With such feelings as these the sons of the soil gathered with glee

around the standard of King William. Not a name is handed down to us.

We know not from what shires they came or under what leaders they

marched. We see only that, as was natural when the stress of the war

lay in Kent and Sussex, the trysting-place was London.[186] How did

that great city stand at this moment with regard to the rebellion? It

will be remembered by what vigorous means Bishop William of Durham

claimed to have secured the allegiance of the citizens some time

earlier.[187] At all events, whether by the help of William of

Saint-Calais or not, London was now in the King’s hands. There the

royal host met, a motley host, a host of horse and foot, of Normans

and English, but a host in which the English element was by far the

greatest, and in which English feeling gave its character to the whole

movement. Thirty thousand of the true natives of the land came

together of their own free will to the defence of their lord the

King.[188] The figures are of much the same value as other figures; it

is enough if we take them as marking a general and zealous movement.

The men who were thus brought together promised the King their most

zealous service; they exhorted him to press on valiantly, to smite the

rebels, and to win for himself the Empire of the whole island.[189]

This last phrase is worth noting, even if it be a mere flourish of the

historian. It marks that the change of dynasty was fully accepted,

that the son of the Conqueror was fully acknowledged as the heir of

all the rights of Æthelstan the Glorious and of Eadmund the

Doer-of-great-deeds. A daughter of their race still sat on the

Scottish throne; but for Malcolm, the savage devastator of Northern

England, Englishmen could not be expected to feel any love. William

was now their king, their king crowned and anointed, the lord to whom

their duty was owing as his men.[190] Him they would make fast on the

throne of England; for him they were ready to win the Empire of all

Britain. The English followers of Rufus loudly proclaimed their hatred

of rebellion. They even, we are told, called on their leader to study

the history of past times, where he would see how faithful Englishmen

had ever been to their kings.[191]

[Sidenote: William’s march.]

[Sidenote: English hatred of Odo.]

At the head of this great and zealous host William the Red set forth

from London. He set forth at the head of an English host, to fight

against Norman enemies in the Kentish and South-Saxon lands. And in

that host there may well have been men who had marched forth from

London on the like errand only two-and-twenty years before. Great as

were the changes which had swept over the land, men must have been

still living, still able to bear arms, who had dealt their blows in

the _Malfosse_ of Senlac amidst the last glimmerings of light on the

day of Saint Calixtus. The enemy was nationally and even personally

the same. The work before all others at the present moment was to

seize the man whose spiritual exhortations had stirred up Norman

valour on that unforgotten day, and whose temporal arm had wielded, if

not the sword, at least the war-club, in the first rank of the

invaders. Odo, the invader of old, the oppressor of later days, the

head and front of the evil rede of the present moment, was the

foremost object of the loyal and patriotic hatred of every Englishman

in the Red King’s army. Could he be seized, it would be easier to

seize his accomplices.[192] The great object of the campaign was

therefore to recover the castle of Rochester, the stronghold where the

rebel Bishop, with his allies from Boulogne and from Bellême, bade

their defiance to the King and people of England.

[Sidenote: Tunbridge castle.]

[Sidenote: Attack on the castle.]

[Sidenote: Position of Tunbridge.]

[Sidenote: The castle stormed.]

It was not however deemed good to march at once upon the immediate

centre of the rebellion. A glance at the map will show that it was

better policy not to make the attack on Rochester while both the other

rebel strongholds, Tunbridge and Pevensey, remained unsubdued. The

former of these, a border-post of Kent and Sussex, guarding the upper

course of the stream that flows by Rochester, would, if won for the

King, put a strong barrier between Rochester and Pevensey. The march

on Rochester therefore took a roundabout course, and this part of the

war opened by an attack on Tunbridge which was the first exploit of

the Red King’s English army. At a point on the Medway about four miles

within the Kentish border, at the foot of the high ground reaching

northward from the actual frontier of the two ancient kingdoms, the

winding river receives the waters of several smaller streams, and

forms a group of low islands and peninsulas. On the slightly rising

ground to the north, commanding the stream and its bridge, a mound had

risen, fenced by a ditch on the exposed side to the north. This

ancient fortress had grown into the castle of Gilbert the son of

Richard, called of Clare and of Tunbridge, the son of the famous Count

Gilbert of the early days of the Conqueror.[193] As Tunbridge now

stands, the outer defences of the castle stand between the mound and

the river, and the mound, bearing the shell-keep, is yoked together in

a striking way with one of the noblest gateways of the later form of

mediæval military art.[194] The general arrangements of the latter

days of the eleventh century cannot have been widely different. The

mound, doubtless a work of English hands turned to the uses of the

stranger, was the main stronghold to be won. It was held by a body of

Bishop Odo’s knights, under the command of its own lord Gilbert; to

win it for the King and his people was an object only second to that

of seizing the traitor prelate himself. The rebel band bade defiance

to the King and his army. The castle held out for two days; but the

zeal of the English was not to be withstood; no work could be more to

their liking than that of attacking a Norman castle on their own soil,

even with a Norman King as their leader. The castle was stormed; the

native Chronicler, specially recording the act of his countrymen,

speaks of it, like the castles of York in the days of Waltheof, as

“tobroken.”[195] Most likely the buildings on the mound were thus

“tobroken;” but some part of the castle enclosure must have been left

habitable and defensible. For the garrison, with their chief Gilbert,

were admitted to terms; and Gilbert, who had been wounded in the

struggle, was left there under the care of a loyal guard.

[Sidenote: They march towards Rochester.]

[Sidenote: Odo at Pevensey.]

[Sidenote: Odo exhorts Robert of Mortain to hold out.]

The first blow had thus gone well to the mark. Such an exploit as

this, the capture by English valour of one of the hated strongholds of

the stranger, was enough to raise the spirit of William’s English

followers to the highest pitch. And presently they were summoned to a

work which would call forth a yet fiercer glow of national feeling.

After Tunbridge had fallen, they set forth on their march towards

Rochester, believing that the arch-enemy Odo was there. Their course

would be to the north-east, keeping some way from the left side of the

Medway; Bishop Gundulf’s tower at Malling,[196] if it was already

built, would be the most marked point on the road. But they were not

to reach Rochester by so easy a path. While they were on their way,

news came to the King that his uncle was no longer at Rochester. While

the King was before Tunbridge, the Bishop with a few followers had

struck to the south-east, and had reached his brother’s castle of

Pevensey.[197] The Count of Mortain and lord of Cornwall was perhaps

wavering, like his neighbour at Arundel. The Bishop exhorted him to

hold out. While the King besieged Rochester, they would be safe at

Pevensey, and meanwhile Duke Robert and his host would cross the sea.

The Duke would then win the crown, and would reward all their

services.[198]

[Sidenote: Interest of Duke Robert in the rebellion.]

[Sidenote: His coming looked for.]

[Sidenote: He fails to help the rebels.]

[Sidenote: His childish boasting.]

[Sidenote: His promises.]

It is well to be reminded by words like these what the professed

object of the insurgents was. It would be easy to forget that all the

plundering that had been done from Rochester to Ilchester had been

done in the name of the lawful rights of Duke Robert. The men who

harried Berkeley and who were overthrown at Worcester were but the

forerunners of the Duke of the Normans, who was to come, as spring

went on, with the full force of his duchy.[199] It was not for nothing

that King William had gathered his English army, when a new Norman

Conquest was looked for. But as yet the blow was put off; Duke Robert

came not; he seemed to think that the crown of England could be won

with ease at any moment. When the first news of William’s accession

came, when those around him urged him to active measures to support

his rights, he had spoken of the matter with childish scorn. Were he

at the ends of the earth――the city of Alexandria is taken as the

standard of distance――the English would not dare to make William king,

William would not dare to accept the crown at their hands, without

waiting for the coming of his elder brother.[200] Both the impossible

things had happened, and Robert and his partisans had now before them

the harder task of driving William from a throne which was already

his, instead of merely hindering him from mounting it. Up to this time

Robert had done nothing; but now, in answer to the urgent prayers of

his uncles, he did get together a force for their help, and promised

that he would himself follow it before long.[201]

[Sidenote: William marches on Pevensey.]

[Sidenote: The English besiege Odo in Pevensey.]

[Sidenote: The castle of Pevensey.]

The news of Odo’s presence at Pevensey at once changed the course of

William’s march. Wherever the Bishop of Bayeux was, there was the

point to be aimed at.[202] Instead of going on to Rochester, the King

turned and marched straight upon Pevensey. The exact line of his march

is not told us, but it could not fail to cross, perhaps it might for a

while even coincide with, the line of march by which Harold had

pressed to the South-Saxon coast on the eve of the great battle.

Things might seem to have strangely turned about, when an English

army, led by a son of the Conqueror, marched to lay siege to the two

brothers and chief fellow-workers of the Conqueror within the

stronghold which was the very firstfruits of the Conquest. The Roman

walls of Anderida were still there; but their whole circuit was no

longer desolate, as it had been when the Conqueror landed, and as we

see it now again. One part of the ancient city had again become a

dwelling-place of man. As Pevensey now stands, the south-eastern

corner of the Roman enclosure, now again as forsaken as the rest, is

fenced in by the moat, the walls, the towers, of a castle of the later

type, the type of the Edwards, but whose towers are built in evident

imitation of the solid Roman bastions. Then, or at some earlier time,

the Roman wall itself received a new line of parapet, and one at least

of its bastions was raised to form a tower in the restored line of

defence. When the house of Mortain passed away in the second

generation, the honour of Pevensey became the possession of the house

of Laigle, and from them, perhaps in popular speech, certainly in the

dialect of local antiquaries, Anderida became the Honour of the

Eagle.[203] Within the circuit of the later castle, close on the

ancient wall, rises, covered with shapeless ruins, a small mound which

doubtless marks the site of the elder keep of Count Robert. Within

that keep the two sons of Herleva, Bishop and Count, looked down on

the shore close at their feet where they had landed with their

mightier brother two-and-twenty years before. Within that stern

memorial of their victory, they had now to defend themselves against

the sons and brothers of men who had fallen by their hands, and whose

lands they had parted out among them for a prey.

[Sidenote: The siege of Pevensey.]

[Sidenote: Duke Robert at last sends help.]

[Sidenote: Robert stays behind.]

[Sidenote: The English hinder the Normans from landing.]

[Sidenote: Utter failure of the invasion.]

The siege of Pevensey proved a far harder work than the siege of

Tunbridge. The Roman wall with its new Norman defences was less easy

to storm than the ancient English mound. William the Red had to wait

longer before Pevensey than William the Great had had to wait before

Exeter. The fortress was strong; the spirit of its defenders was high;

for Odo was among them. The King beset the castle with a great host;

he brought the artillery of the time to bear upon its defences; but

for six weeks his rebellious uncles bore up against the attacks of

William and his Englishmen.[204] And, while the siege went on, another

of the chances of war seemed yet more thoroughly to reverse what had

happened on the same spot not a generation back. Again a Norman host

landed, or strove to land, within the haven of Pevensey. But they came

under other guidance than that which had led the men who came before

them on the like errand. When William crossed the sea, his own Mora

sailed foremost and swiftest in the whole fleet, and William himself

was the first man in his army to set foot on English ground. William

in short led his fleet; his son only sent his. Robert still tarried in

Normandy; he was coming, but not yet; his men were to make their way

into England how they could without him. They came, and they found the

South-Saxon coast better guarded than it had been when Harold had to

strive against two invaders at once. When Robert’s ships drew nigh,

they found the ships of King William watching the coast; they found

the soldiers of King William lining the shore.[205] On such a spot, in

such a cause, no Englishman’s heart or hand was likely to fail him.

The attempt at a new Norman landing at Pevensey was driven back. Those

who escaped the English sailors drew near to the shore, but only to

fall into the hands of the English land-force. It must not be

forgotten that, as the coast-line then stood, when the sea covered

what is now the low ground between the castle and the beach, the

struggle for the landing must have gone on close under the walls of

the ancient city and of the new-built castle. The English who beat

back the Normans of Duke Robert’s fleet as they strove to land must

have been themselves exposed to the arrows of the Normans who guarded

Count Robert’s donjon. But the work was done. Some of the invaders

lived to be taken prisoners; but the more part, a greater number than

any man could tell, were smitten down by the English axes or thrust

back to meet their doom in the waves of the Channel. Some who deemed

that they had still the means of escape tried to hoist the sails of

their ships and get them back to their own land. But the elements

fought against them. The winds which had so long refused to bring the

fleet of William from Normandy to England now refused no less to take

back the fleet of Robert from England to Normandy. And there were no

means now, as there had been by the Dive and at Saint Valery, for

waiting patiently by a friendly coast, or for winning the good will of

the South-Saxon saints by prayers or offerings.[206] Even Saint Martin

of the Place of Battle had no call to help the eldest son of his

founder against his founder’s namesake and chosen heir. The ships

could not be moved; the English were upon them; the Normans, a

laughing-stock to their enemies, rather than fall into their enemies’

hands, leaped from their benches into the less hostile waters. The

attempt of the Conqueror’s eldest son to do by deputy what his father

had done in person had utterly come to nought. The new invaders of

England had been overthrown by English hands on the spot where the

work of the former invaders had begun.

[Sidenote: Alleged death of William of Warren.]

[Sidenote: The castle surrenders.]

[Sidenote: Terms granted to Odo.]

[Sidenote: Rochester to be surrendered.]

[Sidenote: The garrison refuse to surrender; Odo taken prisoner by his

own friends.]

After the defeat of this attempt to bring help to the besieged at

Pevensey, nothing more was heard of Duke Robert’s coming in person. If

we may believe a single confused and doubtful narrative, the defenders

of the castle had at least the satisfaction of slaying one of the

chief men in the royal army. We are told that Earl William of Warren

was mortally wounded in the leg by an arrow from the walls of

Pevensey, and was carried to Lewes only to die there.[207] However

this may be, the failure of the Norman expedition carried with it the

failure of the hopes of the besieged. Food now began to fail them, and

Odo and Robert found that there was nothing left for them but to

surrender to their nephew on the best terms that they could get. Of

the terms which were granted to the Count of Mortain and lord of

Cornwall we hear nothing. The Bishop of Bayeux and Earl of Kent was a

more important person, and we have full details of everything that

concerned him. The terms granted to the chief stirrer up of the whole

rebellion were certainly favourable. He was called on to swear that he

would leave England, and would never come back, unless the King sent

for him, and that, before he went, he would cause the castle of

Rochester to be surrendered.[208] For the better carrying out of the

last of his engagements, the Bishop was sent on towards Rochester in

the keeping of a small body of the King’s troops, while the King

himself slowly followed.[209] No further treachery was feared; it was

taken for granted that those who held the castle for Odo would give it

up at once when Odo came in person to bid them do so. These hopes were

vain; the young nobles who were left in the castle, Count Eustace,

Robert of Bellême, and the rest, were not scrupulous as to the faith

of treaties, and they had no mind to give up their stronghold till

they were made to do so by force of arms. Odo was brought before the

walls of Rochester. The leaders of the party that brought him called

on the defenders of the castle to surrender; such was the bidding

alike of the King who was absent and of the Bishop who was there in

person. But Odo’s friends could see from the wall that the voices of

the King’s messengers told one story, while the looks of the Bishop

told another. They threw open the gates; they rushed forth on the

King’s men, who were in no case to resist them, and carried both them

and the Bishop prisoners into the castle.[210] Odo was doubtless a

willing captive; once within the walls of Rochester, he again became

the life and soul of the defence.

[Sidenote: William’s _Niðing_ Proclamation.]

[Sidenote: The second English muster.]

[Sidenote: The siege of Rochester.]

[Sidenote: Straits of the besieged.]

[Sidenote: Plague of flies.]

[Sidenote: They agree to surrender.]

It perhaps did not tend to the moral improvement of William Rufus to

find himself thus shamefully deceived by one so near of kin to

himself, so high in ecclesiastical rank. At the moment the treachery

of Odo stirred him up to greater efforts. Rochester should be won,

though it might need the whole strength of the kingdom to win it. But

the King saw that it was only by English hands that it could be won.

He gathered around him his English followers, and by their advice put

out a proclamation in ancient form bidding all men, French and

English, from port and from upland, to come with all speed to the

royal muster, if they would not be branded with the shameful name of

_Nithing_. That name, the name which had been fixed, as the lowest

badge of infamy, on the murderer Swegen,[211] was a name under which

no Englishman could live; and it seems to have been held that

strangers settled on English ground would have put on enough of

English feeling to be stirred in the like sort by the fear of having

such a mark set upon them. What the Frenchmen did we are not told; but

the _fyrd_ of England answered loyally to the call of a King who thus

knew how to appeal to the most deep-set feelings and traditions of

Englishmen.[212] Men came in crowds to King William’s muster, and, in

the course of May, a vast host beset the fortress of Rochester.

According to a practice of which we have often heard already, two

temporary forts, no doubt of wood, were raised, so as to hem in the

besieged and to cut off their communications from without.[213] The

site of one at least of these may be looked for on the high ground to

the south of the castle, said to be itself partly artificial, and

known as Boley Hill.[214] The besieged soon found that all resistance

was useless. They were absolutely alone. Pevensey and Tunbridge were

now in the King’s hands; since the overthrow of Duke Robert’s fleet,

they could look for no help from Normandy; they could look for none

from yet more distant Bristol or Durham. Till the siege began, they

had lived at the cost of the loyal inhabitants of Kent and London. For

not only the Archbishop, but most of the chief land-owners of Kent

were on the King’s side.[215] This is a point to be noticed amid the

general falling away of the Normans. For the land-owners of Kent, a

land where no Englishman was a tenant-in-chief, were a class

preeminently Norman. But we can well believe that the rule of Odo, who

spared neither French nor English who stood in his way,[216] may have

been little more to the liking of his own countrymen than it was to

that of the men of the land. But all chance of plunder was now cut

off; a crowd of men and horses were packed closely together within the

circuit of the fortress, with little heed to health or cleanliness.

Sickness was rife among them, and a plague of flies, a plague which is

likened to the ancient plague of Egypt, added to their distress.[217]

There was no hope within their own defences, and beyond them a host

lay spread which there was no chance of overcoming. At last the heart

of Odo himself failed him. He and his fiercest comrades, Eustace of

Boulogne, even Robert of Bellême, at last brought themselves to crave

for peace at the hands of the offended and victorious King.

[Sidenote: Lesson of the war: the King stronger than any one noble.]

[Sidenote: Odo and Roger of Montgomery.]

[Sidenote: The unity of England.]

It was a great and a hard lesson which Odo and his accomplices learned

at Pevensey and Rochester. It was the great lesson of English history,

the great result of the teaching of William the Great on the day of

Salisbury, that no one noble, however great his power, however strong

the force which he could gather round him, could strive with any hope

of success against the King of the whole land. In the royal army

itself Odo might see one who had risen as high as himself among the

conquerors of England, the father of the fiercest of the warriors who

stood beside him, following indeed the King’s bidding, but following

it against his will. Roger of Montgomery was in the host before

Rochester, an unwilling partner in a siege which was waged against his

own sons. Both he and other Normans in the King’s army are charged

with giving more of real help to the besieged than they gave to the

King whom they no longer dared to withstand openly.[218] But it was in

vain that even so great a lord as Earl Roger sought to strive or to

plot against England and her King. The policy of the Conqueror,

crowning the work of earlier kings, had made England a land in which

no Earl of Kent or of Shrewsbury could gather a host able to withstand

the King of the English at the head of the English people.[219] When

the days came that kings were to be brought low, it was not by the

might of this or that overgrown noble, but by the people of the land,

with the barons of the land acting only as the first rank of the

people. Those days were yet far away; but an earlier stage in the

chain of progress had been reached. The Norman nobles had taken one

step towards becoming the first rank of the English people, when they

learned that King and people together were stronger than they.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Rufus refuses terms to the besieged.]

[Sidenote: The King’s threats.]

[Sidenote: Pleadings for the besieged.]

[Sidenote: Answer of the King.]

[Sidenote: Pleadings for Odo.]

[Sidenote: Pleadings for Eustace and Robert of Bellême.]

The defenders of Rochester had brought themselves to ask for peace;

but they still thought that they could make terms with their

sovereign. Let the King secure to them the lands and honours which

they held in his kingdom, and they would give up the castle of

Rochester to his will; they would hold all that they had as of his

grant, and would serve him faithfully as their natural lord.[220] The

wrath of the Red King burst forth, as well it might. Odo at least was

asking at Rochester for more favourable terms than those to which he

had already sworn at Pevensey. William answered that he would grant no

terms; he had strength enough to take the castle, whether they chose

to surrender it or not. And the story runs that he added――not

altogether in the spirit of his father――that all the traitors within

the walls should be hanged on gibbets, or put to such other forms of

death as might please him.[221] But those of his followers who had

friends or kinsfolk within the castle came to the King to crave mercy

for them. A dialogue follows in our most detailed account, in which

the scriptural reference to the history of Saul and David may be set

down as the garnish of the monk of Saint Evroul, but which contains

arguments that are likely enough to have been used on the two sides of

the question. An appeal is made to William’s own greatness and

victory, to his position as the successor of his father. God, who

helps those who trust in him, gives to good fathers a worthy offspring

to come after them. The men in the castle, the proud youths and the

old men blinded by greediness, had learned that the power of kings had

not died out in the island realm. Those who had come from

Normandy――here we seem to hear an argument from English mouths――sweeping

down upon the land like kites, they who had deemed that the kingly

stock had died out in England, had learned that the younger William

was in no way weaker than the elder.[222] Mercy was the noblest

attribute of a conqueror; something too was due to the men who had

helped him to his victory, and who now pleaded for those who had

undergone enough of punishment for their error. Rufus is made to

answer that he is thankful both to God and to his faithful followers.

But he fears that he should be lacking in that justice which is a

king’s first duty, if he were to spare the men who had risen up

against him without cause, and who had sought the life of a king who,

as he truly said, had done them no harm.[223] The Red King is made to

employ the argument which we have so often come across on behalf of

that severe discharge of princely duty which made the names of his

father and his younger brother live in men’s grateful remembrance. He

fears lest their prayers should lead him away from the strait path of

justice. He who spares robbers and traitors and perjured persons takes

away the peace and safety of the innocent, and only sows loss and

slaughter for the good and for the unarmed people.[224] This course is

one which the Red King was very far from following in after years; but

it is quite possible that he may have made such professions at any

stage of his life, and he may have even made them honestly at this

stage. But on behalf of the chiefest of all culprits, the counsellors

of mercy had special arguments. Odo is the King’s uncle, the companion

of his father in the Conquest of England. He is moreover a bishop, a

priest of the Lord, a sharer in the privileges to which, in one side

of his twofold character, he had once appealed in vain. The King is

implored not to lay hands on one of Odo’s holy calling, not to shed

blood which was at once kindred and sacred. Let the Bishop of Bayeux

at least be spared, and allowed to go back to his proper place in his

Norman diocese.[225] Count Eustace too was the son of his father’s old

ally and follower――the invasion which Eustace’s father had once

wrought in that very shire seems to be conveniently forgotten.[226]

Robert of Bellême had been loved and promoted by his father; he held

no small part of Normandy; lord of many strong castles, he stood out

foremost among the nobles of the duchy.[227] It was no more than the

bidding of prudence to win over such men by favours, and to have their

friendship instead of their enmity.[228] As for the rest, they were

valiant knights, whose proffered services the King would do well not

to despise.[229] The King had shown how far he surpassed his enemies

in power, riches, and valour; let him now show how far he surpassed

them in mercy and greatness of soul.[230]

[Sidenote: The King yields.]

[Sidenote: He grants terms.]

[Sidenote: Odo asks for the honours of war.]

[Sidenote: Humiliation of Odo.]

[Sidenote: Wrath of the English against him.]

[Sidenote: He leaves England for ever.]

To this appeal Rufus yielded. It was not indeed an appeal to his

knightly faith, which was in no way pledged to the defenders of

Rochester. But it was an appeal to any gentler feelings that might be

in him, and still more so to that vein of self-esteem and

self-exaltation which was the leading feature in his character. If

Rufus had an opportunity of showing himself greater than other men, as

neither justice nor mercy stood in the way of his making the most of

it, so neither did any mere feeling of wrath or revenge. As his

advisers told him, he was so successful that he could afford to be

merciful, and merciful he accordingly was. To have hanged or blinded

his enemies would not have so distinctly exalted himself, as he must

have felt himself exalted, when those who had defied him, those who

had tried to make terms with him, were driven to accept such terms as

he chose to give them. The Red King then plighted his faith――and his

faith when once so plighted was never broken――that the lives and limbs

of the garrison should be safe, that they should come forth from the

castle with their arms and horses. But they must leave the realm; they

must give up all hope of keeping their lands and honours in England,

as long at least as King William lived.[231] To these terms they had

to yield; but Odo, even in his extremity, craved for one favour. He

had to bear utter discomfiture, the failure of his hopes, the loss of

his lands and honours; but he prayed to be at least spared the public

scorn of the victors. His proud soul was not ready to bear the looks,

the gestures, the triumphant shouts and songs, of the people whom he

had trodden to the earth, and who had now risen up to be his

conquerors. He asked, it would seem, to be allowed to march out with

what in modern phrase are called the honours of war. His particular

prayer was that the trumpets might not sound when he and his followers

came forth from the castle. This, we are told, was the usual ceremony

after the overthrow of an enemy and the taking of a fortress.[232] The

King was again wrathful at the request, and said that not for a

thousand marks of gold would he grant it.[233] Odo had therefore to

submit, and to drink the cup of his humiliation to the dregs. With sad

and downcast looks he and his companions came forth from the

stronghold which could shelter them no longer. The trumpets sounded

merrily to greet them.[234] But other sounds more fearful than the

voice of the trumpet sounded in the ears of Odo as he came forth. Men

saw passing before them, a second time hurled down from his high

estate――and this time not by the bidding of a Norman king but by the

arms of the English people――the man who stood forth in English eyes as

the imbodiment of all that was blackest and basest in the foreign

dominion. Odo might keep his eyes fixed on the ground, but the eyes of

the nation which he had wronged were full upon him. The English

followers of Rufus pressed close upon him, crying out with shouts

which all could hear, “Halters, bring halters; hang up the traitor

Bishop and his accomplices on the gibbet.” They turned to the King

whose throne they had made fast for him, and hailed him as a national

ruler. “Mighty King of the English, let not the stirrer up of all evil

go away unharmed. The perjured murderer, whose craft and cruelty have

taken away the lives of thousands of men, ought not to live any

longer.”[235] Cries like these, mingled with every form of cursing and

reviling, with every threat which could rise to the lips of an

oppressed people in their day of vengeance, sounded in the ears of Odo

and his comrades.[236] But the King’s word had been passed, and the

thirst for vengeance of the wrathful English had to be baulked. Odo

and those who had shared with him in the defence of Rochester went

away unhurt; but they had to leave England, and to lose all their

English lands and honours, at least for a season. But Odo left England

and all that he had in England for ever.[237] The career of the Earl

of Kent was over; of the later career of the Bishop of Bayeux we shall

hear again.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: End of the rebellion.]

[Sidenote: Order of events.]

[Sidenote: The Whitsun Assembly. June 4, 1088.]

[Sidenote: Confiscations and grants.]

[Sidenote: Amnesty of the chief rebels.]

The rebellion was now at an end in southern England. Revolt had been

crushed at Worcester, at Pevensey, and at Rochester, and we hear

nothing more of those movements of which Bishop Geoffrey had made

Bristol the centre, and which had met with such a reverse at the hands

of the gallant defenders of Ilchester. The chronology of the whole

time is very puzzling. We have no exact date for the surrender of

Rochester; we are told only that it happened in the beginning of

summer.[238] But, as the siege of Pevensey lasted six weeks,[239] it

is impossible to crowd all the events which had happened since Easter

into the time between Easter and Whitsuntide. Otherwise the

pentecostal Gemót would have been the most natural season for some

acts of authority which took place at some time during the year. The

King was now in a position to reward and to punish; and some

confiscations, some grants, were made by him soon after the rebellion

came to an end. “Many Frenchmen forlet their land and went over sea,

and the King gave their land to the men that were faithful to

him.”[240] Of these confiscations and grants we should be glad to have

some details. Did any dispossessed Englishmen win back their ancient

heritage? And, if so, did they keep their recovered heritage,

notwithstanding the amnesty which at a somewhat later time restored

many of the rebels? One thing is clear, that the Frenchmen who are now

spoken of were not the men of highest rank and greatest estates among

the rebellious Normans. For them there was an amnesty at once. Them,

we are told, the King spared, for the love of his father to whom they

had been faithful followers, and out of reverence for their age which

opened a speedy prospect of their deaths. He was rewarded, it is

added, by their repentant loyalty and thankfulness, which made them

eager to please him by gifts and service of all kinds.[241]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Versions of the story of the Bishop of Durham.]

[Sidenote: The King again summons the Bishop.]

[Sidenote: The Bishop’s complaints.]

[Sidenote: Doings of Counts Alan and Odo.]

[Sidenote: The Bishop comes with a safe-conduct.]

The speed with which some of the greatest among the rebel leaders were

restored to their old rank and their old places in the King’s favour

is shown by the way in which, within a very few months, we find them

acting on the King’s side against one who at the worst was their own

accomplice, and who himself professed to have had no part or lot in

their doings. We must now take up again the puzzling story of Bishop

William of Durham. We left him, according to his own version, hindered

from coming to the King by the violence of the Sheriff of Yorkshire,

and suffering a seven weeks’ harrying of his lands which carries us

into the month of May.[242] This is exactly the time when the national

Chronicler sets the Bishop himself before us as carrying on a general

harrying of the North country.[243] It is likely enough that both

stories are true; in a civil war above all it is easy, without the

assertion of any direct falsehood, to draw two exactly opposite

pictures by simply leaving out the doings of each side in turn. Anyhow

the King had summoned the Bishop to his presence, and the Bishop had

not come. The King now sends a more special and urgent summons,

demanding the Bishop’s presence in his court, that is, in all

likelihood, at the Whitsun Gemót, or at whatever assembly took its

place for that year.[244] The message was sent by a prelate of high

rank, that Abbot Guy who had just before been forced by Lanfranc upon

the unwilling monks of Saint Augustine’s.[245] The Bishop was to

accompany the Abbot to the King’s presence. But, instead of going with

Guy, Bishop William, fearing the King’s wrath and the snares of his

enemies, sent another letter, the bearer of which went under the

Abbot’s protection.[246] The letter curiously illustrates some of the

features of the case. We learn more details of the Sheriff’s doings.

He had divided certain of the Bishop’s lands between two very great

personages, Count Alan of the Breton and of the Yorkshire Richmond,

and Count Odo, husband of the King’s aunt, and seemingly already lord

of Holderness.[247] The Sheriff had not only refused the King’s peace

to the Bishop; he had formally defied him on the part of the

King.[248] Some of the Bishop’s men he had allowed to redeem

themselves; but others he had actually sold. Were they the Bishop’s

slaves, dealt with as forfeited chattels, or did the Sheriff take on

himself to degrade freemen into slavery?[249] The Bishop protests that

he is ready to come with a safe-conduct, and to prove before all the

barons of the realm that he is wholly innocent of any crime against

the King. He adds that he would willingly come at once with the Abbot.

He had full faith in the King and his barons; but he feared his

personal enemies and the unlearned multitude.[250] Who were these

last? Are we again driven to think of the old popular character of the

Assembly, and did the Bishop fear that the solemn proceedings of the

King’s court would be disturbed by a loyal crowd, ready to deal out

summary justice against any one who should be even suspected of

treason? The King sent the safe-conduct that was asked for, and the

Bishop came to the King’s court.[251]

[Sidenote: The Bishop’s ecclesiastical claims.]

[Sidenote: He goes back to Durham.]

The two Williams, King and Bishop, now met face to face. William of

Saint-Calais pleaded his rights as a bishop as zealously, and far more

fully, than they had been pleaded by the bishop who was also an earl.

The Bishop of Durham, as Bishop of Durham, held great temporal rights;

but William of Saint-Calais was not, like his predecessor Walcher,

personally earl of any earldom. Bishop William’s assertion of the new

ecclesiastical claims reminds us of two more famous assemblies, in the

earlier of which William of Saint-Calais will appear on the other

side. In forming our estimate of the whole story, we must never forget

that the man who surprised the Red King with claims greater than those

of Anselm is the same man who a few years later became the counsellor

of the Red King against Anselm. In this first Assembly the Bishop

refuses to plead otherwise than according to the privileges of his

order. The demand is refused. He craves for the counsel of his

Metropolitan Thomas of York and of the other bishops. This also is

refused. He offers to make his personal purgation on any charge of

treason or perjury. This is refused. The King insists that he shall be

tried before the Court after the manner of a layman. This the Bishop

refuses;[252] but the King keeps his personal faith, and the Bishop is

allowed to go back safely to Durham. We hear much of the ravages done

on the Bishop’s lands, both while he was away from Durham and after he

had gone back thither.[253] Of ravages done by the Bishop we hear

nothing in this version. In this version William of Saint-Calais,

blackest of traitors in the Peterborough Chronicle, is still the

meekest of confessors.

[Sidenote: June-September, 1088.]

[Sidenote: Agreement between the Bishop]

[Sidenote: and the Counts. September 8.]

We get no further details of the Bishop of Durham’s story till the

beginning of September. But in the meanwhile the Bishop wrote another

letter to the King, again asking leave to make his purgation. The only

answer, we are told, on the King’s part was to imprison the Bishop’s

messenger and to lay waste his lands more thoroughly than ever. But,

from the beginning of September, the story is told with great detail.

By that time southern England at least was at peace, and by that time

too men who had taken a leading part in the rebellion were acting as

loyal subjects to the King. On the day of the Nativity of our Lady an

agreement was come to between the Bishop and three of the barons of

the North. Two of these were the Counts Alan and Odo, who had received

grants of the Bishop’s lands. They, it seems clear, had had no share

in the rebellion; but with them was joined a leading rebel, Roger of

Poitou, son of the Earl of Shrewsbury, whom we last heard of as one of

Odo’s accomplices at Pevensey. These three, acting in the King’s name,

pledged their faith for the Bishop’s personal safety to and from the

King’s court. The three barons seem to make themselves in some sort

arbiters between the King and the Bishop. His personal safety is

guaranteed in any case. But the place to which he is to be safely

taken is to differ according to the result of the trial. The terms

seem to imply that, if the three barons deem justice to be on the side

of the Bishop, he is to be taken back safely to Durham, while, if they

deem justice to be on the side of the King, he is to be allowed freely

to cross the sea at any haven that he may choose, from Sandwich to

Exeter.[254] In case of the Bishop’s return to Durham, if he should

find that during his absence any new fortifications have been added to

the castle, those fortifications are to be destroyed.[255] If, on the

other hand, the Bishop crosses the sea, the castle is to be

surrendered to the King. No agreement contrary to this present one was

to be extorted from the Bishop on any pretext. The terms were agreed

to by the Bishop, and were sworn to, as far as the surrender of the

castle was concerned, by seven of the Bishop’s men, seemingly the same

seven of whom we have heard before and of whom we shall hear again.

All matters were to be settled in the King’s court one way or the

other by the coming feast of Saint Michael; but, as this term was

plainly too short, the time of meeting was put off by the consent of

both sides to an early day in November.

[Sidenote: The Meeting at Salisbury. November 2, 1088.]

[Sidenote: Urse of Abetot.]

[Sidenote: Conduct of the Bishop.]

[Sidenote: Lanfranc’s view of vestments.]

[Sidenote: Case of Thomas at Northampton. 1164.]

On the appointed day Bishop William of Durham appeared in the King’s

court at Salisbury. We have not now, as we had two years before, to

deal with a gathering of all the land-owners of England in the great

plain. The castle which had been reared within the ditches that fence

in the waterless hill became the scene of a meeting of the King and

the great men of the realm which may take its place alongside of later

meetings of the same kind in the castle by the wood at Rockingham and

in the castle by the busy streets of Northampton. We have――from the

Bishop’s side only, it must be remembered――a minute and lifelike

account of a two days’ debate in the Assembly, a debate in which not a

few men with whose names we have been long familiar in our story, in

which others whose names and possessions are written in the Great

Survey, meet us face to face as living men and utter characteristic

speeches in our ears. We are met at the threshold by a well-known

form, that of the terrible Sheriff of Worcestershire, Urse of Abetot.

Notwithstanding the curse of Ealdred, he flourished and enjoyed court

favour, and we now find him the first among the courtiers to meet

Bishop William, and to bid him enter the royal presence.[256] That

presence the Bishop entered four times in the course of the day,

having had three times to withdraw while the Court came to a judgement

on points of law touching his case. At every stage the Bishop raises

some point, renews some protest, interposes some delay or other. And

during the whole earlier part of the debate, it is Lanfranc who takes

the chief part in answering him; the King says little till a late

stage of the controversy. Before Bishop William comes in to the King’s

presence, he prays again, but prays in vain, to have the counsel of

his brother bishops. None of them, not even his own Metropolitan

Thomas, would give him the kiss of peace or even a word of greeting.

When he does come in, he first raises the question whether he ought

not to be judged, and the other bishops to judge him, in full

episcopal dress. To the practical mind of Lanfranc questions about

vestments did not seem of first-rate importance. “We can judge very

well,” he said, “clothed as we are; for garments do not hinder

truth.”[257] This point, it will be remembered, again came up at

Northampton, seventy-six years later. The entrance of Thomas into the

King’s hall clad in the full garb of the Primate of all England was

one of the most striking features of that memorable day.[258]

[Sidenote: Hostile dealings of the Bishop’s own men.]

[Sidenote: The Bishop called on to “do right.”]

[Sidenote: He denies the authority of the Court.]

[Sidenote: Growth of the new doctrines.]

[Sidenote: Position of Lanfranc and Bishop William.]

A long legal discussion followed, in which Bishop William and Lanfranc

were the chief speakers. Some points were merely verbal. Much turned

on the construction of the word _bishopric_. The Bishop of Durham

asked to be restored to his bishopric. Lanfranc answered that he had

not been disseized of it.[259] In the course of this dispute one or

two facts of interest come out. It appears from the Bishop’s complaint

that some of the chief men of the patrimony of Saint Cuthberht had

made their way to the meeting at Salisbury, and that not as their

bishop’s friends. They, his own liegemen, had abjured him; they held

the lands of the bishopric in fief of the King; they had made war upon

him by the King’s orders, and were now sitting as his judges.[260] But

the main point was that the Bishop should, before matters went any

further, do right to the King, that is, acknowledge the jurisdiction

of the Court.[261] This demand the Bishop tried to evade by every

means; but it was firmly pressed both by Lanfranc and by the lay

members of the Court. These last seem to act in close concert with the

Primate, and the ecclesiastical writer brings out in a lively way the

energy of their way of speaking.[262] In answer to them the Bishop

spake words which amounted to a casting aside of all the earlier

jurisprudence of England, but which were only a natural inference from

that act of the Conqueror which had severed the jurisdictions which

ancient English custom had joined together. He told the barons of the

realm and the other laymen who were present that with them he had

nothing to do, that he altogether refused their jurisdiction; he

demanded, that, if the King and the Bishops allowed them to be

present, they should at least not speak against him.[263] The doctrine

of ecclesiastical privilege had indeed grown, since, six and thirty

years before, the people of England, gathered beneath the walls of

London, had declared a traitorous archbishop to be deprived and

outlawed, and had by their own act set another in his place. Yet the

position of William of Saint-Calais was more consistent than the

position of Lanfranc. William of Saint-Calais wholly denied the right

of laymen to judge a bishop; Lanfranc, the assertor of that right, had

been placed in his see on the very ground that the deposition of

Robert and the election of Stigand were both invalid, as being merely

acts of the secular power. Still, however logical might be the

Bishop’s argument, his claims were practically new, either in English

or in Norman ears. If they had ever been heard of before, it had been

only for a moment from the lips of Odo. And we may mark again that,

though the words of William of Saint-Calais would have won him favour

with Hildebrand, they won him no favour with Lanfranc. Lanfranc

represented the traditions of the Conqueror, and in the days of the

Conqueror, all things, divine and human, had depended on the

Conqueror’s nod.[264]

[Sidenote: The King speaks.]

[Sidenote: Roger Bigod demands that the charge be read.]

[Sidenote: The charge formally brought.]

[Sidenote: Its probable truth.]

[Sidenote: Points not dwelled on.]

At this stage the King speaks for the first time, and, in this first

speech the words of William the Red are mild enough. He had hoped, he

said, that the Bishop would have first made answer to the charges

which had been brought against him, and he wondered that he had taken

any other course. But the charge had not yet been formally made. Amid

the Bishop’s protests about the rights of his order, this somewhat

important point was pressed by one of his fellow-rebels. This was

Roger the Bigod, he who from the castle of Norwich had done such harm

in the eastern lands, but who now appears as an adviser of the king

against whom he had been fighting a few months before. Let the charge,

he said, be brought in due form, and let the Bishop be tried according

to it.[265] After more protests from the Bishop, the charge was made

by Hugh of Beaumont.[266] It contained a full statement of the

Bishop’s treason and desertion, as already described,[267] and the

time is said to have been when the King’s enemies came against him,

and when his own men, Bishop Odo, Earl Roger, and many others, strove

to take away his crown and kingdom.[268] It is demanded that, on this

charge and on any other charges that the King may afterwards bring,

the Bishop shall abide by the sentence of the King’s court. We have

this statement only in the version of Bishop William himself or of a

local partisan. Yet there is no reason to doubt that it is a fair

representation of the formal charge which was brought in the King’s

court. That charge brings out quite enough of overt acts of treason to

justify even the strong words of the Peterborough Chronicler.[269]

With the secret counsels of the rebels during Lent it does not deal;

what share Bishop William had had in them might be hard to make out by

legal proof, and the charge is quite enough for the King’s purpose

without them. But it brings out this special aggravation of the

Bishop’s guilt, that, after the rebellion had broken out, after

military operations had begun, the Bishop was still at the King’s

side, counselling action while he was himself plotting desertion. The

flight of Bishop William, as we have already told it, really reads not

unlike the flight of Cornbury and Churchill just six centuries later;

and it would be pressing the judgement of charity a long way to plead

in his behalf the doctrine that in revolutions men live fast.[270] We

may notice also that nothing is said about the Bishop’s harryings in

Northern England. They might, according to the custom of the time, be

almost taken as implied in the fact of his rebellion; or they might be

among the other charges which the King had ready to bring forward if

he thought good.

[Sidenote: The Bishop’s answer.]

[Sidenote: Wrath of the lay members.]

[Sidenote: Speech of Bishop Geoffrey on behalf of William.]

[Sidenote: Answer of Lanfranc.]

[Sidenote: The Bishop goes out.]

[Sidenote: Defiance of Hugh of Beaumont.]

The formal charge was thus laid before the Court, and it was for the

Bishop to make his answer. It was the same as before. Hugh of Beaumont

might say what he chose;[271] only according to his own ideas of

canonical rule would he answer. By this time the wrath of the lay

members of the Assembly was waxing hot; they assailed the Bishop,

some, we are told, with arguments, some with revilings.[272] At this

stage Bishop William found a friend where we should hardly have looked

for one. The brigand Bishop of Coutances, already changed from a rebel

into a loyal subject, was there among the great men of the realm.

England knew him, not as a prelate of the Church, but as one of the

greatest of her land-owners; but now, like Odo, he speaks as a bishop.

He appeals to the Archbishops at least to give a hearing to Bishop

William’s objection. They, the bishops and abbots, ought no longer to

sit there; they ought to withdraw, taking with them some lay

assessors, to discuss the point raised by the Bishop of Durham,

whether he ought not to be restored to his bishopric before he is

called on to plead.[273] Again the great ecclesiastical statesman is

inclined to scorn, almost to mock, the scruples of lesser men.

Canonical subtleties might disturb the conscience of a bishop who had

a few months before headed a band of robbers; but the lawyer of Pavia,

the teacher of Avranches, the monk of Bec, the Abbot of Saint

Stephen’s, the Patriarch of all the nations beyond the sea, had

learned, in his long experience, that, as changes of vestments did not

greatly matter, so changes of place and procedure did not greatly

matter either. As Lanfranc had told Bishop William that they could

judge perfectly well in the clothes which they then had on, so now he

tells Bishop Geoffrey that they can judge perfectly well in the place

and company in which they were now sitting. There was no need to rise;

let the Bishop of Durham and his men go out, and the rest of the

Court, clergy and laity alike, would judge what was right to be

done.[274] The Bishop warned the Court to act according to the canons,

and to let no one judge who might not canonically judge a bishop.

Lanfranc calmly, but vaguely, assured him that justice would be

done.[275] Hugh of Beaumont told him more plainly, “If I may not

to-day judge you and your order, you and your order shall never

afterwards judge me.”[276] With one more protest, one more declaration

that he would disown any judgement which was not strictly

canonical,[277] Bishop William and his followers left the hall of

meeting.

[Sidenote: Debate in the Bishop’s absence.]

[Sidenote: Constitution of the Court.]

[Sidenote: The Bishop comes back.]

[Sidenote: Debate on the word _fief_.]

[Sidenote: The Bishop’s seven men.]

[Sidenote: He goes out the second time.]

Our only narrative of these debates, the narrative of Bishop William

himself or of some one writing under his inspiration, complains of the

long delay before the Bishop was allowed to come back, and gives a

description, one which reads like satire, of the assembly which stayed

to debate the preliminary point of law. There was the King, with the

bishops and earls, the sheriffs and the lesser reeves, with the King’s

huntsmen and other officials.[278] The great officers of state,

Justiciar, Chancellor, Treasurer, had not yet risen to their full

importance; still it is odd to find them, as they would seem to be,

thrust in, after the manner of an _et cetera_, after, it may be,

Osgeat the reeve and Croc the huntsman.[279] But anyhow, in this

purely official assembly, we may surely see the _Theningmannagemót_

gradually changing into the _Curia Regis_.[280] The Court, however

constituted, debated in the Bishop’s absence on the point of the law

which he had raised. On his return, his own Metropolitan, Thomas of

York, announced to him the decision of the Assembly. Till he

acknowledged the jurisdiction of the Court, the King was not bound to

restore anything that had been taken from him. We seem to hear the

voice of Flambard, when, in announcing this decision, Thomas makes use

of the word _fief_, which had not hitherto been heard in the

discussion.[281] Bishop William catches in vain at the novelty;

Archbishop Thomas declines all verbal discussion; whether it is called

bishopric or fief, nothing is to be restored till the jurisdiction of

the court is acknowledged.[282] Thus baffled, Bishop William has only

to fall back on his old protests, his old demand for the counsel of

his brother bishops. Lanfranc meets him as a lawyer; the bishops are

his judges, and therefore cannot be his counsel.[283] The King now

steps in; the Bishop may take counsel with his own men, but he shall

have no counsel from any man of his.[284] The Bishop answers that, in

the seven men whom he has with him――clearly the same seven of whom we

have twice heard already――he will find but little help against the

power and learning of the whole realm which he sees arrayed against

him.[285] But he gets no further help; he withdraws the second time

for consultation, but it is only with the seven men of his own

following.

[Sidenote: He comes back and appeals to Rome.]

The result of their secret debate suggests that Bishop William in

truth took counsel with no one but himself. Surely no seven men of

English or Norman birth could have been found to suggest the course

which William of Saint-Calais now took. For he came back to utter

words which must have sounded strange indeed either in English or in

Norman ears. “The judgement which has here been given I reject,

because it is made against the canons and against our law; nor was I

canonically summoned; but I stand here compelled by the force of the

King’s army, and despoiled of my bishopric, beyond the bounds of my

province, in the absence of all my comprovincial bishops. I am

compelled to plead my cause in a lay assembly; and my enemies, who

refuse me their counsel and speech and the kiss of peace, laying aside

the things which I have said, judge me of things which I have not

said; and they are at once accusers and judges; and I find it

forbidden in our law to admit such a judgement as I in my folly was

willing to admit.[286] The Archbishop of Canterbury and my own Primate

ought, out of regard for God and our order, to save me of their good

will from this encroachment. Because then, through the King’s enmity,

I see you all against me, I appeal to the Apostolic See of Rome, to

the Holy Church, and to the Blessed Peter and his Vicar, that he may

take order for a just sentence in my affair; for to his disposition

the ancient authority of the Apostles and their successors and of the

canons reserves the greater ecclesiastical causes and the judgement of

bishops.”[287]

[Sidenote: Character of the appeal.]

[Sidenote: Arguments of Lanfranc.]

[Sidenote: William’s comprovincials.]

[Sidenote: The Bishop goes out the third time.]

[Sidenote: He comes back, and sentence is pronounced.]

[Sidenote: He renews his appeal.]

Such an appeal as this was indeed going to the root of the matter. It

was laying down the rule against which Englishmen had yet to strive

for more than four hundred years. William of Saint-Calais not only

declared that there were causes with which no English tribunal was

competent to deal, but he laid down that among such causes were to be

reckoned all judgements where any bishop――if not every priest――was an

accused party. Bishop William could not even claim that, as one

charged with an ecclesiastical offence, he had a right to appeal to

the highest ecclesiastical judge. Even such a claim as this was a

novelty either in Normandy or in England; but William of Saint-Calais

was not charged with any ecclesiastical offence. Except so far as the

indictment involved the charge of perjury, that debateable ground of

the two jurisdictions, the offence laid to the Bishop’s charge was a

purely temporal one, that of treason against his lord the King. So

arraigned, he refuses the judgement of the King of the English and his

Witan, and appeals from them to the Bishop of Rome. He justifies his

appeal by referring to some law other than the law of England, some

special law of his own order, by which, he alleges, he is forbidden to

submit to any such judgements as that of the national assembly of the

realm of which he is a subject. We again instinctively ask, how would

William the Great have dealt with such an appeal, if any man had been

so hardy as to make it in his hearing? But we again see how the

ecclesiastical system which William the Great had brought in was one

which needed his own mighty hand to guide.[288] He was indeed, in all

causes and over all persons, ecclesiastical and temporal, within his

dominions supreme. But the moment he himself was gone, that great

supremacy seems to have fallen in pieces. Lanfranc himself, steadily

as he maintains the royal authority throughout the dispute, seems to

shrink from boldly grappling with the Bishop’s claim. Some lesser

fallacies we are not surprised to find passed over. The daring

statement that the sole right of the Bishop of Rome to judge other

bishops was established by the Apostles may perhaps have seemed less

strange even to Lanfranc than it does to us. But Lanfranc must have

smiled, and Thomas of York must have smiled yet more, at the Bishop of

Durham’s grotesque complaint that he was deprived of the help of his

comprovincial bishops.[289] It was a vain hope indeed, if he thought

that King Malcolm would allow him the comfort of any brotherly counsel

from Glasgow or Saint Andrews. But the real point is that Lanfranc

seems to avoid giving any direct answer to Bishop William’s claim to

appeal to a court beyond the sea. Instead of stoutly denying the right

of any English subject to appeal to any foreign power from the

judgement of the highest court in England, he falls back into Bishop

William’s own subtleties about “fief” and “bishopric;” and he appeals

to the case of Odo, where it was only the Earl and not the Bishop who

was dealt with.[290] The verbal question goes on, till the Bishop

declares that he has no skill to dispute against the wisdom of

Lanfranc; he has been driven to appeal to the apostolic see, and he

wishes to have the leave of the King and the Archbishop to go to the

see to which he has appealed.[291] A third time does he, at Lanfranc’s

bidding, leave the hall while this question is debated by the King and

his council. On his return the final sentence is pronounced by the

mouth of Hugh of Beaumont. As the Bishop has refused to answer the

charges brought against him by the King, as he invites the King to a

tribunal at Rome, the Bishop’s fief is declared forfeited by the

judgement of the King’s court and the barons. It really says a good

deal for the long-suffering of the prelates and barons, and of the Red

King himself, that Bishop William again ventured to make his appeal in

more offensive terms than before. He is ready, in any place where

justice reigns and not violence, to purge himself of all charges of

crime and perjury. He will prove in the Roman Church that the

judgement which has just been pronounced is false and unjust.[292]

Hugh of Beaumont is driven to a retort; “I and my companions are ready

to confirm our judgement in this court.” The Bishop again declares

that he will enter into no pleadings in that court. Let him speak

never so well, his words are perverted by the King’s partisans. They

have no respect for the apostolic authority, and, even after he has

made his appeal, they load him with an unjust judgement. He will go to

Rome to seek the help of God and of Saint Peter.[293]

[Sidenote: Speeches of the King.]

[Sidenote: The Bishop appeals to Counts Odo and Alan.]

[Sidenote: Cries of the lay members.]

[Sidenote: Intervention of Count Alan.]

[Sidenote: The Bishop appeals yet again.]

[Sidenote: The final sentence.]

Up to this time the King has taken only a secondary part in the lively

dispute which has been going on in his presence. We have listened

chiefly to the pithy sayings of Lanfranc and to the official

utterances of Hugh of Beaumont. But now Rufus himself steps in as a

chief speaker, and that certainly in a characteristic strain. His

patience had borne a good deal, but it was now beginning to give way.

The King’s short and pointed sentences, uttered, we must remember,

with a fierce look and a stammering tongue, are a marked contrast to

the long-turned periods and legal subtleties of the Bishop. He now

steps into the dispute from a very practical side; “My will is that

you give me up your castle, as you will not abide by the sentence of

my court.”[294] More distinctions, more protests, more appeals to

Rome, only stir up the Red King to the use of his familiar oath; “By

the face of Lucca, you shall never go out of my hands till I have your

castle.”[295] The Bishop was now fairly in the mouth of the lion; yet

he again goes through the whole story of his wrongs and his innocence,

with some particulars which we have not hitherto heard. When his

possessions were seized by the King’s officers, though a hundred of

his own knights looked on, no resistance had been offered to the

King’s will.[296] He had now nothing left but his episcopal city; if

the King wished to take that, he would offer no resistance, save by

the power of God. He would only warn him, on behalf of God and Saint

Peter and his Vicar the Pope, not to take it. He would give hostages

and sureties that, while he went to Rome, his own men should keep the

castle, and that, if the King wished, they should keep it for his

service.[297] The King again spoke; “Be sure, Bishop, that you shall

never go to Durham, nor shall your men hold Durham, nor shall you

escape my hands, unless you freely give up the castle to me.”[298] The

Bishop now for once says not a word about canonical rights; he

appeals, more shortly and more prudently, to the plighted faith of the

two Counts who had promised that he should go back to Durham. But

Lanfranc argues that the Bishop has forfeited his safe-conduct, and

that, if he refuses to give up the castle, the King may rightly arrest

him.[299] At this hint the lay members of the Assembly joined in with

one voice, the foremost among them being that Randolf Peverel of whose

possessions and supposed kindred we have had elsewhere to speak.[300]

“Take him,” was the cry, “take him; for that old gaoler speaks

well.”[301] But at this stage the Bishop finds friends in the Counts

whose faith had been pledged to his safe-conduct. Count Alan formally

states the terms of the agreement, and prays the King――Odo and Roger

joining with him in the prayer――that he may not be forced to belie his

faith, as otherwise the King should have no further service from

him.[302] But in Lanfranc’s view the second of the two cases which

were contemplated in the agreement had taken place. The King was not

bound to let the Bishop go back to Durham; all that he was now bound

to do was to give him ships and a safe-conduct out of the realm.[303]

The dispute goes on in the usual style. The Bishop continues his

appeal to Rome; he again invokes what he calls specially the Christian

law, pointing, it would seem, to a volume in his own hand;[304] while

Lanfranc asserts the authority of the King’s court.[305] The King then

steps in with one of his short speeches; “You may say what you will,

but you shall not escape my hands, unless you first give up the castle

to me.”[306] The Bishop then makes a shorter protest than usual, the

drift of which seems to be that he is ready to suffer any loss rather

than be personally arrested.[307] The sentence of the Court is now

finally passed. A day is fixed by which the Bishop’s men should leave

the city of Durham and the King’s men take possession of it

instead.[308]

[Sidenote: The Bishop asks for an allowance.]

[Sidenote: Answer of Lanfranc.]

[Sidenote: The King’s offers.]

[Sidenote: The King and Ralph Paganel.]

The judgement of the Assembly had thus formally gone against the

claims of the Bishop of Durham; but his resources were not at an end.

Defeated on all points of law, he makes an appeal to the King’s

generosity. Will his lord the King, he now prays, leave him something

from his bishopric on which he may at least be able to live? Lanfranc

again answers; “Shall you go to Rome, to the King’s hurt and to the

dishonour of all of us, and shall the King leave lands to you? Stay in

his land, and he will give back to you all your bishopric, except the

city, on the one condition that you do right to him in his court by

the judgement of his barons.”[309] Bishop William, almost parodying

the words of a much earlier appeal to Rome, says that he has appealed

to the Apostolic See, and to the Apostolic See he will go.[310]

Lanfranc retorts; “If you go to Rome without the King’s leave, we will

tell him what he ought to do with your bishopric.” Bishop William

answers in a long speech, renewing his protests of innocence and his

offers of purgation, and setting forth the services which he claimed

to have done for the King at Dover, Hastings, and London. The Bishop

many times makes his prayer, and the King as often refuses. Then

Lanfranc counsels him to throw himself wholly on the King’s mercy; if

he will do so, he himself will plead for him at the King’s feet. But

the Bishop still goes on about the authority of the canons and the

honour of the Church; he will earnestly pray for the King’s mercy, but

he will accept no uncanonical judgement. The King then makes a new

proposal; “Let the Bishop give me sureties that he will do nought to

my hurt on this side the sea, and that neither my brother nor any of

my brother’s men shall keep the ships which I shall provide to my

damage or against the will of their crews.”[311] It certainly was

demanding a good deal to expect Bishop William to go surety for either

the will or the power of Duke Robert to do or to hinder anything. The

Bishop pleads that the Counts pledged their faith that he should not

be obliged to enter into any agreement except the one which had been

made at Durham. And the Sheriff of Yorkshire, Ralph Paganel, the same

who had been the spoiler of the Bishop’s goods, bears witness that his

claim was a just one.[312] By this time the wrath of the Red King was

gradually kindling; he turns on the Sheriff with some sharpness; “Hold

your peace; for no surety will I endure to lose my ships; but if the

Bishop will give this surety which I ask, I will ask for no

other.”[313] The Bishop falls back on his old plea; he will enter into

no agreement save that into which he entered with the Counts. The King

again swears by the face of Lucca that the Bishop shall not cross the

sea that year, unless he gives the required surety for the ships.[314]

The Bishop then protests that, rather than be arrested, he will give

the surety and more than the surety which is demanded; but he calls

all men to witness that he does this unwillingly and through fear of

arrest.[315] He gives the surety, and another stage in the long debate

ends.

[Sidenote: Question of the safe-conduct.]

[Sidenote: Charges against the Bishop’s men.]

[Sidenote: Interposition of Lanfranc on behalf of the Bishop.]

[Sidenote: The Bishop to leave England.]

A new point, happily the last, was raised when the Bishop, having

given the required surety, asked for ships and a safe-conduct. The

King says that he shall have them as soon as the castle of Durham is

in the King’s power; till then, he shall have no safe-conduct, but

shall stay at Wilton.[316] He again meekly protests; he will endure

the wrong against which he has no means of striving.[317] Then a man

of Bishop Geoffrey of Coutances steps in with a new count. The men who

held the Bishop of Durham’s castle had――before the Bishop came to

the King’s court; therefore, it might be inferred, with his

knowledge――taken two hundred beasts belonging to the Bishop of

Coutances which were under the King’s safe-conduct. Bishop Geoffrey

had surely seen more than two hundred beasts brought into Bristol as

the spoil of loyal men in Somerset, Gloucestershire, and Wiltshire;

but he is careful to exact the redress of his own loss from his

brother bishop and rebel. The men of the Bishop of Durham had refused

to pay the price of the beasts; they refused even when Walter of

Eyncourt――we have met him in Lincolnshire[318]――bade them do so in the

King’s name; he William, the man of Bishop Geoffrey, demands that the

price be paid to his lord.[319] The King puts it to the barons whether

he can implead the Bishop on this charge also.[320] Lanfranc, for the

first time helping his brother prelate, rules that this cannot be

done. Bishop William cannot be impleaded any further, because he now

holds nothing of the King――the surrender of the castle of Durham is

thus held to be already made――and is entitled to the King’s

safe-conduct.[321] The Assembly now breaks up for the day; the Bishop

is to choose the haven from which he will sail, and to make known his

choice on the morrow.

[Sidenote: Conditions of the Bishop’s sailing.]

[Sidenote: November 21, 1088.]

[Sidenote: November 14.]

The next day the Court again comes together. The Bishop of Durham asks

Count Alan to find him a haven and ships at Southampton. The King

steps in; “Know well, Bishop, that you shall never cross the channel

till I have your castle”――adding, with a remembrance of the doings of

another prelate at Rochester――“for the Bishop of Bayeux made me smart

with that kind of thing.”[322] If the castle of Durham was in the

King’s hands by the fixed day, the fourteenth day of November, the

Bishop should have the ships and the safe-conduct without further

delay. The King then bids Count Alan and the Sheriff Gilbert[323] to

give the Bishop at Southampton such ships as might be needful for his

voyage seven days after the day fixed for the surrender of the castle.

Meanwhile, on the appointed day, the castle of Durham was received

into the King’s hands by Ivo Taillebois and Erneis of Burun――names

with which we have long been familiar.[324] They disseized the Bishop

of his church and castle and all his land; but they gave to the

Bishop’s men a writ under the King’s seal, promising the most perfect

safety to the Bishop and his men through all England and in their

voyage.[325] And, according to the most obvious meaning of the

narrative, Heppo, the King’s _balistarius_――a man of whom, like Ivo

Taillebois, we have heard in Lincolnshire――was put into their hands as

surety for the observance of the safe-conduct.

[Sidenote: Action of Ivo Taillebois.]

[Sidenote: November 21.]

[Sidenote: The Bishop’s voyage delayed.]

[Sidenote: November 26.]

[Sidenote: Charge against the monk Geoffrey.]

[Sidenote: New summons against the Bishop.]

[Sidenote: His argument with Osmund.]

[Sidenote: The Bishop again summoned by Walkelin.]

[Sidenote: Interposition of the Counts.]

[Sidenote: He at last crosses to Normandy.]

It might have seemed that the Bishop’s troubles were now ended, so far

as they could be ended by leaving the land which he professed to look

on as a land of persecution. But a crowd of hindrances were put in the

way of his voyage. Notwithstanding the safe-conduct given to the

Bishop’s men, a number of wrongs were done to them by Ivo Taillebois,

whose conduct may be thought to bear out his character as drawn in the

legendary history of Crowland. The great grievance was that in

defiance――so men thought at Durham――of Lanfranc’s judgement that

Bishop William was not bound to plead in the matter of the beasts

taken from the Bishop of Coutances, two of his knights were forced to

plead on that charge.[326] Meanwhile the day came which had been

appointed for the Bishop’s voyage. He had been waiting at Wilton,

under the care of a certain Robert of Conteville, who had been

assigned, at his own request, to keep him from all harm.[327] The

castle had been duly given up; all seemed ready for his crossing.

Bishop William asked the Sheriff Gilbert and his guardian Robert for

ships, to cross in the company of Robert of Mowbray.[328] Under orders

from the King,[329] they kept him for five days longer, when Robert of

Conteville took him to Southampton. The wind was favourable, and the

Bishop craved for leave to set sail at once. The King’s officers

forbade him to sail that day; the next day, when the wind had become

contrary, they, seemingly in mockery, gave him leave to sail. While he

waited for a favourable wind, a new charge was brought against him,

founded on the alleged doings of one of his monks, Geoffrey by name,

of whom we shall afterwards hear as being in his special confidence.

By the sentence of forfeiture pronounced by the Court, all the

Bishop’s goods had become the property of the Crown. It was therefore

deemed an invasion of the King’s rights when, after the Bishop had

gone to the King’s court, Geoffrey took a large number of beasts from

the Bishop’s demesne. He had also taken away part of the garrison of

the castle, who had killed a man of the King’s. On this charge Bishop

William was summoned to appear in the King’s court at the Christmas

Gemót to be held in London. One of the bearers of the summons was no

less famous a man than Bishop Osmund of Salisbury, a man of a local

reputation almost saintly.[330] Bishop William again appeals to the

old agreement; he protests his innocence of any share in the acts of

Geoffrey, though he adds that he might lawfully have done what he

would with his own up to the moment when he was formally

disseized.[331] These words might seem to imply that the act of

Geoffrey, though done after the Bishop had left Durham, was done

before the sentence was finally pronounced. But he cannot go to the

King’s court; he has nothing left; he has eaten his horses; that is

seemingly their price.[332] He is still repeatedly forbidden to cross,

even alone.[333] In answer to an earnest message that he might be

allowed to go to Rome, the King sent Walkelin Bishop of Winchester

with two companions, one of them Hugh of Port, a well-known Domesday

name, to summon him to send Geoffrey for trial to Durham and to appear

himself in London at the Christmas Gemót to answer for the deeds of

his men.[334] In defiance of all prayers and protests, the King’s

officers kept the Bishop in ward night and day; in his sadness he sent

a message to the Counts who had given him the safe-conduct, praying

them by the faith of their baptism to have him released from his

imprisonment and allowed to cross the sea.[335] They answered his

appeal. At their urgent prayer, the King at last let him cross. He

sailed to Normandy, where he was honourably received by Duke Robert,

and――so the Durham writer believed――entrusted with the care of his

whole duchy.[336] Perhaps it was owing to these new worldly cares

that, though we often hear of him again, we do not hear of him as a

suppliant at the court of Rome.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Importance of the story of William of Saint-Calais.]

[Sidenote: Illustrations of jurisprudence.]

[Sidenote: Legal trickery of the Bishop.]

[Sidenote: Reasons for proceeding against him.]

[Sidenote: The first appeal to Rome made by William of Saint-Calais.]

The tale of Bishop William of Durham is long, perhaps in some of its

stages it is wearisome; but it is too important a contribution to our

story to be left out or cut short. It sets before us the earliest of

those debates in the King’s court of which we shall come across other

memorable examples before the reign of Rufus is over. We see the forms

and the spirit of the jurisprudence of England in the days immediately

following the Norman Conquest, a jurisprudence which, both in its

forms and its spirit, has become strongly technical, but which still

has not yet become the exclusive possession of a professional class.

Bishops, earls, sheriffs, are still, as of old, learned in the law,

and are fully able to carry on a legal discussion in their own

persons. And we see that a legal discussion in those days could be

carried out with a good deal of freedom of speech on all sides. As to

the matter of the debate, all that we know of Bishop William, both

afterwards and at this time from other sources, can leave hardly any

doubt that he was simply availing himself of every legal subtlety, of

every pretended ecclesiastical privilege, in order to escape a real

trial in which he knew that he would have no safe ground on the merits

of the case. And, if it be asked why the Bishop of Durham should have

been picked out for legal prosecution, while his accomplices were

forgiven and were actually sitting as his judges, the answer is to be

found in the circumstances of the case. As we read the tale in all

other accounts, as we read of it in the formal charge brought by Hugh

of Beaumont, we see that there was a special treachery in Bishop

William’s rebellion which distinguished his case from that of all

other rebels. Why he should have joined the revolt at all, how he

could expect that any change could make him greater than he already

was, is certainly a difficulty; but the fact seems certain, and, if it

be true, it quite accounts for the special enmity with which he was

now pursued. The idea of the Bishop which the story conveys to us is

that of a subtle man, full of resources, well able to counterfeit

innocence, and to employ the highest ecclesiastical claims as a means

to escape punishment for a civil crime. It was from the mouth of

William of Saint-Calais that, for the first time as far as we can see,

men who were English by birth or settlement heard the doctrine that

the King of the English had a superior on earth, that the decrees of

the Witan of England could be rightly appealed from to a foreign

power. The later career of the Bishop makes him a strange champion of

any such teaching. The largest charity will not allow us to give him

credit for the pure single-mindedness of Anselm, or even for the

conscious self-devotion of Thomas. We feel throughout that he is

simply using every verbal technicality in order to avoid any

discussion of the real facts. A trial and conviction would hardly have

brought with them any harsher punishment than the forfeiture and

banishment which he actually underwent. But it made a fairer show in

men’s eyes to undergo forfeiture and banishment in the character of a

persecuted confessor than to undergo the same amount of loss in the

character of a convicted traitor.

[Sidenote: Behaviour of Lanfranc;]

[Sidenote: of the King.]

[Sidenote: The lesser actors.]

[Sidenote: Conduct of the laity,]

[Sidenote: not favourable to the Bishop.]

The part played by Lanfranc is eminently characteristic. Practically

he maintains the royal supremacy on every point; but he makes no

formal declaration which could commit him to anti-papal theories. As

for William Rufus, one is really inclined for a long while to admire

his patience through a discussion which must have been both wearisome

and provoking, rather than to feel any wonder that, towards the end of

the day, he begins to break out into somewhat stronger language. But

in the latter part of the story, like Henry the Second but unlike

Henry the First, he stoops from his own thoroughly good position. He

shows a purpose to take every advantage however mean, and to crush the

Bishop in any way, fair or foul. So at least it seems in our story;

but one would like to hear the other side, as one is unwilling to

fancy either Bishop Walkelin or Bishop Osmund directly lending himself

to sheer palpable wrong. But, after all, not the least attractive part

of the story is the glimpse which it gives us of the lesser actors,

some of them men of whom we know from other sources the mere names and

nothing more. We feel brought nearer to the real life of the eleventh

century every time that we are admitted to see a Domesday name

becoming something more than a name, to see Ralph Paganel, Hugh of

Port, and Heppo the _Balistarius_ playing their parts in an actual

story. The short sharp speeches put into the mouths of some of the

smaller actors, as well as those which are put into the mouth of the

King, both add to the liveliness of the story and increase our faith

in its trustworthiness. As in some other pictures of the kind, the

laity, both the great men and the general body, stand out on the whole

in favourable colours. It is perfectly plain, from Bishop William’s

own words,[337] that he had not, like Anselm and Thomas, the mass of

the people on his side. It is equally plain that the majority of the

assembly, though they certainly gave him a fair hearing, were neither

inclined to his cause nor convinced by his arguments. And the conduct

of the Counts Alan and Odo and their companion Roger of Poitou is

throughout that of strictly honourable men, anxious to carry out to

the letter every point to which they have pledged their faith. The Red

King, having merely pledged his faith as a king, and not in that more

fantastic character in which he always held his plighted word as

sacred, is less scrupulous on this head.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: No recorded movement in Scotland.]