London
HENRY FROWDE
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OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE
7 PATERNOSTER ROW
THE
REIGN OF WILLIAM RUFUS
AND THE
ACCESSION OF HENRY THE FIRST.
BY
EDWARD A. FREEMAN, M.A., HON. D.C.L., LL.D.
HONORARY FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE.
_IN TWO VOLUMES._
VOLUME II.
Oxford:
AT THE CLARENDON PRESS.
1882.
[_All rights reserved_.]
CONTENTS
CHAPTER V.
THE WARS OF SCOTLAND, NORTHUMBERLAND, AND WALES.
1093-1098.
A. D. PAGE
Events of the year 1093; relations between England
and Scotland; results of the war of 1093 3-4
Growth of the English power and of the English
nation under Rufus; the Scottish kingdom becomes
English 4-5
1093 Death of Malcolm; first reign of Donald 5
1094 Reign of Duncan; second reign of Donald 5
1097 Establishment of Eadgar 5
1095 Revolt of Robert of Mowbray 5-5
Affairs of Wales; comparison between Wales and
Scotland 6
Effects of the reign on the union of Britain;
comparison with Ireland and Normandy 6-8
§ 1. _The last year of Malcolm._ 1093.
Complaints of Malcolm against William Rufus;
effects on Scotland of the restoration of Carlisle;
other grounds of offence 8-9
March, 1093 Scottish embassy at Gloucester; Malcolm
summoned to Gloucester; Eadgar sent to bring him 9-10
Present favour of Eadgar with William 9-10
August Malcolm sets forth; he stops at Durham 11
August 11 He lays a foundation stone of the abbey; import of
the ceremony 11-12
August 24 Malcolm at Gloucester; William refuses to see him;
questions between the kings; William observes his
safe-conduct 13-14
Malcolm’s last invasion of England; he draws near
to Alnwick; history of the place 15-16
English feeling about Malcolm 16
Nov. 13 Malcolm slain by Morel 16-17
Burial of Malcolm at Tynemouth; history of Tynemouth;
his translation to Dunfermline 18-19
Local estimate of Malcolm’s death 19
Character of Margaret; Malcolm’s devotion to her;
her children and their education 20-22
Margaret’s reforms; Scottish feeling towards them 22-26
Her religious reforms 22-23
She increases the pomp of the court 23-24
English influence in Scotland; English and Norman
settlers 24-26
Nov. 27 Death of Margaret; different versions; her burial at
Dunfermline; Scottish feeling towards her 26-28
Donald elected king; he drives out the English;
meaning of the words 29-30
Margaret’s children driven out; action of the elder
Eadgar 30
Eadgyth and Mary brought up at Romsey; Malcolm
at Romsey; story of Eadgyth and William Rufus 31-32
Events of 1094; order of Scottish events 32-33
Christmas, Assembly at Gloucester; Duncan claims the Scottish
1093-1094 crown; his Norman education 33-34
1094 He receives the crown from William, and wins the
kingdom by the help of Norman and English
volunteers 34-35
May, 1094 Revolution in Scotland; the foreigners driven out 35
November Duncan slain and Donald restored 36
1094-1097 Second reign of Donald 36
§ 2. _The revolt of Robert of Mowbray._ 1095-1096.
Conspiracy against William Rufus; no general support
for the plot 37-40
Robert of Mowbray marries Matilda of Laigle 38
His dealings with Earl Hugh and Bishop William;
other conspirators; William of Eu 38-39
Designs on behalf of Stephen of Aumale 39-40
Earl Robert plunders the Norwegian ships; the
merchants complain to the King; Robert refuses
redress 40-41
March 25, Easter assembly at Winchester; Robert summoned,
1095 but refuses to come 41
April 4 Falling stars 41-42
Messages between the King and Robert 42
May 13 Whitsun assembly at Windsor; Robert again refuses
to come 42
The King marches against Robert; his rebellion 42-43
The rebels expect help from Normandy 44
The King marches to Nottingham; Anselm’s command
in Kent 44-45
Robert’s fortresses; the New Castle, Tynemouth,
Bamburgh; taking of the New Castle 46-47
July Siege of Tynemouth; description of the site;
taking of Tynemouth 47-48
The castle of Bamburgh; Robert defends it against
the King 49-50
Failure of direct attacks; making of the _Malvoisin_;
the King goes away 51-52
Robert entrapped by a false message; he flees to
Tynemouth; he is besieged in the monastery,
taken, and imprisoned 52-53
Bamburgh defended by Matilda of Laigle 54
November She yields to save her husband’s eyes 54
Later history of Robert and Matilda 54-55
Morel turns King’s evidence 55
1095-1096 Christmas assembly at Windsor; all tenants-in-chief
summoned; constitutional importance of the meeting 56-59
January 13 The meeting adjourned to Salisbury; action of the
assembly; no general sympathy with the accused 56-59
Bishop William charged with treason and summoned
to take his trial; portents foretelling his death 59-61
Dec. 25, His sickness and death 61
1095-
Jan. 1, 1096
Debate as to his burial-place; he is buried in the
chapter-house 61-62
Sentences of the assembly; Earl Hugh buys his
pardon 62-63
January 13 William of Eu appealed by Geoffrey of Baynard, and
convicted by battle 63
He is blinded and mutilated; action of Earl Hugh 64-65
Story of Arnulf of Hesdin; his innocence proved by
battle 65
He goes to the crusade and dies 66
William of Alderi sentenced to death; the King
refuses to spare him 66-67
His pious end 67-68
Last days of William of Eu and of Morel 68-69
§ 3. _The Conquest and Revolt of Wales._
1093-1097.
Relations with Wales; character of the Welsh wars
of Rufus; effect of the building of castles 69-71
Welsh campaigns of Harold and William Rufus compared 71-72
Immediate failure and lasting success 71
Comparison of the conquest of Wales with the English
and Norman conquests; difference of geographical
conditions 72-74
Extension of England by conquest and settlement 74
Various elements in Wales; the Flemish settlements;
endurance of the Welsh language 74-75
The local nomenclature of Wales contrasted with that
of England 75-76
The Welsh castles; contrast with England; the
Welsh towns 76-77
Conquests before the accession of Rufus; Robert of
Rhuddlan; reigns of Rhys ap Tewdwr and Cedivor 77-78
1091 Saint David’s robbed by pirates 78
1093 Beginning of the conquest of South Wales; legend of
the conquest of Glamorgan 79-81
Story of Jestin and Einion; settlement of Robert
Fitz-hamon and his knights 80-81
Estimate of the story; elements of truth 81-82
History of Robert Fitz-hamon; his lands, marriage,
and settlement at Cardiff 82-83
His works at Gloucester and Tewkesbury; his grants
of Welsh churches to English monasteries 84
Distinction between Morganwg and Glamorgan; extent
of Glamorgan 85
The lords and their castles 86-87
The South-Welsh churches and monasteries 88-89
Saxon and Flemish settlements in South Wales;
foundation of boroughs 88
Conquest of Brecknock; Bernard of Newmarch and
his wife Nest 89-91
Easter, Defeat and death of Rhys at Brecknock; effects of
1093 his death 91-92
April 30 Cadwgan harries Dyfed 92
July 1 Norman conquest of Ceredigion and Dyfed 92-93
Tale of Rufus’s threats against Ireland 92-93
Acquisition of Saint David’s; Bishop Wilfrith 94
The Pembrokeshire castles 95
Pembroke castle begun by Arnulf of Montgomery;
second building by Gerald of Windsor; his wife
Nest 96-97
Earl Hugh in Anglesey; castle of Aberlleiniog 97
Advance of Earl Roger in Powys; castle of Rhyd-y-gors 97
Seeming conquest of Wales; Gower and Caermarthen
unsubdued 98
Effect of William’s absence; general revolt under
Cadwgan son of Bleddyn 98-100
Invasion of England 100
Deliverance of Anglesey; Aberlleiniog castle broken
down 101
Character of the war; action of Cadwgan in Dyfed;
Pembroke castle holds out 101-102
Question of a winter campaign; conquest of Kidwelly,
Gower, and Caermarthen 102
1099 Alleged West-Saxon settlement in Gower; the Gower
castles 103
Pagan of Turberville helps the Welsh 104
North Wales holds out; the Welsh take Montgomery 104-105
Michaelmas, William’s invasion of Wales 105
1095
November 1 He reaches Snowdon; ill-success of the campaign 105
1096 The Welsh take Rhyd-y-gors; revolt of Gwent and
Brecknock 106
English feeling towards the war 106-107
Vain attempts to recover Gwent 107
Importance of the castles; the Welsh attack Pembroke;
defence of Gerald of Windsor 108-109
1097 Gerald takes the offensive against the Welsh 110
Easter, William’s second campaign; seeming conquest; fresh
1097 revolt under Cadwgan 110-111
June-Aug. 1097 William’s third campaign; his ill-success 111-112
October He determines to build castles 112-113
§ 4. _The Establishment of Eadgar in Scotland._
1097-1098.
August, Decree for action in Scotland; the elder Eadgar
1097 commissioned to restore the younger 114
Story of Godwine and Ordgar; the Ætheling Eadgar
cleared by battle 114-118
Estimate and importance of the story 117-118
September The two Eadgars march to Scotland; exploits of
Robert son of Godwine; defeat and blinding of
Donald; later life of Eadmund 118-120
1097-1107 Reign of Eadgar in Scotland 120-123
Eadgar’s gifts to Robert son of Godwine 121
1099-1100 Eadgar and Robert go to the Crusade 121-122
1103 Exploits and martyrdom of Robert son of Godwine;
parallels and contrasts 122-123
1107-1124 Reign of Alexander in Scotland; friendship of the
Scottish kings for England; Turgot and Eadmer 124
1124-1153 Reign of David in Scotland; English influence in
Scotland; the Scottish kings of the second series 125-126
§ 5. _The Expedition of Magnus._ 1098.
Events of the year 1098; their wide geographical
range; Anglesey the centre of the story 126-127
Winter, Schemes of Cadwgan and Gruffydd; they take
1097-1098 wikings from Ireland into pay 127-128
The two Earls Hugh of Chester and Shrewsbury 129
The Earls enter Anglesey; they rebuild the castle
of Aberlleiniog 129-130
The Earls bribe the wikings; Cadwgan and Gruffydd
flee to Ireland 130-131
Cruelties of the Earls; mutilation and restoration
of Cenred 131-132
1093-1103 Reign of Magnus Barefoot in Norway; his surnames 133
He professes friendship for England; his treasure
at Lincoln 133-134
Harold son of Harold in his fleet 134-136
Designs of Magnus on Ireland; Irish marriage of his
son Sigurd; his voyage among the islands 136
1075-1095 Reign of Godred Crouan in Man and the Sudereys 136-137
1078-1094 His Irish dominion 136-137
His sons Lagman and Harold 137
Rulers of Man sent from Ireland and Norway; civil
war in Man 137-138
Legend of Magnus and Saint Olaf 138-140
Magnus seizes the Orkney earls and gives the
earldom to his son Sigurd 140
Further voyage of Magnus; he occupies Man; his
designs 140-142
He approaches Anglesey; preparations of the earls;
the fleet off Aberlleiniog 142-143
Death of Hugh of Shrewsbury; different versions 143-144
Peace between Magnus and Hugh of Chester 145
Anglesey and North Wales subdued by Hugh 145-146
Sigurd’s kingdom in the islands; dealings of
Magnus with Scotland 145-146
§ 6. _The Establishment of Robert of Bellême in England._
1098.
1098 Effects of the death of Hugh of Shrewsbury; Robert
of Bellême buys his earldom and his other
possessions; doubtful policy of the grant 147-149
Unique position of Robert in England; effects of his
coming; his cruelty and spoliations 149-151
His skill in castle-building; his defences in
Shropshire; early history of the Shropshire
fortresses 151-152
896-912 First works at the _Bridge_ 152-153
Quatford; Earl Roger’s house and chapel 153-154
Robert of Bellême removes to Bridgenorth and
Oldbury 155-158
The group of fortresses 158
Robert builds the castle of Careghova 158
Roger of Bully; his Yorkshire and Nottingham
estates 159-160
The castle of Tickhill; use of the names Tickhill
and Blyth 160-162
1088 The priory of Blyth founded by Roger of Bully 161
Death of Roger of Bully; his lands granted to Robert
of Bellême 162-164
CHAPTER VI.
THE LAST WARS OF WILLIAM RUFUS. 1097-1099.
1097-1100 Character of the last years of William Rufus; his
designs on France 165-167
1097-1098 Beginning of the wars between France and Maine 167
Nov. 1097 William crosses the sea 167
Comparison of France and Maine; Philip and Helias;
advantage of the kingly dignity 168-170
Lewis son of Philip 170
Jan. 1098 Beginning of the war of Maine 170
§ 1. _The Beginning of the French War._ 1097-1098.
1092 King Philip; his adulterous marriage with Bertrada
of Montfort 171-172
Opposition of Ivo and Hugh of Lyons; excommunication
of Philip and Bertrada 173-174
Sons of Philip and Bertrada; she schemes against
Lewis 174
Philip invests Lewis with the Vexin 175
1097 William’s grounds of offence; he demands the cession
of the Vexin; his demand is refused 175-176
November William crosses to Normandy; excesses of his
11-30 followers in England 176-177
William and Lewis; difficulties of Lewis; fate of
the captives on each side 178-179
French traitors; Guy of the Rock; description of
Roche Guyon 179-182
Policy of Robert of Meulan; he receives William’s
troops; importance and description of Meulan 182-184
Prospects of William; failure of his plans 184-185
The castle of Chaumont-en-Vexin 185-186
1096 The castle of Gisors; its first defences
strengthened by Robert of Bellême 186-188
Castles of Trye and Boury 188-189
National feeling in the French Vexin 189-190
Prisoners on both sides; Gilbert of Laigle; Simon
of Montfort 190
§ 2. _The First War of Maine._ 1098.
November, Dates of the French war 191
1097-1098
Jan.-Aug. War of Maine 191
1098
1089 Robert suspects the loyalty of Maine; he asks help
of Fulk of Anjou; marriage of Fulk and Bertrada 191-194
1090 Movements in Maine; Hugh son of Azo sent for 194-195
Character of Helias of La Flèche; his descent;
his castles; he accepts the succession of Hugh 195-197
1090 Revolt of Maine; Hugh received at Le Mans 197-200
Bishop Howel imprisoned by Helias 197-199
Release of Howel; his dealings with Robert 199-200
Disputes between Hugh and Howel; disputes of
Howel with his chapter; he goes to England 201
June 28, 1090 Return of Howel; unpopularity of Hugh 202
February, Helias buys the county of Hugh 202-203
1091
1091-1098 First reign of Helias; peace of the land 203-204
October 17, Translation of Saint Julian 204
1093
November, Visit of Pope Urban to Le Mans 205
1095
1095-1097 Sickness of Howel 205
1095-1096 Helias takes the cross; estimate of his conduct 205-207
Aug. 1096 William in Normandy; danger to Maine; negotiations
of Helias with Robert 207
Interview of William and Helias; mutual challenge
and defiance 208-210
1096-1097 William delays his attack 210
July 29, Death of Howel; disputed election to the bishopric 210-211
1097
1097-1126 Hildebert Bishop of Le Mans 211-212
Claims of the Norman dukes over the bishopric;
anger of Rufus at the election of Hildebert 211-213
Nov. 1097 William in Normandy; his designs on Maine 213
Robert of Bellême attacks Maine; Helias strengthens
Dangeul; geographical character of the war 213-214
Jan. 1098 Robert of Bellême invites the King; guerrilla
warfare of Helias 214-215
William leaves Maine; Robert of Bellême continues
the war; castles held by him 216-219
Nature of the country and of the war; comparison
of Maine and England 219-221
Helias defeats Robert at Saônes; cruelty of Robert 221-223
April 28, 1098 Second victory of Helias; he is taken prisoner
near Danguel 223-224
Helias surrendered to the king; contrast between
William Rufus and Robert of Bellême 224-225
Hildebert and the council at Le Mans 225-226
William at Rouen; a great levy ordered; numbers
of the army 226-228
June, The army meets at Alençon; invasion of Maine;
1098 truce with Ralph of Fresnay 228-230
Dealings with the nobles of Maine 230-231
May 5 Fulk of Anjou at Le Mans; he leaves Geoffrey in
command 231-232
March of William Rufus; he approaches Le Mans by
Coulaines; he ravages Coulaines 232-234
Sally from the city; Rufus goes away; the siege of
Le Mans raised 234-236
Ballon betrayed to Rufus; occupied by Robert of
Bellême, and besieged by Fulk 235-236
July 20 William relieves Ballon; his treatment of the
captive knights 236-237
August Fulk goes back to Le Mans; convention between
William and Fulk; Le Mans to be surrendered and
Helias set free 237-238
Submission of Le Mans; William’s entry 238-241
William leaves Le Mans; general submission of
Maine 241
Meeting of William and Helias at Rouen; the offers
of Helias rejected; his defiance 242-243
Helias set free; illustration of the King’s
character 244-245
§ 3. _The End of the French War. September-December_, 1098.
1097-1099 William on the Continent; extent of his conquest in
Maine; he begins, but does not finish 245
September He sets forth against France; the sign in the sky
27, 1098 246
He marches to Pontoise; position of the town and
castle; Pontoise his furthest point 247-248
Siege of Chaumont; castle not taken 248-249
Alliance between Normandy and Aquitaine; coming
of Duke William of Poitiers 249-250
Campaign to the west of Paris; valley of the Maudre;
the two Williams march against the Montfort
castles 250-252
The castles resist singly; Peter of Maule 252-253
The two Simons of Montfort; the castle of Montfort;
successful defence of the younger Simon 253-255
Christmas, William keeps Christmas in Normandy; truce with
1098-1099 France 255
Ill-success of the French war; illustrations of
William’s character 256
§ 4. _The Gemót of 1099._
April 10, Easter assembly 256
1099
May 19 Whitsun assembly in the new hall at Westminster 257
Buildings of William Rufus; they are reckoned
among the national grievances; probable abuses of
the law 257-260
Various grievances and natural phænomena 258
The wall round the tower, the bridge, and the hall;
growth of the greatness of London; relations of
London and Winchester 259-261
Westminster Hall; its two founders; its history 262-263
Object of the hall; personal pride of Rufus; the
Whitsun feast; the sword borne by the King of
Scots 263-264
Deaths of bishops and abbots; character and acts of
Walkelin of Winchester 265-266
April 8, The monks take possession of the new church of
1093 Winchester 266
1097-1098 Walkelin joint regent with Flambard; the King’s
demand for money 266-267
Jan. 3, Death of Walkelin 267
1098
Death of Turold of Peterborough and Robert of New
Minster 267
Abbot Baldwin of Saint Eadmund’s; rebuilding of
the church; the King forbids the dedication 267-269
April 30, Various details of Abbot Baldwin; translation of
1095 Saint Eadmund 268-270
Dec. 29, Death of Abbot Baldwin 270
1097
The bishopric of Durham granted to Randolf Flambard 271
June 5, Consecration of Flambard 271
1099
1099- Character of the appointment; Flambard’s episcopate 271-274
1128
His works at Durham and Norham 272
Later events of the year 1099 274
§ 5. _The Second War of Maine._
_April-September, 1099._
Aug. 1098- Helias withdraws to La Flèche; he strengthens the
April, 1099 castles on the Loir 274-276
April, 1099 He attacks the castle held by the King 277
June He marches against Le Mans; battle at Pontlieue;
he recovers Le Mans 277-278
The castles still held for the King; the Normans
set fire to the city; comparison of Le Mans and
York 279-281
Vain operations against the castles; use of the
church towers; Robert of Bêlleme strengthens
Ballon 281-282
The news brought to William in the New Forest;
his ride to the coast 282-284
He crosses to Touques and rides to Bonneville; the
castle of Bonneville 284-287
His levy; he marches to Le Mans; Helias flees to
Château-du-Loir 287
William passes through Le Mans; he harries southern
Maine; Helias burns the castles 288-289
William besieges Mayet; observance of the Truce of
God; details of the siege; the siege raised 289-294
The land ravaged, but the campaign left unfinished 294-295
William at Le Mans; his good treatment of the
city; he drives out the canons 295-296
Sept. 1099 He goes back to England 296
Hildebert reconciled to the King; the King bids him
pull down the towers of Saint Julian’s; question
whether the order was carried out 297-300
1099 Revolt in Anglesey; return of Cadwgan and Gruffydd;
recovery of Anglesey and Ceredigion by the
Welsh 300-301
Nov. 3, The great tide in the Thames 302
1099
December 3 Death of Bishop Osmund of Salisbury 302
CHAPTER VII.
THE LAST DAYS OF WILLIAM RUFUS AND THE ACCESSION
OF HENRY. 1100-1102.
1000-1100 End of the eleventh century; changes in Britain
and in the world 303-307
Change from Æthelred to William Rufus; contradiction
in William’s position; his defeats not
counted defeats 307-308
The year 1100; lack of events in its earlier months;
comparison with the year 1000; vague expectations,
portents, and prophecies 308-310
§ 1. _The Last days of William Rufus._
_January-August, 1100._
The three assemblies of 1099-1100; no record of
these assemblies; continental schemes of Rufus 310-311
Return of Robert from the crusade; his marriage
with Sibyl of Conversana 311-313
William of Aquitaine; his crusade; he proposes to
pledge his duchy to Rufus; preparations for the
occupation of Aquitaine 313-314
Alleged designs of Rufus on the Empire 314
May, 1100 Portents; death of Richard son of Robert 315-316
June, July Warlike preparations 317
July 15 Consecration of Gloucester abbey 317
August 1 Visions and prophecies; Abbot Fulchered’s sermon
at Gloucester 317-321
August 1 William at Brockenhurst; his companions; Walter
Tirel; his history; his _gab_ with the King;
illustrative value of the story 321-325
August 2 Last day of William Rufus; various versions of his
death; estimate of the received tale 325-327
Versions of Orderic and William of Malmesbury 327-331
Versions which assert a repentance for Rufus 331-332
Version charging Ralph of Aix 333-335
Impression made at the time by the death of Rufus;
its abiding memory; local traditions; end and
character of Rufus 335-337
Accounts of William’s burial; the genuine story; his
popular excommunication; he is buried in the Old
Minster without religious rites 338-341
July 31 Portents at William’s death; dream of Abbot Hugh
of Clugny 341
August 1 Vision of Anselm’s doorkeeper 341
August 2 News brought to Anselm’s clerk; vision of Count
William of Mortain 341-343
§ 2. _The First Days of Henry._
_August 2-November 11, 1100._
Vacancy of the throne; claims of Robert by the
treaty of 1091; choice between Robert and Henry;
claims of Henry; his speedy election 343-345
August 2 Story of Henry on the day of the King’s death; he
hastens to Winchester 345-346
He demands the treasure and is resisted by William
of Breteuil; popular feeling for Henry 346-347
August 3 Meeting for the election; division in the assembly;
influence of Henry Earl of Warwick; Henry
chosen King 347-348
Henry grants the bishopric of Winchester to
William Giffard 349
August 5 Henry crowned at Westminster; form of his oath;
joy at his accession 349-351
He puts forth his charter; its provisions 352-357
Privilege of the knights and its effects 355-356
Renewal of the Law of Eadward 357
Witnesses to the charter 358
August 5 Appointments to abbeys; Robert of Saint Eadmund’s
and Richard of Ely; their later history 359-360
1100-1120 Herlwin Abbot of Glastonbury 360
1100-1117 Faricius Abbot of Abingdon 360
Imprisonment of Flambard 361-362
The King’s inner council 362-363
The news of the King’s death brought to Anselm;
his grief 363
Letters to him from his monks and from the King;
popular language of Henry’s letter 363-366
Intrigues of the Norman nobles with Robert; renewed
anarchy in Normandy 366-367
Sept. Return of Robert to Normandy; his renewed
1100 no-government 367-368
Henry keeps his own fief; war between Henry and
Robert 368
Sept. 23. Return of Anselm 368
Helias returns to Le Mans; the King’s garrison
holds out in the royal tower 370
Helias calls in Fulk; siege of the tower 370
Courtesies between Helias and the garrison; messages
sent to Robert and Henry; surrender of the
castle 370-373
1100-1110 Just reign of Helias; his friendship for Henry 373
1109 His second marriage; later history of Maine; descent
of the later English kings from Helias 374
Meeting of Anselm and Henry; comparison of the
dispute between Anselm and William Rufus and
that between Anselm and Henry 374-375
Henry calls on Anselm to do homage; Anselm refuses;
change in his views 375-377
Truce till Easter; the Pope to be asked to allow the
homage; the spiritual power strengthened through
Rufus’ abuse of the temporal power 375-378
The temporalities of the archbishopric provisionally
restored 378
Reformation of the court; personal character of
Henry; his mistresses and children; story of
Ansfrida and her son Richard 379-382
Henry is exhorted to marry; he seeks for Eadgyth
daughter of Malcolm; policy of the marriage 382-383
Objections to the marriage; Eadgyth said to have
taken the veil 384
Anselm holds an assembly to settle the question;
Eadgyth declared free to marry; other versions of
the story 384-387
November Marriage of Henry and Eadgyth; she changes her
11, 1100 name to Matilda 387-388
Anselm’s speech at the wedding; objections not
wholly silenced 388
1100-1118 Matilda as Queen; her children and character;
“Godric and Godgifu” 388-391
Guy of Vienne comes as Legate; his claims not
acknowledged 391
Nov. 18 Death of Thomas Archbishop of York 391
1100-1108 Gerard of Hereford Archbishop of York 392
§ 3. _Invasion of Robert. January-August, 1101._
Likeness of the years 1088 and 1101; plots to give
the crown to Robert; a party in Normandy to give
the crown to Henry 392-393
Character of Robert and Eadgar; Robert as crusader;
his relapse on his return to Normandy 394
Parties in England and Normandy; Henry’s strict
rule distasteful to the nobles 394-395
Plots of Robert of Bellême and others; Duke
Robert’s grants to Robert of Bellême 395-396
Christmas Assembly at Westminster 396
1100-1101
Flambard escapes to Normandy; his influence with
Robert 396-398
April 21 Easter assembly at Winchester; the questions between
Henry and Anselm adjourned; growth of
the conspiracy 399
June 9 Whitsun assembly; its popular character; mediation
of Anselm; renewed promise of good laws 399-400
The Church and the people for Henry; England
united against invasion 401
Importance of the campaign of 1101; last opposition
of Normans and English; their fusion under Henry 401-402
July, 1101 Robert and his fleet at Tréport 401-403
Henry’s levée; Anselm and his contingent; the
English at Pevensey 403-404
The English fleet sent out; some of the crews desert
to Robert 404
July 20 Robert lands at Portchester; comparison with former
invasions 405-406
Robert marches on Winchester; Matilda in child-bed
in the city; he declines to attack Winchester 406
Estimate of his conduct; personal character of the
chivalrous feeling 406-408
Robert marches towards London; the armies meet
near Maldon 408-409
Desertion of Robert of Bellême and William of
Warren 408-409
July 26 Death of Earl Hugh 410
Anselm’s energy on the King’s side; zeal of the
English; exhortations of the King 410-411
Negotiations between Henry and Robert; their
personal meeting; they agree on terms 412-413
Treaty of 1101; Robert resigns his claim to England;
Henry gives up his Norman possessions, but keeps
Domfront; other stipulations 413-414
Michaelmas, Robert goes back; mischief done by his army 415
1101
§ 4. _Revolt of Robert of Bellême._ 1102.
Continued disloyalty of the Norman nobles; Henry’s
plans for breaking their power 415
Flambard in Normandy; his dealings with the see
of Lisieux 415-416
Banishment and restoration of Earl William of Warren 416
Other banishments; trial of Ivo of Grantmesnil; his
bargain with Robert of Meulan 417-418
1102-1118 Robert of Meulan Earl of Leicester; his death; his
ecclesiastical foundations 418-421
Christmas, Assembly at Westminster; danger from Robert of
1101-1102 Bellême; the King watches him 420-421
April 6, Easter assembly at Winchester; Robert of Bellême
1102 summoned, but does not come 421-422
Second summons to Robert; the war begins 422
Robert and his brothers Arnulf and Roger; his
acquisition of Ponthieu; his dealings with Wales,
Ireland, and Norway 423-424
Condition of Wales; return of Gruffydd and Cadwgan 424
Alliance of Robert of Bellême with the Welsh 425
Arnulf’s dealings with Murtagh; the Irish king’s
daughter promised to him 425-426
Henry’s negotiations with Duke Robert; the Duke
attacks Robert of Bellême’s fortress of Vignats 426
Treason of Robert of Montfort; defeat of the
besiegers; general ravages 427-428
Robert of Bellême strengthens his castles; his
works at Bridgenorth 428
The King besieges Arundel; truce with the besieged 428-429
Robert and Arnulf harry Staffordshire 429
Surrender of Arundel 430
Surrender of Tickhill; its later history 431-432
Autumn, Henry’s Shropshire campaign; Robert of Bellême at
1102 Shrewsbury; the three captains at Bridgenorth 432-433
Story of William Pantulf; he joins the King; his
services 434-435
Siege of Bridgenorth; division between the nobles
and the mass of the army 435-437
Gathering of the mass of the army; they stand by
the King 437-438
William Pantulf wins over Jorwerth to the King 439-440
The captains at Bridgenorth agree to surrender 440-441
Arnulf goes to Ireland; Robert asks help of Magnus
in vain 442-443
The mercenaries at Bridgenorth refuse to surrender;
they are overpowered by the captains and the
townsmen 443-444
Surrender of Bridgenorth; the mercenaries march
out with the honours of war 444-445
Robert still holds Shrewsbury; his despair 445-446
The King’s march to Shrewsbury; zeal of the
English; clearing of the road 446-447
The King refuses terms to Robert; he submits
at discretion, and is banished from England 448-449
Joy at Robert’s overthrow; banishment of his
brothers; later history of Robert of Bellême 449-450
1103 Death of Magnus 451
1103 Later history of Jorwerth; his trial at Shrewsbury
and imprisonment 451-453
Assemblies held in various places under Henry 452
1104-1106 Establishment of Henry’s power; banishment of
William of Mortain; his imprisonment and alleged
blinding 453
1102-1135 Peace of Henry’s reign; its character; Henry the
refounder of the English nation 454-455
1107 The compromise with Anselm 455
1106 Battle of Tinchebrai 456
General character and results of the reigns of
William Rufus and Henry 456-457
APPENDIX.
NOTE A. The Accession of William Rufus 459
B. The Beginning of the Rebellion of 1088 465
C. The Share of Bishop William of Saint-Calais in the
Rebellion of 1088 469
D. The Deliverance of Worcester in 1088 475
E. The Attempted Landing of the Normans at Pevensey 481
F. The Bishopric of Somerset and the Abbey of Bath 483
G. The Character of William Rufus 490
H. The Ecclesiastical Benefactions of William Rufus 504
I. Chivalry 508
K. The Purchase of the Côtentin by the Ætheling Henry 510
L. The Death of Conan 516
M. The Siege of Courcy 519
N. The Treaty of 1091 522
O. The Siege of Saint Michael’s Mount 528
P. The Adventures of Henry after the Surrender of
Saint Michael’s Mount 535
Q. The Homage of Malcolm in 1091 540
R. The Earldom of Carlisle 545
S. The Early Life of Randolf Flambard 551
T. The Official Position of Randolf Flambard 557
U. The alleged Domesday of Randolf Flambard 562
W. The Dealings of William Rufus with vacant
Bishoprics and Abbeys 564
X. The Appointment of Herbert Losinga to the See of
Thetford 568
Y. The Letters of Anselm 570
Z. Robert Bloet 584
AA. The Mission of Abbot Geronto 588
BB. The Embassies between William Rufus and Malcolm
in 1093 590
CC. The Death of Malcolm 592
DD. The Burial of Margaret 596
EE. Eadgyth-Matilda 598
FF. Tynemouth and Bamburgh 603
GG. The Conquest of Glamorgan 613
HH. Godwine of Winchester and his son Robert 615
II. The Expedition of Magnus 618
KK. The Relations between Hildebert and Helias 624
LL. The Surrender of Le Mans to William Rufus 628
MM. The Fortresses of Le Mans 631
NN. The Dates of the Building of Le Mans Cathedral 632
OO. The Interview between William Rufus and Helias 640
PP. The Voyage of William Rufus to Touques 645
QQ. The Siege of Mayet 652
RR. William Rufus and the Towers of Le Mans Cathedral 654
SS. The Death of William Rufus 657
TT. The Burial of William Rufus 676
UU. The Election of Henry the First 680
WW. The Objections to the Marriage of Henry and Matilda 682
XX. The Treaty of 1101 688
ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS.
VOL. II.
p. 19, note 3. This picture of the two natives, most likely churls,
carrying the King’s body on the cart, is singularly like the story of
Rufus’ own end to which we shall come presently.
p. 27, l. 5. I should not have said “_a_ relic,” as I find that the
black cross of Scotland is a relic of great fame, as indeed is almost
implied in the story.
p. 27, note 5. See vol. i. p. 167.
p. 28, note 5. Munch (Det Norske Folks Historie, ii. 471-475, for an
introduction to which I have to thank Professor Fiske of Cornell
University) connects this entry with the account of Magnus’ dealings
with Man, spoken of in p. 138, and with every likelihood supposes an
earlier expedition of Magnus in 1093, in which he appeared in both
Scotland and Man, and which the writers of the Sagas have confounded
with his expedition in 1098. We can thus understand the mention of
Godred, who was certainly alive in 1093, and certainly dead in 1098.
See also Anderson, Preface to Orkneyinga Saga, pp. xxxiii-xxxiv.
p. 31, l. 14. Not “the Breton Count Alan,” at least not the Count of
the Bretons, but Alan of Richmond. See p. 602.
p. 49, l. 22, for “south-western” read “north-western.”
p. 62, note 5. Mr. Fowler writes to me that “what is left of William
of Saint-Calais is under the floor in the part of the chapter-house
still used. W. G. has one of his shoes. They began at the west end in
burying the bishops in the chapter-house, and gradually worked
eastward, ending with Kellow before the bishop’s seat at the east end.
Rites of Durham (Surtees Society ed. p. 47) gives the names as they
were ‘ingraven upon stone with the figure of the crosse + annexed to
every of their said names,’ i.e. on the chapter-house floor, and
between ‘Walcherus’ and ‘Ranulphus comes’.
‘Willielmus Episcopus.’
We found further east ‘Will. Secundus Episcopus’ [that is William of
Saint Barbara, bishop from 1143-1152]. Wyatt smashed them all more or
less.”
p. 81, note 1. See p. 614.
p. 88, l. 17. See below, p. 103.
p. 93, note 2. I presume this is the same king of whom we shall hear a
great deal from p. 137 onwards.
p. 97, l. 2 from bottom. I have been unable to fix the exact site of
Rhyd-y-gors; but I believe it is to be looked for in Caermarthenshire.
p. 101, l. 13. I am also unable to fix the exact site of Yspwys.
p. 134, l. 7 from bottom, for “Ulf” read “Wulf,” as in vol. i. p. 14.
The English spelling is the better, but I suppose I was carried away
by Scandinavian associations.
p. 134, l. 11. Munch (Det Norske Folks Historie, ii. 511) oddly refers
to William of Malmesbury as making the companion of Magnus Barefoot,
not a younger Harold, but the Magnus whom we have already heard of as
our Harold’s son, as I suppose, by Eadgyth Swanneshals. But William of
Malmesbury distinctly says Harold, and I can see nothing about it in
the places in the Saga of Magnus and the Orkneyinga Saga to which he
refers.
p. 136, l. 4 from bottom, for “Cronan” read “Crouan.”
p. 138, note 1. This is placed in the year 1098.
p. 144, l. 1. I know not by what carelessness I contrived, after
referring (see p. 131) to Giraldus’ account of the earlier doings of
the two Earls in Anglesey, to leave out all mention of his account of
Hugh of Shrewsbury’s death, which follows immediately (It. Kamb. ii.
7, vol. vi. p. 129) on the story of the desecration of the church of
Llantryfrydog. It agrees on most points very minutely with the
narrative of Orderic; but it does not seem to be borrowed from it;
“Accesserant ad insulæ portum ab Orchadum insulis piratæ in
navibus longis; quorum adventum ubi comes audivit, statim
eis usque in ipsum mare, forti residens equo, animose nimis
occurrit. Et ecce navium princeps, cui nomen Magnus, primæ
navis in prora cum arcu prostans sagittam direxit. Et
quanquam comes a vertice capitis usque ad talum pedis,
præter oculos solum, ferro fideliter esset indutus, tamen
dextro percussus in lumine, perforato cerebro, in mare
corruit moribundus. Quem cum sic corruentem victor ab alto
despiceret, superbe in victum et insolenter invectus,
dixisse memoratur lingua Danica, ‘Leit loupe,’ quod Latine
sonat Sine salire. Et ab hac in posterum hora potestas
Anglorum in Monia cessavit.”
The only difference between this story and Orderic’s is that, while
Orderic makes Magnus mourn when he learns whom he has slain, Giraldus
puts into his mouth two good Teutonic words of triumph, which sound a
great deal more natural. On the other hand we cannot accept Giraldus’
account of the immediate result of the encounter as regards Anglesey,
which quite contradicts the witness of the Welsh writers. His
statement however is true in the long run, as Anglesey was delivered
again the next year. See p. 146.
In the Orkneyinga Saga, c. xxix. (p. 55, Anderson), Magnus “takes a
psalter and sings during the battle.” Then, by his order, he and the
man from Hálogoland shoot at the same time, and hit “Hugh the Proud,”
much as in the other versions. He and “Hugh the Proud” are oddly
spoken of as “British chiefs.”
p. 146, l. 17. See below, pp. 442, 623; but the words “and of other
parts of North Wales” had better be left out.
p. 153, note 1, for “muentione” read “inuentione.”
p. 174, l. 4, for “from” read “for.”
p. 175, l. 3. I think we must accept this distinct statement as more
trustworthy than the flourish of Orderic a few pages later, which I
have quoted in p. 178, note 1. The present passage, besides its more
distinct character, has the force of a correction.
p. 178, note 3. Suger is a discreet writer, or one might suspect him
of exaggeration in his figures both ways. If we take “milites” in the
strict sense of knights, the French numbers seem strangely small, and
the English strangely large. But any other sense of “miles” would make
the French numbers quite incredible.
p. 181, note 1. And by the Loir too; see below, p. 276.
p. 190, l. 9 from bottom, “superinducta” is the favourite epithet for
her.
p. 201, note 2. “Fraterculus” is an odd word; but it most likely
points to Geoffrey as being one of the “canonici pueri” of whom we
hear sometimes (see below, p. 521). “Frater” did not get its special
meaning till the rise of the Friars, and we have seen the word
“fratres” applied to the canons of Waltham. One might for a moment
think that Geoffrey was a brother of the Bishop’s own, but this is
forbidden by the account of his kindred which directly follows.
p. 207, note 1. This time, when William and Robert were together at
Rouen, can only have been about September, 1096, just after the
conference between the brothers spoken of in vol. i. p. 559, and just
before Robert set forth on the crusade.
p. 230, last line, for “he” read “we.”
p. 243, note 1. It is rather odd that exactly this same phrase of
“callidus senex,” here applied to Robert of Meulan, should be also
applied to the old Roger of Beaumont in the story told in vol. i. p.
194. We must remember that our present “callidus senex” had been
married, seemingly for the first time, only two years before (see vol.
i. p. 551), and that he lived till 1118.
p. 250, l. 8. This is doubtless true, but the specially strange guise,
described in the passage of William of Malmesbury referred to in the
note, was not put on till William of Aquitaine had come back from the
crusade. See above, p. 113.
p. 252, note 2. See above, p. 178, and the correction just above, p.
175.
p. 260, note 3. See at the end of the chapter, p. 302, and note 1.
p. 290, l. 2 from bottom. Yet see the piece of Angevin scandal quoted
in p. 609.
p. 312, l. 10, for “both Rogers, the Duke of Apulia and the young
Count of Sicily, to be one day the first and all but the most famous
of Sicilian kings,” read “both Rogers, the Duke of Apulia and the
Count of Sicily, now drawing near to the end of his stirring life.”
The elder Roger was still alive, though he did not live long after.
p. 343, l. 1. The abbey of Saint Alban’s was not vacant at this time,
see p. 666; and for “thirteen” and “twelve” read “twelve” and
“eleven,” see note.
p. 347, note 2. Orderic is rather full on the circumstances of the
election than on the election itself; see p. 680.
p. 359, l. 11, for “thirteen” read “eleven.”
p. 360, note 1. It must have been at the same time that Abbot Odo of
Chertsey was restored to his abbey. See vol. i. p. 350.
p. 380, note 4. We have had one or two other cases of a church tenant
like this Eadric or Godric, giving back his lease by way of a
benefaction.
p. 389, l. 18. The imperial dignity of Matilda is greatly enlarged on
by the poet of Draco Normannicus, i. 4. Two lines are,
“Suscipit Henricus sponsam, statimque coronat,
Hoc insigne decus maxima Roma dedit.”
p. 396, l. 4. See vol. i. p. 184.
p. 413, l. 6 from bottom, for “in a neighbour” read “a neighbour in.”
p. 416, l. 1. I cannot admit the statement of Flambard’s Durham
biographer, who puts his restoration at this point. It is not so much
that he had no claim to restoration by the general terms of the
treaty, for he might have been specially included in it. But his
restoration at this time is quite inconsistent with Orderic’s account
of his dealings with the bishopric of Lisieux, which cannot be mere
confusion or invention.
p. 450, l. 3. After the words “give thanks to the Lord God,” insert
“for thou hast now begun to be a free king.”
p. 454, l. 13 from bottom, for “his” read “the King’s.”
p. 472, l. 1. This grant of Northallerton must be the same as the
grant mentioned in the charter which I have quoted in p. 535; cf. pp.
299, 508.
p. 487, ll. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. It does not appear that any of the regular
assemblies of the year 1101 was held at Windsor. The Whitsun assembly
(see p. 399) may have been held there, but it is hardly likely. But
the mere confirmation of an earlier grant need not have been made in a
regular gemót.
p. 503, l. 13. For “hanc terram” read “hac terra.”
p. 508. Several gifts of Rufus to the Abbey of Gloucester are recorded
in the Gloucester Cartulary, i. 68, i. 102, i. 115. This last, which
appears again in ii. 293, is a grant to the abbey of the right of
catching sturgeons. This cannot have been one of the grants made
during his sickness at Gloucester (see vol. i. p. 395), as it is dated
from Huntingdon; but in the grant in i. 102, it is expressly said that
it was made when the King was “apud Gloucestriam morbo gravi vexatus.”
In i. 238, 239, 240, Henry and Stephen confirm gifts of their brother
and uncle. The document in ii. 107, which in the index is referred to
William Rufus, clearly belongs to the Conqueror, and to the earlier
part of his reign, before the death of William Fitz-Osbern in 1071; it
refers to the lands of the church of Gloucester which were held by
Archbishop Thomas. See N. C. vol. ii. p. 690.
In the Register of Malmesbury (p. 330) there is a singular charter in
favour of the Abbey of Malmesbury granted during his stay at Hastings
in 1094. It brings in several familiar names great and small, and
illustrates the relations between landowners of any kind and the King
and his huntsmen;
“Willelmus rex Angliæ O. episcopo et W. Hosato, et C.
venatori, et A. falconario, salutem. Sciatis me abbati
Godefrido silvas suas ad custodiendum commendasse. Nolo ergo
ut aliquis forestarius meus de eis se intromittat. Et Croco
venatori præcipio ut de ix. sol. quos super homines suos
placitaverat eum et suos clamet quietos. Teste Willelmo
episcopo, et F. filio Hamonis, R. capellano, apud Hastinge.”
p. 569, heading, for “Losinga” read “Herbert.”
p. 585, l. 1. It is odd that William of Malmesbury should speak of the
all-powerful Roger of Salisbury as “alius quidam episcopus;” for we
see from the Chronicle (see p. 587) that it was no other.
p. 592, l. 10, for “þaes” read “þæs.”
p. 600, l. 6 from bottom. I seem in p. 30 to have taken “puellæ
nostræ” to mean the nuns; but it would rather seem, both here and in
the next page, to mean, other girls sent merely for education, like
Eadgyth herself.
p. 605, l. 8 from bottom. I cannot get rid of a lurking notion that
this “Aldredi” should be “Alberici.” But I do not know how Alberic
could appear with the title of earl in the time of Waltheof.
p. 611, l. 9 from bottom. See M. Paris, ed. Wats, Additamenta, p. 199.
THE REIGN OF WILLIAM RUFUS.
CHAPTER V.
THE WARS OF SCOTLAND, NORTHUMBERLAND, AND WALES.[1]
1093-1098.
[Sidenote: Events of the year 1093.]
[Sidenote: Relations between England and Scotland.]
[Sidenote: War of 1093.]
[Sidenote: Its results.]
[Sidenote: Growth of the English power]
[Sidenote: and of the English nation under William Rufus.]
[Sidenote: The Scottish kingdom becomes English.]
The year of Anselm’s appointment to the archbishopric, that part of
the year which passed between the day when the bishop’s staff was
forced into his hand and the day when he received consecration from
Thomas of Bayeux, was a time full of stirring and memorable events of
quite another kind. It was now that some of the events of former years
were to bring forth fruit. The relations between England and Scotland
were of a kind which might lead to open warfare at any moment.[2] This
year the open warfare came. And it was a warfare which was far more
important in its direct results than mere plundering inroads on either
side of the border commonly were. The direct results of the warfare of
this year were in truth the crowning result of causes which had been
working for a whole generation. It was a singular irony of fate which
made William the Red in some sort a missionary, not only of the
political power of the English kingdom, but of the ascendency of the
English blood and speech. He began the later position of England as an
European power. He extended the boundaries of the kingdom of England
within his own island. And, more than this, he gave decisive help to a
work which wrought one of the greatest of victories, not so much for
England as a power as for the English-speaking folk in their
English-speaking character. That he gave kings to Scotland was a small
matter; that was done by other rulers of England before and after him.
What specially marks his reign is that in his day, and largely by his
agency, it was ruled that, of the three elements in Northern Britain,
British, English, and Scottish or Irish, the English element should
have the upper hand. It was ruled that the kingdom of Scotland,
whatever might be its relations towards the kingdom of England,
whether separate or united, whether dependent or independent, whether
friendly or hostile, should be itself truly an English kingdom, a
kingdom which was for some generations more truly English than the
southern England itself.
[Sidenote: Summary of Scottish affairs.]
[Sidenote: Death of Malcolm; first reign of Donald. 1093.]
[Sidenote: Reign of Duncan.]
[Sidenote: Second reign of Donald. 1094.]
[Sidenote: Establishment of Eadgar. 1097.]
[Sidenote: Revolt of Robert of Mowbray. 1095.]
The Scottish affairs with which we shall have to deal in the present
chapter begin with the controversy between William Rufus and Malcolm
which led to the death of Malcolm in his last invasion of England. On
this follows that first outburst of the true Scottish nationality
which led to the election of Donald, followed by his overthrow and the
establishment of Duncan by the power of England. Then, after a short
interval, comes the second national uprising, and the restoration of
Donald. After a longer interval comes the second overthrow of Donald,
and the establishment of the younger Eadgar by the arms of the elder.
The question was now decided in favour of the line of Malcolm and
Margaret and of the form of English influence which was represented by
that line. And between these two last revolutions we may record, as a
kind of episode for which it is not easy to find a place in the
general run of any other narrative, the revolt and overthrow of the
great earl of Northern England which forms at least a poetical
sequence to the overthrow of Malcolm. Between the second establishment
and the second overthrow of Donald, I propose to tell, in its
chronological order, the tale of the slayers of Malcolm, of Earl
Robert of Mowbray and his kinsman Morel. There is little doubt that
their revolt was connected with movements in Normandy also; but it
would have been hard to describe it in a chapter in which Anselm is
the chief actor. It comes better in its moral and geographical
relation towards the affairs of Scotland.
[Sidenote: Affairs of Wales.]
[Sidenote: Comparison between Wales and Scotland.]
[Sidenote: Disunion in Wales.]
[Sidenote: Effects of the reign on the union of Britain.]
[Sidenote: Its causes.]
[Sidenote: Comparison with Ireland and Normandy.]
But Scotland was not the only land within the four seas of Britain
with which the kingdom of England has much to do, especially in the
way of fighting, within the few years of this memorable reign. The
affairs of Wales are still more constantly coming before our eyes.
While the Red King is on the throne, Welsh warfare supplies, year
after year, no small part of the events which the chronicler of
England has to record. The Welsh history of this time is one of deep
interest on many grounds. But it is specially important as giving us
an example of a third type of conquest in our own island, a conquest
differing widely both from the English Conquest of Britain and from
the Norman Conquest of England. Nor do the affairs of Wales fail to
supply us with some instructive contrasts as compared with the affairs
of Scotland. Scotland and the other dominions of the Scottish king
seem throughout this time to act as a whole, at least as regards
England. The land is conquered, or it wins back its freedom; it
receives foreign influences, or it casts them out; but it seems to do
all these things as a whole. The union was perhaps very much on the
surface, but the events of this time bring whatever there was of union
to the front. The British story, on the other hand, is the story of
disunion in its strongest form. Alike in victory and in defeat, all is
local and personal; common action on the part of the whole nation
seems impossible. The result of English dealings with Wales during
these years may be summed up as immediate loss and final success, as
defeat in detail leading to substantial conquest. It is to this reign
more than to any other that we may trace up the beginning of the chain
of events which has gradually welded together England, Scotland, and
Wales, into the thoroughly united island of Great Britain. The remote
causes begin far earlier; now we begin to enter on the actual story
itself. And from that story we may perhaps draw another lesson. Three
nations, differing in blood and speech, once parted by bitter
enmities, have been worked together into one political whole, while
still keeping so much of old diversity as is really healthy, so much
as hinders a dull and lifeless uniformity, so much as sometimes
kindles to wholesome rivalry in a common cause. But this has been
because the facts of geography allowed and almost compelled their
union; it has been because the nature of the old enmities was such as
did not hinder union. England, Scotland, and Wales, have at various
times done one another a good deal of mischief; there has been no time
when any one of the three held either of the others in abiding Turkish
bondage. But these very facts may teach us that the same result cannot
be looked for in a land where the undying laws of nature and the
events of past history alike forbid it. Such union cannot be where the
boundaries of land and water on the map, where the memory of abiding
Turkish bondage in days not long passed by, join to hinder the same
process of welding together which has so happily taken place among the
three nations of the isle of Britain. William the Red did much for the
final union of Britain, because nature favoured that union. He brought
Normandy under the same rule as England, but only for the two lands to
be again parted asunder, because nature forbad their union. And if it
be true that from the rocks of Saint David’s he looked out on the dim
outline of distant Ireland, he did well to turn away from the
prospect, to bluster and threaten, it may be, but to keep the
practical exercise of his warfare and his policy for other lands. He
did well to keep it, as far as the island world was concerned, for
those lands which, as the event has shown, nature did not forbid to
be, in course of ages, fully united with his kingdom.
§ 1. _The Last Year of Malcolm._ 1093.
[Sidenote: Complaints made by Malcolm.]
[Sidenote: Effects on Scotland of the restoration of Carlisle.]
[Sidenote: Probable wrong to Scotland.]
[Sidenote: Other grounds of offence.]
[Sidenote: Scottish embassy at Gloucester. March, 1093.]
[Sidenote: Malcolm summoned to Gloucester.]
[Sidenote: Eadgar sent to bring him.]
We should be glad of a clearer account than we have of the immediate
causes which led to the open breach between William and Malcolm in the
year which followed the restoration of Carlisle. It is certain that
Malcolm complained through an embassy that the King of the English had
failed to carry out the provisions of the treaty made two years
before. Nothing is more likely; it was not the manner of William Rufus
to carry out his treaties with other princes, any more than his
promises to his subjects. Both alike, being parts of his everyday
duty, and not lighted up with the rays of chivalrous honour, were
reckoned by him under the head of those promises which no man can
carry out. But we should be well pleased to know whether the alleged
breach of treaty had anything to do with William’s Cumbrian conquest.
The strengthening of Carlisle, the annexation of its district, could
in no case have been agreeable to the King of Scots. And if, as there
seems every reason to believe, the land had been held by its late lord
Dolfin as a vassal of the Scottish crown, what William had done was a
distinct aggression on the rights of that crown. The superiority of
the English crown over both Scotland and Cumberland would in no way
justify the act; it would have been a wrong done to the Duke of the
Normans if the King of the French had annexed Ponthieu and
strengthened Saint Valery against Normandy. But we are not told
whether this was the ground of offence, or whether William had failed
to carry out any of the clauses of the treaty, those for instance
which secured to the King of Scots certain payments and possessions in
England.[3] What followed may perhaps suggest that, however much the
occupation of Carlisle may have rankled in the mind of Malcolm, the
formal ground of complaint was something of this last kind. Whatever
were his wrongs, the Scottish king sent to complain of them, and the
answer which he received was one which shows that, at this first
stage, Rufus was not disposed to slight the complaint. We are not told
the exact date of this first Scottish embassy. It may very well have
come during the short season of William’s reformation; his seeming
readiness to deal reasonably with the matter, as contrasted with his
conduct a few months later, may pass as one of the fruits of his
temporary penitence, along with the appointment of Anselm and the
promise of good laws. He sent an embassy to Scotland, inviting or
summoning the Scottish King to Gloucester, and giving hostages for his
safety. This looks very much as if the ground of complaint was the
refusal of some of the rights which had been promised to Malcolm
whenever he came to the English court. The Scottish King agreed to
come on these terms. William, in his present frame of mind, was
seemingly anxious to do all honour to the prince with whom he was
dealing. The Scottish ambassadors were sent back to bring their king,
and with them, as the most fitting of mediators, was sent the man who
had himself for a moment been a king, the brother-in-law of Malcolm,
the favoured guest of William, the Ætheling Eadgar.[4]
[Sidenote: Eadgar in favour with William.]
[Sidenote: His mission to Scotland.]
We last heard of Eadgar somewhat more than a year before, when Robert
left England in anger, and Eadgar went with him.[5] This seems to
imply that the relations between William and Eadgar were at that
moment unfriendly. We have no account of Eadgar’s return to England;
but the duty on which he was now sent implies that he was now not only
in William’s formal favour, but in his real confidence. He who had
lately been Malcolm’s representative in a conference with William now
acts as William’s representative in a conference with Malcolm. Eadgar,
like his friend Duke Robert, was clearly one of those men who can act
better on behalf of others than on behalf of themselves.[6] In his
present mission he seems to have acquitted himself to William’s full
satisfaction; the King of Scots was persuaded to come to the English
court. If his coming did not prove specially lucky either to himself
or to the over-lord to whom he came, that was at all events not the
fault of Eadgar.
[Sidenote: Events of the year 1093.]
[Sidenote: Meeting at Gloucester. August 24, 1093.]
[Sidenote: Malcolm sets forth. August, 1093.]
While Eadgar was away on his mission to Scotland, he left behind him a
busy state of things in England. His embassy came in the midst of the
long delays between Anselm’s first nomination and his investiture,
enthronement, and consecration. It came in the time when William of Eu
was plotting,[7] and when, as we shall presently see, seeming conquest
was going on throughout Wales. The place and day for which Malcolm was
summoned to the King’s court was Gloucester on the feast of Saint
Bartholomew. This can hardly have been a forestalling of the regular
Christmas Gemót, for which, by the rule of the last reign, Gloucester
was the proper place. But this year, like most years when William
Rufus was in England, was a year of meetings. This cannot be the
meeting at which Anselm was invested and did homage, for that, as we
have seen, was at Winchester.[8] But, if Winchester was near to the
New Forest, Gloucester was near to the Forest of Dean, and would on
that account not be without its attractions for the Red King.[9] Or it
may well be that the presence of the King at Gloucester, both now and
earlier in the year, may have been caused by the convenience of that
city for assemblies in which action against the Britons might have to
be discussed.[10] Malcolm accordingly set forth, “with mickle
worship,” in the beginning of August as it would seem, to go to the
court of the over-lord by the Severn.
[Sidenote: He stops at Durham.]
[Sidenote: Rebuilding of the abbey.]
[Sidenote: Malcolm lays a foundation stone. August 11, 1093.]
[Sidenote: Much of Malcolm’s dominions in Durham diocese.]
[Sidenote: Import of the ceremony.]
On his way he tarried to take part in a great ecclesiastical ceremony,
his share in which was not without a political meaning. The Bishop of
Durham, William of Saint-Calais, now again the King’s chief
counsellor, already his partisan in the opening strife with
Anselm,[11] was ready to begin his great work of rebuilding Saint
Cuthberht’s abbey. The church of Ealdhun, which had escaped the flames
on the day of Robert of Comines,[12] could not really have been
ruinous beyond repair; but, after the fashion of the time, it was
doomed to make way for a building, built not only on a vaster scale,
but in an improved form of art surpassing every contemporary
building.[13] Of the mighty pile which still stands, the glory of
the Northern Romanesque, King Malcolm now laid one of the
foundation-stones, along with Bishop William and Prior Turgot.[14] The
invitation to take part in such a work was clearly meant as a mark of
honour and friendship on both sides. But it must surely have meant
more. The King of Scots could not on any showing have claimed any
authority at Durham. But he was something more than a mere foreign
visitor. As ecclesiastical geography was understood at Durham, Malcolm
was no stranger there; he was rather quite at home. At York he might
have been told that the whole of his dominions owed spiritual
allegiance to that metropolis. But the Bishops of Durham, practically
the only suffragans of the see of York and suffragans almost on a
level with their metropolitan, were at no time specially zealous for
the rights of the Northern Primate. But, as they drew the
ecclesiastical map, a great part of Malcolm’s dominions, his earldom
of Lothian, his Castle of the Maidens, perhaps even lands beyond those
borders, all came within their own immediate spiritual charge. To the
counsellor of King William Malcolm came as the highest vassal of the
English crown; to the Bishop of Durham he came as the highest layman
in his own diocese. As such, he was fittingly asked to take a share in
a work which concerned the kingdom and the church of which he was one
of the chief members. His consent, besides being a mark of friendship
alike towards King William and Bishop William, was doubtless taken as
an acknowledgement that he belonged to the temporal realm of the one
and to the spiritual fold of the other. And if Malcolm had learned any
of the subtleties of some of his contemporaries and of some of his
successors, he might have comforted himself with the thought that,
whatever the laying of the stone implied, it was laid only by the Earl
of Lothian and not by the King of Scots.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Malcolm at Gloucester. August 24, 1093.]
[Sidenote: Rufus refuses to see Malcolm.]
[Sidenote: Dispute between the kings.]
[Sidenote: Question of “doing right.”]
[Sidenote: Probable pretensions of Rufus.]
[Sidenote: William in the wrong.]
[Sidenote: William observes his safe-conduct.]
From Durham and its ceremonies Malcolm, Earl and King, went on to the
court of the over-lord at Gloucester. He had evidently come disposed
to make the best of matters, as William himself had been during his
time of sickness and penitence. But now in August Rufus was himself
again; he had repented of his repentance; he was more than ever puffed
up with pride and with the feeling of his own power. Out of mere
insolence, it would seem, in defiance of the advice of his counsellors
who wished for peace, he refused to have any speech with, or even to
see, the royal vassal and guest who had made such a journey to come to
his presence.[15] Whatever passed between the kings must have passed
by way of message through third parties. In one account we read
generally that Rufus would do nothing of what he had promised to
Malcolm.[16] In another version we are told, with all the precision of
legal language, that William demanded that Malcolm should “do right”
to him by the judgement of the barons of England only, while Malcolm
maintained that he was bound by ancient custom to “do right” only on
the borders of the two kingdoms, where the kings of Scots were wont to
“do right” to the kings of the English, and that by the judgement of
the great men of both kingdoms.[17] The meaning of these words is
plainly open to dispute, and it has naturally given rise to not a
little.[18] Their most natural meaning seems to be that William wished
to deal with the kingdom of Scotland as with an ordinary fief. Such a
claim would have been against all precedent, and it would be specially
dangerous when William Rufus was king and when Randolf Flambard was
his minister. On the other hand, Malcolm in no way denies the
superiority of the English crown; he stands simply on the ground of
ancient custom. He is ready to “do right,” a process clearly to be
done by an inferior to a superior; but he will do it only as by
ancient custom it was wont to be done. Because a kingdom acknowledged
the external superiority of another kingdom, it did not at all follow
that its king was bound to submit himself to the judgement of the
barons of the superior kingdom. The original commendation had been
made, not only by the King of Scots, but by the whole Scottish
people,[19] and their king might fairly claim that he should have the
advice and help of his own Wise Men in making answer to any charge
that was brought against him. This is one of the cases in which the
use of technical language, without any full explanation of the
circumstances, really makes a matter darker; and we must perhaps be
content to leave the exact point at issue unsettled. But it is plain
from the English Chronicle that William was in the wrong; he refused
to do something for Malcolm which he had promised to do. The
obligations of a treaty sat lightly on the Red King; but on one point
his honour was pledged. Malcolm had come under a safe-conduct――the
sending of hostages, if nothing else, shows it. And a safe-conduct
from Rufus might always be trusted. We cannot say that the two kings
parted in wrath, seeing they did not meet at all. But Malcolm
naturally went away in great wrath, and he left Rufus behind him in
great wrath also. He reached his own kingdom in safety; what he did
with the hostages we are not told.[20]
* * * * *
[Illustration:
Map
illustrating the
NORTHUMBRIAN CAMPAIGNS
A.D. 1093-95.
Edwᵈ. Weller
_For the Delegates of the Clarendon Press._]
[Sidenote: Malcolm’s last invasion of England.]
[Sidenote: He draws near to Alnwick.]
[Sidenote: Alnwick castle.]
[Sidenote: Alnwick and the Percies.]
[Sidenote: The first Percy at Alnwick. 1309.]
[Sidenote: The true Percies.]
[Sidenote: The Vescies at Alnwick.]
[Sidenote: 1174.]
The silly pride shown by William Rufus at Gloucester led to a series
of events of the highest importance both as to the relations between
England and Scotland, and as to the internal affairs of the northern
kingdom. As soon as Malcolm reached Scotland, he gathered together his
forces, and began his fifth, and, as it happened, his last, invasion
of England. He entered the earldom of Northumberland, and harried
after his usual fashion as far as some point which, there is no reason
to doubt, was in the near neighbourhood of Alnwick. We may fairly
accept the tradition which carries him to the spot known as Malcolm’s
Cross, where a commemorative rood once stood, and where the ruins of a
Romanesque chapel may still be seen. The spot is on high ground
overlooking the river Alne, while on the opposite side of the stream a
lower height is crowned by the town of Alnwick, and by such remains of
its famous castle as modern innovation has spared. The neighbourhood
of that castle, the fame of the historic house which once held it, has
caused every place and every act into which the name of Alnwick or of
Percy can be dragged to be surrounded by an atmosphere of legend. It
needs some little effort to take in the fact that, as the Percies of
history have long passed away from Alnwick, so in the days of Malcolm
some centuries had to pass before the Percies of history reached
Alnwick. It needs some further effort to take in the further fact that
the true Percy, the Percy of Domesday, the Percy of Yorkshire, never
had anything to do with Alnwick or with Northumberland at all. And it
perhaps needs a further effort again to take in the fact that it is by
no means clear whether in the days of Malcolm there was any castle of
Alnwick in being. One may guess that the site had been fortified at
some earlier time; but the known history of Alnwick, castle and abbey,
begins with the works of the elder lords of Alnwick, the house of
Vescy, in the next century.[21] Of that date a noble gateway has still
been spared, which may well have looked on the captivity of the
Scottish William in the days of Henry the Second, but which assuredly
did not look on the death of Malcolm in the days of the Red King. The
height to which Malcolm’s harryings reached may have looked down on
some earlier fortress beyond the Alne, or it may simply have looked
down on the town of Alnwick, which was doubtless already in being. But
whatever was there at that time in the way of artificial defence,
there were stout hearts and a wary leader ready to meet the king who
was invading England for the fifth time.
[Sidenote: English feeling about Malcolm.]
[Sidenote: Death of Malcolm. November 13, 1093.]
[Sidenote: Malcolm slain by Morel.]
It is certainly strange that in not a few English writers, generally
indeed those who are parted from the event by some distance of time
and place, the overthrow of the invaders which now followed is told
with a certain feeling for the invader and with a certain feeling
against those who overthrew him. Malcolm perhaps drew to himself some
share of the national and religious halo which gathered round his
wife, while there was nothing attractive, either on national or on
personal grounds, in the men who at that time stood forth as the
champions of England. Yet it must have been the “good men” of two
years past[22] who now went forth under the cunning guidance of Earl
Robert of Mowbray. By some ambush or other stratagem, that skilful
captain led his forces on the Scottish King unawares, under
circumstances which are not detailed, but which have led even English
writers to speak of the attack as treacherous.[23] Malcolm was killed;
and with him died his son and expected heir Eadward. They fell on the
day of Saint Brice, ninety-one years after the great slaughter of the
Danes which has made that day memorable in the kalendar of
England.[24] The actual slayer of Malcolm was his gossip Morel, Earl
Robert’s nephew and steward, guardian of the rock and fortress of
Bamburgh. From him it would seem that Alnwick, or perhaps rather the
dale between Alnwick and Malcolm’s Cross, took the name of
_Moreldene_.[25] Morel was, it was noticed, the gossip, the
_compater_, of Malcolm, as William Malet was of Harold;[26] and it
seems almost to be implied, by writers far away from Alnwick, that
this spiritual affinity made the slaughter of the invader a crime.
[Sidenote: Burial of Malcolm at Tynemouth.]
[Sidenote: History of Tynemouth.]
[Sidenote: Martyrdom of King Oswine.]
[Sidenote: First church of Tynemouth.]
[Sidenote: Invention of Saint Oswine. March 15, 1065.]
[Sidenote: Tostig begins the new church.]
[Sidenote: Tynemouth granted to Jarrow by Waltheof.]
[Sidenote: Earl Robert grants Tynemouth to Saint Alban’s.]
[Sidenote: Death of Abbot Paul. 1093.]
[Sidenote: Translation of Saint Oswine. August 23, 1103.]
[Sidenote: Malcolm translated to Dunfermline.]
The body of Malcolm, like the bodies of Harold and Waltheof, received
a first burial and a later translation. It was first borne to the
church of Saint Oswine at Tynemouth, a place which was growing into
great reputation under the special favour of Earl Robert. Through his
bounty the walls of a new minster were rising within his fortress
which crowned the rocky height on the left bank of the mouth of the
great Northumbrian river. That fortress and that minster will again
play a memorable part in the chequered history of their founder. But
the church of Saint Oswine, the martyred King of Deira, did not owe
its first origin to Robert of Mowbray or to any other stranger.[27]
The body of the sainted king, slain by the practice of the Bretwalda
Oswin, was laid in a church which was said to have been first built of
wood by the Bretwalda Eadwine, and then rebuilt of stone by the
sainted Bretwalda Oswald. The position of Tynemouth marked it out as a
special point for attack and defence in the days of the Danish
invasions; but, after the havoc which they caused, the holy place had
been neglected and forgotten. In the days of Earl Tostig and Bishop
Æthelwine the pious care of the Earl’s wife Judith had led to the
invention of the martyr’s relics, and to the beginning of a new
church. Of that church Tostig laid the foundations in the year of his
fall, but men of another speech were to finish it. The unfinished
church was granted by Earl Waltheof to the monks of the newly restored
house of Jarrow, and his gift was confirmed by the Norman Earl
Alberic. A gift to Jarrow proved, as events turned out, to be the same
thing as a gift to Durham; but, before the change of foundation at
Durham, the monks of Jarrow had removed the relics of Saint Oswine
from Tynemouth to their own church. With the reign of Earl Robert a
change came. Out of devotion, and at the heavenly bidding, as was
believed at Saint Alban’s――out of a quarrel with Bishop William, as
was believed at Durham――but at all events out of a feeling for the
memory of Oswine which showed that he had learned some reverence for
the worthies of the land in which he had settled――Earl Robert deprived
the church of Durham of this possession, and refounded Tynemouth as a
cell to the distant abbey of Saint Alban. Abbot Paul came in person to
take possession, in defiance of all protests on behalf of Durham,
where it was believed that his death which soon followed was the
punishment of this wrong. Saint Oswine himself was not translated back
to Tynemouth till the power of Robert of Mowbray had passed away. But
the church on the rock became famous, and it fills a considerable
place in the local history of Saint Alban’s. There, in the chosen
sanctuary of his conqueror, the body of Malcolm lay for awhile. He was
afterwards moved to his own Dunfermline[28], where the pillars of his
minster, in their deep channellings, bear witness to an abiding tie,
at least of the artistic kind, between the royal abbey of Scotland and
the great church of Northern England of which a Scottish king laid the
foundation-stone.
[Sidenote: Local estimate of Malcolm’s death.]
But, if English writers in later times, and even men who wrote at the
time in distant parts of England, found some flowers to strew on the
tomb of the husband of the saintly daughter of the old kingly line, no
such feelings were shared by those who had seen Malcolm and his
invading host at their own doors. The chronicler who wrote nearest to
the spot stops, as he records the death of Malcolm, to mark the
judgement of God which cut off the merciless enemy of England. He
stops to reckon up all the times that Malcolm had laid waste the
fields of Northumberland, and had carried away the folk of
Northumberland into bondage.[29] He tells with glee how the invading
host utterly vanished; how they were either cut down by the sword of
the avenger, or swept away by the floods of Alne, swollen by the
winter’s rain beyond its wonted depth and strength.[30] He records the
burial at Tynemouth; but he takes care to tell how none of the
Scottish host was left to bury the Scottish king, but how the charity
of two men of the land bore him on a wain to the place of burial.[31]
And he adds the moral, equally applicable to all ambitious kings, that
he who had deprived so many of life and goods and freedom now, by
God’s just judgement, lost his life and his goods together.[32]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Character of Margaret.]
[Sidenote: Malcolm’s devotion to her.]
[Sidenote: Margaret’s education of her children.]
[Sidenote: Her sons;]
[Sidenote: David;]
[Sidenote: Eadmund.]
The invading king was dead, and with him the son whom he had designed
to wear his crown after him was dead also. The saintly wife of Malcolm
and mother of Eadward was soon to follow her husband and her son. Of
the true holiness of Margaret, of her zeal, not only for a formal
devotion, but for all that is morally right, none can doubt.[33] A
woman evidently of great natural gifts and of a cultivation unusual in
her time, she deeply impressed all whom she came across, her own
husband most of all. To Malcolm his Margaret was indeed a pearl of
great price, to be cherished, almost to be worshipped, as already a
saint on earth. She taught him to share her devotions, till men
wondered at such piety in a man of this world.[34] It is touching to
read how the unlettered king loved to look with wonder on the books in
which his queen delighted; how those which she delighted in more than
others he would cherish and kiss like holy relics, how he would have
them adorned with gold and gems, and would then bring them back to his
wife in their new splendour, as sacred offerings.[35] Her prayers, her
fasts, her never-failing bounty to the poor, stand out in her
biography even more conspicuously than her gifts to churches, to
distant Iona among them.[36] It is perhaps a rarer merit that the
influence of her personal example hindered the slightest approach to
foul or profane speech in her presence,[37] and that her careful
education of her children handed on her virtues to another generation.
For Margaret was not one of those who sought for their own soul’s
health in neglecting the most obvious duties of the state of life to
which God had called them. In the petty and selfish devotion of her
great-uncle she had no share; called to be wife, mother, and queen, it
was by doing her duty as wife, mother, and queen that she won her
claim to a higher saintship than that of Æthelthryth at Ely or of
Eadgyth at Wilton. The witness of Margaret is in her children,
children many of whom bore the great and kingly names of her own
house. The careful training which the Conqueror gave to his children
showed its fruits in his daughters only; the teaching of Margaret
lived in her sons as well. Eadward died with his father; but in Eadgar
and Alexander and the more renowned David, she gave three kings to
Scotland, of whom the two latter were kings indeed, while all three
inherited the gentleness and piety of their mother, along with the
virtue so rare among the princes of that day, the strictest purity of
personal life.[38] David, son-in-law of Waltheof, who gave Scotland
worthy heirs to succeed him, surely ranks higher on the roll of royal
saints than Eadward, son-in-law of Godwine, who left England to the
chances of a disputed succession. One child only of this goodly stock
is spoken of as falling away from the bright example of his
parent.[39] Yet Eadmund, alone of the children of Margaret, lived to
become a cloistered monk; and he was perhaps deemed degenerate only
because he fell back on the character of a Scottish patriot of an
older type.
[Sidenote: Margaret’s reforms.]
[Sidenote: State of religion in Scotland.]
[Sidenote: Malcolm acts as his wife’s interpreter.]
[Sidenote: She increases the pomp of the Scottish court.]
[Sidenote: Her early associations.]
[Sidenote: Feeling of the Scots.]
Had Margaret confined her cares to bringing up her own children in
strict piety and virtue, one of her sons would in all likelihood have
mounted his father’s throne immediately after the bloody day of
Alnwick. But in Malcolm’s kingdom she came, in her own eyes at least,
as the representative of a higher morality, a purer religion, and a
more advanced civilization, and she felt specially called on to play
the part of a reformer. The ecclesiastical condition of Scotland was
by no means perfect, according to the standard which Margaret had
brought with her. The Scots still kept Easter at a wrong time; they
said mass in some way which at Durham was deemed barbarous;[40] they
cared not for the Lord’s day; and they are said to have neglected the
most ordinary Christian rules in the matter of marriage. They took to
wife, after Jewish models, the widows of their brothers, and even,
after old Teutonic models, the widows of their fathers. All these
evils, ecclesiastical and moral, Margaret set herself zealously to
root out. Councils were gathered to work the needful reforms, and
Margaret found her husband an useful interpreter. For the king who had
been placed on the Scottish throne by the will of Eadward and the arms
of Siward naturally spoke the English tongue as readily as that of his
own people.[41] But Margaret was a queen as well as a saint; and she
either took a personal pleasure in the pomp of royalty or else she
deemed royal state to be wholesome in its effects on the minds of the
barbarous people. The King of Scots was taught to show himself in more
gorgeous apparel, to ride with a greater and more stately train, than
his forefathers had been wont to do. But the righteous queen knew
something of the evils which might come of a king’s great and stately
following, and she took care that the train of King Malcolm should
not, like the train of King William, pass among the fields and
households of his people like a blight or a pestilence[42]. That
Margaret should innovate in the direction of state and ceremony was
not wonderful. Daughter of kings, kinswoman, perhaps daughter, of
Cæsars, she had, in her childhood and youth, seen something of many
lands. She may have seen the crown of Saint Stephen, still in its
freshness, on the brow of a Magyar king, and the crown of Charles and
Otto on the brow of an Imperial kinsman. She had assuredly seen King
Eadward, King Harold, and King William, in all the glory of the crown
to which her husband’s crown owed homage. And we may be sure that the
kingly state of Scotland was mean besides that of Germany, of England,
and even of Hungary. Margaret might well think it a duty to herself
and to her husband to raise him in outward things nearer to a level
with his brother kings both of the island and of the mainland. But the
policy of such a course, among such a people as the Scots of that age,
may well be doubted. A fierce race, hard to control at any time, may
well have had no great love for an outward show of kingship, which
would be taken, and rightly, as the sign of a growth of the kingly
power such as agreed neither with their customs nor with their wishes.
[Sidenote: English influence in Scotland.]
[Sidenote: Scottish feeling towards Margaret.]
[Sidenote: English and Norman settlers.]
[Sidenote: Jealousy of the native Scots.]
Margaret moreover was a stranger in Scotland. One can well believe
that the native Scots were already beginning to be jealous of English
influence in any shape. Before Margaret came, they must have felt that
the English element in the triple dominion was growing into greater
importance than their own. Lothian was becoming greater than the true
Scottish land beyond the Scots’-water. Fife, it may well be, was
already becoming as Lothian. Malcolm himself had been placed on the
throne by English arms; he had become the man of two kings who were
politically English, though they held England as a conquered realm.
His five invasions of England must have been quite needful to keep up
even Malcolm’s character among his own people. And his English queen,
bringing in English ways, trying to turn Scotland into another
England, stopping good old Scottish customs and good old Scottish
licence, tricking out the King of Albanach in some new devised foreign
garb, English, Norman, German, or Hungarian, must have been looked at
in her own time, by the Scots of her own day, with very different
feelings towards the living queen from those with which they soon
learned to look towards the national saint. She came too with her
English following, and her English following was only the first wave
of many which came to strengthen the English element which was already
strong in the land. While Malcolm and Margaret reigned, Scotland, the
land which had sheltered Margaret and her house in their days of
banishment, stood open to receive, and its king’s court stood open to
welcome, every comer from the south. Native Englishmen flying from
Norman oppression and Norman plunder,――Normans who thought that their
share in the plunder of England was too small――men of both races, of
both tongues, of every class and rank among the two races,――all found
a settlement across the Scottish border. The King spoke English; the
Queen most likely spoke French also; Englishmen and Normans alike
seemed civilizing elements among the people whom Margaret had to
polish and to convert. Both Normans and English kept Easter at the
right time, and neither Normans nor English thought of marrying their
step-mothers. Scotland and the court of Scotland were crowded with
English and Norman knights, with English and Norman clerks. They got
benefices, temporal and spiritual, in the Scottish land. They may have
converted; they may have civilized; but conversion and civilization
are processes which are not always specially delighted in by those who
are to be converted and civilized. Anyhow they were strangers, brought
into the land by kingly favour, to flourish, as men would naturally
deem, at the cost of the sons of the soil. The national spirit of the
Scottish people arose; the jealousy of the strangers established in
the land waxed stronger and stronger. It might be in some measure kept
down as long as novelty was embodied in the persons of the warrior
king and the holy queen. As soon as they were gone, the pent-up
torrent burst forth in its full strength.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: The news of Malcolm’s death brought to Margaret.
November 17, 1093.]
[Sidenote: English version of her death.]
[Sidenote: Turgot’s version.]
[Sidenote: Her burial at Dunfermline.]
The first to bring the news of the death of her husband and son to the
ears of Margaret was another of her sons, the future King Eadgar. As
the tale reached Peterborough, Worcester, and Saint Evroul, the Queen,
when she heard the tidings, became as one dead at heart; she settled
her temporal affairs; she gave gifts to the poor; then she entered the
church with her chaplain; she communicated at the mass which he sang;
she prayed that her soul might pass away, and her prayer was
granted.[43] This is a version which has already received a legendary
element. It is not, strictly speaking, miraculous, but is on the way
to become so. A person, seemingly in health, is made to die in answer
to prayer on the receipt of ill news. The tale, as told by an
eye-witness, is different. The Queen had long been expecting death;
for half a year she had never mounted a horse, and had but seldom left
her bed.[44] On the fourth day after her husband’s death, feeling
somewhat stronger, she went into her private oratory; she heard mass,
and communicated. Her sickness increased; she was taken back to her
bed, holding and kissing a relic known as the Black Cross of
Scotland,[45] and waiting for her end. She prayed and repeated the
fifty-first psalm,[46] with the cross in her hand. The agony was
already near when Eadgar came from the war. She was able to ask after
his father and brother. Fearing to distress his mother yet more,
Eadgar said that they were well.[47] Margaret conjured him as her son,
and by the cross which she had in her hand, to speak the truth. He
then told her the grievous tale. She murmured not, nor sinned with her
lips.[48] She could even give thanks for her sorrows, sent, as she
deemed, to cleanse her from her sins.[49] As one who had just partaken
of the holy rite, she began the prayer which follows communion, and,
as she prayed, her soul left the world. The deadly paleness passed
away from her face, and she lay, red and white, as one sleeping.[50]
The place of her death was Edinburgh, the castle of maidens;[51] her
body was borne to Dunfermline and buried there, before the altar of
the church of the Holy Trinity of her own rearing.[52]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Scottish feeling towards her.]
[Sidenote: A Scottish king to be chosen.]
[Sidenote: Election of Donald.]
[Sidenote: He drives out the English.]
We read the touching tale with different feelings from those with
which it was heard at the moment by Scots who clave to old Scottish
ways, good or bad. We have even hints that the funeral of the sainted
queen could not go from Edinburgh to Dunfermline without danger. It
needed either a miracle or the natural phænomena of the country to
enable the body of the English lady to be carried out of one gate of
the Castle of the Maidens, while the champions of the old times of
Scotland were thundering at another.[53] Such a story may be legendary
in its details, but it is clearly no legend, but true tradition, as
regards the national feeling of the times which it describes.
Scotland, at the time of Malcolm’s death, was still torn by local and
dynastic factions;[54] but all parties in the old Scottish realm were
agreed on one point. They would have no more innovations from England
or from Normandy; they would have no more English or Norman strangers
to eat up their land in their own sight. They would have no son of
Margaret, no son even of Malcolm, to reign over them; they would again
have a king of the true stock of Albanach, who should reign after the
old ways of Albanach and none other. The settled English element south
of the Scots’-water would be weak against such a movement as this; or
indeed it may be that the men of Lothian were no more eager to be
reformed after Margaret’s fashion than the men of Scotland and
Strathclyde. Such a king as was needed was soon found in the person of
Donald Bane, Donald the Red――Scotland had her Rufus as well as
England――the brother of the late king and son of that Duncan who had
been cut off in his youth in the civil war between his house and the
house of Macbeth.[55] He was at once raised to the Scottish crown as
the representative of Scottish nationality. His first act was
emphatic; “he drave out all the English that ere with the King Malcolm
were.”[56]
[Sidenote: Meaning of the words.]
[Sidenote: Margaret’s children driven out.]
[Sidenote: Action of the elder Eadgar.]
[Sidenote: Malcolm’s daughters;]
[Sidenote: Mary;]
[Sidenote: Eadgyth or Matilda;]
[Sidenote: her sojourn at Romsey.]
[Sidenote: Malcolm at Romsey.]
[Sidenote: Her relations with Henry.]
[Sidenote: Tale of Eadgyth and William Rufus.]
This is of course no more to be understood of a general driving out of
the settled English inhabitants of Lothian than the massacre of Saint
Brice is to be understood of a general slaughter of the settled Danish
inhabitants of Lincolnshire and Yorkshire.[57] The driving out was
confined to the newly come English, who filled the court of Malcolm
and Margaret, and who doubtless kept, or seemed to keep, many a
true-born Scot from the favour of his king. For these there was to be
no longer a place in the Scottish realm or in the other dominions of
its sovereign. They had to go and seek shelter in their own land. The
language of our guides suggests that they were mainly English in the
strictest sense; though we cannot but fancy that some Normans or other
strangers may have crept in among them.[58] One thing is certain;
among the English that ere with the King Malcolm were his own children
by his English wife held a place. Of his sons Eadmund and Æthelred we
cannot speak with certainty; but Eadgar, Alexander, and David, had to
flee, and the Scottish story describes their uncle the Ætheling Eadgar
as in some way helping their escape. He did it, we are told, by
stealth, that he might not kindle any suspicion in the Norman King of
England.[59] It is hard to see what Eadgar, who could not have been in
Scotland at the time of his sister’s death, could have done for her
children till they were at least within the English border, and there
is nothing to make us think that Eadgar had in any way lost that full
favour with William Rufus which he had enjoyed at the beginning of the
year. But the mere use of his name witnesses to the belief that he who
could do so little for himself was able to do a good deal for others.
In this story he is said to have sheltered his sister’s daughters as
well as her sons. More trustworthy accounts say that Eadgyth and Mary
had already been sent by their parents to be brought up in the abbey
of Romsey, where their aunt Christina was a nun.[60] Mary in time
married the younger Eustace of Boulogne, and was the mother of a Queen
of the English, that valiant Matilda who strove so well to keep the
English crown for her husband Stephen.[61] Eadgyth, in her loftier
destiny, will meet us again under the new name which she had to share
with her niece and to hand on to an Imperial daughter.[62] The second
Queen Matilda of our story, the good Queen Maud of tradition, had been
designed to be the bride of the Breton Count Alan.[63] That was not to
be her fate; neither was it to be her fate to embrace the holy calling
which her aunt Christina strove to force upon her. For the present she
remained unprofessed, loathing the veil which her aunt ever and anon
put upon her head, to shield her, as she said, from Norman
outrage.[64] When Christina’s back was turned, the lively girl tore
the veil from her head and trampled on it.[65] Her father too, on some
visit to England――could he have turned aside to Romsey before or after
his memorable visit to Gloucester?――saw the veil on her head with
anger; he had not designed her for that, but for the bridal of Count
Alan. It seems plain that her marriage with Henry was a marriage of
old affection on both sides, and one version even makes the Ætheling
seek for her as his wife in her father’s lifetime. One version,
strange indeed, but perhaps the more likely to have some truth in it
because of its strangeness, gives her an unlooked-for lover. We are
told that, for once, in the person of Eadgyth of Scotland, female
charms kindled in the heart of the Red King a passion which in his
case might be called virtuous.[66] He came to Romsey with a body of
his knights; the wily abbess, dreading his purpose, caused Eadgyth to
put on the veil. She then drew the King into the cloister to see her
roses and other flowers; but he caught a glimpse of the nuns as they
passed by; he saw the veil on the head of Eadgyth, and turned away.
She was then twelve years old. Presently her father came; he saw her
veiled; he tore the veil from her head, he trampled it under his feet,
and took away his daughter. Such a tale must be taken for what it is
worth; but the picture of William Rufus contemplating either maidens
or roses at least puts him in a light in which we do not meet him
elsewhere.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Christmas, 1093-1094.]
[Sidenote: Events of 1094.]
[Sidenote: Order of Scottish events.]
A series of events now follow which our guides seem to place within
the year of Malcolm’s death, but for which room can hardly have been
found in the few weeks of it which were still to come. The winter of
that year, it will be remembered, was a stirring winter. It saw the
consecration of Anselm; it saw the Gemót at Gloucester at which
William received the challenge from his brother in Normandy;[67] it
saw the first beginnings of fresh disputes between the King and the
Archbishop.[68] The next year was the year of William’s second Norman
expedition, and it is clear that his absence from England had an
influence on the affairs of Scotland, as it undoubtedly had on those
of Wales. The election of Donald and the driving out of the English
from Scotland may have followed as swiftly on the deaths of Malcolm
and Margaret as the election of Harold followed on the death of
Eadward or the election of Henry on the death of William Rufus. But we
can hardly find room for an English expedition to Scotland, for the
establishment of a new king, and for a domestic revolution limiting
his powers, between the driving out of the English and the last day of
the year. One is inclined to think that the Gemót of Gloucester saw a
discussion of the affairs of Scotland as well as of the affairs of
Normandy, and that the results of that discussion, direct consequences
as they were of the death of Malcolm and the election of Donald, were
set down under the year in which the chain of events began, though
some of them must, almost in the nature of things, have really
happened in the year which followed.
[Sidenote: Gemót of Gloucester. Christmas, 1093-1094.]
[Sidenote: Duncan claims the Scottish crown.]
[Sidenote: Duncan’s Norman education.]
[Sidenote: He receives the crown from William.]
[Sidenote: 1054.]
[Sidenote: 1332.]
[Sidenote: He wins it by the help of Norman and English volunteers.
1094.]
[Sidenote: Second revolution; the foreigners driven out.]
[Sidenote: May? 1094.]
I am inclined therefore to think that it must have been at the
Christmas assembly which decreed the war with Robert that a claimant
appeared to demand the Scottish crown at the hands of the southern
over-lord. This was Duncan, the son of Malcolm and Ingebiorg. He was
in truth the eldest of Malcolm’s children, and, though, under the
influence of a new set of ideas, it became usual to speak of him as a
kind of Ishmael, he was most likely as lawful an heir to the Scottish
throne as any of the three kings who were sons of the English
saint.[69] In itself the succession of Duncan would have seemed an
intermediate course between the succession of Donald and the
succession of Margaret’s son Eadgar. But Duncan, given years ago as a
hostage to William the Great,[70] had long been a follower of William
the Red. He lived in his court, and did him faithful service as his
man and his knight. He must have been unknown in Scotland, and his
feelings and habits must have been those of a Norman rather than those
of a Scot. He represented neither the old Scottish traditions which
were embodied in Donald nor yet the new foreign reformation which was
embodied in Margaret and her sons. It was no wonder then that no party
in his father’s kingdom thought of his claims at his father’s death.
But he now came to the King’s court; he set forth the usurpation of
his uncle Donald and his own rights; he demanded the crown of his
father, and did homage for it to the Monarch of Britain.[71] The event
is singularly like the earlier event which had placed Duncan’s own
father on the Scottish throne; it is still more like the later event
which gave Scotland a momentary king in Edward Balliol. The King’s
designs on Normandy hindered him from either marching himself to the
help of Duncan or sending any part of the regular forces of his
kingdom. But Duncan was allowed to get together a body of volunteers,
English and French――doubtless of any nation that he could find――at
whose head he marched into Scotland. He overthrew his uncle Donald,
and took possession of the throne by the help of his new allies.[72]
Details are lacking; the Scots must have been overthrown for a moment
by some sudden attack. What follows is instructive. The reign of
Duncan, as a king surrounded by a Norman and English following, was
but for a moment. But there was clearly no feeling in Scotland against
allowing him to reign, if he were willing to reign as a national Scot.
The people, startled for a moment, took heart again. A new movement
broke forth; the King was surrounded, and the foreigners who
accompanied him were this time, not driven out, but slaughtered. He
himself escaped with a few only.[73] But, this work once done, the son
of Malcolm was not less willingly received than his brother. Donald
was not restored; but Duncan was accepted as King of Scots on
condition of his allowing no English or French settlers within his
realm.[74]
[Sidenote: Death of Duncan and restoration of Donald. November? 1094.]
[Sidenote: Second reign of Donald. 1094-1097.]
We may perhaps suspect that this national movement in Scotland was
timed so as to grasp the favourable moment when the King of the
English, with the mass of his forces, was beyond the sea. This is more
clearly marked in the next revolution, which took place towards the
end of the year. While King William was still in Normandy, while the
Welsh were in triumphant revolt, a powerful confederacy was formed
against Duncan. Donald now leagued himself with Malpeter, the Mormaor
of Mærne, the representative of the old party of Macbeth, and also
with Eadmund, son of Malcolm and Margaret. This last, their only
degenerate son, as he is called, joined with his uncle against his
half-brother. He was lured, it is said, by the promise of half the
kingdom.[75] Duncan was slain, by treachery, we are told, and Donald
began a second reign.[76] This revolution was perhaps among the causes
which brought William back from Normandy.[77] But both English and
Welsh affairs were in a state which forbade any immediate intervention
in Scotland. William had to put up with the insults which he had
received, the driving out of his subjects and the slaughter of the
king to whom he had given the kingdom. Donald was allowed to reign
without disturbance for three years.
§ 2. _The Revolt of Robert of Mowbray._ 1095-1096.
[Sidenote: Events contemporary with Donald’s second reign.]
The three years of Donald’s second reign were contemporary with much
that we have already told, with the whole dispute between William and
Anselm, with the preaching of the crusade, with the acquisition of
Normandy. They were contemporary with stirring events in Wales which
we shall speak of in another section. And they were contemporary with
events in England which, as I have said, have a kind of connexion with
the fate of Malcolm which makes it seem on the whole most natural to
speak of them at this point. We will now therefore go on to the chief
English event of the year which followed the second accession of
Donald, namely the revolt of Robert Earl of Northumberland.
[Sidenote: Conspiracy against William Rufus.]
[Sidenote: Robert of Mowbray marries Matilda of Laigle.]
[Sidenote: His dealings with the Earl of Chester and the Bishop of
Durham.]
[Sidenote: Other conspirators.]
[Sidenote: William of Eu.]
[Sidenote: Conspiracy in favour of Stephen of Aumale.]
It is not the least strange among the strange events of this reign
that the only rebellion against William Rufus within his kingdom,
after that which immediately followed his accession, was directly
occasioned by one of the few good deeds which are recorded of him. The
King did a simple act of justice; one of his greatest nobles at once
openly rebelled, and the open rebellion of one brought to light the
hidden conspiracy of many more. We may be sure that there had long
been a good deal of lurking discontent which was waiting for even a
slight opportunity to break forth into a flame. The conspiracy was
devised among men of the highest rank and power, some of them near of
kindred to the King; and the open rebel was certainly the foremost man
of his own generation in the kingdom. There were in the days of Rufus
grounds enough for discontent and revolt among any class, and there
were special grounds which specially touched the men of highest rank.
They are said to have been offended by the King’s general harshness,
and, above all, by the strictness of his hunting-code.[78] The head
and author of the seditious movement was the stern guardian of the
northern frontier of the kingdom, Robert of Mowbray Earl of
Northumberland. He is said to have been specially puffed up to
rebellion by his successes against Malcolm and his Scots.[79] But,
great as he deemed himself, he held that he might become greater by a
powerful alliance. The gloomy Earl, with whom speech and laughter were
so rare, thought to help his projects by taking a wife. He married
Matilda of Laigle, the daughter of that Richer who died so worthily
beneath the keep of Sainte-Susanne,[80] the sister of that Gilbert
whom we have seen foremost in the work of slaughter among the
seditious citizens of Rouen.[81] Her mother Judith was the sister of
Earl Hugh of Chester; and Robert seems to have entangled his new uncle
in his rebellious schemes. One would have thought that Bishop William
of Durham had had enough of rebellion. He was now as high in the
King’s favour and counsels as any man in the realm. He was, or at
least had been, on bad terms with his neighbour Earl Robert;[82] and
it is hard to see what can have been his temptation to join in any
seditious movement. Yet we know that there were churchmen concerned in
the conspiracy;[83] it is certain that Bishop William lost the King’s
favour about this time; and there seems little doubt that he was at
least suspected of being in league with the Earl. Others concerned are
said to have been Philip of Montgomery, son of the late Earl of
Shrewsbury,[84] Roger of Lacy, great in Herefordshire and in several
other shires,[85] and one nearer to the royal house than all, William
of Eu, the late stirrer up of strife between the King and his brother.
The object of the conspiracy was said to be to put the King to death,
and to give the crown to Stephen of Aumale, the son of Adelaide, whole
sister of the Conqueror, by her third husband, Odo Count of Champagne
and lord of Holderness.[86]
[Sidenote: No general support for the plot.]
[Sidenote: No ground for Stephen’s claim.]
In short, the two men who had been the first to put castles into the
King’s hands in Normandy were now plotting against him in England.
Stephen of Aumale was to receive the English crown at the bidding of
William of Eu. Such a conspiracy as this must have been merely the
device of a few discontented nobles; it could have met with no broad
ground of general support among men of any class. No doubt many men of
all ranks and of all races would have been well pleased to get rid of
William; but there must surely have been few who seriously hoped to
set up Stephen of Aumale as his successor. By a solemn treaty only
five years old, the reigning Duke of the Normans was marked out as the
successor to the English crown.[87] And if that arrangement was held
to be set aside by later warfare between the brothers, there was
nothing to bar the natural claims of Henry. Neither Norman nor English
feeling could have endured that the man who was at once Norman and
English should be set aside for a stranger from Champagne. Neither
Norman nor English feeling could have endured that all the sons of the
Conqueror should be set aside in favour of the son of his sister.
Truly men of any rank or any race had good reason to revolt against
William Rufus. But this was like the revolt of the Earls in the days
of the elder William,[88] a purely personal and selfish revolt, which
called forth no sympathy, Norman or English. Still a large party was
ready to revolt on any occasion. And the occasion was presently found.
[Sidenote: Earl Robert plunders the Norwegian ships.]
[Sidenote: The merchants complain to the King.]
[Sidenote: Robert refuses redress.]
[Sidenote: He is summoned to the King’s court.]
It was found, as far as Earl Robert was concerned, in a wanton breach
of common right and of the law of nations, which it was assumed that
the King would treat as an act of defiance against his authority. Four
Norwegian trading ships had peacefully anchored in some Northumbrian
haven. Earl Robert, his nephew Morel, and their followers, wantonly
plundered the ships, and took away their whole cargoes. And the tale
is told as if the act of plunder was meant directly as an act of
rebellion against the King, whose peace was certainly broken in the
most outrageous way.[89] The merchants, despoiled of all that they
had, made their way to the King and laid before him their complaint
against the Earl of the Northumbrians.[90] Had such an act been done
by any of William’s own following, the injured men would most likely
have met with no redress. But plunder done by anybody else on his own
account was an outrage on the royal authority――one might perhaps say
an encroachment on the royal monopoly of oppression――with which the
Red King was not minded to put up. William straightway sent the
strictest and sternest orders to Earl Robert to restore at once all
that had been taken from the Norwegian merchants. The Earl scornfully
took no notice. The King then asked the amount of the merchants’
losses, and made it good to them from his own hoard. He then summoned
the Earl to his court; but he refused to come.[91]
[Sidenote: Gemót of Winchester. March 25, 1095.]
[Sidenote: The falling stars. April 4.]
[Sidenote: Messages between the King and Robert.]
[Sidenote: Whitsun Gemót. Windsor, May 13, 1095.]
Such is the story which reached the cloister of Saint Evroul, a story
altogether likely in itself, and which well fits in with and explains
the entries in our own Chronicle. These bring us into the thick of the
regular assemblies of this year of assemblies. The gathering at
Rockingham dealt wholly with the affairs of Anselm; to the regular
Easter assembly at Winchester which so soon followed it, Earl Robert,
though specially summoned, refused to come. The King was very wroth
against him, and sent word that, if he did not wish to be altogether
put out of the King’s peace, he must come to the court to be held at
Pentecost.[92] Signs in the heavens seem to have foretold that
something was coming. It was now, on the night of the feast of Easter
and again ten days later, that a crowd of stars was seen to fall from
heaven, not one or two, but so thickly that no man could tell
them.[93] If the stars fought against Malcolm on the day of Saint
Brice, it was only in their courses, and no chronicler has recorded
the fact. But it looks as if this special Easter shower, of which we
have elsewhere heard other meanings,[94] was by some at least held to
portend the fall of the great earl of the North. The time between
Easter and Pentecost, the time so busily occupied in another range of
subjects by the coming of Cardinal Walter and the acknowledgement of
Pope Urban,[95] was no less busily occupied by an exchange of messages
between the King and his undutiful subject. Robert, like Godwine
two-and-forty years before, demanded hostages and a safe-conduct,
before he would risk himself before the Assembly.[96] This the King
refused; Robert, arraigned on a definite charge of open robbery, had
no such claim to hostages as Godwine, as King Malcolm, or even as his
own neighbour Bishop William. The Whitsun-feast was held; the King was
at Windsor――not at Westminster――and all his Witan with him. Anselm was
there, to be received into the King’s favour, and to engage to observe
the customs of the realm.[97] But the Earl of the Northumbrians was
not there.[98] The two accounts fit in perfectly without contradiction
or difficulty. One gives us the cause of the special summons of Earl
Robert to the Gemót; the other gives us its exact date and form.
[Sidenote: The King’s march.]
[Sidenote: His motives.]
[Sidenote: Robert resists.]
Rufus, thus defied, at once took to arms. It would seem that he did
not wholly rely on his mercenaries, but called out the national force
of the kingdom.[99] He was again the King of the English, marching at
the head of his people. He was marching against the rebel fortresses
of the North, as he had once marched against Tunbridge, Pevensey, and
Rochester. But these great preparations were not made simply to avenge
the wrongs of the Norwegian merchants. Their wrongs were the outward
occasion, and that was all. The refusal of Earl Robert to come to the
King’s court was the counterpart of the more general refusal of the
Norman nobles to come to the Easter Assembly seven years earlier.[100]
The King knew, or had good reason to suspect, that there was again a
wide-spread conspiracy afloat to deprive him of his crown and life. Of
this conspiracy the open disobedience of Earl Robert was simply the
first outward sign; the affair of the Norwegian merchants had merely
brought matters to a head. Rufus may even have made use of their
wrongs as a pretext for proving Robert’s doubtful loyalty. Robert was
as yet the only open rebel. When the King drew the sword, he met with
no resistance anywhere save where the Earl of the Northumbrians was in
possession. Robert’s accomplices remained accomplices and
conspirators; they did not dare to risk the chances of open rebellion.
The Earl may have thought that the strength which had twice overcome a
King of Scots might defy a King of the English also.[101] At all
events, Robert of Mowbray withstood the King in arms, and a stirring
and varied campaign followed.
[Sidenote: Help expected from Normandy.]
[Sidenote: The King marches to Nottingham.]
[Sidenote: Anselm’s command in Kent.]
It appears however from an incidental notice that Earl Robert and his
fellows by no means trusted only to movements within the realm. It is
certainly strange that a conspiracy in which William of Eu could be
even suspected of taking a part should have found any support in
Normandy; yet in those times men changed sides so easily that it is
not impossible that he might have been again intriguing with Duke
Robert himself. It is still more likely that some intrigue was going
on, not with the Norman Duke but with the enemies of Rufus in Normandy
as well as in England. It is certain that an invasion of south-eastern
England was at this time daily dreaded;[102] and it is perhaps more
likely that William of Eu, Stephen of Aumale, and the rest, were
planning an expedition at their own risk than that Duke Robert was
designing anything with the regular forces of Normandy. The invasion
was plainly looked on as a serious danger; but there is no reason to
think that it ever took place. The King thought it needful to take
special means for guarding the coast. He had gone on his northern
march as far as Nottingham, accompanied not only, as we might expect,
by many of his nobles, but what we might less have looked for, by both
the archbishops and by the Cardinal Bishop of Albano.[103] One might
almost think that some special news was brought to the King at this
point; for it was now that Anselm, in this his short season of renewed
favour with the King, was sent back to guard his city and diocese. He
received the trust from the King’s own mouth; he went back to
Canterbury, whither a writ from the King followed him bidding him stay
in care of the city, ready at any moment, when news should be brought
from the threatened havens, at once to gather together horse and foot
for the defence of the land.[104] Anselm went back to his metropolis,
and there stayed, as we have seen, ready to discharge these unusual
duties, which, as the expected invasion never came, did not in the end
involve any military action on his part.
[Sidenote: The King draws near to Northumberland.]
[Sidenote: Confession of Gilbert of Clare.]
Meanwhile the King went on, taking with him the Archbishop of York,
who at Nottingham was already in his own province and diocese. When
the march had gone on somewhat further, when the King and his host
were drawing near to the borders of the Northumbrian earldom, that is,
we may suppose, when they were near the banks of the Tyne, an incident
happened which showed that the enemies of Rufus had other schemes
besides those of open warfare either at home or abroad.[105] Gilbert
of Clare or of Tunbridge, of whom we have already heard as a rebel in
earlier days,[106] and who seems now to be looked on as a traitor in
the King’s camp, calls the King aside, and, to his amazement, falls at
his feet and craves his pardon for his offences. Let the King promise
him forgiveness, and he will do something which shall deliver him from
a great danger.[107] Rufus wonders and hesitates, but, after a little
debate in his own mind, he promises the pardon that is asked for.
Gilbert then warns the King not to enter a certain wood――have we again
the tale of the hunting-party as the scene of assassination?[108] He
was himself one of a body who had plotted the King’s death, and a
party of them were now in the wood ready to slay him. He told the King
their number and names;[109] but the story reads as if no immediate
action was taken against them. The conspirators are baulked of their
prey, and the King’s host marches on to attack the fortresses of the
rebel Earl.[110]
[Sidenote: Defence of Robert’s fortresses.]
[Sidenote: The New Castle.]
[Sidenote: Tynemouth.]
[Sidenote: Bamburgh.]
[Sidenote: Taking of the New Castle.]
Robert of Mowbray had made good preparations for defence. The main
body of his followers, among them the men highest in rank and most
trusted in valour, guarded the great frontier fortress of his earldom,
the New Castle which Duke Robert had reared to guard the way to the
further north by the old line of the Ælian Bridge.[111] Placed
opposite the scene of Walcher’s slaughter at Gateshead,[112] it rose
above the Tyne with far more of the usual position of a fortress than
would be dreamed by one who merely passes so strangely near to it on
the modern railway, or who lights almost by chance on gateway and
castle imbedded in the streets of the modern town. The gateway, even
the keep as it now stands, are both of later date than the time of our
story. But the days of Monkchester were passed; the New Castle was
already a place of arms, a strong post standing right in the way of
the King’s advance against the rebellious land. Lower down the tidal
stream, beyond the relics――they were then still something more than
relics――of the great Roman rampart which left its name at Wallknol, at
Wallcar, and at Wallsend[113]――fast by the mouth of the estuary whose
shores and whose waters are now so thickly set with the works of
modern industry――the Earl’s castle of Tynemouth at once sheltered the
rising monastery of Saint Oswine and guarded the approach to the river
and to all to which the river led. Tynemouth was held by the Earl’s
brother; Robert himself, far to the north, kept the great stronghold
of all, the old seat of Northumbrian power, which frowns over land and
sea from the basaltic rock of Bamburgh. The King’s first attack was
lucky; we have no details; but we read that the New Castle was taken,
and that all the men that were in it were kept in ward. The choicest
men of Earl Robert’s following were thus in the King’s hands; the
inland centre of his power was lost; but he and his brother still held
out in their fastnesses by the Ocean.
[Sidenote: Siege of Tynemouth.]
[Sidenote: Description of the site.]
[Sidenote: The monastic peninsula.]
[Sidenote: Taking of Tynemouth. July? 1095.]
Tynemouth and Bamburgh both stood long sieges. The strong site of the
monastic stronghold enabled it to bear up for two months, while the
fortress of Ida remained, as far as any strictly military operation
was concerned, untaken during the whole war. Tynemouth, which had so
lately seen the burial of Malcolm, had now to endure the assaults of
the royal force in the cause of Malcolm’s chief enemy. The holy place
of Saint Oswine was strong alike by nature and art. At the mouth of
the great Northumbrian river, on that bank of it which lay within
Robert’s earldom, two headlands, divided by a small bay, stand forth
boldly to meet the waves of the German Ocean. In later times the
fortified precinct took in both points. Both came within the wall and
ditch which cut off the peninsulas from the mainland. The castle of
Tynemouth, strictly so called, covered the southern height immediately
above the river. The northern promontory was crowned by the church and
the monastic buildings, themselves sheltered by a vast gatehouse,
which itself grew into a castle. Such, there is reason to believe, was
the arrangement in the days of Malcolm and William. The castle of
Robert of Mowbray rose sheer above the estuary, on its left bank. To
the north, on the other headland, protected by a smaller fortress,
stood the church and monastery which were growing up at his bidding, a
tribute paid by the conquerors to the ancient worthies of the land.
The peninsula crowned by the monastic stronghold stretches forth into
the waters, like a miniature of that which is at once the oldest and
the newest Syracuse, since the art of man joined the island of Ortygia
to the mainland of Sicily. While the neck is strengthened by works of
defence, the rocky headland rises boldly from the waves on two sides.
To the south the ground rises more gently above the bay between the
two peninsulas, the bay to which the monastery above it gave the name
of the Prior’s haven. The town which grew up in after times sprang up
directly to the west of the approach to the northern headland; it now
spreads itself on all sides save only on the two headlands themselves.
The first attack must have been made from the older site of the town;
the small fortress, that most likely which guarded the neck of the
monastic headland, was taken. The main castle to the south fell at the
end of two months, and the Earl’s brother and the knights who defended
it shared the fate of the defenders of the New Castle.
[Sidenote: The castle of Bamburgh.]
[Sidenote: The relic of Saint Oswald.]
[Sidenote: The keep.]
[Sidenote: Robert defends Bamburgh against the King.]
And now came the hardest struggle of all, the struggle for the old
home of Ida and Bebbe. _Bebbanburh_, Bamburgh――the royal city of
Bernicia, which its founder had fenced first with a hedge and then
with a wall or earthwork――the city small but strong, with its steep
height approached only by steps[114]――though its main purpose was
military and not religious, contained within its walls a sanctuary and
a relic as worshipful as aught that was sheltered by Tynemouth or
Jarrow or Durham itself. The ancient church of Bamburgh was honoured
by the presence of the wonder-working hand of the martyred Bretwalda
Oswald. That relic had in earlier days helped, along with the prayers
of Aidan, to save Bamburgh from the fires of Penda; we are not told
whether it was by the favour of the martyr that the elder Waltheof
sheltered himself within the impregnable walls, while his valiant son
marched forth to victory. The city, the small city which took in the
space only of a few fields, had doubtless by this time given way to
the Norman fortress, strengthened by all the arts which the Norman had
brought with him. The castle precincts, in their widest extent,
clearly cover the whole of the ancient site; at the south-western end
they are still approached by steps which doubtless represent those
which in the days of the old Northumbrian chronicler were the only
means of mounting the height. At Bamburgh, as elsewhere, we are met by
the never-failing difficulty which besets the student of the castles
of that age. Can any of the work at Bamburgh which bears the impress
of Norman art be safely assigned to the eleventh century? Or must we
give up all to the twelfth, and believe that no part of the great
centre of the building, the keep “huge and square,” was already in
being when Robert of Mowbray defied the Red King from his rock? On
such a point it is dangerous to be over-positive. The surrounding
walls are of all dates down to the basest modern imitations; the
chapel which guarded the relic of Saint Oswald, standing apart in the
great court with its eastern apse overlooking the sea, was clearly,
when perfect, no mean work of the next age. But whatever was the
character or the material of the defences of Robert’s day, they were
doubtless as strong as any skill within the Northumbrian earldom could
make them. There, from the castle raised on the land side on the
bulwarks of the rock out of which its walls and bastions grow, rising
on the sea side over deep and shifting hills of sand, the eye might
take in the long indented coast, the sea dotted with islands of which
many play a part in the sacred story of northern England,[115]――Farn
and its fellows hard by, hallowed by the abode and death of Saint
Cuthberht――Holy Island itself further to the north-west, the landscape
bounded in the far distance by the border hills of the two British
kingdoms, beyond which Malcolm no longer stood ready to ravage the
pastures of Northumberland. Within that ancient fortress, rich with so
many earlier associations, the proud and gloomy Earl now kept his
ground, adding a new and stirring page to the long history of
Bamburgh. His brother and his best knights were the King’s prisoners;
but, strong on his rocky height, the Earl of the Northumbrians,
heedless of the lesson of seven years earlier, dared to bid defiance
to the King of the English and to the whole strength of his kingdom.
[Sidenote: Strength of the position.]
[Sidenote: Direct attacks fail.]
[Sidenote: Making of the _Malvoisin_.]
[Sidenote: Its effects.]
[Sidenote: Alleged despair of Robert.]
[Sidenote: The castle still not taken.]
And in truth the event proved that the rebellious daring of Robert of
Mowbray had better grounds than the daring of those who had held
Rochester and Pevensey, Tynemouth and the New Castle, against their
sovereign. The well of the purest water, hollowed out on the highest
point of the rock, and then, or at some later day, taken in within the
massive walls of the huge keep, made Robert safe from all such dangers
as threatened the Ætheling Henry when he held out on the rock of Saint
Michael.[116] All the power and skill of the Red King was brought to
bear upon the ancient stronghold; but all was in vain; the castle of
Bebbe was not to be taken by any open attack. William therefore took
to slower means of warfare. He made one of those towers which were so
often made in such cases, to act as a check on the besieged castle, to
form in fact an imperfect kind of blockade. This tower must have stood
on the land side, to cut off all hope of help from any friendly
quarter. It therefore could not have stood very far from the site of
the present village; and in the fields nearly south of the castle some
faint traces of earthworks seem not unlikely to mark the site of the
tower to which the King gave the significant name of _Malvoisin_. The
new work is described as exercising all the energies of the royal
army, and as striking such fear into the hearts of the besieged that
many of Robert’s party now forsook him and entered the King’s service.
We are even told that the fierce Earl looked out from the height of
Bamburgh in all fear and sadness, crying out to his accomplices by
name to be mindful of the traitorous oaths which they had sworn to
him. The King and his friends were merry as they heard, and none of
those who were appealed to, tormented as they were with fear and
shame, went back to share the Earl’s waning fortunes. Be this as it
may, as far as open force went, Bamburgh and its lord remained
unsubdued. To bring either of them under his power, the King and his
followers were fain to have recourse to false promises and cruel
threats.
[Sidenote: The King goes away.]
The Evil Neighbour of Bamburgh was built; it was well stocked with
guards, arms, and victuals. But Bamburgh itself was not taken any the
more. William did not in this case, as he did in some of his
continental enterprises, throw up the whole undertaking, because he
did not succeed in the first or second attack. So to have done would
have been pretty much the same as throwing up his crown; it would have
been to unteach the great lesson of his reign, and to declare that the
Earl of the Northumbrians was stronger than the King of the English.
He might turn away in wilfulness from this or that Norman or
Cenomannian fortress which he had attacked in wilfulness; but he knew
the art of reigning better than to leave Bamburgh in the possession of
a rebel earl. The work was to go on; but he was so far tired of it
that he left it to be done by others. When the _Malvoisin_ was well
strengthened, the King turned away, and appeared no more before
Bamburgh during the rest of the campaign.
[Sidenote: Michaelmas, 1095.]
[Sidenote: Robert entrapped by a false message.]
[Sidenote: He flees to Tynemouth.]
[Sidenote: He is besieged in the monastery,]
[Sidenote: taken, and imprisoned.]
When Rufus left Bamburgh, he went southward; he then went to the war
in Wales, and left the garrison of the _Malvoisin_ to keep watch over
their besieged neighbour. It may be left to casuists in chivalry to
judge whether the knightly king approved of the means which were now
taken in order to entrap the besieged earl. The garrison of the New
Castle, doubtless not without the knowledge of the garrison of the
_Malvoisin_, sent a false message to Robert, saying that, if he came
thither privily, he would be received into the castle. The Earl,
naturally well pleased at such a prospect of winning back his lost
stronghold, set forth by night for the New Castle at the head of
thirty knights. The men from the _Malvoisin_ watched and followed him,
and sent to the men of the New Castle to say that he was on the way.
Knowing nothing of what was going on, Earl Robert drew near to the New
Castle on a Sunday, expecting, it would seem, to be received there
with welcome. His hopes were vain; he was taken, and the more part of
his followers also were taken, killed, or wounded. The version which
goes most into detail says that, when he saw that he was betrayed by
the garrison of the New Castle, he fled, with a part at least of his
following, to his own monastery at Tynemouth. It is not easy to see
how this could be, unless he was able either to win back the small
fortress on the neck of the monastic peninsula, or else to climb up
from the seaside at some less steep or less strongly defended point of
the height. But the tale is so told that there must be at least some
kernel of truth in it. We read that the Earl stood something like a
siege in his own monastery. He was able, with his small party, to
defend himself in it for six days, and to kill and wound many of his
assailants. At last, on the sixth day, he himself received a severe
wound in the leg; the whole of his followers were taken, some of them
also as wounded men. The Earl, himself among the latter, contrived to
drag himself to the church of his own rearing, where still lay the
body of the Scottish King whom some looked on as his victim. If claims
of sanctuary were thought of, they were not allowed, and one who had
turned the consecrated precinct into a castle had perhaps little claim
to plead such privileges, even within his own foundation. Earl Robert
was dragged away from his own church, and was kept in prison to await
the King’s pleasure.
[Sidenote: Bamburgh defended by Matilda of Laigle.]
[Sidenote: November, 1095.]
[Sidenote: She yields to save her husband’s eyes.]
[Sidenote: Later history of Robert; two versions.]
[Sidenote: Later history of Matilda; her second marriage and divorce.]