CHAPTER XII.

THE LATER REIGN OF WILLIAM IN NORMANDY.[159]

1051–1066.

[Sidenote: Recapitulation of the history of Normandy.]

We left the Duchy of Normandy in the enjoyment of a short season of

unusual peace, after the energy of its great Duke had for a moment

quelled all enemies at home and [Sidenote: 1051.] abroad. We saw the

Duke himself received as a cherished guest at the Court of England,

during those gloomy months when England, in the absence of her

defenders, seemed to have already become a Norman land. We saw him

return to his home, clothed, there can be little doubt, in his own

eyes, with the character of the lawful heir of the English Crown. We

have now to trace out his history and that of his Duchy from the time

of his return from his first English sojourn till he again steps upon

the field of English history as an avowed claimant of the Kingdom of

England. The intervening time fills a space of fifteen [Sidenote:

Character of the period in Norman history.] years, years crowded with

stirring and memorable events in the history of Normandy. But they

are events which, till quite the end of the period, have no direct

connexion with the history of England. It is only in the last stage of

the present Chapter that the two streams of our narrative must again

converge, at the moment when the two great figures of our drama meet

face to face in the memorable and fatal visit of Earl Harold to the

Norman court. The earlier years of the period are wholly occupied with

the affairs of William and his Duchy, his marriage, his ecclesiastical

reforms and foundations, his wars against rebellious kinsmen within his

Duchy and with French and Angevin enemies beyond its bounds. But these

things all form part of our story. No part of the life of the great

Conqueror is foreign to the history of the Conquest of England. Every

blow dealt by William against his restless neighbours or against his

jealous overlord formed part of his military schooling for the greatest

day of his military life. Every exercise of that political craft in

which he surpassed all men made his hand more skilful for the weaving

of that masterpiece of subtlety by which, even more than by his lance

and bow, he knew how to make England his own.

[Sidenote: Divisions of the period.]

The period will fall naturally into four divisions. First [Sidenote:

William’s marriage.] comes William’s marriage with Matilda of Flanders,

a step which was, in itself, of no small moment in William’s career,

and which, as I have already hinted,[160] supplies some [Sidenote: His

French wars. 1050–1058.] most characteristic illustrations of William’s

temper. Next come the wars of William with the King of the French

and his allies, those allies being not only the ceaseless enemy of

Normandy, the Count of Anjou, but also enemies of William’s within his

own Duchy and within his own [Sidenote: His war for Maine. 1061–1063.]

ducal house. Thirdly comes the later stage of the Angevin war, when

it became almost wholly resolved into a struggle for the possession

of Maine. Lastly, we come to William’s [Sidenote: The Breton War and

the oath of Harold.] Breton campaigns, which, in our point of view,

necessarily become a mere adjunct to the great question of the visit

and the oath of Harold. I have purposely reserved that question for

this stage of my history. As the date is uncertain, and as the event

is recorded by no contemporary English writer, I could find no fitting

place for it in the [Sidenote: The oath a Norman rather than an English

question.] course of my purely English narrative. Recorded only by

Norman writers, it seems essentially a piece of Norman history, and the

question of right or wrong is essentially a Norman question.[161] It

has no bearing on the events narrated and discussed in my last Chapter;

it has the closest bearing on the events which will be narrated in

later Chapters. [Sidenote: Its bearing on the history.] Any personal

obligations towards William, which Harold had contracted or which

Harold had broken, formed altogether a personal question between

William and Harold. It was a question with which the English nation had

in strictness nothing to do.[162] They might take it into consideration

as a matter of prudence; they had nothing to do with it as a matter of

right. If any wrong was done to William, it was done, not by England,

but by Harold personally. It might be a crime in Harold to accept the

Crown to which he was chosen, but that in no way affected the right of

the English people to choose him. The question then, up to this point,

is a Norman question; it became an English question only when William

claimed the English Crown, and put forth the alleged perjury of Harold

as one of the grounds of his claim. I have therefore reserved the

consideration of the whole story for the present Chapter. It comes in

here as a part of the Norman history, which has no direct bearing on

the purely English events which have gone before, but which has the

most direct and important bearing on the combined Norman and English

events which are to follow.

§ 1. _The Marriage of William and Matilda. 1049–1060._

[Sidenote: Position of William.]

William, at the time of his visit to Eadward, had reached the age of

about twenty-four years. The negotiations for [Sidenote: 1049.] his

marriage had already begun at least two years before.[163] A marriage

into some princely house was an object of no small moment for one

in William’s position. The Bastard, the Tanner’s grandson, had now

abundantly made good his position within his own Duchy, and he had

shown to his neighbours that he was one whose borders could not be

insulted with impunity. The victor of Val-ès-dunes, the avenger of

Alençon, the man to whom the impregnable steep of Domfront had yielded

in sheer dread of his wrath,[164] already held no small place among

the princes of Gaul and of Europe. The rulers of the lands nearest to

his own had had abundant means of judging of his prowess. His royal

overlord at Paris had witnessed what William could do as an ally, and

his restless rival at Angers had felt yet more keenly what he could

do as an enemy. Alike in warfare and in internal government, he had

shown himself in every way the peer of Kings and of long-descended

Dukes and Counts. It remained now to be seen whether [Sidenote: A

princely marriage desirable for him.] the rulers of other European

states were ready to receive him as their social peer, and to allow

their blood to mingle with the blood of the son of Herleva. His own

panegyrist has indeed no doubt on the point. The Duke of the Normans

had only to choose his wife at his will from the houses of whichever

of the neighbouring princes he thought good. Nay, distant Kings would

have vied with one another in offering their daughters to such a

bridegroom.[165] Notwithstanding this rhetoric, we may be allowed to

suspect that, when the chief men of Normandy urged on their sovereign

the prudence of an early marriage, they thought somewhat of the

advantage of fixing the position of William in the eyes of the world

as well as of the necessity of securing the Norman succession.[166]

This last object [Sidenote: Importance of direct heirs to William.]

indeed was a matter of paramount importance. Nothing but the life

of the reigning Duke stood between his Duchy and the repetition of

such anarchy as his own early years had witnessed. A bastard could,

in strict law, have no heirs but heirs of his own body; and, even

setting aside William’s bastardy, it was as hard now as it had been

at the death of Robert to say who was the lawful presumptive heir to

the Norman Duchy. It was before all things necessary that William

should, with all speed, raise up sons of his own to [Sidenote: Domestic

purity of William’s life.] sit on his ducal chair. And it is to the

eternal honour of the young Duke that there was no fear of the rights

of William’s lawful sons being interfered with by the claims of any

elder but unlawful issue. There was no fear of William’s bride, whoever

she might be, having to share her place in his house or in his heart

with any unlawful or irregular consort. Alone of all his race, William

set an example to all the princes of his time of a domestic life of

unsullied purity. He had marked, it may well be, the shame, the sorrow,

the anarchy, which had been brought upon himself and his country by

the youthful error of his own parents, or rather—it might be fairer

to say—by the neglect of his father to redeem that youthful error by

a later marriage. He was determined that no such evils should ever

arise from any such error on his own part. No mistress, no Danish wife,

appeared in William’s days in the palace of Rouen; and this virtue, so

unusual in one surrounded by all the temptations of youth and power,

seems to have become the subject of foolish and brutal jests among the

profligate scoffers of his Court.[167] The private life of William

is a bright feature among the varied traits of his strangely mingled

character. In this respect the noblest of women would have been no more

than an help meet for him. And such an one he found in the wife whom

he sought with such characteristic pertinacity, and who, in the end,

shared his cares and his glories for more than thirty years.

[Sidenote: His counsellors recommend a marriage with Matilda of

Flanders.]

The counsels of the wise men of Normandy both pressed William to

marry, and further suggested the expediency of selecting for his bride

the daughter of some neighbouring prince.[168] The weighty matter

was long and anxiously discussed, but at last either the counsels of

his advisers or his own inclination disposed William in favour of

the daughter of the reigning Count of Flanders. It may be that, if

the English Court had been adorned with a princess, he would have

sought, by a marriage with a daughter of Eadward, to strengthen the

hopes which he may have already begun to cherish in the direction of

Eadward’s Crown. But no such help was to be looked for in the house of

his childless cousin; still, as I have already hinted, it is possible

that one of the merits in his eyes of the wife whom he did choose was

that she sprang by direct, if only by female descent, from the blood

of Ælfred.[169] It is possible that other princesses might have been

found who had the same amount of connexion with English royalty,[170]

but it would have been hard to find one who united a descent of this

kind with the great European position which attached to a daughter of

Baldwin. The laureate of William taxes his powers to the uttermost to

set forth the greatness of the prince who was thought worthy to become

the father-in-law [Sidenote: Descent of the Counts of Flanders.] of

his hero. No line was so exalted as that of the Count of Flanders, or

as, in contempt of the geography of his own time, he wishes rather to

call him, the Satrap of the Morini.[171] The lowly origin of Lyderic

the Forester[172] was forgotten among the splendours of a house which,

by successive intermarriages, could boast of a descent from the Kings

of Wessex, Italy, and Burgundy, and from the Imperial stock of the

Great Charles.[173] The Flemish Count was in name a vassal of the

Roman Emperor; in truth he was the stay and glory of his counsels.

Rarely did he condescend to visit the Imperial Court; when he stooped

so far, Counts, Marquesses, Dukes, the mighty Primates of the German

Church, even Kings themselves, looked on him [Sidenote: Their power

and dignity.] with wonder and admiration.[174] Without accepting all

this rhetoric, it is certain that, next to a marriage into the house

of an anointed King, no connexion could have been found more exalted

than that which William sought to form with the prince whom his

contemporaries spoke of as the mighty [Sidenote: Importance of their

border position.] Marquess.[175] No description could be more apt. It

was to their position as Marquesses in the strict sense of the word,

as princes holding a border land between France and Germany,[176] as

vassals of both Crowns, but no very humble subjects of either, that the

Counts of Flanders owed their special greatness among European princes.

Their land, with its sea-board and its rivers, was marked out by nature

as the land where commerce and civic greatness were to take a firmer

hold than in any other land north of the Alps.[177] And its hardy,

sharp-witted, and industrious inhabitants, [Sidenote: Character of

the people.] near kinsmen of our own Nether-Dutch stock, were no less

renowned in warfare than they were in the peaceful arts of commerce and

manufacture. And we must not forget that, in those days, the Flemish

dominion, and, with it, the Low-Dutch speech, reached far to the south

of the narrow frontier which is all that successive French aggressions

have left to the modern Kingdom of Belgium. The Marquess of Flanders

was a near neighbour of the Duke of the Normans. Between them lay only

the small Counties of Ponthieu and Boulogne, the representatives of

the old disputed land of Herlwin of Montreuil.[178] On every political

ground, no alliance could be more desirable for the young Duke than one

which brought him into close and friendly connexion with this mighty

house.

[Sidenote: Baldwin the Fifth. 1036–1067.]

Of the reigning Count, Baldwin the Fifth, Baldwin of Lisle or

Yssel,[179] Baldwin the _Debonnaire_, we have often heard in other

parts of our history. We first heard of him as a rebel against his

own father, and as being brought to reason by the potent influence of

Duke Robert.[180] We next heard of his constant reception of English

and other exiles, and of his wars with the Empire, in which England

bore a part against him.[181] In those wars his Norman panegyrist

represents him as invariably successful.[182] We have seen how far

this description departs from the truth of history; [Sidenote:

Baldwin’s second rebellion and reconciliation. 1054–1056.] but in

after times, when the might of Rome and Germany was represented by a

woman and a child, it is said that Baldwin gained concessions which

he was not likely to gain at the hands of Henry the Third.[183] With

his other overlord, the Parisian King, he had formed the closest

tie of affinity; his wife was Adela, the daughter of King [Sidenote:

His Regency in France. 1061.] Robert and sister of the reigning King

Henry.[184] In after times, on the death of Henry, Count Baldwin was

called on to act as Regent or Protector over the realm of his wife’s

young nephew Philip.[185] His marriage with Adela gave him two sons,

Baldwin and Robert, both of whom afterwards reigned over Flanders.[186]

Judith, who a few [Sidenote: 1051.] years later became the wife of

Tostig the son of Godwine, is often spoken of as his daughter, but she

was in truth his sister, the child of his father’s old age,[187] and

probably in years the contemporary of his own children. But, if the

sister of Baldwin shared the viceregal seat of Northumberland, his

daughter was fated to yet higher honour within [Sidenote: His daughter

Matilda.] our island. Matilda, the child of Baldwin and Adela, in after

days to be crowned at Westminster as Lady of the English, was the

princess whom the advice of William’s wisest counsellors selected as

the fittest bride for their young Duke.

[Sidenote: William seeks her in marriage.]

One might be curious to know how far this choice was at all prompted in

the beginning by personal inclination on William’s part. It is certain

that Matilda won and retained William’s deepest affection, that he had

to struggle hard to obtain her hand, and that he made her a faithful

and loving husband throughout their joint lives. But modern researches

have shown that there was a mystery about the marriage which no one

would have guessed from the fluent narratives of the Norman writers.

They enlarge on Matilda’s beauty, on her accomplishments and her

virtues.[188] But, just as the Encomiast of Emma keeps out of sight

the fact that his heroine was a widow and a mother at the time of her

marriage with Cnut,[189] so the panegyrists of William keep out of

sight the fact, revealed to us by a comparison of several documents

and incidental statements, that [Sidenote: Matilda’s former marriage

and children.] Matilda was the mother of a son and a daughter of whom

William was not the father.[190] Some of them further conceal, what

others have the honesty to allow, that the marriage of the Duke was

objected to on canonical grounds, and that an interval of some years

took place between the first proposal of marriage and the actual

celebration of the rite. The language of William’s laureate would

lead us to believe that Count Baldwin brought his daughter across the

Norman frontier almost as soon as William’s ambassadors had reached his

court with William’s proposal.[191] A more minute examination reveals

the fact that the marriage was first [Sidenote: 1049–1053.] thought

of before the murder of Beorn, but that the lovers were not joined

together by the Church till the year of the death of Godwine.

[Sidenote: Legend of Brihtric.]

The scandal of a later age told the tale how one Brihtric, a Thegn

of Gloucestershire, was sent as an ambassador from the King of the

English to the court of Bruges, how the daughter of the Count cast

an eye of love on the tall stalwart Englishman, how she offered

herself to him in marriage, how he refused her advances, and how in

later times Matilda, the Lady of the English, found means of ample

revenge for the slight which he had offered to Matilda, the Flemish

princess. William, we are told, not considering, it would seem, that

such hatred might be deemed to savour of love, easily granted his

wife’s prayer for the imprisonment of Brihtric and for the transfer

of his lands to herself.[192] The tale is evidently mythical, but it

preserves the kernel of truth that William was not the [Sidenote:

Gerbod, first husband of Matilda.] first love, or indeed the first

husband, of Matilda. She had been already married to Gerbod, a man of

distinction in Flanders, whose title was taken from his hereditary

office as _Advocate_ of the great Abbey of Saint Bertin at [Sidenote:

Her children, Gerbod and Gundrada.] Saint Omer. To him she had borne

two children, a son who bore his father’s name, and who, in after

times, when his step-father filled the English throne, held and

resigned the great Earldom of Chester, the special home of the house

of Leofric.[193] The other child of Gerbod and Matilda was a daughter,

Gundrada by name, who became the wife of William of Warren, and whose

tomb and its inscription have long been among the favourite objects of

antiquarian research.[194] That tomb was placed in a minster of her own

rearing, which has now vanished from the earth, in that great Priory

of Saint Pancras at Lewes, whose walls [Sidenote: 1264.] sheltered

the King and the enemies of England in the next great struggle for

her freedom. For a long while Gundrada was looked on as a daughter

of William himself,[195] but there is no doubt that both she and her

brother Gerbod were the children of Matilda by her first husband. The

question now arises, which I shall discuss elsewhere,[196] whether the

elder Gerbod was dead at the time of William’s first courtship, or

whether the delays and difficulties which beset the marriage of William

and Matilda were not, partly at least, caused by the necessity of

procuring a divorce between the Flemish princess and her first husband.

The [Sidenote: Matilda probably a widow.] balance of evidence and of

probability seems to me to be decidedly in favour of the belief that

Matilda was now a widow. But at any rate it is certain, though no one

would have guessed it from any of the writers who record the marriage,

that the bride of William was already the mother of two children by

another man. The whole story forcibly reminds us of the marriage of

Cnut and Emma, except that, while Emma was clearly many years older

than Cnut, Matilda, married no doubt to Gerbod when very young, must

have been about William’s own age.[197] Another point is plain that,

even if the marriage was first thought of as a matter of policy,

William’s affections were soon firmly fixed upon the woman whose hand

he was seeking. No otherwise can we explain the desperate pertinacity

with which he pursued his object in defiance of difficulties to which a

merely political suitor would soon have yielded.

[Sidenote: Beginning of William’s courtship. 1048–1049.]

The scheme of the marriage must have been first broached soon after

the war of Domfront and Alençon. For in the year following that war

the marriage met with the most formidable of all obstacles. It was

forbidden by an express command of the common Father of Christendom,

speaking at the head of an Assembly which had a real claim to command

no small share of the reverence of Western [Sidenote: The Council of

Rheims. 1049.] Europe. The good Pope Leo had gathered together at

Rheims that famous Council of some of whose acts I have had occasion

to speak earlier in my history.[198] For one of those moments which

come few and far between in the annals of nations and Churches, the two

lights of the Christian firmament shone in friendship side by side;

the two swords no longer clashed against each other, but were drawn

at the same bidding to chastise the same offenders. At the summons

of a Pope and an Emperor each alike worthy of his throne, clerks and

laymen had assembled from distant lands, among which England had not

been slow to send her representatives.[199] The abbatial minster of

Saint Remigius had been hallowed by the Pope himself; and a number

of Princes and Prelates were next called to account by the assembled

Fathers for various breaches of the law, canonical and moral. There,

as we have seen, a Norman Bishop, a member of the mightiest house in

Normandy, had to defend himself on a charge of sacrilegious destruction

of his own cathedral.[200] There a Prelate of the Ducal Burgundy, Hugh

of Langres, was deposed from his episcopal office for various acts of

cruelty and adultery.[201] But Pope Leo did not shrink from smiting

offenders yet more exalted, and among them he struck the most grievous

of personal blows at the Duke of the Normans [Sidenote: Enforcement

of the ecclesiastical laws of marriage.] himself. One special object

of the Council was the stricter enforcement of the Church’s law of

marriage, a point on which the princes and great nobles of Gaul would

seem just then to have been specially lax. Among the canons of the

Council, two are aimed specially at offences of this kind, and the

Pope and the assembled Fathers at once proceeded to launch the censures

of the Church against offenders of every degree. A whole train of

princes were summoned before the Synod, and some of them were actually

excommunicated. Among them [Sidenote: Censures pronounced on various

French Princes.] were the two princes who held the border lands between

Flanders and Normandy, two princes of one of whom we have already heard

but too much in our history, and of both of whom we shall hear again.

Eustace of Boulogne, the brother-in-law of King Eadward, and Ingelram,

seemingly the son of the reigning Count of Ponthieu, were both smitten

with excommunication on charges of incest the evidence for which seems

to be no longer forthcoming. Theobald of Chartres, the son of Odo

the old enemy of Normandy, was also called to account on a charge of

putting away his lawful wife without cause.[202] And it was now that

an order went forth which touched the [Sidenote: Baldwin forbidden to

give his daughter to William.] two mightier neighbours of all these

princes. Count Baldwin of Flanders was forbidden to give his daughter

in marriage to William the Norman, and he, William, was forbidden to

receive her. Such is the only description vouchsafed to the great Duke.

The other princes receive their usual titles of honour, but it would

almost seem that any such respectful mention was still looked on as not

due of right to the grandson of the Tanner.

At the date then of the Council of Rheims, the marriage had not yet

been celebrated, though William’s first proposals must have been

already made to Baldwin, and must have been favourably listened to by

him. The Papal prohibition seemingly stopped the marriage for four

years. [Sidenote: Alleged consanguinity of William and Matilda.] The

ground of objection was, according to all the evidence which we have

on the subject, the usual ground of nearness of kin. Yet it is by no

means easy, either to trace up the pedigree of William and Matilda to a

common ancestor, or to see any reasonable ground for the prohibition on

any of the usual ecclesiastical theories of affinity. But it certainly

seems more reasonable to suppose the existence of some unrecorded

hindrance of this kind than to believe that William sought the hand

of Matilda, and that her father favoured his suit, at a time when she

was actually the [Sidenote: The marriage delayed.] wife of another

man.[203] At all events, the marriage was delayed, and the moment when

it was actually celebrated [Sidenote: Coincidence of its celebration

with the captivity of Pope Leo.] coincides so remarkably with one of

the most memorable exploits of William’s countrymen in another part

of Europe that it is hard to believe that the one event had not some

influence on the other. The Normans were now pressing their conquests

in the South of Italy, and Pope Leo did [Sidenote: 1053–1054.] not deem

it inconsistent with his duty to endeavour to check their progress even

by force of arms.[204] His own prowess, tried in earlier warfare, the

lofty stature and heavy swords of his German auxiliaries, availed him

not.[205] [Sidenote: Leo’s wars with the Normans of Apulia. His defeat

and imprisonment.] The Pontiff became a captive in the hands of enemies

who knew as well how to make the most of an advantage as if William

himself had been their leader. And in truth there was one in their

ranks with a head well nigh as cunning to devise, and an arm well nigh

as strong to execute, as the head and the arm of William himself. For

the Norman host was commanded by the sons of Tancred [Sidenote: Policy

of Robert Wiscard.] of Hauteville, and among them, as yet the least

renowned among his brethren, stood the man before whom Cæsars as well

as Pontiffs were to quail.[206] There stood the founder of the Apulian

Duchy, the remote founder of the Sicilian Kingdom, the man who did less

only than William himself to make the Norman name famous and terrible

throughout the world. The true spirit of Robert Wiscard appears in the

demeanour of conquerors who bowed in the lowliest reverence to their

holy captive, and who at the same time knew how to win from him what

might pass as a lawful investiture [Sidenote: Origin of the Sicilian

Kingdom.] of all their conquests. Such were the beginnings of that

Norman Kingdom of the South whose fate forms so striking a contrast

to that of their northern conquest. Thus arose that Sicilian realm,

whose Crown shone the brightest among the Pleiads which decked the

brow of the Wonder of the World,[207] and which, in its lowest depth

of degradation, we have seen merged in a realm of happier [Sidenote:

1860.] omen at the mere approach of the wonder-worker of our own day.

[Sidenote: The marriage at last celebrated; Baldwin brings his daughter

to Eu. 1053.]

It was while Leo was thus kept in the power of the Normans of the South

that William seems to have thought that the hour was at last come when

he might venture to trample under foot the prohibition of the Council

of Rheims. It may be that the reverential gaolers of the Pope had

contrived to wring from him some concession to the prince whom, if they

did not look on as their sovereign, they must at least have honoured as

the most renowned of all who bore the Norman name. Or it may be that

William and Baldwin deemed that, during such a collapse of the Papal

authority, any breach of ecclesiastical discipline might safely be

dared, in the hope that an absolution after the fact might be won from

some successor less austere than the saintly Leo. At all events the

marriage was celebrated while Leo was still in durance. Count Baldwin

himself led his daughter through Ponthieu to the Norman frontier.

She was there met by the bridegroom who had so long and so patiently

waited for her. The marriage ceremony was performed, by what daring

priest or Prelate we know not, in the church of the ducal town which

stood nearest to the Flemish border. At Eu, under the shadow of the old

fortress of Rolf, in the minster which had been lately reared by the

bounty of Count William and his half-canonized wife,[208] Duke William

received the hand of the bride whose possession had been forbidden to

him by the judgement of Pope and Council. From the border castle the

new Duchess was led in all fitting state [Sidenote: Matilda’s reception

at Rouen.] to her husband’s capital. The metropolitan city received

the Lady of Normandy with every expression of joy. Any doubts as to

the canonical validity of the marriage were likely to give way before

the charm of Matilda’s presence, before the mere novelty of seeing the

Court of Rouen, after an interval of perhaps thirty years,[209] once

more adorned by the grace and dignity of a reigning Duchess.

[Sidenote: Opposition to the marriage within the Duchy.]

But, in an age and country where the religious spirit was so actively

at work as it was in Normandy in the days of William, it was not likely

that any breach of canonical law, even on the part of the sovereign,

should pass unchallenged. Men were found who feared not, perhaps in the

spirit of the Baptist, to rebuke the prince who had dared so direct

a breach of the orders of so revered an assembly as the Council of

Rheims. And the opposition was led by one from whom, according to all

the accounts of his character which have been handed down to us, we

should not have looked for any special zeal either for ecclesiastical

discipline [Sidenote: Censure pronounced by Archbishop Malger.] or

for Christian morality. At the head of the Norman Church now stood

William’s uncle Malger, a man who, as I have already said,[210] is

described to us only in the darkest colours. Yet almost the only act

recorded of him is one which, in the life of a saint, would undoubtedly

have been set down as one of the most striking proofs of his sanctity.

The Primate of Normandy did not shrink from reproving his prince, and

that prince the Great William, for the breach of canonical law which

he had committed in marrying his kinswoman. He at least threatened,

if he did not actually publish, a sentence of excommunication against

the princely [Sidenote: His probable motives.] offender.[211] Was his

motive in so doing simply disloyalty? Was he, as one account seems to

imply, in league with his brother the Count of Arques, to overthrow

William’s throne?[212] Or are we to suppose that Malger was really

stirred up by a holy zeal to denounce a breach of ecclesiastical law,

however exalted the offenders? Such is the equally distinct statement

of another of our authorities, less open than those who are hardest

upon Malger to the influences [Sidenote: Nature of the charges against

Malger.] of flattery or prejudice.[213] After all, if we come to

distinguish the crimes alleged against Malger from the declamation

which is used about them, they are not crimes of any enormous dye. They

are the follies and vices which could hardly fail to be expected from

a young prince thrust into a great ecclesiastical office to which he

clearly had no real call. He is allowed not to have been deficient in

the learning of the time.[214] But he was fonder of hunting than became

an Archbishop, a charge which seems a little hard in an age when an

extravagant devotion to brutal sports was not deemed inconsistent with

the highest saintliness.[215] He kept too splendid a table,[216] and

wasted the wealth, and even the ornaments, of his church in reckless

largesses.[217] All this is likely enough, and the existence of his

son Michael shows that he was no strict observer of ecclesiastical rule

on other points.[218] And we can well believe that Duke William, most

of whose own faults were of a kind exactly opposite to those of his

uncle, was diligent in rebuking one who certainly departed widely from

his ideal of a Prelate.[219] But when these intelligible and probable

charges are mixed up with vague stories of robbery and other unnamed

crimes,[220] we begin to have our doubts. [Sidenote: His lack of the

Pallium.] We are told also that successive Pontiffs had refused him the

pallium, as being unworthy of his office,[221] so that Rouen was now

in much the same case as Canterbury. He also neglected to attend more

than one Council at Rome to which he was summoned.[222] All Rouen and

all Normandy, we are told, were utterly weary of their Primate and his

doings.[223]

[Sidenote: Malger’s opposition probably honest.]

All this may well have been so; yet the excommunication, or threatened

excommunication, of the Duke, more especially when we remember that

the fact is left out by those who draw the worst picture of Malger,

suggests that there may have been another side to the story. The

excommunication does not read like the act of one who was utterly dead

to the duties and decencies of his office. It reads more like the act

of one who, conscious that he had greatly neglected those duties and

decencies, was anxious to make amends for past offences by an act of

saintly zeal and boldness. It is the sort of act which may well have

been meant as the first step [Sidenote: William’s indignation at him.]

in an amended career. And there is strong ground for believing that

it was this over zealous discharge of ecclesiastical duty, quite as

much as any of his ecclesiastical or moral offences, which finally

brought down on Malger the wrath of his nephew and sovereign. It

would be altogether of a piece with William’s conduct in greater

matters still, if his personal indignation, and the complaints and

entreaties of Matilda, were mixed up with a real [Sidenote: Malger

deposed at Council of Lisieux. 1055.] feeling of the unfitness of

Malger for his office.[224] At all events, two years after William’s

marriage, long before that marriage was recognized at Rome, Malger was

formally deposed from his see by a joint exercise of the ducal and the

pontifical authority. Ermenfrid, Bishop of Sitten, a Prelate who seems

to have been specially employed to represent the Roman See beyond the

Alps, was [Sidenote: 1062, 1070.] now sent into Normandy, as he was

in after years twice sent into England. William gathered a Council at

Lisieux, in which all the Bishops of Normandy, under the presidency of

the Papal Legate, sat in judgement on their erring metropolitan. Malger

was unanimously condemned, and the Duke decreed his deposition from his

see.[225] He was banished to the Isles of the Côtentin, so [Sidenote:

His banishment and death.] familiar to us as the Channel Islands.[226]

His life there is said to have still given scandal;[227] if Malger’s

ebullition of zeal against William was really the beginning of his own

reformation, nothing was more likely to throw him back in the work of

amendment than the consequences which his over diligence had brought

upon him. One of the charges against him was that of dealing with a

familiar spirit,[228] a charge which has been ingeniously explained by

the supposition that the learning of Malger took in mathematics and

astronomy, and that, as in the ease of Gerbert and many others, the

reputation of practising magic was the penalty of knowledge beyond

his age.[229] It was his custom to sail about among the islands, and

sometimes to visit the mainland of the Côtentin. One day, on entering

the vessel, his supernatural power enabled him to prophesy that one of

the company would die that day. He knew not however who was the doomed

person, nor by what means he would perish. His prediction was fulfilled

in himself: he fell overboard and was drowned. His body was afterwards

found among the rocks, and he was buried at Cherbourg.[230]

[Sidenote: Malger succeeded by Maurilius.]

A Prelate of a very different stamp from Malger succeeded him on

the metropolitan throne of Rouen. William [Sidenote: His life and

character.] had now fully learned that the high places of the Church

could not be rightly turned into mere provisions for the younger

members of sovereign houses. He determined to give the Norman Church

a thoroughly worthy chief pastor, and in his choice he overlooked

all prejudices of family and even of nation. This willingness to

recognize the claims of merit in strangers from every land has been

already spoken of as one of the marked features of the Norman national

character.[231] The new Primate, Maurilius, was a man of foreign birth,

one who had seen much of various parts of the world, and who seems to

have made choice of Normandy as his adopted country. His [Sidenote: His

birth near Rheims, and studies at Lüttich.] career in many respects

reminds us of that of Lanfranc, with this difference, that the earlier

years of Lanfranc were spent in a character wholly lay, while Maurilius

had first entered the ecclesiastical calling as a secular priest. He

was a Frenchman by birth, born of a noble house in the neighbourhood of

Rheims.[232] But his higher education was Teutonic. He first studied

at home at Rheims, then at Lüttich, and lastly, as the reward of his

proficiency in learning, he was raised to the dignity of [Sidenote: He

becomes “Scholasticus” at Halberstadt.] “Scholasticus,” Chancellor or

Lecturer, in the cathedral church of Halberstadt, one of the richest

secular foundations in the Saxon Church.[233] But the zeal of Maurilius

soon aspired to a straiter life than that of a secular canon. He

[Sidenote: He becomes a monk at Fécamp. 1001–1031.] left his stall at

Halberstadt, he betook himself into Normandy, and there became a monk

in the Abbey of Fécamp.[234] That great house, the favourite foundation

of Richard the Fearless, and one of the objects of the misapplied

bounty of our own Eadward, was now flourishing in all the odour of

[Sidenote: Secular Canons at Fécamp. 990.] youthful sanctity.[235]

The secular canons, who had been its first inmates, had, under the

rule of Richard the Good, the patron and father of monks, made way for

regulars of [Sidenote: Benedictine Monks. 1001.] the Benedictine order,

under the rule of their first Abbot, the renowned and holy William, a

native of Italy, and of illustrious birth. He it was who received the

Chancellor of [Sidenote: Maurilius leaves Fécamp, and] Halberstadt as

one of his spiritual household,[236] till, like Lanfranc,[237] the

neophyte sought for a still more complete [Sidenote: becomes a hermit

in Italy.] isolation from the world, and, with the leave of his Abbot,

Maurilius left Fécamp for some undescribed part of Italy, where he led

a hermit’s life, supporting himself by the work of his own hands.[238]

His sanctity at last drew on him [Sidenote: He is made Abbot of

Saint Mary’s at Florence by the Marquess Boniface. [1027–1052.]] the

attention of the famous Boniface, Marquess of Tuscany, the father of

the more famous Countess Matilda. This prince constrained him, much

against his will, to undertake the government and the reform of the

great monastery of Saint Mary in the city of Florence. He laboured

there for some years, and brought his monks into some degree of order

and good living. But the elder members of the brotherhood, accustomed

to the lax government of former Abbots, proved too much for his powers

[Sidenote: He returns to Fécamp.] of reformation.[239] He resigned his

dignity and returned to Fécamp, where he lived for some years as a

private monk, [Sidenote: Abbot John. 1031–1080.] under the new Abbot

John. This Prelate was another Italian, high in favour alike with

the Duke of the Normans and with the King of the English, who, like

so many others of his order, found it to his advantage to cross the

[Sidenote: Maurilius Archbishop of Rouen. 1055–1069.] sea and visit

the saintly Eadward face to face.[240] Under his rule the ex-Abbot of

Florence lived in peace, till he was called by Duke William to the

highest place in the Norman Church. He held more than one Council of

his Province.[241] He also finished the rebuilding of the metropolitan

Church, which had been begun by his predecessor Robert, and had been

possibly interrupted during the unthrifty reign of Malger. The church

of Maurilius, which has [Sidenote: He completes and consecrates Rouen

Cathedral. 1063.] wholly made way for the works of later architects,

was consecrated three years before the invasion of England, in the

presence of all the Bishops of his Province, and of Duke William

himself.[242] He survived this great ceremony six years, and died in

the full odour of sanctity, having seen his sovereign and benefactor

for three years on the throne of England.

[Sidenote: The marriage of William and Matilda censured by Lanfranc.]

The deposition of Malger, the succession of Maurilius, and the men

to whom the career of the new Primate introduces us, serve well to

illustrate that great religious movement which was now going on in

Normandy,[243] and which was beyond doubt greatly fostered by the

wise appointments which William had now learned to make to the great

ecclesiastical offices in his gift. But the unlucky Archbishop was not

the only churchman who felt that it was dangerous to administer rebuke

to one of William’s temper. A greater than Malger or Maurilius also

took upon him the function of Micaiah, and, strangely enough, he found,

through a temporary disgrace, a path to a higher place in the favour

of his [Sidenote: His present favour with William.] prince. Lanfranc,

now Prior of Bec, already high in the Duke’s favour and a sharer in his

inmost counsels,[244] perhaps took upon him personally to rebuke his

sovereign for his uncanonical marriage; at all events he was known to

have spoken his mind freely and openly on the subject.[245] [Sidenote:

Papal Interdict on Normandy?] The writer whom we have to follow for the

share taken by Lanfranc in the affair adds that all Normandy was laid

under an interdict by Papal authority as a punishment for the sin of

its prince.[246] The contemporary writers so evidently avoid the whole

subject that their silence counts for less than it otherwise would;

but it would certainly be strange if so memorable an exercise of Papal

authority as the interdiction of divine offices throughout the Duchy

found no one to record it except the local chronicler of Bec. But,

however this may be, we need not doubt that Lanfranc spoke out on the

subject in a way which was far from agreeable to the Duke and probably

still less agreeable to the Duchess. The darker side of William’s

character now stands forth. He was already stark beyond [Sidenote:

William’s incapacity to bear personal insult.] measure to the men who

withstood his will.[247] With all his great qualities, he could not

endure anything which savoured of personal insult, least of all when

that insult touched his wife as well as himself. The stern executor of

justice, the reformer of the Norman Church, is forgotten for a while

in the man who mutilated his prisoners at Alençon,[248] and who, years

after, burned Mantes to punish a silly jest of its sovereign. Lanfranc

had also enemies at hand, who did not fail to stir up the mind of the

Duke against him.[249] The vengeance taken by William was cruel, one

might almost add, cowardly. For the fault or virtue of one member he

punished the whole society, and, as commonly happened in such cases,

the punishment fell more heavily on the dependants of the society

than [Sidenote: He orders the banishment of Lanfranc, and burns the

“Park” of the Abbey.] on the society itself.[250] William ordered that

Lanfranc should at once be dismissed from the monastery and banished

from Normandy. But he also ordered the ravaging and burning of part

of the possessions of the Abbey.[251] He was obeyed in both orders.

Lanfranc set forth from Bec, to seek his fortune once more, and he set

forth in a guise almost as lowly as that in which he first appeared in

the presence of Herlwin. But his journey [Sidenote: Reconciliation of

Lanfranc and the Duke.] was not a long one. By chance or by design,

he met William on the way;[252] the visible change in his fortunes,

aided by his own ready wit, procured him an audience of the Duke,

and in that audience terms of reconciliation were readily agreed on.

Lanfranc was again admitted to William’s full favour, confirmed by the

kiss of peace.[253] The damage done to the estates of the House of

Bec was more than made good.[254] But Lanfranc was required in return

to withdraw his opposition to the Duke’s marriage, [Sidenote: Lanfranc

becomes the champion of the marriage.] and even to make himself the

champion of his cause. A man of scrupulous honour, according to modern

ideas of honour, would not have accepted such an office. But modern

ideas of honour differ widely from monastic ideas of conscience. There

was nothing in the terms agreed to by Lanfranc at which the most tender

and the most formal conscience could be offended.[255] Lanfranc had

denounced the marriage as sinful, and he was not called on to withdraw

that denunciation. He might still look upon the act as sinful, but

he pledged himself to do his best to procure that the sin should be

forgiven. The marriage was at most a breach of a canonical restriction,

and it was not beyond the power of the Apostolic See to heal such a

breach even after the fact. Lanfranc then was to go to Rome, and to

use all the power of his learning and eloquence to obtain from the

Pontiff a dispensation which would make good the marriage which had

been irregularly contracted.[256]

[Sidenote: Negotiations with the Roman Court. 1054?-1059.]

If these transactions between William and Lanfranc took place soon

after the celebration of the marriage, the negotiations with the Roman

Court must have been prolonged indeed. William’s anxiety to keep his

wife would seem to have proved as fertile a source for canonical

disputations as the anxiety of Henry the Eighth to get rid of his. It

is at least certain that the matter was not finally settled till the

Pontificate of Nicolas the Second, the Pontiff who yielded so readily

to the threats of the English Earl Tostig,[257] and who found it

equally expedient to yield to the milder persuasions of the orator of

Pavia. [Sidenote: Succession of Popes. [Victor the Second. 1055–1057.

Stephen the Ninth. 1057–1058. Benedict the Tenth. 1058–1059. Nicolas

the Second. 1059–1061.]] But Nicolas did not ascend the Papal throne

till six years after the marriage ceremony at Eu. It is quite possible

that stern and resolute Popes like Victor the Second and Stephen the

Ninth refused to grant any concession, and it is probable that the

scruples of Lanfranc, perhaps those of William himself, would forbid

any application to the usurper Benedict.[258] But, in any case, Nicolas

granted the required dispensation. Lanfranc visited Rome, both on the

Duke’s errand and on his own. The theological dispute with Berengar

of Tours[259] was still [Sidenote: Second Lateran Council. April 13,

1059.] going on, and in the second Lateran Council, held under the

presidency of Nicolas, the heretic publicly retracted his errors.[260]

Lanfranc was again present as the champion [Sidenote: Lanfranc again

opposes Berengar;] of orthodoxy,[261] and his performances in this way

may well have inclined Pope and Council to listen favourably to his

petitions on other subjects. He pleaded the cause of his [Sidenote:

and pleads for William and Matilda.] sovereign firmly and effectually,

and he seems to have used language nearly as plain-spoken as Tostig

did two years later. William, he argued, was determined not to give

up his wife;[262] the Pope would therefore do well to yield, for

ecclesiastical censures—the interdict is clearly intended—would fall

quite as heavily on the innocent as on the guilty.[263] Another

argument is also put into Lanfranc’s mouth, that the pride of Count

Baldwin would not endure to have his daughter returned on his hands—he

might have added with a second brood of children, and those too of

doubtful legitimacy. War would certainly break out between Normandy and

Flanders, and it was the duty of the common Father of Christendom to

hinder, as far [Sidenote: Nicholas grants the dispensation. Lanfranc

returns to Normandy. 1059–1060.] as in him lay, the shedding of

Christian blood. To these various arguments the mind of Pope Nicolas

yielded. Lanfranc at last returned with the wished-for dispensation

which at last ratified by the highest ecclesiastical authority the

marriage which had been, in ecclesiastical eyes, rashly and irregularly

entered into six years before.[264]

[Sidenote: Condition of the dispensation. Foundation of the two Abbeys

at Caen.]

So great a favour however was not to be granted, except on condition

that the sinners should atone for their fault by worthy works of

penance. The Duke and the Duchess were each to rear and endow a

monastery for religious persons of their respective sexes.[265] Another

account adds that four foundations of still more direct usefulness,

hospitals namely for the sick, blind, and aged, were also to be

established in four of the chief towns of Normandy, at Rouen, Bayeux,

Caen, and Cherbourg.[266] The discharge of the former part of the

Papal command caused the creation of two of the noblest architectural

monuments of the Duchy. The two stately Abbeys of Caen arose as at

once the monument and the atonement of the irregular marriage of

William and Matilda. Each [Sidenote: Character of the buildings.] of

those noble piles retains to this day large portions of the original

work of its founder, and each exhibits a character of its own, a sort

of personality received from [Sidenote: Matilda’s church of the Holy

Trinity.] its founder’s hand. The church of Matilda, the Abbey of

the Holy Trinity, the first to be begun, the last to be brought to

perfection, bears witness, we may say, to the feminine impatience of

the Duchess, to her anxiety not to delay the work of atonement for

her fault. Her church [Sidenote: Its consecration. June 18, 1066.] was

so far completed as to be ready for consecration in the year of the

great crisis of her husband’s life, and its solemn hallowing forms an

incident which will again claim our attention even in the midst of

William’s preparations for the invasion of our island.[267] But the

church then hallowed seems to have been a mere fragment, simply so

much as was necessary for the devotions of the sisterhood; the greater

portion of the present fabric belongs to a somewhat later age. But

enough remains of Matilda’s own work to show that the building was

carried on in the full spirit of her original design. No contrast

between two buildings so nearly alike in plan and style can be more

striking than the contrast between the minster of William and the

[Sidenote: William’s church of Saint Stephen, begun 1064?] minster of

Matilda. William was no more inclined to hurry in this undertaking than

in any other undertaking of his life. His wife hastened to consecrate

a fragment; but William knew how to bide his time as much in a work

[Sidenote: consecrated 1077.] of architecture as in a work of war or

politics. Eleven years later,[268] William and Lanfranc, now promoted

to be the Cæsar and the Pontiff of another world,[269] were present

at the consecration of the great Abbey of Saint Stephen, perfect from

east to west, save only that the addition of [Sidenote: 1086.] the

western towers was a later work, and was probably [Sidenote: Character

of the Conqueror impressed on his building.] celebrated with a second

feast of dedication. And that mighty pile, perhaps the noblest and most

perfect work of its own date, shows us the spirit of the Conqueror

impressed on every stone. The choir has given way to a later creation;

but the nave of William and Lanfranc is still there,[270] precisely

such a nave as we should expect to arise at the bidding of William the

Great. Erected at the moment when the Romanesque of Normandy had cast

aside the earlier leaven of Bernay and Jumièges, and had not yet begun

to develope into the more florid style of Bayeux and Saint Gabriel,

the church of William, vast in scale, bold and simple in its design,

disdaining ornament, but never sinking into rudeness, is indeed a

church worthy of its founder. The minster of Matilda, far richer, even

in its earliest parts, smaller in size, more delicate in workmanship,

has nothing of that simplicity and grandeur of proportion which marks

the work of her husband. The one is the expression in stone of the

imperial will of the conquering Duke; the other breathes the true

spirit of his loving and faithful Duchess.

[Sidenote: Beginning of the foundation of Saint Stephen’s. 1064?]

But, though the completion of William’s minster was delayed till a

much later date, yet, according to the custom of the founders of

monasteries,[271] the society itself, furnished no doubt with a

temporary church and other temporary buildings, was established as

soon as possible after the receipt of the Papal rescript. The monks

of Saint Stephen already dwelt in their suburb beyond the walls of

Caen, and the care of their founder had already given them the most

famous man in his dominions for their ruler. In the same year in

which the sister church was dedicated, in the same year in which

England was invaded, the house was fit for at least the temporary

accommodation of its new ruler. [Sidenote: Lanfranc first Abbot.

June 15, 1066.] Lanfranc, the Prior of Bec, was called to the office

of Abbot of the rising house. It was fitting that the man who had

wrought the reconciliation between the Duke and the Holy See should

receive the dignity which came into being as the fruit and seal of

that reconciliation. Lanfranc long resisted;[272] he had no wish to

encumber himself with the cares and responsibilities of a post which

was designed to hold a high place among the Norman Prelacy. His learned

retirement at Bec was far more to his taste. But the will of Duke

William was not to be withstood, either by those to whom he would give

or by those from whom he would take away. Lanfranc became the first

Abbot of the great [Sidenote: ANSELM, born 1033; Monk of Bec 1060;

Prior 1066? Abbot of Bec 1078; Archbishop of Canterbury 1093–1109.]

house of Saint Stephen. In the office which he vacated at Bec he was

succeeded by one no less renowned than himself. A few years before the

foundation of Saint Stephen’s, another wanderer from the South had

found his way to the holy shelter of Bec, and had become one of the

spiritual household of Abbot Herlwin. Anselm of Aosta, the profoundest

of metaphysicians and divines, the father of all Christian theology

since his time, had heard of the fame of Lanfranc, and he had left his

home and his heritage to sit at his feet as his scholar. He soon, by

the counsel of Lanfranc himself and of Archbishop Maurilius, became

not only his scholar, but his brother in the monastic profession. He

now succeeded him in his office of Prior;[273] he lived to succeed

their common father Herlwin in the abbatial chair of Bec, and at last

to succeed Lanfranc himself on the [Sidenote: Excellence of William’s

ecclesiastical appointments.] throne of Augustine. We have now reached

quite another æra in the history of the Norman Church from that when

Robert and Malger and Odo were thrust into the highest ranks of the

priesthood. Lanfranc, Anselm, Maurilius, the worthiest men of every

land—such were now the chief pastors to whom William, in this at least

a true nursing father, entrusted the care of the spiritual welfare of

his people.

[Sidenote: Happiness of William’s marriage.]

William had thus, after so many troubles and difficulties, won, or

rather wrested, the highest ecclesiastical sanction for the marriage

which he had so dearly at heart. That marriage proved happy and

fruitful. The abiding affection of William and Matilda endured no shock

till, in their later days, a subject of difference between them was

stirred up by the misconduct of their eldest son.[274] That son was the

first-born of a house as numerous, as flourishing, and well [Sidenote:

His sons.] nigh as ill-fated as the House of Godwine himself. Four sons

were born to William and Matilda. Two of them seem to have been born

before the Papal confirmation of their parents’ marriage,[275] but we

do not read that any objection [Sidenote: Robert, b. 1056? d. 1135.] to

their legitimacy was raised on that ground. Of these two, Robert, the

eldest, twice failed of the Crown of England, and ruled Normandy to his

shame and sorrow. Still the bold Crusader, the generous brother, the

chosen friend of the last male of the House of Cerdic, the only one of

his own house who had not the opportunity, perhaps had not the will,

to be a tyrant over England, may perhaps claim some small sympathy

at English hands. The second brother, [Sidenote: Richard, b. 1058?

d. after 1066. William, b. 1060? d. 1100. Henry, b. 1068, d. 1135.]

Richard, was cut off in his youth by that mysterious doom which made

the woods of Hampshire fatal to William’s house. The third, William

the Red, a man of natural powers perhaps hardly inferior to those of

his father, lived to leave behind him a name more detested than any

other name in the dark catalogue of royal oppressors. The fourth was

the mighty Henry, the Lion of Justice, an Englishman so far as birth

on English soil could make him one, the one son of their Conqueror

whom Englishmen recognized as a true Ætheling, the child of a crowned

King and a crowned Lady. In him we see once more, if not the personal

virtues, yet at least the vigorous government, the far-seeing policy,

which became a son of William the Great. Deeply as he was stained with

crimes and vices, it is not without a certain reverence that we look

back to the King in whom the green tree began at last to return to its

place, to him of whom our own Chronicler could say that “a good man was

he and mickle awe was there of him,” and who won for himself a praise

like that of Godwine, of Harold, and of William, the praise that “no

man durst hurt other in his days.”[276]

[Sidenote: William’s daughters.]

Such were the sons of the Conqueror. The names and number of his

daughters are given with such strange variation that I must examine the

different statements more [Sidenote: Adela, wife of Stephen of Blois.]

minutely elsewhere.[277] But among them we see clearly the noble Adela,

through whom the once hostile land of Chartres and Blois became a land

friendly to Normandy, a land [Sidenote: Cecily, Abbess of Caen.] which

gave a King to England. Clearly too we see Cecily, a virgin consecrated

to God from her childhood, dedicated at the altar which her mother had

reared, and where she was herself so long to bear rule over her holy

sisterhood. More [Sidenote: Other daughters, Adeliza, &c.] dimly pass

before our eyes the forms of daughters wedded or betrothed to a Duke

in neighbouring Britanny and to a King in distant Spain. And one there

was to whom a higher honour than all was for a moment offered, the

betrothed for a day of the one man who could bear himself as the born

peer of her mighty father, the bride whose sad betrothal directly led

to all the woes which the warfare of those two master spirits was to

bring upon the land for which they strove.

§ 2. _William’s Wars with France. 1053–1060._

The many points which are suggested by William’s marriage have led us

some years away from our strict [Sidenote: Character of the period.]

chronological order. But the years which were occupied by these

discussions and delays were important and busy years in many ways.

William, still young, was now in the full maturity of mind and body,

and the renown of his exploits was spreading far beyond the bounds

of his own Duchy. But he had still to struggle for its possession

[Sidenote: Rebellions within Normandy supported by Anjou and France.]

against foes both within and without its borders. Faithless vassals

and jealous kinsmen were still constantly rising up against him, nor

did they ever fail to find neighbouring potentates ready to abet them

against their sovereign. The restless enmity of the Angevin never

slept, and now King Henry himself relapsed into that same position of

constantly recurring hostility which had marked the earlier days of

William’s reign. Henry had acted as a good and faithful overlord at

Val-ès-dunes; but William had paid the debt in full by no less good

and faithful service against the King’s enemies. It was indeed in the

King’s cause that he had drawn upon himself the abiding enmity of

the Count of Anjou. But now we see France and Anjou leagued together

against Normandy. Every Norman rebel is aided in his revolt and

sheltered in his exile. Once at least, King and Count pass the Norman

frontier together, but only to feel both the strength of the Norman arm

and the subtlety of the Norman brain. Henry in short plays the part

which he played in the days before Val-ès-dunes, and [Sidenote: France

and Normandy naturally hostile.] he now has the power of Anjou to help

him. The relapse on the King’s part is not wonderful; the real wonder

is that he ever left his course of obvious, though crooked, policy,

in order to act for once as a generous and honourable neighbour and

suzerain. It was only natural that every advance which was made by the

lord of Rouen, whether in the way of external greatness or of internal

prosperity, should be felt by the lord of Paris as [Sidenote: Greatness

of Normandy even in later times.] a blow dealt against himself and his

kingdom. We may perhaps better understand the greatness of Normandy

in the days of its independence, if we look at some of the signs of

the greatness which it retained after two centuries and a half of

subjection, after having long served as the chief battle-ground between

England and France. In the days of Lewis the Eleventh, Normandy,

far from being a third part in extent, was in wealth and importance

a third part of the kingdom into which it had been merged, and it

furnished a third part of the revenue of the Parisian Crown. The great

object of every enemy of the Parisian Kingdom was to wrest Normandy

from its grasp. No blow could be so great as to give even a qualified

independence to the great province which cut off the city which was

the cradle and kernel of the Kingdom from [Sidenote: Its importance in

the English and Burgundian Wars.] all communication with the English

seas. There was no object on which the enemies of France, English

and Burgundian, were more strongly bent, than on the separation of

Normandy from the French Crown. There was no sacrifice which a French

King would not make rather than surrender the noblest province of his

Kingdom. The last [Sidenote: 1421.] dying injunction of the great

English conqueror of France was, at all risks, at all sacrifices, to

keep Normandy in full [Sidenote: 1465.] possession.[278] One main

object of the great Burgundian rival of France was to give Normandy

a Duke of her own,[279] even though that Duke was himself a member

of [Sidenote: Spirit of Norman independence still remaining in the

fifteenth century.] the royal house of France. And, whatever we say of

the wish of the Englishman, the wish of the Burgundian was certainly

met by a strong vein of local feeling in Normandy itself. Even in those

times, Norman patriotism still held that Normandy was too great for

simple incorporation with France, and that so great a Duchy ought not

to be without its Duke.[280] On the other hand, there was no sacrifice

from which French policy so instinctively shrank. Lewis the Eleventh,

who at least knew his own interests, was willing to surrender anything

rather than make that one great sacrifice. He would give up Champagne,

even Aquitaine, far greater in extent than Normandy, anything rather

than the [Sidenote: Independent Normandy threatening to France.]

precious dominion itself.[281] And, if the extended France of the

fifteenth century could so little afford to see Normandy separated from

its body, even though it was to form an appanage of one of its own

princes, how far more threatening must a practically independent, and

often hostile, Normandy have been to the infant France of the eleventh

century, when Champagne and Anjou were the fiefs of princes well

nigh as powerful as their overlord, when Aquitaine was, in all save

a nominal homage, a foreign land? Independent Normandy, flourishing

under its illustrious Duke, was as sharp an eye-sore to Paris as ever

Aigina was to Peiraieus.[282] As he who held Dêmêtrias, Chalkis, and

Akrokorinthos was said to hold the fetters of Greece,[283] so he who

held Eu, Cherbourg, Honfleur, and Rouen, might truly be said to hold

the fetters of royal France.

[Sidenote: Norman rebels constantly supported by France and Anjou.]

The King of the French then, throughout this period, is the

arch-disturber, powerfully helped on occasion by his now loyal vassal

the Count of Anjou. We shall see both of them advance, step by step,

from giving shelter and comfort to Norman rebels to giving them active

help in their warfare, and from giving them active help in their

warfare to formal invasions of the Norman land at the head of their own

armies.

[Sidenote: Revolt of William Busac. 1048–1053?]

The first revolt against William after the war of Domfront and Alençon

is wrapped up in great obscurity. One ancient writer alone records it;

among modern writers, some pass it by unnoticed, while others recount

it with a singular amount of confusion.[284] But there seems reason

to believe that, at the beginning of this period, at some time after

the affair of William of Mortain,[285] the Duke was disturbed by a

revolt of another kinsman of his [Sidenote: The Counts of Eu.] own

name at the other end of his Duchy. Duke Richard the Good had granted

to his half-brother William the castle and county of Eu, the old

border-fortress of Rolf.[286] [Sidenote: Castle of Eu.] That famous

spot, known in modern times as the last home of lawful royalty in

France, was marked by a castle, every trace of which has given way to

a palace of the sixteenth century, but which was long the chief guard

of Normandy towards the frontier of Ponthieu. It was no hill-fort,

like Domfront or, in another way, like Falaise. [Sidenote: The earlier

Norman sites on the coast.] It was a fortress of the older Norman

type, a stronghold of the days when the Normans had not yet cast off

the feelings of the old Wikings, when to command the sea was their

main object, and when princes placed their dwelling-places on points

close to the sea or to some navigable river. Placed on comparatively

low ground, with hills overlooking town and castle on every side, the

fortress of Eu no doubt had its value in the days of Hasting and Rolf.

It immediately commands the flats, in those days no doubt not fully

reclaimed from the sea, which lie skirted by the hills which end in the

cliffs of Tréport. Count William and his wife Lescelina were among the

most lavish benefactors of the Church [Sidenote: Church of Eu founded

for secular Canons, 1002; changed to regulars, 1177.] among the princes

and nobles of Normandy. The church of Eu was built and endowed by Count

William as a foundation of secular canons, which, like so many other

foundations of the same kind, like Waltham in the very same year, was

afterwards changed into an establishment of regulars.[287] Small, if

any, are the traces which remain of the church where the Great William

received his bride;[288] it is to the monastic occupants of Eu that

we owe that stately and soaring pile which needs only fitting towers

to rank among the noblest [Sidenote: Other ecclesiastical foundations

of the family.] minsters of Normandy. Lescelina, the Count’s wife,

who herself in her widowhood took the monastic habit, lives in Norman

ecclesiastical history as the foundress of the Abbey of Saint Peter

on the Dive,[289] whose noble tower forms the most striking object

on the way from the birthplace of the Great William to the place of

his [Sidenote: Sons of William and Lescelina; Robert Count of Eu;]

burial. Two of their sons, the eldest and the youngest, walked in the

steps of their parents. Robert succeeded his father in the County of

Eu; he lived a loyal and honoured subject of Duke William, one of his

chosen counsellors and valiant soldiers, whose name will often occur in

this history alike among the defenders of Normandy and the invaders of

England. He too was bountiful to ecclesiastical foundations, and at his

bidding the Abbey of Tréport[290] arose on the rocks which bound the

view from the now forsaken walks which surround his [Sidenote: Hugh,

Bishop of Lisieux. 1050–1077.] dwelling-place. His younger brother,

Hugh, mounted the episcopal throne of Lisieux. In that office he is

described as showing himself a model of ecclesiastical [Sidenote: His

virtues.] perfection of every kind.[291] Among his other good deeds,

his panegyrist records that, when the synod was held in his own church

for the trial of his kinsman and metropolitan Malger, he preferred the

cause of God to the ties of blood, and was foremost to give his voice

against the son of his uncle.[292] There is no need to doubt the purity

of Hugh’s motives; yet an historian who judged Norman Bishops by a

rule as uncharitable as that by which his panegyrist judges English

Earls might doubt whether it was necessarily a disinterested act when

the Bishop of Lisieux pleaded for the condemnation of the Archbishop

of Rouen. The eldest and the third son of William and Lescelina were

thus memorable and honoured [Sidenote: William Busac.] in their several

walks. Their second son, William, called Busac, has left behind him a

less worthy name. He is [Sidenote: His rebellion.] known in Norman

history only for his rebellion, a rebellion of which the exact cause

and the exact date are alike uncertain. But it is plain that he

asserted a right to the Duchy.[293] This claim must have been made on

much more frivolous grounds than those which had been put forth by some

other pretenders; for, to say nothing of his having an elder brother

living, the birth of his father was as distinctly illegitimate as the

birth of the reigning Duke. William Busac seems to have been at this

time, by what means does not appear, in possession of his brother’s

fortress of Eu, which he made the centre of his revolt. [Sidenote: Duke

William takes Eu.] But he had provoked a foe stronger than himself.

Duke William gathered a force, and besieged and took the fortress of

his great ancestor.[294] He acted with the same politic lenity which,

at this time of his life, he always showed, except when his passions

were specially aroused [Sidenote: William Busac banished. He takes

refuge in France, and receives the County of Soissons. 1058.] in the

way that they had been at Alençon. He merely required his rebellious

kinsman to go into banishment. The castle of Eu was restored to its

lawful owner Count Robert. As for William Busac, he distinctly gained

by his exile. A younger son in Normandy, he became the founder of a

great house in a foreign land. He took shelter in France, where King

Henry received him with all honour, and after a while promoted him to

a splendid marriage and a great fief. He bestowed on the exile the

hand of Adelaide, heiress of Reginald Count of Soissons, sprung from

a younger branch of that house of Vermandois which traced its descent

from the direct and legitimate male line of Charles the Great.[295]

But the direct line of the banished rebel did not flourish. Two sons

succeeded Count William in the possession of Soissons, and the heritage

then passed away into the hands of descendants in the female line.[296]

[Sidenote: Revolt of William Count of Arques. 1053.]

The next revolt against which the Duke had to struggle was of a much

more formidable kind. Of no man could it be more truly said than of

William that his foes were they of his own household. The rebel was

again a kinsman, and the scene of the rebellion was again laid in

those lands beyond Seine which had remained loyal during the revolt

which ended at Val-ès-dunes.[297] William, in short, was destined to

fight for his crown with every branch of his family, and with the men

of every part of his dominions. The kinsman who now revolted was an

uncle, another William, a son of Richard the Good by Papia, a brother

therefore of Archbishop Malger. The legitimacy of his own birth was

perhaps not absolutely beyond doubt,[298] yet we are told that he, like

Guy of Burgundy and others,[299] as the son of a lawful wife,[300]

despised the Bastard of Herleva, [Sidenote: Wide-spread movement] and

asserted his own better right to the Duchy. In this movement against

Duke William many conspirators, both [Sidenote: against the Duke;]

in and out of Normandy, had a share. And at their head stood one,

the highest of all in rank, and now again the [Sidenote: share taken

by King Henry;] foremost in hatred against the prince by whose side

he once had fought, Henry, King of the French. It is also [Sidenote:

perhaps by Archbishop Malger.] quite possible that the Primate of

Normandy himself had a share in his brother’s intrigues. Acts of

distinct treason may thus have been among the causes which led to his

deposition, as well as either neglect of ecclesiastical rule in his

own person or an intemperate zeal for its observance in [Sidenote:

The Duke suspects William of Arques.] the persons of others.[301]

At all events, the Primate’s brother was now strongly, most likely

deservedly, suspected by the [Sidenote: His earlier conduct;] Duke. We

are told that he had been engaged in secret plots ever since William’s

childhood;[302] but it is certain that [Sidenote: his desertion at

Domfront. 1048–1049.] his name has not openly appeared in any of the

conspiracies and revolts which we have thus far had to record. We are

told also that, at the siege of Domfront, he acted something like

the part of a deserter, leaving his post without any [Sidenote: Duke

William occupies the castle of Arques.] leave from his sovereign and

general.[303] On these and on other grounds it was that Duke William,

as a matter of precaution, without as yet interfering with any other

of the rights and possessions of his uncle, took possession of and

garrisoned his castle of Arques.[304]

[Sidenote: Description of Arques: its earlier and later history.]

Arques, the small capital of the district of Talou,[305] plays a part

in warfare both earlier and later than the days with which we are

concerned. Its name is now best known through the victory which was

won in its neighbourhood by Henry of Navarre over the forces of the

League. [Sidenote: 1589.] But Arques had become famous in far earlier

times. In the troubled minority of Richard the Fearless, when King

[Sidenote: 944.] Lewis of Laôn and Count Arnulf of Flanders invaded

the Duchy, the Flemish Count, in marching along the Norman coast, had

been checked by the resistance of the Norman garrison which defended

Arques.[306] The position then contended for was probably the town of

Arques, now sunk to a village, but which was in those days a place of

some importance. As an important position according to earlier Norman

ideas,[307] it became an occasional dwelling-place of the Dukes,

and it was in its neighbourhood that Duke Richard first made the

acquaintance of the famous Gunnor.[308] Arques had also given its name

to a line of Viscounts, themselves descended from another daughter of

the lucky forester, and whose names will be found enrolled [Sidenote:

Duke William grants the County to his Uncle.] among the conquerors

of England.[309] But the County of Arques or Talou had been granted,

seemingly by William himself in the early part of his reign,[310] to

his uncle the son of Papia. Count William now proceeded, after the

[Sidenote: Count William builds the Castle of Arques.] manner of that

time, to secure himself by the erection of a fortress on a new site, a

fortress which is undoubtedly one of the earliest and most important

in the history of Norman military architecture. The castle of Arques,

the work of William’s rebellious uncle and namesake,[311] is one of

the few examples still remaining of the castles which were raised by

the turbulent Norman barons in [Sidenote: The later Norman castles on

heights.] the stormy days of William’s minority.[312] In the stage of

the military art which now opens, the lower ground is forsaken, and

the square donjon is almost always found placed on a height. Such a

position at once added to the strength of the castle in case of attack,

and enabled it to command the surrounding country like an eagle’s

nest perched on a rock. Still, in days before the introduction of

artillery, it was no objection to a site, otherwise convenient, that

it was commanded by ground higher still. It was not till the days of

the English wars that William’s own Falaise had been commanded by the

rock on the opposite side of his maternal beck.[313] An insular or

peninsular site was specially preferred; and this is very [Sidenote:

Position of Arques.] conspicuously seen in the site of the Castle of

Arques. At a distance of about three miles from the haven whose name

of Dieppe is but a slight corruption of the old Teutonic _deeps_, near

the point of junction of the river of the same name with the Eaulne

and with the northern Varenne, a narrow tongue of land immediately

commands the low, and in old times marshy, flats which lie between the

high ground and the sea. The range of hills which ends in the cliffs of

Dieppe rises close to the left; to the right, at a greater distance,

lie the heights covered by the Forest of Arques. These heights are

separated from the peninsular hill by the town of Arques, with its

rich and picturesque church of the latest mediæval work, and by the

battle-ground which made Arques famous in later days. In fact both

Williams, the founder and the Conqueror alike, seem to be eclipsed

even in local memory by the fame of the more modern hero.[314] It was

on the end of this tongue of land that Count William fixed his castle,

the outer wall fencing in the greater part of the peninsula, while the

donjon itself [Sidenote: Strength of the castle.] was placed on the

neck of the isthmus. At Arques no artificial mound was needed; the

sides of the hill are naturally of no slight steepness; but, even on

such a site as this, a Norman castle-builder was not satisfied with

trusting to natural defences only. Between the wall and the slope of

the hill Count William dug a fosse of enormous depth, such a fosse

as may be seen in our own land at Old Sarum. An enemy who scaled the

sides of the hill thus found himself, not under the castle wall, but

on a narrow ledge of ground, a mere pathway in short, with a deep and

wide ditch between himself and the fortress. This gigantic work still

remains; so does the donjon itself, but, stripped as it is of all its

smooth stone and of every fragment of architectural detail, it appears

to the ordinary eye little more than a shapeless mass. The inner gate

and part of the outer wall are perhaps also of the original work;

but the castle received large additions and alterations in very late

times, some of which did not even spare the donjon itself.[315] Still

the site remains untouched, and the huge stern mass of the donjon is

still there, at least more fortunate in its decay than Falaise in its

“restoration.” There is no spot in Normandy on which the true Norman

spirit is more thoroughly impressed.

Such a fortress as this Duke William could not afford to [Sidenote:

Duke William puts a garrison in the castle.] leave in the hands of a

suspected enemy. He therefore, as I have just said, placed a garrison

in the castle of Arques, seemingly thinking that, in so doing, he had

done enough to provide for the safety of that quarter of the Duchy. At

all events he did not think that his personal presence was [Sidenote:

Duke William at Valognes.] needed; for we find him once more in the

distant Côtentin, once more, as before the day of Val-ès-dunes, to be

summoned from his quarters at Valognes[316] by the news of a rebellion

in the land. This time it was not his personal safety that was

threatened, but everything was in jeopardy for which William could deem

it worth while to reign or to [Sidenote: The Duke’s garrison at Arques

betrays the castle to Count William.] live. The garrison which he had

placed on the steep of Arques had proved faithless. Count William had

appeared before the gate of the fortress which he had himself raised;

threats, gifts, promises, solicitations of every kind, had won over

the minds of its unsteady defenders.[317] The Lord of [Sidenote: Count

William openly revolts.] Arques once more stood as master within

his own castle, and now, in reliance on the support of their common

overlord, he openly defied his nephew and immediate sovereign.[318]

The anarchy which had overspread all Normandy in the days of Duke

William’s childhood, now broke forth again, [Sidenote: Ravages of the

rebels.] no less terrible in kind if greatly narrowed in extent. But

it was at least spread over as wide a range as could be commanded

from the Castle of Arques. The hill-fortress became a mere nest of

robbers, by whom every sort of damage was ceaselessly inflicted on the

country around. As ever happened in these wretched conflicts, the blow

fell heaviest on those who were least able to bear it. The goods of

the churches, the crops and cattle of the peasant, the wares of the

travelling merchant, became the prey of Count William and his soldiers.

This kind of excess it was ever the great Duke’s boast, as it was his

highest glory, to put down with all the weight of his hand. We may

well believe his panegyrist when he tells us that it was in answer to

the cry of his suffering people, no less than to avenge the insult

done to his own authority,[319] that William set forth in all haste

[Sidenote: Duke William’s march from Valognes.] from Valognes. He set

forth on a march only less speedy than the headlong ride which had once

borne him across the estuary of the Vire and by the minster and the

mount of the faithful Hubert.[320] No longer alone, he again made his

way across the ford which he had passed on that memorable night, but

now he had no need to slink in by-paths or to fear to present himself

before the gates of any city in his dominions. He pressed on by now

loyal Bayeux, safe under the episcopal care of his brother, or rather

of those who ruled under the name of the youthful Prelate.[321] He

passed by Caen, where the anathema had been spoken against evil-doors

such as those whom he was hastening to chastise.[322] There he made

a feint of going on towards his capital; but he turned his steps to

Pontaudemer, he crossed the Seine at Caudebec, one of the spots where

the ancient speech of the Northman still lives in the local name;[323]

he hastened on by Baons-le-Comte, till he found himself, at the head of

[Sidenote: He reaches Arques with a small company,] six followers only,

at the foot of the hill of Arques.[324] All the rest of the company at

whose head he had set forth from Valognes had broken down on the way

beneath the [Sidenote: and meets a reinforcement from Rouen.] haste

and weariness of that terrible ride. But a reinforcement was already

waiting for him. Some of the Duke’s chiefest and most trusty vassals

had deemed that, in such a moment of peril, there was no need to wait

for formal orders to do the duty of every loyal subject. They had

set forth from Rouen at the head of a troop numbering three hundred

knights, meaning to keep the revolters in check and to hinder the

carrying of any kind of provisions into the rebellious fortress.[325]

But they found the forces gathered in the castle to be so numerous,

and they found the loyalty of some of their own men to be so doubtful,

that, on the second day of their adventure, they made up their minds

to turn home again before the dawn of the next day. Hard by the castle

[Sidenote: William exhorted to delay.] they found the Duke with his

small company. They told him the state of affairs; the disaffection

was greater than he thought; nearly the whole neighbourhood—that is,

we may suppose, the noble portion of its inhabitants—was hostile; it

was dangerous to go on further with so small a force. But the victor

of Val-ès-dunes and Domfront had learned something like confidence

in his star. “The rebels,” said the Duke, “if once they see me face

to face, will [Sidenote: He hastens on; his successful skirmish

before the gates.] never dare to withstand me.”[326] At once, we are

told, he spurred on his horse at full speed. His rebel uncle and his

followers, a greater company than his own, were to be seen on the

steep, returning, it would seem, from a plundering excursion. They

were therefore no doubt disordered and encumbered with booty. The

Duke determined on an instant attack. He followed them up to the only

accessible point of the hill, by the path leading straight to the gate

of the castle. A skirmish followed before the gateway, on the ground

now covered by the later defences of the castle. The defenders of the

fortress gave way before the impetuous charge of the Duke, and it was

only, we are told, through their suddenly shutting the gates that the

quarrel failed to be decided on the very day in which William had come

in sight of the rebel stronghold.

The castle of Arques might possibly have been taken by such a sudden

blow as the Duke had done his best to deal; but he knew well that to

attempt to carry his uncle’s fortress by storm while its defenders were

on their guard was an undertaking which surpassed even his prowess.

Horse and foot could only have pressed up the sides of the peninsula,

probably to fall headlong into the deep chasm which yawned between them

and the outer walls of the castle.[327] Duke William was too wary a

warrior to waste his strength on such attempts as this; moreover, at

this time of his life at least, he had no mind for wanton slaughter,

and he wished for the honour of recovering the castle and subduing the

rebellion without the shedding of Norman blood.[328] A blockade was

therefore [Sidenote: William blockades the castle.] the only course

open to him; Arques was to be another Brionne.[329] The Duke had now

been joined by a large following, counting among them some of the best

knights of Normandy.[330] He could therefore afford to divide his

forces. One party was left to continue the blockade of the castle.

[Sidenote: Walter Giffard commands the blockading party.] Its command

was entrusted to Walter Giffard, a loyal knight of the neighbourhood.

He was a kinsman of William of Arques, that is, not of the rebel Count,

but of the faithful Viscount, and a more distant kinsman of the Duke

himself, both owning a common ancestor in the forester of Equiqueville,

the father of Gunnor and her sisters.[331] The chief who now commanded

below the steep of Arques lived to refuse to bear the banner of

Normandy below the steep of Senlac. He lived to make up for a forced

inaction against rebels in his own land, by dealing blows with all

the remaining strength of his aged arm against men who were fighting

for their homes against an unprovoked invasion. He lived to have his

name written in the great record of the Conquest, and to found, like

so many others among the baronage of Normandy, a short-lived Earldom

in the land which he helped to conquer. The force under Walter now

remained to guard the works which the Duke raised for the blockade

of the castle. A ditch and palisade at the foot of the hill protected

a wooden tower,[332] which was raised, as usual, in order to cut off

the besieged from all communication with the neighbourhood. With the

other party William himself departed, to keep in check some of the more

powerful allies by whom it was likely that supplies or reinforcements

would be furnished to the besieged.[333]

[Sidenote: King Henry abets the rebels.]

At the head of these was King Henry. It would seem that a scruple of

feudal honour made William shrink from meeting his lord face to face in

battle, even though his lord was in the act of committing a breach of

every feudal tie towards a vassal who had fully discharged every feudal

[Sidenote: William’s feudal scruple against meeting the King in arms.]

duty. One reason, we are told, for the Duke’s entrusting the blockade

to others was that the King was known to be marching to the relief of

the castle. Rather than do aught against his oath of homage, William

would run all the risk involved in carrying his own arms elsewhere,

while he left others to head the resistance against the most dangerous

of his foes.[334] And so it happened. The King came and went unhurt

in person, but he was far from [Sidenote: Ambush of the Normans at

Saint Aubin.] being successful in his enterprise. The besiegers laid

an ambush in the way of the French army, near the dwelling of one of

the few men in the County of Talou who remained loyal. The scene of

this stratagem was the castle of Saint Aubin, a point on the Dieppe at

a short [Sidenote: Loyalty of Richard of Hugleville.] distance above

Arques. There dwelt a valiant knight of princely descent, Richard

of Hugleville, a son of Papia, a daughter of Richard the Good. She

had married beyond the limits of Normandy. Her husband was Gulbert,

Advocate of Saint Valery in Ponthieu, a name soon to become so famous

in Norman history. The Ponthevin dignity continued in the elder branch

of the family; but Richard, the second son of Gulbert and Papia, had

received an establishment in the land of Talou, and he now stood firmly

by his cousin the Duke, while nearly the whole of the surrounding

country was hostile.[335] With him no doubt stood his son, the younger

[Sidenote: His son Gulbert.] Gulbert, a man whose name we shall again

greet with honour, one whom Englishmen at least may look on as the

noblest among the chivalry of Normandy.[336] With Richard too stood his

son-in-law Geoffrey, the husband of his daughter Ada, and Geoffrey’s

brother Hugh, the sons of Thurcytel who held the lordship of Neufmarché

by the famous forest of Lions. Of these, Hugh had already fallen in an

earlier [Sidenote: Richard’s son-in-law Geoffrey and his son Bernard

of Newmarch.] skirmish with the rebels of Arques.[337] Geoffrey lived

to be father of one who made himself a name in a remote corner of our

own island. Bernard of Newmarch, the son of Ada the daughter of Richard

of Hugleville, became as terrible an enemy to the central land of the

Cymry, as the son of Hamon Dentatus showed himself to the Cymry of the

southern coasts.[338] His fame still [Sidenote: His priory and castle

at Brecknock.] lives, far away from the forest of Lions and the hill of

Arques, where the minster and the castle of Brecknock look forth on the

vale of the Welsh Axe, and on the mountain rampart which, when Arques

was beleaguered and defended, still guarded the realm of Gruffydd the

son of Rhydderch.[339]

[Sidenote: The French halt at Saint Aubin.]