FEUDALISM AND A STRONG KING
William, the second son of the Conqueror, followed with no filial
compunction his father's command that he should leave his death-bed and
cross the channel at once to secure the kingdom of England. At the port
of embarkation he learned that his father had died, but he did not turn
back. Probably the news only hastened his journey, if this were possible.
In England he went first to Winchester to get possession of his father's
great treasure, and then to Canterbury with his letter to Lanfranc.
Nowhere is there any sign of opposition to his succession, or of any
movement in favour of Robert, or on Robert's part, at this moment. If the
archbishop had any doubts, as a man of his good judgment might well have
had, knowing the new king from his boyhood, they were soon quieted or he
resolved to put them aside. He had, indeed, no alternative. There is
nothing to indicate that the letter of his dying master allowed him any
choice, nor was there any possible candidate who gave promise of a better
reign, for Lanfranc must have known Robert as well as he knew William.
Together they went up to London, and on September 26, 1087, hardly more
than two weeks after he left his father's bedside, William was crowned
king by Lanfranc. The archbishop took of him the customary oath to rule
justly and to defend the peace and liberty of the Church, exacting a
special promise always to be guided by his advice; but there is no
evidence of any unusual assembly in London of magnates or people, of any
negotiations to gain the support of persons of influence, or of any
consent asked or given. The proceedings throughout were what we should
expect in a kingdom held by hereditary right, as the chancery of the
Conqueror often termed it, and by such a right descending to the heir.
This appearance may possibly have been given to these events by haste and
by the necessity of forestalling any opposition. Men may have found
themselves with a new king crowned and consecrated as soon as they
learned of the death of the old one; but no objection was ever made.
Within a few months a serious insurrection broke out among those who
hoped to make Robert king, but no one alleged that William's title was
imperfect because he had not been elected. If the English crown was held
by the people of the time to be elective in any sense, it was not in the
sense which we at present understand by the word "constitutional."
Immediately after the coronation, the new king went back to Winchester to
fulfil a duty which he owed to his father. The great hoard which the
Conqueror had collected in the ancient capital was distributed with a
free hand to the churches of England. William II was as greedy of money
as his father. His exactions pressed even more heavily on the kingdom,
and the Church believed that it was peculiarly the victim of his
financial tyranny, but he showed no disposition to begrudge these
benefactions for the safety of his father's soul. Money was sent to each
monastery and church in the kingdom, and to many rich gifts of other
things, and to each county a hundred pounds for distribution to the poor.
Until the following spring the disposition of the kingdom which Lanfranc
had made was unquestioned and undisturbed. William II wore his crown at
the meeting of the court in London at Christmas time, and nothing during
the winter called for any special exertion of royal authority on his
part. But beneath the surface a great conspiracy was forming, for the
purpose of overthrowing the new king and of putting his brother Robert in
his place. During Lent the movers of this conspiracy were especially
active, and immediately after Easter the insurrection broke out. It was
an insurrection in which almost all the Norman barons of England took
part, and their real object was the interest neither of king nor of
kingdom, but only their own personal and selfish advantage. A purely
feudal insurrection, inspired solely by those local and separatist
tendencies which the feudal system cherished, it reveals, even more
clearly than the insurrection of the Earls of Hereford and Norfolk under
William I, the solid reserve of strength in the support of the nation
which was the only thing that sustained the Norman kingship in England
during the feudal age.
The writers upon whom we depend for our knowledge of these events
represent the rebellious barons as moved by two chief motives. Of these
that which is put forward as the leading motive is their opposition to
the division of the Norman land into two separate realms, by the
succession of the elder brother in Normandy and of the younger in
England. The fact that these barons held fiefs in both countries, and
under two different lords, certainly put them in an awkward position, but
in one by no means uncommon throughout the feudal world. A suzerain of
the Norman type, however, in the event of a quarrel between the king and
the duke, could make things exceedingly uncomfortable for the vassals who
held of both, and these men seem to have believed that their divided
allegiance would endanger their possessions in one land or the other.
They were in a fair way, they thought, to lose under the sons the
increase of wealth and honours for which they had fought under the
father. A second motive was found in the contrasted characters of the two
brothers. Our authorities represent this as less influential than the
first, but the circumstances of the case would lead us to believe that it
had equal weight with the barons. William they considered a man of
violence, who was likely to respect no right; Robert was "more
tractable." That Robert was the elder son, that they had already sworn
allegiance to him, while they owed nothing to William, which are
suggested as among their motives, probably had no real influence in
deciding their action. But the other two motives are so completely in
accord with the facts of the situation that we must accept them as giving
the reasons for the insurrection. The barons were opposed to the
separation of the two countries, and they wished a manageable suzerain.
The insurrection was in appearance an exceedingly dangerous one. Almost
every Norman baron in England revolted and carried his vassals with him.
Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, the king's uncle, was the prime mover in the
affair. He had been released from his prison by the Conqueror on his
death-bed, and had been restored by William II to his earldom of Kent;
but his hope of becoming the chief counsellor of the king, as he had
become of Robert in Normandy, was disappointed. With him was his brother,
Robert of Cornwall, Count of Mortain. The other great baron-bishop of the
Conquest, Geoffrey of Coutances, was also in insurrection, and with him
his nephew, Robert of Mowbray, Earl of Northumberland. Another leading
rebel was Roger, Earl of Shrewsbury, with his three sons, the chief of
whom, Robert of Bellême, was sent over from Normandy by Duke Robert, with
Eustace of Boulogne, to aid the insurrection in England until he should
himself be able to cross the channel. The treason of one man, William of
St. Calais, Bishop of Durham, was regarded by the English writers as
particularly heinous, if indeed we are right in referring their words to
him and not to Bishop Odo; it is at least evident from the sequel that
the king regarded his conduct in that light. The reason is not altogether
clear, unless it be that the position of greatest influence in England,
which Bishop Odo had desired in vain, had been given him by the king.
Other familiar names must be added to these: William of Eu, Roger of
Lacy, Ralph of Mortimer, Roger Bigod, Hugh of Grantmesnil. On the king's
side there were few Norman names to equal these: Hugh of Avranches, Earl
of Chester, William of Warenne, and of course the vassals of the great
Archbishop Lanfranc. But the real strength of the king was not derived
from the baronial elements. The castles in most of the great towns
remained faithful, and so did nearly all the bishops and the Church as a
whole. But the weight which turned the scale and gave the decision to the
king, was the support of the great mass of the nation, of the English as
opposed to the Norman.
For so great a show of strength, the insurrection was very short-lived,
and it was put down with almost no fighting. The refusal of the barons to
come to the Easter court, April 14, was their first overt act of
rebellion, though it had been evident in March that the rebellion was
coming, and before the close of the summer confiscation or amnesty had
been measured out to the defeated rebels. We are told that the crown was
offered to Robert and accepted by him, and great hopes were entertained
of decisive aid which he was to send; but nothing came of it. Two sieges,
of Pevensey castle and of Rochester castle, were the most important
military events. There was considerable ravaging of the country by the
rebels in the west, and some little fighting there. The Bishop of
Coutances and his nephew seized Bristol and laid waste the country about,
but were unsuccessful in their siege of Ilchester. Roger of Lacy and
others collected a force at Hereford, and advanced to attack Worcester,
but were beaten off by the Norman garrison and the men of Bishop
Wulfstan. Minor incidents of the same kind occurred in Gloucestershire,
Leicestershire, Norfolk, and the north. But the decisive events were in
the south-east, in the operations of the king against his uncle Odo. At
London William called round him his supporters, appealing especially to
the English, and promising to grant good laws, to levy no unjust taxes,
and to allow men the freedom of their woods and of hunting. With an army
which did not seem large, he advanced against Rochester, where the Bishop
of Bayeux was, to strike the heart of the insurrection.
Tunbridge castle, which was held for Odo, was first stormed, and on the
news of this Odo thought it prudent to betake himself to Pevensey, where
his brother, Robert of Mortain, was, and where reinforcements from Robert
of Normandy would be likely to land. William at once turned from his
march to Rochester and began the siege of Pevensey. The Norman
reinforcements which Robert finally sent were driven back with great
loss, and after some weeks Pevensey was compelled to surrender. Bishop
Odo agreed to secure the surrender of Rochester, and then to retire from
England, only to return if the king should send for him. But William
unwisely sent him on to Rochester with a small advance detachment, to
occupy the castle, while he himself followed more slowly with the main
body. The castle refused to surrender. Odo's expression of face made
known his real wishes, and was more convincing than his words. A sudden
sally of the garrison overpowered his guards, and the bishop was carried
into the castle to try the fortune of a siege once more. For this siege
the king again appealed to the country and called for the help of all
under the old Saxon penalty of the disgraceful name of "nithing." The
defenders of the castle suffered greatly from the blockade, and were soon
compelled to yield upon such terms as the king pleased, who was with
difficulty persuaded to give up his first idea of sending them all to the
gallows.
The monk Orderic Vitalis, who wrote an account of these events a
generation after they occurred, was struck with one characteristic of
this insurrection, which the careful observer of any time would hardly
fail to notice. He says: "The rebels, although they were so many and
abundantly furnished with arms and supplies, did not dare to join battle
with the king in his kingdom." It was an age, to be sure, when wars were
decided less by fighting in the open field than by the siege and defence
of castles; and yet the collapse of so formidable an insurrection as
this, after no resistance at all in proportion to its apparent fighting
strength, is surely a significant fact. To notice here but one inference
from it, it means that no one questioned the title of William Rufus to
the throne while he was in possession. Though he might be a younger son,
not elected, but appointed by his father, and put into the kingship by
the act of the primate alone, he was, to the rebellious barons as to his
own supporters, the rightful king of England till he could be overthrown.
The insurrection being put down, a general amnesty seems to have been
extended to the rebels. The Bishop of Bayeux was exiled from England;
some confiscations were made, and some rewards distributed; but almost
without exception the leaders escaped punishment. The most notable
exception, besides Odo, was William of St. Calais, the Bishop of Durham.
For some reason, which does not clearly appear, the king found it
difficult to pardon him. He was summoned before the king's court to
answer for his conduct, and the account of the trial which followed in
November of this year, preserved to us by a writer friendly to the bishop
and present at the proceedings, is one of the most interesting and
instructive documents which we have from this time. William of St.
Calais, as the king's vassal for the temporalities of his bishopric, was
summoned before the king's feudal court to answer for breach of his
feudal obligations. William had shown, in one of the letters which he had
sent to the king shortly before the trial, that he was fully aware of
these obligations; and the impossibility of meeting the accusation was
perfectly clear to his mind. With the greatest subtlety and skill, he
sought to take advantage of his double position, as vassal and as bishop,
and to transfer the whole process to different ground. With equal skill,
and with an equally clear understanding of the principles involved,
Lanfranc met every move which he made.[14]
From the beginning the accused insisted upon the privileges of his order.
He would submit to a canonical trial only. He asked that the bishops
should appear in their pontificals, which was a request that they judge
him as bishops, and not as barons. Lanfranc answered him that they could
judge him well enough clad as they were. William demanded that his
bishopric should be restored to him before he was compelled to answer,
referring to the seizing of his temporalities by the king. Lanfranc
replied that he had not been deprived of his bishopric. He refused to
plead, however, until the point had been formally decided, and on the
decision of the court against him, he demanded the canonical grounds on
which they had acted. Lanfranc replied that the decision was just, and
that he ought to know that it was. He requested to be allowed to take
counsel with the other bishops on his answer, and Lanfranc explained that
the bishops were his judges and could not be his counsel, his answer
resting on a principle of the law necessary in the courts of public
assembly, one which gave rise to elaborate regulations in some feudal
countries. Bishop William finally refused to accept the judgment of the
court on several grounds, but especially because it was against the
canons; and Lanfranc explained at greater length than before, that he had
not been put on trial concerning his bishopric, but concerning his fief,
as the Bishop of Bayeux had been tried under William I. But all argument
was in vain. The bishop could not safely yield, and he insisted on his
appeal to Rome. On his side the king insisted on the surrender of the
bishop's castle, the last part of his fief which he still held, and was
sustained by the court in this demand. The bishop demurred, but at last
yielded the point to avoid arrest, and after considerable delay, he was
allowed to cross over to the continent. There he was welcomed by Robert
and employed in Normandy, but he never went any farther nor pushed his
appeal to Rome, which in all probability he had never seriously intended,
though there is evidence that the pope was disposed to take up his cause.
Throughout the case the king was acting wholly within his right,
regarding the bishop as his vassal; and Lanfranc's position in the trial
was in strict accordance with the feudal law.
This was the end of serious rebellion against King William Rufus. Seven
years later, in 1095, a conspiracy was formed by some of the barons who
had been pardoned for their earlier rebellion, which might have resulted
in a widespread insurrection but for the prompt action of William. Robert
of Mowbray, Earl of Northumberland, who had inherited the 280 manors of
his uncle, the Bishop of Coutances, and was now one of the most powerful
barons of the kingdom, had been summoned to the king's court, probably
because the conspiracy was suspected, since it was for a fault which
would ordinarily have been passed over without remark, and he refused to
appear. The king's hands were for the moment free, and he marched at once
against the earl. By degrees the details of the conspiracy came out. From
Nottingham, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was accompanying the march,
was sent back to Kent to hold himself in readiness at a moment's notice
to defend that part of England against an expected landing from Normandy.
This time it had been planned to make Stephen of Aumale, a nephew of the
Conqueror, king in William's place; but no Norman invasion occurred. The
war was begun and ended by the siege and surrender of Mowbray's two
castles of Tynemouth and Bamborough. In the siege of the latter, Mowbray
himself was captured by a trick, and his newly married wife was forced to
surrender the castle by the threat of putting out his eyes. The earl was
thrown into prison, where, according to one account, he was held for
thirty years. Treachery among the traitors revealed the names of the
leaders of the plot, and punishments were inflicted more generally than
in 1088, but with no pretence of impartiality. A man of so high rank and
birth as William of Eu was barbarously mutilated; one man of minor rank
was hanged; banishment and fines were the penalties in other cases.
William of St. Calais, who had been restored to his see, fell again under
the suspicion of the king, and was summoned to stand another trial, but
he was already ill when he went up to the court, and died before he could
answer the charges against him. There were reasons enough in the heavy
oppressions of the reign why men should wish to rebel against William,
but he was so fixed in power, so resolute in action, and so pitiless
towards the victims of his policy, that the forming of a dangerous
combination against him was practically impossible.
The contemporary historians of his reign tell us much of William's
personality, both in set descriptions and in occasional reference and
anecdote. It is evident that he impressed in an unusual degree the men of
his own time, but it is evident also that this impression was not so much
made by his genius as a ruler or a soldier, by the possession of the
gifts which a great king would desire, as by something in his spirit and
attitude towards life which was new and strange, something out of the
common in words and action, which startled or shocked men of the common
level and seemed at times to verge upon the awful. In body he was shorter
than his father, thick-set and heavy, and his red face gave him the name
Rufus by which he was then and still is commonly known. Much of his
father's political and military ability and strength of will had
descended to him, but not his father's character and high purpose. Every
king of those times thought chiefly of himself, and looked upon the state
as his private property; but the second William more than most. The money
which he wrung from churchman and layman he used in attempts to carry out
his personal ambitions in Normandy, or scattered with a free hand among
his favourites, particularly among the mercenary soldiers from the
continent, with whom he especially loved to surround himself, and whose
licensed plunderings added greatly to the burden and tyranny of his
reign. But the ordinary doings of a tyrant were not the worst things
about William Rufus. Effeminate fashions, vices horrible and unheard-of
in England, flourished at his court and threatened to corrupt the nation.
The fearful profanity of the king, his open and blasphemous defiance of
God, made men tremble, and those who were nearest to him testified "that
he every morning got up a worse man than he lay down, and every evening
lay down a worse man than he got up."
In the year after the suppression of the first attempt of the barons
against the king, but before other events of political importance had
occurred, on May 28, 1089, died Lanfranc, the great Archbishop of
Canterbury, after nearly nineteen years of service in that office. Best
of all the advisers of the first William, he was equally with him
conqueror of England, in that conquest of laws and civilization which
followed the mere conquest of arms. Not great, though famous as a
theologian and writer, his powers were rather of a practical nature. He
was skilful in the management of men; he had a keen appreciation of legal
distinctions, and that comprehensive sight at the same time of ends and
means which we call the organizing power. He was devoted to that great
reformation in the religious and ecclesiastical world which occurred
during his long life, but he was devoted to it in his own way, as his
nature directed. He saw clearly, for one thing, that the success of that
reformation in England depended on the maintenance of the strong
government of the Norman kings; and from his loyalty to them he never
swerved, serving them with wise counsel and with all the resources at his
command. Less of a theologian and idealist than his successor Anselm,
more of a lawyer and statesman, he could never have found himself, for
another thing, in that attitude of opposition to the king which fills so
much of his successor's pontificate.
As his life had been of constant service to England, his death was an
immediate misfortune. We cannot doubt the opinion expressed by more than
one of the writers of the next reign, that a great change for the worse
took place in the actions of the king after the death of Lanfranc. The
aged archbishop, who had been in authority since his childhood, who might
seem to prolong in some degree the reign or the influence of his father,
acted as a restraining force, and the true character of William expressed
itself freely only when this was removed. In another way also the death
of Lanfranc was a misfortune to England. It dates the rise to influence
with the king of Ranulf Hambard, whose name is closely associated with
the tyranny of Rufus; or if this may already have begun, it marks his
very speedy attainment of what seems to have been the complete control of
the administrative and judicial system of the kingdom. Of the early
history of Ranulf Flambard we know but little with certainty. He was of
low birth, probably the son of a priest, and he rose to his position of
authority by the exercise of his own gifts, which were not small. A
pleasing person, ingratiating manners, much quickness and ingenuity of
mind, prodigality of flattery, and great economy of scruples,--these were
traits which would attract the attention and win the favour of a man like
William II. In Ranulf Flambard we have an instance of the constantly
recurring historical fact, that the holders of absolute power are always
able to find in the lower grades of society the ministers of their
designs who serve them with a completeness of devotion and fidelity which
the master rarely shows in his own interest, and often with a genius
which he does not himself possess.
Our knowledge of the constitutional details of the reign either of
William I or William II is very incomplete, and it is therefore difficult
for us to understand the exact nature of the innovations made by Ranulf
Flambard. The chroniclers leave us no doubt of the general opinion of
contemporaries, that important changes had been made, especially in the
treatment of the lands of the Church, and that these changes were all in
the direction of oppressive exactions for the benefit of the king. The
charter issued by Henry I at the beginning of his reign, promising the
reform of various abuses of his brother's reign, confirms this opinion.
But neither the charter nor the chroniclers enable us to say with
confidence exactly in what the innovations consisted. The feudal system
as a system of military tenures and of judicial organization had
certainly been introduced by William the Conqueror, and applied to the
great ecclesiastical estates of the kingdom very early in his reign. That
all the logical deductions for the benefit of the crown which were
possible from this system, especially those of a financial nature, had
been made so early, is not so certain. In the end, and indeed before very
long, the feudal system as it existed in England became more logical in
details, more nearly an ideal feudalism, with reference to the rights of
the crown, than anywhere else in Christendom. It is quite within the
bounds of possibility that Ranulf Flambard, keen of mind, working under
an absolute king, whose reign was followed by the longer reign of another
absolute king, not easily forced to keep the promises of his coronation
charter, may have had some share in the logical carrying out of feudal
principles, or in their more complete application to the Church, which
would be likely to escape feudal burdens under a king of the character of
the first William. Indeed, such a complete application of the feudal
rights of the crown to the Church, the development of the so-called
regalian rights, was at this date incomplete in Europe as a whole, and
according to the evidence which we now have, the Norman in England was a
pioneer in that direction.
The loudest complaints of these oppressions have come down to us in
regard to Canterbury and the other ecclesiastical baronies which fell
vacant after the death of Lanfranc. This is what we should expect: the
writers are monks. It seems from the evidence, also, that in most cases
no exact division had as yet been made between those lands belonging to a
monastic bishop or an abbot, which should be considered particularly to
form the barony, and those which should be assigned to the support of the
monastic body. Such a division was made in time, but where it had not
been made before the occurrence of a vacancy, it was more than likely
that the monks were placed on very short commons, and the right of the
king to the revenues interpreted in the most ample sense. The charter of
Henry I shows that in the case of lay fiefs the rights of the king,
logically involved in the feudal system, had been stretched to their
utmost limit, and even beyond. It would be very strange if this were not
still more true in the case of ecclesiastical fiefs. The monks, we may be
sure, had abundant grounds for their complaints. But we should notice
that what they have in justice to complain of is the oppressive abuse of
real rights. The system of Ranulf Flambard, so far as we can determine
what it was, does not differ in its main features from that which was in
operation without objection in the time of Henry II. The vacant
ecclesiastical, like the vacant lay, fief fell back into the king's
domain. It is difficult to determine just what its legal status was then
considered to be, but it was perhaps regarded as a fief reverting on
failure of heirs. Certainly it was sometimes treated as only an escheated
or forfeited lay fief would be treated. Its revenues might be collected
by the ordinary machinery, as they had been under the bishop, and turned
into the king's treasury; or it might be farmed out as a whole to the
highest bidder. There could be no valid objection to this. If the legal
position which Lanfranc had so vigorously defended was correct, that a
bishop might be tried as a baron by a lay court and a lay process, with
no infringement of his ecclesiastical rights, then there could be no
defence against this further extension of feudal principles. Relief,
wardship, and escheat were perfectly legitimate feudal rights, and there
was no reason which the state would consider valid why they should not be
enforced in all fiefs alike. The case of the Bishop of Durham, in 1088,
had already established a precedent for the forfeiture of an
ecclesiastical barony for the treason of its holder, and in that case the
king had granted fiefs within that barony to his own vassals. Still more
clearly would such a fief return to the king's hands, if it were vacant.
But if the right was clear, it might still be true that the enforcement
of it was new and accompanied with great practical abuses. Of this much
probably we must hold Ranulf Flambard guilty.
The extension and abuse of feudal law, however, do not fill up the
measure of his guilt. Another important source of royal revenue, the
judicial system, was put under his control, and was forced to contribute
the utmost possible to the king's income. That the justiciarship was at
this time as well defined an office, or as regularly recognized a part of
the state machinery, as it came to be later, is hardly likely. But that
some officer should be clothed with the royal authority for a special
purpose, or in the absence of the king for general purposes, was not an
uncommon practice. In some such way as this Ranulf Flambard had been
given charge of the king's interests in the judicial system, and had much
to do by his activities in that position with the development of the
office of justiciar. Exactly what he did in this field is as uncertain as
in that of feudal law, though the one specific instance which we have on
record shows him acting in a capacity much like that of the later
itinerant justice. However this may be, the recorded complaints of his
oppressions as judge, though possibly less numerous and detailed than of
his mistreatment of the Church, are equally bitter. He was the despoiler
of the rich, the destroyer of the poor. Exactions already heavy and
unjust he doubled. Money alone decided cases in the courts. Justice and
the laws disappeared. The rope was loosened from the very neck of the
robber if he had anything of value to promise the king; while the popular
courts of shires and hundreds were forced to become engines of extortion,
probably by the employment of the sheriffs, who were allowed to summon
them, not according to the old practice, but when and where it suited
their convenience. The machinery of the state and the interpretation of
its laws were, in days like these, completely at the mercy of a tyrannous
king and an unscrupulous minister. No system of checks on absolute power
had as yet been devised; there were no means of expressing public
discontent, nor any form of appeal but insurrection, and that was
hopeless against a king so strong as Rufus. The land could only suffer
and wait, and at last rejoice that the reign was no longer. In the
meantime, from the beginning of Robert's rule in the duchy across the
channel, the condition of things there had been a standing invitation to
his brother to interfere. Robert is a fair example of the worst type of
men of the Norman-Angevin blood. Not bad in intention, and not without
abilities, he was weak with that weakness most fatal of all in times when
the will of the ruler gave its only force to law, the inability to say
no, the lack of firm resisting power. The whole eleventh century had been
nourishing the growth, in the favouring soil of feudalism, of the manners
and morals of chivalry. The generation to which William and Robert
belonged was more strongly influenced in its standards of conduct by the
ideals of chivalry than by any other ethical code, and both these princes
are examples of the superior power of these ideals. In the age of
chivalry no princely virtue was held of higher worth than that of
"largesse," the royal generosity which scattered gifts on all classes
with unstinted hand; but Robert's prodigality of gifts was greater than
the judgment of his own time approved, and, combined with the inability
to make himself respected or obeyed, which often goes with such
generosity, it was the source of most of his difficulties. His ideal
seemed to be that every man should have what he wanted, and soon it was
apparent that he had retained very little for himself.
The castles of Normandy were always open to the duke, and William the
Conqueror had maintained garrisons of his own in the most important of
them, to insure the obedience of their holders. The first move that was
made by the barons of Normandy, on the news of William's death, was to
expel these garrisons and to substitute others of their own. The example
was set by Robert of Bellême, the holder of a powerful composite lordship
on the south-west border and partly outside the duchy. On his way to
William's court, he heard of the duke's death, and he instantly turned
about, not merely to expel the ducal garrisons from the castles of his
own fiefs, but to seize the castles of his neighbours which he had reason
to desire, and some of these he destroyed and some he held for himself.
This action is typical of the influence of Robert's character on
government in Normandy. Contempt for the authority of the duke meant not
merely that things which belonged to him would be seized upon and his
rights denied, but also that the property and rights of the weak, and
even of those who were only a little weaker than their neighbours, were
at the mercy of the stronger.
Duke Robert's squandering of his resources soon brought him to a want of
ready money intolerable to a prince of his nature, and his mind turned at
once with desire to the large sum in cash which his father had left to
Henry. But Henry was not at all of the stamp of Robert. He was perfectly
clear headed, and he had no foolish notions about the virtue of
generosity. He preferred to buy rather than to give away. A bargain was
struck between them, hardly six months after their father's death, and
the transaction is characteristic of the two brothers. For three thousand
pounds of silver, Henry purchased what people of the time regarded as a
third of Robert's inheritance, the lordship of the Cotentin, with its
important castles, towns, and vassals. The chroniclers call him now Count
of the Cotentin, and he there practised the art of government for a time,
and, in sharp contrast to Robert, maintained order with a strong hand.
During the same summer of 1088, Henry crossed over to England to get
possession of the lands of his mother Matilda, which she had bequeathed
to him on her death. This inheritance he does not seem to have obtained,
at least not permanently; but there was no quarrel between him and
William at that time. In the autumn he returned to Normandy, taking with
him Robert of Bellême. Robert had been forgiven his rebellion by the
king, and so clear was the evidence that Henry and Robert of Bellême had
entered into some kind of an arrangement with King William to assist his
designs on Normandy, or so clear was it made to seem to Duke Robert, that
on their landing he caused them both to be arrested and thrown into
prison. On the news of this the Earl of Shrewsbury, the father of Robert
of Bellême, crossed over from England to the aid of his son, and a short
civil war followed, in the early part of the next year, in which the
military operations were favourable to the duke, but his inconstancy and
weakness of character were shown in his releasing Robert of Bellême at
the close of the war as if he had himself been beaten. Henry also was
soon released, and took up again his government of the Cotentin.
William may have felt that Robert's willingness to accept the crown of
England from the rebel barons gave him the right to take what he could
get in Normandy, though probably he was not particularly troubled by the
question of any moral justification of his conduct. Opportunity would be
for him the main consideration, and the growing anarchy in the duchy
furnished this. Private war was carried on without restraint in more than
one place, and though the reign of a weak suzerain was to the advantage
of the rapacious feudal baron, many of the class preferred a stronger
rule. The arguments also in favour of a union of the kingdom and the
duchy, which had led to the rebellion against William, would now, since
that attempt had failed, be equally strong against Robert. For William no
motive need be sought but that of ambition, nor have we much right to say
that in such an age the ambition was improper. The temptation which the
Norman duchy presented to a Norman king of England was natural and
irresistible, and we need only note that with William II begins that
determination of the English kings to rule also in continental dominions
which influences so profoundly their own history, and hardly less
profoundly the history of their island kingdom, for centuries to come. To
William the Conqueror no such question could ever present itself, but the
moment that the kingdom and the duchy were separated in different hands
it must have arisen in the mind of the king.
But if William did not himself care for any moral justification of his
plans, he must make sure of the support of his English vassals in such an
undertaking; and the policy of war against Robert was resolved upon in a
meeting of the court, probably the Easter meeting of 1090. But open war
did not begin at once. William contented himself for some months with
sending over troops to occupy castles in the north-eastern portion of
Normandy, which were opened to him by barons who were favourable to his
cause or whose support was purchased. The alarm of Robert was soon
excited by these defections, and he appealed to his suzerain, King Philip
I of France, for aid. If the policy of ruling in Normandy was natural for
the English king, that of keeping kingdom and duchy in different hands
was an equally natural policy for the French king. It is hardly so early
as this, however, that we can date the beginning of this which comes in
the end to be a ruling motive of the Capetian house. Philip responded to
his vassal's call with a considerable army, but the money of the king of
England quickly brought him to a different mind, and he retired from the
field, where he had accomplished nothing.
In the following winter, early in February of 1091, William crossed over
into Normandy to look after his interests in person. The money which he
was wringing from England by the ingenuity of Ranulf Flambard he
scattered in Normandy with a free hand, to win himself adherents, and
with success. Robert could not command forces enough to meet him in the
field, and was compelled to enter into a treaty with him, in which, in
return for some promises from William, he not merely accepted his
occupation of the eastern side of the duchy, which was already
accomplished, but agreed to a similar occupation by William of the
north-western corner.
Cherbourg and Mont-Saint-Michel, two of the newly ceded places, belonged
to the dominions which "Count" Henry had purchased of his brother, and
must be taken from him by force. William and Robert marched together
against him, besieged him in his castle of Mont-Saint-Michel, and
stripped him of his lordship. Robert received the lion's share of the
conquest, but William obtained what he wished. Henry was once more
reduced to the condition of a landless prince, but when William returned
to England in August of this year both his brothers returned with him,
and remained there for some time.
William had been recalled to England by the news that King Malcolm of
Scotland had invaded England during his absence and harried
Northumberland almost to Durham. Malcolm had already refused to fulfil
his feudal obligations to the new king of England, and William marched
against him immediately on his return, taking his two brothers with him.
At Durham Bishop William of St. Calais, who had found means to reconcile
himself with the king, was restored to his rights after an exile of three
years. The expedition to Scotland led to no fighting. William advanced
with his army to the Firth of Forth. Malcolm met him there with an army
of his own, but negotiations were begun and conducted for William by his
brother Robert, and for Malcolm by the atheling Edgar, whose expulsion
from Normandy had been one of the conditions of the peace between William
and Robert. Malcolm at last agreed to acknowledge himself the man of
William II, with the same obligations by which he had been bound to his
father, and the king returned to England, as he had gone, by way of
Durham. Very likely something in this expedition suggested to William
that the north-western frontier of England needed rectification and
defence. At any rate, early in the spring of the next year, 1092, he
marched against Carlisle, expelled Dolphin, son of the Gospatric of
William the Conqueror's time, who was holding it under Malcolm of
Scotland, built and garrisoned a castle there, and after his return to
the south sent a colony of English families to occupy the adjacent
country. This enlargement of the area of England was practically a
conquest from the king of Scotland, and it may have been, in violation of
the pledge which William had just given, to restore to Malcolm all his
former possessions. Something, at least, led to immediate complaints from
Malcolm, which were without avail, and a journey that he made by
invitation the next year, to confer with William at Gloucester, resulted
only in what he regarded as further humiliating treatment. On his return
to Scotland he immediately took arms, and again invaded Northumberland.
This, however, was destined to be the last of his incursions, for he was
killed, together with his eldest son, Edward, near Alnwick, on the
eastern coast. The news of the death of her husband and son at once
proved fatal to Queen Margaret. A reaction followed against English
influence in the state, which she had supported, and a conflict of
parties and a disputed succession gave to William an opportunity to
interfere in favour of candidates of his own, though with little real
success. At least the north of England was relieved of the danger of
invasion. This year was also marked by important advances in the conquest
of South Wales by the Norman barons of the country.
[14] Dugdale, Monasticon, ed. 1846, 1.244 ff--and Symeon of Durham,
Deinjusta Vexations (Rolls series), i. 170 ff.