The British chronicler here makes a comment which fully explains the

final issue of these wars. The Normans or English, whichever we are to

call the hosts of England under the Red King, had thus for three years

met with nothing but defeat. Yet they had in truth won the land. “The

folk stayed in their homes, trusting fearlessly, though the castles

were yet whole, and the castlemen in them.”[266] The fortresses might

be hemmed in for a moment; but, as long as they stood whole with the

castlemen in them, the newly won freedom of the open country was

liable to be upset at any moment. In Gwent and Brecheiniog at least

the natives might for the moment stay fearlessly in their homes; they

might at some favourable point surprise and cut to pieces the armies

that were sent against them; they might withdraw to moors and

mountains when the invading force was too strong for them; but, as

long as the castles stood firm, the real grasp of the stranger on the

land was not loosened. How long a castle could stand out we see by the

example of this very year’s campaign. All the castles of Dyfed and

Ceredigion had been destroyed two years before, save Pembroke and

Rhyd-y-gors; and Rhyd-y-gors was now in the hands of the Britons.

Pembroke, the castle of earth and wood, the outpost cut off from all

help, still stood through the whole of these two years, the one

representative of Norman dominion in the whole region of which it had

become the head. No wonder that the Britons, victorious everywhere

else, resolved on one great attack on this still unconquered

stronghold of the enemy. A host led by several chieftains of the house

of Cadwgan, Uhtred son of Edwin,――one whom we should rather have

looked for in Northumberland,――and Howel son of Goronwy, set forth and

fought against Pembroke. Gerald of Windsor was hard pressed. One

night, fifteen of his knights, despairing of resistance, made their

escape from the castle in a boat. Their esquires were more faithful,

and Gerald at once gave them the arms of knighthood, and also

granted――or professed to grant to them――the fiefs of their recreant

lords.[267] We read too how Gerald, to hide his real plight from the

enemy, betook himself to some of those simple devices of which we hear

in so many times and places. He had four swine in the castle; he cut

them in pieces, and threw them over to the besiegers.[268] The next

day he wrote or caused letters to be written sealed with his seal,

saying that there was no need to trouble Earl Arnulf――he is made to

bear the title――for any help for four months to come. These letters he

took care should be found near a neighbouring house of Bishop Wilfrith

of Saint David’s, as if they had been lost by their bearer.[269] They

were read out in the Welsh army. The Britons, we are told, having no

mind for a four months’ siege, marched away.[270] They claim to have

marched away without loss, with much booty, especially with all the

cattle belonging to the castle.[271] But the castle was not taken; it

stood there to do its work; and early in the next year Gerald was

harrying in his turn as far as the borders of Saint David’s.[272]

Friendship for the Bishop perhaps kept him from harrying the holy soil

of Dewisland itself.

[Sidenote: Easter, 1097.]

[Sidenote: William’s second Welsh campaign.]

[Sidenote: Seeming conquest.]

[Sidenote: Fresh revolt.]

[Sidenote: Cadwgan.]

[Sidenote: William’s third campaign. June-August, 1097.]

[Sidenote: The King’s ill-success.]

[Sidenote: He determines to build castles. October, 1097.]

This year, the King, as he had done two years before, deemed the

affairs of Wales to call for his own presence, and for a greater

effort on his part than ever. He had come back from taking possession

of the mortgaged land of Normandy; he had held the Easter Assembly at

Windsor somewhat after the regular time.[273] At that Assembly Welsh

affairs must have formed a subject of discussion, as the King

presently set out for Wales with a great host. This was the time when

the knights sent by the Archbishop were deemed so unfit for their

duty.[274] The King’s coming appears to have led to a seeming, perhaps

a pretended, submission. Led by native guides, he passed through the

whole country,[275] and he clearly believed that he had brought Wales

to a state of peace. So he deemed when he came back to hold the

Whitsun Assembly, the assembly in which Anselm for the first time that

year craved leave to go to the Pope.[276] But he was called back by a

fresh revolt. The Welsh, in the emphatic phrase of our Chronicler,

“bowed _from_ the King.”[277] They had once bowed _to_ him; now they

bowed _from_ him; they cast away his authority; perhaps they formally

_defied_ him in the strict feudal sense; certainly they defied him in

the more general sense which that word has now come to bear. And now,

for the first time in these wars, the English Chronicler gives us the

name of a Welsh leader, a name which from British sources has long

been familiar to us. “They chose them many elders of themselves; one

of them was Cadwgan hight, that of them the worthiest was; he was

brother’s son of Gruffydd the King.”[278] The name of the great prince

who had ruled all Wales, who had won the battle by the Severn,[279]

who had put Earl Ralph to flight[280] and burned Hereford town and

minster,[281] the prince whom it needed all the strength and all the

arts of Harold to overthrow, was still famous even among Englishmen.

The nephew of Gruffydd had this time too to dread no such tactics as

had worn down his uncle on his own soil. King William set forth with a

host of horse as well as of foot, vowing to put to death every male of

the rebel nation.[282] Again the pomp and pride of Norman chivalry was

shivered against the natural defences of the land which was so rashly

attacked. The Britons seem, by their own account, to have made the war

a religious one; perhaps, like the Irish king, they deemed that higher

powers would fight for them against the blasphemer. Strengthened by

prayers, fastings, and other pious exercises, the Welsh took to their

woods and rocks and mountains, while the Red King’s host marched and

rode bootlessly through the valleys and plains.[283] “Mickle he lost

in men and in horses, and eke in many other things.”[284] This state

of things went on from midsummer to August.[285] Then the King came

back to hold two assemblies at unusual times, in the second of which

he and Anselm met for the last time.[286] And now it was that he took

that wise resolution which I have quoted above.[287] As invasions by

mounted knights led to nothing but losing both the knights and their

horses, he would build castles on the borders. This Harold, who knew

so much better than William Rufus how to carry on a Welsh campaign,

had not done. But then the objects of Harold and the objects of

William Rufus were not the same.

[Sidenote: Action of Robert of Bellême. 1098-1102.]

We should have been well pleased to know what was the immediate result

of the resolve for the building of the border-castles. What were the

fortresses which were built, as surely some must have been built, in

obedience to it? This is the last entry which connects Rufus

personally with Welsh affairs. But we can hardly help connecting this

resolve with the building, a little time later, of several fortresses

in the lands threatened by the Welsh, specially of one, the greatest

of them all. In the next year one part of the British land becomes the

scene of a series of events of far-reaching interest and importance,

but also of a local interest quite as great in its own way. We shall

then see that, if the Red King did not do much in the way of building

border-castles himself, much was done by others, of course with his

approval, most likely by his order. Our next year’s tale brings

Robert of Bellême to the Welsh border, and, where he was lord,

castle-building went on with all vigour.

[Sidenote: Affairs of Scotland.]

But before we enter on a branch of our story which touches all parts

of the British islands, and many lands beyond the British islands, it

may be well to take up the thread of our Scottish narrative at a point

where the affairs of Scotland and those of Wales seem again to be

brought into some measure of connexion. The year which saw that wise

resolution of the Red King with regard to the Welsh castles, a

resolution which really meant the final union of Wales with the

English realm, saw also the end of those revolutions whose final

result was, not the union of Scotland with the English realm――that was

not to come about till long after, and by other means――but the

extension of English influence within the kingdom of Scotland till it

might be looked on as in truth a second English realm.

§ 4. _The Establishment of Eadgar in Scotland._

1097-1098.

[Sidenote: Decree for action in Scotland. August, 1097.]

[Sidenote: Designs of the Ætheling Eadgar.]

It must have been at one of the later assemblies of the year which we

have now reached, most likely at the August gathering,[288] that the

resolution was taken for vigorous action in Scotland. The King himself

had had enough of Welsh warfare; he must have been already looking

forward to those French and Cenomannian campaigns which form the main

feature of the next year; he was in the middle of his final dispute

with Anselm. But William Rufus seems always to have been well pleased

to set others in motion, even on enterprises in which he did not share

himself. So he gladly hearkened to the proposals of the Ætheling

Eadgar for an expedition into Scotland. Its object was to overthrow

the usurper Donald, as the chosen of Dunfermline was deemed at

Winchester, to restore the line of Malcolm and Margaret, and to bring

the Scottish kingdom once more into its due obedience to the over-lord

in England.

[Sidenote: Relations between Eadgar and the King.]

[Sidenote: Story of Godwine and Ordgar.]

Our last certain notice of Eadgar sets him before us as enjoying the

fullest confidence on the part of the reigning King, as sent by him on

the important errand of negotiating with Malcolm and bringing him to

William’s court at Gloucester.[289] One hardly knows what to make of

the tale which describes him as awakening a certain amount of

suspicion in the King’s mind later in the same year;[290] but that,

either before or after this time, he was in some such danger appears

from another tale in the details of which there may or may not be a

legendary element, but which undoubtedly brings before us real persons

and a real state of things. To this tale I have already referred

elsewhere, as having that kind of interest which belongs to every

story in which we see any one of those who are recorded in the Great

Survey as mere names stand forth as a living man, playing his part in

the world of living men. However obscure the man, however small his

deeds, there is always an interest in finding any part of the dry

bones of Domesday clothed with flesh and blood. And the interest

becomes higher when the man thus called forth out of darkness is a man

of native English birth, and the father of one whom England may well

be glad to reckon among her worthies.[291]

[Sidenote: Eadgar accused by Ordgar.]

[Sidenote: The ordeal and the battle.]

[Sidenote: Godwine volunteers to fight for Eadgar.]

[Sidenote: Notices of him in Domesday.]

[Sidenote: Duel of Godwine and Ordgar.]

[Sidenote: Victory of Godwine, and acquittal of Eadgar.]

The story runs then that a knight of English birth, Ordgar by name,

seeking favour with the King, brought a charge against the English

Ætheling. He told William that Eadgar, trusting to his own descent

from ancient kings, was seeking to deprive the reigning king of his

crown. William hearkened to the accuser, and some grievous doom――would

it have been the doom of William of Eu?――was in store for Eadgar, if

his guilt――his ambition or patriotism――could be proved. But how was

the charge to be proved or disproved? By Old-English law the appeal to

the judgement of God in doubtful cases was by the ordeal; and, as

between Englishman and Englishman, this rule had not been changed by

the laws of the Conqueror.[292] But we can well believe that

Englishmen who were admitted to a place in the Red King’s court had

largely put on the ideas and feelings of Normans. They would doubtless

look down on the ancient practice of their fathers, and they would be

more inclined to follow the fashion of their Norman companions in

better liking the more chivalrous test of the wager of battle. It

seems in the present story to be taken for granted that the trial will

be by wager of battle. But who will do battle for Eadgar, when the

royal favour is so clearly shown on behalf of Eadgar’s accuser? The

Ætheling was sad at heart, forsaken, as it seemed, of all men. But at

last one stepped forward who was ready to dare the risk on behalf of a

man to whom he was bound by a double tie. As an Englishman he was

stirred to come to the help of the descendant of the ancient kings,

and he was further bound to Eadgar by the special tie which binds a

man to his lord. He was a knight of noble English descent, known as

Godwine of Winchester. We know him in Domesday as a tenant of the

Ætheling for lands in Hertfordshire, and the Survey further suggests

that he may have had a private grudge against the opposite champion.

There were lands in Oxfordshire which were held by an Ordgar, and

which had been held by a Godwine. The matter is to be decided by the

hand-to-hand fight of the two English knights. For they so far cleave

to the customs of their fathers that they fight on foot and deal

handstrokes with their swords. Ordgar comes forth in splendid armour,

surrounded by a crowd of courtiers.[293] Godwine has nothing to trust

to but his sword and his good cause. But there was at least no attempt

made to hinder a fair fight――so to do would have been altogether

foreign to the spirit of the chivalrous king. The herald and the

umpire do their duty;[294] the knights take their oath to forbear the

use of all weapons but those which were needed in the knightly duel. A

long and hard fight follows, the ups and downs of which are described

with Homeric minuteness. Ordgar at last, sorely wounded, is pressed to

the ground, with the foot of the victorious Godwine upon him.[295] As

a last resource, he strives, but in vain, to stab Godwine with a knife

which, in breach of his oath, he had treacherously hidden in his

boot.[296] Godwine snatches the knife from him; Ordgar confesses the

falsehood of his charge, and presently dies of his wounds.[297]

Godwine now becomes an object of universal honour, and receives from

the King the lands of the slain Ordgar, while Eadgar rises higher than

ever in the King’s favour.

[Sidenote: Estimate of the story.]

[Sidenote: Its general truth.]

[Sidenote: Englishmen under Rufus.]

[Sidenote: Robert son of Godwine.]

I see no reason to doubt the main outline of this story, which rests

on the evidence of undesigned coincidences. Men of no special renown,

about whom there was no temptation to invent fables, are made to act

in a way which exactly agrees with what we know from the surest of

witnesses to have been their real position. Without pledging ourselves

to the details of the combat, which have a slightly legendary sound,

we may surely believe that we have here the record of a real wager of

battle, like those which happened at no great distance of time in the

cases of William of Eu and Arnulf of Hesdin. We may surely believe

that Eadgar was wrongfully accused, and that Godwine cleared his lord

in the duel. We see then that in the Red King’s day there was nothing

to hinder men of Old-English birth, exceptionally lucky men doubtless,

from holding an honourable rank and a high place in royal favour. But

we learn also, as we might expect to find, that such Englishmen found

that it suited their purposes to adopt Norman fashions. Of Godwine we

hear no more; but his son, as I have noticed elsewhere, bears,

according to a very common rule, the Norman name of Robert.[298] Had

we chanced to hear of him without hearing the name of his father, we

might not have known that the hero and martyr was a man of our own

blood.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: The Eadgars march to Scotland. September, 1097.]

[Sidenote: The comet.]

We now follow the Ætheling to a warfare in which Robert the son of

Godwine is his companion. Eadgar set out about Michaelmas to place his

nephew and namesake on the Scottish throne. He had a bright comet and

a shower of falling stars to light him on his way.[299] But Donald was

hardly of importance enough for the heavenly powers to foretell his

fall; the shining and departure of the comet was rather understood to

mark the approaching day when Anselm, the light of England, turned

away from our land and left darkness behind him.[300] The force of the

Ætheling seems to have been of much the same kind as the force which

Duncan had led on the same errand three years before. He went with the

King’s approval and support, but certainly without the King’s personal

help, perhaps without any part of the royal army.[301] That army, as

we have lately seen, was just then coming together for another

errand.[302]

[Sidenote: Vision of the younger Eadgar.]

[Sidenote: Exploits of Robert son of Godwine.]

[Sidenote: Defeat and blinding of Donald.]

[Sidenote: Fate of Eadmund;]

[Sidenote: he becomes a monk at Montacute.]

The host then marched northward. On the way, we are told, the younger

Eadgar was honoured by a vision of Saint Cuthberht, who bade him take

his banner from the abbey at Durham――the abbey now without a

bishop――and he should have victory in the battle.[303] The banner was

borne before the army; the fight in which it was unfurled was long and

hard; but the valour of the men who fought under its folds was not to

be withstood. Without binding ourselves to details which may well be

legendary, we may believe that Robert son of Godwine was foremost in

the fight, and that the victory in which Donald was the second time

overthrown was largely owing to his personal prowess.[304] Little

mercy was shown to the vanquished; Donald spent the rest of his days

blinded and a prisoner;[305] his confederate Eadmund lived to become

somewhat of a saint. He put on the garb of Clugny in the priory of

Montacute, at the foot of that hill of Saint Michael where the castle

of Robert of Mortain now covered the spot which had beheld the finding

of England’s Holy Cross.[306] But as that house did not arise till

some years later, at the bidding of Count William the son of

Robert,[307] we may gather that Eadmund spent the intermediate time in

some harsher captivity. When he died, he was buried, at his own

request, in chains, as a sign of penitence for his share in his

half-brother’s death.[308]

[Sidenote: Eadgar King of Scots.]

[Sidenote: Character of the year 1098.]

[Sidenote: Eadgar’s gifts to Durham and to Robert son of Godwine.]

[Sidenote: Action of Eadgar, Robert, and Randolf Flambard; after 1099.]

The younger Eadgar now reigned over Scotland as the sworn liegeman of

King William of England.[309] The elder Eadgar went back to England,

to end there a year of heavy time, a year of evil weather, a year in

which men could neither till the earth nor gather in its tilth, and

when the folk was utterly bowed down by unrighteous gelds.[310] His

valiant comrade abode for a while in the dominions of the Scottish

King. Eadgar was grateful to all who had helped him in heaven or in

earth. The battle had been won by Saint Cuthberht and Robert son of

Godwine. Saint Cuthberht, in the person of the monks of his abbey,

received the lands of Coldingham, the seat in ancient times of a house

of nuns famous in the days of Danish warfare.[311] A little later――for

it was when Durham had again a bishop――he received, in the person of

his own successor, the greater gift of the town of Berwick.[312]

Robert, by the leave of his own sovereign, received a fief in the same

land of Lothian, and began the building of a castle. But, while King

Eadgar went to do service to his over-lord in England, the bishop――it

was already Randolf Flambard――and the barons of the bishopric, whom

Robert’s fortress seems in some way to have offended, attacked it and

made its lord a prisoner.[313] King Eadgar came back with letters from

his over-lord, ordering the release of their common subject. The

Bishop and his barons obeyed; but the King of Scots withdrew his gift

of Berwick from the bishopric, as a punishment for the wrong done to

the man to whom he owed his crown.[314]

[Sidenote: Eadgar and Robert go to the Crusade.]

[Sidenote: 1099.]

[Sidenote: Robert in Palestine.]

[Sidenote: 1103.]

[Sidenote: His exploits and death.]

[Sidenote: Modern parallels and contrasts.]

[Sidenote: Robert of Saint Alban’s.]

Robert the son of Godwine was presently called to a nobler work. His

lord the Ætheling went to the Holy War. Eadgar was not one of those

who marched first of all with the two Roberts of Normandy and

Flanders. He was one of that second party who set forth about the time

of the siege of Antioch, and joined the Norman Duke in his ignoble

retreat at Laodikeia.[315] Robert the son of Godwine, if he stayed in

Britain long enough to have any dealings with Flambard in his

character of Bishop of Durham, must have set out later still. He could

have had no share in the leaguer of Nikaia or of Antioch; most likely

he had no share in the rescue of the Holy City. He could hardly have

reached Syria till Jerusalem was again a Christian kingdom under its

second king. Godfrey, the mirror of Christian knighthood, was gone.

His successor was his less worthy brother Baldwin, he who had told the

dream of his calling to Dame Isabel in the hall of Conches.[316] But

there was still work to be done; the land which had been won had to be

defended. King Baldwin was besieged in Rama by the misbelievers.[317]

The King, attended by five knights only, made a sally to cut his way

through the besiegers. The valiant Englishman rode in front of him,

cutting down the infidels on each side with his sword. As Robert

pressed too fiercely on, his sword fell from his hand; he stooped to

grasp it again; he was overpowered by numbers, and was carried off a

prisoner.[318] He was led to the Egyptian Babylon; he was offered his

choice of death or apostasy; he clave to his faith; placed as a mark

in the market-place, like the East-Anglian Eadmund, he died beneath

the arrows of his merciless captors.[319] Such men could England, even

in her darkest day, send forth for the relief and defence of

Christendom in the Eastern world. Such men she could send forth even

in the days of our fathers, to draw the sword for right in the haven

of Pylos or beneath the akropolis of Athens. Now the men who go forth

from England to the same quarter of the world seem to share more of

the spirit of another Robert who, a century later, went forth from the

same shire as the son of Godwine on another errand. In our own story

we come across no renegade or traitor save the single name of Hugh of

Jaugy.[320] But in the course of the twelfth century we see the

forerunners of a class of men whose names stain the annals of our own

time. The glory of Robert son of Godwine is balanced by the shame of

Robert of Saint Alban’s, English by birth and blood, the apostate

Templar who joined the host of Saladin and mocked the last agonies of

the defenders of the Holy City.[321] Of the earlier Robert our century

has seen the true successors in the honoured names of Gordon and

Church and Hastings. Of the later Robert it has seen the successor in

the Englishman who sells his soul and his sword to keep down the yoke

of the barbarian on the necks of his Christian brethren. It has seen

him in the Greek who sells his soul and his glib tongue to argue in

the councils of Europe against the deliverance of his own people.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Reign of Eadgar in Scotland. 1097-1107.]

[Sidenote: Alexander. 1107-1124.]

[Sidenote: Friendship of the Scottish kings for England.]

[Sidenote: Turgot and Eadmer.]

[Sidenote: Effects of the reign of David. 1124-1153.]

[Sidenote: His English position;]

[Sidenote: his earldoms.]

[Sidenote: English influence in Scotland.]

[Sidenote: His invasion of England.]

[Sidenote: The Scottish kings of the second series.]

[Sidenote: The English or Norman candidates for the Scottish crown.]

With the accession of Eadgar to the Scottish crown the direct

connexion between English and Scottish affairs comes to an end, as far

as concerns the period with which we have immediately to do. Eadgar

reigned in peace, as far as his own kingdom was concerned, for ten

years, earning the doubtful praise of being in all things like to his

remote uncle the Confessor.[322] At his death the Scottish dominions

were divided between his two more energetic brothers. Alexander took

the kingdom; David, by a revival of an ancient custom,[323] held as an

appanage that part of Strathclyde or Cumberland which still belonged

to the Scottish crown. Both princes maintained strict friendship with

England, and both sought wives in England. Alexander married a natural

daughter of King Henry, Sibyl by name;[324] the wife of David was,

more significantly, the widowed daughter of Waltheof.[325] Alexander

had to strive against revolts in the North,[326] and his reign marks a

great period in the ecclesiastical history of Scotland. It is the time

in which we meet with the familiar names of Turgot and Eadmer, the one

as bishop, the other as bishop-elect, of the first see in

Scotland.[327] The influence of the reign of Eadgar told wholly in

favour of the process by which Scotland was becoming an English

kingdom. The reign of Alexander told perhaps less directly in favour

of things specially English,[328] but it worked strongly towards the

more general object of bringing Scotland into the common circle of

western Christendom. The succession of David reunited the Scottish

dominions, and his vigorous rule of twenty-nine years brought to

perfection all that his parents had begun. That famous prince was

bound to England by every tie of descent, habit, and affinity. Brother

of her Queen, uncle of her Imperial Lady,[329] David was an English

earl in a stricter sense than any king of Scots who had gone before

him. He was not only Earl of Lothian, which was becoming fast

incorporated with Scotland――or more truly was fast incorporating

Scotland with itself――nor yet only of Northumberland and Cumberland,

with which the same process might easily have been carried out.[330]

He was Earl also of distant and isolated Huntingdon, an earldom which

could not be held except on the same terms as its fellows of Leicester

or Warwick. Under David, the great reformer, the great civilizer, but

at the same time the king who made the earlier life of Scotland a

thing of the past, all that was English, all that was Norman, was

welcomed in the land which was now truly a northern England. If David,

like his father, appeared as an invader of England, if, in so doing,

he made England feel that he had subjects who were still far from

being either English or Norman,[331] he did so only as a benevolent

mediator in the affairs of England, as the champion of the claims of

one of his nieces against the claims of the other. With the three sons

of Malcolm and Margaret begins the line of those whom we may call the

second series of Scottish kings, those who still came in the direct

line of old Scottish royalty, but under whom Scotland was a disciple

of England, and on the whole friendly to England. They stand

distinguished alike from the purely Celtic kings who went before them,

and from the kings, Norman or English as we may choose to call them by

natural descent, who were politically more hostile to England than the

old Malcolms and Kenneths. Eadgar and Alexander died childless; the

later kings were all of the stock of David. Of that stock――and thereby

of the stock of Waltheof and Siward and their forefathers of whatever

species――came that motley group who in after days wrangled for David’s

crown. Bruce, Balliol, Hastings, Comyn, all came by female descent of

the line of David and Matilda. In every other aspect all of them were

simply English nobles of the time. It is an odd destiny by which,

according as they supported or withstood the rights of their own

prince over the kingdom which they claimed, some of them have won the

name of Scottish traitors and others the name of Scottish patriots.

§ 5. _The Expedition of Magnus._ 1098.

[Sidenote: Events of the year 1098.]

[Sidenote: Their wide geographical range.]

[Sidenote: Magnus of Norway.]

[Sidenote: Anglesey the centre of the story.]

[Sidenote: The Earls of Shrewsbury.]

The events of the year which followed the last revolution in Scotland

amount to a general stirring of all the lands which could in ordinary

times have any influence on the affairs of England. We shall see in

the next chapter that it was the busiest of times in the Gaulish

mainland, where the designs of Rufus, now undisputed master of

Normandy, spread far beyond anything that had been dreamed of by any

earlier holder of the Norman duchy. For warfare or for alliance, the

range of our story during this most stirring year stretches from the

fiords of Norway to the gorges of the Pyrenees. In the present section

we have to look to the northern side of this tangled drama, and to

take the specially British aspect of it as our centre. A mighty

undertaking, which moved the whole of north-western Europe, which

touched England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and the smaller islands

which lie between and around them, comes home to us mainly as it

touches that one among those islands which might almost pass for a

part of the mainland of southern Britain. The great warfare of Magnus

of Norway mainly concerns our story so far as it almost casually

became a part of warfare in Wales, and specially of warfare in

Anglesey. And, as regards England itself, the most important aspect of

a movement which stirred every northern land was that it indirectly

lifted one man who was already great beyond endurance in Normandy and

its border lands into a place of greatness even less endurable in

England and its border lands. We have to tell a tale spreading over

many lands and seas, a tale full of personal pictures and personal

exploits. To Englishmen of the last years of the eleventh century and

the first years of the twelfth, its most practical aspect was that it

took away Earl Hugh of Shrewsbury and set his brother Robert in his

place.

[Sidenote: The winter of 1097.]

[Sidenote: The war of Anglesey. 1098.]

[Sidenote: Schemes of Cadwgan and Gruffydd.]

[Sidenote: The Welsh take wikings from Ireland into pay.]

We must now look back to the moment, late in the last year, when the

Welsh seemed to have completely won back their freedom, except in

Glamorgan and at the single point covered by the unconquered fortress

of Pembroke.[332] It is startling to find in our next notice that the

Britons, without any mention of any fresh loss, are beginning to stand

on the defensive, and to seek out as it were a last shelter. The war

is now shifted to a quarter of which we have hitherto heard less than

of some other parts of Wales, and it becomes connected with movements

in other parts of the world which carry us back a generation. The

island off the north-west corner of Wales, that Mona or Mevania to

which half-forgotten English conquests had given the name of

Anglesey,[333] became now, as in the days of Roman invasion, the

chief――at the time it may have seemed the last――stronghold of British

resistance. The island, parted from the British mainland by the narrow

strait――the Hellespont――of Menai, lying within sight of the fortress

of Robert of Rhuddlan at Dwyganwy, seems for the last four years to

have been left untouched by any Norman invader. But now we read that

the princes of Gwynedd, Cadwgan son of Bleddyn, their worthiest elder,

and Gruffydd the slayer of Robert, with the general assent of the

Britons of the north, agree in council, as one of their own

chroniclers puts it, to save Mona.[334] This form of words seems to

imply less trust in their own resources than we might have looked for

in the elders of the Britons after their late successes. If Mona

needed to be saved, one would think that they must already have found

that there was little real chance of saving Gwynedd or Dyfed. And the

way by which they sought to save Mona was hardly a wise one, though it

was one which might have been defended by many precedents. Just as

Gruffydd had done ten years before, they took into their pay a fleet

of pirates from Ireland, wikings doubtless from the Scandinavian

settlements, whom one Welsh writer, perhaps more from habit than as

meaning his words to be taken in their full force, speaks of as

heathens.[335] With these allies, and with the main body of their own

forces, the British leaders withdrew into Anglesey.

[Sidenote: The two Earls Hugh, of Chester and Shrewsbury.]

[Sidenote: Rebuilding of the castle of Aberlleiniog.]

[Sidenote: Traces of the castle.]

[Sidenote: The earls bribe the wikings.]

The news of this alliance was thought serious enough to call for

vigorous action on the part of the two earls of the border. Both now

bore the same name. Hugh of Avranches still ruled at Chester――we last

heard of him as counselling the cruel punishment of William of Eu;

Hugh of Montgomery was drawing near to the end of his short dominion

over Shropshire. The Scandinavian writers couple the two Hughs

together, and they distinguish the elder by the well-earned surname of

Hugh the Fat, and the younger by that of Hugh the Proud.[336] They

gathered their forces, Norman and English, and crossed over to

Anglesey. The first step towards the occupation of the island was the

usual Norman means, the building of a castle. In this case they had

not to build for the first time, but to build up afresh what the Welsh

had destroyed in the moment of victory. It will be remembered that,

four years before, the Britons in their great revolt had won back

Anglesey and broken down the castle.[337] There seems no reason to

doubt that the site of the old work was the site of the new, and that

that site marks at once the landing-place of the two earls and the

scene of the fall of one of them. It lies on the eastern side of the

island, quite free from the strait, and nearly due west from the scene

of the Marquess Robert’s death at Dwyganwy.[338] It lies about half

way between the priory of Penmon――the head of Mona――parts of whose

simple and venerable church must be nearly contemporary with our

times,[339] and the great fortress of later days at Beaumaris, the

head of the island shire. A small expanse of flat and marshy ground

marks the spot where the small stream of Lleiniog, mere brook as it

is, makes its independent way into the sea. On its left bank the

careful enquirer will find, what he will certainly not see at a

glance, a castle-mound with its ditches, now, after the usual

senseless and provoking fashion, masked with trees. But he who makes

his way within will find, not only the mound, but the square tower

crowning it, though he will hardly deem this last to be a work of the

two earls. In front of the castle, immediately above the sea, a slight

natural height seems to have been improved by art into a smaller

mound. The earthworks at least the earls doubtless found ready to

their hand, whether they had been thrown up in the earlier invasion of

the island, or whether the invaders had then taken advantage of mounds

thrown up by men of earlier times. Here we have beyond doubt the

remains of the castle of Aberlleiniog, the castle which Hugh the Fat

and Hugh the Proud designed to hold Anglesey in check.[340] But it was

not only to the craft of the engineer that the two Hughs trusted. The

earls of the Red King’s day had learned to practise the special arts

of their master. The wikings were bribed with the gold of England to

betray the cause of their British allies, and they gave the earls

valuable help in making good their entrance into Anglesey.[341]

[Sidenote: Cadwgan and Gruffydd flee to Ireland.]

[Sidenote: Cruel treatment of the Welsh captives.]

[Sidenote: Desecration of the church of Saint Tyfrydog.]

[Sidenote: Mutilation of Cenred.]

[Sidenote: Restoration of his speech.]

It was in strange contrast with the vigour which for several years had

been shown by the Welsh leaders, and with the success which had

commonly waited on their arms, but quite in harmony with their last

action of all, when Cadwgan and Gruffydd, seeing the turn which things

had taken, threw up the common cause altogether and fled to Ireland to

secure their own safety.[342] Anglesey was now left to the mercy of

the two earls. The character for gentleness which Hugh of Shrewsbury

bears, and which he may have deserved in the government of his own

earldom, brought no lessening of suffering to British enemies.

Wherever the two Hughs marched, men were slaughtered, or were, in

modern eyes at least, worse than slaughtered. They were blinded,

deprived of hands and feet, or made to undergo the other mutilations

usual at the time.[343] In some cases at least the earls trampled on

every privilege of holy places and holy persons. It may be deemed a

lesser matter that one of them caused his hounds to pass a night in

the church of Saint Tyfrydog, and found them all mad in the

morning.[344] The privileges of the Church could not shelter even her

human and priestly servants. One special victim was an aged priest,

who is said to have taken a leading part in the war by the advice

which he gave to the Welsh. His name Cenred bespeaks English birth;

the form of the name is Mercian; if he had passed from the earldom of

either Hugh to the side of the Welsh, he would naturally be looked on

as a traitor, and his treason would explain the excessive harshness

with which he was treated. The old man was dragged out of a church;

besides more shameful suffering, one eye was torn out, and his tongue

was also cut out.[345] This last form of mutilation seems to have been

confined to himself, and it may have been meant as specially befitting

one who had used that dangerous member to give counsel to the enemy.

And now, according to our story, happened one of those signs and

wonders which were at the time naturally deemed miraculous, but for

which modern times have supplied, if not an explanation, at least a

parallel. Cenred fared like the victims of Gelimer of old, like the

victims of Djezzar in modern times; three days after the loss of his

tongue, his speech came back to him.[346] Four days later again, so

men deemed at Worcester, came vengeance on one at least of the two

earls for the cruel deed which they had wrought on him.[347]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Expedition of Magnus Barefoot.]

[Sidenote: Character of his reign. 1093-1103.]

[Sidenote: His surnames.]

[Sidenote: 1093-1098.]

[Sidenote: He professes friendship for England.]

[Sidenote: His treasure at Lincoln.]

If wikings from Ireland had betrayed the cause of the Britons, a far

mightier wiking was now afloat, if not to give help to the Britons, at

least to act as a minister of wrath upon their enemies. The tale of

Stamfordbridge seems to come over again on the western, instead of the

eastern, side of the British islands. For a grandson of Harold

Hardrada shows himself at the head of a power almost equalling that of

his grandfather; he brings a grandson of Godwine in his train, he

overcomes two Mercian earls, and finds his own doom, not indeed in

Yorkshire, but in Ireland. But the enterprise which recalls so many

points in the enterprise of two-and-thirty years earlier was not in

any strict sense an invasion of England. Magnus, the son of that

peaceful Olaf of whom we have heard in the Conqueror’s day,[348] now

reigned in Norway in the spirit of his grandfather rather than in that

of his father. He bore various surnames, as the Tall and the

Lover-of-Strife; but his name has gone down in history with the

special epithet of Magnus Barefoot――more strictly it would seem

Bare-leg――a name which is said to have been given to him as one of the

results of the enterprise of which we have now to speak. After showing

himself for five years as a mighty warrior in his own peninsula,

Magnus set forth to bring more western lands under his obedience.

Against England he professed to have no designs, and the little that

we casually hear of him in connexion with England seems to imply

friendly relations. His son Sigurd, afterwards famous as the Crusader,

was the child of an English captive. Her name of Thora witnesses to

her Scandinavian descent;[349] but her captivity could not have been

the work of the arms of Magnus. Either now or at some later time, he

entrusted a great treasure, twenty thousand pounds of silver, to the

keeping of a rich citizen of Lincoln,[350] a sign of the high place

which was still held by the city of the Danish Lawmen, and of the

connexion which its citizens still kept up with the kingdoms of the

North.[351]

[Sidenote: Harold son of Harold in his fleet.]

But, peaceful as might be the professions of Magnus toward England,

there was one in his fleet whose presence could not fail to call up

thoughts of deeds which had been done, or which might again be done,

on English ground. We learn from one of the most casual of notices

that Magnus had with him a man who, if the course of things had gone

otherwise a generation earlier, might then himself have been the

wearer of the English crown, who would at least have stood nearer to

it than either the Ætheling of the blood of Cerdic or the Ætheling of

the blood of Rolf. It could hardly have been without an object that

the grandson of Harold the son of Sigurd brought with him the son of

Harold the son of Godwine. Strange indeed was the fate of the twin

sons of the doubly widowed Ealdgyth.[352] Each flashes across our

sight for a moment, and only for a moment. Ulf we have seen the

prisoner of the Conqueror; we have seen him sent forth by the

Conqueror’s son to go in freedom and honour, but to go we know not

whither.[353] And now, for once in the course of a life which must

have been a chequered one, we hear the name of his brother. Some ship

in the fleet of Magnus bore, as its guest or as its captain, Harold

the son of Harold King of the English.[354] Whence he came, whither he

went, before and after that one voyage to the shores of Britain, we

know not. Grandson of Godwine, grandson of Ælfgar, begotten, but not

born, to the kingship of England, the child of the widow did not see

the light in the City of the Legions till his father had found his

cairn upon the rocks of Hastings, perhaps his tomb before the altar at

Waltham. What friendly hand saved him, when his brother came into the

Conqueror’s power, we know not, any more than we know the later

fortunes of his mother. But now the younger Harold came, the guest of

one whose grandfather had felt the might, as his father had felt the

mild-heartedness, of the elder Harold.[355] His voyage brought him not

near to either the most glorious or the most mournful memories of his

father. The fleet of Magnus kept aloof alike from the shores of

Yorkshire and from the shores of Sussex. But the younger Harold came

to look for a moment on the land where his mother had dwelled as a

queen, and which his father had filled with the trophies of his

conquest.[356] He came to see the British shores lined with English

warriors, but to see them under the rule of the Norman leaders who had

divided between them so great a part of the earldom of his mother’s

house, and the elder of whom reigned as all but a king in the city of

his own birth. Son and nephew of the three who died on Senlac, he saw

from the Norwegian ship the fall of the son of the man who led the

charge which first broke down the English palisade upon that hill of

doom.[357] And then, his name once spoken, he passes away into utter

darkness. Of Ulf, the knight of the Norman duke, of Harold the comrade

of the Norwegian king, we have no tale to tell save that they were

such.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Magnus’ designs on Ireland.]

[Sidenote: His alleged Irish marriage.]

[Sidenote: Irish marriage of his son Sigurd.]

[Sidenote: His voyage among the islands.]

[Sidenote: Dominion of Godred Cronan.]

[Sidenote: 1075-1091.]

[Sidenote: 1078.]

[Sidenote: Godred driven out of Dublin. 1094.]

[Sidenote: His death.]

[Sidenote: 1095.]

[Sidenote: His sons, Lagman and Harold.]

[Sidenote: Donald sent by Murtagh to the Sudereys.]

[Sidenote: Ingemund sent by Magnus.]

[Sidenote: Civil war in Man.]

One version of our tale speaks of Ireland as the main object of the

expedition of Magnus, as it certainly was the object of his last

expedition some years later. He had, it is said, married the daughter

of an Irish king, but his father-in-law had failed to carry out the

marriage-contract.[358] There is nothing of this in the Norwegian

account, which speaks only of a later marriage between Sigurd son of

Magnus and a daughter of King Murtagh.[359] But it seems clear from a

comparison of the various accounts that Magnus did, at some stage of

the present voyage, make an attack on Ireland; it seems reasonable

therefore to suppose that Irish enterprise formed part of his scheme

from the beginning.[360] Our own narrative is more concerned with his

course along the shores of our own island, in which however he seems

to have barely touched Britain itself, in either its Scottish or its

English regions. His exploits lay among the smaller islands of the

British seas, most of which had at that moment more to do with Ireland

than with either England or Scotland. It is not easy to call up from

among many conflicting statements an exact picture of the state of

things at the time. In the interval between the expedition of Harold

Hardrada and the expedition of his grandson, Godred the son of Harold,

surnamed Cronan, he whom we have heard of at Stamford bridge,[361] had

raised up a considerable dominion of which Man was the centre. He

ruled over Dublin and the greater part of Leinster, and over the

Sudereys or Hebrides; and, if the chronicle of his own island may be

believed, he drove the Scots to a singular treaty, the object of which

must have been to hinder Scotland from becoming a naval power.[362] We

may guess that some of the piratical adventurers of whom we have heard

once or twice in our Welsh notices, as for instance in the story of

Robert of Rhuddlan and again in the tale which we have just told, were

in truth subjects of Godred. But the dominion of Godred was one of

those powers which seem as it were casually founded, and which seldom

long outlive the reign of their founder. His Irish dominion did not

last even so long as his own life. After seventeen years of

possession, he was driven out of Dublin by Murtagh, and in the next

year he died, leaving three sons, Lagman, Harold, and Olaf, of whom

Lagman succeeded to his island dominion. In the Manx version of the

tale, Lagman, disturbed by a rebellion of his brother Harold, took a

frightful revenge by inflicting on him the usual cruel mutilations.

Then, smitten with remorse, he made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem and

died there.[363] The chief men of the Sudereys, hearing of his death,

asked King Murtagh for a ruler during the minority of Olaf. This would

almost look as if Murtagh had not only driven Godred out of Ireland,

but had established some kind of supremacy over Man itself. But the

ruler sent, Donald by name, proved a tyrant, and was driven out.[364]

Then we are told that Magnus himself sent one Ingemund to take the

crown of the Isles, that the chief men came together in Lewis to make

him king but that his outrages on their wives and daughters made them

change their purpose. Instead of crowning him, they burned him in his

house, and slew all his followers with fire and sword.[365] Directly

after, we read of a civil war in the isle of Man itself, in which the

leaders of both parties were killed.[366] The Norwegian story tells us

nothing of all this; it conceives Godred as still living at the time

of the expedition of Magnus, and Lagman as acting under his

father.[367] The Manx version, though confused in its chronology and

mixed up with some legendary details, gives the more intelligible

story of the two. We see a time of confusion in Man, Ireland, and the

Sudereys, which the Norwegian King tries to turn to his own advantage.

The slaughter of his candidate for the island crown might have been

looked on as ground for war by princes more scrupulous in such matters

than Magnus Barefoot.

[Sidenote: Signs and wonders.]

[Sidenote: Legend of Magnus and Saint Olaf.]

[Sidenote: His fleet.]

A King of the Northmen could hardly set out on a great enterprise

without signs and wonders; but the signs and wonders which marked the

expedition of Magnus are of a different kind from those which marked

the expedition of Harold Hardrada. Or rather, one of the two elements

which we see in the tale of Harold had, in the thirty years which had

passed, waxed strong enough to drive out the other. In the days of

Harold the omens and visions still savour of the old times of

Scandinavian heathendom. Saint Olaf indeed appears in his character of

a Christian martyr, to remind us that we are reading the deeds of

baptized men; but the general tone is that of the worshippers of Thor

and Odin.[368] But the tale which is now told of Magnus is a mere

piece of every-day mediæval hagiology. It reminds us of some of the

tales which are told of William the Great and of others.[369] Magnus,

great-nephew of Saint Olaf, is seized with an irreverent longing to

test the truth of the boast that the body of his martyred kinsman had

not seen corruption. The body, first buried in a sandhill near Nidaros

or Trondhjem, was soon, like those of our own Harold and Waltheof,

translated to a worthier place in the great church of Nidaros. Its

incorruption had been already proved, and in their new place the holy

remains wrought wonders of healing and deliverance.[370] But now,

heedless of the remonstrances of the bishop and his clergy, Magnus

bade that the shrine should be opened, that he might see whether it

was even as the tale went. He saw and believed; and he not only

believed but trembled. He rushed out of the church, smitten with

sudden fear. In the night the martyr appeared to him and gave him his

choice of two forms of punishment. He must either lose his kingdom and

his life within thirty days, or else he must set forth from Norway and

never see the land again. Magnus gathered together his wise men; he

told them the vision, and by their advice, he chose the second

alternative, by far the less terrible to a king of the seas.[371] He

set forth, but it was on an errand of conquest, at the head of a fleet

of a hundred and sixty ships, a number far less than that of the

mighty armada which had come together at the bidding of his

grandfather.[372]

[Sidenote: Magnus at Orkney.]

[Sidenote: He seizes the earls.]

[Sidenote: He gives the earldom to Sigurd.]

[Sidenote: Magnus among the Sudereys;]

[Sidenote: in Cantire;]

[Sidenote: his dealings with Galloway.]

[Sidenote: His fruitless design on Ireland.]

[Sidenote: He occupies Man.]

[Sidenote: His designs.]

The teller of this tale has either misplaced the date of the real or

supposed vision, or else he has mixed up the present voyage of Magnus

with a later one. Magnus certainly saw Norway again after that one of

his expeditions which alone directly touches English history. He first

sailed to the Orkneys, where the brother earls, the sons of Thorfinn

and Ingebiorg, the half-brothers of Duncan of Scotland, still

reigned.[373] Their reign now ended. On what ground we are not told,

Paul and Erling, the allies of his grandfather, were dealt with by

Magnus as enemies. They were made prisoners, and were sent to Norway,

where they afterwards died.[374] His own young son Sigurd was

established in the rule of the earldom, with a council to advise

him.[375] Magnus then sailed among the Sudereys, plundering, burning,

and slaying. His minstrels and sagamen boast of his doings in this way

in the islands of Lewis, Uist, Skye, Mull, and Islay. But he

spared――the new faith of the Northmen prevailed thus far――the holy

island of Saint Columba, all whose inhabitants were freely received to

his peace.[376] The only part of the isle of Britain itself which he

seems to have touched was the long peninsula of Cantire, which might

pass rather for another island than for part of the mainland, and

which in truth formed a part of the insular realm. Thence, we are

told, he plundered such parts of the Irish and Scottish coasts as lay

within reach.[377] We read also in other versions that he made the men

of Galloway become hewers of wood for fortresses to be raised, perhaps

along their own shores.[378] We read too that at this stage he

designed a more deliberately planned attack on Ireland, but that he

shrank from carrying it out when he saw how strongly the Irish coasts

were guarded.[379] His next point was Man, which one narrator of his

exploits strangely describes him as finding forsaken, and as peopling

with inhabitants, from what quarter we are not told.[380] The local

chronicler tells us, doubtless with far greater truth, that he landed

on the island of Saint Patrick,――Holm Peel, the place of the famous

castle and cathedral church――that he was pleased with the land, and

built fortresses therein, meaning――so at least it was believed in

Man――to make the island his own dwelling-place.[381] Man, once

established as the seat of a great Northern empire, would certainly

have been a standing menace to all the regions and races of the

British islands. But the dominion of Magnus over Man was not handed on

to any successor of his own house, and during the few years which he

still lived, he did not make Man the centre of his power.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Version of Orderic.]

[Sidenote: He approaches Anglesey.]

[Sidenote: Preparations for resistance.]

[Sidenote: The fleet off Aberlleiniog.]

We now come near to that point in the expedition which brings it

immediately within the range of our present history. The writer who

gives us most detail deems the exploits of Magnus so great that he

lashes himself up to his highest flight of classical rhetoric. He

paints the Norwegian king as the conqueror of the Kyklades――not those

Kyklades of the Ægæan which his grandfather may well enough have

visited, but the other Kyklades in the great sea, lying as it were

outside the world.[382] To match this unlooked-for definition of the

Western islands, the winds which filled the sails of Magnus are

honoured with unusual names; and, by a sad relapse into paganism

Amphitritê seems to be called up as a special guardian of the English

shore.[383] Of the two islands which bore the name of Mevania, both of

which had obeyed the Bretwalda Eadwine, Magnus was already master of

one; he now drew near to the other. We are told that he sent a small

part of his fleet, consisting of six ships, to some unnamed point of

the more strictly English shore, bearing a red shield as a sign that

their purposes were peaceful.[384] But the people of Britain of all

races seem to have put little faith in the peaceful purposes of the

Northmen. A vast host, French and English, presently came together

from all parts of the dominions of the two Mercian earls. The

meeting-place is said to have been at Dwyganwy on the peninsula

opposite Anglesey, the scene of the fall of Robert of Rhuddlan.[385]

But there can be no doubt that the scene of the tale which we have to

tell lies on the opposite shore of Anglesey, and seemingly hard by the

newly restored castle of Aberlleiniog. Most likely the sea then came

in further over the low and marshy ground, and nearer to the

castle-mound, than it does now. Both the earls were on the spot; the

younger Hugh of Shrewsbury had been the first to come, and he had had

to wait some days for his allies. At last the Norwegian ships were

seen at sea near the coast, and the inhabitants were running to and

fro for fear. By this time the forces of Hugh of Chester must have

come up; but it is Hugh of Shrewsbury, the younger and more active of

the pair, who plays the chief part in the story. He mounted his horse,

and rode backwards and forwards along the shore, bringing his

followers together, lest the invaders should land and overcome them

piecemeal.[386] In his zeal he rode so near to the water as to come

within reach of the advancing tide and within bow-shot of the

Norwegian ships. Two archers on the ship of King Magnus spied him out,

and took aim. His body was so well guarded by his coat of mail that it

was his face only that supplied a mark for the archers. Of these one

was King Magnus himself; the other was a warrior from Halagoland, the

most northern part of the strictly Norwegian shore. The arrow shot by

the King’s comrade struck and turned aside from the nose-piece of the

Earl’s helmet. The shaft sent by the King’s own hand went yet more

truly to its mark; it pierced the eye of Hugh and went through his

head. Hugh the Proud sank, and perished amid the advancing waves.[387]

He died by a stroke like that by which the elder Harold fell on

Senlac; and we could almost wish that it had been the hand of the

younger Harold that sent the shaft.

[Sidenote: Norwegian and Welsh versions.]

[Sidenote: Peace between Magnus and Hugh of Chester.]

[Sidenote: Burial of Hugh of Shrewsbury.]

That shaft was, according to the monk of Saint Evroul, sent by the

hand of Magnus, but by the special instigation of the devil. To the

minstrels of Norway the death of Earl Hugh seemed a worthy exploit.

They sang, not of a single shot, but of a fierce battle, in which the

Norwegian king, lord of the islands, met the Welsh earls[388] face to

face. They told how the arrows rattled on the coats of mail, and how

the King’s own arrow overthrew Earl Hugh the Proud by the waters of

Anglesey.[389] The British chronicler too tells us, if not of the

fierce struggle described by the Northern poet, yet of arrows shot on

both sides, alike from the ships and by the defenders of the

land.[390] All agree that it was by the royal hand that the Earl fell.

But it is only from Saint Evroul that we hear that Magnus shot Hugh

unwittingly, and that he mourned when he knew who it was whom he had

slain. It is added that he at once made full peace with the surviving

Earl Hugh of Chester, declaring that he had no hostile purposes

against England, but that he only wished to wage war with Ireland, and

to assert his dominion over the islands.[391] The body of Earl Hugh of

Shrewsbury was sought for with pains by Normans and English, and was

found at last, as the tide went back.[392] The only gentle one among

the sons of Mabel[393]――gentle, we may easily believe, to all but the

Britons, perhaps cruel to them only under the evil influence of his

elder namesake――was mourned by all, and was buried the seventeenth day

after his death in the cloister of his father’s abbey at

Shrewsbury.[394]

[Sidenote: Designs of Magnus on Anglesey.]

[Sidenote: Anglesey and North Wales subdued by Hugh.]

The words which we have just seen put into the mouth of Magnus are

words of doubtful meaning, and they might imply a claim to Anglesey,

as well as to the other islands. That Magnus came thither with

purposes of conquest we may set down as certain; it is less clear

whether those purposes were carried out, even for a moment. In Norway

it was believed that the overthrow of Earl Hugh put the King of the

Northmen in possession of Anglesey, which is strangely spoken of as a

third of the British land.[395] In Man it was said that Magnus, having

slain one earl and put another to flight, occupied Anglesey, but that

he was persuaded by the Welsh, on the payment of a heavy ransom, to

leave the island and sail back to Man.[396] Certain it is that, if

Magnus took any real possession of Anglesey, it was a momentary

possession indeed. According to the British chroniclers, he sailed

away at once, so that his coming and the death of one of the earls did

not really hinder the joint work of the two. For a moment Anglesey,

and with it seemingly the greater part of North Wales, was brought

more thoroughly than ever under Norman or English rule. The phrase by

which the Welsh writer sets forth the result has a strange sound; but

it does not badly describe the final work of these endless wars. The

French, he says, made the people become Saxons.[397] But for the

present this work was done only for a moment. In the course of the

next year, Anglesey was again, neither in French nor in Saxon, but in

British hands.[398]

[Sidenote: Sigurd’s kingdom.]

[Sidenote: Occupation of Cantire.]

[Sidenote: Dealings of Magnus with Scotland.]

We shall hear again of Magnus in the revolutions both of Anglesey and

of other parts of North Wales. For the present, satisfied with the

glory of having carried the Norwegian arms further south in the

British islands than any of his predecessors had done,[399] he seems

to have sailed, first to Man and then to Ireland. There he made a

truce with Murtagh, and, at a later time, he married the daughter of

the Irish king to his own son Sigurd. This youth was now entrusted

with the rule of all the Orkneys and Hebrides, and that with the

kingly title.[400] Of his kingdom Cantire formed a part; the peninsula

had been formally taken possession of by the Norwegian king. This was

done by a symbolic rite, which well expressed the dominion of a king

of the seas over the land. Magnus was drawn in a ship across the

isthmus which joins Cantire to the mainland. The occupation of Cantire

was, according to the Norwegian writer, the result of a treaty with

Malcolm King of Scots;[401] but the expedition of Magnus took place

during the reign of Eadgar. Magnus then went back to Norway, to

receive his surname from the dress of the islanders, the use of which

he and his followers brought into their own land. He then occupied

himself for a while with Scandinavian affairs, till his restless

spirit again brought him within the range of our story.

§ 6. _The establishment of Robert of Bellême in England._ 1098.

[Sidenote: Effects of the death of Hugh of Shrewsbury.]

[Sidenote: Robert of Bellême Earl of Shrewsbury. 1098.]

[Sidenote: He buys his brother’s possessions.]

[Sidenote: Extent of his estates.]

[Sidenote: Doubtful policy of the grant.]

[Sidenote: Position of Robert on the continent.]

Of the two earls who had crossed over to Anglesey to meet with such

singular ups and downs of fortune, it was the elder who came back

alive. Hugh of Chester, Hugh the Fat, had still to rule for a few

years longer till he died a monk at Saint Werburh’s. But the

short-lived reign of Hugh the Proud at Shrewsbury and Arundel had come

to an end, and his death led to important changes in all those parts

of England with which he had had to deal, but above all in his own

earldom on the Welsh border. A large part of that district, a district

the most important of all in a military point of view, passed under

the rule of the man who was at once the most merciless of oppressors

and the most skilful of military engineers. The Red King and his

minister had now an opportunity of carrying out their doctrines with

regard to the redemption of lands on a grand scale. The King was

doubtless ready to be the heir of Earl Hugh, as of all other men; but,

as in the case of other men, he was willing to allow the next kinsman

to redeem the inheritance, if he offered a becoming price. So now,

when Robert of Bellême claimed the earldom and lands of his deceased

brother, he obtained a grant of them on a payment of three thousand

pounds.[402] This was nearly half the sum for which William Rufus had

made himself master of all Normandy; but it was perhaps not too great

a price to pay for the great earldom of Shropshire with its endless

castles and lordships, for Arundel and Chichester and the other

South-Saxon lands of Roger of Montgomery, and for the rest of his

possessions scattered over many English shires. Robert of Bellême,

specially so called as the son of his mother, but who was no less

Robert of Montgomery as the son of his father, and who now became no

less Robert of Arundel and of Shrewsbury, thus joined together in his

own person three inheritances, any one of which alone might have set

him among princes. One might doubt whether William the Conqueror would

have been tempted by any price to allow the accumulation of such vast

powers in the hands of one man, and that a man whose homage was not

due to himself only. But with William the Red the services and the

payments of Robert of Bellême together outweighed any thought of the

policy which might have led him rather to bestow the vacant earldom

and other lands on some other among the sons of Earl Roger. Robert was

now at the height of his power and his fame――such fame as his

was――beyond the sea. We shall read in the next chapter of his doings

in Maine this very year, the doings of which he now received the

reward. To the Norman heritage of his father, to the marchlands which

he had inherited from his mother, to the lands which mother and son

had snatched from so many Norman and Cenomannian holders, Robert now

added all that his father had received from the Conqueror’s grant

among the conquered English, and all that his father had won for

himself among the half-conquered Welsh.

[Sidenote: His new position in England.]

[Sidenote: Comparison with the Counts of Mortain.]

[Sidenote: Comparison of Robert of Bellême and Hugh of Chester.]

[Sidenote: Unique position of Robert.]

The establishment of Robert of Bellême in England marks an epoch in

our story. Though we have already so often heard of him, not only in

continental affairs but in the affairs of our own island, he had not

yet, as far as we can see, held any English possessions at all;

certainly he had none which put him on a level with the great Norman

land-owners. From this time he is something more than merely one among

them; he at once begins to play the part of the foremost among them,

foremost alike in power and in ambition. His namesake, Robert of

Mortain and of Cornwall, had held as great a number of English acres,

and his death had handed over the vast heritage to his son. But

neither of the Counts of Mortain had any personal gifts which could

win for them the personal position which was held by Robert of

Bellême. The father was sluggish; the son was turbulent; neither of

them was the peer of the great captain and engineer who was now to

lord it over the British march. Nor did the nature and position of his

estates give to the grandson of Herleva the same advantages which

belonged to the son of Mabel. The one was, bating the title of Earl,

as great in Cornwall as the other was in Shropshire; but the lord of

Cornwall might, if he chose, sleep idly, while the lord of Shropshire

was driven to constant action against a restless enemy. Each had a

great position in Sussex; but the position of the lord of Arundel and

Chichester was practically higher than that of the lord of Pevensey.

The vast scattered possessions held by the Count of Mortain throughout

England added more to his wealth than to his political power. Earl

Hugh of Chester was in his own earldom even greater than Robert was in

his; but Earl Hugh was growing old, and ambitious as he was, he seems

to have kept his ambition within certain geographical bounds, in those

regions of Normandy and of Britain which destiny seemed to have set

before him. There can be no doubt that, at this moment, Robert of

Bellême held a position in England which he shared with no rival in

the island, and which was backed by a power beyond sea which put him

rather on a level with sovereign dukes and counts than with ordinary

nobles.

[Sidenote: Effects of his coming.]

[Sidenote: Robert a stranger in England.]

[Sidenote: Cruelty of the new earl.]

[Sidenote: His spoliations.]

To the men of the borderland, of whatever race, the change of masters

was a frightful one. To the settled inhabitants, Norman and English,

it must have been like yet another foreign conquest. The change is

marked in the change of name; the surname of the new lord comes from

the lands of his mother which lay beyond the bounds either of England

or of Normandy. Hugh of Montgomery is exchanged for Robert of Bellême.

The new master from the march of Normandy and Maine must, twenty-nine

years after the conquest of Shropshire, have seemed a stranger, not

only to Englishmen, but to Normans of the first settlement, still more

so to men who were of Norman parentage but of English birth. In its

personal aspect the change of lords must have been a matter of

shuddering. The rule of Earl Roger had been tolerable; the four years

of Earl Hugh we have seen spoken of as a reign of special mildness, at

least for his own people. But now they had a lord of another kind.

English and Welsh, we are told, had smiled at the tales of the deeds

of Robert in other lands; they listened to them as to the song of the

bard or the gleeman, deeming that, if such things were done, they were

at least done far away from themselves. But now they found in their

own persons that those tales were true, when, in the strong words of a

writer of those times, they were flayed alive by the iron claws of

Earl Robert.[403] The Earl himself, great as he was in power and

wealth, was only puffed up by what he had to hanker after yet more. He

spared no man, of whatever race or order, whose lands lay conveniently

to his hand, nor did he scruple to take away from the saints

themselves what the men of the elder time had given to them.[404]

[Sidenote: His skill in castle-building.]

[Sidenote: His defence of Shropshire.]

[Sidenote: 1094.]

[Sidenote: Early history of the Shropshire fortresses.]

[Sidenote: 896.]

[Sidenote: Æthelflæd fortifies Bridge (north). 912.]

But Robert of Bellême was something more than an ordinary plunderer;

he was a man of genius in his way; whatever he either inherited or

seized on was sure to be strengthened by the best engineering skill of

his time.[405] In the gradual work of planting both England and

Normandy with castles he had no small share; and his skill is nowhere

more to be admired than in the way in which he adapted his designs to

the varying circumstances of different places. He built at Bridgenorth

and he built at Gisors; there is little that is alike in the two

fortresses, because there is little that is alike in the position of

the two points which those fortresses severally had to defend. The

former, Robert of Bellême’s great creation on English ground, held a

most important place in the defences of the middle course of the

Severn. The Welsh wars of this reign had brought that whole line of

country into renewed importance. If the power of England under her

Norman masters was stretching further and further over the British

lands, that very advance laid the English lands more and more open to

passing and occasional British ravages. The experience of such warfare

within the English border was quite fresh. When Robert of Bellême took

his earldom, four years only had passed since Shropshire and

Herefordshire had been laid waste,[406] just as in the old days when

Gruffydd smote the Saxon at Rhyd-y-Groes.[407] The new Earl of

Shropshire therefore found it needful to strengthen the whole line of

defences of the Severn. Strong as was the capital of his earldom on

its peninsular height, it was well to have, in the rear of Shrewsbury,

another great fortress on a lower point of the river, a point whose

importance is witnessed by its name; it is emphatically the _Bridge_.

The whole region had been carefully fortified, perhaps in earlier days

still, certainly in the days when the Dane as well as the Briton had

to be guarded against. In the last campaign of Ælfred, the Danes,

finding it expedient to leave the neighbourhood of London, had marched

across the whole breadth of England from Thames to Severn, and had

_wrought_ a _work_ beside that river at _Quatbridge_.[408] Sixteen

years later, the victorious Lady, the guardian of the Mercian land,

had _timbered_ the _burh_ at _Bridge_. At a somewhat lower point, the

enemy against whom Ælfred and his daughter had to strive has left his

memory in the name of Danesford. The _Bridge_ was the site of the

chosen stronghold of Robert of Bellême. But when his discerning eye

marked the spot for a great military centre, he did but do afresh what

had been already done by the native guardian of England. The fortress

of Robert of Bellême was but a calling into fresh being, a

strengthening with new works, of the older fortress of Æthelflæd.[409]

[Illustration:

Map

illustrating the

SHROPSHIRE CAMPAIGN.

A.D. 1102.

Edwᵈ. Weller

_For the Delegates of the Clarendon Press._]

[Sidenote: Older mound of Quatford.]

[Sidenote: Quatford Castle.]

[Sidenote: Earl Roger’s house.]

[Sidenote: His chapel.]

It is somewhat singular that in the line of defence traced by Robert’s

father so commanding a site as that of the Bridge did not hold the

first place. The strong place of Roger of Montgomery lies between

three and four miles lower down the river. There, on the left, the

English, side of the Severn, we meet with the first――first to one

going up the stream――of our present group of fortresses. A bold

height, of no very great positive elevation, marks the position of the

church and mound of Quatford, standing side by side, as is so often

seen both in our own island and beyond sea. The mound is a natural

height rising close above the river, ditched and scarped as was

needed, but raised only slightly above its original height. This elder

fortification, the dwelling-place of some English thegn of the old

time, seems to have given way, either before or after the coming of

the Norman, to a stronghold a little way further up the river, which

still bears the name of Quatford Castle. A sandstone hill, standing

isolated, near to the river but not immediately on its banks, was,

like the smaller and older post, improved and raised into a castle

mound, perhaps by Earl Roger himself, perhaps by some earlier holder.

There the Survey records his new house and his borough; and we may

fairly see his work in the well which still remains bored deep in the

heart of the rock.[410] In the days of King Eadward the lordship of

Eardington had been held by Saint Mildburh of Wenlock. But, if Earl

Roger, who passes for the refounder of that house,[411] did any wrong

to its patroness, he may be held to have atoned for it by the

collegiate chapel which he raised at Quatford. It was founded at the

request of his wife, not the proud and cruel Mabel, but her pious and

gentle successor Adeliza. A pleasing legend is told of the origin of

the chapel and of the house, a legend which, if it contains any kernel

of truth, points to Earl Roger as having been the first to occupy

Quatford Castle as a dwelling, and which may account for the

restoration of the far more tempting site of the old fortress of the

Lady being left to be the work of his son.[412]

[Sidenote: Robert of Bellême removes to Bridge (north).]

[Sidenote: Oldbury.]

[Sidenote: Oldbury and Bridgenorth.]

The new rule now began, and the home of Roger and Adeliza was forsaken

by Earl Robert for the far stronger point higher up the river, and on

the opposite, the right or Welsh bank.[413] Here, in contrast to the

mere fords at other points, to Quatford itself and to the Danesford

above it, stood the _bridge_ which still forms so marked a feature,

and which had given the spot its name. _Bridge_ then, the stronghold

of Æthelflæd, became the stronghold of Robert of Bellême; and now,

perhaps from its position with regard to his father’s dwelling at

Quatford, it came to be specially distinguished as _Bridgenorth_. A

steep cliff overhangs the river at a point where the opposite ground

is high, where the stream is far wider than it again becomes lower

down, and where the channel is divided by an island, such as those by

which the Danes loved to anchor, whether in the Seine or in the

Severn. And, as the Danes are recorded to have _wrought_ a _work_ in

clear distinction from the _burh_ which the Lady afterwards

_timbered_, we are tempted to see that work in a mound not far from

the bridge, and on the same side as the river, but not rising

immediately above the river’s banks. A natural height has been

ditched, scarped, and raised to a level somewhat lower than that of

the cliff immediately above the stream, the cliff which was chosen for

the fortress, first of the Lady and then of the rebel Earl. It is

plainly in opposition to this last that the place had, before the time

of Domesday, received the name of Oldbury, which is still borne by the

parish in which it stands.[414] The cliff itself, the site of the

castle and town of Bridgenorth, has a peninsular shape so strongly

marked that it is hard to believe that the river runs on one side of

it only, and that Bridgenorth and Oldbury are divided, not by a

stream, but by a dry valley, in those days doubtless not dry, but

marshy. The sites of the older and the newer fortress still look on

one another, though the older has again become only a grassy mound,

while the younger grew into a fortress, parish, and town, and still

remains a parliamentary borough.

[Sidenote: Bridgenorth castle;]

[Sidenote: Robert’s keep.]

[Sidenote: The churches and town of Bridgenorth.]

[Sidenote: The group of fortresses.]

[Sidenote: Burf Castle.]

The position of the great fortress of the oppressor is a noble one.

The mere height of the cliff at Bridgenorth is so much lower than many

of the surrounding hills of that lovely region that it makes less show

than might have been looked for in the general view. But, as we stand

close under it on the other side of the river, we feel that

Bridgenorth needs only buildings of equal majesty on its height to

make it rank with Lincoln, with Le Mans, almost with Laon itself. But

against the proud minsters of those cities Bridgenorth has nothing to

set in its general view save two church towers, one of them modern,

whose ugliness is not relieved by the fact that it represents the

castle church, the college of Bridgenorth, transferred thither by

Robert of Bellême, when he moved castle, church, and everything from

their older home at Quatford. But Bridgenorth still keeps one object

of surpassing interest in our present story, that which is of a truth

the very cradle and kernel of the place, the shattered keep of Robert

of Bellême. There we have the good luck which we enjoy but seldom in

examining the military remains of this age, the strongholds of the men

of the Conquest and their immediate successors. Most commonly we light

on little more than the mere site, or the works of earlier or of later

times; it is only now and then that we actually see, in however

imperfect a state, some piece of genuine masonry belonging to the time

with which we are dealing. This satisfaction we have in no small

measure at Bridgenorth. There is the square keep of the terrible

founder of the fortress, broken down, riven asunder by some explosion

in the warfare of later times――what is left of it driven to overhang

its base like the tower of Caerphilly or the _Muro Torto_ of Rome――but

still keeping its main and distinctive features, still showing, in its

flat pilasters, its double-splayed windows,[415] the traces of its

double-sloped roof with the deep gutter,[416] what that stern, hard,

tower was when the Devil of Bellême first called it into being. We can

just trace the gateway which the keep commanded between the inner and

outer courts of the castle, and we can see the ruins of the advanced

building which sheltered the actual entrance of the keep itself. The

square tower, so characteristic of Norman military work, is after all

so rare in this its earlier form that every such fragment as this of

Bridgenorth calls for most attentive study. Here we see the highest

advances in the art of defence, as practised by the man whose name

makes us shudder through almost every page of our story. At

Bridgenorth nature had done almost everything. The tall and steep

cliff called for nothing to be done in the way of mounds and ditches.

It was enough to fence in the height――that the Lady had doubtless done

after the fashion of her age――and to raise the keep――the distinctive

feature of Earl Robert’s age――as the last shelter in case of attack

from the land side. We can trace the inner and outer courts, the

latter containing the unsightly church which represents the college

within the castle. The other church stands nearly on a level with the

castle, parted from the castle hill by a dip which takes the form of a

steep road――_Cartway_ is the name it still keeps――leading down from

the town to the river. Few stronger or more striking sites of its own

scale could have been found. The Castle by the Bridge is not a

mountain fortress; far higher hills than the hill of Bridgenorth or

the hill of Quatford come within the general view. But the stronghold

of Æthelflæd and Robert served better than any loftier point could

have done for its own immediate work. No other point could have served

so well to guard the most important point of the river, and to shelter

the older borders of England against any desperate attempt of the

Britons to carry their endless warfare far within her later borders.

The whole group, Bridgenorth, Oldbury, the two Quatfords, are a

succession of strongholds which form a whole. All are within sight of

one another, though it might be hard to find a point which directly

commands all four at once. A little further inland, on the Quatford

side of the river, a broad hill, fenced in by a slight earthwork, and

known as Burf Castle, commands the widest and most striking view of

all, the round back of the Wrekin, the sharp rise and fall of the

Titterstone, with a boundless view over the lower country to the

north-east. This is undoubtedly the site of an early stronghold, which

may have played its part in the days of the Lady or in the old time

before her. But there is no sign that it entered into the military

reckoning of Roger of Montgomery or of Robert of Bellême.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Robert builds the castle of Careghova.]

[Sidenote: His Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire estates.]

[Sidenote: Roger of Bully.]

[Sidenote: His Yorkshire estates.]

[Sidenote: Position of Tickhill.]

[Sidenote: The castle.]

The great engineering works at Bridgenorth seem to have occupied the

mind of Earl Robert during the whole of the few remaining years of his

English career. We shall find that they were not fully finished four

years later. At the same time, while he fenced in Bridgenorth in the

rear of the capital of his earldom, he raised another stronghold in

advance of it, within the later Welsh border, at Careghova,

immediately on Offa’s Dyke.[417] And he was at the same time extending

his possessions in a more peaceful region, where no inroads of Britons

or Northmen were to be feared. On the borders of Yorkshire and

Nottinghamshire stood a chief seat of one who, in the extent of his

possessions, ranked as one of the foremost men in England. This was

Roger of Bully, who took his name from a Norman lordship in the land

of Braye, lying west of what was to be the New Castle of King Henry,

on the high ground which overlooks the forest of Saint-Saen, the home

of the faithful Helias. The name of Roger of Bully――the spellings of

the name are endless――is less commonly mentioned in our tale than we

might have looked for. He was a great land-owner in Yorkshire; he was

one of the greatest land-owners in Nottinghamshire, and he held

considerable estates in other parts of England. He had supplanted two

English earls in their special homes; he sat by the hearth of Eadwine

and by the hearth of Waltheof; in another spot, the holdings of ten

English thegns had been rolled together into a single lordship to

enrich the fortunate stranger.[418] Among his Yorkshire estates

he held the exceptionally favoured lands of Sprotburgh and

Barnburgh, which had remained untouched in the general harrying of

Northumberland.[419] He seems to have won the special favour of the

greatest ladies of the Conqueror’s court; if he held the hall of

Hallam, the hall of Waltheof, it was by the gift of Waltheof’s widow

Judith;[420] and an estate which he held in distant Devonshire is set

down as the gift of Queen Matilda herself.[421] Yet this man, who

holds so great a place in the Survey, plays no visible part in

history; he lives only in the record of Domesday and in his still

abiding work in a minster and a castle of his own rearing. Just within

the borders of Yorkshire, at no great distance from the shires both of

Nottingham and Lincoln, Roger had occupied an English dwelling-place,

entered in the Survey as Dadesley, but which afterwards grew into

greater note by the name of Tickhill.[422] Like many other

dwelling-places of English lords, Dadesley or Tickhill must have been

chosen simply as a convenient centre for the estates of its owner. It

is no natural stronghold; the post seems to have no special military

advantages; it crowns no steep, it commands no river, it bars the

entrance to no valley. A low hill of sandstone was improved by art

into one of the usual mounds, and it had been in King Eadward’s day

the possession of Ælfsige and Siward. The mound, as in other places,

was in after time taught to bear a polygonal keep, and its sides were

themselves strengthened by masonry. The keep, of which the foundations

only are left, was of later date than the days with which we are

concerned. And we may fully believe that parts at least of the circuit

wall of the castle, and still more, that the elder parts of the

gatehouse, with a face of ornaments and sculptures which almost remind

us of the work of the great Emperor’s day at Lorsch, are due to the

taste, such as it was, of the first Norman lord of Tickhill.

[Sidenote: The priory of Blyth, founded 1088.]

[Sidenote: Name of Blyth and Tickhill used indiscriminately.]

[Sidenote: Death of Roger of Bully.]

[Sidenote: The lands of Roger of Bully granted to Robert of Bellême.]

[Sidenote: Impolicy of the grant.]

[Sidenote: Greatness of Robert of Bellême.]

The nomenclature of the lands of Roger of Bully has been singularly

shifting. Dadesley gave way to Tickhill. But Tickhill is not the only

name borne by Roger’s stronghold. It not uncommonly takes the name of

a more certain memorial of him which lies only a few miles off, but

within the bounds of another shire. In the year of the first rebellion

of the Red King’s reign, Roger of Bully had founded a monastery

dependent on the abbey of the Holy Trinity at Rouen. It was reared on

a point of his possessions known as Blyth, lying within the borders of

Nottinghamshire, and near a river which joins the old historic stream

of the Idle.[423] The nave of Roger’s church still stands; there is no

mistaking the distinguishing marks of the earliest Norman style, even

in a building whose loftiness and narrowness have more in common with

later forms of art.[424] Blyth became at least as famous as Tickhill.

The castle, with the honour of which it formed the head, is called by

both names, and we shall find as we go on that the same incident in

our story is placed by some of our authorities at Blyth and by others

at Tickhill.[425] Roger, founder of both castle and monastery, seems

to have died about the time when Robert of Bellême was strengthening

himself at Bridgenorth and Careghova. His lands went at once to swell

the possessions of the terrible Earl. On some plea of kindred, Robert

demanded them of the King. William was as ready to grant him the lands

of Blyth and Hallam as he had been to grant him the earldom of

Shropshire and the other possessions of his father. But he was no more

inclined than he was then to grant anything without a consideration.

Earl Robert was allowed to redeem the heritage of his kinsman, but to

redeem it only on payment of a great sum.[426] We may again doubt

whether William the Great would have allowed such a redemption, even

in the days when he had fallen into covetousness and greediness he

loved withal. With the Conqueror neither greediness nor anything else

ever came before policy. He whose policy it had been to separate

Norman and English estates in the second generation, who had taken

care that no son of his own chosen friend should hold Breteuil and

Hereford in a single hand,[427] would surely never have allowed any

one man to have reached the gigantic height of wealth and power which

was now reached by Robert of Bellême. The gathering together of such

vast possessions in Normandy and England in the hands of one who had

some pretensions to rank as a prince beyond the bounds of Normandy and

England almost amounted to a direct challenge to their owner to

dispute the great lesson of Rochester, and to see whether there was

not at least one subject in England whom the King of England could not

control.

That question had yet to be tried, and to be tried in the person of

the new lord of Tickhill. But it was not raised during the short

remnant of the days of William the Red. The two powers of evil

contrived to pull together in friendly guise as long as the days of

unlaw and unright lasted. And the longer those days lasted, the

blacker and the bitterer they grew. The greater the power and wealth

which was gathered together in the hands of Robert of Bellême, the

greater, we are told, was the pride and cruelty of that son of

Belial.[428] He may by this time have grown weary of oppression in the

familiar scenes of his evil deeds on both sides of the sea. The death

of Robert of Bully opened to him a new and wide human hunting-ground

in Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire. But his hold on all that he had

within our island was fated to be short. We are drawing near to the

end of the reign and the life of William Rufus, and, when the reign

and life of William Rufus were over, the English power of Robert of

Bellême did not last long.

* * * * *

But before we come to the last days of the Red King in his island

kingdom, we must again cross the sea, to follow the warlike campaigns

of his latest days, to trace out the wide-reaching schemes of dominion

which filled his restless soul, his fitful energy in beginning

enterprises, his strange waywardness in leaving them half done. And

now will come the living contrast between unright, as embodied in

William Rufus, and right, as embodied this time, not in a man of the

church and the cloister, but in a man of his own order, a layman, a

prince, a soldier. We have had one chapter where the main interest has

gathered round Anselm of Aosta; we are now coming to another in which

the main interest will gather round Helias of La Flèche.