The Rouen of those days, like the Le Mans, the York, and the Lincoln,
of those days, was still the Roman city, the old Rothomagus. As in
those and in countless other cases, large and populous suburbs had
spread themselves over the neighbouring country; at Rouen, as at York,
those suburbs had passed the river; but the city itself, the walled
space to be attacked and defended in wartime, was still of the same
extent as it had been in the days before Rolf and before Chlodwig. The
rectangular space marking the Roman camp stretched on its southern
side nearly to the Seine, whose stream, not yet fenced in by quays,
reached further inland on that side than it now does. Rouen is
essentially a river city, not a hill city. The metropolitan church
does indeed stand on sensibly higher ground than the buildings close
to the river; but to one fresh from Le Mans or Chartres the rise which
has to be mastered seems trifling indeed. For a hill city the obvious
site would have been on the natural akropolis supplied by the height
of Saint Katharine to the south-east. Yet Rouen is a city of the
mainland; the islands which divide the waters of the Seine must have
been tempting points for Rolf in his Wiking days; but even the largest
of them, the Isle of the Cross, was hardly large enough for a town to
grow upon it. Of the walls of Rothomagus not a fragment is left; yet
the impress of a Roman _chester_ is hard to wipe out; it is still easy
to trace its lines among the streets and buildings of the greatly
enlarged mediæval and modern city. Frightful as has been the havoc
which the metropolis of Normandy has undergone in our own time,
mercilessly as the besom of destruction has swept over its ancient
streets, churches, and houses, the dæmon of modern improvement has
spared enough to enable us, if not to tell the towers, yet in idea to
mark well the bulwarks, of the city where the Conqueror reigned. Near
the south-west corner of the parallelogram, not far from the
river-side, had stood the earlier castle of the Dukes. Its site in
after times became the friary of the Cordeliers, a small fragment of
whose church, as well as another desecrated church within the castle
precinct, does in some faint way preserve the memory of the
dwelling-place of Rolf.[695] But by the days of Robert, the dukes had
moved their dwelling to the south-eastern corner, also near the river,
where the site of the castle is marked by the vast _halles_, and by
the graceful Renaissance porch, where the chapter of our Lady of Rouen
yearly, on the feast of the Ascension, exercised the prerogative of
mercy by saving one prisoner condemned to die. Here the memory of the
castle, though only its memory, lives in the names of the _Haute_ and
the _Basse Vieille Tour_, one of which is soon to be famous in our
story. On the eastern side the wall was washed by a small tributary of
the Seine, the Rebecq, a stream whose course has withdrawn from sight
almost as thoroughly as the Fleet of London or the Frome of
Bristol.[696] On this side of the city lay a large swampy tract, whose
name of _Mala palus_ still lives in a _Rue Malpalu_[697], though a
more distant part of it has taken the more ambitious name of the Field
of Mars. Within the wall lay the metropolitan church of our Lady and
the palace of the Primate of Normandy. If this last reached to
anything like its present extent to the east, the Archbishops of
Rouen, like the Counts of Maine,[698] must have been reckoned among
the men who sat on the wall. Outside the city, but close under the
wall, near its north-eastern corner, stood the great abbey of Saint
Ouen, the arch-monastery,[699] still ruled by its Abbot Nicolas,
though his long reign was now drawing to an end.[700] At the opposite
north-western angle, but much further from the walls, where the higher
ground begins to rise above the city, stood the priory of Saint
Gervase, the scene of the Conqueror’s death.[701] Saint Gervase indeed
stood, not only far beyond the Roman walls, but beyond those
fortifications of later times which took Saint Ouen’s within the city.
For Rouen grew as Le Mans grew. On the higher ground like Saint
Gervase, but more to the east, rose the castle of Bouvreil, which
Philip of Paris, after the loss of Norman independence, reared to hold
down the conquered city. Between his grandfather’s castle and the
ancient wall Saint Lewis traced out the newer line of fortification
which is marked by the modern _boulevards_. His walls are gone, as
well as the walls of Rothomagus; but of the house of bondage of Philip
Augustus one tower still stands, while of the dwelling-place of her
own princes even mediæval Rouen had preserved nothing.
[Sidenote: The gates.]
[Sidenote: Suburbs beyond the Seine.]
The four sides of the Roman enclosure were of course pierced by the
four chief gates of the city, of three of which we hear in our story.
Of these the western, the gate of Caux, is in some sort represented by
the Renaissance gate of the Great Clock[702] with its adjoining tower.
The northern gate bore the name of Saint Apollonius. The river was
spanned by at least one bridge, which crossed it by way of the island
of the Cross, near the second ducal castle. Beyond the stream lay the
suburb of Hermentrudeville, now Saint Sever, where Anselm had waited
during the sickness of the Conqueror.[703] There too the Duchess
Matilda, soon to be Queen, had begun the monastery of the meadow, the
monastery of our Lady of Good News, the house of _Pratum_ or _Pré_,
whose church still stood unfinished, awaiting the perfecting hand of
her youngest son.[704]
[Sidenote: Fright of Duke Robert.]
[Sidenote: Approach of Gilbert and Reginald.]
[Sidenote: Efforts of Conan.]
[Sidenote: Division among the citizens.]
[Sidenote: Utter confusion.]
Meanwhile the elder and best-beloved son of Matilda was trembling
within the city on the right bank of the broad river. Luckily he had
the presence of his youngest brother, the English Ætheling, the Count
of the Côtentin, to strengthen him. Personal courage Duke Robert never
lacked at any time; but something more than personal courage was now
needed. Robert was perhaps not frightened, but he was puzzled; at such
a moment he seemed to the calm judgement of Henry to be simply in the
way; it was for wiser heads to take counsel without him. But
deliverance was at hand. Both sides of the Seine sent their helpers.
Gilbert of Laigle crossed the bridge by the island close under the
ducal tower, and turned to the left to the attack of the southern
gate. Reginald of Warren at the head of three hundred knights drew
near to the gate of Caux.[705] Against this twofold attack Conan
strove hard to keep up the hearts of his partisans. He made speeches
exhorting to a valiant defence. Many obeyed; but the city was already
divided; while one party hastened to the southern gate to withstand
the assault of Gilbert, another party sped to open the western gate
and to let in the forces of Reginald. Soldiers of the King of the
English, the advanced guard doubtless of a greater host to come, were
already in the city, stirring up the party of Conan to swifter and
fiercer action.[706] Soldiers and citizens were huddled together in
wild confusion; shouts passed to and fro for King and Duke; men at
either gate smote down neighbours and kinsmen to the sound of either
war-cry.[707] The strength of the city was turned against itself. The
hopes of the commonwealth of Rouen, either as a free city or as a
favoured ally of the island King, were quenched in the blood of its
citizens. Le Mans and Exeter had fallen; but they had fallen more
worthily than this.
[Sidenote: Henry sends Duke Robert away.]
[Sidenote: No attacks from the east.]
Meanwhile Henry and those who were with him in the castle deemed that
the time had come for the defenders of the ducal stronghold to join
their friends within and without the city. But there was one
inhabitant of the castle whose presence was deemed an encumbrance at
such a moment. Men were shouting for the Duke of the Normans; but the
wiser heads of his friends deemed that the Duke of the Normans was
just then best out of the way. Robert came down from the tower, eager
to join in the fray and to give help to the citizens of his own
party.[708] But all was wild tumult; it needed a cooler head than
Robert’s to distinguish friend from foe. He might easily rush on
destruction in some ignoble form, and bring dishonour on the Norman
name itself.[709] He was persuaded by his friends to forego his
warlike purposes, and to suffer himself to be led out of harm’s way.
While every other man in the metropolis of Normandy was giving and
taking blows, the lord of Normandy, in mere personal prowess one of
the foremost soldiers in his duchy, was smuggled out of his capital as
one who could not be trusted to let his blows fall in the right place.
With a few comrades he passed through the eastern gate into the suburb
of the Evil Swamp, just below the castle walls. It is to be noticed
that no fighting on this side of the city is mentioned. The King’s
troops were specially looked for to approach from Gournay, and the
east gate was the natural path by which an army from Gournay would
seek to enter Rouen. One would have expected that one at least of the
relieving parties would have hastened to make sure of this most
important point. Yet one division takes its post by the southern gate,
another by the western, none by the eastern. Were operations on that
side made needless, either by the neighbourhood of the castle, by any
difficulties of the marshy ground, or by the disposition of the
inhabitants of the suburb? Certain it is that Duke Robert’s nearest
neighbours outside his capital were loyal to him. The men of the Evil
Swamp received the Duke gladly as their special lord.[710] He allowed
himself to be put into a boat, and ferried across to the suburb on the
left bank. There he was received by one of his special counsellors,
William of Arques, a monk of Molesme, and was kept safely in his
mother’s monastery till all danger was over.[711]
[Sidenote: Gilbert enters Rouen.]
[Sidenote: Slaughter of the citizens.]
[Sidenote: Conan taken prisoner.]
[Sidenote: Fate of Conan.]
[Sidenote: Henry and Conan in the tower.]
[Sidenote: Death of Conan.]
It was clearly not wholly for the sake of such a prince as this that
so many Norman leaders, Henry of Coutances among them, had made up
their minds that the republican movement at Rouen was to be put down.
The moment for putting it down had come. Gilbert of Laigle had by this
time, by the strength of his own forces and by the help of the
citizens of his party, entered Rouen through the southern gate. His
forces now joined the company of Henry; they thus became far more than
a match for the citizens of Conan’s party, even strengthened as they
were by those of the King’s men who were in the city. A great
slaughter of the citizens followed; the soldiers of Rufus contrived to
flee out of the city, and to find shelter in the neighbouring
woods;[712] the city was full of death, flight, and weeping; innocent
and guilty fell together; Conan and others of the ringleaders were
taken prisoners. Conan himself was led into the castle, and there
Henry took him for his own share of the spoil, not indeed for ransom,
but to be dealt with in a strange and dreadful fashion. It is one of
the contrasts of human nature that Henry, the great and wise ruler,
the king who made peace for man and deer, the good man of whom there
was mickle awe and in whose day none durst hurt other, should have
been more than once guilty in his own person of acts of calm and
deliberate cruelty which have no parallel in the acts of his father,
nor in those of either of his brothers. So now Conan was doomed to a
fate which was made the sterner by the bitter personal mockery which
he had to endure from Henry’s own mouth. The Ætheling led his victim
up through the several stages of the loftiest tower of the castle,
till a wide view was opened to his eyes through the uppermost
windows.[713] Henry bade Conan look out on the fair prospect which lay
before him. He bade him think how goodly a land it was which he had
striven to bring under his dominion.[714] These words well express the
light in which Conan’s schemes would look in princely eyes; the
question was not whether Robert or William should reign in Rouen; it
was whether Conan should reign there as demagogue or tyrant in the
teeth of all princely rights. Henry went on to point out the beauties
of the landscape in detail; the eyes of the scholar-prince could
perhaps better enjoy them than the eyes of Rufus or of Robert of
Bellême. Beyond the river lay the pleasant park, the woody land rich
in beasts of chase. There was the Seine washing the walls of the city,
the river rich in fish, bearing on its waters the ships which enriched
Rouen with the wares of many lands.[715] On the other side he bade him
look on the city itself thronged with people, its noble churches, its
goodly houses. The modern reader stops for a moment to think that, of
the buildings which then met the eye of Conan, churches, castles,
halls of wealthy burghers like himself, clustering within and without
the ancient walls, all doubtless goodly works according to the sterner
standard of that day, hardly a stone is left to meet his own eye as he
looks down from hill or tower on the great buildings of modern Rouen.
It was another Saint Romanus, another Saint Ouen, of far different
outline and style from those on which we now gaze, which Henry called
on Conan to admire at that awful moment. He bade him mark the
splendour of the city; he bade him think of its dignity as the spot
which had been from of old the head of Normandy.[716] The trembling
wretch felt the mockery; all that was left to him was to groan and cry
for mercy. He confessed his guilt; he simply craved for grace in the
name of their common Maker. He would give to his lord all the gold and
silver of his hoard and the hoards of his kinsfolk; he would wipe out
the stain of his past disloyalty by faithful service for the rest of
his days.[717] The Conqueror would have granted such a prayer in sheer
greatness of soul; the Red King might well have deemed it beneath him
to harm so lowly a suppliant. But the stern purpose of Henry was
fixed, and his wrath, when it was once kindled, was as fierce as that
of his father or his brother. “By the soul of my mother”――that seems
to have been the most sacred of oaths with Matilda’s defrauded heir,
as he looked out towards the church of her building――“there shall be
no ransom for the traitor, but rather a hastening of the death which
he deserves.”[718] Conan no longer pleaded for life; he thought only
of the welfare of his soul. “For the love of God, at least grant me a
confessor.”[719] Had the Lion of Justice reached that height of malice
which seeks to kill the soul as well as the body? At Conan’s last
prayer his wrath reached its height;[720] Conan should have no time
for shrift any more than for ransom. If the clergy of Saint Romanus
already enjoyed their privilege of mercy, they were to have no chance
of exercising it on behalf of this arch-criminal. With all the
strength of both his hands, Henry thrust Conan, like Eadric,[721]
through the window of the tower. He fell from the giddy height, and
died, so it was said, before he reached the ground. His body was tied
to the tail of a pack-horse and dragged through the streets of Rouen
to strike terror into his followers. The spot from which he was hurled
took the name of the Leap of Conan.[722] The tower, as I have said,
has perished; the site of the Leap of Conan must be sought for in
imagination, at some point, perhaps the south-eastern corner, of the
vast _halles_ of ancient Rouen.
[Sidenote: Policy of Henry.]
[Sidenote: Robert brought back.]
[Sidenote: Treatment of the citizens.]
[Sidenote: Imprisonment and ransom of William son of Ansgar.]
The rule of Robert was now restored in Rouen, so far as Robert could
be said to rule at any time in Rouen or elsewhere. It is remarkable
that after the death of Conan we lose sight of Henry; that is, as far
as Rouen is concerned, for we shall before long hear of him again in
quite different relations towards his two brothers. He may well have
thought that one fearful example was needed, but that one fearful
example was enough. He would secure the punishment of the ringleader,
even by doing the hangman’s duty with his own hands; but mere havoc
and massacre had no charms for him at any time. His policy might well
have forestalled the later English rule, “Smite the leaders and spare
the commons.” If Robert or anybody else was to reign in Rouen, nothing
would be gained by killing, driving out, or recklessly spoiling, the
people over whom he was to reign. But there were men at his side to
whom the utmost licence of warfare was the most cherished of
enjoyments. The Duke, never personally cruel,[723] was in a merciful
mood. When all danger was over, he was brought across the river from
his monastery to the castle. He saw how much the city had already
suffered; his heart was touched, and he was not minded to inflict any
further punishment. But he had to yield to the sterner counsels of
those about him, and to allow a heavy vengeance to be meted out.[724]
He seems however to have prevailed so far as to hinder the shedding of
blood. At least we hear nothing of any general slaughter. The fierce
men who had brought him back seem to have contented themselves with
plunder and leading into captivity. The citizens of Rouen were dealt
with by their countrymen as men deal with barbarian robbers. They were
spoiled of all their goods and led away into bondage. Robert of
Bellême and William of Breteuil, if they spared life, spared it only
to deal out on their captives all the horrors of the prison-house.[725]
The richest man in Rouen after the dead Conan, William the son of
Ansgar, became the spoil of William of Breteuil. After a long and
painful imprisonment, he regained his liberty on paying a mighty
ransom of three thousand pounds.[726]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Count William marches against Conches. November, 1090.]
Before his captive was set free, the lord of Breteuil himself learned
what it was to endure imprisonment, this time doubtless of a milder
kind than that which he inflicted on William the son of Ansgar or that
which himself endured at the hands of Ascelin.[727] The Count of
Evreux and his nephew of Breteuil must have marched almost at once
from their successful enterprise at Rouen to a less successful
enterprise at Conches. For it was still November when Count William or
his Countess resolved on a great attack on the stronghold of their
rival.[728] Evreux was doubtless the starting-point for an undertaking
which followed naturally on the work which had been done at Rouen. The
Count of Evreux might keep on the garb of Norman patriotism which he
had worn in the assault on the rebellious capital, and his Countess
might add to the other crimes with which she charged Ralph and Isabel
a share in the crime of Conan, that of traitorous dealing with the
invading enemy. The forces of Evreux and Breteuil were therefore
arrayed to march together against the stronghold of the common kinsman
and enemy at Conches.
[Sidenote: Position of Evreux and Conches.]
[Sidenote: Position of Mediolanum or Evreux.]
[Sidenote: History of Evreux.]
[Sidenote: The Roman walls.]
[Sidenote: Small traces of the eleventh century at Evreux.]
[Sidenote: The _Câtelier_.]
No contrast could well be greater than the contrast between the spot
from which Count William set forth and the spot which he led his
troops to attack. Near as Conches and Evreux are, they are more
thoroughly cut off from one another than many spots which are far more
distant on the map. The forest of Evreux parts the hills of Conches
from the capital of Count William’s county. The small stream of the
Iton flows by the homes of both the rival heroines. But at Conches it
flows below the hill crowned by castle, church, and abbey; at Evreux
its swift stream had ages before been taught to act as a fosse to the
four walls of a Roman _chester_. Low down in the valley, like our own
Bath, with the hills standing round about his city, the Count of
Evreux lived among the memorials of elder days. The walls of
Mediolanum, which can still be traced through a large part of their
circuit, fenced in to the south the minster of Our Lady and the palace
of the Bishop, then still tenanted by the eloquent Gilbert.[729] His
home, like that of his metropolitan at Rouen,[730] might seem to stand
upon the Roman wall itself. At the north-west corner, the wall fenced
in the castle from which Count William had driven out the Conqueror’s
garrison, and where he, either then or at some later time, overthrew
the Conqueror’s donjon.[731] The wall of Mediolanum, like the wall of
the Athenian akropolis, had fragments of ornamental work, shattered
columns, capitals, cornices, built in among its materials. It would
thus seem to belong to a late stage of Roman rule, when the Frank was
dreaded as a dangerous neighbour, perhaps when he had already once
laid Mediolanum waste. To the north, much as at Le Mans and at Rouen,
the city in later times enlarged its borders, as, in later times
still, it has enlarged them far to the south. The “Little City”――a
name still borne by a street within the Roman circuit――is a poor
representative of the Old Rome on the Cenomannian height;[732] but
both alike bear witness to the small size of the original Roman
encampments, and to the gradual process by which they were enlarged
into the cities of modern times. But in the days of William and
Heloise the circuit of Roman Mediolanum was still the circuit of
Norman Evreux. And, as in so many other places, the oldest monuments
have outlived many that were newer. Neither church, castle, nor
episcopal palace, keeps any fragments of the days of the warlike
Countess; it is only in the minster of Saint Taurinus without the
walls that some small witnesses of those times are to be found. Even
the Romanesque portions of the church of Our Lady must be later than
Count William’s day, and the greater part of the building of the
twelfth century has given way to some of the most graceful conceptions
of the architects of the fourteenth. The home of the Bishop has taken
the shape of a stately dwelling in the latest style of mediæval art;
the home of the Count has vanished like the donjon which Count William
overthrew. But the old defences within which bishops and counts had
fixed themselves in successive ages still live on, to no small extent
in their actual masonry, and in the greater part of their circuit in
their still easily marked lines. And, high upon the hills, the eye
rests on the stronghold of yet earlier days, bearing the local name of
the _Câtelier_, the earth-works which rise above Evreux as the
earth-works of Sinodun rise above the northern Dorchester. Here we may
perhaps see the point where the Gaul still held out on the hill, when
the Roman had already entrenched himself by the river-side. At Evreux
the works of the earliest times, the works of the latest times, the
works of several intermediate times, are there in their fulness. But
there is nothing whatever left in the city directly to remind us of
the times with which we are now dealing. A man might pass through
Evreux, he might make a diligent search into the monuments of Evreux,
and, unless he had learned the fact from other sources, he might fail
to find out that Evreux had ever had counts or temporal lords of any
kind.
[Illustration:
EVREUX
_For the Delegates of the Clarendon Press._ E. Weller.]
[Sidenote: Position of Conches.]
[Sidenote: Foundation of the monastery.]
[Sidenote: The castle.]
[Sidenote: The abbey.]
It is otherwise with the fortress of the warlike lady of the hills,
against which the warlike lady of the river-city now bade the forces
of her husband’s county to march. The home of Isabel has no more of
her actual work or date to show than the home of Heloise; but the
impress of the state of things which she represents is stamped for
ever on the stronghold of the house of Toesny. At Evreux the Count and
his followers lived in the midst of works which, even in their day,
were ancient; at Conches, on the other hand, all was in that day new.
Conches had already its minster, its castle, most likely its growing
town; but all were the works of its present lord or of his father. The
hill of Conches is another of those peninsular hills which, as the
chosen sites of castles, play so large a part in our story. But the
castle of Conches does not itself crown a promontory, like the castle
of Ballon. The cause doubtless was that at Conches the abode of peace
came first, and the abode of warfare came only second. Either Ralph
himself, the first of his house who bears the surname of Conches as
well as that of Toesny, or else his fierce father in some milder
moment, had planted on the hill a colony of monks, the house of Saint
Peter of Conches or Castellion.[733] The monastery arose on that point
of the high ground which is most nearly peninsular, that stretching
towards the north. To the south of the abbey presently grew up the
town with its church, a town which, in after times at least, was
girded by a wall, and which was sheltered or threatened by the castle
of its lords at the end furthest from the monastery. To the east, the
height on which town and castle stand side by side rises sheer from a
low and swampy plain, girt in by hills on every side, lying like the
arena of a natural amphitheatre. On the hill-side art has helped
nature by escarpments; the mound of the castle, girt by its deep and
winding ditch, rises as it rose in the days of Ralph and Isabel; but
the round donjon on the mound and the other remaining buildings of the
fortress cannot claim an earlier date than the thirteenth century. The
donjon and the apse of the parish church, a gem of the latest days of
French art, now stand nobly side by side; in Isabel’s day they had
other and ruder forerunners. But of the abbey, which must have
balanced the castle itself in the general view, small traces only now
remain; it has become quite secondary in the general aspect of the
place, which gathers wholly round the parish church and the donjon.
The western side of the hill, towards the forest which takes its name
from Conches, shows nearly the same features as the eastern side on a
smaller scale. It looks down on another plain girt in by hills; but on
this side the slope of the hill of Conches itself is gentler, and the
town is here defended by a wall. Altogether it was a formidable
undertaking when the lord of the ancient city in the vale carried his
arms against the fortress, the work of his brother, which had arisen
within his own memory on the height overlooking his own river.
[Sidenote: Siege of Conches.]
[Sidenote: Near kindred of the combatants.]
[Sidenote: Death of Richard of Montfort.]
[Sidenote: William of Breteuil taken prisoner.]
[Sidenote: Settlement of the county of Evreux on young Roger of
Conches.]
Count William thus began his winter siege of Conches; but, as usual,
we get no intelligible account of the siege as a military operation.
We are told nothing of the Count’s line of march, or by what means he
sought to bring the castle to submission. But, as usual too, we have
no lack of personal anecdotes, anecdotes some of which remind us how
near were the family ties between the fierce nobles who tore one
another in pieces. We have already mentioned one nephew of the Count
of Evreux who came with him to the attack of Conches. But William of
Breteuil was nephew alike of both the contending brothers. His mother
Adeliza, daughter of Roger of Toesny, wife of Earl William of Hereford
before he went to seek a loftier bride in Flanders,[734] was the whole
sister of Ralph of Conches and the half-sister of Count William of
Evreux.[735] Another nephew and follower of Count William, Richard of
Montfort, son of his whole sister, was moreover a brother of the
Penthesileia of Conches.[736] The fate of these two kinsmen was
different. Richard, in warring against his sister’s castle, with some
chance of meeting his sister personally in the field, did not respect
the sanctity of the neighbouring abbey of her husband’s foundation. He
heeded not the tears of the monks who prayed him to spare the holy
place. A chance shot of which he presently died was looked on as the
reward of his sacrilege. Both sides mourned for one so nearly allied
to both leaders.[737] William of Breteuil, the ally of his uncle of
Evreux, became the captive of his uncle of Conches. That wary captain,
when the host of Evreux came a-plundering, was at the head of a large
force of his own followers and of the King of England’s soldiers.[738]
But he bade his men keep back till the foe was laden with booty; they
were then to set upon them in their retreat. His orders were
successfully carried out. Many of the party became the prisoners of
the lord of Conches, among them the lord of Breteuil, the gaoler of
William the son of Ansgar.[739] Of this incident came a peace which
ended the three years’ warfare of the half-brothers.[740] The captive
William of Breteuil procured his freedom by a ransom of three thousand
pounds paid to his uncle of Conches, which was presently made good to
him by the ransom of his own victim from Rouen. Moreover, as he had no
lawful issue,[741] he settled his estates on his young cousin Roger,
the younger son of Ralph and Isabel. The same youthful heir was also
chosen by his childless uncle of Evreux to succeed him in his
county.[742] Perhaps Duke Robert confirmed all these arrangements as a
matter of course; perhaps the consent of such an over-lord was not
deemed worth the asking.
[Sidenote: Character of Roger.]
[Sidenote: The three dreams.]
[Sidenote: Baldwin of Boulogne.]
[Sidenote: Roger’s dream.]
The young Roger of Toesny thus seemed to have a brilliant destiny
opened to him, but he was not doomed to be lord either of Evreux or of
Breteuil. He was, it is implied, too good for this world, at all
events for such a world as that of Normandy in the reign of Robert.
Pious, gentle, kind to men of all classes, despising the pomp of
apparel which was the fashion of his day,[743] the young Roger
attracts us as one of a class of whom there may have been more among
the chivalry of Normandy than we are apt to think at first sight. An
order could not be wholly corrupt which numbered among its members
such men as Herlwin of Bec, as Gulbert of Hugleville,[744] and the
younger son of Ralph of Conches. A tale is told of him, a tale
touching in itself and one which gives us our only glimpse of the
inner and milder life of the castle of Conches under the rule of its
Amazonian mistress. A number of knights sat idle in the hall, sporting
and amusing themselves with talk in the presence of the lady
Isabel.[745] At last they told their dreams. One whose name is not
given, said that he had seen the form of the Saviour on the cross,
writhing in agony and looking on him with a terrible countenance. All
who heard the dream said that some fearful judgement was hanging over
the head of the dreamer. Then spoke Baldwin the son of Count Eustace
of Boulogne, one of the mightier sons of an ignoble father.[746] He
too had seen his Lord hanging on the cross; but the divine form was
bright and glorious; the divine face smiled kindly on the dreamer; the
divine hand blessed him and traced the sign of the cross over his
head.[747] All said that rich gifts of divine favour were in store for
him. Then the young Roger crept near to his mother, and told her that
he too knew one not far off who had beheld his vision also. Isabel
asked of her son of whom he spoke and what the seer had beheld. The
youth blushed and hesitated, but, pressed by his mother and his
comrades, he told how there was one who had lately seen his vision of
the Lord, how the Saviour had placed his hand on his head, and had
bidden him, as his beloved, to come quickly that he might receive the
joys of life. And he added that he knew that he who was thus called of
his Lord would not long abide in this world.
[Sidenote: Fulfilment of the dreams.]
[Sidenote: Death of young Roger.]
Such talk as this in the hall of Conches, in the presence of its
warlike lady, whether we deem it the record of real dreams or a mere
pious imagining after the fact, seems like a fresh oasis in the dreary
wilderness of unnatural war. Each vision was of course fulfilled. The
nameless knight, wounded ere long in one of the combats of the time,
died without the sacraments. Baldwin of Boulogne, afterwards
son-in-law of Ralph and Isabel,[748] was indeed called to bear the
cross, but in a way which men perhaps had not thought of six years
before Pope Urban preached at Clermont. Count of Edessa, King of
Jerusalem, the name of Baldwin lives in the annals of crusading
Europe; to Englishmen it perhaps comes home most nearly as the name of
a comrade of our own Robert son of Godwine.[749] But a brighter crown
than that of Baldwin’s kingdom was, long before Baldwin reigned, the
reward of the young Roger. A few months after the date of the tale, he
died peacefully in his bed, full of faith and hope, and, amid the
grief of many, his body was laid in the minster of Saint Peter of his
father’s rearing.[750]
[Sidenote: Later treaty between the two brothers.]
[Sidenote: 1100.]
[Sidenote: Banishment and death of Count William. April 18, 1108.]
There was thus peace between Conches and Evreux, a peace which does
not seem to have been again broken. Ten years later, in a time of
renewed licence, we find the two brothers joining in a private war
against Count Robert of Meulan.[751] Eight years later again, when
Count William and his Countess were busy building a monastery at
Noyon, they fell under the displeasure of King Henry, and died in
banishment in the land of Anjou.[752] Ralph of Toesny was succeeded by
his son the younger Ralph, and Isabel, after a long widowhood,
withdrew as a penitent to atone for the errors of her youth, one would
think of her later days also, in a life of religion.[753]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Orderic’s picture of Normandy.]
[Sidenote: His English feelings.]
It is after recording the war of Conches and the sack of Rouen that
the monk of Saint Evroul takes up his parable to set forth the general
wretchedness of Normandy in the blackest colours with which the
pictures of Hebrew prophets and Latin poets could furnish him. And it
is Orderic the Englishman[754] that speaks. In his Norman cell he
never forgot that he first drew breath by the banks of the Severn. In
his eyes the woes of Normandy were the righteous punishment for the
wrongs of England. The proud people who had gloried in their conquest,
who had slain or driven out the native sons of the land, who had taken
to themselves their possessions and commands, were now themselves
bowed down with sorrows. The wealth which they had stolen from others
served now not to their delight but to their torment.[755] Normandy,
like Babylon, had now to drink of the same cup of tribulation, of
which she had given others to drink even to drunkenness. A Fury
without a curb raged through the land, and smote down its inhabitants.
The clergy, the monks, the unarmed people, everywhere wept and
groaned. None were glad save thieves and robbers, and they were not
long to be glad.[756] And so he follows out the same strain through a
crowd of prophetic images, the locust, the mildew, and every other
instrument of divine wrath. We admit the aptness of his parallel when
he tells us that in those days there was no king nor duke in the
Norman Jerusalem; we are less able to follow the analogy when he adds
that the rebellious folk sacrificed at Dan and Bethel to the golden
calves of Jeroboam.[757] At last, when his stock of metaphors is worn
out, he goes back to his story to tell the same tale of crime and
sorrow in other parts of the Norman duchy.[758]
§ 3. _Personal Coming of William Rufus._
1091.
[Sidenote: Christmas Gemót at Westminster. 1090.]
[Sidenote: The King crosses to Normandy. February, 1091.]
[Sidenote: Duke Robert helps Robert of Bellême.]
[Sidenote: Hugh of Grantmesnil and Richard of Courcy.]
In a general view of the state of affairs, William Rufus had lost much
more by the check of his plans at Rouen than he could gain by any
successes of his Norman allies at Conches. The attempt of the Count of
Evreux on the castle of his new vassal had been baffled; but his own
far greater scheme, the scheme by which he had hoped to win the
capital of Normandy, had been baffled also. It may have been this
failure which led the King to see that his own presence was needed
beyond the sea. The Christmas Gemót of the year was held, not, as
usual, at Gloucester, but at Westminster. At Candlemas the King
crossed to Normandy with a great fleet.[759] The two things are
mentioned together, as if to imply that a further sanction of the
assembled Witan was given to this new stage of the war. War indeed
between William and Robert there was none. It does not seem that a
single blow was struck to withstand the invader. But blows were given
and taken in Normandy throughout the winter with as much zeal as ever.
And this time Duke Robert himself was helping to give and take them.
Stranger than all, he was giving and taking them in the character of
an ally of Robert of Bellême against men who seem to have done
nothing but defend themselves against the attacks of the last-named
common enemy of mankind. Old Hugh of Grantmesnil, once the
Conqueror’s lieutenant at Winchester and afterwards his Sheriff of
Leicestershire,[760] was connected by family ties with Richard of
Courcy,[761] and the spots from which they took their names, in the
diocese of Seez, between the Dive and the Oudon, lay at no great
distance from one another. They thus lay between Earl Roger’s own
Montgomery[762] and a series of new fortresses on the Orne and the
neighbouring streams, by which Earl Roger’s son hoped to extend his
power over the whole land of Hiesmes.[763] Hugh and Richard
strengthened themselves against the tyrant――such is the name which
Robert bears――gathering their allies and putting their castles in a
state of defence. Their united forces were too much for the lord of
Bellême. He sought help from his sovereign, and the Duke, who was not
allowed to strike a blow for his own Rouen, appeared as the besieger
of Courcy, no less than of Brionne. He who had fought to turn the
tyrant out of Ballon and Saint Cenery now fought to put Courcy into
the tyrant’s power.
[Sidenote: Siege of Courcy. January, 1091.]
[Sidenote: News of William’s coming. February.]
[Sidenote: The siege raised.]
[Sidenote: Men flock to William from all parts.]
[Sidenote: Treaty of Caen. 1091.]
The siege of Courcy began in January.[764] At the end of the month or
the beginning of the next, a piece of news came which caused the Duke
and the other besiegers to cease from their work. Robert himself could
see that there was something else to be done besides making war on
Hugh of Grantmesnil on behalf of Robert of Bellême, when the King of
the English was in his own person on Norman ground. The host before
Courcy broke up; some doubtless went to their own homes;[765] but we
may suspect that some found their way to Eu. For there it was that
King William had fixed his quarters; there the great men of Normandy
were gathering around him. They did not come empty-handed. They
welcomed the King with royal gifts; but it was to receive far greater
gifts in return. Thither too men were flocking to him, not only from
Normandy, but from France, Flanders, Britanny, and all the
neighbouring lands. And all who came went away saying that the King of
the English was a far richer and more bountiful lord than any of their
own princes.[766] In such a state of things it was useless for Robert
to think of meeting his brother in arms. His only hope was to save
some part of his dominions by negotiation before the whole Norman land
had passed into the hands of the island king. A treaty of peace was
concluded, by which Robert kept his capital and the greater part of
his duchy, but by which William was established as a powerful and
dangerous continental neighbour, hemming in what was left of Normandy
on every side.
[Sidenote: Cession of Norman territory to William.]
[Sidenote: Their geographical aspect.]
[Sidenote: Cession of Fécamp and Cherbourg.]
The treaty was agreed to, seemingly under the mediation of the King of
the French, in a meeting of the rival brothers at Caen.[767] The
territorial cession made by Robert mainly took the form of recognizing
the commendations which so many Norman nobles had made to the Red
King. They had sought him to lord, and their lord he was to be. The
fiefs held by the lords of Eu, Aumale, Gournay, and Conches, and all
others who had submitted to William, passed away from Robert. They
were to be held of the King of the English, under what title, if any,
does not appear. To hold a fief of William Rufus meant something quite
different from holding a fief of Robert. The over-lordship of Robert
meant nothing at all; it did not hinder his vassal from making war at
pleasure either on his lord or on any fellow-vassal. But the
over-lordship of William Rufus, like that of his father, meant real
sovereignty; the lords who submitted to him had given themselves a
master. If any of them had a mind to live in peace, their chance
certainly became greater; in any case the dread of William’s power,
combined with the attractions of the rich hoard which was so freely
opened, might account for the sacrifice of a wild independence. The
territory thus ceded to the east, the lands of Eu, Aumale, and
Gournay, involved a complete surrender of the eastern frontier of the
duchy. The addition of the lands of Conches formed an outpost to the
south. Rouen was thus hemmed in on two sides. But this was not enough,
in the ideas of the Red King, to secure a scientific frontier. The
lord of the island realm must hold some points to strengthen his
approach to the mainland, something better than the single port of Eu
in one corner of the duchy. Robert had therefore to surrender two
points of coast which had not, as far as we have heard, been occupied
by William or by his Norman allies. Rouen was to be further hemmed in
to the north-west, by the cession of Fécamp, abbey and palace. The
occupation of this point had the further advantage for William that it
put a check on the districts which had been kept for Robert by Helias
of Saint-Saen. These were now threatened by Fécamp on one side and by
Eu and Aumale on the other. And William’s demands on the Duke of the
Normans contained one clause which could be carried out only at the
cost of the Count of the Côtentin. Henry’s fortress of Cherbourg, not
so long before strengthened by him,[768] was also to pass to William.
So early was the art known by which a more powerful prince, with no
ground to show except his own will, claims the right to shut out a
weaker prince or people from the seaboard which nature has designed
for them.
[Sidenote: William demands Saint Michael’s Mount.]
[Sidenote: Money paid to Robert.]
[Sidenote: The lost dominions of the Conqueror to be restored to
Robert.]
[Sidenote: Projected recovery of Maine.]
Besides Cherbourg, the Red King demanded the island fortress of Saint
Michael’s Mount, the abbey in peril of the sea. Otherwise he seems to
have claimed nothing in the west of Normandy. Robert might reign, if
he could, over the lands which his father had brought into submission
on the day of Val-ès-Dunes. Nor were the great cessions which Robert
made to be wholly without recompence. It might be taken for granted
that the Duke whose territories were thus cut off was to have some
compensation in another shape out of the wealth of England. So it was;
vast gifts were given by the lord of the hoard at Winchester to the
pauper prince at Rouen.[769] But he was not to be left without
territorial compensation also. William not only undertook to bring
under Robert’s obedience all those who were in arms against him
throughout Normandy; he further undertook to win back for him all the
dominions which their father had ever held, except those lands which,
by the terms of the treaty, were to fall to William himself. This
involved a very considerable enlargement of Robert’s dominions,
besides turning his nominal rule into a reality in the lands where he
was already sovereign in name. It was aimed at lands both within and
without the bounds of the Norman duchy. Maine, city and county, was
again in revolt against its Norman lords.[770] By this clause of the
treaty William bound himself to recover Maine for Robert. This
obligation he certainly never even attempted to fulfil. He did not
meddle with Maine till the Norman lord and the English King were again
one. Then the recovery of Maine, or at least of its capital, became
one of the chief objects of his policy.
[Sidenote: Henry to be despoiled of the Côtentin.]
[Sidenote: Character of the agreement.]
[Sidenote: Henry attacked at once.]
But this clause had also a more remarkable application. Its terms were
to be brought to bear on one nearer by blood and neighbourhood to both
the contending princes than either Cenomannian counts or Cenomannian
citizens. The terms of the treaty amounted to a partition of the
dominions of the Count of the Côtentin between his two brothers.
Cherbourg and Saint Michael’s Mount were, as we have seen, formally
assigned to William, and the remainder of Henry’s principality
certainly came under the head of lands which had been held by William
the Great and which the treaty did not assign to William the Red. As
such they were to be won back for Robert by the help of William. That
is to say, William and Robert agreed to divide between themselves the
territory which Henry had fairly bought with money from Robert. No
agreement could be more unprincipled. As between prince and prince, no
title could be better than Henry’s title to his county; while, if the
welfare of the people of Coutances and Avranches was to be thought of,
the proposed change meant their transfer from a prince who knew the
art of ruling to a prince whose nominal rule was everywhere simple
anarchy. Neither Robert nor William was likely to be troubled with
moral scruples; neither was likely to think much of the terms of a
bargain and sale; but one might have expected that Robert would have
felt some thankfulness to his youngest brother for his ready help in
putting down the rebellious movement at Rouen.[771] William might
indeed on that same account look on Henry as an enemy; but such enmity
could hardly be decently professed in a treaty of alliance between
Robert and William. We may perhaps believe that the chief feeling
which the affair of Rouen had awakened in Robert’s mind was rather
mortification than gratitude. A brother who had acted so vigorously
when he himself was not allowed to act at all was dangerous as a
neighbour or as a vassal. The memory of his services was humiliating;
it was not well to have a brother so near at hand, and in command of
so powerful a force, a brother who, if he had at one moment hastened
to his elder brother’s defence, might at some other moment come with
equal speed on an opposite errand. But whatever were their motives,
King and Duke agreed to rob their youngest brother of his dominions.
And the importance which was attached to this part of the treaty is
shown by the speed and energy with which it was carried out. While the
recovery of Maine was delayed or forgotten, the recovery of the
Côtentin was the first act of the contracting princes after the
conclusion of the treaty.
[Sidenote: Probable objects of William.]
[Sidenote: Settlement of the English and Norman succession.]
[Sidenote: William and Robert to succeed one another.]
[Sidenote: Constitutional aspect of the agreement.]
[Sidenote: Growth of the hereditary principle,]
[Sidenote: and of the doctrine of legitimacy.]
[Sidenote: The two Æthelings]
[Sidenote: Henry;]
[Sidenote: Eadgar.]
[Sidenote: Eadgar banished from Normandy.]
[Sidenote: William’s policy towards]
[Sidenote: Henry and Eadgar.]
[Sidenote: Eadgar goes to Scotland.]
But, when we look to some other terms of the treaty, it is possible
that, in the mind of William at least, the spoliation of Henry had a
deeper object. One purpose of the treaty was to settle the succession
both to the kingdom of England and to the duchy of Normandy. Neither
the imperial crown nor the ducal coronet had at this moment any direct
and undoubted heir, according to any doctrine of succession. Both
William and Robert were at this time unmarried; Robert had more than
one illegitimate child; no children of William Rufus are recorded at
any time. The treaty provided that, if either King or Duke died
without lawful issue during the lifetime of his brother, the survivor
should succeed to his dominions. I have spoken elsewhere of the
constitutional aspect of this agreement.[772] It was an attempt to
barter away beforehand the right of the Witan of England to bestow the
crown of a deceased king on whatever successor they thought good. And,
like all such attempts, before and after, till the great act of
settlement which put an end to the nineteen years’ anarchy,[773] it
came to nothing. But that such an agreement should have been made
shows what fresh strength had been given by the Norman Conquest to the
whole class of ideas of which the doctrine of hereditary succession to
kingdoms forms a part.[774] But, putting this view of the matter
aside, the objects of the provision, as a family compact, were
obvious. It was William’s manifest interest to shut out Robert’s sons
from any share in the inheritance of their father. This was easily
done. The stricter doctrine of legitimacy of birth was fast
growing.[775] It was but unwillingly that Normandy had, sixty years
earlier, acknowledged the bastard of an earlier Robert; it was most
unlikely that Normandy would submit to a bastard of the present
Robert, while there yet lived lawful sons of him who had made the name
of Bastard glorious. Robert, on the other hand, might not be unwilling
to give up so faint a chance on the part of his own children, in order
to be himself declared presumptive heir to the crown of England. But
there were others to be shut out, one of whom at least was far more
dangerous than the natural sons of Robert. There were then in Normandy
two men who bore the English title of Ætheling, one of the old race,
one of the new; one whom Englishmen had once chosen as the last of the
old race, another to whom Englishmen looked as the first of the new
race who had any claim to the privileges of kingly birth. We must
always remember that, in English eyes, Henry, the son of a crowned
King of the English, born of his crowned Lady on English ground, had a
claim which was not shared by his brothers, foreign born sons of a
mere Norman Duke and Duchess.[776] The kingly and native birth of
Henry might put his claims at least on a level with those of Eadgar,
who, male heir of Ecgberht and Cerdic as he was, was born of uncrowned
parents in a foreign land.[777] Indeed it might seem that by this time
all thoughts of a restoration of the West-Saxon house had passed out
of the range of practical politics, and that the claims of Eadgar were
no longer entitled to a thought. The Red King however seems to have
deemed otherwise. He was clearly determined to secure himself against
the remotest chances of danger. Henry was to be despoiled; Eadgar was
to be banished. Eadgar had come back from Apulia;[778] he was now
living in Normandy on terms of the closest friendship with the Duke,
who had enriched him with grants of land, and, as we have seen,
admitted him to his inmost counsels.[779] We know not whether Eadgar
had given the Red King any personal offence, or whether William was
simply jealous of him as a possible rival for the crown. At any rate,
whether by a formal clause of the treaty or not, he called on Robert
to confiscate Eadgar’s Norman estates and to make him leave his
dominions.[780] Neither towards Henry nor towards Eadgar would the
policy of William Rufus seem to have been wise; but sound policy, in
any high sense, was not one of the attributes of William Rufus.
Whatever may be said of Henry’s relations towards Normandy, he was
more likely to plot against his brother of England if he became a
landless wanderer than if he remained Count of Coutances and
Avranches. As for Eadgar, it might possibly have been a gain if he
could have been sent back to Apulia or provided for in his native
Hungary. As it was, he straightway betook himself to a land where he
was likely to be far more dangerous than he could ever be in Normandy.
As in the days of William the Great,[781] he went at once to the court
of his brother-in-law of Scotland.[782] It may be that William
presently saw that he had taken a false step in the treatment of both
the Æthelings. At a later time we shall see both Henry and Eadgar
enjoying his full favour and confidence.
[Sidenote: The followers of each side to be restored.]
[Sidenote: The rebels of 1088 to be restored.]
The man before whose eyes the crown of England had twice been dangled
in mockery, and the man who was hereafter to grasp that crown with a
grasp like that of the Conqueror himself, were thus both doomed to be
for the moment despoiled of lands and honours. To men of less exalted
degree the treaty was more favourable. King and Duke alike, so far to
the credit of both of them, stipulated for the safety and restoration
of their several partisans in the dominions of the other. All
supporters of William in any of those parts of Normandy which were not
to be ceded to him were to suffer no harm at the hands of Robert. And,
what was much more important, all those who had lost their lands in
England three years before on account of their share in the rebellion
on behalf of Robert were to have their lands back again. An exception,
formal or practical, must have been made in the case of Bishop Odo. He
certainly was not restored to his earldom of Kent.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: The treaty sworn to.]
[Sidenote: It stands but a little while.]
[Sidenote: William and Robert march against Henry. Lent, 1091.]
[Sidenote: Henry’s position.]
[Sidenote: Earl Hugh of Chester and others betray their castles to
William.]
[Sidenote: Henry takes up his quarters at Saint Michael’s Mount.]
[Sidenote: The buildings on the Mount.]
[Sidenote: Abbot Roger. 1085.]
[Sidenote: The monks welcome Henry.]
The treaty was sworn to by twelve chief men on each side.[783] The
English Chronicler remarks, with perfect truth, that it stood but a
little while.[784] But one part at least was carried out at once and
with great vigour. Within less than a month after William had landed
in Normandy to dispossess Robert, he and Robert marched together to
dispossess Henry. They spent their Lent in besieging him in his last
stronghold. When the Count of Coutances heard of the coalition against
him, he made ready for a vigorous resistance. He put his two cities of
Coutances and Avranches and his other fortresses into a state of
defence, and gathered a force, Norman and Breton, to garrison
them.[785] Britanny indeed was the only quarter from which he received
any help in his struggle.[786] Those who seemed to be his firmest
friends turned against him. Even Earl Hugh of Chester, the foremost
man in the land from which his father had taken his name,[787] had no
mind to jeopard his great English palatinate for the sake of keeping
his paternal Avranches in the obedience of the Ætheling. Henry’s other
supporters, Richard of Redvers, it is to be supposed, among them, were
of the same mind. They saw no hope that Henry could withstand the
might, above all the wealth, of Rufus; they accordingly surrendered
their fortresses into the King’s hands.[788] One stronghold only was
now left to Henry, one of the two which had been specially marked out
to be taken from him, the monastic fortress of Saint Michael. The
sacred mount was then famous and venerable through all Normandy, and
far beyond the bounds of Normandy. Of that vast and wondrous pile of
buildings, halls, cloister, church, buildings which elsewhere stand
side by side, but which here are heaped one upon another, little could
then have been standing. The minster itself, which crowns all, had
begun to be rebuilt seventy years before by the Abbot Hildebert,[789]
and it may be that some parts of his work have lived through the
natural accidents of the next age[790] and the destruction and
disfigurement of later times. But the series of pillared halls,
knightly and monastic, which give its special character to the abbey
of the Mount, are all of far later date than the war of the three
brothers. Yet the house of the warrior archangel was already at once
knightly and monastic. The reigning abbot Roger was, in strict
ecclesiastical eyes, a prelate of doubtful title. He had come in――as
countless other bishops and abbots of Normandy and England had come
in――less by free election of the monks than by the will of the great
Duke and King.[791] What personal share Roger took in the struggle is
not recorded; but some at least of his monks, like the monks of Ely in
the days of Hereward,[792] welcomed the small body of followers who
still clave to Henry, and at whose head he now took up his last
position of defence in the island sanctuary.[793]
[Sidenote: Siege of the Mount.]
[Sidenote: Lent, 1091.]
[Sidenote: Its position.]
[Sidenote: The inner bay.]
[Sidenote: Later sieges. 1417-1424.]
[Sidenote: No mention of ships.]
[Sidenote: Positions of the besiegers.]
[Sidenote: Character of the siege.]
[Sidenote: Combats]
Here Henry was besieged by his two brothers, Duke and King. Yet we
hear of nothing which can in strictness be called a siege. The Mount
stands in the mouth of a bay within a bay. At high water it is
strictly an island; at low water it is surrounded by a vast wilderness
of sand――those treacherous sands from which thirty years before Harold
had rescued the soldiers of the elder William[794], and which stretch
back as far as the rocks of Cancale on the Breton shore. In this sense
the bay of Saint Michael may be counted to stretch from Cancale to the
opposite point on the Norman coast, where the land begins to bend
inwards to form the narrower bay. This last may be counted to stretch
from the mouth of the border stream of Coesnon below Pontorson to
Genetz lying on the coast nearly due west from Avranches. The Mount
itself and its satellite the smaller rock of Tombelaine lie nearly in
a straight line between these two points. Alternately inaccessible by
land and by water, accessible by land at any time only by certain
known routes at different points, the Mount would seem to be incapable
of direct attack by any weapons known in the eleventh century. On the
other hand, it would be easy to cut it off from all communication with
the outer world by the occupation of the needful points on the shore
and by the help of a blockading fleet. And in the great siege three
hundred and thirty years later――when Normandy had again a kingly duke
of the blood of Rolf and Henry, but when the Mount clave to the King
of Paris or of Bourges――we hear both of the blockading fleet of
England and of the series of posts with which the shore was lined.
Without a fleet the Mount could hardly be said to be besieged; but, on
the other hand, its insular position would be of no use to its
defenders, unless they had either ships at command or friends beyond
sea. In the present case we hear nothing of ships on either side, nor
of any help coming to the besieged. Nor do we hear of any systematic
occupation of the whole coast. We hear only that the besiegers
occupied two points which commanded the two sides of the inner bay, On
the north the Duke took up his quarters at Genetz; to the south the
besiegers occupied Arderon, not far from the mouth of the Coesnon,
while King William of England established himself in the central
position of Avranches.[795] The siege thus became an affair of endless
small attacks and skirmishes. We hear of the plundering expeditions
which Henry was able to make into the lands of Avranches and even of
Coutances, lands which had once been his own, but which had now become
hostile ground.[796] We hear too how, before each of the extreme
points occupied by the besiegers, before Genetz and before Arderon,
the knights on both sides met every day in various feats of arms,
feats, it would seem, savouring rather of the bravado of the tourney
than of any rational military purpose.[797]
[Illustration:
Map to illustrate the SIEGE OF Sᵀ MICHAEL’S MOUNT. A.D. 1091.
_For the Delegates of the Clarendon Press._ Edwᵈ. Weller]
[Sidenote: Personal anecdotes.]
[Sidenote: William compared to Alexander.]
[Sidenote: Knight-errantry of William.]
[Sidenote: The King upset.]
[Sidenote: His treatment of the knight who unhorsed him.]
We now get, in the shape of those personal anecdotes in which this
reign is so rich, pictures of more than one side of the strangely
mixed character of the Red King. At the other end of Normandy William
had won lands and castles without dealing a single blow with his own
sword, and with a singularly small outlay of blows from the swords of
others. At Eu, at Aumale, and at Gournay, the work had been done with
gold far more than with steel. Beneath Saint Michael’s Mount steel was
to have its turn; and, when steel was the metal to be used, William
Rufus was sure to be in his own person the foremost among those who
used it. The change of scene seemed to have turned the wary trafficker
into the most reckless of knights errant. Amidst such scenes he
became, in the eyes of his own age, the peer of the most renowned of
those Nine Worthies the tale of whom was made up only in his own day.
We shall see at a later stage how the question was raised whether the
soul of the Dictator Cæsar had not passed into the body of the Red
King; by the sands of Saint Michael’s bay he was held to have placed
himself on a level with the Macedonian Alexander. The likeness could
hardly be carried on through the general military character of the two
princes; for Alexander, when he began an enterprise, commonly carried
it on to the end. And it may be doubted whether Alexander ever
jeoparded his own life in the senseless way in which Rufus in the tale
is made to jeopard his. We must picture to ourselves the royal
head-quarters between the height of Avranches and the sands of Saint
Michael’s bay. The King goes forth from his tent, and mounts the horse
which he had that morning bought for fifteen marks of silver.[798] He
sees the enemy at a distance riding proudly towards him. Alone,
waiting for no comrade, borne on both by eagerness for the fray and by
the belief that no one would dare to withstand a king face to face, he
gallops forward and charges the advancing party.[799] The newly bought
horse is killed; the King falls under him; he is ignominiously dragged
along by the foot, but the strength of his chain-armour saves him from
any actual wound.[800] By this time the knight who had unhorsed him
has his hand on the hilt of his sword, ready to deal a deadly blow.
William, frightened by the extremity of his danger, cries out, “Hold,
rascal, I am the King of England.”[801] The words had that kind of
magic effect which is so often wrought by the personal presence of
royalty. From any rational view of the business in hand, to slay, or
better still to capture, the hostile king should have been the first
object of every man in Henry’s garrison. To no case better applied the
wise order of the Syrian monarch, “Fight neither with small nor great,
save only with the King of Israel.”[802] But as soon as a voice which
some at least of them knew proclaimed that it was a king who lay
helpless among them, every arm was stayed. The soldiers of Henry
tremble at the thought of what they were so near doing; with all
worship they raise the King from the ground and bring him another
horse.[803] William springs unaided on his back; he casts a keen
glance on the band around him,[804] and asks, “Who unhorsed me?” As
they were muttering one to another, the daring man who had done the
deed came forward and said, “I, who took you, not for a king but for a
knight.” A bold answer was never displeasing to Rufus; he looked
approval, and said, “By the face of Lucca,[805] you shall be mine;
your name shall be written in my book,[806] and you shall receive the
reward of good service.” Here the story ends; we are to suppose that
William, instead of being carried a prisoner to the Mount, rode back
free to Avranches, having lessened the small force of Henry by a stout
knight and two horses.
[Sidenote: Character of the story.]
[Sidenote: Comparison with Richard the First.]
The tale is told as an example of the magnanimity of the Red King. And
there is something which moves a kind of admiration in the picture of
a man, helpless among a crowd of enemies, yet bearing himself as if
they were his prisoners, instead of his being theirs. The point of the
story is that Rufus did no harm, that he felt no ill will, towards the
man who had unhorsed, and all but killed him; that he honoured his
bold deed and bold bearing, and promised him favour and promotion. But
had the soldiers of Henry done their duty, William would have had no
opportunity, at least no immediate opportunity, of doing either good
or harm to his antagonist. William assumes that the enemy will not
dare to withstand him, and his assumption is so far justified that he
is withstood only by one who knows not who he is, and whose words
imply that, if he had known, he would not have ventured to withstand
him. Trusting to this kind of superstitious dread, William is able to
speak and act as he might have spoken if the man who unhorsed him had
been brought before him in his own tent. Richard of the Lion-heart,
when the archer who had given him his death-wound was brought before
him, first designed him for a death of torture, and then, on hearing a
bold answer, granted him life and freedom.[807] In this, as in some
other cases, the Red King, the earliest model of chivalry, certainly
does not lose by comparison with the successor who is more commonly
looked on as its ideal.[808]
[Sidenote: Contrast between William and Robert.]
[Sidenote: Lack of water on the Mount.]
[Sidenote: Henry asks to be allowed to take water.]
[Sidenote: Answer of Robert and William.]
Another and perhaps better known story which is told of this siege
puts the character of William Rufus in another light, while it brings
out the character of Robert in a lively form. The Duke, heedless of
the consequences of his acts but not cruel in his own person, was,
above all men, open to those passing bursts of generosity which are
quite consistent with utter weakness and want of principle. William
Rufus was always open to an appeal to his knightly generosity, to that
higher form of self-assertion which forbade him to harm one who was
beneath him, and which taught him to admire a bold deed or word even
when directed against himself. But the ties of kindred, still more the
ties of common humanity, sat very lightly on him. The gentler soul of
Robert was by no means dead to them. He did not shrink from waging an
unjust war against his brother and deliverer; he did not shrink from
despoiling that brother and deliverer of dominions which he had sold
to him by his own act for a fair price; but he did shrink from the
thought of letting the brother against whom he warred suffer actual
bodily hardships when he could hinder them. The defenders of the Mount
had, according to one account, plenty of meat; but all our narratives
agree as to the difficulty of providing fresh water for the fortress
which twice in the day was surrounded by the waves.[809] Henry sent a
message to the Duke, praying that he might be allowed access to fresh
water; his brothers might, if they thought good, make war on him by
the valour of their soldiers; they should not press the powers of
nature into their service, or deprive him of those gifts of Providence
which were open to all human beings.[810] Robert was moved; he gave
orders to the sentinels at Genetz not to hinder the besieged from
coming to the mainland for water.[811] One version even adds that he
added the further gift of a tun of the best wine.[812] This kind of
generosity, where no appeal was made to his own personal pride, was by
no means to the taste of Rufus; as a commander carrying on war, he was
ready to press the rights of warfare to the uttermost. When he heard
what Robert had done, he mocked at his brother’s weakness; it was a
fine way of making war to give the enemy meat and drink.[813] Robert
answered, in words which do him honour, but which would have done him
more honour if they had been spoken at the beginning as a reason for
forbearing an unjust attack on his brother――“Shall we let our brother
die of thirst? Where shall we find another, if we lose him?”[814]
[Sidenote: Henry surrenders.]
[Sidenote: William at Eu.]
[Sidenote: He goes back to England. August, 1091.]
Such are these two famous stories of the war waged beneath the mount
of the Archangel. Both are eminently characteristic; there is no
reason why both may not be true. But we must withhold our belief when
one of our tale-tellers adds that William turned away from the siege
in contempt for Robert’s weakness.[815] A more sober guide tells us
that when, for fifteen days, Henry and his followers had held up
against lack of water and threatening lack of food,[816] the wary
youth saw the hopelessness of further resistance, and offered to
surrender the Mount on honourable terms. He demanded a free passage
for himself and his garrison. William, already tired of a siege in
which he had made little progress and which had cost him many men and
horses,[817] gladly accepted the terms. Henry, still Ætheling, though
no longer Count, marched forth from his island stronghold with all the
honours of war.[818] We are to suppose that, according to the terms of
the treaty, the King took possession of the Mount itself, and the Duke
of the rest of Henry’s former county. William stayed on the mainland,
in the parts of Normandy which had been ceded to him, for full six
months, having his head-quarters at Eu.[819] In August the affairs of
his island kingdom called him back again; and, strange to say, both
his brothers went with him as his guests and allies.[820]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Fortunes of Henry.]
[Sidenote: His presence in England in 1091.]
[Sidenote: Story of Henry’s adventures.]
[Sidenote: His alleged wanderings.]
[Sidenote: Robert and Henry accompany William to England.]
At this moment the past and the future alike lead us to look with more
interest on the fates of the dispossessed Ætheling than on those of
any other of the actors in our story. But there is at first sight some
little difficulty in finding out what those fates were. From our
English authorities we could only gather that Henry was in England
before the end of the year in which the siege took place, and that
three years later he was again beyond sea, in favour with William and
at enmity with Robert. From other writers we get a version, which
takes no notice of any visit to England, but which gives us a moving
tale of Henry’s experiences in Normandy and the neighbouring lands. It
is one of those cases where a writer, telling his own part of the
story, altogether forgets, perhaps without formally contradicting,
other parts. In such a case he is likely to stumble in some of his
dates and details; but this need not lead us altogether to cast aside
the main features of his story. It is plain that, for some time after
the surrender of the Mount, Henry was, to say the least, landless. In
the pictures of his actual distress and adversity there may well be
somewhat of exaggeration; but they draw from one who is not a
flatterer the important remark that, having known adversity himself,
he learned to be gracious in after years to the sufferings of
others.[821] We are perhaps startled by such a saying when we think of
some particular acts of Henry; but this witness does not stand alone;
and, among the contradictions of human nature, there is nothing
impossible in the belief that such a spirit may have existed alongside
of many particular acts of cruelty.[822] But it is certain that
Henry’s season of adversity must have been shorter than it appears in
the picture of it which is given to us. We are told that, soon after
he left the Mount, he found himself very nearly a solitary wanderer.
He first went into Britanny, the only land from which he had received
any help, and thanked his friends there for their services. Thence he
betook himself to France, and spent, we are told, nearly two years in
the borderland of the Vexin, the land which had been the scene of his
father’s last and fatal warfare, and which was again to be the scene
of warfare before his brother’s reign was ended. There, with a train
cut down to one knight, one clerk, and three esquires, Henry wandered
to and fro, seeking shelter where he could.[823] Whatever truth there
may be in these details, the time of Henry’s probation could not have
been spread over anything like a period of two years. He may have been
a wanderer during the few months which immediately followed the
surrender of the Mount; but, if so, he was reconciled to both his
brothers long before the end of the year. Or he may, from some
unexplained reason, have again become a wanderer during some months of
the following year. There is nothing in any way impossible or unlikely
in either story. What is certain is that, before the end of the next
year, Henry had again an establishment on Gaulish ground, and one
gained in the most honourable way. And it is equally certain that when
King William went back to England in the month of August in the
present year he took both of his brothers with him.[824]
§ 4. _The Scottish Expedition of William Rufus._
_August-October, 1091._
[Sidenote: Affairs of Scotland.]
[Sidenote: Malcolm’s invasion of Northumberland. May, 1091.]
[Sidenote: He is driven back.]
[Sidenote: The “good men.”]
The business which called William back to his kingdom was a serious
one; it was no other than to drive back or to avenge a Scottish
invasion. King Malcolm, who seems to have stayed quiet during the
rebellion three years before, now took up arms. We cannot help
connecting this step with the visit of his brother-in-law, and the
words of the Chronicler seem directly to imply that Malcolm’s invasion
was the consequence of Eadgar’s coming.[825] From one version we might
almost think that Malcolm had been called on to do homage and had
refused.[826] This is perfectly possible in itself; but the time of
William’s special occupation with Norman affairs seems oddly chosen
for such a summons. An earlier time, some point in the blank period
between the rebellion and the Norman campaign, would have seemed more
natural for such a purpose. However this may be, now, in the month of
May, Malcolm took advantage of William’s absence in Normandy to invade
Northumberland for the fourth time. He designed, we are told, to go
much further and do much more, words which might almost suggest a
purpose of asserting the claims of Eadgar to the English crown.
Whatever were his objects, they were not carried out, save one which
was doubtless not the least among them, that of carrying off great
spoil from Northumberland.[827] The furthest point that Malcolm
reached was Chester-le-Street, a point unpleasantly near to the
bishopless monks of Durham.[828] There the men in local command went
against him and drove him back. In the national Chronicle they appear
as “the good men who guarded this land.”[829] In this way of speaking,
as in many other phrases in our own and other tongues, the word “good”
means rank and office rather than moral goodness. Yet the latter idea
is not wholly absent; the name would hardly be given to men who were
engaged in a cause which the writer wholly condemned. The “good men”
here spoken of must have been mainly Normans, with Earl Robert of
Mowbray at their head. Earl Robert was not likely to have won much
love from the English people. Yet he passed for a “good man,” when he
did his duty for England, when he guarded the land and drove back the
Scottish invader. Of any wish to put Malcolm in the place of either
the elder or the younger William we see no trace at any stage of our
story. Beyond this emphatic sentence, we get no details. As in so many
other cases, if conquest was the object of Malcolm’s expedition,
plunder was the only result.
[Sidenote: William and Robert in England. August, 1091.]
[Sidenote: Relations between Robert and Malcolm.]
[Sidenote: Stronger side of Robert and Eadgar.]
The news of this harrying of the northern part of his kingdom brought
King William back from Normandy in the course of August. With him, as
we have said, came Robert and Henry. Why was the Duke’s presence
needed? One account hints that his coming had some reference to the
actors in the late rebellion, some of whom at least were now restored
to their estates.[830] Another version speaks of an old friendship
between Robert and Malcolm;[831] and there was a tie of spiritual
affinity between them arising out of Robert’s relation as godfather to
a child of Malcolm.[832] It was perhaps in this character that Robert
came to act, if need should be, as a welcome negotiator with his
Scottish gossip. One strange thing is that, on more than one occasion
in our story, both Robert and Eadgar, two men who seem so incapable of
vigorous or rational action on behalf of themselves, play a distinctly
creditable part when acting on behalf of others. But this is really no
uncommon inconsistency of human nature; men are often found who are
good advisers in the affairs of others, while they are by no means
wise managers of their own. Robert in truth appears to most advantage
anywhere out of his own duchy. Neither the warrior of the crusade nor
the negotiator with the Scot seems to be the same man as the Duke who
could not be trusted to defend his own palace.
[Sidenote: William sets forth.]
[Sidenote: Durham in the absence of Bishop William.]
[Sidenote: The King’s favourable treatment of the monks.]
[Sidenote: Works at Durham.]
[Sidenote: Reconciliation of Bishop William with the King.]
[Sidenote: He is restored to his bishopric. September 3, 1091.]
[Sidenote: His renewed influence with the King.]
In the present case there was more of negotiation than of warfare. Of
actual fighting there seems to have been none. William got together,
as his father had done in the like case,[833] a great force by land
and sea for the invasion of Scotland. With the land force the King and
the Duke set forth; but seemingly with no haste, as time was found for
a great ecclesiastical ceremony on the way. For three years the church
of Durham had been without a shepherd, and the castle of Durham had
been in the hands of the King. The monks of Saint Cuthberht’s abbey
had feared that this irregular time would be an evil time for them.
But they put their trust in God and their patron saint, and went to
the King to ask his favour. Rufus was specially gracious and merciful;
he rose up to greet Prior Turgot, the head of the embassy, and he gave
orders that the monks of Durham should be in no way disturbed, but
should keep full possession of their rights and property, exactly as
if the Bishop had remained in occupation of his see.[834] We may even
venture to guess that they had a somewhat fuller possession of them
during the Bishop’s absence. We are expressly told by the local
historian that the Red King did not deal with Durham as he dealt with
other churches; he took nothing from the monks, and even gave them
something of his own.[835] The new society――for it must be remembered
that the monks of Durham were a body of Bishop William’s own bringing
in[836]――flourished so greatly during this irregular state of things
that it was now that they built their refectory.[837] But a time of
more settled order was now to come. Bishop William of Saint-Calais,
whatever had been his crimes three years back, was among those whom
King William had engaged by his treaty with his brother to restore to
their lands and honours. Besides this general claim, it was believed,
at Durham at least, that the banished prelate had earned his
restoration by a signal service done to the King. In the third year of
his banishment an unnamed Norman fortress was holding out for the
King; but its garrison was sore pressed, and its capture by the enemy
seemed imminent. The Bishop, by what means of persuasion we are not
told, but it does not seem to have been by force, caused the besiegers
to raise the siege.[838] This service won the King’s thorough good
will, and William, on his march to Scotland, personally put the Bishop
once more in possession of his see and of all its rights and
belongings, temporal and spiritual.[839] Bishop William did not come
back empty-handed; he brought with him costly gifts for his church,
ornaments, gold and silver vessels, and, above all, many books.[840]
And, at some time before the year was out, we find him confirming with
great solemnity, with the witness of the great men of the realm,
certain grants of the Conqueror to the monks of his church.[841] The
return of the Bishop was an event not only of local but of national
importance. He was restored by the King, not only to his formal
favour, but to a high place in his innermost counsels. Bishop William
was not one of those who come back from banishment having learned
nothing and forgotten nothing. He had, in his sojourn beyond the sea,
learned an altogether new doctrine as to the relations between bishops
and kings.
[Sidenote: Loss of the ships. Michaelmas, 1091.]
[Sidenote: William and Malcolm by the _Scots’ Water_.]
[Sidenote: Mediation of Robert and Eadgar.]
[Sidenote: Conference of Robert and Malcolm.]
[Sidenote: Malcolm’s homage to Robert.]
[Sidenote: He submits to William.]
The march which had been interrupted by the ceremony at Durham was
clearly a slow one. William was at Durham in the first days of
September; much later in the month a heavy blow fell on one part of
the expedition. The greater part of the ships were lost a few days
before the feast of Michaelmas, and we are told that this happened
before the King could reach Scotland. The King was therefore several
weeks in journeying from Durham to the border of the true Scotland,
the Firth of Forth; and we are told that many of the land force also
perished of cold and hunger.[842] The army however which remained was
strong enough to make Malcolm feel less eager for deeds of arms than
he had most likely felt in May. At last, near the shore of the _Scots’
Water_, the estuary which parted English Lothian from Scottish Fife,
the two kings met face to face, seemingly in battle array, but without
coming to any exchange of blows. It is marked in a pointed way that
Malcolm had crossed from his kingdom to his earldom. He “went out of
Scotland into Lothian in England, and there abode,”[843] There a
negotiation took place. The ambassadors or mediators were Duke Robert
and the Ætheling Eadgar.[844] According to the most picturesque
version, Malcolm, who is conceived as still keeping on the northern
side of the firth, sends a message to William to the effect that he
owes no homage to him, but that, if he can have an interview with
Robert, he will do to him whatever is right. By the advice of his Wise
Men,[845] William sends his brother, who is courteously received by
the Scottish King for three days. Somewhat like the Moabite king of
old, though with quite another purpose, Malcolm takes his visitor to
the tops of various hills, and shows him the hosts of Scotland
encamped in the plains and dales below. With so mighty a force he is
ready to withstand any one who should try to cross the firth; he would
be well pleased if any enemy would make the attempt. He then suddenly
turns to the question of homage. He had received the earldom of
Lothian from King Eadward, when his great-niece Margaret was betrothed
to him. The late King William had confirmed the gifts of his
predecessor, and, at his bidding, he, Malcolm, had become the man of
his eldest son, his present visitor Duke Robert. To him he would
discharge his duty; to the present King William he owed no duty at
all. He appealed to the Gospel for the doctrine that no man could
serve two lords, the doctrine which had been so practically pressed on
Robert’s behalf three years before.[846] Robert admitted the truth of
Malcolm’s statement; but he argued that times were changed, and that
the decrees of his father had lost their old force. It would be wise
to accept the reigning King as his lord, a lord nearer, richer, and
more powerful, than he could pretend to be himself. Malcolm might be
sure of a gracious reception from William, if he came on such an
errand. Malcolm was convinced; he went to the King of the English; he
was favourably received, and a peace was agreed on. It is added that
the two kings then disbanded their armies, and went together into
England.[847]
[Sidenote: Question as to the betrothal of Margaret.]
[Sidenote: Question of Lothian.]
This last statement throws some doubt upon the whole of this version;
for Malcolm’s alleged journey to England at this moment is clearly a
confusion with events which happened two years later. The references
too to the earldom of Lothian and to an earlier betrothal of Margaret
are a little startling; yet it is perhaps not quite hopeless to
reconcile them with better ascertained facts. As I have elsewhere
suggested, this earlier betrothal of Margaret to Malcolm is not
necessarily inconsistent with his later marriage with her after the
intermediate stage of Ingebiorg.[848] Malcolm may at one time have
been in no hurry to carry out a marriage dictated by political
reasons; yet he may have afterwards become eager for the same marriage
after he had seen her whose hand was designed for him. As for the
Lothian earldom, we here see the beginning of the later Scottish
argument, that homage was due from the Scottish to the English king
only for lands held within the kingdom of England. At this stage
Lothian was the land held within the kingdom of England; it was what
Northumberland, Huntingdon, or any other confessedly English land held
by the Scottish king, was in later times. When Malcolm was restored to
his crown by the arms of Siward,[849] no doubt Lothian was granted to
him among other things. Only Malcolm takes up the line, or our
historian thinks it in character to make him take up the line, of
implying, though not directly asserting, that Lothian was the only
possession for which homage was due. And, on the strictest view of
English claims, Malcolm would be right in at least drawing a marked
distinction between Scotland and Lothian. He owed both kingdom and
earldom to the intervention of Eadward and Siward; but Lothian was a
grant from Eadward in a sense in which Scotland was not. Over Scotland
neither Eadward nor William could claim more than an external
superiority. Lothian was still English ground, as much as the land
which is now beginning to be distinguished as Northumberland.
[Sidenote: Treaty between William and Malcolm.]
[Sidenote: Malcolm does homage.]
The version of Malcolm’s submission which I have just gone through is
certainly worth examining, and I do not see that it contradicts the
simpler and more certain version. According to this account, the
negotiation was carried on between Robert and Eadgar. The agreement to
which the mediators came was that Malcolm should renew to the younger
William the homage which he had paid to the elder.[850] On the other
hand, he was to receive all lands and everything else that he had
before held in England, specially, it would seem, twelve _vills_ or
mansions for his reception on his way to the English court.[851] On
these terms Malcolm became the man of William; Eadgar also was
reconciled to William. The two kings parted on good terms, but the
Chronicler notices, in a phrase of which he is rather fond, that it
“little while stood.”[852]
[Sidenote: Return of William.]
[Sidenote: Evidence of the Durham charters.]
[Sidenote: Duncan.]
[Sidenote: Eadgar.]
[Sidenote: Henry.]
[Sidenote: Siward Barn.]
William, Robert, and Eadgar now took their journey back again, as it
is specially marked, from Northumberland into Wessex.[853] The realm
of Ælfred is still looked on as the special dwelling-place of his
successors from beyond the sea. But it would seem that, at some stage
of their southward journey, at some time before the year was out, they
joined with other men of royal and princely descent in setting their
crosses to a document, in itself of merely local importance, but which
is clothed with a higher interest by the names of those who sign it. A
grant of certain churches to the convent of Durham becomes a piece of
national history when, besides the signatures for which we might
naturally look, it bears the names of King William the Second, of
Robert his brother, of Henry his brother, of Duncan son of King
Malcolm, of Eadgar the Ætheling, and of Siward Barn.[854] This is the
only time when all these persons could have met. There is no sign of
any later visit of Robert to England during the reign of William. But
the signatures of Henry and Duncan teach us more. Duncan, it will be
remembered, had been given as a hostage at Abernethy;[855] he had been
set free by the Conqueror on his death-bed; he had been knighted by
Robert, and allowed to go whither he would.[856] Had he already made
his way back to his own land, or did he come in the train of his
latest benefactor? In the former case, had he been again given as a
hostage? Or had William found out that the son of Ingebiorg might
possibly be useful to him? It is certain that, two years later, Duncan
was at William’s court and in William’s favour; and it looks very much
as if he had, in whatever character, gone back to England with the
King. The signature of Eadgar shows that the document must be later
than the treaty with Malcolm by which he was reconciled to William,
that is, that it was signed on the journey southward, not on the
journey northward. The signature of Henry is our only hint that he had
any share at all in the Scottish business, and it throws a perfectly
new light on this part of his history. He was plainly in England,
seemingly in favour with both his brothers, and things look as if he
too, though he is nowhere mentioned, must have gone on the march to
Scotland. Siward Barn, like Duncan, was one of those who were set free
by William the Great on his death-bed. We now learn that he shared the
good luck of Duncan and Wulf, not the bad luck of Morkere and
Wulfnoth. He signs as one of the great men of the north, with Arnold
of Percy, with the Sheriff Morel, and with Earl Robert himself.
[Sidenote: Fresh dispute between William and Robert.]
[Sidenote: Robert and Eadgar leave England. December 23, 1091.]
One thing is plain, namely, that this document was not signed in the
regular Christmas Assembly of the year. By that time Robert and Eadgar
were no longer in England. By that time Robert and William had again
quarrelled. We may guess that some of Robert’s old partisans had been
less lucky than the Bishop of Durham. At all events, some points in
the treaty of Caen remained unfulfilled. Then, as in later times, a
diplomatic engagement was not found strong enough to carry itself out
by its own force, like a physical law of nature. We are not told what
was the special point complained of; but something which the Red King
should have done for Robert or for his partisans was left undone.[857]
It was simply as a man and a king that Rufus had entered into any
engagements with his brother. His knightly honour was not pledged; the
treaty therefore came under the head of those promises which no man
can fulfil.[858] We are told in a pointed way that Robert stayed with
his brother till nearly the time of Christmas. The matter in dispute,
whatever it was, might have been fittingly discussed in the Christmas
Assembly; only it might have been hard to find the formula by which
the Duke of the Normans was to appeal the King of the English of bad
faith before his own Witan. Two days before the feast Robert took ship
in Wight, and sailed to Normandy, taking the Ætheling Eadgar with
him.[859]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Natural phænomena. Fall of the tower at Winchcombe. October
15, 1091.]
[Sidenote: Great wind in London. October 17, 1091.]
[Sidenote: Fire in London. March 28, 1092.]
[Sidenote: Consecration of the church of Salisbury. April 5, 1092.]
[Sidenote: The tower roof thrown down. April 10.]
Either the reign of Rufus was really richer than other times in
striking natural phænomena, or else they were specially noticed as
signs of the times. About the time of the King’s Scottish expedition,
the tower of the minster at Winchcombe was smitten by a mighty
thunderbolt, and fell in ruins on the body of the church, crushing the
most hallowed images in its fall. The Chthonian Zeus had no place in
the mythology of the times; but this destruction, which left behind it
a thick smoke and an evil smell, was deemed to be the work of the evil
one, the signs of whose presence were got rid of only by the most
solemn chants and processions.[860] Two days later, London was visited
by a fearful wind, which blew down seven churches and houses to the
number of six hundred. Above all, the wooden roof of the church of
Saint Mary-le-bow was carried off, and its beams were hurled to the
ground with such force that they were driven into the hard earth, and
had to be sawn off as they stood.[861] Two men who were in the church
were crushed. The citizens could have hardly repaired their houses
before another blow came upon them. Early in the next year the greater
part of London was destroyed by fire.[862] By Eastertide the cathedral
churches of two of the dioceses whose seats had been moved in the late
reign stood ready for consecration. On the waterless hill which then
was Salisbury, within the everlasting ditches of the elder time,
looking down on the field of battle which had decreed that Britain
should be English[863] and on the field of council which had decreed
that England should be one,[864] Norman Osmund, the doctor of the
ritual lore of England, had finished the work which Lotharingian
Hermann had began. The new mother church of the lands of Berkshire,
Wiltshire, and Dorset, the elder minster of Saint Mary, whose stones
were borne away to build the soaring steeple of its successor but
whose foundations may still be traced on the turf of the forsaken
city, now awaited its hallowing. There was then no archbishop in
southern England; the rite was done by Osmund himself with the help of
his two nearest episcopal neighbours, Walkelin of Winchester and John
of Bath.[865] The ceremony had thus a specially West-Saxon character.
The three bishops who came together at Salisbury represented the
three――once four――churches, among which the old West-Saxon diocese,
the diocese of Winchester, had been parted asunder.[866] But at
Salisbury too, the elements, if somewhat less hostile than at
Winchcombe and London, were by no means friendly. Five days only after
the hallowing, the lightning fell, as at Winchcombe; the peaked roof
or low spire which sheltered the tower――doubtless of wood covered with
lead――was thrown down, and its fall did much damage to the walls of
the new minster.[867]
[Sidenote: Remigius of Lincoln.]
[Sidenote: Completion of the minster.]
[Sidenote: Thomas of York claims the jurisdiction of Lindesey.]
[Sidenote: Remigius wins over the King.]
[Sidenote: Gathering for the consecration at Lincoln. May 9, 1092.]
[Sidenote: Death of Remigius. May 6, 1092.]
A day later by a month had been fixed for another ceremony of the same
kind, the crowning of the work of a prelate who seems to have wished
for a more stately ceremony and a greater gathering than the almost
domestic rite which had satisfied Bishop Osmund. Remigius, Almoner of
Fécamp, Bishop of Dorchester, Bishop of Lincoln, was drawing near the
end of his famous episcopate. He had reformed the constitution of his
chapter and diocese; and we hear that he was no less zealous in
reforming the manners of his flock.[868] The darling sin of
Bristol――most likely the darling sin of every great trading-town――was
rife at Lincoln also; and Remigius, like Wulfstan, preached against
the wicked custom by which men sold their country-folk, sometimes
their kinsfolk, to a life of shame or of bondage in foreign
lands.[869] But beyond all this, he had finished his great work on the
hill of Lincoln; the elder church of Saint Mary had grown into the
great minster of which later rebuildings and enlargements have still
left us some small remnants.[870] The eastern limb had as yet no need
to overleap the Roman wall of Lindum; but Remigius had reared, and
sought to consecrate, no fragment, but a perfect church. His doorways
are there in the western front to show that the building has received
no enlargement on that side from Remigius’ day to our own. The work
was done, and its founder felt his last end coming. He was eager to
see the house which he had builded dedicated to its holy use before he
himself passed away. But an unlooked-for hindrance came. The only
archbishop in the land, Thomas of York, claimed the district in which
Remigius had built his church as belonging to his own diocese.[871]
This does not seem to have been by virtue of the claim that the whole
diocese of Dorchester came within his metropolitan jurisdiction.[872]
The argument was that Lindesey, won for the Christian faith by
Paullinus, won for the Northumbrian realm by Ecgfrith, was part of the
diocesan jurisdiction of the Bishop of York. And, whatever the truth
of the case might be, the warmest of all admirers of Remigius goes
some way to strengthen the doctrine of Thomas, when he speaks of
Lindesey almost as a conquered land won by the prowess of Remigius
from the Northumbrian enemy.[873] The time was not one for doubtful
disputations. Remigius, saint as he is pictured to us, knew how to use
those baser arguments which were convincing above all others in the
days of the Red King. His original appointment in the days of the
Conqueror had not been altogether beyond suspicion;[874] and it was
now whispered that it was by the help of a bribe that he won the
zealous adhesion of William Rufus to his cause. Rufus was at least
impartial; he was clearly ready to give a fair day’s work for a fair
day’s wages, and what he would do for a Jew he would also do for a
bishop. All the bishops of England were bidden by royal order to come
together at the appointed day for the dedication of the church of
Lincoln.[875] A vast crowd of men of all ranks came to Lincoln; the
course of the story suggests that the King himself was there; all the
bishops came, save one only. Robert of Hereford, the friend of
Wulfstan, the Lotharingian skilled in the lore of the stars, knew by
his science that the rite would not take place in the lifetime of
Remigius. He therefore deemed it needless to travel to Lincoln for
nothing.[876] His skill was not deceived; three days before the
appointed time Remigius died.[877] The dedication of the church was
delayed; it was done in the days of his successor, some years
later.[878] Meanwhile Remigius himself won the honours of a saint in
local esteem, and wonders of healing were wrought at his tomb for the
benefit of not a few of divers tongues and even of divers creeds.[879]
§ 5. _The Conquest and Colonization of Carlisle._
1092.
[Sidenote: William’s conquest of Carlisle.]
[Sidenote: Mistakes as to the position of Cumberland and
Westmoreland.]
It was seemingly from this fruitless gathering at Lincoln that William
the Red went forth to what was in truth the greatest exploit of his
reign. He went on a strange errand, to enlarge the bounds of England
by overthrowing the last shadow of independent English rule. Hitherto
the northern border of England had shown a tendency to fall back
rather than to advance, and a generation later the same tendency
showed itself again. But Rufus did what neither his father nor his
brother did; he enlarged the actual kingdom of England by the addition
of a new shire, a new earldom――in process of time a new bishopric――and
he raised as its capital a renewed city whose calling it was to be the
foremost bulwark of England in her northern wars. Whatever any other
spot on either side of the sea may be bound to do, Carlisle, city and
earldom, is bound to pay to the Red King the honours of a founder. And
the Saxon branch of the English people must see in him one who planted
a strong colony of their blood on the lands of men of other races,
kindred and alien. There is a certain amusement in seeing the endless
discussions in which men have entangled themselves in order to explain
the simple fact that Cumberland and Westmoreland are not entered in
Domesday, forgetful that it was just as reasonable to look for them
there as it would have been to look there for Caithness or the
Côtentin. Cumberland and Westmoreland, by those names, formed no part
of the English kingdom when the Conqueror drew up his Survey. Parts of
the lands so called, those parts which till recent changes formed
part, first of the diocese of York, afterwards of that of Chester, are
entered in Domesday in their natural place, as parts of Yorkshire.[880]
The other parts are not entered, for the simple reason that they were
then no part of the kingdom of England. It was now, in the third or
fourth year of William Rufus, that they became so.
[Sidenote: History of Carlisle.]
[Sidenote: 603-685.]
[Sidenote: Scandinavians in Cumberland.]
[Sidenote: Carlisle destroyed by Scandinavians.]
Lugubalia or _Caerluel_ was reckoned among the Roman cities of
Britain. It was reckoned too among the cities of the Northumbrian
realm, in the great days of that realm, from the victory of Æthelfrith
at Dægsanstan to the fall of Ecgfrith at Nectansmere.[881] Then the
Northumbrian power fell back from the whole land between Clyde and
Solway, and all trace of Lugubalia is lost in the confused history of
the land of the Northern Britons. Its site, to say the least, must
have formed part of that northern British land whose king and people
sought Eadward the Unconquered to father and lord.[882] It must have
formed part of that well nigh first of territorial fiefs which Eadmund
the Doer-of-great-deeds granted to his Scottish fellow-worker.[883] It
must have formed part of the under-kingdom which so long served as an
appanage for the heirs of Scottish kingship. But, amidst all these
changes, though the land passed under the over-lordship of the
Basileus of Britain, yet it never, from Ecgfrith to Rufus, passed
under the immediate dominion of any English king. And, as far as the
city itself was concerned, for the last two centuries before Rufus the
site was all that was left to pass to any one. The history of
Scandinavian influence in Cumberland is one of the great puzzles of
our early history. The Northman is there to speak for himself; but it
is not easy to say how and when he came there.[884] But one result of
Scandinavian occupation or Scandinavian inroad was the overthrow of
Lugubalia. We gather that it fell, as Anderida fell before Ælle and
Cissa, as Aquæ Solis fell before Ceawlin, as the City of the Legions
fell before Æthelfrith.[885] But now the son of the Conqueror was to
be to Lugubalia what the daughter of Ælfred had been to the City of
the Legions. The king who made the land of Carlisle English bade the
walls of Carlisle again rise, to fence in a city of men, a colony of
the Saxon land.
[Sidenote: Dolfin lord of Carlisle.]
At this moment the land of Carlisle, defined, as we can hardly doubt,
by the limits of the ancient diocese, was the only spot of Britain
where any man of English race ruled. Its prince, lord, earl――no
definite title is given him――was Dolfin the son of Gospatric, a scion
of the old Northumbrian princely house and sprung by female descent
from the Imperial stock of Wessex.[886] When or how Dolfin had got
possession of his lordship we know not; but it can hardly fail to have
been a grant from Malcolm, and it must have been held by him in the
character of a man of the Scottish king.
[Sidenote: Dolfin driven out, the city restored and the castle built.
1092.]
[Sidenote: The Saxon colony.]
[Sidenote: Supposed connexion with the making of the New Forest.]
We are not told whether either Dolfin or Malcolm had given any new
offence to William, or whether there was any other motive for the
King’s action at this moment. We can record only the event. Rufus went
northward with a great force to Carlisle. He drove out Dolfin; he
restored the forsaken city; he built the castle; he left a garrison in
it, and went southward again.[887] But this was not all. Not only was
the restored city to be a bulwark of England, but the conquered land
was to become a colony of Englishmen. Many churlish folk were sent
thither with wives and cattle, to dwell in the land and to till
it.[888] We thus see, what seems always to be forgotten in discussions
of Cumbrian ethnology, that, at least in the immediate district of
Carlisle, the last element in its mixed population was distinctly
Saxon.[889] Ingenious writers have guessed that the men who were now
settled at Carlisle were the very men who had been deprived of their
homes and lands at the making of the New Forest. There is no evidence
for this guess, and every likelihood is against it. Though I hold that
the dispossessed land-owners and occupiers of Hampshire are not an
imaginary class,[890] yet I cannot think that they can have formed so
large a class as to have gone any way towards colonizing even so small
a district as the old diocese of Carlisle. But it is plain that the
land needed inhabitants, and that the new inhabitants were sought for
in the south of England. In the Carlisle district then the order of
settlement among the races of Britain is different from what it is
anywhere else. Elsewhere it is Briton, Angle or Saxon, Dane or
Northman. Here, as far as one can see, the order must be Briton,
Angle, Pict, Northman, Saxon.
[Sidenote: The land and earldom of Carlisle.]
[Sidenote: History and character of the city.]
[Sidenote: Its analogy with Edinburgh and Stirling.]
[Sidenote: The wall and the castle.]
[Sidenote: Work of Rufus and Henry at Carlisle.]
The land now added to England is strictly the land of Carlisle. We do
not hear the names of Cumberland or Westmoreland till after the times
with which we are dealing. The restored city gave its name to the
land, to its earls, when it had earls, to its bishops when it had
bishops.[891] And truly of all the cities of England none is more
memorable in its own special way than that which now for the first
time became a city of united England. The local history of Carlisle
stands out beyond that of almost any other English city on the surface
of English history. It has not, as local history so often has; to be
dug out of special records by special research. Called into fresh
being to be the bulwark of England against Scotland, Carlisle remained
the bulwark of England against Scotland as long as England needed any
bulwark on that side. In every Scottish war, from Stephen to George
the Second, Carlisle plays its part. Nor is it perhaps unfit that a
city whose special work was to act as a check upon the Scot should
itself have in its general look somewhat of a Scottish character. The
site of the city and castle instinctively reminds us of the sites of
Edinburgh and Stirling. It is a likeness in miniature; but it is a
likeness none the less. The hill which is crowned by Carlisle castle
is lower than the hills which are crowned by the two famous Scottish
fortresses; but in all three cases the original city climbs the hill
whose highest point is crowned by the castle. At Carlisle the castle
stands at the northern end of the city, and its look-out over the
Eden, towards the Scottish march, is emphatically the look-out of a
sentinel. It looks out towards the land which so long was hostile; but
it looks out also on one spot which suggests the memories of times
when Scots, Picts, and Britons may have been there, but when they
found no English or Danish adversaries to meet them. The Roman wall
avoids Lugubalia itself, though the inner line of foss, which runs
some way south of the wall itself, is said to be traced along the line
which divides the castle from the city. But among the most prominent
points of view from the castle is Stanwix, the site of the nearest
Roman station, which seems to bear about it the memory of the stones
of the ancient builders. Here, on the brow of the hill, cut off by a
ditch like so many headlands of the same kind, on a site which had
doubtless been a place of strength for ages before the Roman came, the
Red King reared the new bulwark of his realm. Of the works of his age
there are still large remains; how much is the work of Rufus himself,
how much of his successor, it might be hard to say. The square keep is
there, though sadly disfigured by the unhappy use of the castle as a
barrack; a large part of the wall, both of city and castle, is still,
after many patchings and rebuildings, of Norman date; it is still in
many places plainly built out of Roman stones. Here and there one is
even tempted to think that some of those stones in the lower part of
the wall may have stood there since Carlisle was Lugubalia. Castle and
city bear about them the memories of many later times and many
stirring scenes in history. But on that spot we are most called on to
trace out, in church and city and castle, every scrap that reminds us
of the two founders of Carlisle, the two royal sons of the Conqueror.
The names which before all others live on that site are those of
William who raised up city and fortress from the sleep of ages, and of
Henry who completed the work by adding Carlisle to the tale of English
episcopal sees.[892]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Fortunes of Henry.]
[Sidenote: Domfront held by Robert of Bellême.]
[Sidenote: The men of Domfront choose Henry to lord. 1093.]
In the same year in which King William of England thus advanced and
strengthened the borders of his kingdom by strength of arms, his
youngest brother again became a ruler of men by a nobler title.
Whatever was the date or the length of Henry’s day of distress, it
came to an end about the time of the restoration of Carlisle. No call
could be more honourable than that which again set him in a place of
power. Among the many victims of Robert of Bellême were the people of
Domfront, the old conquest of William the Great. The castle had passed
into the hands of the tyrant, and grievous was the oppression which
Domfront and the coasts thereof suffered at his hands. The
inhabitants, under the lead of a chief man of the place, Harecher or
Archard by name, rose in revolt, and chose the banished Count of the
Côtentin as their lord and defender against the common enemy of
mankind. In company with this local patriot, Henry came to Domfront;
he accepted the offered lordship, and entered into the closest
relations with those who had chosen him. He bound himself to respect
all their local customs, and never to give them over to any other
master. Henry kept his word; amidst all changes, he clave to Domfront
for the rest of his days as a specially cherished possession.[893]
[Sidenote: Position of Domfront.]
It was indeed, both in its position and in its associations, a noble
starting-point for one who had to carve out a dominion for himself by
his wits or by his sword. It was a place of happy omen for a son of
William the Conqueror, as the place where his father first began to
deserve that title, his first possession beyond the elder bounds of
his own duchy.[894] Henry was now lord of the rocky peninsula, which,
impregnable as it had once been deemed, had yielded to the terror of
his father’s name, and where the donjon of his father’s rearing opened
its doors to receive his greatest son as a prince and a deliverer. On
one side, the Varenne flowed far beneath the rock, parting it from the
wilder rocks beyond the stream. On the other side, on the same level
as the castle, but with a slight dip between the two, just like the
dip which parts town and castle at Nottingham,[895] was the walled
town, in after days itself a mighty fortress, girded with double walls
and towers in thick array, and entered by a grim and frowning gateway
with two massive flanking towers grounded on the solid rock. But, of
all spots in the world, Domfront is one whose lord could never bear to
be lord of Domfront only. From few spots not fixed on actual Alps or
Pyrenees can the eye range over a wider prospect than it ranges over
from the castle steep of Henry’s new lordship. To the north the view
is by comparison shut in; but on this side lies the way into the true
heart of Normandy, to Caen and Bayeux and all that lies between. To
the west the eye catches the hills of the Avranchin; to the south the
land of Maine stretches far away, the land of his father’s victories
at Ambrières and at Mayenne, the land whose sight suggests that the
land of Anjou lies yet beyond it. To the south Henry might look on
lands which were to be the inheritance of his children; to the north
he looked on lands which were one day to be his own; but to the
south-west, towards Mortain and Avranches and the Archangel’s Mount,
his eye might light on a region some of the most famous spots of which
he was presently to win with his own right hand.
[Sidenote: Change in Henry’s affairs.]
[Sidenote: His old friends join him.]
[Sidenote: Earl Hugh.]
[Sidenote: Henry restored to William’s favour.]
[Sidenote: Henry at war with Robert.]
[Sidenote: He gets back his county.]
For the tide in Henry’s affairs turned fast, as soon as the wanderer
of the Vexin became the chosen lord of Domfront. His old friends in
his former principality began to flock around him once more. Earl Hugh
was again on his side, with Richard of Redvers and the rest.[896] And
he had now a mightier friend than all. King William of England soon
found out that he had not played a wise part for his own interests, or
at least for his own plans, in strengthening his elder brother at the
expense of the younger. He was now again scheming against Robert; he
therefore favoured the growth of the new power on the Cenomannian
border. It was with the Red King’s full sanction that Domfront became
the head-quarters of a warfare which Henry waged against both Roberts,
the Duke and the tyrant of Bellême.[897] He made many expeditions,
which were largely rewarded with plunder and captives, and in the
course of which some picturesque incidents happened which may call for
some notice later in our story.[898] For the present we are concerned
rather with the re-establishment of Henry’s power, of which his
possession of Domfront was at once the earnest and the beginning.
Favoured by William, helped by his former friends, Henry was soon
again a powerful prince, lord of the greater part of his old county of
Coutances and Avranches. And this dominion was secured on his southern
border by the occupation of another fortress almost as important as
Domfront itself, and no less closely connected with the memory of
Henry’s father.
[Sidenote: Castle of Saint James occupied by Henry.]
[Sidenote: Its position.]
[Sidenote: Slight remains of the castle.]
This was the castle of Saint James, the stronghold which the Conqueror
reared to guard the Breton march,[899] which stands close on that
dangerous frontier, in the southernmost part of the land of Avranches.
That hilly and wooded land puts on at this point a somewhat bolder
character. A peninsular hill with steep sides, and with a rushing
beck, the Beuvron, between itself and the opposite heights, was a
point which the eye of William the Great had marked out as a fitting
site for a border-castle. Yet the castle did not occupy the exact spot
where one would have looked for it. We should have thought to find it
at the very head of the promontory, commanding the valley on all
sides. It is so at Ballon; it is not so at Saint Cenery or at Conches.
But in a more marked way than either of these, the castle of Saint
James stood on one side of the hill, the south side certainly, the
side looking towards the dangerous land, but still not occupying the
most commanding position of all. In this choice of a site we may
perhaps see a mark of the Conqueror’s respect for religion. The
ecclesiastical name of the place shows that, in William’s day, the
church of Saint James already occupied the lofty site which its
successor still keeps. Castle-builders less scrupulous than the great
William might perhaps have ventured, like Geoffrey of Mayenne at Saint
Cenery,[900] to build their fortress on the holy ground. The Conqueror
had been content with the less favourable part of the hill, and at
Saint James, as at Conches, church and castle stood side by side. The
natural beauty of the site cannot pass away; the look-out over the
valley on either side is fairer and more peaceful now than it was in
William’s day; but every care has been taken to destroy or to mutilate
all that could directly remind us of the days when Saint James was a
stronghold of dukes and kings. The elder church has given way to a
structure strangely made up of modern buildings and ancient fragments.
The tower of the Conqueror still gives its name to the Place of the
Fort; but there are no such remains as we see in the shattered keep of
Domfront, hardly such remains as may be traced out at Saint Cenery and
on the Rock of Mabel. A line of wall to the south, strengthening the
scarped hill-side like the oldest walls of Rome, is all that is left
to speak to us of the castle which was William’s most famous work on
that border of his dominions. Nothing beyond these small scraps is
left of the fortress whose building led to that memorable march
against the Breton in which William and Harold fought as
fellow-soldiers.[901]
[Sidenote: The castle granted to Earl Hugh.]
We are not told what were Henry’s relations with Britanny at the time
when this great border fortress passed into his hands. Bretons had
been his only friends at the time of the siege of the Mount; but their
friendship for the Count of the Côtentin was perhaps felt for him, not
so much in that character as in that of the enemy of the Norman Duke
and the English King. It may possibly mark a feeling that the Celtic
peninsula might again become a dangerous land, when the guardianship
of the chief bulwark against the _Bretwealas_ of the mainland was
given to one who had full experience of warfare with the _Bretwealas_
of the great island. The Earl of Chester had a hereditary call to be
the keeper of the castle of Saint James. The fortress had, on its
first building, been entrusted by the Conqueror to the guardianship of
Earl Hugh’s father, the Viscount Richard of Avranches. Hugh’s treason
when King and Duke came against him was now forgotten; his earlier and
later services were remembered; and the restored prince, now once more
Count as well as Ætheling, granted the border castle, not as a mere
castellanship, but as his own proper fief, to the lord of the distant
City of the Legions.[902]
* * * * *
We have thus seen the power of William the Red firmly established on
both sides of the sea. He had received the homage of Scotland; he had
enlarged the bounds of England; he had won for himself a Norman
dominion hemming in the dominions which are left to the nominal
sovereign of the Norman land. And it is wonderful with how little
fighting all this had been done. It was only before the island rock of
Saint Michael that the chivalrous King had any opportunity of winning
renown by feats of chivalry. A year follows, crowded with events, but
all of them events which happened within the four seas of our own
island. Our next chapter will therefore deal mainly with English
affairs, and with some aspects of English affairs which yield in
importance to none in the whole history of England. One of the chief
personages of our story now comes before us in the form of the holy
Anselm. Few more striking personal contrasts are to be found in the
whole range of history than those parts of our tale where Anselm and
William meet face to face. But more memorable still, in a general
aspect of English history, is the work which has been silently going
on ever since William Rufus was made fast on his throne, the work
which stands broadly forth as a finished thing when the controversy
between King and Primate begins. Assuredly no “feudal system” was ever
introduced into England by any law of William the Great; but it is
only a slight stretch of language to say that something which, if any
one chooses, may be called a “feudal system” was, during these years,
devised in and for England by the craft and subtlety of Randolf
Flambard.