THE SUBJUGATION OF LAND AND CHURCH
With William's return to England began the long and difficult task of
bringing the country completely under his control. But this was not a
task that called for military genius. Patience was the quality most
demanded, and William's patience gave way but rarely. There was no army
in the field against him. No large portion of the land was in
insurrection. No formal campaign was necessary. Local revolts had to be
put down one after another, or a district dealt with where rebellion was
constantly renewed. The Scandinavian north and the Celtic west were the
regions not yet subdued, and the seats of future trouble. Three years
were filled with this work, and the fifteen years that follow were
comparatively undisturbed. For the moment after his return, William was
occupied with no hostilities. The Christmas of 1067 was celebrated in
London with the land at peace, Normans and English meeting together to
all appearance with cordial good-will. A native, Gospatric, was probably
at this time made Earl of Northumberland, in place of Copsi, who had been
killed, though this was an exercise of royal power in form rather than in
reality, since William's authority did not yet reach so far. A Norman,
Remigius, was made Bishop of Dorchester, in place of Wulfwig, who had
died while the king was in Normandy, and William's caution in dealing
with the matter of Church reform is shown in the fact that the new bishop
received his consecration from Stigand. It is possible also that another
heavy tax was imposed at this time.
But soon after Christmas, William felt himself obliged to take the field.
He had learned that Exeter, the rich commercial city of the south-west,
was making preparations to resist him. It was in a district where Harold
and his family had had large possessions. His mother was in the city, and
perhaps others of the family. At least some English of prominence seem to
have rallied around them. The citizens had repaired and improved their
already strong walls. They had impressed foreigners, merchants even, into
their service, and were seeking allies in other towns. William's rule had
never yet reached into that part of England, and Exeter evidently hoped
to shut him out altogether. When the king heard of these preparations, he
acted with his usual promptitude, but with no sacrifice of his diplomatic
skill. The citizens should first be made to acknowledge their intentions.
A message was sent to the city, demanding that the oath of allegiance to
himself be taken. The citizens answered that they would take no oath, and
would not admit him within the walls, but that they were willing to pay
him the customary tribute. William at once replied that he was not
accustomed to have subjects on such conditions, and at once began his
march against the city. Orderic Vitalis thought it worthy of note, that
in this army William was using Englishmen for the first time as soldiers.
When the hostile army drew near to the town, the courage of some of the
leading men failed, and they went out to seek terms of peace. They
promised to do whatever was commanded, and they gave hostages, but on
their return they found their negotiations disavowed and the city
determined to stand a siege. This lasted only eighteen days. Some decided
advantage which the Normans gained--the undermining of the walls seems
to be implied--induced the city to try again for terms. The clergy,
with their sacred books and relics, accompanied the deputation, which
obtained from the king better promises than had been hoped for. For some
reason William departed from his usual custom of severity to those who
resisted. He overlooked their evil conduct, ordered no confiscations, and
even stationed guards in the gates to keep out the soldiers who would
have helped themselves to the property of the citizens with some
violence. But as usual he selected a site for a castle within the walls,
and left a force of chosen knights under faithful command, to complete
the fortification and to form the garrison. Harold's mother, Gytha, left
the city before its surrender, and finally found a refuge in Saint Omer,
in Flanders. Harold's sons also, if they were in Exeter, made their
escape before its fall.
After subduing Exeter, William marched with his army into Cornwall, and
put down without difficulty whatever resistance he found there. The
confiscation of forfeited estates was no doubt one object of his march
through the land, and the greater part of these were bestowed upon his
own half brother, Robert, Count of Mortain, the beginning of what grew
ultimately into the great earldom of Cornwall. In all, the grants which
were made to Robert have been estimated at 797 manors, the largest made
to any one as the result of the Conquest. Of these, 248 manors were in
Cornwall, practically the whole shire; 75 in Dorset, and 49 in
Devonshire. This was almost a principality in itself, and is alone nearly
enough to disprove the policy attributed to William of scattering about
the country the great estates which he granted. So powerful a possession
was the earldom which was founded upon this grant that after a time the
policy which had been followed in Normandy, in regard to the great
counties, seemed the only wise one in this case also, and it was not
allowed to pass out of the immediate family of the king until in the
fourteenth century it was made into a provision for the king's eldest
son, as it has ever since remained. These things done, William disbanded
his army and returned to spend Easter at Winchester.
Once more for a moment the land seemed to be at peace, and William was
justified in looking upon himself as now no longer merely the leader of a
military adventure, seeking to conquer a foreign state, but as firmly
established in a land where he had made a new home for his house. He
could send for his wife; his children should be born here. It should be
the native land of future generations for his family. Matilda came soon
after Easter, with a distinguished train of ladies as well as lords, and
with her Guy, Bishop of Amiens, who, Orderic tells us, had already
written his poem on the war of William and Harold. At Whitsuntide, in
Westminster, Matilda was crowned queen by Archbishop Aldred. Later in the
summer Henry, the future King Henry I, was born, and the new royal family
had completely identified itself with the new kingdom.
But a great task still lay before the king, the greatest perhaps that he
had yet undertaken. The north was his only in name. Scarcely had any
English king up to this time exercised there the sort of authority to
which William was accustomed, and which he was determined to exercise
everywhere. The question of the hour was, whether he could establish his
authority there by degrees, as he seemed to be trying to do, or only
after a sharp conflict. The answer to this question was known very soon
after the coronation of Matilda. What seemed to the Normans a great
conspiracy of the north and west was forming. The Welsh and English
nobles were making common cause; the clergy and the common people joined
their prayers; York was noted as especially enthusiastic in the cause,
and many there took to living in tents as a kind of training for the
conflict which was coming. The Normans understood at the time that there
were two reasons for this determination to resist by force any further
extension of William's rule. One was, the personal dissatisfaction of
Earl Edwin. He had been given by William some undefined authority, and
promoted above his brother, and he had even been promised a daughter of
the king's as his wife. Clearly it had seemed at one time very necessary
to conciliate him. But either that necessity had passed away, or William
was reluctant to fulfil his promise; and Edwin, discontented with the
delay, was ready to lead what was for him at least, after he had accepted
so much from William, a rebellion. He was the natural leader of such an
attempt; his family history made him that. Personal popularity and his
wide connexions added to his strength, and if he had had in himself the
gifts of leadership, it would not have been even then too late to dispute
the possession of England on even terms. The second reason given us is
one to which we must attach much greater force than to the personal
influence of Edwin. He in all probability merely embraced an opportunity.
The other was the really moving cause. This is said to have been the
discontent of the English and Welsh nobles under the Norman oppression,
but we must phrase it a little differently. No direct oppression had as
yet been felt, either in the north or west, but the severity of William
in the south and east, the widespread confiscations there, were
undoubtedly well known, and easily read as signs of what would follow in
the north, and already the borders of Wales were threatened n with the
pushing forward of the Norman lines, which went on so steadily and for so
long a time.
Whether or not the efforts which had been making to obtain foreign help
against William were to result finally in bringing in a reinforcement of
Scots or Danes, the union of Welshmen and Englishmen was itself
formidable and demanded instant attention. Early in the summer of 1068
the army began its march upon York, advancing along a line somewhat to
the west of the centre of England, as the situation would naturally
demand. As in William's earlier marches, so here again he encountered no
resistance. Whatever may have been the extent of the conspiracy or the
plans of the leaders, the entire movement collapsed before the Norman's
firm determination to be master of the kingdom. Edwin and Morcar had
collected an army and were in the field somewhere between Warwick and
Northampton, but when the time came when the fight could no longer be
postponed, they thought better of it, besought the king's favour again,
and obtained at least the show of it. The boastful preparations at York
brought forth no better result. The citizens went out to meet the king on
his approach, and gave him the keys of the city and hostages from among
them.
The present expedition went no further north, but its influence extended
further. Ethelwin, the Bishop of Durham came in and made his submission.
He bore inquiries also from Malcolm, the king of Scots, who had been
listening to the appeals for aid from the enemies of William, and
preparing himself to advance to their assistance. The Bishop of Durham
was sent back to let him know what assurances would be acceptable to
William, and he undoubtedly also informed him of the actual state of
affairs south of his borders, of the progress which the invader had made,
and of the hopelessness of resistance. The Normans at any rate believed
that as a result of the bishop's mission Malcolm was glad to send down an
embassy of his own which tendered to William an oath of obedience. It is
not likely that William attached much weight to any profession of the
Scottish king's. Already, probably as soon as the failure of this
northern undertaking was apparent, some of the most prominent of the
English, who seem to have taken part in it, had abandoned England and
gone to the Scottish court. It is very possible that Edgar and his two
sisters, Margaret and Christina, sought the protection of Malcolm at this
time, together with Gospatric, who had shortly before been made Earl of
Northumberland, and the sheriff Merleswegen. These men had earlier
submitted to William, Merleswegen perhaps in the submission at
Berkhampsted, with Edgar, and had been received with favour. Under what
circumstances they turned against him we do not know, but they had very
likely been attracted by the promise of strength in this effort at
resistance, and were now less inclined than the unstable Edwin to profess
so early a repentance. Margaret, whether she went to Scotland at this
time or a little later, found there a permanent home, consenting against
her will to become the bride of Malcolm instead of the bride of the
Church as she had wished. As queen she gained, through teaching her wild
subjects, by the example of gentle manners and noble life, a wider
mission than the convent could have furnished her. The conditions which
Malcolm accepted evidently contained no demand as to any English
fugitives, nor any other to which he could seriously object. William was
usually able to discern the times, and did not attempt the impracticable.
William intended this expedition of his to result in the permanent
pacification of the country through which he had passed. There is no
record of any special severity attending the march, but certainly no one
was able to infer from it that the king was weak or to be trifled with.
The important towns he secured with castles and garrisons, as he had in
the south. Warwick and Northampton were occupied in this way as he
advanced, with York at the north, and Lincoln, Huntingdon, and Cambridge
along the east as he returned. A great wedge of fortified posts was thus
driven far into that part of the land from which the greatest trouble was
to be expected, and this, together with the general impression which his
march had made, was the most which was gained from it. Sometime during
this summer of 1068 another fruitless attempt had been made to disturb
the Norman possession of England. Harold's sons had retired, perhaps
after the fall of Exeter, to Ireland, where their father had formerly
found refuge. There it was not difficult to stir up the love of
plundering raids in the descendants of the Vikings, and they returned at
this time, it is said with more than fifty ships, and sailed up the
Bristol Channel. If any among them intended a serious invasion of the
island, the result was disappointing. They laid waste the coast lands;
attacked the city of Bristol, but were beaten off by the citizens; landed
again further down in Somerset, and were defeated in a great battle by
Ednoth, who had been Harold's staller, where many were killed on both
sides, including Ednoth himself; and then returned with nothing gained
but such plunder as they succeeded in carrying off. The next year they
repeated the attempt in the same style, and were again defeated, even
more disastrously, this time by one of the newcomers, Brian of Britanny.
Such piratical descents were not dangerous to the Norman government, nor
was a rally to beat them off any test of English loyalty to William.
Even the historian, Orderic Vitalis, half English by descent and wholly
so by birth, but writing in Normandy for Normans and very favourable to
William, or possibly the even more Norman William of Poitiers, whom he
may have been following, was moved by the sufferings of the land under
these repeated invasions, revolts, and harryings, and notes at the close
of his account of this year how conquerors and conquered alike were
involved in the evils of war, famine, and pestilence. He adds that the
king, seeing the injuries which were inflicted on the country, gathered
together the soldiers who were serving him for pay, and sent them home
with rich rewards. We may regard this disbanding of his mercenary troops
as another sign that William considered his position secure.
In truth, however, the year which was coming on, 1069, was another year
of crisis in the history of the Conquest. The danger which had been
threatening William from the beginning was this year to descend upon him,
and to prove as unreal as all those he had faced since the great battle
with Harold. For a long time efforts had been making to induce some
foreign power to interfere in England and support the cause of the
English against the invader. Two states seemed especially fitted for the
mission, from close relationship with England in the past,--Scotland and
Denmark. Fugitives, who preferred exile to submission, had early sought
the one or the other of these courts, and urged intervention upon their
kings. Scotland had for the moment formally accepted the Conquest.
Denmark had not done so, and Denmark was the more directly interested in
the result, not perhaps as a mere question of the independence of
England, but for other possible reasons. If England was to be ruled by a
foreign king, should not that king on historical grounds be a Dane rather
than a Norman? Ought he not to be of the land that had already furnished
kings to England? And if Sweyn dreamed of the possibility of extending
his rule, at such a time, over this other member of the empire of his
uncle, Canute the Great, he is certainly not to be blamed.
It is true that the best moment for such an intervention had been allowed
to slip by, the time when no beginning of conquest had been made in the
north, but the situation was not even yet unfavourable. William was to
learn, when the new year had hardly begun, that he really held no more of
the north than his garrisons commanded. Perhaps it was a rash attempt to
try to establish a Norman earl of Northumberland in Durham before the
land had been overawed by his own presence; but the post was important,
the two experiments which had been made to secure the country through the
appointment of English earls had failed, and the submission of the
previous summer might prove to be real. In January Robert of Comines was
made earl, and with rash confidence, against the advice of the bishop, he
took possession of Durham with five hundred men or more. He expected, no
doubt, to be very soon behind the walls of a new castle, but he was
allowed no time. The very night of his arrival the enemy gathered and
massacred him and all his men but two. Yorkshire took courage at this and
cut up a Norman detachment. Then the exiles in Scotland believed the time
had come for another attempt, and Edgar, Gospatric, and the others, with
the men of Northumberland at their back, advanced to attack the castle in
York. This put all the work of the previous summer in danger, and at the
call of William Malet, who held the castle for him, the king advanced
rapidly to his aid, fell unexpectedly on the insurgents, and scattered
them with great slaughter. As a result the Norman hold on York was
tightened by the building of a second castle, but Northumberland was
still left to itself.
William may have thought, as he returned to celebrate Easter at
Winchester, that the north had learned a lesson that would be sufficient
for some time, but he must have heard soon after his arrival that the men
of Yorkshire had again attacked his castles, though they had been beaten
off without much difficulty. Nothing had been gained by any of these
attempts, but they must have been indications to any abroad who were
watching the situation, and to William as well, that an invasion of
England in that quarter might hope for much local assistance. It was
nearly the end of the summer before it came, and a summer that was on the
whole quiet, disturbed only by the second raid of Harold's sons in the
Bristol Channel.
Sweyn of Denmark had at last made up his mind, and had got ready an
expedition, a somewhat miscellaneous force apparently, "sharked up" from
all the Baltic lands, and not too numerous. His fleet sailed along the
shores of the North Sea and first appeared off south-western England. A
foolish attack on Dover was beaten off, and three other attempts to land
on the east coast, where the country was securely held, were easily
defeated. Finally, it would seem, off the Humber they fell in with some
ships bearing the English leaders from Scotland, who had been waiting for
them. There they landed and marched upon York, joined on the way by the
men of the country of all ranks. And the mere news of their approach, the
prospect of new horrors to be lived through with no chance of mitigating
them, proved too much for the old archbishop, Aldred, and he died a few
days before the storm broke. William was hunting in the forest of Dean,
on the southern borders of Wales, when he heard that the invaders had
landed, but his over-confident garrison in York reported that they could
hold out for a year without aid, and he left them for the present to
themselves. They planned to stand a siege, and in clearing a space about
the castle they kindled a fire which destroyed the most of the city,
including the cathedral church; but when the enemy appeared, they tried a
battle in the open, and were killed or captured to a man.
The fall of York gave a serious aspect to the case, and called for
William's presence. Soon after the capture of the city the Danes had gone
back to the Humber, to the upper end of the estuary apparently, and there
they succeeded in avoiding attack by crossing one river or another as the
army of the king approached. In the meantime, in various places along the
west of England, insurrections had broken out, encouraged probably by
exaggerated reports of the successes of the rebels in the north. Only one
of these, that in Staffordshire, required any attention from William, and
in this case we do not know why. In all the other cases, in Devon, in
Somerset, and at Shrewsbury, where the Welsh helped in the attack on the
Norman castle, the garrisons and men of the locality unassisted, or
assisted only by the forces of their neighbours, had defended themselves
with success. If the Danish invasion be regarded as a test of the
security of the Conquest in those parts of England which the Normans had
really occupied, then certainly it must be regarded as complete.
Prom the west William returned to the north with little delay, and
occupied York without opposition. Then followed the one act of the
Conquest which is condemned by friend and foe alike. When William had
first learned of the fate of his castles in York, he had burst out into
ungovernable rage, and the mood had not passed away. He was determined to
exact an awful vengeance for the repeated defiance of his power. War in
its mildest form in those days was little regulated by any consideration
for the conquered. From the point of view of a passionate soldier there
was some provocation in this case. Norman garrisons had been massacred;
detached parties had been cut off; repeated rebellion had followed every
pacification. Plainly a danger existed here, grave in itself and inviting
greater danger from abroad. Policy might dictate measures of unusual
severity, but policy did not call for what was done, and clearly in this
case the Conqueror gave way to a passion of rage which he usually held in
check, and inflicted on the stubborn province a punishment which the
standard of his own time did not justify.
Slowly he passed with his army through the country to the north of York,
drawing a broad band of desolation between that city and Durham.
Fugitives he sought out and put to the sword, but even so he was not
satisfied. Innocent and guilty were involved in indiscriminate slaughter.
Houses were destroyed, flocks and herds exterminated. Supplies of food
and farm implements were heaped together and burned. With deliberate
purpose, cruelly carried out, it was made impossible for men to live
through a thousand square miles. Years afterwards the country was still a
desert; it was generations before it had fully recovered. The Norman
writer, Orderic Vitalis, perhaps following the king's chaplain and
panegyrist William of Poitiers, while he confesses here that he gladly
praised the king when he could, had only condemnation for this deed. He
believed that William, responsible to no earthly tribunal, must one day
answer for it to an infinite Judge before whom high and low are alike
accountable.
Christmas was near at hand when William had finished this business, and
he celebrated at York the nativity of the Prince of Peace, doubtless with
no suspicion of inconsistency. Soon after Christmas, by a short but
difficult expedition, William drove the Danes from a position on the
coast which they had believed impregnable, and forced them to take to
their ships, in which, after suffering greatly from lack of supplies,
they drifted southward as if abandoning the land. During this expedition
also, we are told, Gospatric, who had rebelled the year before, and
Waltheof who had "gone out" on the coming of the Danes, made renewed
submission and were again received into favour by the king. The hopes
which the coming of foreign assistance had awakened were at an end.
One thing remained to be done. The men of the Welsh border must be taught
the lesson which the men of the Scottish border had learned. The
insurrection which had called William into Staffordshire the previous
autumn seems still to have lingered in the region. The strong city of
Chester, from which, or from whose neighbourhood at least, men had joined
the attack on Shrewsbury, and which commanded the north-eastern parts of
Wales, was still unsubdued. Soon after his return from the coast William
determined upon a longer and still more difficult winter march, across
the width of England, from York to Chester. It is no wonder that his army
murmured and some at least asked to be dismissed. The country through
which they must pass was still largely wilderness. Hills and forests,
swollen streams and winter storms, must be encountered, and the strife
with them was a test of endurance without the joy of combat. One
expedition of the sort in a winter ought to be enough. But William
treated the objectors with contempt. He pushed on as he had planned,
leaving those to stay behind who would, and but few were ready for open
mutiny. The hazardous march was made with success. What remained of the
insurrection disappeared before the coming of the king; it has left to us
at least no traces of any resistance. Chester was occupied without
opposition. Fortified posts were established and garrisons left there and
at Stafford. Some things make us suspect that a large district on this
side of England was treated as northern Yorkshire had been, and homeless
fugitives in crowds driven forth to die of hunger. The patience which
pardoned the faithlessness of Edwin and Waltheof was not called for in
dealing with smaller men.
From Chester William turned south. At Salisbury he dismissed with rich
rewards the soldiers who had been faithful to him, and at Winchester he
celebrated the Easter feast. There he found three legates who had been
sent from the pope, and supported by their presence he at last took up
the affairs of the English Church. The king had shown the greatest
caution in dealing with this matter. It must have been understood, almost
if not quite from the beginning of the Norman plan of invasion, that if
the attempt were successful, one of its results should be the revolution
of the English Church, the reform of the abuses which existed in it,
as the continental churchman regarded them, and as indeed they were.
During the past century a great reform movement, emanating from the
monastery of Cluny, had transformed the Catholic world, but in this
England had but little part. Starting as a monastic reformation, it
had just succeeded in bringing the whole Church under monastic control.
Henceforth the asceticism of the monk, his ideals in religion and
worship, his type of thought and learning, were to be those of the
official Church, from the papal throne to the country parsonage. It
was for that age a true reformation. The combined influence of the two
great temptations to which the churchmen of this period of the Middle
Ages were exposed--ignorance so easy to yield to, so hard to overcome,
and property, carrying with it rank and power and opening the way to
ambition for oneself or one's posterity--was so great that a rule of
strict asceticism, enforced by a powerful organization with fearful
sanctions, and a controlling ideal of personal devotion, alone could
overcome it. The monastic reformation had furnished these conditions,
though severe conflicts were still to be fought out before they would
be made to prevail in every part of western Europe. Shortly before the
appointment of Stigand to the archbishopric of Canterbury, these new
ideas had obtained possession of the papal throne in the person of Leo
IX, and with them other ideas which had become closely and almost
necessarily associated with them, of strict centralization under the
pope, of a theocratic papal supremacy, in line certainly with the
history of the Church, but more self-consciously held and logically
worked out than ever before.
In this great movement England had had no permanent share. Cut off from
easy contact with the currents of continental thought, not merely by the
channel but by the lack of any common interests and natural incentives to
common life, it stood in an earlier stage of development in
ecclesiastical matters, as in legal and constitutional. In organization,
in learning, and in conduct, ecclesiastical England at the eve of the
Norman Conquest may be compared not unfairly to ecclesiastical Europe of
the tenth century. There was the same loosening of the bonds of a common
organization, the same tendency to separate into local units shut up to
interest in themselves alone. National councils had practically ceased to
meet. The legislative machinery of the Church threatened to disappear in
that of the State. An outside body, the witenagemot, seemed about to
acquire the right of imposing rules and regulations upon the Church, and
another outside power, the king, to acquire the right of appointing its
officers. Quite as important in the eyes of the Church as the lack of
legislative independence was the lack of judicial independence, which was
also a defect of the English Church. The law of the Church as it bore
upon the life of the citizen was declared and enforced in the hundred or
shire court, and bishop and ealdorman sat together in the latter. Only
over the ecclesiastical faults of his clergy did the bishop have
exclusive jurisdiction, and this was probably a jurisdiction less well
developed than on the continent. The power of the primate over his
suffragans and of the bishop within his diocese was ill defined and
vague, and questions of disputed authority or doubtful allegiance
lingered long without exact decision, perhaps from lack of interest,
perhaps from want of the means of decision.
In learning, the condition was even worse. The cloister schools had
undergone a marked decline since the great days of Theodore and Alcuin.
Not merely were the parish priests ignorant men, but even bishops and
abbots. The universal language of learning and faith was neglected, and
in England alone, of all countries, theological books were written in the
local tongue, a sure sign of isolation and of the lack of interest in the
common philosophical life of the world. In moral conduct, while the
English clergy could not be held guilty of serious breaches of the
general ethical code, they were far from coming up to the special
standard which the canon law imposed upon the clergy, and which the
monastic reformation was making the inflexible law of the time. Married
priests abounded; there were said to be even married bishops. Simony was
not infrequent. Every churchman of high rank was likely to be a
pluralist, holding bishoprics and abbacies together, like Stigand, who
held with the primacy the bishopric of Winchester and many abbeys. That
such a man as Stigand, holding every ecclesiastical office that he could
manage to keep, depriving monasteries of their landed endowments with no
more right than the baron after him, refused recognition by every legally
elected pope, and thought unworthy to crown a king, or even in most cases
to consecrate a bishop, should have held his place for so many years as
unquestioned primate in all but the most important functions, is evidence
enough that the English Church had not yet been brought under the
influence of the great religious reformation of the eleventh century.
This was the chief defect of the England of that time--a defect upon all
sides of its life, which the Conquest remedied. It was an isolated land.
It stood in danger of becoming a Scandinavian land, not in blood merely,
or in absorption in an actual Scandinavian empire, but in withdrawal from
the real world, and in that tardy, almost reluctant, civilization which
was possibly a necessity for Scandinavia proper, but which would have
been for England a falling back from higher levels. It was the mission of
the Norman Conquest--if we may speak of a mission for great historical
events--to deliver England from this danger, and to bring her into the
full current of the active and progressive life of Christendom.
It was more than three years after the coronation of William before the
time was come for a thorough overhauling of the Church. So far as we
know, William, up to that time, had given no sign of his intentions. The
early adhesion of Stigand had been welcomed. The Normans seem to have
believed that he enjoyed great consideration and influence among the
Saxons, and he had been left undisturbed. He had even been allowed to
consecrate the new Norman bishop of Dorchester, which looks like an act
of deliberate policy. It had not seemed wise to alarm the Church so long
as the military issue of the invasion could be considered in any sense
doubtful, and not until the changes could be made with the powerful
support of the head of the Church directly expressed. It is a natural
guess, though we have no means of knowing, that Lanfranc's mission to
Rome in 1067 had been to discuss this matter with the Roman authorities,
quite as much as to get the pallium for the new Archbishop of Rouen. Now
the time had come for action.
Three legates of the pope were at Winchester, and there a council was
summoned to meet them. Two of the legates were cardinals, then a
relatively less exalted rank in the Church than later, but making plain
the direct support of the pope. The other was Ermenfrid, Bishop of Sion,
or Sitten, in what is now the Swiss canton of the Vallais. He had already
been in England eight years earlier as a papal legate, and he would bring
to this council ideas derived from local observation, as well as tried
diplomatic skill. Before the council met, the papal sanction of the
Conquest was publicly proclaimed, when the cardinal legates placed the
crown on the king's head at the Easter festival. On the octave of Easter,
in 1070, the council met. Its first business was to deal with the case of
Stigand. Something like a trial seems to have been held, but its result
could never have been in doubt. He was deprived of the archbishopric,
and, with that, of his other preferments, on three grounds: he had held
Winchester along with the primacy; he had held the primacy while Robert
was still the rightful archbishop according to the laws of the Church;
and he had obtained his pallium and his only recognition from the
antipope Benedict X. His brother, the Bishop of Elmham, was also deposed,
and some abbots at the same time.
An English chronicler of a little later date, Florence of Worcester,
doubtless representing the opinion of those contemporaries who were
unfavourable to the Normans, believed that for many of these depositions
there were no canonical grounds, but that they were due to the king's
desire to have the help of the Church in holding and pacifying his new
kingdom. We may admit the motive and its probable influence on the acts
of the time, without overlooking the fact that there would be likely to
be an honest difference in the interpretation of canonical rights and
wrongs on the Norman and the English sides, and that the Normans were
more likely to be right according to the prevailing standard of the
Church. The same chronicler gives us interesting evidence of the
contemporary native feeling about this council, and the way the rights of
the English were likely to be treated by it, in recording the fact that
it was thought to be a bold thing for the English bishop Wulfstan, of
Worcester, to demand his rights in certain lands which Aldred had kept in
his possession when he was transferred from the see of Worcester to the
archbishopric of York. The case was postponed, until there should be an
archbishop of York to defend the rights of his Church, but the brave
bishop had nothing to lose by his boldness. The treatment of the Church
throughout his reign is evidence of William's desire to act according to
established law, though it is also evidence of his ruling belief that the
new law was superior to the old, if ever a conflict arose between them.
Shortly after, at Whitsuntide, another council met at Windsor, and
continued the work. The cardinals had returned to Rome, but Ermenfrid was
still present. Further vacancies were made in the English Church in the
same way as by the previous council--by the end of the year only two, or
at most three, English bishops remained in office--but the main business
at this time was to fill vacancies. A new Archbishop of York, Thomas,
Canon of Bayeux, was appointed, and three bishops, Winchester, Selsey,
and Elmham, all of these from the royal chapel. But the most important
appointment of the time was that of Lanfranc, Abbot of St. Stephen's at
Caen, to be Archbishop of Canterbury. With evident reluctance he accepted
this responsible office, in which his work was destined to be almost as
important in the history of England as William's own. Two papal legates
crossing from England, Ermenfrid and a new one named Hubert, a synod of
the Norman clergy, Queen Matilda, and her son Robert, all urged him to
accept, and he yielded to their solicitation.
Lanfranc was at this time sixty-five years of age. An Italian by birth,
he had made good use of the advantages which the schools of that land
offered to laymen, but on the death of his father, while still a young
man, he had abandoned the path of worldly promotion which lay open before
him in the profession of the law, in which he had followed his father,
and had gone to France to teach and finally to become a monk. By 1045 he
was prior of the abbey of Bec, and within a few years he was famous
throughout the whole Church as one of its ablest theologians. In the
controversy with Berengar of Tours, on the nature of the Eucharist, he
had argued with great skill in favour of transubstantiation. Still more
important was the fact that his abilities and ideas were known to
William, who had long relied upon his counsel in the government of the
duchy, and that entire harmony of action was possible between them. He
has been called William's "one friend," and while this perhaps unduly
limits the number of the king's friends, he was, in the greatest affairs
of his reign, his firm supporter and wise counsellor.
From the moment of his consecration, on August 29, 1070, the reformation
of the English Church went steadily on, until it was as completely
accomplished as was possible. The first question to be settled was perhaps
the most important of all, the question of unity of national organization.
The new Archbishop of York refused Lanfranc's demand that he should take
the oath of obedience to Canterbury, and asserted his independence and
coordinate position, and laid claim to three bordering bishoprics as
belonging to his metropolitan see,--Worcester, Lichfield, and Dorchester.
The dispute was referred to the king, who arranged a temporary compromise
in favour of Lanfranc, and then carried to the pope, by whom it was again
referred back to be decided by a council in England. This decision was
reached at a council in Windsor at Whitsuntide in 1072, and was in favour
of Lanfranc on all points, though it seems certain that the victory was
obtained by an extensive series of forgeries of which the archbishop
himself was probably the author.[4] It must be added, however, that the
moral judgment of that age did not regard as ours does such forgeries in
the interest of one's Church. If the decision was understood at the time
to mean that henceforth all archbishops of York should promise canonical
obedience to the Archbishop of Canterbury, it did not permanently secure
that result. But the real point at issue in this dispute, at least for the
time being, was no mere matter of rank or precedence; it was as necessary
to the plans of Lanfranc and of the Church that his authority should be
recognized throughout the whole kingdom as it was to those of William. Nor
was the question without possible political significance. The political
independence of the north--still uncertain in its allegiance--would be far
easier to establish if it was, to begin with, ecclesiastically
independent.
Hardly less important than the settlement of this matter was the
establishment of the legislative independence of the Church. From the two
legatine councils of 1070, at Winchester and Windsor, a series begins of
great national synods, meeting at intervals to the end of the reign.
Complete divorce from the State was not at first possible. The council
was held at a meeting of the court, and was summoned by the king. He was
present at the sessions, as were also lay magnates of the realm, but the
questions proper to the council were discussed and decided by the
churchmen alone, and were promulgated by the Church as its own laws. This
was real legislative independence, even if the form of it was somewhat
defective, and before very long, as the result of this beginning, the
form came to correspond to the reality, and the process became as
independent as the conclusion.
William's famous ordinance separating the spiritual and temporal courts
decreed another extensive change necessary to complete the independence
of the Church in its legal interests. The date of this edict is not
certain, but it would seem from such evidence as we have to have been
issued not very long after the meeting of the councils of 1070. It
withdrew from the local popular courts, the courts of the hundred, all
future enforcement of the ecclesiastical laws, subjected all offenders
against these laws to trial in the bishop's court, and promised the
support of the temporal authorities to the processes and decisions of the
Church courts. This abolishing by edict of so important a prerogative of
the old local courts, and annulling of so large a part of the old law,
was the most violent and serious innovation made by the Conqueror in the
Saxon judicial system; but it was fully justified, not merely by the more
highly developed law which came into use as a result of the change, but
by the necessity of a stricter enforcement of that law than would ever be
possible through popular courts.
With these more striking changes went others, less revolutionary but
equally necessary to complete the new ecclesiastical system. The Saxon
bishops had many of them had their seats in unimportant places in their
dioceses, tending to degrade the dignity almost to the level of a rural
bishopric. The Norman prelates by degrees removed the sees to the chief
towns, changing the names with the change of place. Dorchester was
removed to Lincoln, Selsey to Chichester, Sherborne to Old Sarum, and
Elmham by two removes to Norwich. The new cities were the centres of life
and influence, and they were more suitable residences for barons of the
king, as the Norman bishops were. The inner organization of these
bishoprics was also improved. Cathedral chapters were reformed; in
Rochester and Durham secular canons were replaced by monastic clergy
under a more strict regime. New offices of law and administration were
introduced. The country priests were brought under strict control, and
earnest attempts were made to compel them to follow more closely the
disciplinary requirements of the Church.
The monastic system as it existed at the time of the Conquest underwent
the same reformation as the more secular side of the Church organization.
It was indeed regarded by the new ecclesiastical rulers as the source of
the Church's strength and the centre of its life. English abbots were
replaced by Norman, and the new abbots introduced a better discipline and
improvement in the ritual. The rule was more strictly enforced. Worship,
labour, and study became the constant occupations of the monks. Speedily
the institution won a new influence in the life of the nation. The number
of monks grew rapidly; new monasteries were everywhere established, of
which the best remembered, the Conqueror's abbey of Battle, with the high
altar of its church standing where Harold's standard had stood in the
memorable fight, is only an example. Many of these new foundations were
daughter-houses of great French monasteries, and it is a significant fact
that by the end of the reign of William's son Henry, Cluny, the source of
this monastic reformation for the world, had sent seventeen colonies into
England. Wealth poured into these establishments from the gifts of king
and barons and common men alike. Their buildings grew in number and in
magnificence, and the poor and suffering of the realm received their
share in the new order of things, through a wider and better organized
charity.
With this new monastic life began a new era of learning. Schools were
everywhere founded or renewed. The universal language of Christendom took
once more its proper place as the literary language of the cloister,
although the use of English lingered for a time here and there. England
caught at last the theological eagerness of the continent in the age when
the stimulus of the new dialectic method was beginning to be felt, and soon
demanded to be heard in the settlement of the problems of the thinking
world. Lanfranc continued to write as Archbishop of Canterbury.[5] Even
something that may be called a literary spirit in an age of general
barrenness was awakened. Poems were produced not unworthy of mention, and
the generation of William's sons was not finished when such histories had
been written as those of Eadmer and William of Malmesbury, superior in
conception and execution to anything produced in England since the days of
Bede. In another way the stimulus of these new influences showed itself in
an age of building, and by degrees the land was covered with those vast
monastic and cathedral churches which still excite our admiration and
reveal to us the fact that the narrow minds of what we were once pleased to
call the dark ages were capable, in one direction at least, of great and
lofty conceptions. Norman ideals of massive strength speak to us as clearly
from the arches of Winchester or the piers of Gloucester as from the firm
hand and stern rule of William or Henry.
In general the Conquest incorporated England closely, as has already been
said, with that organic whole of life and achievement which we call
Christendom. This was not more true of the ecclesiastical side of things
than of the political or constitutional. But the Church of the eleventh
century included within itself relatively many more than the Church of
to-day of those activities which quickly respond to a new stimulus and
reveal a new life by increased production. The constitutional changes
involved in the Conquest, and directly traceable to it through a long
line of descent, though more slowly realized and for long in less
striking forms, were in truth destined to produce results of greater
permanence and a wider influence. The final result of the Norman Conquest
was a constitutional creation, new in the history of the world. Nothing
like this followed in the sphere of the Church. But for a generation or
two the abundant vigour which flowed through the renewed religious life
of Europe, and the radical changes which were necessary to bring England
into full harmony with it, made the ecclesiastical revolution seem the
most impressive and the most violent of the changes which took place in
this age in English public organization and life. If we may trust a later
chronicler, whose record is well supported by independent and earlier
evidence, in the same year in which these legatine councils met, and in
which the reformation of the Church was begun, there was introduced an
innovation, so far as the Saxon Church is concerned, which would have
seemed to the leaders of the reform party hostile to their cause had they
not been so familiar with it elsewhere, or had they been conscious of the
full meaning of their own demands. Matthew Paris, in the thirteenth
century, records that, in 1070, the king decreed that all bishoprics and
abbacies which were holding baronies, and which heretofore had been free
from all secular obligations, should be liable to military service; and
caused to be enrolled, according to his own will, the number of knights
which should be due from each in time of war. Even if this statement were
without support, it would be intrinsically probable at this or some near
date. The endowment lands of bishopric and abbey, or rather a part of
these lands in each case, would inevitably be regarded as a fief held of
the crown, and as such liable to the regular feudal services. This was
the case in every feudal land, and no one would suppose that there should
be any exception in England. The amount of the service was arbitrarily
fixed by the king in these ecclesiastical baronies, just as it was in the
lay fiefs. The fact was important enough to attract the notice of the
chroniclers because the military service, regulated in this way, would
seem to be more of an innovation than the other services by which the
fief was held, like the court service, for example, though it was not so
in reality.
This transformation in life and culture was wrought in the English Church
with the full sanction and support of the king. In Normandy, as well as in
England, was this the case. The plans of the reform party had been carried
out more fully in some particulars in these lands than the Church alone
would have attempted at the time, because they had convinced the judgment
of the sovereign and won his favour. At every step of the process where
there was need, the power of the State had been at the command of the
Church, to remove abuses or to secure the introduction of reforms. But
with the theocratic ideas which went with these reforms in the teaching of
the Church William had no sympathy. The leaders of the reformation might
hold to the ideal supremacy of pope over king, and to the superior mission
and higher power of the Church as compared with the State, but there could
be no practical realization of these theories in any Norman land so long
as the Conqueror lived. In no part of Europe had the sovereign exercised
a greater or more direct power over the Church than in Normandy. All
departments of its life were subject to his control, if there was reason
to exert it. This had been true for so long a time that the Church was
accustomed to the situation and accepted it without complaint. This power
William had no intention of yielding. He proposed to exercise it in
England as he had in Normandy,[6] and, even in this age of fierce conflict
with its great temporal rival, the emperor, the papacy made no sharply
drawn issue with him on these points. There could be no question of the
headship of the world in his case, and on the vital moral point he was too
nearly in harmony with the Church to make an issue easy. On the importance
of obeying the monastic rule, the celibacy of the clergy, and the purchase
of ecclesiastical office, he agreed in theory with the disciples of
Cluny.[7] But, if he would not sell a bishopric, he was determined that
the bishop should be his man; he stood ready to increase the power and
independence of the Church, but always as an organ of the State, as a part
of the machine through which the government was carried on.
It is quite within the limits of possibility that, in his negotiations
with Rome before his invasion of England, William may have given the pope
to understand, in some indefinite and informal way, that if he won the
kingdom, he would hold it of St. Peter. In accepting the consecrated
banner which the pope sent him, he could hardly fail to know that he
might be understood to be acknowledging a feudal dependence. When the
kingdom was won, however, he found himself unwilling to carry out such an
arrangement, whether tacitly or openly promised. To Gregory VII's demand
for his fealty he returned a respectful but firm refusal. The sovereignty
of England was not to be diminished; he would hold the kingdom as freely
as his predecessors had done. Peter's pence, which it belonged of right
to England to pay, should be regularly collected and sent to Rome, but no
right of rule, even theoretical, over king or kingdom, could be allowed
the pope.
An ecclesiastical historian whose childhood and early youth fell in
William's reign, and who was deeply impressed with the strong control
under which he held the Church, has recorded three rules to govern the
relation between Church and State, which he says were established by
William.[8] These are: 1, that no one should be recognized as pope in
England except at his command, nor any papal letters received without his
permission; 2, that no acts of the national councils should be binding
without his sanction; 3, that none of his barons or servants should be
excommunicated, even for crimes committed, without his consent. Whether
these were consciously formulated rules or merely generalizations from his
conduct, they state correctly the principles of his action, and exhibit
clearly in one most important sphere the unlimited power established by
the Norman Conquest.
To this year, 1070, in which was begun the reformation of the Church,
was assigned at a later time another work of constitutional interest.
The unofficial compiler of a code of laws, the Leges Edwardi, written
in the reign of Henry I, and drawn largely from the legislation of the
Saxon kings, ascribed his work, after a fashion not unusual with
writers of his kind, to the official act of an earlier king. He relates
that a great national inquest was ordered by King William in this year,
to ascertain and establish the laws of the English. Each county elected
a jury of twelve men, who knew the laws, and these juries coming
together in the presence of the king declared on oath what were the
legal customs of the land. So runs the preface of the code which was
given out as compiled from this testimony. Such a plan and procedure
would not be out of harmony with what we know of William's methods
and policy. The machinery of the jury, which was said to be employed,
was certainly introduced into England by the first Norman king, and
was used by him for the establishment of facts, both in national
undertakings like the Domesday Book and very probably in local cases
arising in the courts. We know also that he desired to leave the old
laws undisturbed so far as possible, and the year 1070 is one in which
an effort to define and settle the future legal code of the state would
naturally fall. But the story must be rejected as unhistorical. An
event of such importance as this inquisition must have been, if it
took place, could hardly have occurred without leaving its traces in
contemporary records of some sort, and an official code of this kind
would have produced results in the history of English law of which we
find no evidence. The Saxon law and the machinery of the local courts
did survive the Conquest with little change, but no effort was made to
reduce the customs of the land to systematic and written form until a
later time, until a time indeed when the old law was beginning to give
place to the new.
[4] See H. Bohmer, Die Falschungen Erzbischof Lanfranks van Canterbury
(Leipzig, 1902).
[5] Böhmer, Kirche und Staat in England und in der Normandie,
pp. 103-106.
[6] Eadmer, Historia Novorum, p. 9.
[7] Böhmer, Kirche und Staat, pp. 126 ff.
[8] Eadmer, Hist. Nov., p. 10.