THE LAST DAYS OF WILLIAM RUFUS AND THE ACCESSION OF HENRY.
1100-1102.[744]
[Sidenote: End of the eleventh century.]
[Sidenote: Changes in Britain. 1000-1100.]
[Sidenote: Internal changes.]
[Sidenote: Changes in foreign relations.]
[Sidenote: Scotland.]
[Sidenote: Wales.]
[Sidenote: Fusion of elements in Britain begins.]
[Sidenote: Ireland.]
The last year of the eleventh century had now come. The course of
those hundred years had wrought many changes in the world. To our eyes
the changes which it had wrought in the isle of Britain seem great and
wonderful, and great and wonderful they were. At the beginning of the
century Englishmen were struggling for their country and their homes
against the invading Dane. The Dane had won the land; he had given us
one foreign ruler who became one of ourselves. The days of foreign
rule had passed away, only, as the event proved, to pave the way for a
foreign rule which was to be far more abiding. A foreign rule which,
by adopting national feelings, in some sort deadened them paved the
way for a foreign rule which, by seeming for a moment to crush the old
life of the nation, really called it up again in new shapes. But the
rule of the Norman could not, like the rule of Cnut, itself become
national during the life-time of the Conqueror or of his first
successor. There was indeed a change between the England of Æthelred
and the England of William Rufus. The outward aspect of the land
itself must have changed, now that well-nigh every English mound was
crowned by its Norman castle, now that well-nigh every English minster
was giving way to a successor built after Norman patterns. But, if
things had changed, men had changed also. Compare the signatures to a
charter of Æthelred and the signatures to a charter of William. The
change which had come over the land is marked by the difference
between the list of English names among which it may be that some
follower of the Norman Lady has crept in, and the list of Norman names
among which it may be that some unusually lucky Englishman has
contrived to hold his place. England had thus changed indeed in her
internal state; she had changed no less in her relations to other
lands. Within her own island she had made what it is no contradiction
to speak of as a peaceful conquest made at the sword’s point. The
elder Eadgar had placed the younger on the Scottish throne as the work
of warfare. So far as Eadgar’s work was the political submission of
Scotland, its results were but for a moment. So far as it led to the
peaceful change of Scotland into a second and separate English
kingdom, its results have been indeed abiding. Towards Wales, amidst
much of seeming ill-success, the work of conquest had in truth begun;
the Red King had found out the true way to curb those bold spirits
which he could not overcome in the field. Much indeed had the eleventh
century done, in different ways, towards welding the three elements of
the isle of Britain into one political whole. Ages had to pass before
the work was finished; but it was in the eleventh century, above all,
in the reign of Rufus, that it really began. Towards the impossible
work, forbidden by geography and history, of welding another great
island into the same whole, whatever either William may have
dreamed――yet to the Conqueror we may not dare to ascribe mere
dreams――neither had done anything. So far as the two great islands of
the Ocean had begun to draw near to one another, it was as yet wholly
through the advances which the princes and people of Ireland had made
in spiritual things to the Pontiff of the other world, the Patriarch
of all the nations beyond the sea.
[Sidenote: Britain ceases to be another world.]
[Sidenote: Marriages of Ælfgifu-Emma and Eadgyth-Matilda.]
[Sidenote: England becomes part of the Latin world.]
[Sidenote: Advance of the Latin world in the eleventh century.]
[Sidenote: Conversion of the North.]
[Sidenote: The Crusade.]
[Sidenote: The struggle in Spain.]
[Sidenote: Decline of the Eastern Empire.]
[Sidenote: Renewed advance.]
[Sidenote: Sicily.]
But one great work of the times over which we are casting our eyes was
that Britain was now fast ceasing to deserve its ancient name of
another world. The earliest and the latest years of the century are
each marked by a marriage, by a change of name on the part of the
bride, which puts the change before us in a living way. A new epoch of
intercourse with other lands had begun when, on her marriage with a
King of the English of her day, Norman Emma had to become English
Ælfgifu. How greatly things had turned the other way was shown when,
on her marriage with a King of the English of her day, English Eadgyth
had to become Norman Matilda. The land which was to be the realm of
Henry and Matilda was, through the chain of events which began with
Emma’s marriage, fast changing from the separate world of Æthelred’s
day into a part of the larger world of Western Europe, the world of
_Latinitas_, of Latin speech and of learning, the world which, amidst
all the struggles of rival Popes and Emperors, still deemed itself the
world of Rome. And in few ages had that world done more to extend
itself than in the age which began with Æthelred and ended with Henry.
At the beginning of the century northern Europe was still largely
heathen; England was fighting the battle of Christendom against the
Danish renegade. Now the kingdoms of the North had passed into the
Christian fold. The change between the beginning of the century and
the end is best marked by saying that before its end the crusades had
begun, that the first crusade had been crowned with the greatest of
crusading victories. But, in looking at the crusades of the East, the
abiding crusade of the West must not be forgotten. Our own Chronicler
has not failed to tell us somewhat of the great strife of Christian
and Saracen in the south-western peninsula,[745] and if the taking of
Toledo was followed by reverses of the Christian arms, it was only by
dint of help from Africa. Here is a sign that the tide was turned, and
that it was only by such help from beyond the straits, by a new
passage of Africa into Europe, that Islam could maintain itself in the
once Roman and Gothic land. In the Eastern world, the crusade should
not make us forget the causes of the crusade. At the beginning of the
century we saw the Eastern Rome in her full might, the might of
Saracenic victories which were already won, of Bulgarian victories
which were winning. But now, as the Western Mussulman has to call in
help from Africa, so the Eastern Christian has to call in help from
Western Europe. The Christian frontier in Asia has indeed frightfully
gone back since the beginning of the century; but it has again begun
to advance; Nikaia, Antioch, Jerusalem itself, are restored to the
Christian world, and Nikaia is restored, not only to the Christian
world but to the obedience of the Eastern Augustus. And, by not least
memorable change among so many, the great Mediterranean island, the
battle-field of Greek and Saracen, has passed away from the rule of
either, while remaining the flourishing dwelling-place of both. Sicily
has entered within the range of Western Christendom, and Palermo, like
Winchester, has entered within the range of Norman dominion. When
Æthelred reigned at Winchester and Richard at Rouen, a bishop of
Evreux could not have performed the funeral rites of a bishop of
Bayeux within the walls and between the havens of the Happy City.
[Sidenote: Change from Æthelred to William Rufus.]
[Sidenote: Schemes of Rufus.]
Changes then had been great in east and west and north and south
during the century which carries us from Otto the Wonder of the World
and Basil the Slayer of the Bulgarians to what at first sight seems
the lower level of Henry the Fourth and Alexios Komnênos. And when in
our own land the same space carries us from Æthelred to William Rufus,
the gap seems wider still. And it was at least not the fault of
William Rufus that the changes wrought by the eleventh century were
not greater still. Æthelred, the man without rede, was not likely to
change the face of the world, unless by passively supplying the means
for Swegen and Cnut to change it. But William Rufus had no lack of
rede of one kind, though it was perhaps of a kind which better
deserved to be called _unrede_. But it was _unrede_ of a more active
kind than the _unrede_ of Æthelred. William was eager enough to change
the face of the world for his own behoof. To win, after a sort, the
submission of Scotland and Maine, to plan the conquest of Ireland and
France, to negotiate for the purchase of Aquitaine――here alone are
far-reaching plans enough, plans which could not have been carried out
without some large result on the history of mankind. That result could
never have been the lasting establishment of that Empire of Gaul and
Britain of which Rufus seems to have dreamed. But had his continental
plans been successful, they might have led, as the marriage of Lewis
and Eleanor in the next century might have led, to the formation of a
kingdom of France in the modern sense some ages before its time.
[Sidenote: Contradiction in William’s position.]
[Sidenote: His defeats not counted defeats.]
The strange thing is that a man who schemed so much, who filled so
great a place in the eyes of his own generation, after all did so
little. Almost more strange is the way in which he sees all his great
plans utterly shattered, and yet seems to feel no shame, no
discouragement, no shock to his belief in his own greatness. He comes
back really defeated; he has twice won Le Mans, and that is all; but
if he has won Le Mans, he cannot win Mayet. So far from winning Paris,
he cannot win Chaumont. So far from reigning on the Garonne, he cannot
keep even the frontier of the Loir. But what would have been counted
defeat in any one else does not seem to have been counted defeat in
William Rufus. Beaten at all points but one, he still keeps the air of
a conqueror; he still seems to be looked on as a conqueror by others.
From the beginning to the end, there is a kind of glamour about the
Red King and all that he does. He has a kind of sleight of hand which
imposes on men’s minds; like the Athenian orator, when he is thrown in
the wrestling-match, he makes those who saw his fall believe that he
has never fallen.[746] We might even borrow a word from the piebald
jargon of modern diplomacy; we might say that the reign of the Red
King was the highest recorded effort of _prestige_.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: The year 1100.]
[Sidenote: Lack of events in its earlier months.]
[Sidenote: Contrast with the year 1000.]
[Sidenote: Vague expectations afloat.]
[Sidenote: Portents and prophecies.]
And now we have entered on the last year of the reign and of the
century. It is a year whose earlier months are, within our own range
at least, singularly barren of events, while its latter months are
full of matter to record. It is a kind of tribute to the importance of
William Rufus that there is at once so much to record the moment he is
out of the way. When he is gone, a large part of the world feels
relief. But about the lack of events earlier in the year there is
something strange and solemn. The last year of the eleventh century
was not marked by that general feeling of awe and wonder and looking
forward to judgement which marked the last year of the tenth century.
But, at least within the range of the Red King’s influence, that year
seems to have been marked by that vague kind of feeling of a coming
something which some of us have felt before the great events of our
own times. Whatever may be the cause, it is certain that, as the news
of events which have happened sometimes travels with a speed which
ordinary means cannot account for,[747] so the approach of events
which have not yet happened is sometimes felt in a way which we can
account for as little. Coming events do cast their shadows before
them, in a fashion which, whether philosophy can explain it or not,
history must accept as a fact. And coming events did preeminently cast
their shadows before them in the first half of the year 1100. In that
age the feeling which weighed on men’s minds naturally took the form
of portent and prophecy, of strange sights seen and strange sounds
listened to. There is not the slightest ground for thinking that all
these tales are mere inventions after the fact, though they were
likely enough to be improved in the telling after the fact. The
frightful state of things in the land, unparalleled even in those evil
times, joined with the feeling of expectation which always attends any
marked note of time, be it a fresh week or a fresh millennium――all
worked together to bring about a looking for something to come, partly
perhaps in fear, but far more largely in hope. Things could hardly get
worse; they might get better. Men’s minds were charged with
expectation; every sight, every sound, became an omen; if some men
risked prophecies, if some of their prophecies were fulfilled, it was
not wonderful. The first half of the year, blank in events, was rich
in auguries; in the second half the auguries had largely become facts.
In its first months men were saying with hope, “Non diu dominabuntur
effeminati.”[748] Before the twelvemonth was out, they were beginning
to say with joy, “Hic rex Henricus destruxit impios regni.”[749]
§ 1. _The Last Days of William Rufus._
_January――August, 1100._
[Sidenote: The three assemblies of 1099-1100.]
[Sidenote: Christmas at Gloucester. 1099-1000.]
[Sidenote: Easter at Winchester. April 1, 1100.]
[Sidenote: Pentecost at Westminster. May 20, 1100.]
[Sidenote: No record of these assemblies.]
[Sidenote: Death of Urban.]
This year the King, occupied by no warfare beyond his realm, was able
to hold all the assemblies of the year at their wonted times and in
their wonted places.[750] At Christmas William Rufus wore his crown at
Gloucester, the place of his momentary repentance and of his wildest
insolence. He had there given the staff to Anselm; he had there sent
away Malcolm from his court without a hearing. At Easter he wore his
crown at Winchester, the city which had first received him after the
death of his father, where he had first unlocked his father’s
treasures, and had put in bonds those whom his father had set free. At
Whitsuntide he wore his crown at Westminster, and again held the
assembly and the banquet in the mighty hall of his own rearing. We
have no record of the acts of any of these three assemblies. The two
former at least may well have been gatherings which came together more
for the display of kingly magnificence than for the transaction of any
real business of the realm. All things seemed to be as glorious as
ever for the defeated of Mayet and Chaumont. In the death of Urban
Rufus saw the removal of an enemy, at least of a hindrance in his way.
He had indeed found that Urban could be won to his will by a bribe.
Still he was a Pope, a Pope whom he had himself acknowledged, a Pope
whom it might be needful to bribe. Better far was it to come back to
the happy days before he had been cajoled by Cardinal Walter, before
he had been frightened into naming Anselm, the happy days when he was
troubled by no archbishop in the land and no pope out of it. Those
days were come again. Anselm was far away; Urban was dead; Paschal he
had not acknowledged. The last recorded words of Rufus before the day
of Lammas and its morrow were those in which he set forth his fixed
purpose to use as he would the freedom which was his once more.[751]
[Sidenote: Continental schemes of Rufus.]
But if we have no record of the three assemblies of the year, if we
have no traditional sayings of the King, if we have no record of
anything that really happened during these months, we can see that
great schemes were planned; great preparations were making, which must
have been the matter of deep debates at the Pentecostal assembly. Our
own Chroniclers are silent; our tidings come from our familiar teacher
at Saint Evroul. Though the Red King kept himself so close in his
island kingdom, he was planning greater things than ever beyond the
sea. He had Normandy to keep and he had Aquitaine to win. For such
objects he had need of both gold and steel, and we cannot doubt that
in the assembly held at Whitsuntide within the new hall of Westminster
King William demanded no small store of both to enable him to carry
out the schemes of his overweening pride.
[Sidenote: Robert’s return from the crusade.]
[Sidenote: His marriage with Sibyl of Conversana.]
[Sidenote: His reception in south Italy.]
[Sidenote: Character of the Duchess Sibyl.]
[Sidenote: His funds for buying back the duchy.]
Normandy was to be kept. Duke Robert, the bold crusader, was coming
back from the lands where his name, once so despised in his own duchy,
had been crowned with unlooked-for glory. He was coming back by the
path by which he had gone, through the Norman lands of southern Italy.
And he was coming with a companion whose presence promised something
in the way of amendment alike of his private life and of his public
government. He brought with him a wife, Sibyl of Conversana, daughter
of Geoffrey lord of Brindisi, and grand-niece of Robert Wiscard. He
had been welcomed by his southern countrymen with all honours and with
precious gifts; both Rogers, the Duke of Apulia and the young Count of
Sicily, to be one day the first and all but the most famous of
Sicilian kings, were zealous in showing their regard. But from the
house of the Count of Conversana he took away the most precious gift
of all in a woman who is described as uniting all merits and beauties
within and without, and who was certainly far better fitted to rule
the duchy of Normandy than he was.[752] His father-in-law and his
other friends gave him great gifts in money and precious things
towards redeeming his dominions from his brother.[753] But William
Rufus had no thought of restoring the pledge; he had Normandy in his
grasp, and he had no mind to let it go.
[Sidenote: William of Aquitaine;]
[Sidenote: his crusade;]
[Sidenote: He proposes to pledge his duchy to Rufus.]
[Sidenote: Preparations for occupation of Aquitaine.]
But besides this, Aquitaine was to be won. It was indeed to be won in
a peaceful sort, as far as the engagements of its sovereign went. Duke
William of Poitiers, the ally of William of England in his French
campaign, was at last ready for his crusade. Strange warrior of the
cross, strange comrade for Godfrey or even for Robert, was he who,
after his return from the Sepulchre, spared the life of a holy bishop
who rebuked him on the ground that he hated him too much to send him
to paradise, who brought together the monastic harem at Niort, and who
marched to battle with the form of his adulterous mistress painted on
his shield.[754] But now he was setting forth for the holy war. Thirty
thousand warriors――the conventional number everywhere――from Aquitaine,
Gascony, and other lands of southern Gaul, were ready, we are told, to
follow in his train.[755] But Duke William, like Duke Robert, lacked
money. He sent therefore to the master of the hoard which seemed open
to all comers, seeking to pledge his duchy, as Robert had pledged
his.[756] We cannot help suspecting that some such arrangement had
been made at an earlier time, when the two Williams joined their
forces together against France; but, if not made then, it was made
now. King William readily agreed to an offer which would practically
make him master of the greater part of Gaul. He was lord of Normandy;
he held himself to be master of Maine; he was about to become lord of
Aquitaine. Maine and Poitou indeed did not march on each other; but
Anjou might be won by some means. Fulk could not hold out against a
prince who hemmed him in on either side. Either gold or steel would
surely open the way to Angers, as well as to Rouen and to Bourdeaux.
Prepared for all chances, William was gathering money, gathering
ships, gathering men, for a greater work than fruitless attacks on
Mayet and Chaumont, for the great task of enlarging his dominion,――our
guide says to the Garonne; he should rather have said to the Pyrenees.
Robert was to be kept out of Normandy; to restore to the debtor his
pledge was the dull virtue of the merchant or the Jew; such duties
touched not the honour of the good knight. No man could perform all
his promises, and the restoration of Normandy was a promise of the
class which needed not to be performed. Aquitaine was to be peacefully
bought; but possibly arms might be needed there also. All who should
dare to withstand the extension of William’s dominion to the most
southern borders of Gaul were to be brought to obedience at the
sword’s point.
[Sidenote: His alleged designs on the Empire.]
I have said “dominion;” but the word in the writer whom I follow is
_Empire_.[757] That name, one not unknown to us in the history of
Rufus, may have been dropped at random; but it may have been meant to
show that mightier schemes still were at work in the restless brain of
the Red King. We may couple the phrase with vague hints dropped
elsewhere, which show that, whether Rufus really thought of it or not,
men gave him credit for dreams of dominion greater even than the
supplanting of Fulk of Angers, of William of Poitiers, and of Philip
of Paris all at once. The doctrine that Britain was a land fruitful in
tyrants was to be carried out on a greater scale than it had been in
the days of Carausius or Maximus or the later Constantine. The father
had once been looked for at kingly Aachen;[758] the son, so men
believed, hoped to march in the steps of Brennus to imperial
Rome.[759] He would outdo the glory of all crusaders, of princes of
Antioch and kings of Jerusalem. Geoffrey, Bohemund, his own brother,
had knelt as vassals in the New Rome; he would sit as an Emperor in
the Old. Then he would have no question about acknowledging or not
acknowledging popes; he would make them or refuse to make them as he
thought good. The patrimony of Saint Peter might be let to farm, along
with the estates of Canterbury and Winchester and Salisbury. Whether
such thoughts really passed through the mind of William Rufus we can
neither affirm nor deny. That men could believe that they were passing
through his mind shows that they believed, and rightly, that he was
capable of dreaming, of planning, of attempting, anything.
[Sidenote: Portents.]
[Sidenote: Death of young Richard. May, 1100.]
[Sidenote: William, natural son of Robert.]
But while the preparations were making, the portents were gathering.
First came a stroke which reads like a rehearsal of his own end. While
Robert was coming back with his Sibyl to found a new and legitimate
dynasty in the Norman duchy, a blow fell on one of the children of his
earlier wanderings.[760] One Richard had already fallen in the haunted
shades of the New Forest,[761] and his death opened the path for his
younger brother to reign at Winchester and Rouen and Le Mans, and to
dream of reigning at Dublin, Paris, Poitiers, and Rome. Another
Richard, the natural son of Duke Robert, who must have been enrolled
in the service of his uncle, was cut off on the same fatal ground
early in May, shortly before the Westminster assembly. The King’s
knights were hunting the deer in the forest; one of them drew his bow
to bring down a stag; the arrow missed the intended victim, and
pierced Richard with a stroke which brought him dead to the
ground.[762] Great grief followed his fall; his unwitting slayer, to
escape from vengeance, fled and became a monk.[763] Young Richard thus
died while his uncle was making ready to keep his father out of the
dominions which he was pledged to restore. His brother William, the
other son of Robert’s vagrant days, seems to have followed the
fortunes of his father, till, after Tinchebrai, he went to Jerusalem
and died fighting in the Holy War.[764]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Wonders and apparitions.]
[Sidenote: Warlike preparations. June-July, 1100.]
[Sidenote: Consecration of Gloucester Abbey. July 15, 1100.]
[Sidenote: Vision and prophecies.]
The death of Richard might be a warning. It might be taken as a sign
that some special power of destiny hovered over the spot where the
dwellings of man and the houses of God had been swept away to make
clearer ground for sports where joy is sought for in the wanton
infliction of death and suffering. Still it was no portent out of the
ordinary course of nature. But portents of this kind too were not
lacking. The pool of blood in Berkshire welled again;[765] the devil
was seen openly in many places, showing himself, it would seem, to
Normans only, and talking to them of their countrymen the King and the
Bishop of Durham.[766] Strange births, stranger unbirths, were told as
the news of the day to a visitor from another land.[767] As the day
approaches, a crowd of vivid pictures seems to pass before us. June
and July passed amidst preparations for war, but July saw also one
great ecclesiastical ceremony. Abbot Serlo’s minster of Gloucester was
now near enough to perfection for its consecration to be sought for.
Whether all the lofty pillars of the nave were as yet reared or not,
at least that massive eastern limb with its surrounding chapels, which
may still be seen through the lace-work of later times, was already
finished. The rite of its hallowing was done by the diocesan Samson
and three other bishops, Gundulf of Rochester, Gerard of Hereford, and
Hervey the shepherd of the stormy diocese of Bangor. The zeal of the
monks and their visitors was stirred up by the ceremony, and the house
of Saint Peter at Gloucester became a special seat of vision and
prophecy. One godly brother[768] saw in the dreams of the night the
Lord sitting on his throne, with the hosts of heaven and the choirs of
the saints around him. A fair and stately virgin stood forth and knelt
before the Lord. She prayed him to have pity on his people who were
ground down beneath the yoke of King William of England. The dreamer
trembled, and understood that the suppliant was the holy Church of
Christ, calling on her Lord and Saviour to look down on all that her
children bore from the lusts and robberies and other evil deeds of the
King and his followers.[769] Serlo, filled with holy zeal, set down
the vision in writing, and sent the message of warning to the
King.[770]
[Sidenote: Abbot Fulchered’s sermon at Gloucester. August 1, 1100.]
But the visions of the night were not all. A more open voice of
prophecy, so men deemed, was not lacking. A few days after the monk’s
vision, on the day of Lammas, a crowd of all classes was gathered in
Saint Peter’s church at Gloucester to keep the feast of Saint
Peter-in-Chains.[771] Fulchered, Abbot of Earl Roger’s house at
Shrewsbury, once a monk of Earl Roger’s house at Seez, an eloquent
preacher of the divine word, was chosen from a crowd of elders[772] to
make his discourse to the people. A near neighbour of the terrible son
of his own founder, none could know better than he under what woes the
land was groaning. Fulchered mounted the pulpit of the newly-hallowed
minster, and the spirit of the old prophets came upon him.[773] In
glowing words he set forth the sins and sorrows of the time, how
England was given as an heritage to be trodden under foot of the
ungodly. Lust, greediness, pride, all were rampant, pride which would,
if it were possible, trample under foot the very stars of heaven.[774]
The words have the ring of the words of Eadward on his deathbed; but
Eadward had to tell of coming sorrow, and of only distant deliverance.
Fulchered could tell of a deliverance which was nigh, even at the
doors. A sudden change was at hand; the men who had ceased to be men
should rule no longer.[775] And then in a strain which seems to carry
us on to the days of Naseby and Dunbar, he told how the Lord God was
coming to judge the open enemies of his spouse. He told how the
Almighty would smite Moab and Edom with the sword of vengeance, and
overthrow the mountains of Gilboa with a fearful shaking. “Lo,” he
went on, “the bow of wrath from on high is bent against the wicked,
and the arrow swift to wound is drawn from the quiver. It shall soon
smite, and that suddenly; let every man that is wise amend his ways
and avoid its stroke.”[776]
[Sidenote: The alleged dream of the King.]
[Sidenote: Exhortation of Gundulf.]
Such is the report of Abbot Fulchered’s sermon, as it is told us by
one who no doubt set down with a special interest the words of the
first prelate of the minster into which the humble church of his own
father had grown.[777] Other stories tell us how on the night of that
same Wednesday a more fearful dream than that of the monk of
Gloucester disturbed the slumbers of some one. In the earlier version
the seer is a monk from beyond sea; in its later form the terrible
warning is vouchsafed to the King himself.[778] The story, as usual,
puts on fresh details as it grows; but its essential features are the
same in its simplest and in its most elaborate shape. The King, with
his proud and swelling air, scorning all around him, enters a church.
In one version it is a chapel in a forest; in another it is a minster
gorgeously adorned. Its walls were robed with velvet and purple,
stuffs wrought by the skill of the Greek, and with tapestry where the
deeds of past times lived in stitch-work, like the tale of Brihtnoth
at Ely and the newer tale of William at Bayeux.[779] Here were goodly
books, here were the shrines of saints, gleaming with gold and gems
and ivory, a sight such as the eyes of the master and spoiler of so
many churches had never rested on. At a second glance all this bravery
passed away; the walls and the altar itself stood bare. At a third
glance he saw the form of a man lying bare upon the altar. A cannibal
desire came on him; he ate, or strove to eat, of the body that lay
before him. His victim endured for a while in patience; then his face,
hitherto goodly and gentle as of an angel, became stern beyond words,
and he spoke――“Is it not enough that thou hast thus far grieved me
with so many wrongs? Wilt thou gnaw my very flesh and bones?” One
version gives the words another turn; the stern voice answers simply,
“Henceforth thou shalt eat of me no more.” In those accounts which
make the King the dreamer, Rufus tells the vision to a bishop――one
tale names Gundulf――who explains the easy parable. The exhortation
follows, to mend his ways, to hold a synod and to restore Anselm. The
King, in one account, in a momentary fit of penitence, promises to do
so. But his better feelings pass away; in defiance of all warnings, he
goes forth to hunt on the fatal ground, the scene of the wrong and
sacrilege of his father――in some of these versions the scene of
further wrong and sacrilege of his own.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: William at Brockenhurst. August 1, 1100.]
[Sidenote: His companions.]
[Sidenote: Henry.]
[Sidenote: Walter Tirel.]
[Sidenote: His father the Dean of Evreux.]
[Sidenote: His lordships and marriage.]
The details of some of these stories I shall discuss elsewhere. If
they prove nothing else, they prove at least the deep impression which
the Red King’s life and the Red King’s end made on the men of his own
days and of the days which followed them. One thing is certain; on the
first day of August, while Fulchered was preaching at Gloucester, King
William was in the New Forest, with his head-quarters seemingly at
Brockenhurst.[780] He had with him several men whose names are known
to us, as Gilbert of Laigle, once so fierce against William’s cause at
Rouen, Gilbert and Roger of Clare, the former of whom had won his
forgiveness by his timely revelations on the march to Bamburgh.[781]
Henry, Ætheling and Count, if not one of the party, was not far off;
he too had, if not his visions, at least his omens.[782] But chief
among the company, nearest, it would seem, to the King in sportive
intercourse, was one who was perhaps his subject in Normandy by birth,
perhaps his subject in England by tenure, but whose chief possessions,
as well as his feelings, belonged to another land.[783] This was a
baron of France, whom we once before heard of in better company, but
whom the fame of the Red King’s boundless liberality had led into his
service. In days before the stern laws of Hildebrand were strictly
enforced, a churchman of high rank, Fulk, Dean of Evreux, was,
seemingly by a lawful marriage, the father of a large family. Walter,
one of his sons, bore the personal surname of _Tirel_, _Tyrell_, in
many spellings, pointing perhaps to his skill in drawing the bow. He
became, by whatever means, lord of Poix in Ponthieu, and of Achères by
the Seine between Pontoise and Poissy; at the former of these
lordships, it would seem, he had once been the host of Anselm.[784] He
was not, in the days of the Survey at least, a land-owner of much
account in England. A small lordship in Essex, held under Richard of
Clare, is the only entry under any name by which he can be conceived
to be meant. He had married a wife, Adelaide by name, of the great
line of Giffard, who seems to have lived till the latter days of King
Henry. He was now a near friend of the Red King’s, a special sharer
with him in the sports of the forest, so much so that, when legend
came to attribute the laying waste of Hampshire to the younger instead
of the elder William, Walter Tirel was charged with having been the
adviser of the deed.[785]
[Sidenote: _Gab_ of the King and Walter Tirel.]
[Sidenote: Walter jeers at the king.]
[Sidenote: William’s alleged subjects and allies.]
[Sidenote: The King’s answer; he will keep Christmas at Poitiers.]
[Sidenote: Angry words of Walter.]
On the Wednesday of Fulchered’s sermon, the King and his chosen
comrade were talking familiarly. Walter fell into that kind of
discourse which is called in the Old-French tongue by the expressive
words _gaber_ and _gab_.[786] He began to talk big, to jeer at the
King for the small results of his own big talk. But the matter of the
discourse sounds a little strange, if it was really uttered at a
moment when such great preparations were making for the defence of
Normandy, for the purchase of Aquitaine, perhaps for the conquest of
Anjou, to say nothing of schemes greater and further off. The lord of
Poix asked the King why he did nothing; with his vast power, why did
he not attack some neighbour? Great as the Red King’s power was,
Walter is made to speak of it as a good deal greater than the truth,
so much so indeed that we can read the speech only as mockery. All
William’s men were ready at his call, the men of Britanny, of
Maine,[787] he adds of Anjou. The Flemings held of him――we have heard
of his dealings with their Count;[788] the Burgundians held him for
their king; Eustace of Boulogne would do anything at his bidding.[789]
Why did he not make war on somebody? Why did he not go forth and
conquer some land or other? The King answers that he means to lead his
host as far as the mountains――the Alps, we may suppose, are meant. He
will thence turn back to the West, and will keep his next Christmas
feast at Poitiers.[790] The mocking vein of Walter Tirel now turns to
anger; he bursts forth in wrathful words. It would be a great matter
indeed to go to the mountains and thence back to Poitiers in time for
Christmas. Burgundians and French would indeed deserve to die by the
worst of deaths, if they became subjects to the English.[791]
[Sidenote: Illustrative value of the story.]
This talk, put into the mouth of the King and his chosen comrade by a
writer of the next generation, is in every way remarkable. The King’s
boast that he would keep Christmas at Poitiers is found also in an
earlier writer, and it is almost implied in his preparations for
taking possession of Aquitaine.[792] The words about French and
Burgundians becoming subject to the English might sound more in
harmony with the next generation; but we have already seen examples
which show that, even so soon after the Norman Conquest of England,
the English name was beginning to be applied on continental lips to
all the subjects of the English crown. The armies of William Rufus
were English in the same sense in which the armies of Justinian were
Roman. The threat of a King of England, speaking on English ground, to
overrun all the provinces of Gaul is conceived as calling forth a
feeling of patriotic anger in the lord of Poix and Achères. Yet, while
we might have expected such an one to fight valiantly for Ponthieu or
the Vexin against a Norman invader, we might also have expected him to
be quite indifferent to the fate of Poitiers, indifferent at all
events to its transfer from the Aquitanian to the Norman William. The
speech is followed by words which imply that the King’s boast was
taken more seriously than it was meant, and which almost suggest a
plot on Walter’s part for the King’s destruction.[793] In the crowd of
conflicting tales with which we are now dealing, we must not insist on
any one as a trustworthy statement of undoubted facts; but the
dialogue which is put into the mouths of William Rufus and Walter
Tirel is almost as remarkable if we look on it as the invention of the
rimer himself as if we deem it to have been, in its substance, really
spoken by those into whose mouths it is put.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Last day of William Rufus. August 2, 1100.]
[Sidenote: Statement of the Chronicle.]
[Sidenote: Other versions; Walter Tirel mentioned in most.]
[Sidenote: Ralph of Aix.]
[Sidenote: The charge denied by Walter.]
[Sidenote: Estimate of the received tale.]
[Sidenote: The statement of the Chronicle the only safe one.]
[Sidenote: Wonder that he was not killed sooner.]
Of the events of the next day we may say thus much with certainty;
“Thereafter on the morrow after Lammas day was the King William in
hunting from his own men with an arrow offshot, and then to Winchester
brought and in the bishopric buried.”[794] These words of our own
Chronicler state the fact of the King’s death and its manner; they
suggest treason, but they do not directly assert it; they name no one
man as the doer. Nearly all the other writers agree in naming Walter
Tirel as the man who drew the bow; but they agree also in making his
act chance-medley and not wilful murder. Yet it is clear that there
were other tales afloat of which we hear merely the echoes. One
tradition attributed the blow, not to Walter Tirel, but to a certain
Ralph of Aix.[795] As the tale is commonly told, the details of the
King’s death could have been known from no mouth but that of Walter
himself; yet it is certain that Walter himself, long after, when he
had nothing to hope or fear one way or the other, denied in the most
solemn way that he had any share in the deed or any knowledge of
it.[796] The words of the Chronicler, though they suggest treason, do
not shut out chance-medley; they leave the actor perfectly open. There
is nothing in the received tale which is in the least unlikely; but it
is the kind of tale which, even if untrue, might easily grow up.
William may have died by accident by the hand of Walter Tirel or of
any other. He may also have died by treason by the hand of Walter
Tirel or of any other. In this last case there were many reasons why
no inquiries should have been made, many reasons why the received tale
should be invented or adopted. It was just such a story as was wanted
in such a case. It satisfied curiosity by naming a particular actor,
while it named an actor who was out of reach, and did not charge even
him with any real guilt. In favour of the same story is the statement,
which can hardly be an invention, that Walter Tirel fled after the
King’s death. But this was a case in which a man who was innocent even
of chance-medley might well flee from the fear of a suspicion of
treason. And Walter’s own solemn denial may surely go for as much as
any mere suspicion against him. Guesses in such a case are easy; the
slayer may have been a friend of Henry, a friend of Anselm, a man
goaded to despair by oppression――all such guesses are likely enough in
themselves; there is no evidence for any of them. All that can be said
is that the words of the Chronicle certainly seem to point out the
actor, whether guilty or only unlucky, as belonging to the King’s
immediate following. “The King William was in hunting from his own men
by an arrow offshot.” Beyond that we cannot go with certainty. But the
number of men of every class who must have felt that they would be the
better, if an arrow or any other means of death could be brought to
light on the Red King, must have been great indeed. The real wonder
is, not that the shaft struck him in the thirteenth year of his reign,
but that no hand had stricken him long before.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Accounts of the King’s last day.]
Of the last day of the Red King, Thursday, the second day of August,
we have two somewhat minute pictures which belong to different hours
of the day. There is no contradiction between the two; the two may be
read as an unbroken story; but we have that slight feeling of distrust
which cannot fail to arise when it is clear that he who records the
events of the afternoon knew nothing of the events of the morning. The
details of such a day would be sure to be remembered; for the same
reason they ran a special chance of being coloured and embellished. We
shall therefore do well to go through the details of the earlier hours
of that memorable day as we find them written, not forgetting the
needful cautions, but at the same time not forgetting that the tale
has much direct evidence for it and has no direct evidence against
it.[797]
[Sidenote: Morning of August 2.]
[Sidenote: William’s dreams.]
[Sidenote: Robert Fitz-hamon tells the monk’s dream.]
[Sidenote: William’s mocking answer.]
[Sidenote: His disturbance of mind.]
[Sidenote: His morning.]
The King then, even according to those who do not assign the specially
fearful vision to himself, passed a restless night, disturbed by
dreams which, on this milder showing, were ugly enough. He dreamed
that he was bled――a process which in those days seems to have passed
for a kind of amusement――and that the blood gushed up towards heaven,
so as to shut out the light of day.[798] He woke suddenly with the
name of our Lady on his lips; he bade a light to be brought, and bade
his chamberlains not to leave him.[799] He remained awake till
daybreak. Then, according to this version, came Robert Fitz-hamon,
entitled to do so as being in his closest confidence,[800] and told
him the dream of the monk from beyond sea. William was moved; but he
tried to hide his real feelings under the usual guise of mockery; “He
is a monk,” he said with his rude laugh, “he is a monk; monklike he
dreams for the sake of money; give him a hundred shillings.”[801] Here
we see the boasted liberality which recklessly squandered with one
hand what was wrung from the groaning people with the other. Seriously
disturbed in mind, William doubted whether he should go hunting that
morning; his friends urged him to run no risk, lest the dream should
come true. He therefore, to occupy his restless mind, gave the
forenoon to serious business;[802] there was enough of it on hand, if
he was planning a march to Rome or even a march to Poitiers. The early
dinner of those days presently came; he ate and drank more than usual,
hoping thus to stifle and drown the thoughts that pressed upon
him.[803] In this attempt he seems to have succeeded; after his meal
he went forth on his hunting.
[Sidenote: He sets forth to hunt.]
[Sidenote: The new arrows.]
[Sidenote: He gives two of them to Walter Tirel.]
[Sidenote: Abbot Serlo’s letter.]
[Sidenote: William’s mockery.]
[Sidenote: His sneers at English regard for omens.]
At this point we take up the thread of the other story. The King,
after his meal, has regained his spirits, and, surrounded by his
followers and flatterers, he is making ready for the chase. He was
putting on his boots――boots doubtless of no small price――when a smith
drew near, offering him six new _catapults_, arrows, it would seem,
designed, not for the long bow, but for the more deadly arbalest or
cross-bow.[804] The King joyfully took them; he praised the work of
the craftsman; he kept four for himself, and gave two to Walter Tirel.
“Tis right,” he said, “that the sharpest arrows should be given to him
who knows how to deal deadly strokes with them.”[805] The two went on
talking and jesting; the flatterers of the King joined in admiringly.
Suddenly there came a monk from Gloucester charged with a letter from
Abbot Serlo. The letter told the dream of the monk, in which the Holy
Church had been seen calling on her Lord for vengeance on the evil
deeds of the King of the English. The letter was read to the
King[806]――there was a future king not far off who could read letters
for himself. William burst into his bitter laugh; he turned to his
favourite comrade; “Walter, do thou do justice, according to these
things which thou hast heard.” “So I will, my lord,” answered
Walter.[807] Then the King talks more at length about the Abbot’s
letter. “I wonder at my lord Serlo’s fancy for writing all this; I
always thought him a good old abbot. ’Tis very simple of him, when I
have so much business about, to take the trouble to put the dreams of
his snoring monks into writing and to send them to me all this way.
Does he think I am like the English, who throw up their journey or
their business because of the snoring or the dreams of an old
woman?”[808] This speech has a genuine sound; it should be noticed as
being the only speech put into the mouth of William Rufus which can be
construed as expressing any dislike or scorn for his English subjects
as such. Yet the words are rather words of good-humoured raillery than
expressive of any deeper feeling. The Red King oppressed and despised
all men, except his own immediate following. Practically his
oppression and scorn must have fallen most heavily on men of native
English birth; but there is no sign that he purposely picked them out
as objects of any special persecution.
[Sidenote: William and his companions go to the hunt.]
[Sidenote: The King and Walter Tirel.]
[Sidenote: The King shot by an arrow.]
[Sidenote: Various versions.]
[Sidenote: Alleged devotion of the King at the last moment.]
In the version which records this speech the sneer at the English
regard for omens are the Red King’s last recorded words. He now
mounted his horse and rode into a wooded part of the forest to seek
his sport, the sport of those to whom the sufferings of the wearied,
wounded, weeping, beast are a source of joy. Count Henry the King’s
brother,[809] William of Breteuil, and other nobles, went forth to the
hunt, and were scattered about towards different points. The King and
the lord of Poix kept together, with a few companions, some say;
others say that they two only kept together.[810] The sun was sinking
towards the west when an arrow struck the King; he fell, and his reign
and life were ended. This is all that we can say with positive
certainty. That the arrow came from the bow of Walter Tirel is a
feature common to nearly every account; but all the details differ. In
one highly picturesque version, not only the King and Walter
Tirel,[811] but a company of barons are in a thickly wooded part of
the forest near a marsh. The herd of deer comes near; the King gets
down from his horse to take better aim; the barons get down also,
Walter Tirel among them. Walter places himself near an elder-tree,
behind an aspen. A great stag passes by; an arrow badly aimed pierces
the King; by whose hand it was sent the teller of the tale knew not;
but the archers who were there said that the shaft came from the bow
of Walter Tirel. Walter fled at once; the King fell. He thrice cried
for the Lord’s body. But there was none to give it to him; the place
was a wilderness far from any church. But a hunter took herbs and
flowers and made the King eat, deeming this to be a communion. Such a
strange kind of figure of the most solemn act of Christian worship was
not unknown.[812] Our author charitably hopes that it might be
accepted in the case of the Red King, especially as he had received
holy bread――itself a substitute of the same kind――the Sunday before.
[Sidenote: Another version;]
[Sidenote: William unwilling to go to the hunt.]
[Sidenote: He is shot by accident by a knight unnamed.]
[Sidenote: He dies penitent.]
In this version there is no mention of the warning dreams either of
the King or of any other person. The scene in the wood follows at once
on the boasting discourse with Walter Tirel. In another version the
King has the frightful dream; he receives, and receives in a good
spirit, the warning interpretation of the Bishop.[813] His companions,
knights and valets, make ready for the chase; they are mounted on
their horses; the bows are ready; the dogs are following; the dogs
bark; the horns blow; all is ready that could stir up the soul of the
hunter. The King is unwilling to stir; his companions tempt him,
entreat him, jeer at him; it is time to set out; he is afraid. He
tells them solemnly that he is sick and sad a hundredfold more than
they wot of. The end is come; he will not go to the forest. They think
that he is mocking, and at last constrain him to come. The chase is
described; the King seems to be alone with one unnamed companion. The
King calls on his comrade to shoot; he is frightened as being too near
the King. He shoots; the devil guides the barbed arrow so that it
glances from a bough, and pierces the King near the heart. He has just
strength enough to bid the knight to flee for his own life, and to
pray to God for him who has lost his life by his own folly, and who
has been so great a sinner against God. The knight rides off in bitter
grief, wishing a hundred times that he had himself been killed instead
of the King.
[Sidenote: Tenderness towards Rufus in these two versions.]
[Sidenote: Other versions mention Walter Tirel.]
In these versions, both written in the Red King’s own tongue, the
details are very remarkable. They seem to come from a kind of wish,
like the feeling which strewed flowers on the grave of Nero, to make
the end of the oppressor and blasphemer one degree less frightful.
Other versions know nothing of this conversion at the last moment. In
one of them, the two, the King and Walter, are alone; the King shoots
at a stag; he hits the beast, but only with a slight wound. The stag
flies; the King follows him with his eyes, sheltering them with his
hand from the sun’s rays. Walter Tirel meanwhile aims at another stag,
misses him, and strikes the King. Rufus utters no word; like Harold,
he breaks off the shaft of the arrow; he falls on the ground, and
dies. Walter comes up, finds him lifeless, and takes to flight.[814]
Or again, the stag comes between his two enemies; Walter shoots; the
King at the same moment shifts his place; Walter’s arrow flies over
the stag’s back, and pierces the King.[815] In another version the
arrow, as we have already heard, glances from a tree;[816] in another
the King stumbles and falls upon it.[817] In later but not less
graphic accounts the string of the King’s bow breaks; the stag stands
still in amazement; the King calls to Walter, “Shoot, you devil,”
“Shoot, in the devil’s name; shoot, or it will be the worse for you.”
Walter shoots; his arrow, perhaps by a straight course, perhaps by
glancing against a tree, strikes the King to the heart.[818]
[Sidenote: Dunstable version.]
[Sidenote: The dream with new details.]
[Sidenote: The prior of Dunstable warns the King.]
[Sidenote: The King shot by Ralph of Aix.]
In all these versions the arrow comes from the bow of a known
companion, and in all but one that companion is said to be Walter
Tirel. In another form of the story the general outline is the same,
but the persons are different. The vision which in the other version
is seen at Gloucester is moved to Dunstable, and is seen there by the
prior of that house. The change of place is unlucky, as the priory of
Dunstable was not yet founded.[819] The Prince on his throne, and the
fair woman complaining of the deeds of William Rufus, are seen, with
some differences of detail, but quite a new element is brought in. A
man all black and hairy offers five arrows to the Prince on the
throne, who gives them back again to him, saying that on the morrow
the wrongs of the suppliant woman shall be avenged by one of them. The
Prior has the vision explained to him much as in the other versions of
the story, but with the addition that, unless the King repented, the
woman――the Church――would be avenged by one of the arrows on the
morrow. The Prior starts from his sleep, and midnight as it was, he
sets out at once on a journey to the New Forest, as swift and headlong
as the King’s own ride to Southampton the year before. He reaches the
place at one in the afternoon, and finds the King going forth to hunt.
As soon as William sees him, he says that he knows why he is come, and
orders forty marks to be given to him. For, it is added, the King, who
destroyed other churches throughout all England, had a love for the
church of Dunstable and its prior, and had even built the minster
there at his own cost. The Prior says that he has come on much greater
and weightier matters; he takes the King aside; he tells him his
dream, and warns him on no account to go into the forest, but at once
to begin to repent and amend his ways. The Prior has hardly ended his
discourse when a man, like the man whom he had seen in his dream,
comes and offers the King five arrows, like the arrows of the dream.
The King gives them――not to Walter Tirol, who is not mentioned, but to
Ralph of Aix, to take with him into the forest. The Prior meanwhile
prays him not to go, but in vain. He goes into the wood, and is
presently shot with one of those arrows by the hand of Ralph. No
details are given, nor is it implied whether the King’s death was an
act of murder or of chance-medley.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Impression made at the time by the death of Rufus.]
[Sidenote: Its abiding memory.]
[Sidenote: Local traditions.]
[Sidenote: Impressive character of the death of Rufus.]
[Sidenote: Rufus and Charles the First.]
[Sidenote: The words of the Chronicle.]
[Sidenote: End and character of Rufus.]
[Sidenote: Judgement on the reign of Rufus.]
These varying tales, whose very variety shows the impression which the
event made upon men’s minds, may make us glad to come back to the safe
statement of the Chronicler, that the Red King was shot from his own
men. The place and circumstances of the death of Rufus were such as
could not fail to stamp themselves upon men’s minds. We see the proud
and godless King, in the height of his pride and godlessness, with his
heart puffed up with wilder plans and more swelling boasts than any of
his plans and boasts in former years. He goes forth, in defiance of
all warning――for some kernel of truth there must surely be in so many
tales of warning――to take his pleasure in the place which men had
already learned to look on as fatal to his house, the place where his
brother had died by a mysterious death, where his nephew had died only
a few weeks before his own end. He goes forth, after striving first to
quiet his restless soul with business, and then to quench all thoughts
and all warnings in the wine-cup. In the midst of his sport, he falls,
by what hand no man knows for certain. One writer rejoices to tell us
how the oppressor of the Church died on the site of one of the
churches which had been uprooted to make way for his pleasures.[820]
Others rejoice to tell how the King whose life and reign had been that
of a wild beast, perished like a beast among the beasts.[821] And the
impression was not only at the time; it has been abiding. The death of
William Rufus is one of those events in English history which are
familiar to every memory and come readily to every mouth. His death
lives in the thoughts of not a few who have no clear knowledge of his
life. The arrow in the New Forest is well known to many who know
nothing of the real position of the Red King’s reign in English
history. The name of Walter Tirel springs readily to the lips of many
on whose ears the names of Randolf Flambard and Robert of Bellême, of
Helias of Maine and Malcolm of Scotland, nay the name of Anselm
himself, would fall like unwonted sounds. No keener local remembrance
can be found than that which binds together the name of Rufus and the
name of the New Forest. At the scenes of the great events of his
reign, at Rochester and Bamburgh and Le Mans, local memory has passed
away, and the presence of the Red King has to be called up by
book-learning only. In a word, in popular remembrance William Rufus
lives, not in his life but in his death. Nor is this wonderful. In the
widest survey of his reign, we can only say that his death was the
fitting ending of his life; in a life full of striking incident, it is
not amazing that the last and most striking incident of all should be
the best remembered. Of all the endings of kings in our long history,
the two most impressive are surely the two that are most opposite.
There is the death of the king who fell suddenly in the height of his
power, by an unknown hand in the thickest depths of the forest; and
there is the death of the king who, fallen from his power, was brought
forth to die by the stroke of the headsman, before the windows of his
own palace, in the sight of his people and of the sun. The striking
nature of the tale is worthy of its long remembrance; but one could
almost wish that the name of the supposed actor in the death of Rufus
had never attached itself to the story. The dark words of the
Chronicle are in truth more impressive than the tale, true or false,
of Walter Tirel. Rufus was shot in his hunting from his own men. That
is enough; his day was over. A life was ended, stained with deeds
which, in our history at least, stand out without fellow before or
after, but a life in which we may here and there see signs of great
powers wasted, even of momentary feelings which might have been
trained into something nobler. As it is, the career of William the Red
is one of which the kindest words that we can say are that he always
kept his word when it was plighted in a certain form, and that he was
less cruel in his own person than many men of his time, than some
better men than himself. But, however we judge of the man, there is
but one judgement to be passed on the reign. The arrow, by whomsoever
shot, set England free from oppression such as she never felt before
or after at the hand of a single man.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Alleged final penitence of Rufus.]
[Sidenote: The other version prevails.]
[Sidenote: Accounts of William’s burial.]
One tale of the death of Rufus, it will be remembered, charitably
describes him as seeking at the last for the mercy of the God whom he
had so often defied. Others paint him as stubborn to the end, and put
the name of the fiend in his mouth as his last words. The latter
version is the one which left its abiding remembrance; it is the one
which all men accepted at the time as the true picture of the
oppressor whose yoke was broken at that memorable Lammas-tide. But the
versions which try to assert a repentance for William Rufus at the
last moment try also to claim for him a solemn and honourable burial
amid the tears of mourning friends. One story goes so far as to place
at the head of the assembly the late Bishop of the diocese, Walkelin
of Winchester, whose body was already resting in the Old Minster,
while the revenues of his see were in the hands of the King. This
version gives us a vivid picture of the scene which followed the
King’s death.[822] A company of barons gather round the corpse. There
were the sons of Richard of Bienfaite, pointedly distinguished, the
one as _Earl_, the other only as _Lord_.[823] There were Gilbert of
Laigle and Robert Fitz-hamon, names familiar to us, and William of
Montfichet, a name afterwards well known, but which is not enrolled in
Domesday. These lords weep and rend their hair; they beat themselves
and wish they were dead; they could never have such another lord.
Gilbert of Laigle at last bids them turn from vainly lamenting the
lord who could not come back to them to paying the last honours to
what was left of him. The huntsmen make a bier; they strew it with
flowers and fern; they lay it on two palfreys; they place the corpse
on the bier and cover it with the new mantles of Robert Fitz-hamon and
William of Montfichet. Then they bear him to the minster of Saint
Swithhun, where bishops, abbots, clerks, and monks, a goodly company,
are come together. Bishop Walkelin, strange to say, watches by the
body of the King till the morning. Then it is buried with such
worship, such saying of masses, as no man had ever heard before, such
as no man would hear again till the day of doom.
[Sidenote: The genuine story.]
[Sidenote: Popular canonizations.]
[Sidenote: Popular excommunication of Rufus.]
[Sidenote: He is buried in the Old Minster without religious rites.]
[Sidenote: Fall of the tower. 1107.]
Such is the tale of those who would soften down the story; but the
version which bears on it the stamp of truth gives us quite another
picture. The King, forsaken by his nobles and companions, lay dead in
the forest, as little cared for as his father had been when he lay
dead in his chamber at Saint Gervase. Those who had been his comrades
in sport hastened hither and thither to their own homes, to guard them
against troubles that might arise, now that the land had no longer a
ruler. Only a few churls of the neighbourhood, men of the race at whom
Rufus had sneered for heeding omens and warnings, were, now that omens
and warnings had proved too true, ready to do the last corporal work
of mercy to the oppressor. They laid the bleeding body on a rustic
wain; they covered it as they could, with coarse cloths, and then took
it, dripping blood as it went, to the gates of Winchester. He who had
so dearly loved the sports of the woods was himself borne from the
woods to the city, like a savage boar pierced through by the
hunting-spear.[824] And now took place one of the most wonderful
scenes that our history records.[825] That history records not a few
cases of popular canonization; neither pope nor king could hinder Earl
Waltheof and Earl Simon from working signs and wonders on behalf of
the folk for whom they had died.[826] But nowhere else do we read of a
popular excommunication. William Rufus, as I have more than once
remarked, had never been openly cut off from the communion of the
Church. He had died indeed unshriven and unabsolved, but so had many a
better man in the endless struggles of those rough days. There was no
formal ground for refusing to his corpse or to his soul the rites, the
prayers, the offerings, which were the portion of the meanest of the
faithful. But a common thought came on the minds of all men that for
William Rufus those charitable rites could be of none avail. His foul
life, his awful death, was taken as a sign that he was smitten by a
higher judgement than that of Popes and Councils. A crowd of all
orders, ranks, and sexes, brought together by wonder or pity――we will
not deem that they came in scorn or triumph――met the humble funeral
procession, and followed the royal corpse to the Old Minster. The dead
man had been a king; the consecrating oil had been poured on his head;
his body was therefore allowed to pass within the hallowed walls, and
was laid with all speed in a grave beneath the central tower. But in
those rites, at once sad and cheerful, which accompany the burial of
the lowliest of baptized men, the lord of England and Normandy had no
share. No bell was rung; no mass was said; no offerings were made for
the soul which was deemed to have passed beyond the reach even of
eternal mercy. No man took from the hoard which Rufus had filled by
wrong to win the prayers of the poor for him by almsgiving. Men deemed
that for him prayer was too late; no scattering abroad of the treasure
by the hands of others could atone for the wrong by which the treasure
had first been brought together. Many looked on; but few mourned. None
wept for him but the mercenaries who received his pay, and the baser
partners of his foul vices. They would gladly have torn his slayer in
pieces, but he was already far away out of their reach. Thus unwept,
unprayed for, a byeword, an astonishment, and a hissing, the Red King
lay beneath the pavement of the minster of St. Swithhun. A few years
later the tower under which he lay crumbled and fell. Men said that it
fell because so foul a corpse lay beneath it.[827]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Portents at William’s death.]
[Sidenote: Dream of Abbot Hugh of Clugny. July 31, 1100.]
[Sidenote: Vision of Anselm’s doorkeeper. August 1.]
[Sidenote: News brought to Anselm’s clerk. August 2.]
[Sidenote: Vision of Count William of Mortain. August 2.]
But as portents had gone before the fall of the Red King, so portents
did not wait for the crumbling of Walkelin’s tower to startle men in
strange ways with the news that he had fallen. That news, so say the
legends of the time, was known in strange ways in far-off places, long
before the tidings could have been brought by the utmost speed of man;
sooner, it would seem, than the moment when the arrow hit its designed
or unwitting mark. Already on the last day of July, the holy abbot
Hugh of Clugny was able to tell Anselm that he had seen in a dream the
King of the English brought before the throne of God, accused, judged,
and condemned to eternal damnation.[828] The next day, the night of
the kalends of August, a bright youth stood before Anselm’s
door-keeper at Lyons, as he strove to sleep, and asked if he wished to
hear the news. The news was that the strife between King William and
Archbishop Anselm was over.[829] The next day, the day of the King’s
death, one of the Archbishop’s clerks was at the matin service,
singing with his eyes shut. He felt a small paper put into his hand
and a voice bade him read. He looked up; the bearer of the paper was
gone; but he read the words, “King William is dead.”[830] Within our
own island the news was said to have been spread abroad in yet
stranger ways. At the same hour when King William went forth to hunt
in the New Forest, his cousin Count William of Mortain went forth for
his sport also in some of his hunting-grounds in Cornwall. He too
found himself by chance alone, apart from any of his comrades. No
archer from Poix crossed his path, but a sight far more fearful. A
huge goat, shaggy and black, met him, bearing on his back a king――how
was his kingship marked?――black and naked, and wounded in the midst of
his breast. The Count adjured the beast in the holiest name to say
what all this meant.[831] The power of speech was not lacking to the
monster. “I bear,” he answered, “your king, rather your tyrant,
William the Red, to his doom. For I am the evil spirit, I am the
avenger of the wickedness with which he raged against the Church of
Christ, and I brought about his death, at the bidding of the blessed
Alban, protomartyr of England, who made his moan to the Lord, because
this man sinned beyond measure in the island which he had been the
first to hallow.”[832] From what mint this wild tale comes it is
needless to add. The house of Saint Alban was only one of thirteen
abbeys which the King had kept vacant to receive their revenues.[833]
But the other twelve were less rich in that special growth both of
legend and of genuine history which adorns the house of the
protomartyr.
§ 2. _The First Days of Henry._
_August 2――November 11, 1100._
[Sidenote: Vacancy of the throne.]
[Sidenote: Claims of Robert by the treaty of 1091.]
[Sidenote: Such claims little regarded.]
[Sidenote: Choice confined to the house of the Conqueror.]
[Sidenote: No thought of either Eadgar.]
[Sidenote: Choice between Robert and Henry.]
[Sidenote: Claims of Henry; the only son of a king.]
[Sidenote: His personal merits.]
[Sidenote: Speedy election of Henry.]
The throne was again vacant; and now came the question which
Englishmen knew so well whenever the throne was vacant, Whom should
they choose to fill it? There was indeed an instrument in being, dated
nine years before, by which it had been agreed that, if either Robert
or William died without lawful issue, the survivor should succeed to
the dominions of his brother.[834] But Englishmen had never allowed
their most precious birthright to be thus lightly signed away
beforehand. And many men of Norman birth must by this time have put on
the feelings of Englishmen on this point as on many others. With the
great mass of both races there could have been no doubt at all as to
the right man to place upon the vacant throne. By this time, we may be
sure, all thought had passed away of choosing outside the line of the
Conqueror; and if such a thought had come into the head of any man,
there was no candidate who could have been brought forward. The elder
Eadgar was far away on his crusade, and no one was likely to think of
sending to Scotland to offer the crown to his nephew. His nieces were
near at hand; but the thought of a female ruler did not come into
men’s minds till the next generation. Within the house of the
Conqueror there were two claimants. Robert had whatever right the
treaty could give him, a better right undoubtedly than any which he
could put forward as the eldest son of his father. But a paper claim
of this kind went for little when the man who asserted it was far
away, and when, had he been at hand, everything except the letter of
the treaty was against him. It went for naught when there, on the very
spot, was the man whom every sign marked out for kingship. There among
them was the only man――unless indeed they had gone to Norway to seek
for the younger Harold――who was the son of a crowned King of the
English. There was the one man of the reigning house who, born on
English soil of the Norman stock, could be looked on as a countryman
by Normans and English alike. There was the man who, while his
brothers had, in different ways, so deeply misgoverned on their
several sides of the sea, had shown, by his wise rule of a small
dominion, how far better suited he was than either of them to be
entrusted with the rule of a mighty kingdom. The Count of the
Côtentin, Henry the Ætheling, Henry the Clerk, was the man whose name
spoke alike to English and to Norman hearts. To the Normans he was the
son of their conquering Duke, the descendant of the dukes that had
been before him, the man who had made one spot of Norman ground
prosperous while anarchy tore the rest in pieces. To the English he
was their own Ætheling, the one son of their king, their countryman,
as they fondly deemed, speaking the tongue of Ælfred, sent to renew
the law of Eadward. With such a candidate at their doors, the bit of
diplomatic parchment was torn to the winds. No time was to be lost;
the land could not go without a king. The work was done speedily and
decisively. The record which tells how the late king died in the midst
of his unright, without shrift, without atonement, goes on to say, “On
the Thursday was he slain and on the morrow was he buried; and, after
that he buried was, the Witan that nigh at hand were his brother Henry
to king chose.”[835]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Story of Henry on the day of William’s death.]
[Sidenote: Henry hastes to Winchester.]
[Sidenote: William of Breteuil maintains the claim of Robert.]
[Sidenote: Popular feeling for Henry.]
[Sidenote: Formal meeting for the election. August 3.]
On the day of the Red King’s fall Count Henry was hunting in the New
Forest, but not in the same immediate part of it as his brother. The
tale ran that the string of his bow broke, that he went to the house
of a churl to get wherewithal to mend it. While the bowstring is
mending, an old woman of the house asks one of the Count’s companions
who his master was. He answers that he is Henry, brother of the king
of the land. She tells them that she knows by augury that the King’s
brother shall soon be king himself, and bids them remember her
words.[836] Henry turns again to his sport, but, as he draws near to
the wood, men meet him, one, two, three, then nine and ten, telling
him of the King’s death.[837] In this account, he goes in grief to the
place where the corpse lay;[838] a more likely version carries him
straight to the hoard at Winchester, where, as lawful heir of the
kingdom, he demands the keys at the hands of the guard.[839] The tale
reminds us of Cæsar and Metellus.[840] William of Breteuil withstands
the demand. He pleads the elder birth of Robert and the homage which
both Henry and himself had done to him. Robert had waged wars far off
for the love of God; he was now on his way to take his crown and
kingdom in peace.[841] A fierce strife arose; a crowd swiftly
gathered, and it was soon seen on which side the feelings of the
people lay. Men pressed together from all quarters to swell the
company of him who in their eyes was the lawful heir claiming his
right. The voice of England――so much of England as had heard the
news――rose high against the stranger who dared to withstand the
English Ætheling, the son of a crowned king born in the land. Thus,
four-and-thirty years after the great battle, Englishmen still looked
on the son of William Fitz-Osbern, nay on the son of William the Great
born to a duke in Normandy, as outlandish men. But the son of William
the Great, born to a king in their own land, they claimed as their own
countryman. Strengthened by the favour of the people, the Ætheling put
his hand on his sword’s hilt; he would endure no vain excuses to keep
him out of the inheritance of his father.[842] A stop seems to have
been put to this open strife, perhaps by night, perhaps by the coming
of the lowly funeral pomp of the fallen king on the Friday morning.
The unhallowed ceremony over, the Witan came together in a more
regular assembly for the formal choice of a king.
[Sidenote: Division of the assembly;]
[Sidenote: English and Norman supporters of Henry;]
[Sidenote: supporters of Robert.]
[Sidenote: Comparison with the assembly after the death of Cnut. 1035.]
[Sidenote: The divided kingdom now impossible.]
[Sidenote: Henry chosen;]
[Sidenote: influence of Henry Earl of Warwick.]
The place of their meeting, whether in the minster or in the king’s
palace, is not recorded.[843] Wherever it was, other voices were now
to be heard besides those of the Englishmen of Winchester and the
coasts thereof. These called with one voice for their own Ætheling;
but the voices of the Norman lords were by no means of one accord.
Some of the immediate companions of the late king had hastened at once
on his fall to pledge themselves to the cause of Henry. But in the
assembly which now came together a strong party, Normans we may be
sure to a man, supported the cause of Robert. There are few assemblies
of which we would more gladly hear the details than of this, in which
the claims of two candidates for the crown were debated, not without
fierce strife, but at least without bloodshed. We are reminded of the
assembly which, sixty-five years before, peaceably decided between the
claims of Harthacnut and the first Harold.[844] But then the question
was settled by a division of the kingdom; now such a thought is not
breathed. The Conqueror had made England a realm one and indivisible;
it was doubtful to which of his sons it was to pass, but, to whichever
it passed, it was to pass whole. Unluckily, when debates concerned the
kingdom only, without touching any ecclesiastical question, no Eadmer
or William Fitz-Stephen was found to report them. We know only the
result. Henry was chosen, and he largely owed his election to one
special friend. This was his namesake Henry, Earl of Warwick, the
younger son of the old Roger of Beaumont and brother of the more
famous Count of Meulan, soon to be Earl of Leicester. Earl Henry and
his wife Margaret of Mortagne bear a good character among the writers
of their time, and they seem to have been designed for a more peaceful
age than that in which their lot was cast. Chiefly by the influence of
Henry of Warwick, Henry of Coutances and Domfront was chosen to the
English crown. The work was almost as speedy as the burial of Eadward,
the election and the crowning of Harold. Quite as speedy it could not
be, when the Gemót of election was held at Winchester, while the
precedents of three reigns made it seem matter of necessity that the
unction and coronation should be done at Westminster. Before the sun
set on the day after the death of Rufus, England had again, not indeed
a full king, but an undisputed king-elect.
[Sidenote: The hoard opened to the king-elect.]
[Sidenote: He grants the bishopric of Winchester to William Giffard.]
[Sidenote: Consecrated 1107; died 1129.]
Against a king-elect the gates of the hoard could no longer be shut.
Not five thousand pounds only, but the whole treasure of the kingdom
was now Henry’s. His first act was to stop one of the many sources by
which the hoard was filled. One of them was found in the revenues of
the vacant bishopric of the city in which they were met. Henry, still
only chosen and not crowned, took on him to do one act of royal
authority which all men would hail as a sign that the new reign was
not to be as the last. As the uncrowned Ætheling Eadgar had confirmed
the election of Abbot Brand by the monks of Peterborough,[845] so the
uncrowned Ætheling Henry bestowed the staff of the see of Winchester
on the late king’s Chancellor, William Giffard, doubtless a kinsman of
the aged Earl of Buckingham. In his appointment we may perhaps see a
wish on the part of a king who was emphatically the choice of the
English people to conciliate at once the Norman nobles and the royal
officials.[846] But seven years were to pass before the bishop-elect
appointed by the king-elect became a full bishop by the rite of
consecration. And what we should hardly have looked for in a minister
of the Red King, some of those years were years of confessorship and
exile endured by the new prelate on behalf of an ecclesiastical
principle.[847]
[Sidenote: Need for hastening the coronation.]
[Sidenote: Henry crowned at Westminster. August 5, 1100.]
[Sidenote: Form of his oath.]
[Sidenote: He swears to undo the evils of his brother’s reign.]
[Sidenote: Joy at Henry’s accession.]
But Henry, Ætheling and Count, was not long to remain a mere
king-elect. The interregnum ended on the fourth day. It was not a time
to tarry; it was needful that the land should have a full king at the
first moment that the rite of his hallowing could be gone through. It
was known that Robert was on his way back from Apulia, and Henry and
his counsellors feared lest, if the Duke should show himself in
England or even in Normandy before the crown was safe on the new
king’s brow, the Norman nobles in England might repent of an election
in which it is clear that they had not very heartily agreed.[848] From
Winchester therefore Henry went to London with all speed, in company
with Count Robert of Meulan, who kept under the new reign the same
post of specially trusted counsellor which he had held during the
reign of Rufus.[849] On the Sunday after that memorable Thursday,
Count Henry was admitted to the kingly office in the West Minster. As
the Primate was far away, the rite of consecration was performed by
the highest suffragan of his province, Maurice Bishop of London.[850]
The form of Henry’s coronation oath seems, like the oaths of his
father and his brother,[851] to have had a special reference to the
circumstances of the time. It is the oath of a reformer, of a king who
has to bring back right after a season of wrong. As the memory of
Rufus had been branded in his burial as the memory of no other king
ever was, so it was branded no less in the coronation rites of his
successor. The new king swore, as usual, to hold the best law that on
any king’s day before him stood; but he swore further to God and to
all folk to put aside the unright that in his brother’s time was.[852]
These weighty promises made, Bishop Maurice of London hallowed Henry
to king, and, according to the great law of his father, all men in
this land bowed to him and sware oaths and became his men.[853] The
work was now done; the diplomatic meshes of nine years before had been
broken asunder by the strong will of the English people. England had
again a king born on her own soil, a king of her own rearing, her own
choosing, King of the English in a truer sense than those who went
either before him or after him for some generations. Great was the
gladness as the news spread through the length and breadth of the
land. The long hopes of the English, the dark sayings of the Britons,
were fulfilled in the coming of the king sworn before all things to
undo the wrongs of the evil time. The good state was brought back; the
golden age had come again; the days of unlaw had passed away; the Lion
of Justice reigned.[854]
[Sidenote: He puts forth his Charter.]
[Sidenote: Its provisions.]
[Sidenote: The Church to be free;]
[Sidenote: ecclesiastical vacancies.]
Before the Sunday of his consecration had passed, King Henry had put
the solemn promises which he had made before the altar into the shape
of a legal document. That very day he set forth in writing that famous
charter which formed the groundwork of the yet more famous charter of
John.[855] I have commented on its main provisions elsewhere, and I
have tried to show how it at once establishes the new doctrines as to
the tenure of land, and promises to reform the abuses to which they
had already led.[856] I will now go through its main provisions in
order. First, Henry, King of the English, does his faithful people to
wit that he has been crowned king by the common counsel of the barons
of the whole realm of England.[857] He had found the realm ground down
with unrighteous exactions. For the fear of God and for the love which
he has to his people, he first of all makes the Church of God free. He
will not sell the Church nor put her to farm.[858] When an archbishop,
bishop, or abbot, dies, he will take nothing during the vacancy from
the demesne of his church or from its tenants. And he will put away
the evil customs with which the realm of England was oppressed, which
evil customs he goes on to set down in order.
[Sidenote: Reliefs.]
Secondly, he touches the question of reliefs. The heir of lands held
in chief of the crown shall no longer, as was done in his brother’s
time, be constrained to _redeem_ his land at an arbitrary price; he
shall _relieve_ it by a just and lawful relief.[859] And as the King
does by his tenants-in-chief, he calls on his tenants-in-chief to do
in their turn by their under-tenants.
[Sidenote: Marriage.]
Thirdly, he comes to the abuse of the lord’s rights in the matter of
marriage.[860] He will take nothing for licence of marriage, nor will
he meddle with the right of his tenants to dispose of their daughters
or other kinswomen, unless the proposed bridegroom should be the
King’s enemy. The rights of the childless widow are also secured.
[Sidenote: Wardship.]
The fourth clause touches the case of the widow with children. The
mother herself or some fitting kinsman shall have the wardship.[861]
And as the King does by his barons, so shall they do in the case of
the daughters and widows of their men.
[Sidenote: The coinage.]
Fifthly, the coinage is to be brought back to the state in which it
was in the days of King Eadward, and _justice_ is denounced against
false moneyers and other retailers of false coin.[862] Sharp justice
it was, as we know from the annals of Henry’s reign.
[Sidenote: Debts and suits.]
Sixthly, The King forgives all debts owing to his brother, and stops
all suits set on foot by him. This is not the first time in which it
is presumed that claims made by the crown must be unjust. Henry
excepts debts arising out of the ordinary farming of the crown lands;
he excepts also anything that any man had agreed to pay for the
inheritances or other property of others.[863] Does this refer to
property confiscated and sold by the King? Payments which had been
made in relief for a man’s own inheritance are specially
forgiven.[864]
[Sidenote: Wills.]
Seventhly, he confirms the free right of bequest of personal property.
If a man, through warfare or sickness, dies intestate, his wife,
children, kinsfolk, and lawful men, are to dispose of his money as
they may think best for his soul.[865]
[Sidenote: Amercements.]
The eighth provision goes back a step further than the others. It
cancels the practice of both Williams, and goes back in the most
marked way to earlier times. If one of the King’s barons or other men
incurred forfeiture, he should not bind himself to be at the King’s
mercy, as had been done in the time of his father and brother; he
should be fined a fixed amount according to custom, as was done in the
days of the kings before his father.[866]
[Sidenote: Murders.]
Ninthly, the King forgives all _murders_ up to the day of his
coronation. That is to say, he forgives all payments due from the
hundreds according to the special law made by his father for the
protection of his foreign followers.[867] For the future the payment
shall be according to the law of King Eadward.[868]
[Sidenote: The forests.]
Tenthly comes the one illiberal provision in the document. “By the
common consent of my barons, I have kept the forests in my own hands,
as my father held them.”[869] Here, where the King’s personal pleasure
was concerned, we hear nothing of the law of King Eadward or of the
practice of yet earlier kings.
[Sidenote: Privilege of the knights.]
[Sidenote: Effect of the provision.]
[Sidenote: Growth of the country gentry.]
[Sidenote: Policy of Henry towards the second order.]
The eleventh clause is a remarkable one. It does not speak, like the
others, of reforming abuses or of going back to the practice of some
earlier time. The King, of his own free will, bestows a certain
privilege on one class of his subjects. Knights who held their lands
by military service are to be free, as far as their demesne lands are
concerned, from all gelds and other burthens. This the King grants to
them as his own gift. In return for so great a boon, he calls on them
to stand ready with horses and arms for his service and the defence of
his kingdom.[870] This boon seems meant for a class whom it was very
important for Henry to attach to his interest, the men namely of both
races who were of knightly rank but not higher. Many of them were his
tenants-in-chief; those who held only of other lords were still his
men by virtue of the law of Salisbury. It was his policy to strengthen
both classes in opposition to the great nobles whom he knew to be
disaffected to him. It may not be too much to see in this clause of
Henry’s charter an important stage in the developement of an idea
which is peculiar to England, the idea of the gentleman who has no
pretensions to be a nobleman. The knights of Henry’s charter are the
representatives of the thegns of Domesday, the forerunners of the
country gentlemen of later times. Holding a place between the great
barons and the mass of the people, and again between the greatest and
the smallest of the king’s tenants-in-chief――largely Norman by
descent, but also largely English――they were well suited to become the
leaders of the people, as they worthily showed themselves in our early
parliaments. Their existence and importance, as a class separate from
the great barons, did much to establish that distinctive and happy
feature of English political life, which spread freedom over the whole
land, instead of shutting it up within a few favoured towns. The
existence of the knight, as something separate from the baron,
secured, not only his own freedom, but the freedom of land-owners
smaller than himself. It helped to hinder the growth of the hard and
fast line which in France divided the _gentilhomme_ from the
_roturier_. It was part of the policy of Henry to raise particular men
of this second rank, while he broke the power of the great barons of
the Conquest. This clause shows that it was also his policy to
strengthen and to win to his side this class as a class.
[Sidenote: The King’s Peace.]
[Sidenote: The Law of Eadward.]
[Sidenote: The Conqueror’s amendments.]
[Sidenote: The alleged Laws of Henry.]
Of the other three clauses of the charter, the first two are general,
the last is temporary. The twelfth clause establishes firm peace
through the whole kingdom. The thirteenth expresses that mixture of
old things and new which marks the time. Henry lays down the great
basis of all later English jurisprudence; “I restore to you the law of
King Eadward, with those amendments which my father made with the
consent of his barons.”[871] The law of Henry was to be the old law of
England, traditionally called by the name of the king to whose days
men looked back as to the golden age, but modified by the changes, or
rather additions, which were brought in by the few genuine statutes of
the Conqueror.[872] Here, as throughout, Henry sets forth his full
purpose to reign as an English king, and he carefully puts forward the
nature of his kingship as a strict continuation of the kingship of
Eadward and of the kings before Eadward. We have seen that the
collection which goes by the name of the Laws of Henry is no real code
of Henry’s issuing.[873] But it breathes the spirit of this clause and
of the other clauses of the charter. It shows how English, in theory
at least, the government of Henry was meant to be.
[Sidenote: Amnesty.]
The fifteenth and last clause is a kind of amnesty for any
irregularity which might have happened during the short interregnum.
Two days and parts of two other days had passed after the peace of
King William――if we may so speak of the days of unlaw――had come to an
end, and before the peace of King Henry had begun. If any man had
during that time taken anything which belonged to the King or to any
one else, he might restore it without any fine; if he kept it after
the proclamation, he was to be heavily fined.[874]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Witnesses to the charter.]
Such was the famous charter of Henry, the document to which Stephen
Langton appealed as the birthright of English freemen.[875] It was
witnessed on the day of the crowning by the bishop who had officiated,
Maurice of London, by Gundulf Bishop (of Rochester), William
Bishop-elect (of Winchester), Henry Earl (of Warwick), Simon Earl (of
Northampton), Walter Giffard, Robert of Montfort, Roger Bigod, and
Henry of Port.[876] Such names look forward and backward. There is
already a Bigod, forefather of the Earl who would neither go nor
hang.[877] There is a Simon, and if the likeness of names is merely
accidental, the tradition is carried back in another way when we
remember that Earl Simon of Northampton was the son-in-law of
Waltheof.[878] The fewness of the names may perhaps show that the
coronation of Henry, celebrated as it was amidst a burst of popular
joy, was but scantily attended by the great men of the realm. The
whole thing was almost as sudden as the death of Eadward and the
election of Harold, and it did not, like those events, happen while
the Witan were actually in session. The summons, or even the news,
could have gone through a very small part only of the kingdom. One
would be glad to know how men heard in distant shires, in Henry’s own
Yorkshire for instance, not only that the oppressor was gone, but that
the new king was crowned, pledged by his oath and his seal to give his
land a new time of peace and righteousness.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Appointments to abbeys.]
[Sidenote: Saint Eadmund’s and Ely.]
[Sidenote: Herlwin Abbot of Glastonbury. 1100-1120.]
[Sidenote: Faricius Abbot of Abingdon. 1100-1117.]
The new King had taken upon himself to undo the evils of his brother’s
reign, to bring back the days of Eadward, to reign as an English king.
One step towards the restoration of the good state was to fill the
churches which his brother had sacrilegiously kept vacant. The see of
Winchester he had filled already; he now began to fill the thirteen
abbeys which Rufus had held in his hands on the day of his death.
Several were filled before the year was out; two at least were filled
on the very day of his coronation. These were the abbey of Saint
Eadmund, void by the death of its abbot Baldwin, and that of Ely,
which had stood void for seven years since the death of the aged abbot
Simeon.[879] The staff of Saint Eadmund was now placed in the hand of
Robert, a young monk of Bec, who is described as a son, seemingly a
natural son, of Earl Hugh of Chester.[880] That of Ely was given to
Richard, another monk of Bec, son of Richard of Clare.[881] In these
appointments and in some others we again see the need in which Henry
stood of pleasing the great nobles, even at the cost of sinning
against ecclesiastical rule. In the case of the appointment to Saint
Eadmund’s we are distinctly told that the King’s nomination was made
against the will of the monks, and a little later Anselm thought it
his duty to remove both Robert and Richard from their offices. Two
other prelates, appointed before any long time had passed, are of
greater personal fame. The name of Herlwin of Caen, who now received
the staff of Glastonbury, lives in local memory as a great
builder.[882] And the Italian Faricius, now placed in the vacant stall
of Abingdon, figures among the most renowned abbots of his house,
famous amongst his other merits for his skill in the healing art.
Oddly enough, his skill in this way kept him back from higher honour.
Had Faricius been less cunning in leechcraft, he might have been
Archbishop of Canterbury.[883]
[Sidenote: Anselm and Flambard.]
[Sidenote: Flambard imprisoned in the Tower.]
[Sidenote: The King’s inner council.]
[Sidenote: Roger, afterwards Bishop of Salisbury.]
But to undo the evils of the days of unlaw and to reign as an English
king, something more was needed than to put men of Norman, or even
Italian, birth in possession of English abbeys. Towards carrying out
the former of these objects, Henry had a criminal to punish and a
sufferer to restore. Towards carrying out the second, he had a wife to
marry. These three events pretty well filled up the rest of the year.
Henry had two bishops to deal with, who needed to be dealt with in two
very different ways. They were between them the living representatives
of the late rule of unright. The one was the embodiment of what its
agents did, the other was the embodiment of what its victims
underwent. The King had promised to put away the unrighteousnesses of
his brother and of Randolf Flambard; he began by putting away their
surviving author. By the advice of those about him, the Bishop of
Durham, the dregs of wickedness, as he is called in the vigorous words
of one of our writers, was sent as a prisoner to the Tower of
London.[884] This was most likely not the first case, but it is the
first recorded case, in which the great fortress of the Conqueror was
used as a state-prison for great and notable offenders. Randolf
Flambard heads the long list of its unwilling inmates, few of whom
better deserved their place there than he did. We hear nothing of any
claim of ecclesiastical privilege on behalf of the man who had brought
God’s Church low. Flambard was not allowed the advantage of any of the
legal subtleties which his predecessor in his see had known how to
play off so skilfully, and which, one would think, he could have
played off more skilfully still. We do not even hear whether the
Bishop of Durham was summoned before any court of any kind. The
accounts read rather as if his imprisonment was simply a stretch of
the royal power in answer to a popular demand. The Tower may even have
been the best place for Flambard’s safety, as it was the best place
for the safety of Jeffreys, as understood by Jeffreys himself.[885]
The words which say that the act was done by the advice of those about
the King are also worthy of notice. The King’s inner council must
certainly have contained the two Beaumont brothers, the subtle Count
of Meulan and the upright Earl of Warwick. It contained Roger the
Bigod, more honoured in his descendants than in himself. It contained
too some of Henry’s old friends from his Norman fief, Richard of
Redvers and Earl Hugh of Chester. We are told that as soon as the news
of the death of Rufus was known in Normandy, several of the great men
who were there, specially the Earls of Chester and Shrewsbury,
hastened to England to acknowledge Henry.[886] We do not find Robert
of Bellême among Henry’s inner counsellors; we do find Hugh of
Avranches. And to the list we may also most likely add the
bishop-elect of Winchester, William Giffard, a tried court official,
though one who afterwards showed that he could suffer for a principle.
And a man who was to be more famous than all of them, the patriarch of
the long line of English Justiciars and Judges, the poor clerk who was
to be presently the all-powerful Bishop Roger of Salisbury, may have
already given his voice among men who were as yet so far above him in
worldly place.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: The news of the King’s death brought to Anselm.]
We are told that the imprisonment of the Bishop of Durham was one of
two acts which the new King did in order that nothing might be wanting
to the universal joy at his accession.[887] The other was the recall
of the Archbishop of Canterbury. We have seen that, in legendary
belief at least, the death of Rufus was very speedily made known, if
not to Anselm himself, at least to his friends.[888] The news was
presently brought to him in a more ordinary way by two monks, one of
Bec, one of Canterbury. His head-quarters were now at Lyons, but he
was at the moment staying at a monastery called God’s House.[889]
There the messengers met him, and told him that King William was dead.
Anselm was overwhelmed at the tidings, and burst forth into the
bitterest weeping. Those who stood by wondered; but he told them with
a voice broken with sobs that, by the truth which a servant of God
ought not to transgress, he would far rather have died himself than
that William should die as he had died.[890]
[Sidenote: He is invited to come back by his own monks,]
[Sidenote: and by the King.]
[Sidenote: Importance of Henry’s letter.]
[Sidenote: Its popular language.]
[Sidenote: Signatures to the letter.]
Anselm now went back to Lyons, where another monk of Canterbury met
him, bringing with him a formal letter from the convent of the
metropolitan church, praying him, now that the tyrant was dead, to
come back without delay to comfort his children.[891] He took counsel
with his friend Archbishop Hugh, and by his advice began his return to
England, to the great grief, we are told, of the whole city of Lyons
and all the lands thereabouts.[892] He had not reached Clugny when he
was met by a still more important bearer of tidings. A messenger came
in the name of the new King of the English and his lords, bearing a
royal letter, calling on Anselm to come back, and even blaming his
delay in not coming sooner.[893] We have its text, every word of which
deserves to be studied, as showing how popular the constitution of
England still was in theory, and what was the kind of language which
had to be used by one who was called on to play the part of a popular
king. Henry, in setting forth his right to the crown, uses more
popular language than is to be found in the charter itself. There he
spoke of the choice of the barons; in the letter to Anselm he tells
the Archbishop that his brother King William is dead, and that he is
chosen king by the will of God and by the clergy and people of
England.[894] He excuses his hasty coronation in the Archbishop’s
absence on the ground of the urgency of the time. He would more gladly
have received the blessing at his crowning from him than from any one
else; but the necessity of the moment forbade; enemies had arisen
against him and against the people whom he had to rule; his barons
therefore and his whole people had thought that the coronation could
not be delayed. He had therefore, against his will, received the rite
from Anselm’s vicars, and he trusted that Anselm himself would not be
displeased.[895] Himself and the whole people of England, all whose
souls were entrusted to Anselm’s care, prayed him to come back with
all speed to give them the benefit of his counsel.[896] He committed
himself and the whole people of England to the counsel of Anselm and
of those who ought to consult with Anselm for the common good.[897] He
would have sent messengers with money of his own for Anselm’s use;
only since the death of his brother the whole world is so stirred
against the kingdom of England that he could not send any one with any
safety.[898] Anselm is earnestly prayed not to pass through Normandy,
but to sail from Whitsand and land at Dover. There some of the King’s
barons shall be ready to meet him with money which will enable him to
pay anything that he may have borrowed.[899] The letter ends in a
pious and imploring strain; “Hasten then, father, to come, lest our
mother the church of Canterbury, so long tossed and desolate for your
sake, should any longer suffer the loss of souls.” The signatures to
the letter should be noticed. It is said to be signed by other bishops
and barons as well, but the actual names are Gerard Bishop of
Hereford, William Bishop-elect of Winchester, William of Warelwast, of
whom we have heard so often, Henry Earl of Warwick, in some sort a
milder king-maker, Robert Fitz-hamon, and his brother Hamon the
_dapifer_.[900] It is worth notice that the Achitophel of Meulan does
not set his name either to this letter or to the charter. Was it to
give as national a character as might be to both documents that
Robert, as yet only a French count and not an English earl, abstained
from putting his name to them? One can fancy no other reason for its
absence from the earlier document. By the time the letter to Anselm
was sent, the Count of Meulan’s presence may well have been needed in
Normandy.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Dangers of the King and kingdom.]
[Sidenote: Intrigues of the Norman nobles with Duke Robert.]
[Sidenote: Renewed anarchy in Normandy on William’s death.]
The dangers which, according to King Henry’s letter, beset the kingdom
of England may have been somewhat exaggerated in his picture of them;
but they were perfectly real. And no description of them could be
better than that which the King gave when he spoke of them specially
as dangers which beset the King and the people whom he had to rule. It
was most truly the King and the people of England who were threatened
by the intrigues of the great Norman nobles with the restored ruler of
Normandy――if ruler he may be called. The effects of the Red King’s
death were exactly opposite in Normandy and in England. In England his
reign of unright was at once changed for a rule as strong and more
righteous. In Normandy, which had seen the better side of him, where
he had brought back peace of some kind after the anarchy of Robert’s
first reign, anarchy came back again the moment the news of his death
came. Within a week the forces of Evreux and Conches were again in
motion, this time indeed not in order to attack one another, but for a
joint raid against the lands of the Norman Beaumont, the possessions
of the Count of Meulan. The Count, we are told, had abused his
influence with Rufus to do both of them some wrongs, which, while
Rufus lived, they were unable to avenge.[901] They now took the law
into their own hands; so did everybody else. Normandy again became the
same confused field of battle, with every man’s hand against every
other man, which it had been before William the Red at least did it
the service of putting one tyrant in the room of many.[902]
[Sidenote: Return of Robert to Normandy. September, 1100.]
[Sidenote: His renewed no-government.]
[Sidenote: Henry keeps his own fief.]
[Sidenote: War between Henry and Robert.]
[Sidenote: Intrigues of the Normans in England with Robert.]
[Sidenote: Return of Anselm. September 23, 1100.]
To this disturbed land Duke Robert came back in the month of
September, bringing with him his wise and beautiful Duchess from
Conversana. They went to Saint Michael in-Peril-of-the-Sea to give
thanks for their safe return,[903] and Robert was held to have again
taken possession of his duchy. The English Chronicler says that he was
received blithely;[904] it was certainly not the interest of those
whom a ruler like Henry would have checked in their evil ways to make
any opposition to his fresh acknowledgement. As soon as Robert was
again in his native land, all the energy and conduct which he had
shown in the East once more forsook him. The old idleness, the old
wastefulness, came back again. He had already squandered all the money
which he had received from his father-in-law; luckily the death of
Rufus relieved him from the necessity of repaying the sum for which
the duchy had been temporarily pledged. It had not been alienated for
ever, and Henry had no claim to it during Robert’s life. Robert
therefore had no difficulty in taking possession――such possession as
he could take――of all Normandy, except the districts which formed the
fief which Rufus had granted to Henry. There, in the lands of
Coutances, Avranches, and Bayeux, King Henry’s men still kept the land
for him, and withstood all Robert’s attempts to dislodge them.[905] A
border warfare thus began between the brothers almost from the first
moment of the reign of Henry, the second reign of Robert. And it would
seem that, though there was no open outbreak till the next year, the
turbulent Norman nobles in England were, from the very beginning,
making Robert the centre of their intrigues against a prince whose
rule was eminently inconvenient for them.[906] The Lion of Justice was
exactly the kind of ruler for whom they did not wish; Robert, who
would put no check upon them, was far more to their tastes. Could they
only put him on the throne, they might have their own way in all
things in England as well as in Normandy. The same schemes which
disturbed the second year of the reign of Rufus disturbed the reign of
Henry from the very beginning. It was in the midst of all these
disorders, directly after Robert’s return, that Henry’s letter was
sent to Anselm. It was therefore not without reason that the King
warned the Archbishop not to come back through Normandy, but to make
his way to Whitsand. To Whitsand Anselm accordingly came, and crossed
safely to Dover a few days before Michaelmas.[907] The whole land from
which he had been now nearly three years absent received him with a
burst of universal joy.[908]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Connexion of Anselm with Norman history.]
The chief points in the primacy of Anselm had all along had a singular
connexion, by way of coincidence at least, with the changes of things
in the Norman duchy. It was when William was making ready for his
second Norman expedition that Anselm had first drawn on himself the
Red King’s anger by the alleged smallness of his gift towards its
cost.[909] It was just before the King set out that the Primate had
given him his most memorable rebuke.[910] The return of William was at
once followed by the interview at Gillingham[911] and the great
assembly at Rockingham. The collection of money for the final
occupation of the duchy did not directly lead to the second
dispute;[912] but the connexion of time is still marked. Rufus comes
back from Normandy to find fault with Anselm’s contingent of troops
for the Welsh war;[913] and he does not go again to the mainland for
the French and Cenomannian wars till after he has driven Anselm from
England. Now that the Red King is dead, everybody seems to come back
to his old place. Robert comes back to Rouen; Anselm to Canterbury.
And along with them, a third actor in our story, whom, like them,
Rufus had dispossessed, came back also. Before the year was out, Maine
was again free; Helias had won back city and castle without slash or
blow.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Helias returns to Le Mans.]
[Sidenote: The King’s garrison holds out in the royal tower.]
[Sidenote: Helias calls in Fulk of Anjou.]
[Sidenote: Siege of the tower;]
[Sidenote: courtesies between besieged and besiegers.]
[Sidenote: Conference between Walter and Helias.]
[Sidenote: The garrison know not whose men they are.]
[Sidenote: A truce is made; they apply to Robert,]
[Sidenote: and to Henry.]
[Sidenote: Surrender of the castle.]
As soon as the news of his enemy’s fall reached the Count of Maine in
some of those southern possessions from which he had never been
driven, he at once gathered a force and marched to Le Mans. But no
force was needed; the loyal city received its banished prince with all
joy.[914] But possession of the city did not give Helias possession of
the royal tower; that was still held by the garrison which had been
placed in it by the Red King. One of their commanders was a man whom
we know already, Walter of Rouen, the son of Ansgar.[915] The castle
was well provided with arms and provisions, and all that was needed
for defence. Helias, before undertaking a siege, sought the alliance
and help of Fulk of Anjou, whom he acknowledged as over-lord of
Maine.[916] The two counts sat down before the castle of the
Conqueror; but no strictly warlike operations followed. Besieged and
besiegers seem to have been on the most friendly terms. They sometimes
exchanged threats, but more commonly jokes. It was agreed between the
two parties that Count Helias should, whenever he chose, put on a
white tunic, and should, by the name of the White Bachelor, be
received within the tower.[917] Such was the chivalrous confidence
shown on both sides that the Count of Maine went in and out as he
chose, and much that was sportive and little that was hostile went on
between the two parties. At last Walter and his colleague
Haimeric[918] opened their minds to Helias. They were in exactly the
opposite case to the Confessor when he told the churl that he would
hurt him if he could.[919] They explained to their supposed enemy that
they could hurt him if they would, but that they had no mind to do so.
The ground and the defences of the castle gave them the stronger
position. They were not afraid of his artillery, and they could shower
down stones and arrows upon him at pleasure.[920] But they had no mind
to fight against one for whom they had a deep regard, especially as
they did not know for whom they were fighting. They had been the men
of the late King William; they did not now know whether they were the
men of King Henry of England or of Duke Robert of Normandy. They
proposed a truce, during which they might send messengers to both
their possible lords; when they got answers, they might settle what to
do.[921] The messenger came to Robert, and asked him whether he wished
to keep the royal tower of Le Mans or not. If he wished to keep it, he
must send a strong force to rescue it from its Angevin and Cenomannian
besiegers. The Duke, tired, we are told, with his long journeyings and
more anxious for the repose of his bed than for the labours of
war,[922] is made to give two somewhat contradictory reasons for
leaving matters alone. On the one hand, he was satisfied with the
duchy of Normandy; on the other hand, the nobles of England were
inviting him to come and take the crown of that kingdom. He told them
that they had better make an honourable peace with the besiegers. The
messenger, without going back to Le Mans, crossed to England, and told
King Henry exactly how matters stood. Henry was too busy at the moment
to meddle in affairs beyond the sea.[923] He rewarded the messenger,
he sent his thanks to the garrison, and left them to their own
discretion. When the answer came, a message was sent to the White
Bachelor, asking him to visit the tower. The day was now come when he
might rejoice in the possession of that for which he had long wished.
If he had any money in his hoard, he might now make a fine bargain. He
asked what they meant. They told him that he had not conquered them,
that they were quite able to withstand him, but that they had no lord
to serve and were quite willing to give up the castle to him. They
knew his worth and valour; they chose him of their own free will, and
made him that day truly Count of Maine.[924] They gave up the castle
and all that was in it; Helias of course treated them with all honour,
and gave them a strong guard to shelter them from any attacks on the
part of the citizens whose houses they had burned the year
before.[925]
[Sidenote: Last reign of Helias. 1100-1110.]
[Sidenote: His friendship for Henry.]
[Sidenote: His second marriage. 1109.]
[Sidenote: Later fortune of Maine.]
[Sidenote: Descent of the Angevin kings from Helias.]
Thus, after all struggles, Helias of La Flèche was at last undisputed
lord of the Cenomannian city and county. He reigned, in all honour and
seemingly in perfect friendship with Bishop Hildebert,[926] for ten
years longer. He was the firm friend, and in some sort the vassal, of
King Henry of England, and did him good service at Bayeux and at
Tinchebrai.[927] Under his second reign Maine seems to have been
peaceful; but there must have been some wars and fightings on its
borders, as we find Rotrou Count of Perche a prisoner in the
Conqueror’s tower.[928] The year before his death Helias married a
second wife, Agnes, the daughter of Duke William of Aquitaine and
widow of Alfonso King of Gallicia.[929] But his only child was
Eremberga, the daughter of his first wife Matilda of Château du Loir.
Helias, as he was the worthiest, was also the last, of the counts who
held Maine as a separate sovereignty, and who had for some generations
filled no small place in their own quarter of the world. Maine became
the heritage of his daughter, and passed to her husband the younger
Fulk, Count of Anjou and King of Jerusalem,[930] and to her son
Geoffrey Plantagenet. Thus Maine became an appendage to Anjou, to
Normandy, to England. And every sovereign of England, from the first
Angevin king onwards, could boast that he had in his veins, besides
the blood of William and Cerdic, the blood, less famous it may be, but
assuredly not less worthy, of Helias of Le Mans.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Meeting of Anselm and Henry;]
[Sidenote: beginning of fresh difficulties.]
[Sidenote: Changes in Anselm.]
[Sidenote: Comparison of the dispute between Anselm]
[Sidenote: and Rufus and the dispute between Anselm and Henry.]
[Sidenote: Henry calls on Anselm to do homage.]
Anselm landed in England after Helias had been received at Le Mans,
but before he had won back the royal tower. The King and the Primate
soon met, and difficulties at once arose between them. The truth is
that Anselm had come back, in some things, another man. Or rather the
man was the same; his gentleness, his firmness, his perfect
single-mindedness, had not changed a whit. But he had learned
doctrines at Rome and at Bari which had never been revealed to him at
Bec or at Canterbury. The tale of Anselm’s dispute with Henry, his
second banishment, his second return, goes beyond the prescribed
limits of our story, and I have pointed out its leading features
elsewhere.[931] There is hardly anything in which the difference
between William Rufus and Henry the First stands out more strongly.
But we are here concerned only with the very earliest stage of the
dispute, if indeed it is to be called a stage of the dispute at all.
Henry and Anselm met at Salisbury. The King received the Archbishop
with joy; he again excused himself by the necessities of the time for
having received the royal unction from another prelate. Anselm fully
admitted his excuses.[932] There was less agreement between them on
the next point which the King started. Henry called on Anselm to do
homage to him after the manner of his predecessors, and, in the
language of the time, to receive again the archbishopric at his
hands.[933]
[Sidenote: Phrase of receiving the archbishopric.]
[Sidenote: Effect of the new teaching on Anselm’s mind.]
This last phrase has, I think, sometimes been misunderstood. It has
nothing in common with the fresh commissions which the bishops of
Edward the Sixth’s day took out after the death of Henry the Eighth.
It has nothing whatever to do with the spiritual office; in this
phrase, as in so many others, by the “archbishopric” is to be
understood simply the temporalities of the see. These were at this
moment in the King’s hands through their seizure in the days of Rufus.
Since then a new reign had begun; England had a new king; her
inhabitants had a new lord; for the archbishop, like any other
subject, to become the man of the new king was simply according to the
law of Salisbury. For him to receive back his lands was his right; for
him to receive them as a fief was no more than he had already done at
the hands of the Red King. Anselm had then done without scruple all
that he was now asked to do. But since then the decrees of Piacenza
and Clermont, above all the decrees of Bari and Rome, where he had
been himself present, had been put forth. And by those decrees the
ancient customs of England were condemned, and the censures of the
Church were denounced against all who should conform to them. Anselm
deemed it his duty, in all single-mindedness, to obey the bidding of
Rome rather than the law of England. We may regret, but we can neither
wonder nor blame. Anselm, after all, was not an Englishman; he could
not help looking at things with œcumenical rather than with insular
eyes. He fairly told the king’s counsellors how matters stood; he was
bound by the new decrees. If Henry would accept them, there might be
perfect peace between them.[934] If not, he himself could be of no use
in England; he would have to refuse to communicate with any to whom
the King might give bishoprics or abbeys in the ancient fashion; he
could not stay in England on the terms of disobeying the Pope. He
asked of those to whom he spoke that the King would consider the
matter, and tell him his decision, that he might know which way to
turn himself.[935]
[Sidenote: Difficulties of Henry.]
[Sidenote: A truce made till Easter;]
[Sidenote: the Pope to be asked to allow the homage.]
[Sidenote: No personal scruple on Anselm’s part.]
[Sidenote: Effects of the reign of Rufus.]
[Sidenote: Abasement of the kingly power.]
Henry was now, at the very beginning of his reign, in a great strait.
He was naturally unwilling to give up one of the chief flowers of his
crown, one which had been handed down from all the kings before
him.[936] To give up the investiture of the churches and the homage of
their prelates would be to give up the half of his kingdom. On the
other hand, he felt that it would not do to quarrel with the
Archbishop at the very moment of his return to England, or to allow
him to leave England while he himself was not yet firm on his throne.
He feared――doing Anselm, we may be sure, utter injustice――that, if
Anselm left England, he might go to Robert, and take up his cause. It
would be perfectly easy, as he knew very well, to persuade Robert to
accept the new decrees. And on those terms, Anselm might, so the words
run, make Robert King of England[937]――that is, he might bestow on him
a consecration more regular than that which Henry had himself received
from the Bishop of London. It was therefore agreed on both sides to
make a truce or adjournment of all questions till the next Easter.
Meanwhile both King and Archbishop should send messengers to the Pope,
to pray him so to change his decrees as to allow the ancient customs
of the kingdom to stand.[938] We here see, on the one hand, that
Anselm still had no kind of scruple of his own about the homage and
investiture; it was with him simply a question of obedience to a
superior. Let Paschal withdraw the decrees of Urban, and Anselm was
perfectly ready to do by Henry as earlier archbishops had done by
earlier kings. On the other hand, we see how the temporal power had
been weakened and the spiritual power strengthened through the late
King’s abuse of the temporal power. Rufus had given the foreign
dominion a moral advantage, of which Henry now felt the sting. Men had
come to look on the King as the embodiment of wrong, and on the Pope
as the only surviving embodiment of right. The King of the English was
driven to ask the Bishop of Rome to allow the ancient laws of England
to be obeyed. True this was while the King’s hold on his crown was
still weak; when his position was more assured, he took a higher tone;
but it marks the change which had happened that an English king, and
such a king as Henry, should be driven so to abase himself even for a
moment.
[Sidenote: The truce agreed to; provisional restoration of the
Archbishop’s temporalities.]
By the terms of the truce, things were to remain as they were for the
present. Anselm was to be restored to his temporalities without homage
or other conditions; but, if Paschal could not be brought to yield on
the matter of the decrees, they were to pass to the King again.[939]
Anselm looked on all this as useless; he knew the temper of the papal
court better than the King and his friends did. But he agreed for the
sake of peace; he wished to avoid the slightest suspicion of any wish
to disturb the King in the possession of his kingdom.[940] The truce
was therefore agreed to; the messengers were sent, and Anselm, when
the court broke up, went once more in peace to his metropolitan city
or to some other of his many houses.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Reformation of the court.]
[Sidenote: Personal character of Henry.]
[Sidenote: Henry’s mistresses and children.]
[Sidenote: Robert Earl of Gloucester.]
[Sidenote: Henry son of Nest.]
[Sidenote: Matilda Countess of Perche.]
[Sidenote: Robert son of Eadgyth.]
[Sidenote: Henry’s daughter by Isabel of Meulan.]
[Sidenote: Richard son of Ansfrida.]
[Sidenote: Story of his mother and her husband Anskill.]
[Sidenote: Henry’s son Richard.]
But, besides settling the affairs of his Church and realm, Henry had
other more distinctly domestic and personal duties to discharge. He
had to reform the household which he had inherited from his brother;
he had also――so we are told that the bishops and others strongly
pressed upon him――to reform his own life.[941] The vices of Henry were
at least not the vices of Rufus; inclination as well as duty led him
to cleanse the court of its foulest abuses, to make a clean sweep of
the works of darkness.[942] But it was only in a wholly abnormal state
of things that Henry the First could have been hailed as a moral
reformer. His private life was very unlike the life of his father.
Unmarried, like both of his brothers till the recent marriage of
Robert, he was already the father of several children by mothers of
various nations. Of his eldest and most famous son, Robert, afterwards
the renowned Earl of Gloucester, the mother is unknown; but she
appears to have been French.[943] The British Nest, of whom we have
often heard, the daughter of Rhys ap Tewdwr, had, before her marriage
with Gerald of Windsor, borne a son to Henry who bore his own
name.[944] Two of his mistresses bore the characteristic English name
of Eadgyth. One was the mother of Matilda Countess of Perche, who died
in the White Ship;[945] the other, who afterwards, like Nest, obtained
an honourable marriage with the younger Robert of Ouilly, was the
mother of a Robert who plays a part in the civil wars forty years
later.[946] His birth therefore most likely came long after the times
of which we are speaking, as did the birth of the daughter whom Henry
is said to have had by a woman of a Norman house of the loftiest rank,
Isabel, daughter of his chief counsellor, Robert Count of Meulan and
Earl of Leicester.[947] The list of Henry’s natural children is not
yet exhausted――we have no account of the mother of the valiant
Juliana; but the birth of one who is second in personal fame to Earl
Robert of Gloucester had already taken place, and it is connected with
a characteristic story which is worth telling. A wealthy man of
Berkshire, Anskill by name, was one of the chief tenants of the church
of Abingdon. As far as his name is concerned, he might be Norman; he
might be English or rather Danish. His enemies brought a charge
against him to the Red King, who caused him to be kept in so sharp a
prison that before long he died of his hardships.[948] He left a
widow, whose name is given as Ansfrida, and a son named William. The
King then seized on the manor of Sparsholt, which Anskill had held of
the abbey, and gave it――or perhaps only its wardship――to one of his
officers named Toustain, without reserving any service to the
Church.[949] By this grant both the young William and the church of
Abingdon were wronged. For the wardship of its tenant would even, by
Flambard’s own law, go to the abbey. The widow, by what instinct we
are not told, betook herself to Henry to ask his intercession with his
brother the King. Young William did not get back his land, which was
recovered for the abbey at a later time. But his mother presently gave
him a half-brother, Richard, who afterwards distinguished himself in
the French wars, and died in the White Ship.[950] The interest of
Henry, if it did not get back Sparsholt for its lawful tenant, was
enough to secure for his new mistress the safe possession of her
dower, and to provide for her legitimate son by an advantageous
marriage.[951] Ansfrida herself was in the end buried in the minster
of Abingdon with honours of which Saint Hugh would hardly have
approved, and her lawful son did not fail to give gifts to the place
of his mother’s burial.[952]
[Sidenote: Henry is exhorted to marry.]
[Sidenote: He seeks for Eadgyth daughter of Malcolm.]
[Sidenote: Policy of the marriage.]
[Sidenote: Eadgyth looked on as English.]
[Sidenote: Henry’s descent from Ælfred.]
Henry then, if he was fully entitled to reform the worst abuses of his
brother’s household, stood in some need of reformation himself. His
counsellors exhorted him to mend matters by giving himself a wife and
his kingdom a queen. He had not far to look for one when policy and
inclination led him the same way. Notwithstanding all his
irregularities, we are told that he had long loved Eadgyth or Matilda,
the daughter of Malcolm, and it is further implied that his love was
returned on her part.[953] It is not clear where she was at this
moment, but seemingly no longer with her aunt Christina in her
monastic shelter at Romsey.[954] She was now about twenty years old,
some say of remarkable beauty, at all events of a pleasing face, and
mistress of an amount of learning which must have equalled or exceeded
that of her clerkly lover.[955] She had no great worldly
possessions;[956] but she came of a stock which made a marriage with
her the most politic choice which the King could make at the moment.
Eadgyth had lived so long in England that men seem to have forgotten
that she was the daughter of Malcolm, and to have remembered only that
she was the daughter of Margaret. As such she was held to be of the
right kingly kin of England,[957] marked out as the most fitting bride
for a king whose purpose was to reign as an Englishman. True she came
of the blood of Cerdic only by the spindle-side, and by the
spindle-side Henry came of the blood of Cerdic himself.[958] But no
one was likely to remember that a daughter of Ælfred was a remote
ancestress of Henry’s mother, while everybody remembered that Eadgyth
was the daughter of Margaret, the daughter of Eadward, the son of
Eadmund, the son of Æthelred, the son of Eadgar. It was for the
English King to take an English Lady, and to hand on the English crown
to kings born in the land and sprung of the true blood of its ancient
princes.
[Sidenote: Objections made to the marriage.]
[Sidenote: Eadgyth said to have taken the veil.]
[Sidenote: Anselm holds an assembly to settle the question.]
[Sidenote: Eadgyth declared free to marry.]
So thought the people; so thought the King; so seemingly thought the
daughter of Malcolm herself. But not a few mouths were opened to
denounce the marriage as contrary to the laws of the Church. Eadgyth,
they alleged, was a consecrated virgin, and a marriage with her would
be sacrilege. She had, they said, taken the veil at Romsey, when she
was dwelling there with her aunt Christina.[959] She appealed to the
Archbishop, to whom all looked to decide the matter.[960] She told her
story, as we have already heard it, and called on Anselm to judge her
cause in his wisdom. The Archbishop called together at Lambeth――the
manor of his friend the Bishop of Rochester――an assembly of bishops,
abbots, nobles, and religious men, before whom he laid the matter, and
the evidence bearing on it.[961] There was the evidence of the maiden
herself; there was the evidence of two archdeacons, William of
Canterbury and Humbald of Salisbury, whom Anselm had sent to the
monastery, and who, after inquiries among the sisters, reported that
there was no ground to think that Eadgyth had ever been a veiled
nun.[962] The Archbishop then left the assembly, and the rest, who are
spoken of as the Church of England gathered into one place,[963]
debated the question in his absence. Much stress was laid on the case
of those women who, in the first days of the Conquest, had sought
shelter in the cloister from shame and violence, but who had not taken
religion upon themselves.[964] The late Archbishop had declared them
free to marry, and the judgement of the assembly was that the same
rule applied to the case of the daughter of Malcolm.[965] Anselm came
back, and the debate and the decision were reported to him. He
declared that he assented to the judgement, strengthened as it was by
the great authority of Lanfranc.[966] Then Eadgyth herself was brought
in, and heard with a pleased countenance all that had passed.[967] She
then offered to confirm all that she had said by any form of oath that
might be thought good. She did not fear that any one would disbelieve
her; but she wished that no occasion should be left for any one to
blaspheme.[968] Anselm told her that no oath was needed; if any man
out of the evil treasure of his heart should bring forth evil things,
he would not be able to withstand the amount and strength of the
evidence by which her case was proved.[969] He gave her his
blessing,[970] and she went forth, we may say, Lady-elect of the
English.
[Sidenote: Other versions of the story.]
[Sidenote: Anselm made to object.]
[Sidenote: Story of Rufus and the Abbess.]
[Sidenote: Decision in favour of the marriage.]
[Sidenote: Anselm’s scruples and warning.]
In another version, also contemporary but not resting on the same high
authority, things are made to take another turn. The King bids Anselm
perform the marriage rite between himself and the nameless daughter of
Malcolm, called in this version David.[971] Anselm refuses on the
ground that, having worn the veil of a nun, she belonged to a
heavenly, not to an earthly bridegroom. The King says that he has
sworn to her father to marry her, and that he cannot break his oath,
unless it can be shown by a canonical judgement that the marriage is
unlawful.[972] Anselm is therefore bidden to summon the Archbishop of
York, and the rest of the bishops, abbots, and other ecclesiastical
persons of all England, to come together and examine the matter.[973]
The Abbess is brought before them, and she tells the story of the Red
King’s visit to her flowers.[974] The King bids Anselm call on the
synod for its judgement. The assembled fathers debate; canons are
read, and it is judged that the maiden is free to marry, chiefly on
the ground that, if she was veiled, it was while she was under age and
without her father’s consent.[975] The King asks Anselm whether he
objects to this decision; Anselm says that he has no fault to find
with it. Henry then asks Anselm to marry them at once. Anselm pleads
that, though the judgement is right, yet, as the maiden had somehow or
other worn the veil, it were better that she should not marry; there
were others, daughters of kings and counts, one of whom the King might
marry instead. Henry still insists; Anselm performs the ceremony; but
with a warning that England would not rejoice in the offspring of the
marriage.[976] The fate of the White Ship and the wars of Stephen and
Matilda are quoted as a proof of Anselm’s prophetic power.
[Sidenote: Later fables.]
The tone of this story is quite unlike that of the more trustworthy
version; yet there is perhaps no actual contradiction between them.
But the foreign writer stumbles greatly in his names and pedigrees,
and writes by the light of forty years later. We may see in his
version the beginnings of the wild stories of later times, where
Eadgyth is pictured as forced into the marriage against her will, and
even as devoting her future offspring to the fiend.[977]
[Sidenote: Marriage of Henry and Eadgyth. November 11, 1100.]
[Sidenote: She takes the name of Matilda.]
[Sidenote: The wedding and coronation.]
[Sidenote: Anselm’s speech.]
[Sidenote: Objections not wholly silenced.]
A few days later, on the feast of Saint Martin, the marriage was
celebrated by Anselm, and Matilda, as we must now call her, was
hallowed to Queen.[978] It is only a guess that this was the time of
her change of name. One hardly sees its motive; it was Henry’s policy
at this moment to be as English as possible, and the name of his bride
was one of the few English names which the Normans now and then
adopted. Could it be Henry’s abiding reverence for his mother which
made him wish to place another Matilda on his throne? Be this as it
may be, the new Queen bears no other name. All the great men of the
kingdom and a crowd of folk of lower degree came together to her
wedding and crowning. At the door of the West Minster, as the
multitude thronged towards the King and his bride, the Archbishop
stood on high and harangued the people. He told them how the whole
matter had been settled, and on what grounds. And he once again called
on any one who had aught else to say against the marriage to stand
forth and say it.[979] The only answer was a general shout of assent
to the judgement and the marriage.[980] The rite was done. But there
were still some who blamed Anselm for the course that he had
taken;[981] and years afterwards the validity of Matilda’s marriage,
and the consequent legitimacy of her children, was called in question
by those whose political objects it suited to do so.[982]
[Sidenote: Novelty of a queen.]
[Sidenote: Regular life of the King and Queen.]
[Sidenote: “Godric and Godgifu.”]
[Sidenote: 1100-1118.]
[Sidenote: Children of the marriage.]
[Sidenote: William;]
[Sidenote: the Empress Matilda.]
[Sidenote: Later life of Henry and Matilda.]
[Sidenote: Her character.]
[Sidenote: “Good Queen Mold.”]
It is somewhat singular that Matilda practically stepped into the
place of the Lady whose name she had forsaken. There had been no queen
constantly living in England since the elder Eadgyth. The elder
Matilda had been but little in England; William Rufus had been
pre-eminently the “bachelor king.” It must have been a wonderful
change when the riot and foul excess of the Red King’s court gave way
to a household presided over by a devout and virtuous woman. For a
time at least Henry as well as his wife lived a sober and regular
life. As a generation back the strict conduct of Henry’s father had
called forth the jeers of the profligate scoffers of his day, so now
the profligate scoffers of another generation jeered at the decorous
court of Henry and Matilda, and mocked the English King and his
English Lady by the characteristic English names of Godric and
Godgifu.[983] The married life of Matilda reached over eighteen years
only; of her two children, both born early in her wedlock, she did not
live to see her son, the Ætheling William, cut off in the White Ship;
she did live to see her daughter of her own name raised to a place
which had never before been filled by a daughter of England, sitting
as a crowned Augusta in the seat of Livia and Placidia.[984] After a
while Henry seems to have fallen back into his old courses; some at
least of his natural children must have been born after his marriage;
and the same kind of language which was used about his first marriage
was used about his second.[985] The Queen, for whatever reason, ceased
to follow the endless wanderings of the court; and lived in all royal
pomp at Westminster.[986] Her piety rivalled that of her mother; it
was shown in all the usual forms of the time; and her brother David,
not an undevout prince, went so near to a scoff as to ask his sister
whether King Henry would care to kiss the lips which had kissed the
ulcers of the lepers.[987] Her boundless liberality to the poor, to
clerks, scholars, and strangers of every kind, was perhaps not the
less amiable for a manifest touch of vanity.[988] We read that the
means for her lavish bounty in this way had to be found by harsh
exactions from her tenants; but, here as ever, the blame is laid upon
the reeves rather than on their mistress.[989] The memory of “good
Queen Mold” was long cherished, and we can hardly doubt that her
presence by Henry’s side did much to help the fusion of Normans and
English in her husband’s kingdom.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Guy of Vienne comes as Legate.]
[Sidenote: Earlier Legates.]
[Sidenote: Guy’s pretensions not acknowledged.]
Two ecclesiastical events wind up the last year of the eleventh
century. One of them showed that there were limits to Anselm’s
submission to the see of Rome. Guy Archbishop of Vienne came into
England, professing to be papal Legate throughout all Britain. Legates
had been seen in England before, but not with such a commission as
superseded the authority of an acknowledged Primate. They had come
both under Eadward and under William the Great; but they came in the
doubtful days of Stigand, and the last time they came to set Stigand
finally aside.[990] One Legate had come under William the Red; but it
was to bring the pallium to Anselm.[991] But now all men were amazed
at a foreign prelate claiming to exercise powers which had hitherto
been held to belong to none but the Patriarch of the island
world.[992] Legates waxed mightier before Henry’s reign was out;[993]
this time Guy went back as he came. We get no details; but we read
that no one acknowledged him as Legate, and that he was not able to
discharge any legatine function.[994]
[Sidenote: Death of Archbishop Thomas. November 18, 1100.]
[Sidenote: The see of York given to Gerard of Hereford. Archbishop
1100-1108.]
The other event was the death of Archbishop Thomas of York, after an
episcopate of thirty years. He died a few days after the King’s
marriage, leaving a good name behind him as the honoured rebuilder of
his church and legislator of its chapter.[995] This was the first
prelacy which had fallen vacant since Henry’s accession. To deal with
the vacant see after his brother’s fashion would have been in the
teeth of all the new King’s promises. He therefore soon gave the
church of York another shepherd. But his choice fell on a man of a
character widely different from either Thomas or Anselm. The new
archbishop was Gerard Bishop of Hereford, of whom we have already
heard a good deal, and heard some things that are passing
strange.[996] He held the throne of the northern metropolis for eight
years, and, when he died, he had some difficulty in finding a
resting-place in his own minster.[997]
§ 3. _The Invasion of Robert._
_January-August, 1101._
[Sidenote: Likeness of the years 1088 and 1101.]
[Sidenote: Action of the Bishop of Durham,]
[Sidenote: of the sons of Earl Roger.]
[Sidenote: Plots to give the crown to Duke Robert.]
[Sidenote: A party in Normandy for Henry.]
The first year of the twelfth century was a stirring time for England,
though it was not crowded with great and striking events like the last
year of the eleventh. It reads like an earlier chapter of our story
coming over again. We have now again to tell well nigh the same tale
which we told at the beginning of the reign of Rufus. Again we have a
Norman rebellion on English soil; again we have a Norman invasion;
again the English people cleave steadily to the king whom they have
chosen; again the Primate and the bishops in general take the side
which was at once the side of the King and of the people. And, as if
to make the likeness square in the smallest details, a bishop set free
from bonds is the foremost stirrer up of mischief, and again three
sons of Earl Roger are the most active leaders of the revolt. The part
of Bishop Odo of Bayeux in the former rebellion is in the present
played to some extent by Bishop Randolf of Durham; the part of Robert
of Bellême is played again in more than all its fulness by Robert of
Bellême himself. There is again a party eager to place the Duke of the
Normans on the throne of England; but this time that party is balanced
by another which in the other tale does not appear till later, a party
eager to place the King of the English in the ducal chair of Normandy.
[Sidenote: Character of Robert and Eadgar.]
[Sidenote: Robert as crusader.]
[Sidenote: His relapse on his return to Normandy.]