WILLIAM'S LATER YEARS
Political events had not waited for the reformation of the Church, and
long before these reforms were completed, England had become a thoroughly
settled state under the new king. The beginning of the year 1070 is a
turning-point in the reign of William. The necessity for fighting was not
over, but from this date onwards there was no more fighting for the
actual possession of the land. The irreconcilables had still to be dealt
with; in one small locality they retained even yet some resisting power;
the danger of foreign invasion had again to be met: but not for one
moment after William's return from the devastation of the north and west
was there even the remotest possibility of undoing the Conquest.
The Danes had withdrawn from the region of the Humber, but they had not
left the country. In the Isle of Ely, then more nearly an actual island
than in modern times, was a bit of unsubdued England, and there they
landed for a time. In this position, surrounded by fens and interlacing
rivers, accessible at only a few points, occurred the last resistance
which gave the Normans any trouble. The rich mythology which found its
starting-point in this resistance, and especially in its leader,
Hereward, we no longer mistake for history; but we should not forget that
it embodies the popular attitude towards those who stubbornly resisted
the Norman, as it was handed on by tradition, and that it reveals almost
pathetically the dearth of heroic material in an age which should have
produced it in abundance. Hereward was a tenant in a small way of the
abbey of Peterborough. What led him into such a determined revolt we do
not know, unless he was among those who were induced to join the Danes
after their arrival, in the belief that their invasion would be
successful. Nor do we know what collected in the Isle of Ely a band of
men whom the Peterborough chronicler was probably not wrong, from any
point of view, in calling outlaws. A force of desperate men could hope to
maintain themselves for some time in the Isle of Ely; they could not hope
for anything more than this. The coming of the Danes added little real
strength, though the country about believed for the moment, as it had
done north of the Humber, that the tide had turned. The first act of the
allies was the plunder and destruction of the abbey and town of
Peterborough shortly after the meeting of the council of Windsor. The
English abbot Brand had died the previous autumn, and William had
appointed in his place a Norman, Turold, distinguished as a good fighter
and a hard ruler. These qualities had led the king to select him for this
special post, and the plundering of the abbey, so far as it was not mere
marauding, looks like an answering act of spite. The Danes seem to have
been disposed at first to hold Peterborough, but Turold must have brought
them proposals of peace from William, which induced them to withdraw at
last from England with the secure possession of their plunder.
Hereward and his men accomplished nothing more that year, but others
gradually gathered in to them, including some men of note. Edwin and
Morcar had once more changed sides, or had fled from William's court to
escape some danger there. Edwin had been killed in trying to make his way
through to Scotland, but Morcar had joined the refugees in Ely. Bishop
Ethelwin of Durham was also there, and a northern thane, Siward Barn. In
1074 William advanced in person against the "camp of refuge." A fleet was
sent to blockade one side while the army attacked from the other. It was
found necessary to build a long causeway for the approach of the army and
around this work the fiercest fighting occurred; but its building could
not be stopped, and just as it was finished the defenders of the Isle
surrendered. The leaders were imprisoned, Morcar in Normandy for the rest
of William's reign. The common men were mutilated and released. Hereward
escaped to sea, but probably afterwards submitted to William and received
his favour. Edric the Wild, who had long remained unsubdued on the Welsh
borders, had also yielded before the surrender of the Isle of Ely, and
the last resistance that can be called in any sense organized was at an
end.
The comparatively easy pacification of the land, the early submission to
their fate of so strong a nation, was in no small degree aided by the
completeness with which the country was already occupied by Norman
colonies, if we may call them so. Probably before the surrender of Ely
every important town was under the immediate supervision of some Norman
baron, with a force of his own. In all the strategically important places
fortified posts had been built and regular garrisons stationed. Even the
country districts had to a large extent been occupied in a similar way.
It is hardly probable that as late as 1072 any considerable area in
England had escaped extensive confiscations. Everywhere the Norman had
appeared to take possession of his fief, to establish new tenants, or to
bring the old ones into new relations with himself, to arrange for the
administration of his manors, and to leave behind him the agents who were
responsible to himself for the good conduct of affairs. If he made but
little change in the economic organization of his property, and disturbed
the labouring class but slightly or not at all, he would give to a wide
district a vivid impression of the strength of the new order and of the
hopelessness of any resistance.
Already Norman families, who were to make so much of the history of the
coming centuries, were rooted in the land. Montfort and Mortimer; Percy,
Beauchamp, and Mowbray; Ferrets and Lacy; Beaumont, Mandeville, and
Grantmesnil; Clare, Bigod, and Bohun; and many others of equal or nearly
equal name. All these were as yet of no higher than baronial rank, but if
we could trust the chroniclers, we should be able to make out in addition
a considerable list of earldoms which William had established by this
date or soon afterwards, in many parts of England, and in these were
other great names. According to this evidence, his two half brothers, the
children of his mother by her marriage with Herlwin de Conteville, had
been most richly provided for: Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, as Earl of Kent,
and Robert, Count of Mortain, with a princely domain in the south-west as
Earl of Cornwall. One of the earliest to be made an earl was his old
friend and the son of his guardian, William Fitz Osbern, who had been
created Earl of Hereford; he was now dead and was succeeded by his son
Roger, soon very justly to lose title and land. Shrewsbury was held by
Roger of Montgomery; Chester by Hugh of Avranches, the second earl;
Surrey by William of Warenne; Berkshire by Walter Giffard. Alan Rufus of
Britanny was Earl of Richmondshire; Odo of Champagne, Earl of Holderness;
and Ralph of Guader, who was to share in the downfall of Roger Fitz
Osbern, Earl of Norfolk. One Englishman, who with much less justice was
to be involved in the fate which rightly befell these two Norman earls,
was also earl at this time, Watheof, who had lately succeeded Gospatric
in the troubled earldom of Northumberland, and who also held the earldoms
of Northampton and Huntingdon. These men certainly held important
lordships in the districts named, but whether so many earldoms, in form
and law, had really been established by the Conqueror at this date, or
were established by him at any later time, is exceedingly doubtful. The
evidence of the chroniclers is easily shown to be untrustworthy in the
matter of titles, and the more satisfactory evidence which we obtain from
charters and the Domesday Book does not justify this extensive list.
But the historian does not find it possible to decide with confidence in
every individual case. Of the earldoms of this list it is nearly certain
that we must drop out those of Cornwall, Holderness, Surrey, Berkshire,
and Richmond, and almost or quite certain that we may allow to stand
those of Waltheof and William Fitz Osbern, of Kent, Chester, and
Shrewsbury.
Independently of the question of evidence, it is difficult to see what
there was in the general situation in England which could have led the
Conqueror to so wide a departure from the established practice of the
Norman dukes as the creation of so many earls would be. In Normandy the
title of count was practically unknown outside the ducal family. The
feudal count as found in other French provinces, the sovereign of a
little principality as independent of the feudal holder of the province
as he himself was of the king, did not exist there. The four lordships
which bore the title of count, Talou or Arques, Eu, Evreux, and Mortain,
were reserved for younger branches of the ducal house, and carried with
them no sovereign rights. The tradition of the Saxon earldom undoubtedly
exercised by degrees a great influence on the royal practice in England,
and by the middle of the twelfth century earls existed in considerable
numbers; but the lack of conclusive evidence for the existence of many
under William probably reflects the fact of his few creations. But in the
cases which we can certainly trace to William, it was not the old Saxon
earldom which was revived. The new earldom, with the possible exception
of one or two earls who, like the old Prankish margrave, or the later
palatine count, were given unusual powers to support unusual military
responsibilities, was a title, not an office. It was not a government of
provinces, but a mark of rank; and the danger involved in the older
office, of the growth of independent powers within the state under local
dynasties which would be, though existing under other forms, as difficult
to control as the local dynasties of feudal France, was removed once for
all by the introduction of the Norman centralization. That no serious
trouble ever came from the so-called palatine earldoms is itself evidence
of the powerful monarchy ruling in England.
This centralization was one of the great facts of the Conquest. In it
resided the strength of the Norman monarchy, and it was of the utmost
importance as well in its bearing on the future history of England.
Delolme, one of the earliest of foreign writers on the English
constitution, remarks that the explanation of English liberty is to be
found in the absolute power of her early kings, and the most careful
modern student can do no more than amplify this statement. That this
centralization was the result of any deliberate policy on the part of
William can hardly be maintained. A conscious modification of the feudal
system as he introduced it into England, with a view to the preservation
of his own power, has often been attributed to the Conqueror. But the
political insight which would have enabled him to recognize the evil
tendencies inherent in the only institutional system he had ever known,
and to plan and apply remedies proper to counteract these tendencies but
not inconsistent with the system itself, would indicate a higher quality
of statesmanship than anything else in his career shows him to possess.
More to the purpose is the fact that there is no evidence of any such
modification, while the drift of evidence is against it. William was
determined to be strong, not because of any theory which he had formed of
the value of strength, or of the way to secure it, but because he was
strong and had always been so since he recovered the full powers of a
sovereign in the struggles which followed his minority. The concentration
of all the functions of sovereignty in his own hands, and the reservation
of the allegiance of all landholders to himself, which strengthened his
position in England, had strengthened it first in Normandy.
Intentional weakening of the feudal barons has been seen in the fact that
the manors which they held were scattered about in different parts of
England, so that the formation of an independent principality, or a quick
concentration of strength, would not be possible. That this was a fact
characteristic of England is probably true. But it is sufficiently
accounted for in part by the gradual spread of the Norman occupation, and
of the consequent confiscations and re-grants, and in part by the fact
that it had always been characteristic of England, so that when the
holding of a given Saxon thane was transferred bodily to the Norman
baron, he found his manors lying in no continuous whole. In any case,
however, the divided character of the Norman baronies in England must not
be pressed too far. The grants to his two half brothers, and the earldoms
of Chester and Shrewsbury on the borders of Wales, are enough to show
that William was not afraid of principalities within the state, and other
instances on a somewhat smaller scale could be cited. Nor ought
comparison to be made between English baronies, or earldoms even, and
those feudal dominions on the continent which had been based on the
counties of the earlier period. In these, sovereign rights over a large
contiguous territory, originally delegated to an administrative officer,
had been transformed into a practically independent power. The proper
comparison is rather between the English baronies of whatever rank and
those continental feudal dominions which were formed by natural process
half economic and half political, without definite delegation of
sovereign powers, within or alongside the provincial countships, and this
comparison would show less difference.
If the Saxon earl did not survive the Conquest in the same position as
before, the Saxon sheriff did. The office as the Normans found it in
England was in so many ways similar to that of the viscount, vicecomes,
which still survived in Normandy as an administrative office, that it was
very easy to identify the two and to bring the Norman name into common
use as an equivalent of the Saxon. The result of the new conditions was
largely to increase the sheriff's importance and power. As the special
representative of the king in the county, he shared in the increased
power of his master, practically the whole administrative system of the
state, as it affected its local divisions, was worked through him.
Administrator of the royal domains, responsible for the most important
revenues, vehicle of royal commands of all kinds, and retaining the
judicial functions which had been associated with the office in Saxon
times, he held a position, not merely of power but of opportunity.
Evidence is abundant of great abuse of power by the sheriff at the
expense of the conquered. Nor did the king always escape these abuses,
for the office, like that of the Carolingian count, to which it was in
many ways similar, contained a possibility of use for private and
personal advantage which could be corrected, even by so strong a
sovereign as the Anglo-Norman, only by violent intervention at intervals.
Some time after the Conquest, but at a date unknown, William set aside a
considerable portion of Hampshire to form a hunting ground, the New
Forest, near his residence at Winchester. The chroniclers of the next
generation describe the formation of the Forest as the devastation of a
large tract of country in which churches were destroyed, the inhabitants
driven out, and the cultivated land thrown back into wilderness, and they
record a contemporary belief that the violent deaths of so many members
of William's house within the bounds of the Forest, including two of his
sons, were acts of divine vengeance and proofs of the wickedness of the
deed. While this tradition of the method of making the Forest is still
generally accepted, it has been called in question for reasons that make
it necessary, in my opinion, to pronounce it doubtful. It is hardly
consistent with the general character of William. Such statements of
chroniclers are too easily explained to warrant us in accepting them
without qualification. The evidence of geology and of the history of
agriculture indicates that probably the larger part of this tract was
only thinly populated, and Domesday Book shows some portions of the
Forest still occupied by cultivators.[9] The forest laws of the Norman
kings were severe in the extreme, and weighed cruelly on beasts and men
alike, and on men of rank as well as simple freemen. They excited a
general and bitter hostility which lasted for generations, and prepared a
natural soil for the rapid growth of a partially mythical explanation to
account in a satisfactory way for the dramatic accidents which followed
the family of the Conqueror in the Forest, by the direct and tangible
wickedness which had attended the making of the hunting ground. It is
probable also that individual acts of violence did accompany the making,
and that some villages and churches were destroyed. But the likelihood is
so strong against a general devastation that history should probably
acquit William of the greater crime laid to his charge, and refuse to
place any longer the devastation of Hampshire in the same class with that
of Northumberland.
After the surrender of Ely, William's attention was next given to
Scotland. In 1070 King Malcolm had invaded northern England, but without
results beyond laying waste other portions of that afflicted country. It
was easier to show the Scots than the Danes that William was capable of
striking back, and in 1072, after a brief visit to Normandy, an army
under the king's command advanced along the east coast with an
accompanying fleet. No attempt was made to check this invasion in the
field, and only when William had reached Abernethy did Malcolm come to
meet him. What arrangement was made between them it is impossible to say,
but it was one that was satisfactory to William at the time. Probably
Malcolm became his vassal and gave him hostages for his good conduct, but
if so, his allegiance did not bind him very securely. Norman feudalism
was no more successful than the ordinary type, in dealing with a reigning
sovereign who was in vassal relations.
The critical years of William's conquest of England had been undisturbed
by any dangers threatening his continental possessions. Matilda, who
spent most of the time in Normandy, with her councillors, had maintained
peace and order with little difficulty; but in the year after his
Scottish expedition he was called to Normandy by a revolt in his early
conquest, the county of Maine, which it required a formidable campaign to
subdue. William's plan to attach this important province to Normandy by a
marriage between his son Robert and the youngest sister of the last count
had failed through the death of the proposed heiress, and the county had
risen in favour of her elder sister, the wife of the Italian Marquis Azo
or of her son. Then a successful communal revolution had occurred in the
city of Le Mans, anticipating an age of rebellion against the feudal
powers, and the effort of the commune to bring the whole county into
alliance with itself, though nearly successful for the moment at least,
had really prepared the way for the restoration of the Norman power by
dividing the party opposed to it. William crossed to Normandy in 1073,
leading a considerable army composed in part of English. The campaign was
a short one. Revolt was punished, as William sometimes punished it, by
barbarously devastating the country. Le Mans did not venture to stand a
siege, but surrendered on William's sworn promise to respect its ancient
liberty. By a later treaty with Fulk of Anjou, Robert was recognized as
Count of Maine, but as a vassal of Anjou and not of Normandy.
William probably returned to England after the settlement of these
affairs, but of his doings there nothing is recorded, and for some time
troubles in his continental dominions occupied more of his attention than
the interests of the island. He was in Normandy, indeed, during the whole
of that "most severe tempest," as a writer of the next generation called
it, which broke upon a part of England in the year 1075; and the first
feudal insurrection in English history was put down, as more serious ones
were destined to be before the fall of feudalism, by the king's officers
and the men of the land in the king's absence. To determine the causes of
this insurrection, we need to read between the lines of the story as it
is told us by the writers of that and the next age. Elaborate reasons for
their hostility to William's government were put into the mouths of the
conspirators by one of these writers, but these would mean nothing more
than a general statement that the king was a very severe and stern ruler,
if it were not for the more specific accusation that he had rewarded
those who had fought for him very inadequately, and through avarice had
afterward reduced the value even of these gifts.[10] A passage in a letter
of Lanfranc's to one of the leaders of the rebellion, Roger, Earl of
Hereford, written evidently after Roger's dissatisfaction had become known
but before any open rebellion, gives us perhaps a key to the last part of
this complaint.[11] He tells him that the king, revoking, we infer, former
orders, has directed his sheriffs not to hold any more pleas in the earl's
land until he can return and hear the case between him and the sheriffs.
In a time when the profits of a law court were important to the lord who
had the right to hold it, the entry of the king's officers into a
"liberty" to hear cases there as the representative of the king, and to
his profit, would naturally seem to the baron whose income was affected a
diminution of the value of his fief, due to the king's avarice. Nothing
could show us better the attitude natural to a strong king towards feudal
immunities than the facts which these words of Lanfranc's imply, and
though we know of no serious trouble arising from this reason for a
century or more, it is clear that the royal view of the matter never
changed, and finally like infringements on the baronial courts became one
of the causes of the first great advance towards constitutional liberty,
the Magna Carta.
This letter of Lanfranc's to Roger of Hereford is a most interesting
illustration of his character and of his diplomatic skill, and it shows
us clearly how great must have been his usefulness to William. Though it
is perfectly evident to us that he suspects the loyalty of Roger to be
seriously tempted, there is not a word of suspicion expressed in the
letter, but the considerations most likely to keep him loyal are strongly
urged. With the exception of the sentence about the sheriffs, and formal
phrases at the beginning and end, the letter runs thus: "Our lord, the
king of the English, salutes you and us all as faithful subjects of his
in whom he has great confidence, and commands us that as much as we are
able we should have care of his castles, lest, which God avert, they
should be betrayed to his enemies; wherefore I ask you, as I ought to
ask, most dear son, whom, as God is witness, I love with my whole heart
and desire to serve, and whose father I loved as my soul, that you take
such care of this matter and of all fidelity to our lord the king that
you may have the praise of God, and of him, and of all good men. Hold
always in your memory how your glorious father lived, and how faithfully
he served his lord, and with how great energy he acquired many things and
held them with great honour.... I should like to talk freely with you; if
this is your will, let me know where we can meet and talk together of
your affairs and of our lord the king's. I am ready to go to meet you
wherever you direct."
The letter had no effect. Roger seems to have been a man of violent
temper, and there was a woman in this case also, though we do not know
that she herself influenced the course of events. The insurrection is
said to have been determined upon, and the details of action planned,
at the marriage of Roger's sister to Ralph Guader, Earl of Norfolk, a
marriage which William had forbidden.
There was that bride-ale
That was many men's bale,
said the Saxon chronicler, and it was so indeed. The two chief
conspirators persuaded Earl Waltheof to join them, at least for the
moment, and their plan was to drive the king out of England and to
divide the kingdom between them into three great principalities, "for
we wish," the Norman historian Orderic makes them say, "to restore in
all respects the kingdom of England as it was formerly in the time of
King Edward," a most significant indication of the general opinion
about the effect of the Conquest, even if the words are not theirs.
After the marriage the Earls of Norfolk and Hereford separated to raise
their forces and bring them together, when they believed they would be
too strong for any force which could be raised to act against them. They
counted on the unpopularity of the Normans and on the king's difficulties
abroad which would prevent his return to England. The king did not
return, but their other hope proved fallacious. Bishop Wulfstan of
Worcester and Abbot Ethelwy of Evesham, both English prelates, with some
Norman help, cut off the line of communication in the west, and Earl
Roger could not force his way through. The two justiciars, William of
Warenne and Richard of Bienfaite, after summoning the earls to answer in
the king's court, with the aid of Bishop Odo and the Bishop of Coutances,
who was also a great English baron, raised an army of English as well as
Normans, and went to meet Earl Ralph, who was marching westwards.
Something like a battle took place, but the rebels were easily defeated.
Ralph fled back to Norwich, but it did not seem to him wise to stop
there. Leaving his wife to stand a siege in the castle, he sailed off to
hasten the assistance which had already been asked for from the Danes. A
Danish fleet indeed appeared off the coast, but it did nothing beyond
making a plundering raid in Yorkshire. Emma, the new-made wife of Earl
Ralph, seems to have been a good captain and to have had a good garrison.
The utmost efforts of the king's forces could not take the castle, and
she at last surrendered only on favourable terms. She was allowed to
retire to the continent with her forces. The terms which were granted
her, as they are made known in a letter from Lanfranc to William, are
especially interesting as giving us one of the earliest glimpses we have
of that extensive dividing out of land to under-vassals, the process of
subinfeudation, which must already have taken place on the estates
granted to the king's tenants in chief. A clear distinction was made
between the men who were serving Ralph because they held land of him, and
those who were merely mercenaries. Ralph's vassals, although they were in
arms against Ralph's lord, the king, were thought to be entitled to
better terms, and they secured them more easily than those who served him
for money. Ralph and Emma eventually lived out the life of a generation
of those days, on Ralph's Breton estates, and perished together in the
first crusade.
Their fellow-rebels were less fortunate. Roger surrendered himself to be
tried by the king's court, and was condemned "according to the Norman
law," we are told, to the forfeiture of his estates and to imprisonment
at the king's pleasure. From this he was never released. The family of
William's devoted guardian, Osbern, and of his no less devoted friend,
William Fitz Osbern, disappears from English history with the fall of
this imprudent representative, but not from the country. It has been
reserved for modern scholarship co prove the interesting fact of the
continuance for generations of the male line of this house, though in
minor rank and position, through the marriage of the son of Earl Roger,
with the heiress of Abergavenny in Wales.[12] The fate of Waltheof was
even more pathetic because less deserved. He had no part in the actual
rebellion. Whatever he may have sworn to do, under the influence of the
earls of stronger character, he speedily repented and made confession to
Lanfranc as to his spiritual adviser. Lanfranc urged him to cross at once
to Normandy and make his confession to the king himself. William received
him kindly, showed no disposition to regard the fault as a serious one,
and apparently promised him his forgiveness. Why, on his return to
England, he should have arrested him, and after two trials before his
court should have allowed him to be executed, "according to English law,"
we do not surely know. The hatred of his wife Judith, the king's niece,
is plainly implied, but is hardly enough to account for so radical a
departure from William's usual practice in this the only instance of a
political execution in his reign. English sympathy plainly took the side
of the earl. The monks of the abbey at Crowland, which he had favoured in
his lifetime, were allowed the possession of his body. Soon miracles were
wrought there, and he became, in the minds of monks and people, an
unquestioned martyr and saint.
This was the end of William's troubles in England which have any real
connexion with the Conquest. Malcolm of Scotland invaded Northumberland
once more, and harried that long-suffering region, but without result;
and an army of English barons, led by the king's son Robert, which
returned the invasion soon after, was easily able to force the king of
the Scots to renew his acknowledgment of subjection to England. The
failure of Walcher, Bishop of Durham, to keep his own subordinates in
order, led to a local riot, in which the bishop and many of his officers
and clergy were murdered, and which was avenged in his usual pitiless
style by the king's brother Odo. William himself invaded Wales with a
large force; received submissions, and opened the way for the extension
of the English settlements in that country. The great ambition of Bishop
Odo, and the increase of wealth and power which had come to him through
the generosity of his brother, led him to hope for still higher things,
and he dreamed of becoming pope. This was not agreeable to William, and
may even have seemed dangerous to him when the bishop began to collect
his friends and vassals for an expedition to Italy. Archbishop Lanfranc,
who had not found his brother prelate a comfortable neighbour in Kent,
suggested to the king, we are told, the exercise of his feudal rights
against him as his baron. The scene must have been a dramatic one, when
in a session of the curia regis William ordered his brother's arrest, and
when no one ventured to execute the order laid hands upon him himself,
exclaiming that he arrested, not the Bishop of Bayeux, but the Earl of
Kent. William must have had some strong reason for this action, for he
refused to consent to the release of his brother as long as he lived. At
one time what seemed like a great danger threatened from Denmark, in the
plans of King Canute to invade England with a vast host and deliver the
country from the foreigner. William brought over from Normandy a great
army of mercenaries to meet this danger, and laid waste the country
along the eastern coast that the enemy might find no supplies on landing;
but this Danish threat amounted to even less than the earlier ones, for
the fleet never so much as appeared off the coast. All these events are
but the minor incidents which might occur in any reign; the Conquest had
long been finished, and England had accepted in good faith her new
dynasty.
Much more of the last ten years of William's life was spent in Normandy
than in England. Revolts of unruly barons, attacks on border towns or
castles, disputes with the king of France, were constantly occupying him
with vexatious details, though with nothing of serious import. Most
vexatious of all was the conduct of his son Robert. With the eldest son
of William opens in English history a long line of the sons and brothers
of kings, in a few cases of kings themselves, who are gifted with popular
qualities, who make friends easily, but who are weak in character, who
cannot control men or refuse favours, passionate and selfish, hardly
strong enough to be violently wicked as others of the line are, but
causes of constant evil to themselves and their friends, and sometimes to
the state. And with him opens also the long series of quarrels in the
royal family, of which the French kings were quick to take advantage, and
from which they were in the end to gain so much. The ground of Robert's
rebellion was the common one of dissatisfaction with his position and his
father's refusal to part with any of his power in his favour. Robert was
not able to excite any real insurrection in Normandy, but with the aid of
his friends and of the French king he maintained a border war for some
time, and defended castles with success against the king. He is said
even, in one encounter, to have wounded and been on the point of slaying
his father. For some time he wandered in exile in the Rhine valley,
supported by gifts sent him by his mother, in spite of the prohibition of
her husband. Once he was reconciled with his father, only to begin his
rebellion again. When the end came, William left him Normandy, but people
thought at least that he did it unwillingly, foreseeing the evil which
his character was likely to bring on any land over which he ruled.
The year 1086 is remarkable for the formation of one of the most unique
monuments of William's genius as a ruler, and one of the most instructive
sources of information which we have of the condition of England during
his reign. At the Christmas meeting of the court, in 1085, it was
decided, apparently after much debate and probably with special reference
to the general land-tax, called the Danegeld, to form by means of
inquiries, officially made in each locality, a complete register of the
occupied lands of the kingdom, of their holders, and of their values. The
book in which the results of this survey of England were recorded was
carefully preserved in the royal treasury, and soon came to be regarded
as conclusive evidence in disputed questions which its entries would
concern. Not very long after the record was made it came to be popularly
known as the Domesday Book, and a hundred years later the writer on the
English financial system of the twelfth century, the author of the
"Dialogue concerning the Exchequer,"[13] explained the name as meaning
that the sentences derived from it were final, and without appeal, like
those of the last great day.
An especially interesting feature of this survey is the method which was
employed to make it. Two institutions which were brought into England by
the Conquest, the king's missi and the inquest, the forerunners of the
circuit judge and of the jury, were set in motion for this work; and the
organization of the survey is a very interesting foreshadowing of the
organization which a century later William's great-grandson was to give
to our judicial system in features which still characterize it, not
merely in England but throughout great continents of which William never
dreamed. Royal commissioners, or missi, were sent into each county. No
doubt the same body of commissioners went throughout a circuit of
counties. In each the county court was summoned to meet the
commissioners, just as later it was summoned to meet the king's justice
on his circuit. The whole "county" was present to be appealed to on
questions of particular importance or difficulty if it seemed necessary,
but the business of the survey as a rule was not done by the county
court. Each hundred was present by its sworn jury, exactly as in the
later itinerant justice court, and it was this jury which answered on
oath the questions submitted to it by the commissioners, exactly again as
in the later practice. Their knowledge might be reinforced, or their
report modified, by evidence of the men of the vill, or other smaller
sub-division of the county, who probably attended as in the older county
courts, and occasionally by the testimony of the whole shire; but in
general the information on which the survey was made up was derived from
the reports of the hundred juries. The questions which were submitted to
these juries show both the object of the survey and its thorough
character. They were required to tell the name of each manor and the name
of its holder in the time of King Edward and at the time of the inquiry;
the number of hides it contained; the number of ploughs employed in the
cultivation of the lord's domain land, and the number so used on the
lands held by the lord's men,--a rough way of determining the amount of
land under cultivation. Then the population of the manor was to be given
in classes: freemen and sokemen; villeins, cotters, and serfs; the amount
of forest and meadow; the number of pastures, mills, and fish-ponds; and
what the value of the manor was in the time of King Edward, at the date
of its grant by King William, and at the time of the inquiry. In some
cases evidently the jurors entered into such details of the live stock
maintained by the manor as to justify the indignant words of the Saxon
chronicler, that not "an ox nor a cow nor a swine was left that was not
set down in his writing."
The object of all this is plain enough. It was an assessment of the
property of the kingdom for purposes of taxation. The king wished to find
out, as indeed we are told in what may be considered a copy or an
abstract of the original writ directing the commissioners as to their
inquiries, whether he could get more from the kingdom in taxes than he
was then getting. But the record of this inquest has served far different
purposes in later times. It is a storehouse of information on many sides
of history, personal, family, geographical, and especially economic. It
tells us much also of institutions, but less than we could wish, and less
than it would have told us if its purpose had been less narrowly
practical. Indeed, this limiting of the record to a single definite
purpose, which was the controlling interest in making it, renders the
information which it gives us upon all the subjects in which we are now
most interested fragmentary and extremely tantalizing, and forces us to
use it with great caution. It remains, however, even with this
qualification, a most interesting collection of facts, unique in all the
Middle Ages, and a monument to the practical genius of the monarch who
devised it.
On August 1 of the same year in which the survey was completed, in a
great assembly on Salisbury Plain, an oath of allegiance to the king was
taken by all the land-holding men of England, no matter of whom they
held. This has been represented as an act of new legislation of great
institutional importance, but the view cannot be maintained. It is
impossible to suppose that all land-owners were present or that such an
oath had not been generally taken before; and the Salisbury instance was
either a renewal of it such as was occasionally demanded by kings of this
age, or possibly an emphatic enforcement of the principle in cases where
it had been neglected or overlooked, now perhaps brought to light by the
survey.
Already in 1083 Queen Matilda had died, to the lasting and sincere grief
of her husband; and now William's life was about to end in events which
were a fitting close to his stormy career. Border warfare along the
French boundary was no unusual thing, but something about a raid of the
garrison of Mantes, into Normandy, early in 1087, roused William's
especial anger. He determined that plundering in that quarter should
stop, and reviving old claims which had long been dormant he demanded the
restoration to Normandy of the whole French Vexin, of which Mantes was
the capital city. Philip treated his claims with contempt, and added a
coarse jest on William's corpulence which roused his anger, as personal
insults always did, to a white heat. The land around Mantes was cruelly
laid waste by his orders, and by a sudden advance the city was carried
and burnt down, churches and houses together. The heat and exertion of
the attack, together with an injury which he received while riding
through the streets of the city, by being thrown violently against the
pummel of his saddle by the stumbling of his horse, proved too much for
William in his physical condition, and he was carried back to Rouen to
die after a few weeks.
A monastic chronicler of a little later date, Orderic Vitalis, gives us a
detailed account of his death-bed repentance, but it was manifestly
written rather for the edification of the believer than to record
historical fact. It is interesting to note, however, that while William
is made to express the deepest sorrow for the numerous acts of wrong
which were committed in the process of the Conquest of England, there is
no word which indicates any repentance for the Conquest itself or belief
on William's part that he held England unjustly. He admits that it did
not come to him from his fathers, but the same sentence which contains
this admission affirms that he had gained it by the favour of God. It has
been strongly argued from these words, and from others like them, which
are put into the mouth of William later in this dying confession, when he
comes to dispose of his realms and treasures, that William was conscious
to himself that he did not possess any right to the kingdom of England
which he could pass on hereditarily to his heirs. These words might
without violence be made to yield this meaning, and yet it is impossible
to interpret them in this way on any sound principle of criticism,
certainly not as the foundation of any constitutional doctrine. There is
not a particle of support for this interpretation from any other source;
everything else shows that his son William succeeded him in England by
the same right and in the same way that Robert did in Normandy. William
speaks of himself in early charters, as holding England by hereditary
right. He might be ready to acknowledge that it had not come to him by
such right, but never that once having gained it he held it for himself
and his family by any less right than this. The words assigned to William
on his death-bed should certainly be interpreted by the words of the same
chronicler, after he has finished the confession; and these indicate some
doubt on William's part as to the effect of his death on the stability of
his conquest in England, and his great desire to hasten his son William
off to England with directions to Lanfranc as to his coronation before
the news of his own death should be spread abroad. They imply that he is
not sure who may actually become king in the tumults which may arise when
it becomes known that his own strong rule is ended; that rests with God:
but they express no doubt of the right of his heirs, nor of his own right
to determine which one among them shall succeed him.
With reluctance, knowing his disposition, William conceded Normandy to
Robert. The first-born son was coming to have special rights. More
important in this case was the fact that Robert's right to Normandy had
been formally recognized years before, and that recognition had never
been withdrawn. The barons of the duchy had sworn fealty to him as his
father's successor, and there was no time to put another heir in his
place, or to deal with the opposition that would surely result from the
attempt. William was his father's choice for England, and he was
despatched in all haste to secure the crown with the aid of Lanfranc. To
Henry was given only a sum of money, joined with a prophecy that he
should eventually have all that the king had had, a prophecy which was
certainly easy after the event, when it was written down, and which may
not have been difficult to a father who had studied carefully the
character of his sons. William was buried in the church of St. Stephen,
which he had founded in Caen, and the manner in which such foundations
were frequently made in those days was illustrated by the claim, loudly
advanced in the midst of the funeral service, that the land on which the
participants stood had been unjustly taken from its owners for the
Conqueror's church. It was now legally purchased for William's burial
place. The son, who was at the moment busy securing his kingdom in
England, afterwards erected in it a magnificent tomb to the memory of his
father.
[9] Round, Victoria History of Hampshire, i. 412-413. But See
F. Baring in Engl. Hist. Rev. xvi. 427-438 (1901).
[10] Orderic Vitalis, ii. 260.
[11] Lanfranc, Opera (ed. Giles), i. 64.
[12] Round, Peerage Studies, pp. 181 ff.
[13] Dialogus de Scaccario, i. 16 (ed. Hughes, p. 108).