offenders. Of these unlawful
holdings of land, marked in the technical language of the Survey as
_invasiones_ and _occupationes_, many were doubtless real cases of
violent seizure, without excuse even according to William’s reading of
the law. But this does not always follow, even when the language of the
Survey would seem to imply it. Words implying violence, _per vim_ and
the like, are used in the legal language of all ages, where no force has
been used, merely to mark a possession as illegal. We are startled at
finding the Apostle Paul set down as one of the offenders; but the words
“sanctus Paulus invasit” mean no more than that the canons of Saint
Paul’s church in London held lands to which the Commissioners held that
they had no good title. It is these cases where one man held land which
another claimed that gave opportunity for those personal details,
stories, notices of tenures and customs, which make Domesday the most
precious store of knowledge of the time.
One fruitful and instructive source of dispute comes from the way in
which the lands in this or that district were commonly granted out. The
in-comer, commonly a foreigner, received all the lands which such and
such a man, commonly a dispossessed Englishman, held in that shire or
district. The grantee stepped exactly into the place of the
_antecessor_; he inherited all his rights and all his burthens. He
inherited therewith any disputes as to the extent of the lands of the
_antecessor_ or as to the nature of his tenure. And new disputes arose
in the process of transfer. One common source of dispute was when the
former owner, besides lands which were strictly his own, held lands on
lease, subject to a reversionary interest on the part of the Crown or the
Church. The lease or sale—_emere_ is the usual word—of Church lands for
three lives to return to the Church at the end of the third life was very
common. If the _antecessor_ was himself the third life, the grantee, his
_heir_, had no claim to the land; and in any case he could take in only
with all its existing liabilities. But the grantee often took possession
of the whole of the land held by the _antecessor_, as if it were all
alike his own. A crowd of complaints followed from all manner of injured
persons and bodies, great and small, French and English, lay and
clerical. The Commissioners seem to have fairly heard all, and to have
fairly reported all for the King to judge of. It is their care to do
right to all men which has given us such strange glimpses of the inner
life of an age which had none like it before or after.
* * * * *
The general Survey followed by the general homage might seem to mark
William’s work in England, his work as an English statesman, as done. He
could hardly have had time to redress the many cases of wrong which the
Survey laid before him; but he was able to wring yet another tax out of
the nation according to his new and more certain register. He then, for
the last time, crossed to Normandy with his new hoard. The Chronicler
and other writers of the time dwell on the physical portents of these two
years, the storms, the fires, the plagues, the sharp hunger, the deaths
of famous men on both sides of the sea. Of the year 1087, the last year
of the Conqueror, it needs the full strength of our ancient tongue to set
forth the signs and wonders. The King had left England safe, peaceful,
thoroughly bowed down under the yoke, cursing the ruler who taxed her and
granted away her lands, yet half blessing him for the “good frith” that
he made against the murderer, the robber, and the ravisher. But the land
that he had won was neither to see his end nor to shelter his dust. One
last gleam of success was, after so many reverses, to crown his arms; but
it was success which was indeed unworthy of the Conqueror who had entered
Exeter and Le Mans in peaceful triumph. And the death-blow was now to
come to him who, after so many years of warfare, stooped at last for the
first time to cruel and petty havoc without an object.
The border-land of France and Normandy, the French Vexin, the land of
which Mantes is the capital, had always been disputed between kingdom and
duchy. Border wars had been common; just at this time the inroads of the
French commanders at Mantes are said to have been specially destructive.
William not only demanded redress from the King, but called for the
surrender of the whole Vexin. What followed is a familiar story. Philip
makes a foolish jest on the bodily state of his great rival, unable just
then to carry out his threats. “The King of the English lies in at
Rouen; there will be a great show of candles at his churching.” As at
Alençon in his youth, so now, William, who could pass by real injuries,
was stung to the uttermost by personal mockery. By the splendour of God,
when he rose up again, he would light a hundred thousand candles at
Philip’s cost. He kept his word at the cost of Philip’s subjects. The
ballads of the day told how he went forth and gathered the fruits of
autumn in the fields and orchards and vineyards of the enemy. But he did
more than gather fruits; the candles of his churching were indeed lighted
in the burning streets of Mantes. The picture of William the Great
directing in person mere brutal havoc like this is strange even after the
harrying of Northumberland and the making of the New Forest. Riding to
and fro among the flames, bidding his men with glee to heap on the fuel,
gladdened at the sight of burning houses and churches, a false step of
his horse gave him his death-blow. Carried to Rouen, to the priory of
Saint Gervase near the city, he lingered from August 15 to September 7,
and then the reign and life of the Conqueror came to an end. Forsaken by
his children, his body stripped and well nigh forgotten, the loyalty of
one honest knight, Herlwin of Conteville, bears his body to his grave in
his own church at Caen. His very grave is disputed—a dispossessed
_antecessor_ claims the ground as his own, and the dead body of the
Conqueror has to wait while its last resting-place is bought with money.
Into that resting-place force alone can thrust his bulky frame, and the
rites of his burial are as wildly cut short as were the rites of his
crowning. With much striving he had at last won his seven feet of
ground; but he was not to keep it for ever. Religious warfare broke down
his tomb and scattered his bones, save one treasured relic. Civil
revolution swept away the one remaining fragment. And now, while we seek
in vain beneath the open sky for the rifled tombs of Harold and of
Waltheof, a stone beneath the vault of Saint Stephen’s still tells us
where the bones of William once lay but where they lie no longer.
* * * * *
There is no need to doubt the striking details of the death and burial of
the Conqueror. We shrink from giving the same trust to the long tale of
penitence which is put into the mouth of the dying King. He may, in that
awful hour, have seen the wrong-doing of the last one-and-twenty years of
his life; he hardly threw his repentance into the shape of a detailed
autobiographical confession. But the more authentic sayings and doings
of William’s death-bed enable us to follow his course as an English
statesman almost to his last moments. His end was one of devotion, of
prayers and almsgiving, and of opening of the prison to them that were
bound. All save one of his political prisoners, English and Norman, he
willingly set free. Morkere and his companions from Ely, Walfnoth son of
Godwine, hostage for Harold’s faith, Wulf son of Harold and Ealdgyth,
taken, we can hardly doubt, as a babe when Chester opened its gates to
William, were all set free; some indeed were put in bonds again by the
King’s successor. But Ode William would not set free; he knew too well
how many would suffer if he were again let loose upon the world. But
love of kindred was still strong; at last he yielded, sorely against his
will, to the prayers and pledges of his other brother. Ode went forth
from his prison, again Bishop of Bayeux, soon again to be Earl of Kent,
and soon to prove William’s foresight by his deeds.
William’s disposal of his dominions on his death-bed carries on his
political history almost to his last breath. Robert, the banished rebel,
might seem to have forfeited all claims to the succession. But the
doctrine of hereditary right had strengthened during the sixty years of
William’s life. He is made to say that, though he foresees the
wretchedness of any land over which Robert should be the ruler, still he
cannot keep him out of the duchy of Normandy which is his birthright. Of
England he will not dare to dispose; he leaves the decision to God,
seemingly to Archbishop Lanfranc as the vicar of God. He will only say
that his wish is for his son William to succeed him in his kingdom, and
he prays Lanfranc to crown him king, if he deem such a course to be
right. Such a message was a virtual nomination, and William the Red
succeeded his father in England, but kept his crown only by the help of
loyal Englishmen against Norman rebels. William Rufus, it must be
remembered, still under the tutelage of his father and Lanfranc, had not
yet shown his bad qualities; he was known as yet only as the dutiful son
who fought for his father against the rebel Robert. By ancient English
law, that strong preference which was all that any man could claim of
right belonged beyond doubt to the youngest of William’s sons, the
English Ætheling Henry. He alone was born in the land; he alone was the
son of a crowned King and his Lady. It is perhaps with a knowledge of
what followed that William is made to bid his youngest son wait while his
eldest go before him; that he left him landless, but master of a hoard of
silver, there is no reason to doubt. English feeling, which welcomed
Henry thirteen years later, would doubtless have gladly seen his
immediate accession; but it might have been hard, in dividing William’s
dominions, to have shut out the second son in favour of the third. And
in the scheme of events by which conquered England was to rise again, the
reign of Rufus, at the moment the darkest time of all, had its appointed
share.
* * * * *
That England could rise again, that she could rise with a new life,
strengthened by her momentary overthrow, was before all things owing to
the lucky destiny which, if she was to be conquered, gave her William the
Great as her Conqueror. It is as it is in all human affairs. William
himself could not have done all that he did, wittingly and unwittingly,
unless circumstances had been favourable to him; but favourable
circumstances would have been useless, unless there had been a man like
William to take advantage of them. What he did, wittingly or
unwittingly, he did by virtue of his special position, the position of a
foreign conqueror veiling his conquest under a legal claim. The hour and
the man were alike needed. The man in his own hour wrought a work,
partly conscious, partly unconscious. The more clearly any man
understands his conscious work, the more sure is that conscious work to
lead to further results of which he dreams not. So it was with the
Conqueror of England. His purpose was to win and to keep the kingdom of
England, and to hand it on to those who should come after him more firmly
united than it had ever been before. In this work his spirit of formal
legality, his shrinking from needless change, stood him in good stead.
He saw that as the kingdom of England could best be won by putting forth
a legal claim to it, so it could best be kept by putting on the character
of a legal ruler, and reigning as the successor of the old kings seeking
the unity of the kingdom; he saw, from the example both of England and of
other lands, the dangers which threatened that unity; he saw what
measures were needed to preserve it in his own day, measures which have
preserved it ever since. Here is a work, a conscious work, which
entitles the foreign Conqueror to a place among English statesmen, and to
a place in their highest rank. Further than this we cannot conceive
William himself to have looked. All that was to come of his work in
future ages was of necessity hidden from his eyes, no less than from the
eyes of smaller men. He had assuredly no formal purpose to make England
Norman; but still less had he any thought that the final outcome of his
work would make England on one side more truly English than if he had
never crossed the sea. In his ecclesiastical work he saw the future
still less clearly. He designed to reform what he deemed abuses, to
bring the English Church into closer conformity with the other Churches
of the West; he assuredly never dreamed that the issue of his reform
would be the strife between Henry and Thomas and the humiliation of John.
His error was that of forgetting that he himself could wield powers, that
he could hold forces in check, which would be too strong for those who
should come after him. At his purposes with regard to the relations of
England and Normandy it would be vain to guess. The mere leaving of
kingdom and duchy to different sons would not necessarily imply that he
designed a complete or lasting separation. But assuredly William did not
foresee that England, dragged into wars with France as the ally of
Normandy, would remain the lasting rival of France after Normandy had
been swallowed up in the French kingdom. If rivalry between England and
France had not come in this way, it would doubtless have come in some
other way; but this is the way in which it did come about. As a result
of the union of Normandy and England under one ruler, it was part of
William’s work, but a work of which William had no thought. So it was
with the increased connexion of every kind between England and the
continent of Europe which followed on William’s coming. With one part of
Europe indeed the connexion of England was lessened. For three centuries
before William’s coming, dealings in war and peace with the Scandinavian
kingdoms had made up a large part of English history. Since the baffled
enterprise of the holy Cnut, our dealings with that part of Europe have
been of only secondary account.
But in our view of William as an English statesman, the main feature of
all is that spirit of formal legality of which we have so often spoken.
Its direct effects, partly designed, partly undesigned, have affected our
whole history to this day. It was his policy to disguise the fact of
conquest, to cause all the spoils of conquest to be held, in outward
form, according to the ancient law of England. The fiction became a
fact, and the fact greatly helped in the process of fusion between
Normans and English. The conquering race could not keep itself distinct
from the conquered, and the form which the fusion took was for the
conquerors to be lost in the greater mass of the conquered. William
founded no new state, no new nation, no new constitution; he simply kept
what he found, with such modifications as his position made needful. But
without any formal change in the nature of English kingship, his position
enabled him to clothe the crown with a practical power such as it had
never held before, to make his rule, in short, a virtual despotism.
These two facts determined the later course of English history, and they
determined it to the lasting good of the English nation. The
conservative instincts of William allowed our national life and our
national institutions to live on unbroken through his conquest. But it
was before all things the despotism of William, his despotism under legal
forms, which preserved our national institutions to all time. As a less
discerning conqueror might have swept our ancient laws and liberties
away, so under a series of native kings those laws and liberties might
have died out, as they died out in so many continental lands. But the
despotism of the crown called forth the national spirit in a conscious
and antagonistic shape; it called forth that spirit in men of both races
alike, and made Normans and English one people. The old institutions
lived on, to be clothed with a fresh life, to be modified as changed
circumstances might make needful. The despotism of the Norman kings, the
peculiar character of that despotism, enabled the great revolution of the
thirteenth century to take the forms, which it took, at once conservative
and progressive. So it was when, more than four centuries after
William’s day, England again saw a despotism carried on under the forms
of law. Henry the Eighth reigned as William had reigned; he did not
reign like his brother despots on the continent; the forms of law and
freedom lived on. In the seventeenth century therefore, as in the
thirteenth, the forms stood ready to be again clothed with a new life, to
supply the means for another revolution, again at once conservative and
progressive. It has been remarked a thousand times that, while other
nations have been driven to destroy and to rebuild the political fabric,
in England we have never had to destroy and to rebuild, but have found it
enough to repair, to enlarge, and to improve. This characteristic of
English history is mainly owing to the events of the eleventh century,
and owing above all to the personal agency of William. As far as mortal
man can guide the course of things when he is gone, the course of our
national history since William’s day has been the result of William’s
character and of William’s acts. Well may we restore to him the surname
that men gave him in his own day. He may worthily take his place as
William the Great alongside of Alexander, Constantine, and Charles. They
may have wrought in some sort a greater work, because they had a wider
stage to work it on. But no man ever wrought a greater and more abiding
work on the stage that fortune gave him than he
“Qui dux Normannis, qui Cæsar præfuit Anglis.”
Stranger and conqueror, his deeds won him a right to a place on the roll
of English statesmen, and no man that came after him has won a right to a
higher place.
* * * * *
THE END.
* * * * *
_Printed by_ R. & R. CLARKE, LIMITED, _Edinburgh_.