THE EARLY DAYS OF WILLIAM RUFUS.[4]
1087-1090.
[Sidenote: Character of the accession of Rufus.]
[Sidenote: No formal election.]
[Sidenote: His general acceptance.]
The way by which the second William became fully established on the
throne of his father has some peculiarities of its own, which
distinguish it from the accessions of most English kings, earlier and
later. The only claim of William Rufus to the crown was a nomination
by his father which we are told that his father hardly ventured to
make. Of election by any assembly, great or small, we see no trace.
Yet the new king is crowned, and he receives the national submission
at his crowning, with the fullest outward national consent, with no
visible opposition from any quarter, and, as events proved, with the
hearty good will of the native English part of his subjects. Yet the
King is hardly established in his kingdom before he has to fight for
his crown. William Rufus had, like his father, to win the kingdom of
England by war after he was already its crowned king. But, as regards
those against whom he fought and those at whose head he fought, his
position was the exact reverse of that of his father. Nominated by his
father, elected, one might say, by Lanfranc, crowned with no man
gainsaying him, William Rufus was at last really established in the
royal power by the act of the conquered English. It was they who won
the crown for the son of their Conqueror in fight against his father’s
nearest kinsmen and most cherished comrades.
§ 1. _The Coronation and Acknowledgement of William Rufus. September,
1087._
One prominent aspect of the reign of William Rufus sets him before us
as the enemy, almost the persecutor, of the Church in his realm, as
the special adversary of the ecclesiastical power when the
ecclesiastical power was represented by one of the truest of saints.
And yet there have been few kings whose accession to the throne was in
so special a way the act of the ecclesiastical power. William Rufus
was made king by Lanfranc in a somewhat fuller sense than that in
which every king of those times might be said to be made king by the
prelate who poured the consecrating oil upon his head. Nomination by
the last king, in the form of recommendation to the electors, had
always been taken into account when the people of England came
together to set a new king over them. The nomination of Eadward had
formed a part, though the smallest part, of the right of Harold to
become the chief of his own people.[5] An alleged nomination by
Eadward formed the only plausible part of the claim by which William
asserted his right to thrust himself upon a people of strangers. And
now a nomination by William himself was the only right by which his
second surviving son claimed to succeed to the crown which he had won.
Modern notions of hereditary right would have handed over England as
well as Normandy to the eldest son of the last king. English feeling
at the time would doubtless, if a formal choice had to be made among
the sons of the Conqueror of England, have spoken for his youngest
son. Of all the three Henry alone was a true Ætheling; he alone had
any right to the name of Englishman; he alone was the son of a crowned
king and a man born in the land.[6] But the last wish of William the
Great was that his island crown should pass to William the Red. He had
not, as our fullest narrative tells us, dared to make any formal
nomination to a kingdom which he had in his last days found out to be
his only by wrong. He had not dared to name William as his successor;
he left the kingdom in the hands of God; he only hoped that the will
of God might be that William should reign, and should reign well and
happily.[7] And as the best means of finding out whether the will of
God were so, he left the actual decision to the highest and wisest of
God’s ministers in his kingdom. He gave no orders for the coronation
of Rufus; he simply prayed Lanfranc to crown him, if the Primate
deemed such an act a rightful one.[8] As far as the will of the dying
king went, one alone of the Witan of England, the first certainly
among them alike in rank and in renown, was bidden to make the choice
of the next sovereign on behalf of the whole kingdom.
[Sidenote: Wulf and Duncan set free by Robert.]
The special agency of Lanfranc in the promotion of William Rufus is
noticed by all the writers who give any detailed account of his
accession.[9] Nor was it likely that, when the Archbishop was to be
the one elector, the claims of the candidate should be refused. It
would seem indeed as if Lanfranc doubted for a moment whether he ought
to take upon himself the responsibility of the choice.[10] But
everything must have helped to make him ready to carry out the wishes
of his late master. That they were the Conqueror’s last wishes was no
small matter, and Lanfranc had every personal reason to incline him
the same way. To make William Rufus king was to promote the man who
stood in a special relation to himself, who had been in some sort his
pupil, and whom he had himself girded with the belt of knighthood.[11]
And it really seems as if there was no other elector besides Lanfranc
himself. For once in our history we read of a king succeeding without
any formal election, without any meeting of the Witan before the
coronation. Within three weeks of the death of the first William, the
second William was full king over the land. As soon as he had heard
the last wishes of his father, as soon as the dying king had dictated
the all-important letter which was to express those wishes to the
Primate, William Rufus left the bedside of his father while the breath
was still in him. He started for the haven of Touques, a spot of which
we shall get a vivid picture later in our story. With him set forth
the bearer of the letter, one of the great King’s chaplains, and, as
some say, his Chancellor. This was Robert Bloet, he who was presently
to succeed Remigius of Fécamp in his newly-placed throne on the hill
of Lincoln.[12] Before they had left Norman ground, the news came that
all was over, that England had no longer a king.[13] William crossed
with all speed, seemingly to Southampton, and found in England no
rival, English or Norman. He indeed brought with him two men, either
of whom, if Englishmen had still heart enough to dream of a king of
their own blood, might have been his rival. Among the captives whom
the Conqueror set free on his death-bed were two men who represented
the mightiest of the fallen houses of conquered England. These were
Morkere the son of Ælfgar, once the chosen Earl of the Northumbrians,
and Wulfnoth, the youngest son of Godwine and brother[14] of Harold.
Two other captives of royal blood, Duncan the son of Malcolm and
Ingebiorg, so long a hostage for his father’s doubtful faith to his
over-lord,[15] and Wulf the son of Harold and Ealdgyth, the babe who
had been taken when Chester fell,[16] were set free at the same time.
Duncan and Wulf were in the power of Robert. They in no way threatened
his possession of Normandy, and Robert, with all his faults, did not
lack generous feeling. They were knighted and set free.[17] Of Wulf we
hear no more; Duncan lived to sit for a moment on the throne of his
father. The fate of their fellow-sufferers was harsher. Morkere and
Wulfnoth had come, by what means we know not, into the power of
William. As Morkere had once crossed the sea with the father,[18] he
now came back with the son. But their day of freedom was short. The
son of Godwine and the grandson of Leofric might either of them be
dangerous to the son of William. They therefore tasted the air of
freedom only for a few days. William, acting as already king, went to
his capital at Winchester, and there thrust the delivered captives
once more into the house of bondage.[19] Of Morkere we hear no more;
we must suppose that the rest of his days, few or many, were spent in
this renewed imprisonment. Wulfnoth seems to have been released at
some later time, to enter religion, and to be made the subject of the
praises of a Norman poet.[20]
[Sidenote: Rufus is crowned at Westminster, September 26, 1087.]
Such was the first act of authority done by the new ruler. Having thus
disposed of the men whom he seems to have dreaded, William found no
opposition made to his succession. But it was important for him to
take possession without delay. The time, September, was not one of the
usual seasons for a general assembly of the kingdom, and William could
not afford to wait for the next great festival of Christmas. No native
English competitor was likely to appear; but he must at least make
himself safe against any possible attempts on the part of his brothers
beyond the sea. From Winchester he hastened to the presence of
Lanfranc――seemingly at Canterbury; as the story is told us, it seems
to be taken for granted that it rested with the Primate to give or to
refuse the crown.[21] Whether the younger William himself brought the
news of the death of the elder is not quite clear; but we are not
surprised to hear from an eye-witness that the first feeling of
Lanfranc was one of overwhelming grief at the loss of the king who was
dead, a king who, if he had been to him a master, had also been in so
many things a friend and a fellow-worker.[22] The formal consecration
of his successor was not long delayed; the new king was solemnly
crowned and anointed by the hands of Lanfranc in the minster of Saint
Peter, on Sunday the feast of the saints Cosmas and Damian. So the day
is marked by a scholar who had specially explored the antiquities of
Rome; Englishmen, who knew less of saints whose holy place was by the
Roman forum, were content to mark it by its relation to the great
festival three days later, or even by the mere day of the month.[23]
On that day, before the altar of King Eadward’s rearing, the second
Norman lord of England took the oaths which bound an English king to
the English people. And, besides the prescribed oaths to do justice
and mercy and to defend the rights of the Church, Lanfranc is said to
have bound the new king by a special engagement to follow his own
counsel in all things.[24] William Rufus was thus king, and, if
anything had been lacking in the way of regular election before his
crowning, it was fully made up by the universal and seemingly zealous
acceptance of him at his crowning. “All the men on England to him
bowed and to him oaths swore.”[25] The crown which had passed to
Eadward from a long line of kingly forefathers, the crown which Harold
had worn by the free gift of the English people, the crown which the
first William had won by his sword and had kept by his wisdom, now
passed to the second of his name and house. And it passed, to all
appearance, with the perfect good will of all the dwellers in the
land, conquerors and conquered alike. William the Second, William the
Younger, William the Red, took his place on the seat of the great
Conqueror without a blow being struck or a dog moving his tongue
against him.
[Sidenote: Wealth of the treasury at Winchester.]
[Sidenote: Gifts to churches.]
[Sidenote: Gifts to Battle Abbey.]
[Sidenote: Gifts to the poor.]
The first act of the uncrowned candidate for the kingly office had
been one of harshness――harshness which was perhaps politic in the son,
but which trod under foot the last wishes of a repentant father. The
first act of the crowned King was one which might give good hopes for
the reign which was beginning, and which certainly carried out his
father’s wishes to the letter. From Westminster William Rufus went
again to Winchester, this time not to make fast the bars of his
father’s prison-house, but to throw open the stores of his father’s
treasury. Our native Chronicler waxes eloquent on the boundless wealth
of all kinds, far beyond the powers of any man to tell of, which had
been gathered together in the Conqueror’s hoard during his one and
twenty years of kingship. The Chronicler had, as we must remember,
himself lived in William’s court, and we may believe that his own eyes
had looked on the store of gold and silver, of vessels and robes and
gems and other costly things, which it was beyond the skill of man to
set forth.[26] These were the spoils of England, and from them were
made the gifts which, in the belief of those days, were to win repose
in the other world for the soul of her despoiler. Every minster in
England received, some six marks of gold, some ten, besides gifts of
every kind of ecclesiastical ornament and utensil, rich with precious
metals and precious stones, among which books for the use of divine
service was not forgotten.[27] And, above all, the special foundation
of his father, the Abbey of the Battle, received choicer gifts than
any, the royal mantle of the departed King among them.[28] Every
upland church, every one at all events on the royal lordships,
received sixty pennies.[29] Moreover a hundred pounds in money was
sent into each shire to be given away in alms to the poor for
William’s soul.[30] Such a gift might be bountiful in a small shire
like Bedford, where many Englishmen still kept their own; but it would
go but a little way, even after eighteen years, to undo the work of
the great harrying of Yorkshire. Meanwhile Robert, already received as
Duke of the Normans, was doing the same pious work among the poor and
the churches of his duchy.[31] The dutiful son and the rebel were both
doing their best for the welfare of their father in the other world.
[Sidenote: The Christmas Assembly. 1087-1088.]
[Sidenote: Odo restored to his earldom.]
From Winchester the new King went back to Westminster, and there he
held the Christmas feast and assembly. It was attended by the two
archbishops and by several other bishops, among whom the saint of
Worcester is specially mentioned. At this meeting too appeared Odo of
Bayeux, who received again from his nephew his earldom of Kent.[32]
Released from his bonds by the pardon which had been so hardly wrung
from the dying Conqueror,[33] he already filled the first place in the
councils of the new Duke of the Normans,[34] and he hoped to win the
like power over the mind of his other nephew in England. But before
long events came about which showed how true had been the foresight of
William the Great, when he had said that mighty evils would follow if
his brother should be set free from his prison.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Unusual character of William’s accession.]
[Sidenote: William the only available king at the moment.]
[Sidenote: Comparison between William and Robert.]
[Sidenote: Political bearing of William’s accession.]
It is certainly something unusual in those times for a king thus to
make his way to his crown by virtue, as it were, of an agreement
between a dead king and a living bishop, without either the nobles or
the nation at large either actively supporting or actively opposing
his claim. It is clear that men of both races had very decided views
about the matter; but they gave no open expression to them at the
time. The discussion of the succession came after the coronation,
among men who had already acknowledged the new King. It may be that
all parties were taken by surprise. The accession of William Rufus had
not indeed followed the death of his father with anything like the
same speed with which the accession of Harold had followed the death
of his brother-in-law. But then the death of Eadward had long been
looked for; the succession of Harold had long been practically agreed
on; above all, the Witan were actually in session when the vacancy
took place. Everything therefore could be done at a moment’s notice
with perfect formal regularity. Now everything, if much less sudden,
was much more unlooked for. The kingdom found itself called on to
acknowledge a king whom no party had chosen, but whom no party had at
the moment the means, perhaps not the will, to oppose. The Normans, we
may believe, would, if they had been formally asked, have preferred
Robert. The English, we may be sure, would, if they had been formally
asked, have, at least among Norman candidates, preferred Henry. And
practically the choice lay among Norman candidates only, and among
them Henry was the one who was practically shut out. All hopes, we may
be sure, had passed away of seeking for a king either in the house of
Cerdic, in the house of Godwine, or in the house which, if not the
house of Cnut, was, at least by female succession, the house of his
father Swegen. Of the sons of the Conqueror, Henry, the one who was at
once Norman and Englishman, was young and beyond the sea. William was
in England, with at least his father’s recommendation to support him.
The practical question lay between William and Robert. Was William to
be withstood on behalf of Robert? Between William and Robert there
could at the moment be little doubt in the minds of Englishmen. Their
father’s policy had kept both back from any great opportunity of doing
either good or evil to the conquered kingdom. But, as far as their
personal characters went, Robert had as yet shown his worst side and
William his best. There could be little room for doubt between the man
who had fought against his father and the man who had risked his life
to save his father. And, besides this, the accession of William would
separate England and Normandy. England would again have, if not a king
of her own blood, yet at least a king of her own. The island world
would again be the island world, no longer dependent on, or mixed up
with, the affairs of the world beyond the sea. The harshness which had
again thrust back Morkere and Wulfnoth into prison might be passed by,
as an act of necessary precaution. Morkere too might by this time be
well nigh forgotten, and Wulfnoth had never been known. If a native
king was not to be had, William Rufus was at the moment by no means
the most unpromising among possible foreign kings.
[Sidenote: No real choice.]
[Sidenote: Employment of the treasure.]
But in truth neither Normans nor Englishmen were in this case called
on to make any real choice. Both were called on, somewhat after the
manner of the sham _plebiscita_ of modern France, to acknowledge a
sovereign who was already in possession. Whatever might have been the
abstract preference of the Normans for Robert or of the English for
Henry, neither party felt at the moment that degree of zeal which
would lead them to brave the dangers of opposition. At any rate,
William Rufus was a new king, and a new king is commonly welcome. Men
of both races might reasonably expect that the rule of one who had
come peacefully to his crown would be less harsh than that of one who
had made his entry by the sword. It is further hinted that William
partly owed his recognition to his early possession of his father’s
hoard, perhaps to his careful discharge of his father’s will, perhaps,
even thus early in his reign, to some other discreet application of
his father’s treasures.[35] Certain it is that, from whatever cause,
all men accepted Rufus with all outward cheerfulness, though perhaps
without any very fervent loyalty towards him on any side. It needed
the events of the next few months, it needed strong influences and
strong opposing influences, to turn the Normans in England into the
fierce opponents of the new King, and the native English into his
zealous supporters. It needed the further course of his own actions to
teach both sides how much they had lost when they passed from the rule
of William the Great to that of William the Red.
§ 2. _The Rebellion against William Rufus. March-November, 1088._
[Sidenote: Beginning of the rebellion.]
[Sidenote: Discontent of Odo.]
[Sidenote: Influence of William of Saint-Calais.]
The winter of the year which beheld the Conqueror’s death passed
without any disturbance in the realm of his son.[36] But in the spring
of the next year it became plain that the general acceptance which
Rufus had met with in England was sincere on the part of his English
subjects only. As the native Chronicler puts it, “the land was
mightily stirred and was filled with mickle treason, for all the
richest Frenchmen that were in this land would betray their lord the
King, and would have his brother to King, Robert that was Earl in
Normandy.”[37] The leaders in this revolt were the bishops whom the
Conqueror had clothed with temporal power. And foremost among them was
his brother, the new King’s uncle, Odo Bishop of Bayeux, now again
Earl of Kent; and, according to one account, already Justiciar and
chief ruler in England.[38] But whatever might be his formal position,
Odo soon began to be dissatisfied with the amount of authority which
he practically enjoyed. He seems to have hoped to be able to rule both
his nephews and all their dominions, and, in England at least, to keep
the whole administration in his own hands at least as fully as he had
held it before his imprisonment. In this hope he was disappointed. The
Earl of Kent was not so great a man under the younger William as he
had been under the elder. The chief place in the confidence of the new
King was held by another man of his own order. This was William of
Saint Carilef or Saint Calais, once Prior of the house from which he
took his name, and afterwards Abbot of Saint Vincent’s without the
walls of Le Mans.[39] He had succeeded the murdered Walcher in the see
of Durham, and he had reformed his church according to the fashion of
the time, by putting in monks instead of secular canons.[40] His place
in the King’s counsel was now high indeed. “So well did the King to
the Bishop that all England went after his rede and so as he
would.”[41] Besides this newly born jealousy of the Kings newly chosen
counsellor, Odo had a long standing hatred against the other prelate
who had so long watched over the King, and whose advice the King was
bound by oath to follow.[42] He bore the bitterest grudge against the
Primate Lanfranc, as the inventor of that subtle distinction between
the Bishop of Bayeux and the Earl of Kent which had cost the Earl five
years of imprisonment.[43]
[Sidenote: Action of Odo.]
[Sidenote: March 1, 1088.]
[Sidenote: Gatherings of the rebels.]
[Sidenote: Arguments on behalf of Robert.]
Of the two personages who might thus be joined or separated at
pleasure, it is the temporal chief with whom we have now to deal. Lent
was now come. Of the spiritual exercises of the Bishop of Bayeux
during the holy season we have no record; the Earl of Kent spent the
time plotting with the chief Normans in England how the King might be
killed or handed over alive to his brother.[44] We have more than one
vigorous report of the oratory used in these seditious gatherings.
According to some accounts, they went on on both sides of the sea, and
we are admitted to hear the arguments which were used both in Normandy
and in England.[45] Both agree in maintaining the claims of Robert, as
at once the true successor, and the prince best fitted for their
purpose. But it is on Norman ground that the necessity for an union
between Normandy and England is set forth most clearly. The main
object is to hinder a separation between the two kingdoms, as they are
somewhat daringly called.[46] It is clear that to men who held lands
in both countries it would be a gain to have only one lord instead of
two; but, if we rightly understand the arguments which are put into
the mouths of the speakers, it was held that, if England had again a
king of her own, though it were a king of the Conqueror’s house, the
work of the Conquest would be undone. The men who had won England with
their blood would be brought down from their dominion in the conquered
island.[47] If they have two lords, there will be no hope of pleasing
both; faithfulness to the one will only lead to vengeance on the part
of the other.[48] William was young and insolent, and they owed him no
duty. Robert was the eldest son; his ways were more tractable, and
they had sworn to him during the life-time of his father. Let them
then make a firm agreement to stand by one another, to kill or
dethrone William, and to make Robert ruler of both lands.[49] Robert,
we are told, approved of the scheme, and promised that he would give
them vigorous help to carry it out.[50]
[Sidenote: Speech of Odo.]
[Sidenote: Reasons for preferring Robert to William.]
[Sidenote: Comparison of the elder and younger William.]
These arguments of Norman speakers are given us without the names of
any ringleaders. We may suspect that the real speaker, in the idea of
the reporter, was no other than the Bishop of Bayeux.[51] We hear of
him more distinctly on English ground, haranguing his accomplices
somewhat to the same effect; only the union of the two states is not
so distinctly spoken of. It may be that such a way of putting the case
would not sound well in the ears of men who, if not Englishmen, were
at least the chief men of England, and who might not be specially
attracted by the prospect of another conquest of England, now that
England was theirs. The chief business of the Bishop’s speech is to
compare the characters of the two brothers between whom they had to
choose, and further to compare the new King with the King who was
gone. The speaker seems to start from the assumption that, in the
interests of those to whom he spoke, it was to be wished that the
ruler whom they were formally to acknowledge should be practically no
ruler at all. William the Great had not been a prince to their minds;
William the Red was not likely to be a prince to their minds either.
Robert was just the man for their purpose. Under Robert, mild and
careless, they would be able to do as they pleased; under the stern
and active William they would soon find that they had a master. The
argument that follows is really the noblest tribute that could be paid
to the memory of the Conqueror. It sets him before us, in a portrait
drawn by one who, if a brother, was also an enemy, as a king who did
justice and made peace, and who did his work without shedding of
blood. It is taken for granted that the death of the great king, at
whose death we are told that peaceable men wept and that robbers and
fiends rejoiced,[52] was something from which Odo and men like Odo
might expect to gain. But nothing would be gained, if the rod of the
elder William were to pass into the hands of the younger. The little
finger of the son would be found to be thicker than the loins of the
father. Their release from the rule of the King who was gone would
profit them nothing, if they remained subjects of one who was likely
to slay where his father had merely put in bonds.[53] In this last
contrast, though we may doubt whether there could have been any ground
for drawing it so early in the reign of Rufus, we see that the men of
the time were struck by the difference between the King whose laws
forbade the judicial taking of human life and the King under whom the
hangman began his work again. To pleadings like these we are told that
the great mass of the Norman nobility in England hearkened; a small
number only remained faithful to the King to whom they had so lately
sworn their oaths. Thus, as the national Chronicler puts it, “the
unrede was read.”[54]
[Sidenote: Bishop Geoffrey of Coutances joins the rebels.]
[Sidenote: Treason of the Bishop of Durham.]
[Sidenote: Different statements of his conduct.]
As the chief devisers of the unrede we have the names of two bishops
besides Odo. One name we do not wonder to find along with his.
Geoffrey Bishop of Coutances was a prelate of Odo’s own stamp, one of
whose doings as a wielder of the temporal sword we have heard in
northern, in western, and in eastern England.[55] But we should not
have expected to find as partner of their doings the very man whose
high promotion had filled the heart of Odo with envy. It was indeed
the most unkindest cut of all when the Bishop of Durham, the man in
whose counsel the King most trusted, turned against the benefactor who
had raised him so that all England went at his rede. What higher
greatness he could have hoped to gain by treason it is hard to see.
And it is only fair to add that in the records of his own bishopric he
appears as a persecuted victim,[56] while all the writers of southern
England join in special reprobation of his faithlessness. The one who
speaks in our own tongue scruples not to make use of the most emphatic
of all comparisons. “He would do by him”――that is, Bishop William
would do by King William――“as Judas Iscariot did by our Lord.”[57] We
should certainly not learn from these writers that, after all, it was
the King, and not the Bishop, who struck, or tried to strike, the
first blow.
[Sidenote: His alleged services to the King. Lent, 1088.]
[Sidenote: His action towards London.]
[Sidenote: Early movements in Kent and Sussex. March, 1088.]
It is certainly far from easy to reconcile the different accounts of
this affair. At a time a little later the southern account sets Bishop
William before us as one who “did all harm that he might all over the
North.”[58] But at Durham it was believed that at all events a good
deal of harm had been already done by the King to the Bishop; and the
Bishop claims to have at an earlier time done the best of good service
to the King.[59] That service must have been rendered while the Lenten
conspiracy was still going on; for at no later time does the Bishop of
Durham seem to have been anywhere in the south of England. Then,
according to his own story, the Bishop secured to the King the
possession of Hastings, of Dover, and of London itself. We have only
William of Saint-Calais’ own statement for this display of loyal
vigour on his part; but, as it is a statement made in the hearing of
the King and of the barons and prelates of England, though
exaggeration is likely enough, the whole story can hardly be sheer
invention. Bishop William claims to have kept the two southern havens
in their allegiance when the King had almost lost them. He claims
further to have quieted disturbances in London, after the city had
actually revolted, by taking twelve of the chief citizens to the
King’s presence.[60] Our notes of time show that the events of which
the Bishop thus speaks must have happened at the latest in the very
first days of March. It follows that there must have been at the least
seditious movements in south-eastern England, before the time of the
open revolt in the west. In short, the rebellion in Kent and Sussex
must have begun very early indeed in the penitential season.
[Sidenote: Bishop William’s advice to the King.]
[Sidenote: He forsakes the King.]
[Sidenote: His temporalities seized. March, 1088.]
[Sidenote: He writes to the King.]
[Sidenote: He is summoned to the King’s Court.]
[Sidenote: Action of Ralph Paganel.]
[Sidenote: The lands of the bishopric laid waste. March-May, 1088.]
We gather from the Durham narrative that, even at this early stage,
both Bishop Odo and Earl Roger were already known to the King as
traitors. We gather further that it was by the advice of the Bishop of
Durham that the King was making ready for military operations against
them, and that, when the Bishop was himself summoned to the array, he
made answer that he would at once join with the seven knights whom he
had with him――seven chief barons of the bishopric, as it would
seem――and would send to Durham for more. But, instead of so doing, he
left the King’s court without his leave; he took with him some of the
King’s men, and so forsook the King in his need.[61] Such was
afterwards the statement on the King’s side. Certain it is that,
whatever the Bishop’s fault was, the royal vengeance followed speedily
on it. Early in March, whether with or without the advice of any
assembly,[62] Rufus ordered the temporalities of the bishopric to be
seized, and the Bishop himself to be arrested. The Bishop escaped to
his castle at Durham, whence it would not be easy to dislodge him
without a siege. Meanwhile the King’s men in Yorkshire and
Lincolnshire, though they failed to seize the Bishop’s own person,
took possession in the King’s name of his lands, his money, and his
men. From Durham the Bishop wrote to the King, setting forth his
wrongs, protesting his innocence, and demanding restitution of all
that had been taken from him. He goes on to use words which remind us
in a strange way at once of Godwine negotiating with his royal
son-in-law and of Odo in the grasp of his royal brother. He offers the
services of himself and his men. He offers to make answer to any
charge in the King’s court. But, like Godwine, he asks for a
safe-conduct before he will come;[63] like Odo, he declares that it is
not for every one to judge a bishop, and that he will make answer only
according to his order.[64] On the receipt of this letter, the King at
once, in the sight of the Bishop’s messenger, made grants of the
episcopal lands to certain of his barons;[65] those lands were
therefore looked on as property which had undergone at least a
temporary forfeiture. He however sent an answer to the Bishop, bidding
him come to his presence, and adding the condition that, if he would
not stay with the King as the King wished, he should be allowed to go
back safe to Durham. It must however be supposed that this promise was
not accompanied by any formal safe-conduct; otherwise, though it is
not uncommon to find the officers of a king or other lord acting far
more harshly than the lord himself, it is hard to understand the
treatment which Bishop William met with at the hands of the zealous
Sheriff of Yorkshire. That office was now held by Ralph Paganel, a man
who appears in Domesday as holder of lands in various parts, from
Devonshire to the lands of his present sheriffdom,[66] and who next
year became the founder of the priory of the Holy Trinity at York.[67]
The Bishop, on receiving the King’s answer, sent to York to ask for
peace of the Sheriff. But all peace was refused to the Bishop, to his
messengers, and to all his men. A monk who was coming back from the
King’s presence to the Bishop was stopped; his horse was killed,
though he was allowed to go on on foot. Lastly, the Sheriff ordered
all men in the King’s name to do all the harm that they could to the
Bishop everywhere and in every way. The Bishop was thus cut off from
telling his grievances; and for seven weeks, we are told, the lands of
the bishopric were laid waste.[68] This date brings us into the month
of May, by which time important events had happened in other parts of
England.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: General rebellion.]
[Sidenote: The Easter Gemót. April 16, 1088.]
[Sidenote: The rebels refuse to come.]
We have seen that, in south-eastern England at least, the unrede of
this year’s Lent must have gone beyond mere words, and must have
already taken the form of action. But it seems not to have been till
after Easter that the general revolt of the disaffected nobles broke
forth throughout the whole land. By this time they had all thoroughly
made up their minds to act. And we may add that it is quite possible
that the King’s treatment of the Bishop of Durham may have had some
share in helping them to make up their minds. They may have been led
to think that open rebellion was the safest course. The first general
sign was given at the Easter Gemót of the year, which, according to
rule, would be held at Winchester. The rebel nobles, instead of
appearing to do their duty when the King wore his crown, kept aloof
from his court. They gat them each man to his castle, and made them
ready for war.[69] Soon after the festival the flame burst forth. The
great body of the Norman lords of England were in open revolt against
the son of the man who had made England theirs.
[Sidenote: The rebel nobles.]
[Sidenote: Robert of Mortain]
[Sidenote: and William of Eu.]
[Sidenote: Earl Roger and the border lords.]
[Sidenote: Osbern.]
[Sidenote: Loyalty of Earl Hugh.]
[Sidenote: Rebellion of Robert of Rhuddlan;]
[Sidenote: of Roger the Bigod;]
[Sidenote: of Bishop Geoffrey of Coutances;]
[Sidenote: of Robert of Mowbray.]
The list of the rebel nobles reads like a roll of the Norman leaders
at Senlac or a choice of the names which fill the foremost places in
Domesday. With a few marked exceptions, all the great men of the land
are there. Along with Odo, Bishop and Earl, the other brother of the
Conqueror, Robert of Mortain and of Cornwall, the lord of Pevensey and
of Montacute, joined in the revolt against his nephew.[70] So did
another kinsman, a member of the ducal house of Normandy and gorged
with the spoils of England, William son of Robert Count of Eu,
grandson of the elder William and his famous wife Lescelina.[71] Of
greater personal fame, and of higher formal rank on English soil, was
the father of one of the men who had crossed the sea to trouble
England, Roger of Montgomery, whose earldom of Shrewsbury swells, in
the statelier language of one of our authorities, into an earldom of
the Mercians.[72] He brought with him a great following from his own
border-land. Among these was Roger of Lacy, great in the shires from
Berkshire to Shropshire;[73] and with him came the old enemy Osbern of
Richard’s Castle, whose name carries us back to times that now seem
far away.[74] With Osbern came his son-in-law Bernard of Neufmarché or
Newmarch, sister’s son to the noble Gulbert of Hugleville, the man who
was soon to stamp his memory on the mountain land of Brecheiniog.[75]
From the same border too came the lord of Wigmore, Ralph of
Mortemer.[76] But the treason of the great Earl of the central march
was not followed by his northern neighbour. Hugh of Chester clave to
the King, while the mightiest of his tenants joined the rebels. For
the old Hugh of Grantmesnil raised the standard of revolt in
Northhamptonshire, and in Leicestershire, the land of his
sheriffdom.[77] And his rebellion seems to have carried with it that
of his nephew the Marquess Robert of Rhuddlan, the terror of the
northern Cymry.[78] Robert thus found himself in arms, not only
against his king, but against his immediate and powerful neighbour and
lord Earl Hugh. But the tie which bound a man to his mother’s brother
was perhaps felt to be stronger than duty towards either king or earl.
Along with the lords of the British marches stood the guardian of the
eastern coast of England against the Dane, Roger the Bigod, father of
earls, whose name, fated to be so renowned in later times, appears in
the records of these days with a special brand of evil.[79] And with
Odo and William of Durham a third prelate joined in the unrede, a
prelate the worthy compeer of Odo, the warrior Geoffrey of Coutances,
the bishop who knew better how to marshal mailed knights for the
battle than to teach surpliced clerks to chant their psalms in the
choir.[80] He brought with him the last of the elder succession of
Northumbrian earls, his nephew Robert of Mowbray, tall of stature,
swarthy of countenance, fierce, bold, and proud, who looked down on
his peers and scorned to obey his betters, who loved better to think
than to speak, and who, when he opened his lips, seldom let a smile
soften his stern words.[81] With these leaders were joined a crowd of
others, “mickle folk, all Frenchmen,” as the Chronicler significantly
marks.[82] The sons of the soil, we are to believe, had no part in the
counsels of that traitorous Lent, in the deeds of that wasting Easter.
[Sidenote: Ravages of the rebels.]
[Sidenote: Evidence against the Bishop of Durham.]
[Sidenote: Ravages of Roger Bigod;]
[Sidenote: of Hugh of Grantmesnil.]
The war now began, a war in which, after the example of the chief
combatants, fathers fought against sons, brothers against brothers,
friends against their former friends.[83] The rebel leaders, each from
the point where his main strength lay, began to lay waste the land,
specially the lordships of the King and the Archbishop. And among
these evil-doers the loyal monk of Peterborough distinctly sets down
William of Saint-Calais, meek victim as he seems in the records of his
own house. The Bishop may have argued that he was only returning what
the King had done to him; but the witness is such as cannot be got
over; “The Bishop of Durham did to harm all that he might over all the
north.” Some others of the confederates and their doings are sketched
in a few words by the same sarcastic pen; “Roger hight one of them
that leapt into the castle at Norwich, and did yet the worst of all
over all the land.”[84] So does the English writer speak of the first
Bigod who held the fortress which had arisen on the mound of the
East-Anglian kings.[85] Roger had succeeded to the place, though not
to the rank, of Ralph of Wader, and, as Ralph had made Norwich a
centre of rebellion against the father, so Roger now made it a centre
of rebellion against the son. Then we read how “Hugo eke did nothing
better neither within Leicestershire nor within Northampton.”[86] This
was the way in which the lord of Grantmesnil, so honoured at Saint
Evroul, was looked on in the _scriptorium_ of the house which had once
been the Golden Borough. In some other parts of the country we get
fuller accounts than these of the doers and of what was done. Three
districts in the west and in the south-east of England became the
scene of events which are set down by the writers of the age in
considerable detail.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Bristol and its castle.]
[Sidenote: Bristol in the eleventh century.]
[Sidenote: The chief churches not yet built.]
[Sidenote: Peninsular site of the borough.]
[Sidenote: The two rivers.]
[Sidenote: Changes in later times.]
[Sidenote: The castle.]
[Sidenote: Works of Earl Robert.]
[Sidenote: Growth of the town.]
Of Bristol, the great merchant-haven on the West-Saxon and Mercian
border, we last heard when the sons of Harold failed to make their way
within its walls,[87] and when its greedy slave-traders cast aside,
for a while at least, their darling sin at the preaching of Saint
Wulfstan.[88] The borough was now beginning to put on a new character,
one which, in the disturbances half a century later, won for it the
name of the stepmother of all England.[89] A fortress, the forerunner
of the great work of Robert Earl of Gloucester,[90] had now arisen,
and its presence made Bristol one of the chief military centres of
England down to the warfare of the seventeenth century. The Bristol of
those days had not yet occupied the ground which is now covered by its
two chief ecclesiastical ornaments. The abbey of Saint Augustine, the
creation of Robert Fitz-Harding, had not yet arisen on the lowest
slope of the hills to the west, nor the priory of Saint James, the
creation of Earl Robert, on the ground to the north of the borough.
These foundations arose in the next age on the Mercian ground without
the walls. And any forerunner which may then have been of the church
of Saint Mary on the Red cliff, for ages past the stateliest among the
parish churches of England, stood beyond the walls, beyond the river,
on undisputed West-Saxon ground. The older Bristol lay wholly on the
Mercian side of the Avon, at the point where the Frome of
Gloucestershire still poured its waters into the greater stream in the
sight of the sun.[91] But nowhere, unless at Palermo, have the
relations of land and water been more strangely turned about than they
have been at Bristol. The course of the greater river, though not
actually turned aside, is disguised by cuts and artificial harbours
which puzzle the visitor till the key is found. The lesser stream of
the Frome has had its course changed and shortened, and the remnant
is, like the Fleet of London, condemned by art to the fate which
nature has laid on so many of the rivers of Greece and Dalmatia;[92]
it runs, as in a _katabothra_, under modern streets and houses. The
marshy ground lying at the meeting of the streams has been reclaimed
and covered with the modern buildings of the city. In the twelfth
century, still more therefore in the eleventh, this space was covered
at every high tide, when the waters rushing up the channels of both
rivers made Bristol seem to float on their bosom like Venice or
Ravenna.[93] Of the castle again the more part of its site is covered
by modern buildings; a great part of its moat is filled up; the donjon
has vanished; the green is no longer a green; it is only by searching
that we can find out some parts of the outer walls of the fortress,
and some still smaller parts of the buildings which they fenced
in.[94] But, when the key is once found, it is not hard to follow the
line both of the borough and of the fortress. Bristol belongs to the
same general class of peninsular towns as Châlons, Shrewsbury, Bern,
and Besançon; but, as at Châlons, the height above the rivers is not
great; and it is at Bristol made quite insignificant by comparison
with the hills to the west and north. Yet on the narrow neck of the
isthmus itself, the actual slope towards the streams on either side is
not to be despised. To the west of that isthmus, within the peninsula,
stood the original town, girded to the north by the original course of
the Frome, to the south-west by the marshy ground at the junction of
the rivers.[95] To the west of the isthmus, outside the peninsula,
stood the castle. Standing on the exposed side, open to an attack from
the east, it was fenced in on three sides by a moat joining the two
rivers at either end. A writer of the next age gives us a picture of
Bristol Castle as it then stood, strengthened by all the more advanced
art of that time.[96] But the great keep of Earl Robert, slighted in
the days of the Commonwealth, was not yet. We can only guess at the
state of borough and fortress, as they had stood when the sons of
Harold were driven back from the walls of Bristol, or as they stood
now at the opening of the civil war which we have now reached. But
there are few towns whose general look must have been more thoroughly
unlike what it is now. The central and busy streets which occupy the
area of the older Bristol must, allowing for the difference between
the eleventh century and the nineteenth, still keep the general
character of the old merchant-borough. But few changes can be greater
than those which have affected Bristol both in earlier and in later
times. One period of change first surrounded the elder town with a
fringe of ecclesiastical buildings, and then took them within a more
extended line of wall. Another in later days has swept away well nigh
every trace of the fortress which was so famous both in the twelfth
century and in the seventeenth, and has covered the whole range of the
neighbouring hills with a new and airy city of modern days.
[Illustration:
Map illustrating the SOMERSET AND GLOUCESTERSHIRE CAMPAIGN. 1088.
_For the Delegates of the Clarendon Press._ Edwᵈ. Weller]
[Sidenote: Bristol occupied by Bishop Geoffrey.]
[Sidenote: His relation to the town.]
[Sidenote: His works.]
[Sidenote: Ravages of William of Eu and Robert of Mowbray.]
[Sidenote: Robert burns Bath.]
[Sidenote: He marches through Wiltshire to Ilchester.]
[Sidenote: Position of Ilchester.]
[Sidenote: The siege.]
[Sidenote: Robert of Mowbray driven back from Ilchester.]
The castle of Bristol then, though not perched, like so many of its
fellows, on any lofty height, was placed on a strong and important
site. That site, commanding the lower course of the Avon and the great
borough upon it, and guarding the meeting-place, still of two shires,
as once of two kingdoms, supplied an admirable centre for the work of
those whose object was, not to guard those shires, but to lay them
waste.[97] To that end Bristol was occupied and garrisoned by the
warrior Bishop of Coutances, Geoffrey of Mowbray. It is not unlikely
that he was already in command of the castle. He was not only a
land-owner in the two neighbouring shires, a very great land-owner in
that of Somerset;[98] but the meagre notice of Bristol in the Great
Survey also shows that he stood in some special relation to the
borough as the receiver of the King’s dues within it.[99] He doubtless
added anything that the castle needed in the way of further defences,
and conjecture has attributed to him one of the several lines which
the city walls have taken, that which brought the line of defence most
closely to the banks of the Frome.[100] But whatever were his works,
we have no record of them; we know only that the fierce prelate, at
the head of his partisans, turned Bristol Castle into a den of
robbers. His chief confederates were William of Eu, of whom we have
already spoken[101], and his own nephew Robert of Mowbray. Among them
they harried the land, and brought in the fruits of their harrying to
the castle.[102] The central position of Bristol made a division of
labour easy. Of Bishop Geoffrey’s two younger confederates, Robert
undertook the work in Somerset and William in Gloucestershire. Robert
marched up the valley of the Avon to the Roman town of Bath,
emphatically the “old borough.”[103] At the foot of the hills on
either side, lying, as wicked wits put it, amid sulphureous vapours,
at the gates of hell,[104] the square, small indeed, of the Roman
walls sheltered the abbey of Offa’s rearing, now widowed by the death
of its English abbot Ælfsige.[105] The city had been overthrown by the
arms of Ceawlin; it had lain waste like the City of the Legions;[106]
it had risen again as an English town to share with the City of the
Legions in the two chief glories of the days of the peaceful Eadgar.
If Chester saw his triumph,[107] Bath had seen his crowning. And now
the hand of the Norman, not the Norman Conqueror but the Norman rebel,
fell as heavily on the English borough as the hand of the West-Saxon
invader had fallen five hundred years before. Bath was a king’s town;
as such it drew on itself the special wrath of the rebels; the whole
town was destroyed by fire, to rise again presently in another
character.[108] From Bath, the greatest town of Somerset, but which,
as placed in a corner of the land, has never claimed to be one of its
administrative centres, the destroyer passed on to another town of
Roman origin, which once did aspire to be the head of the Sumorsætan,
but from which all traces of greatness have passed away. From Bath
Robert first marched into Wiltshire, most likely following the line of
the Avon; he there wrought much slaughter and took great spoil. He
then turned to the south-west along the high ground of Wiltshire; he
made his way into the mid parts of Somerset, and laid siege to the
King’s town of Givelceaster, Ivelchester, Ilchester, the Ischalis of a
by-gone day.[109] The town lay at the foot of the most central range
of the hills of Somerset, on the edge of one of the inlets of the
great marshland of Sedgemoor. The site was marked by the junction of
the great line of the Fossway with a number of roads in all
directions. The spot was defended by the river, the Ivel, which gives
the town its English name. Here, at the foot of the high ground, the
stream widens to surround an island, a convenient outpost in the
defences of the town which arose on its southern bank. Ilchester, like
Bath, drew on itself the special enmity of the rebels as being a
king’s town, an enmity likely to be the sharper because Ilchester
stands within sight of Count Robert’s castle of Montacute, and is
divided only by the river from lands which were held by his
fellow-rebel William of Eu.[110] The Ilchester of our day seems a
strange place for a siege; but in the days of the Red King the town
was still surrounded by strong walls, and those walls were defended by
valiant burghers. The walls and gates have perished; the ditches have
been filled up; yet the lasting impress of the four-sided shape of the
Roman _chester_ may still be traced in the direction of the roads and
buildings of the modern town.[111] The importance of Ilchester had
passed away even in the sixteenth century, when of its five or six
churches all but one were in ruins; but, in the times with which we
are dealing, its hundred and seven burgesses, with their market held
in the old forum at the meeting-place of the roads, held no
inconsiderable place among the smaller boroughs of Western England.[112]
What the men of Ilchester had they knew how to defend; the attack and
the defence were vigorously carried on on either side. Our one
historian of the leaguer――he becomes almost its minstrel――tells us how
the besiegers fought for greed of booty and love of victory, while the
besieged fought with a good heart for their own safety and that of
their friends and kinsfolk. The stronger and worthier motive had the
better luck. The dark and gloomy Robert of Mowbray, darker and
gloomier than ever, turned away, a defeated man, from the unconquered
walls of Ilchester.[113]
[Sidenote: William of Eu plunders in Gloucestershire.]
[Sidenote: He harries Berkeley.]
[Sidenote: Position of Berkeley.]
[Sidenote: The castle.]
This utter failure of a man who stands forth in a marked way as one of
the skilful captains of the age was a good omen for success at points
which were still more important in the struggle. Meanwhile the work of
destruction was going steadily on in the lands on the other side of
Bristol, among the flock of the holy Wulfstan. Gloucestershire was
assigned as the province of William of Eu, and he did his work with a
will along the rich valley of the Severn, still the land of pasture,
then also the land of vines.[114] The district called Berkeley Harness
was laid waste with fire and sword, and the town of Berkeley itself
was plundered.[115] Berkeley, once the abode of Earl Godwine and the
scene of the pious scruples of Gytha,[116] is now simply marked as a
king’s town;[117] the abbey had vanished in a past generation; the
famous castle belongs to a later generation; but the place was not
defenceless. Berkeley is indeed one of those places which have become
strongholds almost by accident. It looks up at a crowd of points on
the bold outlying promontories of the Cotswolds, points some of them
marked by the earthworks of unrecorded times, which in Normandy or
Maine could hardly fail to have been seized on for the site of
fortresses far sooner than itself. Nor is it near enough to the wide
estuary of the Severn to have been of any military importance in the
way of commanding the stream. It is rather one of those places where
the English lord fixed his dwelling on a spot which was chosen more as
a convenient centre for his lands than with any regard to purposes of
warfare. The mound, the church, the town, rose side by side on ground
but slightly higher than the rich meadows around them. But the mound
on which the great Earl of the West-Saxons had once dwelled had been,
as usual, turned to Norman military uses. Earl William of Hereford,
whose watchful care stretched on both sides of the river, had crowned
it with what Domesday marks as “a little castle.”[118] One would be
well pleased to know in what such a defence was an advance on the
palisades or other defences which may have surrounded the hall of
Godwine. In after days the “little castle” was to grow into the
historic home of that historic house in whom, whether they themselves
acknowledge it or not, history must see the lineal offspring, not of a
Danish king, but of an English staller.[119] At present however the
savage William of Eu had not to assault the stronghold of Robert, son
of Harding and grandson of Eadnoth, but merely to overcome whatever
resistance could be offered by the _castellulum_ of William
Fitz-Osbern. Its defences were most likely much less strong than the
Roman walls of Ilchester. Berkeley and the coasts thereof were
thoroughly ravaged. On the whole, notwithstanding the defeat of Robert
of Mowbray, the Bishop of Coutances and his lieutenants had done their
work to their own good liking. No small spoil from each of the three
nearest shires had been brought in to the robbers’ hold at Bristol.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Rebel centre at Hereford.]
[Sidenote: Action of Earl Roger.]
Meanwhile the same work was going on busily to the north and
north-west of Bishop Geoffrey’s field of action. Of the movements in
Herefordshire and Worcestershire we have fuller accounts, accounts
which, before we have done, land us from the region of military
history into that of hagiography. The centre of mischief in this
region was at Hereford. The city which Harold had called back into
being, and where William Fitz-Osbern had ruled so sternly, had now no
longer an earl; the rebel Roger was paying the penalty of his treason
at some point far away alike from Hereford, from Flanders, and from
Breteuil.[120] The city had now the King for its immediate lord. It
was presently seized by Roger of Lacy,[121] and was turned into a
meeting-place for the disaffected. The host that came together is
marked as made up of “the men that eldest were of Hereford, and the
whole shire forthwith, and the men of Shropshire with mickle folk of
Bretland.”[122] Some of their names, besides that of Roger of Lacy, we
have heard already.[123] And we are significantly told that the men of
Earl Roger――the men of Shropshire――were with them, a formula which
seems specially meant to shut out the presence of the Earl
himself.[124] And though the leaders were “all Frenchmen,”[125] yet
among their followers were men of all the races of the land. Not only
Normans and Britons, but Englishmen also, were seen in the rebel
ranks. So it seemed, if not in the general prospect as it was looked
at from distant Peterborough, yet at least in the clearer view which
men took from the watch-towers of more nearly threatened
Worcester.[126]
[Sidenote: The rebels march on Worcester.]
[Sidenote: 1055.]
[Sidenote: 1041.]
[Sidenote: Deliverance of Worcester.]
[Sidenote: Action of Wulfstan.]
[Sidenote: Position of Worcester.]
[Sidenote: Wulfstan called to the command.]
[Sidenote: Wulfstan enters the castle.]
[Sidenote: Advance of the rebels.]
[Sidenote: Sally of the royal forces.]
[Sidenote: Wulfstan curses the rebels.]
[Sidenote: Victory of the king’s men.]
For it was the “faithful city” of after days on which the full storm
of the Western revolt was meant to burst. The Norman lords of the
border, with their British allies, now marched on Worcester, as,
thirty-three years before, an English earl of the border, with his
British allies, had marched on Hereford.[127] They came of their own
will to deal by Worcester, shire and city, as, forty-seven years
before, English earls had been driven against their will to deal with
them at the bidding of a Danish king.[128] “They harried and burned on
Worcestershire forth, and they came to the port itself, and would then
the port burn and the minster reave, and the King’s castle win to
their hands.”[129] But Worcester was not doomed to see in the days of
the second William such a day as Hereford had seen in the days of
Eadward, as Worcester itself had seen in the days of Harthacnut. The
port was not burned, the minster was not reaved, nor was the King’s
castle won into the hands of his enemies. And the deliverance of
Worcester is, with one accord, assigned by the writers of the time to
the presence within its walls of its bishop, the one remaining bishop
of English blood, whose unshaken loyalty had most likely brought the
special wrath of the rebels upon his city and flock. The holy Wulfstan
was grieved at heart for the woes which seemed coming upon his people;
but he bade them be of good courage and trust in the Lord who saveth
not by sword or spear.[130] The man who had won the heart of
Northumberland for Harold,[131] who had saved his own city for the
first William,[132] was now to save it again for the second. At
Worcester, castle, minster, and episcopal palace rose side by side
immediately above the Severn. But Worcester is no hill city like
Durham or Le Mans. The height above the stream is slight; the
subordinate buildings of the monastery went down almost to its banks.
The mound, traditionally connected with the name of Eadgar the
Giver-of-peace, has now utterly vanished; it then stood to the south
of the monastery, and had become, as elsewhere, the kernel of the
Norman castle. It will be remembered that it was the sacrilegious
extension of its precincts at the hands of Urse of Abetot which had
brought down on him the curse of Ealdred.[133] But by this time the
new minster of Wulfstan’s own building, whose site, we may suppose,
was further from the castle, that is, more to the north, than that of
the church of Oswald,[134] was, if not yet finished, at least in
making. It may be that at this moment the two minsters――the elder one
which has wholly passed away, the newer, where Wulfstan’s crypt and
some other portions of his work still remain among the recastings of
later times,――both stood between the mound of Eadgar and its Norman
surroundings, and the bishop’s dwelling, whatever may have been its
form in Wulfstan’s day. Still along the line of the river, lay the
buildings of the city further to the north, with the bridge leading to
the meadows and low hills beyond the stream, backed by the varied
outline of the heights of Malvern, the home of the newly-founded
brotherhood of Ealdwine.[135] At the moment when the rebels drew near
to Worcester, all the inhabitants of the city, of whatever race or
order, were of one heart and of one soul under the inspiration of
their holy Bishop. Like the prophets and judges of old, Wulfstan
suddenly stands forth as first, if not in military action, at least in
military command. We know not whether the fierce Sheriff or some
captain of a milder spirit formally bore rule in the castle. But we
read that the Norman garrison, by whom the mild virtues of the English
bishop were known and loved, practically put him at their head. They
prayed him to leave his episcopal home beyond the church, and to take
up his abode with them in the fortress. If danger should be pressing,
they would feel themselves all the safer, if such an one as he were
among them.[136] Wulfstan agreed to their proposal, and set out on the
short journey which he was asked to make, a journey which the
encroachments of the Sheriff had made shorter than it should have
been.[137] On his way he was surrounded by the inhabitants of
Worcester of all classes, all alike ready for battle. He himself had,
after the new fashion of Norman prelates, a military following,[138]
and the soldiers of the King and of the Bishop, with all the citizens
of Worcester, now came together in arms. From the height of the castle
mound, Wulfstan and his people looked forth beyond the river. The foes
were now advancing; they could be seen marching towards the city, and
burning and laying waste the lands of the bishopric.[139] Soldiers and
citizens now craved the Bishop’s leave to cross the river and meet the
enemy. Wulfstan gave them leave, encouraging them by his blessing, and
by the assurance that God would allow no harm to befall those who went
forth to fight for their King and for the deliverance of their city
and people.[140] Grieved further by the sight of the harrying of the
church-lands, and pressed by the urgent prayer of all around him,
Wulfstan pronounced a solemn anathema against the rebellious and
sacrilegious invaders.[141] The loyal troops, strengthened by the
exhortations and promises of their Bishop, set forth. The bridge was
made firm; the defenders of Worcester marched across it;[142] and the
working of Wulfstan’s curse, so the tradition of Worcester ran, smote
down their enemies before them with a more than human power. The
invaders, scattered over the fields for plunder, were at once
overtaken and overthrown. Their limbs became weak and their eyes dim;
they could hardly lift their weapons or know friend from foe.[143] The
footmen were slaughtered; the horsemen, Norman, English, and Welsh,
were taken prisoners; of the whole host only a few escaped by flight.
The men of the King and of the Bishop marched back to Worcester――so
Worcester dutifully believed――without the loss of a single man from
their ranks. They came back rejoicing in the great salvation which had
been wrought by their hands, and giving all thanks to God and his
servant Wulfstan.[144]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Movements of Odo in Kent.]
[Sidenote: Tunbridge and Pevensey.]
Among the sorrows which rent the breast of the holy Bishop of
Worcester, one may have been to see a man of his own order, one whom
he had, somewhat strangely perhaps, honoured with his friendship,
acting as a temporal leader in the rebellion against which he had to
wield his spiritual arms. It was, it may be remembered, Geoffrey of
Mowbray, the lord of the robbers’ hold at Bristol, who had rebuked the
lamb-like simplicity of Wulfstan’s garb.[145] The lamb of Severnside
had now overthrown alike the wolves of Normandy and the wild cats of
the British hills. But, if Wulfstan mourned over the evil deeds of the
warlike Bishop of Coutances, he had no such personal cause for grief
over either the sins or the sorrows of another bishop who was
meanwhile, like himself, besieged in an episcopal city. That bishop
however was not, like Wulfstan, defending his own flock with either
spiritual or temporal arms; he was doing all the wrong in his power to
the flock of another. The source and leader of the whole
mischief,[146] Odo, Bishop and Earl, chose his own earldom of Kent for
the scene of his ravages. Our notes of time are very imperfect, and we
have seen that there were movements in Kent, movements in which Odo
seems to have had a share, much earlier in the year.[147] But it would
seem that the great outbreak of rebellion in south-eastern England
happened about the same time as the great outbreaks more to the west
and north. As the Bishop of Coutances had fixed his head-quarters in
the castle of Bristol, so the Bishop of Bayeux now fixed his
head-quarters in the castle of Rochester, and thence ravaged the lands
of the King and the Archbishop.[148] Another great Kentish fortress,
that of Tunbridge, was also in rebellion. So in Sussex was Pevensey,
the very firstfruits of the Conquest, where Odo’s brother Count Robert
also held out against the King. These three fortresses now become the
busy scene of our immediate story; but the centre of all is the post
occupied by the Bishop of Bayeux and Earl of Kent. This part of the
war is emphatically the war of Rochester.
[Illustration:
Map illustrating the KENT AND SUSSEX CAMPAIGN. A.D. 1088.
_For the Delegates of the Clarendon Press._ Edwᵈ. Weller]
[Sidenote: Early history of Rochester.]
[Sidenote: Importance of its position.]
[Sidenote: The later castle.]
[Sidenote: The cathedral church.]
[Sidenote: The castle site fortified by the Conqueror.]
[Sidenote: The city.]
[Sidenote: Nature of the site.]
[Sidenote: The castle occupied by Odo.]
[Sidenote: Odo asks Robert to come.]
The city by the Medway had been a fortress from the earliest times. We
have seen that it had already played a part both in foreign and in
civil wars. In the days of Æthelred it still kept the Roman walls
parts of which still remain, walls which were then able to withstand
two sieges, one at the hands of the King himself, and one at those of
the Danish invaders.[149] In truth the position of Rochester, lying on
the road from London to Canterbury, near to the sea on a navigable
river, made it at all times a great military post.[150] The chief
ornament of the city did not yet exist in the days of Odo. The noble
tower raised in the next age by Archbishop Walter of Corbeuil, the
tower which in one struggle held out against John[151] and in the next
held out for his son,[152] and still remains one of the glories of
Norman military architecture, had perhaps not even a forerunner of its
own class.[153] And the minster of Saint Andrew, which the
enlargements of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries have still left
one of the least among the episcopal churches of England, had then
only the lowly forerunner which had risen, which perhaps was still
only rising, under the hands of Gundulf.[154] But the steep scarped
cliff rising above the broad tidal stream was a stronghold in the
Conqueror’s days, as it had doubtless been in days long before his.
Whether a stone castle had yet been built is uncertain; the fact that
such an one was built for William Rufus by Gundulf later in his reign
might almost lead us to think that as yet the site, strong in itself,
was defended only by earthworks and defences of timber.[155] Below the
castle to the south-east lay the city, doubtless fenced by the Roman
wall; and a large part of its space had now begun to form the monastic
precinct of Saint Andrew. The town is said to have been parted from
the castle by a ditch which, as at Le Mans and at Lincoln, was
overleaped by the enlarged church of the twelfth century;[156] in any
case the castle, in all its stages, formed a sheltering citadel to the
town at its feet. Neither town nor castle by itself occupies a
peninsular site; but a great bend of the river to the south makes the
whole ground on which they stand peninsular, with an extent of marshy
ground between the town and the river to the north and east. The
stronghold of Rochester, no lofty natural peak, no mound of ancient
English kings, perhaps as yet gathering round no square keep of the
new Norman fashion, but in any case a well-defended circuit with its
scarped sides strengthened by all the art of the time, was the chief
fortress of the ancient kingdom over which the Bishop of Bayeux now
ruled as Earl. It now became, under him, the great centre of the
rebellion. Gundulf, renowned as he was for his skill in military
architecture, must have been sore let and hindered in the peaceful
work of building his church and settling the discipline of his
monks,[157] when his brother bishop filled the castle with his men of
war, five hundred of his own knights among them.[158] But Odo was not
satisfied with his garrison. He sent beyond sea to Duke Robert for
further help. The prince in whose name Rochester was now held was
earnestly prayed to come at once at the head of the full power of his
duchy, to take possession of the crown and kingdom which were waiting
for his coming.[159]
[Illustration:
ROCHESTER
_For the Delegates of the Clarendon Press._ E. Weller]
[Sidenote: The news brought to Robert.]
[Sidenote: He sends over Eustace of Boulogne and Robert of Bellême.]
[Sidenote: Three sons of Earl Roger at Rochester.]
[Sidenote: Hugh of Montgomery.]
[Sidenote: Roger of Poitou.]
[Sidenote: Action of Earl Roger.]
[Sidenote: He stays at Arundel.]
[Sidenote: Position of Arundel.]
[Sidenote: A castle at Arundel T. R. E.]
[Sidenote: Description of the castle.]
[Sidenote: William of Warren at Lewes.]
[Sidenote: His earldom of Surrey.]
[Sidenote: His loyalty.]
According to the narrative which we are now following, it would seem
that Robert now heard for the first time of the movement which was
going on in his behalf in England. His heart is lifted up at the
unlooked for news; he tells the tidings to his friends; certain of
victory, he sends some of them over to share in the spoil; he promises
to come himself with all speed, as soon as he should have gathered a
greater force.[160] At the head of the party which was actually sent
were two men whose names are familiar to us.[161] One of them, Count
Eustace of Boulogne, united the characters of a land-owner in England
and of a sovereign prince in Gaul. This was the younger Eustace, the
son of the old enemy of England, the brother of the hero who was
within a few years to win back the Holy City for Christendom.[162]
With him came Robert of Bellême; his share in the rebellion is his
first act on English ground that we have to record. Himself the eldest
son of Earl Roger of Shrewsbury, he had either brought with him two of
his brothers, or else they had already embraced the cause of Odo in
England. Three sons of Roger and Mabel were now within the walls of
Rochester.[163] The second was Hugh, who was for a moment to represent
the line of Montgomery while Robert represented the line of Bellême,
and who was to be as fierce a scourge to the Britons of the Northern
border as Robert was to be to the valiant defenders of the land of
Maine.[164] And with them was the third brother, Roger of Poitou, the
lord of the debateable land between Mersey and Ribble,[165] carrying
as it were to the furthest point of the earldom of Leofric the claim
of his father to the proud title which the elder Roger bears at this
stage of our story. It is as Earl of the Mercians that one teller of
our tale bids us look for a moment on the lord of Montgomery and
Shrewsbury.[166] But the Earl of the Mercians was not with his sons at
Rochester any more than he had been with his men before Worcester. He
was in another seat of his scattered power. His presence was less
needed at Shrewsbury, less needed at the continental or the insular
Montgomery, than it was in the South-Saxon land where the lord of
Arundel and Chichester held so high a place. While his men were
overthrown before Worcester, while his sons were strengthening
themselves at Rochester, Earl Roger himself was watching events in his
castle of Arundel.[167] The spot was well fitted for the purpose.
Arundel lies in the same general region of England as the three great
rebel strongholds of Rochester, Tunbridge, and Pevensey; it lies in
the same shire and near the same coast as the last named of the three.
But it lies apart from the immediate field of action of a campaign
which should gather round those three centres. A gap in the Sussex
downs, where the Arun makes its way to the sea through the flat land
at its base, had been marked out, most likely from the earliest times,
as a fitting spot for a stronghold. The last slope of this part of the
downs towards the east was strengthened in days before King William
came with a mound and a ditch, and Arundel is marked in the Great
Survey as one of the castles few and far between which England
contained before his coming.[168] The shell-keep which crowns the
mound, and the gateway which flanks it, have been recast at various
later times from the twelfth century onward, but it would be rash to
assert that the mere wall of the keep may not contain portions either
of the days of King William or of the days of King Eadward. The traces
of a vast hall, more immediately overlooking the river, reared as
usual on a vaulted substructure, almost constrain us to see in them
the work of no age earlier or later than that of Roger or his
successor of his own house.[169] The site is a natural watchtower,
whence the eye ranges far away to various points of the compass, over
the flat land and over the more distant hills, and over the many
windings of the tidal river which then made Arundel a place of trade
as well as of defence.[170] Less threatening than his vulture’s nest
at _Tre Baldwin_,[171] less tempting to an enemy than his fortresses
on the peninsula of Shrewsbury and within the walls of Chichester,[172]
the stronghold of Arundel seems exactly the place for an experienced
observer of men and things like Earl Roger to look out from and bide
his time. He had to watch the course of things in the three rebel
fortresses; he had further to watch what might come from a nearer
spot, another break in the hill ground, where, between his doubtful
Arundel and rebellious Pevensey, the twin mounds of loyal Lewes,[173]
the home of William and Gundrada, looked up to what was one day to be
the battle-ground of English freedom. Its lord, long familiar to us as
William of Warren, stood firm in his allegiance, and it was now,
according to some accounts, that he received his earldom of Surrey, an
earldom to be borne in after times along with that which took its name
from Roger’s own Arundel.[174] William became the King’s chief
counsellor, and his position at Lewes must have thrown difficulties in
the way of any communication between Arundel and Pevensey. And in
truth, when Earl Roger found it safest to watch and be prudent, we are
not surprised to find events presently shaping themselves in such a
way as to make it his wisest course to play the part of the Curio of
the tale.[175]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Action of the King.]
[Sidenote: He wins over Earl Roger.]
[Sidenote: Count Robert at Pevensey.]
But meanwhile where was King William? Where was the king who had taken
his place on his father’s seat with so much ease, but whose place upon
it had been so soon and so rudely shaken? We have been called on more
than once in earlier studies to mark how the two characters of fox and
lion were mingled in the tempers of the Conqueror and his countrymen,
and assuredly the Conqueror’s second surviving son was fully able to
don either garb when need called for it.[176] At this moment we are
told in a marked way that William Rufus showed himself in the
character of that which is conventionally looked on as the nobler
beast. He had no mind to seek for murky holes, like the timid fox,
but, like the bold and fearless lion, he gave himself mightily to put
down the devices of his enemies.[177] Yet the first time when we
distinctly get a personal sight of him, the Red King is seen playing
the part of the fox with no small effect. Earl Roger was assuredly no
mean master of Norman craft; but King William, in his first essay,
showed himself fully his equal. By a personal appeal he won the Earl
over from at least taking any further personal share in the rebellion.
At some place not mentioned, perhaps at Arundel itself, the Earl,
disguising, we are told, his treason, was riding in the King’s
company.[178] The King took him aside, and argued the case with him.
He would, he said, give up the kingdom, if such was really the wish of
the old companions of his father. He knew not wherefore they were so
bitter against him; he was ready, if they wished it, to make them
further grants of lands or money. Only let them remember one thing;
his cause and theirs were really the same; it was safer not to dispute
the will of the man who had made both him and them what they were.
“You may,” wound up Rufus, “despise and overthrow me; but take care
lest such an example should prove dangerous to yourselves. My father
has made me a king, and it was he alone who made you an earl.”[179]
Roger felt or affected conviction, and followed the King, in his
bodily presence at least, during the rest of the campaign.[180] But
Robert, Count of Mortain and lord of Cornwall, still made Pevensey one
of the strongholds of the revolt. Of the third great neighbour of
these two lords, Count Robert of Eu, father of the ravager of
Berkeley, we hear nothing on this side of the water.
[Sidenote: Loyal Normans.]
[Sidenote: Earl Hugh.]
[Sidenote: William of Warren.]
[Sidenote: Robert Fitz-hamon.]
[Sidenote: Forces on the side of Rufus,]
[Sidenote: the Church, and the people.]
[Sidenote: Loyalty of the Bishops.]
[Sidenote: The King appeals to the English.]
[Sidenote: His proclamation.]
[Sidenote: His promises.]
[Sidenote: The English take up the King’s cause.]
[Sidenote: Motives for supporting William.]
But, amid the general falling away, the throne of William Rufus was
still defended by some men of Norman birth on whom he could better
rely than on the doubtful loyalty of the Earl of Shrewsbury. Earl Hugh
of Chester remained faithful; so, as we have seen, did Earl Roger’s
neighbour, now or afterwards Earl William.[181] And to these already
famous names we must add one which was now only beginning to be heard
of, but which was presently to equal, if not to surpass, the renown of
either. This was Robert Fitz-hamon, the son or grandson of Hamon
_Dentatus_, the rebel of Val-ès-dunes.[182] But it was not on the
swords of the Norman followers of his father that the son of the
Conqueror rested his hopes of keeping the crown which the Conqueror
had left him. William Rufus had at his side two forces, either of
which, when it could put forth its full power, was stronger by far
than the Norman nobles. All that in any way represented the higher
feelings and instincts of man was along with him. All that in any
shape was an embodiment of law or right was arrayed against the men
whose one avowed principle was the desire to shake off the restraints
of law in any shape. Against the openly proclaimed reign of
lawlessness the King could rely on the strength of the Church and the
strength of the people. With the single exception of him of Durham,
the marauding bishops of Bayeux and Coutances found no followers among
the men of their order in England. Lanfranc stood firmly by the King
to whom he had given the crown; and the other bishops, of whatever
origin, sought, we are told, with all faithfulness of purpose, the
things which were for peace.[183] Either by their advice or by his own
discernment, the King saw that his only course was to throw himself on
the true folk of the land, to declare himself King of the English in
fact as well as in name. A written proclamation went forth in the name
of King William, addressed, doubtless in their own ancient tongue, to
the sons of the soil, the men of English kin. The King of the English
called on the people of the English, on the valiant men who were left
of the old stock; he set forth his need to them and craved for their
loyal help.[184] At such a moment he was lavish of promises. All the
wrongs of the days of William the Elder were to be put an end to in
the days of William the Younger. The English folk should have again
the best laws that ever before were in this land. King William would
reign over his people like Eadward or Cnut or Ælfred. The two great
grievances of his father’s days were to cease; the King’s coffers were
no longer to be filled by money wrung from his people; the King’s
hunting-grounds were no longer to be fenced in by the savage code
which had guarded the Conqueror’s pleasures. All unrighteous geld he
forbade, and he granted to them their woods and right of hunting.[185]
At the sound of such promises men’s hearts were stirred. At such
moments, men commonly listen to their hopes rather than to their
reason; the prospects and promises of a new reign are always made the
best of; and there was no special reason as yet why the word of
William the Red should be distrusted. He had not conquered England; he
had not as yet had the means of oppressing England; he had shown at
least one virtue in dutiful attachment to his father; his counsellor
was the venerated Primate; chief in loyalty to him was one yet more
venerated, the one native chief left to the English Church, the holy
Bishop of Worcester. If the English dealt with William as an English
king, he might deal with them as an English king should deal with his
people. In fighting for William against the men who had risen up
against him, they would be fighting for one who had not himself
wronged them against the men who had done them the bitterest of
wrongs. If the Bishop of Bayeux and the Bishop of Coutances, if Robert
of Mortain and Robert of Mowbray, if Eustace of Boulogne and the
fierce lord of Bellême, could all be smitten down by English axes or
driven into banishment from the English shores, if their estates on
English soil could be again parted out as the reward of English
valour, the work of the Norman Conquest would indeed seem to be
undone. And it would be undone none the less, although the king whose
crown was made sure by English hands was himself the son of the
Conqueror of England.
[Sidenote: Loyalty of the English.]
[Sidenote: They meet in London.]
[Sidenote: William’s English army.]
[Sidenote: Their zeal in his cause.]
[Sidenote: William accepted as the English king.]