The affairs of Normandy and Maine have now become directly connected,

and the connexion between the two countries becomes closer at every

moment. The death of Geoffrey seemed to open to Herbert a chance of

recovering the dominions which he had never possessed.[586] The years

during which Le Mans was occupied by Geoffrey had been spent by the

widow and children of Hugh in some part of [Sidenote: Herbert’s three

sisters.] Germany.[587] Besides Herbert, Hugh had three daughters,

whose marriages and betrothals are of no small moment in the history.

One, Gersendis, was first married to Theobald of Chartres.[588] By him

she was divorced, and this divorce [Sidenote: Gersendis, married, 1st,

to Theobald of Chartres; 2nd, to Azo of Liguria.] was one of the many

irregularities in that way which called down the censures of Pope Leo

and the Fathers of Rheims.[589] She then made a more splendid alliance

beyond the Alps. She became the second wife of the famous Azo, Marquess

of Este and Liguria, renowned in his own day for his wealth, his good

fortune, and for attaining, though not till long after the marriage and

the death of Gersendis, the age of a hundred years.[590] By his first

wife Cunegund he became the ancestor of the House of Brunswick, and

the children of Gersendis of Maine produced the long line of Lords,

Marquesses, and Dukes of Ferrara and Modena. How this marriage affected

the history of Maine, of Normandy, and of England, we shall Another

sister mother of Helias of La Flèche. [Sidenote: Another sister mother

of Helias of La Flèche.] see at a later stage. Another sister married

John of La Flèche, and by him became the mother of three sons. One of

them bore the familiar Teutonic name of Gilbert; the two others were

honoured with the patriarchal appellations of Enoch and Elijah, and the

bearer of the last name, under the modified form of Helias or Helie,

plays an important [Sidenote: Margaret.] part in the history of the

next generation.[591] Margaret, the other daughter, who must have been

many years younger than Gersendis, and of whose beauty and virtues

we read rapturous descriptions, was still unmarried.[592] Herbert

now [Sidenote: Herbert applies to Duke William. 1061.] addressed

himself to the Duke of the Normans. William’s own days of trial and

persecution were now over; he had come forth honourably out of all his

difficulties; he had smitten all his enemies at home and abroad; he

was now well fitted to appear either as a protector or as a conqueror.

Moreover he was actually in possession of part of the Cenomannian

County; all his conquests up to this time, Domfront, Ambrières, and the

Rock of Mabel,[593] had been made at what might be called the expense

of Herbert himself. There was no great chance of recovering them from

the prince who had so vigorously clutched the straw at the moment of

his birth,[594] and who in his later days as firmly refused to take

off his clothes before he went to bed. But, at any rate, more might

be gained by way of submission [Sidenote: He _commends_ himself to

William.] than by way of aggression. Herbert therefore _commended_[595]

himself to William; he became his man; he engaged to hold Maine as

a fief of Normandy, according to the ancient grant which Rolf had

received from King Rudolf.[596] Special terms, all favourable to the

lord, were attached to the [Sidenote: Terms of the homage; William to

have Maine, if Herbert died childless, and Margaret to marry Robert.]

homage. If Herbert died childless, Duke William’s lordship was to be

converted into immediate sovereignty; the Duke of the Normans was to

become the Count of the Cenomannians.[597] But, in order that the

principality might still remain to the descendants of its ancient

lords, Herbert’s sister Margaret was to be given in marriage to

William’s young son Robert.[598] William himself would thus be the

only interloper; Robert would reign in right of his wife, and in the

next generation, a descendant, if only in the female line, of Herbert

Wake-Dog would again rule upon the steep of Le Mans.[599]

Whether Herbert ever obtained actual possession of his new fief does

not certainly appear. If he did, his enjoyment [Sidenote: Herbert dies

childless. 1063.] of it was very short. Within two years he died,

and died childless. By the terms of the treaty, Maine now passed to

William. According to Norman accounts, Herbert’s last breath was

spent in asserting the rights of the Norman Duke, and in exhorting

his friends and subjects to seek for no other as their lord. Almost

forestalling the words of the English Chronicler, he warned them that

the yoke of William would be light to those who accepted [Sidenote:

Unwillingness of Maine to submit to William.] it willingly, but heavy

indeed to those who dared to withstand him.[600] But the mass of the

people of city and county were of another mind. They doubted the

lightness of the Norman yoke in any case.[601] And the treaty between

Herbert and William had sacrificed the rights of several members of

Herbert’s family. Herbert had, as he hoped, secured the succession to

the descendants of one of his sisters. But no such descendants were

in being; Robert and Margaret were not married, nor seemingly even

betrothed, at the time of his death. There was therefore no sort of

security that, if William were once admitted, the County would ever

return to the descendants of its ancient lords. Then again, though

Herbert had left no male heir, he had kinsfolk in the female line whose

rights were as good as those of the unborn posterity of Margaret. We

read of no movements at this time on behalf either of the Marquess of

Liguria or of the Lord of La Flèche, the claims of both [Sidenote: The

patriotic party assert the rights of Walter and Biota.] of whom were

pressed in after times. But a strong party, the patriotic party, as it

would seem, throughout the province, asserted the rights of Herbert’s

aunt Biota and of her husband Walter of Mantes, the nephew of Eadward

of England. The city was held for them by several of the chief lords of

the country, among whom we hear specially of Hubert of Saint-Susanna,

and of Geoffrey of Mayenne, of whom we have already heard in the wars

between Anjou and Normandy.[602] The citizens seem to have been on the

same side. Of the Bishop, for once in Cenomannian history, we hear

nothing. The line of Bishops of the fierce house of Belesme had come

to an end, and the line of eminent Prelates appointed under [Sidenote:

Bishop Vulgrin. 1058–1059.] Norman rule had not yet begun. The reigning

Bishop Vulgrin was a good, prudent, and peaceful monk, whose monastic

virtues had been proved by his reform of the Abbey of Saint Sergius

without the walls of Angers,[603] and whose chief object at Le Mans was

to rebuild the church of Saint Julian on a greater scale.[604] In this

revolution then the ecclesiastical power seems to have been neutral,

while nobles and citizens were united for Count Walter and against the

Norman.

[Sidenote: William’s preparations for war.]

A struggle therefore could not be avoided. William was the least likely

of all men tamely to give up either a real or a fancied right, or even

to pass by a decent pretext for extending his power. Maine was to be

conquered. But William was no more disposed to hurry in [Sidenote: His

measures at home.] the business of conquest than in any other business.

He began by healing a few wounds at home. It was now that he called

back from banishment Hugh of Grantmesnil and Ralph of Toesny,[605] men

whose offences were very doubtful, and whose services in the war were

likely to be useful. It was now also that he made that agreement with

Arnold of Escalfoy, by which that turbulent spirit [Sidenote: His plans

for the campaign.] was sent off to the wars in Apulia.[606] The plan of

the campaign was thoroughly characteristic. William saw that the prize

must be his in the long run. Maine alone could not resist Normandy, and

Walter’s chance of finding allies was just now not great. William’s

panegyrist tells us—and we have no reason to doubt the fact—that he

was anxious to win his conquest with the least possible amount of

bloodshed.[607] It was a policy still more obvious to forbear to

destroy or damage a noble city which he designed to be one of the chief

jewels of his coronet. And it was only reasonable military foresight to

avoid the risk of a rash attack on a strong fortress which might be won

in [Sidenote: He determines to harry the country and to keep the attack

on the city for the last.] another way.[608] The city was the main

object; we see throughout that the capital was in a special manner the

head of the province, that Le Mans was Maine in a sense in which Rouen

certainly was not Normandy.[609] The city then was reserved by William

to be the last object of attack. But the city was strongly defended by

Geoffrey of Mayenne, whom Walter had made his chief adviser, and who

seems to have been equally in the confidence of the citizens.[610] A

hasty attack might have seriously jeoparded the success of William’s

plans. His course therefore was to impoverish, and at the same time to

frighten, the besiegers by a systematic harrying of the whole country.

Vineyards, fields, detached houses, were everywhere [Sidenote: The

country gradually subdued.] ravaged; the smaller fortified posts of

the province were taken one by one; garrisons were left wherever they

were called for by the scheme of the campaign;[611] the capital was

left to be devoured the last. This mode of warfare gradually wore out

the patience, as it weakened the resources, of the defenders of the

city. At last, when well nigh every other fortress of Maine had come

into [Sidenote: The city reduced to surrender.] William’s hands,[612]

the citizens were reduced to submit to a surrender, and William found

himself in a position to enter the city at whose possession he had been

so long aiming, as a conquest won without a battle or a siege.

[Sidenote: Position and history of Le Mans.]

The city into which William had now to make his triumphal entry was one

which might have added fresh lustre even to an Imperial diadem. In his

day it was a possession which could hardly be overvalued as a strong

military post, as the centre of a rich and flourishing province, as a

city itself rich and flourishing, according to the standard of those

times. To us it is mainly attractive as a spot on which the history of

a long series of ages, before and after the days of William, is still

legibly written. Le Mans is one of a type of cities which is spread

over a great part of Gaul, but to which England, and even Normandy,

can present but feeble approaches. A steep hill rises abruptly above

the river Sarthe to the west, and somewhat less abruptly above the

lower ground to the east. The ground also falls away in the like

sort to the south, while the hill is continued in the higher ground

to the north, of which it forms the natural termination. The height,

therefore, though washed by the river on one side only, does in effect

assume a sort of peninsular shape. Like most elevated sites of towns,

the rise of the ground is such as would not be remarkable in a hill

whose sides were covered with verdure or forest, but it is quite enough

to make the post strongly defensible, and to make the streets of the

still existing city steep and hard of ascent. [Sidenote: Growth of the

Gaulish hill-fort into the Roman, the mediæval, and the modern city.]

This point, like so many points of the same kind, had, in unrecorded

days, become the site of a Gaulish hill-fort, and the Gaulish hill-fort

had, as usual, grown into a Roman city. The name of the universal

conquerors still dwells there, and the most ancient quarter of the

city is still traditionally known as _La vieille Rome_. The original

Gaulish rampart was, in the later days of the Empire, exchanged, at

the bidding of the great Constantine, for a wall of Roman masonry,

large portions of which still remain. They show how small a part of

the existing town was covered by the famous city of old. The Roman

wall still fences in only the higher ground; the fortifications were

not brought down to the river till Cenomannia had, in the thirteenth

century, been constrained to bow to Paris. Two great monasteries lay,

as usual, without the walls. They were placed at the foot of the hill

on either side, one of them even lay beyond the river. The growth

of the modern city has embraced both, leaving the ancient fortified

circuit as a venerable acropolis, retaining its place even now as

the ecclesiastical and municipal hearth of the city. To the west the

city still presents a stately front to the river. Walls and houses,

the dwellings of priests and citizens, still showing, in their rich

and early work, the importance of both classes in the Cenomannian

state, still rise, stage above stage, up to the highest ridge crowned

[Sidenote: The Palace of the Counts.] by the two dominant buildings of

the city. To the south-east, on the Roman wall itself, incorporating

within itself the very fortifications of the elder Empire, stood, and

still stands, the palace of the ancient rulers, the Hughs [Sidenote:

The Cathedral.] and the Herberts of Cenomannia. In the north-east

corner of the original city, rose the Minster of Saint Julian, the

cathedral church of that famous Bishoprick. That soaring apse, which

the glories even of Beauvais and Amiens can hardly surpass, had not

as yet demanded the sacrifice of that portion of the ancient rampart

which hindered the full developement of the mighty temple. Even the

stately nave, so strangely attached to the later and loftier choir,

itself one of the works in which the builders of the twelfth century

aimed most successfully at reproducing the gorgeous foliage of Rome

and Corinth, had not as yet assumed its present shape. But the earlier

temple out of which it was as it were hewn, whose masonry bespeaks,

not the deliberate imitation, but the immemorial retention of Roman

forms, was a work of William’s age, and its earliest portions were

probably slowly rising at the [Sidenote: William’s “_Joyeuse Entrée_”

at Le Mans.] time of William’s conquest.[613] The stern and massive

portal which still forms its principal approach, may well have been

the one through which the procession swept, which went forth singing

hymns and swinging censers, to welcome the prince who had won the city

without shedding the blood of friend or foe.[614] With equal joy, real

or pretended, men of all ranks in the city went forth to greet the

conqueror; shouts of applause met the ear of William as he entered;

men knelt as he drew near, and hailed the Duke of the Normans as the

lawful lord of Le Mans. [Sidenote: Walter consents to the surrender.]

Walter, putting the best face upon the matter, agreed to the surrender

with apparent willingness. William had neither motive nor temptation

to further harshness. He took peaceful possession of his conquest,

but he took care to guard it after the ordinary fashion of a Norman

conqueror. [Sidenote: William builds a castle near the cathedral.] In

the north-western angle of the city, near the point where William,

advancing from his own Duchy, had doubtless made his triumphal entry,

a Norman donjon now rose in dangerous neighbourhood to the minster

and to the dwelling of its Prelate. So near were the two buildings

that, in later days, the towers which, as at Exeter and Geneva, formed

the finish of the transepts were deemed to be a standing menace to

the royal fortress. Of these towers the reign of William’s immediate

successor has a strange tale to tell.[615] They have however left

more speaking traces behind them than the fortress which was now the

outward trophy of William’s victory. While Le Mans can still boast

such splendid remains of the works both of earlier and of later days,

the politic devastation of the seventeenth century has left only a few

shapeless fragments of wall to bear witness to the former being of the

castle with which the Conqueror sought to curb the lofty spirit of the

city which was as yet his noblest conquest.[616]

[Sidenote: Submission of Walter.]

Le Mans then was won, and with Le Mans the whole Cenomannian land

formally passed into the hand of the conqueror.[617] The rival

pretender to the County had given up his claims, for fear, we are told,

lest in seeking what was another’s he should lose his own. While the

harrying of Maine had been going on, other Norman bands had crossed

another part of the frontier, and had carried havoc through Walter’s

original possessions of Mantes and Chaumont.[618] [Sidenote: Death

of Walter and Biota.] He and his wife soon disappear from the scene.

We have no trustworthy details of their death, but rumour affirmed

[Sidenote: William charged with poisoning them.] that both of them died

by poison. In the mouths of William’s enemies, rumour further added

that the poison was administered to them by William’s order, when they

were his guests in his own castle at Falaise. This is one of those

occasions on which the remark must be again repeated that the charge of

secret poisoning is one which it is easy to bring and hard to disprove.

In this case the charge is certainly not brought home to William by

any direct evidence. It seems indeed to rest on nothing better than

the wild assertions of William’s enemies at a drunken revel.[619]

To stoop to a crime of this kind, which admitted of no defence, and

which could be cloked by no self-delusion, seems to me to be quite

inconsistent with a character like William’s, in which, among all its

darker features, a certain regard to the first principles of morality,

a distinct element of the fear of God, was never wholly wanting. I

venture therefore to dismiss the tale as simply part of that stock of

uncertified scandal of which William’s age was so fruitful.

[Sidenote: Geoffrey of Mayenne still holds out.]

One enemy had however still to be brought into subjection before

William could boast that he was undisputed master of the whole

Cenomannian land. Geoffrey of Mayenne, the brave defender of Le Mans,

seems to have refused to have any share in the surrender of the city;

he had withdrawn so as not to be a witness of William’s triumphal

entry; he had been often summoned, but he had neglected every summons,

to appear and do a vassal’s duty to his new sovereign.[620] Such an

enemy was one of whom it was manifestly fitting to make an example.

Call him rebel or patriot as we will, Geoffrey of Mayenne was the sort

of man with whom it did not suit William’s purposes to put up with

for a moment. If the Duke knew when to delay, he also knew when to

hasten. He had won Le Mans without a blow; he had gained his point

more easily by bringing a gradual process of terror and distress to

bear on the minds of its defenders. No such process would answer

with a single determined enemy. It was for the new Lord of Maine to

show, once for all, that no man in his [Sidenote: William besieges

Mayenne. 1063.] new dominion could resist him with impunity. The Duke

therefore led his forces at once against Geoffrey’s town and fortress

of Mayenne.[621] The castle was strong, and men deemed an assault to

be an hazardous undertaking.[622] But the prince to whom Domfront and

Alençon and Arques had yielded, who had himself carried the bulwarks

of his own Falaise by sheer strength of onslaught,[623] was not to

be baffled by works which were at least not stronger than [Sidenote:

Description of the place.] those of so many famous fortresses. The

position of the castle of Mayenne is one which bears more likeness to

that of Alençon[624] than to that of Falaise or Domfront. It is no

Gaulish hill-fortress which has grown by degrees into a Roman and into

a modern city. The town of Mayenne stands on both sides of the river

from which it takes its name, a river of far greater width than the

maternal beck at Falaise or even than the Varenne at Domfront. It may

well be that the light craft of the Northmen, who so long harassed the

shores and islands of the Loire and its tributaries, may have made

their way even to this inland post. At all events, the main point in

the fortification of Mayenne was to secure the river. The town covers

the steep slopes on either side, and the right[625] bank of the stream

still washes the walls of the castle. No buildings now remain which can

have witnessed the wars of William and Geoffrey, but the later castle

evidently occupies the ancient site. A noble range of bastions rising

above the stream, a miniature as it were of the mighty pile of dark

and frowning Angers, contrasts well with the steep and narrow streets

of the town itself, with the varied and eccentric outline of the great

church of Our Lady, and with the thick woods which still overshadow the

river close up to the buildings of the town. The greater part of the

modern town lies on the right bank, and in William’s time, when Mayenne

was less a town than a military post, it was doubtless this part alone,

as in the elder Angers, that was encompassed by a wall.[626] But the

date of the church of Saint Martin beyond the river shows that, as at

Angers, the opposite shore must, at this time, or soon after, have

become the site of a populous suburb. To a modern and non-military eye,

the site of Mayenne, which could easily be commanded from the higher

ground above, does not seem so formidable as that of other places which

had yielded to William’s arms; but it must be remembered that, before

the invention of cannon, a fortress did not suffer as it now does by

being open to the missiles of the enemy. No more striking instance

of this difference can be found than in the long resistance which

William himself met with before the river fortress of Brionne.[627]

At all events, Mayenne is spoken of as a post well defended by the

river on one side and by both nature and art on the other, and which

was looked on as almost hopeless to carry by [Sidenote: Difficulties

of the siege.] assault. Horse and foot, lances, swords, and arrows,

the ram and the catapult themselves, were all, we are told, deemed

useless.[628] Famine alone could be looked to for the reduction of the

impregnable fortress.[629] One only hope of [Sidenote: The Normans fire

the town.] immediate success presented itself. Fire at least was at

hand, and fire was a weapon with which the Normans were always ready.

By the Duke’s order, flaming materials of some sort were hurled over

the walls of the town.[630] As ever happened among the wooden houses

of those times, the flames spread fast, and did their work fully as

well as the sword.[631] The defenders of the town walls and town gates

left their posts to rescue, as far as might be, their own houses and

goods. The Normans rushed in with a loud and joyful shout. The spoils

were abundant; horses, arms, household stuff of every kind, were

found in plenty. And all was, by [Sidenote: The castle surrenders.

Probable absence of Geoffrey.] the liberality of the Duke, given up

to his soldiers.[632] The town was thus taken, and the next day the

castle surrendered.[633] This speedy surrender, as well as some other

expressions of our historian, might lead us to think that Geoffrey

himself was not present in person.[634] Of his [Sidenote: His later

history. 1073–1098.] immediate fate we hear nothing; but, thirty years

later, either himself, or perhaps a son of the same name, again played

an important part in Cenomannian history.[635] The town was restored by

William;[636] a garrison was left in the castle; the Duke and his army

went home rejoicing,[637] and the few who still ventured to hold up

their heads against him within his new dominions soon submitted.[638]

[Sidenote: Succession of deaths in the House of Maine.]

The fate of one person has still to be spoken of. The house of the

Counts of Maine might seem to have lain under a ban of fate. Herbert,

Walter, Biota, had all been swept away.[639] It may strengthen the

belief that William had no hand in their removal when we find that they

were soon followed to the grave by a member of the same house whom

William had no possible motive to destroy, but rather every possible

motive to keep alive. Herbert had died before the marriage of his

sister with the Duke’s [Sidenote: Margaret brought from Germany.]

son could be carried out. William now sent for her from her German

shelter, meaning to bring her up in his own land as the bride of its

future sovereign. On account of her youth, the actual marriage was put

off for a while, and the fair and pious Margaret was entrusted to the

care of discreet persons of both sexes.[640] Before the time for the

[Sidenote: Her death.] marriage came, the bride was no more.[641] The

tale is told of her, as it is told of one of William’s own daughters,

that she shrank from the prospect of an earthly bridegroom, and prayed

to be released from so hard a necessity.[642] After her death, as in

the case of so many saints, a hair-shirt was found on her, with which,

young as she was, she had already learned to bring the flesh into

subjection.[643] The body thus early inured to austerity found its last

home in the minster of Fécamp, which, along with other churches of her

adopted country, she had already learned to love and honour.[644]

[Sidenote: Importance of the conquest of Maine; its connexion with the

conquest of England.]

The conquest of Maine is one of the most important events in the life

of William. It stands second only to the Conquest of England. It was

in truth William’s first great appearance in the character of the

Conqueror, it was a sort of prelude to the still greater work which

he had to do beyond the sea. The two events indeed have a direct

connexion. William’s rival for the possession of Maine was, if not

an English Ætheling, yet the grandson of an English King, a possible,

though not a likely, competitor for the English Crown.[645] But the

conquest of Maine connects itself with the conquest of England in a

more instructive way than through the fact that Walter of Mantes was

the son of a daughter of Æthelred. The [Sidenote: Analogies between

the two.] circumstances of the two conquests are strangely alike, and

the earlier and lesser success may well have served both as a happy

omen and as an actual school for the later and greater enterprise. In

each case, William took possession of a land, at once against the will

of its inhabitants, and to the prejudice of members of the reigning

family. In each case, William trampled alike on hereditary right and

on popular election. But in neither ease was it the mere brute force

of the sword which he opposed to them. Those wonderful arts by which

he deceived others, by which he most likely deceived even himself, in

the matter of England, were practised with almost equal skill, though

in a narrower field, in the matter of Maine. In the case of Maine,

as in the case of England, William contrived to give his claims an

aspect of strict legality. In both cases he could allege a bequest of

a reigning sovereign; in both cases he could allege an act of homage

done by a rival: in both cases a marriage, which in neither case ever

took effect, was designed to connect William’s house with the house of

the rival who thus became his vassal. The circumstances indeed differed

in the two stories; the parts in the two dramas were differently

arranged. In the Cenomannian version, the bequest of Eadward and the

homage of Harold are both united in the person of Herbert. The part

of Harold is therefore divided between Herbert and Walter, or rather

between Herbert and the valiant Geoffrey of Mayenne. Such differences

will always occur, for no events in history exactly reproduce one

another. But in each story we see the bequest, the commendation, the

intended marriage. In each the conquest is made to take the shape

of a legal claim, which is unavoidably backed by force. In each the

conqueror contrives to be received with at least the outward consent

of the conquered. The two stories are so like one another that we may

be sure that the likeness was present to the keen and busy mind of

the hero of both. While winning Maine, William was, beyond all doubt,

planning how he might win England. He was feeling his way; he was

learning his trade; he was practising his prentice hand in the great

arts of diplomacy and invasion. It is therefore not only the mere

probable chronological sequence, but a close connexion in the subjects

themselves, which leads us directly from William’s Cenomannian conquest

to the subject of the last section of the Chapter, to the visit of Earl

Harold to the Norman Court, and to the memorable oath, whatever was its

exact nature, which he is alleged to have plighted to the Norman Duke.

§ 4. _The Visit of Harold and the Breton War. 1064?_

[Sidenote: Position of William and Harold.]

The time was now come for the two born leaders of men around whose

career our whole history gathers to meet face to face. As yet, for a

little while, their meeting was to be friendly; but in that friendly

meeting the seeds were sown of their last meeting on the battle-field.

The Duke of the Normans and the Earl of the West-Saxons were now each

of them at the height of his glory. The most famous exploits of each

had happened within a single year. About the time that William had

been receiving the submission of Le Mans and Mayenne, Harold had been

waging his great campaign against the Welsh, and, if he had not been

winning crowns for himself, he had been disposing of crowns to others

and [Sidenote: William and Harold at the moment the two first men in

Western Europe.] receiving the homage of their wearers.[646] It is not

too much to say that, at that moment, William and Harold were the two

foremost men of Western Europe. The great Emperor was gone; the great

Pope had not yet risen on the world, though Hildebrand the Archdeacon

had already begun to guide the policy of the Court of which he was

before long to be the avowed as well as the virtual ruler. Among

Western crowns, those of France and Germany were worn by children;

on what brow the Crown of England rested I need not again set forth.

Kings of greater renown than Eadward or Philip reigned in Northern

Europe; but the persevering prudence of Swend, the knight-errantry of

Harold Hardrada, can hardly be put on a level with the union of every

kingly gift alike in the great Englishman and in the great Norman. Few

words are needed to show how far, in Gaul and in Britain respectively,

the great Duke and the great Earl outshone the sovereigns to whom the

accident of birth had given the right to claim the vassal’s homage

from the one and the subject’s duty from the other. Among princes not

bearing the royal title, Baldwin, Count of Flanders and Regent of

France, could alone be compared with them in power. But no one would

bring his personal character and personal exploits into rivalry with

those of the renowned rulers of Normandy and Wessex. Harold and William

then were the first men in Western Christendom, the one the first

in continental lands, the other the first within the Island Empire.

[Sidenote: The rivalry between them as yet not avowed.] Nothing had as

yet happened to make either the avowed enemy of the other, and two such

men must have looked admiringly on each other’s great deeds. Yet each

must have looked on the other as a lion in his path; both were already

aiming at the same prize, and each must have known that that prize

was not likely to be won without [Sidenote: Their meeting. Question

whether it was their first meeting.] a struggle with a worthy rival.

It is a striking episode in our story when these two mighty men, so

soon to be the deadliest of enemies, could meet yet once, as host and

guest, in peace and friendship. Whether they had before seen each other

is uncertain. They had not met on English ground, for at the time of

William’s visit to Eadward, Harold, I need not say, was a banished man

in Ireland. Whether they met on Norman ground in the course of Harold’s

earlier continental journey we have no certain evidence. If they had

met at any earlier moment, their earlier meeting no doubt taught each

of them what manner of man he had to deal with in the other. But in no

case had that earlier meeting any such direct results on the events of

our history as those which sprang out of the strange accident which now

for a while made Earl Harold the guest, the friend, the companion in

arms, of the Norman Duke.

[Sidenote: Contradictory nature of the different stories.]

I have said a strange accident, because, among all the various

statements which are handed down to us as to the occasion of Harold’s

visit to Normandy and his alleged oath to William, I am inclined to

prefer that version which represents his presence in Normandy as

being wholly the result of chance. I need hardly say that there is no

portion of our history, perhaps no portion of any history, which is

more entangled in the mazes of contradictory, and often impossible,

statements than that on which we are now entering. I have already

touched incidentally on the [Sidenote: Probable groundwork of truth.]

subject in an earlier Chapter.[647] I there said that, with regard both

to the alleged bequest of Eadward to William and to the alleged oath of

Harold to William, I could not but hold that there is some groundwork

of truth in both stories. I held that the absolute silence of the

contemporary English writers told, under the circumstances, in favour

of a bequest of some kind and an oath of some kind. But the details,

as I there said, are told with such an amount of contradiction, many

of the statements are so manifestly impossible, it is so hard to fix

the date of the event or to piece it on in any way to the undoubted

facts of the history, that we can hardly admit anything as certain

beyond these bare facts of a bequest of some kind and an oath of some

kind. As for the bequest, I trust that I have shown[648] that the

groundwork of William’s claim as testamentary successor to Eadward

was, in all probability, a promise of the succession, or at least a

promise of a royal recommendation to the Witan, [Sidenote: 1051.] made

by Eadward to William at the time of the Duke’s visit to England. I

trust that I have also shown that that promise was set aside by later

arrangements in favour, first of the Ætheling Eadward, and then of

Earl Harold.[649] [Sidenote: Connexion between the bequest of Eadward

and the oath of Harold.] With regard to the oath, it is, in the Norman

accounts, inextricably mixed up with the bequest. In one version Harold

is actually represented as being sent into Normandy to announce the

devise of the Crown in favour of William. In all the received versions

the intentions of Eadward in favour of his Norman kinsman are taken for

granted as the ground on which the oath is demanded. The two questions

then must be discussed together. As usual, I shall discuss them at

large in another part of this volume.[650] I shall here do little more

than tell the tale itself, in that shape in which it seems to me to

have least of improbability about it. But, as I before said, I can

look upon nothing in the whole story as absolutely certain, except

that Harold made some engagement or other, which was capable of being

construed as an admission of William’s claim to the Crown, and which

made his own later acceptance of the Crown capable of being represented

as an act of perjury.

[Sidenote: Three different versions; 1. Harold sent by Eadward to

announce the devise of the Crown in favour of William.]

There are three chief statements as to the causes which took Harold

into Normandy. According to a version which I have already mentioned,

Eadward, perhaps after the death of the Ætheling, determined to make

William his heir. He therefore sent Harold over to announce his

intention to the Norman Duke, and to confirm the appointment by an oath

in his own person. This account I believe to be absolutely fabulous.

According to another [Sidenote: 2. Harold goes to reclaim the hostages

given by Godwine in 1052.] account, Godwine, on his reconciliation

with Eadward, gave hostages to the King for his good behaviour, in the

persons of his youngest son Wulfnoth and his grandson Hakon the son

of Swegen. These hostages were given by the King to the safe keeping

of the Duke of the Normans. Now that years had rolled by, now that

Godwine was dead, now that Eadward was, as this version of the story

implies, on perfectly good and confidential terms with Godwine’s

successor Harold, there no longer seemed any reason why a brother and a

nephew of the first man in England should linger any longer in foreign

banishment. Harold therefore asks the King’s leave to go to the Court

of William and ask for their release. The King warns his brother-in-law

against so perilous an adventure; he knew William well, and some harm

was sure to happen to Harold, if he trusted himself in his power. The

impetuous spirit of the Earl refuses to hearken to the warnings of the

Saint. He wrings an unwilling permission from the King, and goes on his

errand. He is entrapped into an oath binding him in the fullest way to

support William’s claims. He returns to England to receive much more

of sorrowful reproof and warning from the King who had foreseen the

future so much more clearly than himself.[651]

[Sidenote: The first story a mere invention; the second contains a

certain groundwork of fact. Both stories assume Harold’s

loyalty to Eadward.]

This tale I do not believe any more than the other, but it apparently

differs from it as not being pure invention, but as being grounded on

a certain basis of fact. Both stories, it will be observed, assume

the loyalty of Harold and the confidence placed in him by Eadward,

and they thereby at once contradict those other Norman statements

which describe Harold as acting with insolence to Eadward, and Eadward

as being afraid of Harold’s power.[652] The former story indeed, by

representing Harold as sent to announce and confirm Eadward’s choice,

implies that Harold had himself no designs on the Crown, or, at all

events, that Eadward had no suspicion that he had any. But the second

story distinctly implies that, at the time of the journey, Eadward had

no intentions in favour of William, perhaps that he had intentions

in favour of Harold. This version therefore comes nearer to the true

state of the case than the other. With regard to the hostages, I do

not believe the tale, but I still suspect that some small amount of

truth lurks under it. No English account of the restoration of Godwine

mentions that he gave hostages to the King, still less that any such

hostages were entrusted to the keeping of Duke William. Such [Sidenote:

Improbability of the story of the hostages; its origin.] a story is

most improbable in itself, and it distinctly contradicts the real facts

of the case. Hostages were given and exchanged many times in the course

of the banishment and return of Godwine, once indeed so late as the

day of his return, the day before the famous Mickle Gemót.[653] But

this was because matters were still under debate, and, when hostages

were given, they were given on both sides. When the controversy was

over, when Godwine was fully restored to his old honours, there was no

longer any need or any room for hostages. At such a moment as that,

when Godwine’s family and the whole patriotic party were in the full

swing of triumph, when decrees were being passed for their restoration

to all their honours, when other decrees were pronouncing banishment

against the leaders of the Norman faction, when every road was thronged

with Norman knights and priests fleeing for their lives,—at such a

moment as this, it is utterly inconceivable that two members of the

House of Godwine, a son and a grandson of the great Earl, should have

been sent off into what would be in truth captivity, however honourable

captivity, at the Norman Court. Nothing short of the express authority

of the English Chronicles could make us accept a statement so utterly

incredible. And instead of being supported by their authority, it is

implicitly contradicted by it. The banishment of Wulfnoth and Hakon

is manifestly inconsistent with the statement that all the members of

Godwine’s family were restored to what they had before held.[654] I

therefore altogether disbelieve in the story of the hostages. But I

think that it may not be difficult to trace its origin, which I shall

accordingly attempt to do elsewhere.[655] [Sidenote: Third story;

Harold’s presence in Normandy accidental, through stress of weather.] I

accept then the third version, according to which Harold’s presence in

Normandy was purely accidental. According to this account, he was not

going to William’s court, either on the King’s errand or on his own.

He was sailing elsewhere, to Wales or to Flanders, or simply taking

his pleasure in the Channel. I am inclined to think that this last was

really the case, and I further suspect that he was accompanied on his

pleasure-trip by [Sidenote: Possible presence of other members of his

family.] some of the younger members of his family, by his brother

Wulfnoth, his nephew Hakon, and possibly his sister Ælfgifu.[656]

At all events, the Earl set forth at the head of a considerable

company, enough to fill three of the vessels of the time,[657] and

he went accompanied by dogs and hawks, ready to enjoy the sports

of the field at any points [Sidenote: They set sail at Bosham.] at

which they might land.[658] The place of embarcation was close by the

favourite South-Saxon abode of Godwine and Harold, the land-locked

haven of Bosham.[659] The contemporary record sets them before our

eyes as first paying their devotions in that venerable church which

still remains as one of the living witnesses of their age,[660] and

then as feasting in the Earl’s hall, before their temporary farewell

to their native land.[661] As for their voyage, nearly all accounts

agree that, whatever was their original destination, [Sidenote: They

are driven by a storm to the coast of Ponthieu.] Harold’s ships were

driven by stress of weather to the coast of Ponthieu. They were there

in the dominions of Count Guy, who, since the slaughter of Mortemer,

had become, first the prisoner, and then the vassal, of William.[662]

Guy, like the [Sidenote: The right of _Wreck_. Barbarous treatment of

shipwrecked persons.] princes and inhabitants of various parts of Gaul,

exercised the right of wreck in all its fulness. Their barbarous and

unchristian practice on this head is strongly and justly denounced by

the panegyrist of William.[663] The shipwrecked man, instead of being

looked on as an object of humanity and Christian charity, was looked on

as a wretch forsaken of God and man, who became the lawful spoil of

the lord into whose hands he was thrown. Indeed the words used might

almost be taken as meaning that they were not even satisfied with

those unfortunates whom accident threw in their way. Fraud of some

kind, false lights or the like, would seem to have been used to entrap

the unwary.[664] And woeful indeed was the doom of the unlucky wretch

who fell into their hands. Imprisonment was his usual fate, and to

imprisonment torture was often added. The higher and more illustrious

the victim, the harder was his doom, as from such captives more might

be wrung in the way of ransom than could be gained from meaner men.

Such was now the fate which threatened the foremost man [Sidenote:

Harold betrayed to Guy of Ponthieu and seized by him.] of England, the

brother-in-law of its King. A fisherman, we are told, who frequented

the English coast, knew the person of the Earl of the West-Saxons. He

hastened to Count Guy; for twenty pounds he would show him a captive

who would gladly pay a hundred pounds for his ransom.[665] The Count

rode in person to the coast, and the [Sidenote: He is imprisoned at

Beaurain.] English Earl was seized in his presence.[666] Harold was

now kept in prison, perhaps actually in fetters,[667] not, as has

been sometimes thought, on the sea-shore at Saint Valery, but in the

inland fortress of Beaurain near Hesdin.[668] Some [Sidenote: He sends

a message to William.] however of the party contrived to escape; an

Englishman, charged with a message from Earl Harold, made his way to

the palace of Rouen and to the presence of William. The messenger knelt

before the Duke, and told him the tale of wrong, how the great English

Earl, without any offence on his part, had been seized by a vassal of

Normandy, and was at that moment held in bonds at Beaurain.[669] We

can well understand the mingled feelings of William on hearing such

a piece of news. The nobler elements of his nature would sincerely

abhor the base act of Guy; but his crafty policy would at once discern

how great and manifold were the advantages which he [Sidenote:

William’s interest in the matter.] might draw out of the crime of his

vassal.[670] His rival, not yet his open enemy, was thrown into his

hands by an accident which made generosity at once the surest policy.

No greater good fortune could befall William than that which made

him the benefactor, the liberator, of Harold. He might disarm him by

benefits; he might win him over by cajolery; he might entrap him into

some engagement, which might be craftily represented as binding the

English Earl to something which he had himself perhaps never dreamed

of. He could, in any case, establish a claim upon his gratitude; he

might perhaps establish a claim upon his honour. Whatever course

events might take, some gain, greater or smaller, could hardly fail to

accrue to William. His course therefore was clear; Harold was to be

set free at any cost. [Sidenote: He sends to Guy and demands Harold’s

enlargement.] Messengers were sent, bidden to hasten to Beaurain with

the full speed of Norman horsemanship.[671] They were to ask in the

Duke’s name for the enlargement of the illustrious captive; they were,

if it proved needful, to demand it with threats.[672] Guy, himself

for two years the captive of William, had no mind to bring on himself

the wrath [Sidenote: Guy brings Harold to William at Eu.] of his new

overlord a second time. He put the best face on the matter;[673]

the Earl was at once released from prison, and Guy and Harold rode

together, hawk on hand, to meet Duke William. The Duke had by this time

reached the border fortress of Eu, the castle of the brave and loyal

Count Robert.[674] Instead of being the prisoner of Guy, [Sidenote:

William’s rewards to Guy.] Harold was now the guest of William. The

prompt obedience of the Count of Ponthieu to the bidding of the Duke

was rewarded with fitting thanks, with money—no doubt to the amount of

Harold’s ransom—and moreover with a large and goodly grant of lands by

the banks of the Eaulne.[675] The price was a heavy one, but it was a

price which William could well afford to pay for the great advantage

which a freak of fortune had thus unexpectedly thrown into his hands.

[Sidenote: Harold’s splendid reception at Rouen.]

Harold was now the honoured guest of William. The Duke of the English,

as he appeared in Norman eyes,[676] accompanied his Norman brother

to his palace at Rouen.[677] There he was entertained with martial

exercises;[678] he received every mark of respect which was due to so

illustrious a visitor; he was admitted to the closest intimacy with

the Duke and his family. One writer, whose minute knowledge of the

subject is a little startling, tells us that William used always to go

to bed early, and to leave [Sidenote: Blandishments of Matilda.] Harold

conversing with Matilda to a later hour.[679] The winning graces of

the Duchess are said to have had no small share in gaining the consent

of the English Earl to one part of the engagement which was to be

presently [Sidenote: Doubtful date of the events, but before Harold’s

marriage with Ealdgyth.] required of him. The date of these events, I

need not say, is one of the most puzzling features of the whole story,

and it is impossible to do more than approach it by conjecture.[680]

But, if there be any truth at all in the tale, it must have taken

place before Harold’s marriage with Ealdgyth, itself [Sidenote: Harold

engages to marry a daughter of William.] an event whose date is not a

little doubtful.[681] One feature in Harold’s engagement, one which

is insisted on in every account save one,[682] and one which in many

accounts is made the most prominent of all, is his promise to marry a

daughter of William. The daughters of William and Matilda were still

quite children, while Harold was older than their father;[683] yet we

are told that the renown and lofty bearing of the English Earl made so

deep an impression on the heart of one of them, that, when she found

herself forsaken by Harold, she shrank from the thought of another,

even a royal, bridegroom.[684] Whatever we may think of this tale,

it can hardly be doubted that Harold allowed himself to be entangled

into some engagement of the kind. Such engagements were often lightly

entered into, without much serious thought of their accomplishment.

And, in the case of an engagement between Harold and a daughter of

William, mere difference of age would [Sidenote: Harold’s sister

[Ælfgifu?] to be married to a Norman.] make the chances rather against

its fulfilment. At the same time, we are told, it was arranged that

Harold’s sister—that is, doubtless, Ælfgifu, who was perhaps then

present at Rouen—should be given in marriage to a Norman noble.[685]

Harold, in short, seems to have been for a while altogether fascinated

by the splendid reception which he had met [Sidenote: Harold receives

knighthood from William, and joins in an expedition against Britanny.]

with at the Norman court. He even agreed, like Jehoshaphat on his visit

to Ahab, to accompany William in an expedition which he was preparing

against the Bretons, and, either before setting forth or after his

return, he allowed himself to receive knighthood after the Norman

fashion from the Duke’s hand.[686] It is not hard to understand how

Harold may have been beguiled into these certainly unwise compliances.

He may well have been dazzled by finding himself an object of the

highest honour at the court of the most renowned sovereign in Europe.

And he undoubtedly owed William a debt of solid gratitude [Sidenote:

Influences brought to bear on Harold’s mind.] for his deliverance from

Guy’s dungeon at Beaurain. We can understand too the arts by which

William might entrap the conqueror of Gruffydd into taking a share

in warfare against an enemy of the same race. An expedition against

the continental Briton might be pressed in the most flattering and

attractive shapes upon the man who had been the first to show how the

insular Briton might be effectually subdued. Gratitude, curiosity,

love of adventure, personal and national ambition, a half laudable

desire to display the might of Harold and of England in the eyes of

Norman comrades,[687] would all work upon his mind. All these motives

would unite to lead him to waste time among the fascinations, peaceful

and warlike, offered him by his Norman sojourn, time which would

undoubtedly have been more wisely spent within his own island and his

own Earldom. A speedy return to England was Harold’s wisest policy.

But a speedy return would have been uncourteous, [Sidenote: Harold

practically a prisoner.] perhaps impossible. Harold was, after all, in

William’s power. The palace of Rouen differed in every external aspect

from the dungeon of Beaurain. But Harold was perhaps hardly more of a

free agent in the hands of William than he had been in the hands of

Guy. His fetters were gilded, but he was still in fetters. The guest of

William was practically his prisoner; nay, unless Harold walked warily

on such dangerous ground, he might, like the guests of Geoffrey of

Anjou, exchange the hall of the ducal palace for its prison-house.

[Sidenote: The Breton war; uncertainty of our accounts.]

Of the Breton war in which Harold was thus induced to take a share, it

is very hard to make out anything at all clearly. I can find nothing

to throw any light upon it in the Breton or Angevin chronicles, and

the Norman accounts are anything but satisfactory or coherent.[688]

The [Sidenote: Conan Count of the Bretons. 1040–1066.] reigning Count

Conan, son of that Alan who had acted so faithfully as William’s

guardian,[689] was a kinsman of the Duke’s, each of them owning a

common ancestor in Richard the Fearless.[690] It will be remembered

that, in the days of William’s childhood, Alan had been looked upon

as a possible competitor for the succession of Duke Robert;[691] but

we have hardly heard of him during the later years of [Sidenote: His

relations to his uncle Odo.] William. We have seen his uncle and

guardian Odo acting against William in the campaign which followed

the rout of Mortemer.[692] But Odo had been, since that [Sidenote:

1056.] time, seized and imprisoned by his nephew Conan,[693] and a

war had since gone on between the Count and Odo’s son, Hoel Count of

Nantes. That war however seems to have come to an end before the time

which seems the least [Sidenote: 1062.] improbable date for the joint

expedition of William and Harold.[694] The Norman account represents

Conan as rising in rebellion against William, whose somewhat antiquated

suzerain rights are set forth in the strongest language.[695]

[Sidenote: A Breton party said to be favourable to Normandy.] But

it also implies that some at least of the Breton chieftains took the

Norman side against Conan. Conan is further described as being aided

by Geoffrey of Anjou, no longer of course the famous Martel, but his

less terrible nephew, [Sidenote: Alleged alliance between Britanny and

Anjou.] Geoffrey the Bearded.[696] Here again I am unable to confirm

the Norman account by any statement to the same effect elsewhere. In

fact, the narrative of this campaign, which one would have thought

there was no temptation to falsify, is every whit as puzzling as those

parts of the story which one may conceive as being misrepresented to

the prejudice of Harold.

[Sidenote: Norman accounts of Breton manners.]

The panegyrist of William takes this opportunity of setting forth in

strong terms the formidable nature of a Breton war, as well as the

barbarism and wickedness of the Breton people. Of this subject we

have heard something already from other sources.[697] The land was

populous, a fact which is oddly attributed to the polygamous habits of

the people. One man had, like the ancient Moors, ten wives or more,

and became the father of fifty children.[698] That such an arrangement

must have doomed nine men or more to celibacy, and could therefore be

hardly looked on as on the whole conducive to population, does not

seem to have occurred to the Norman Archdeacon. The land, we are told,

was fertile in pasture; it produced vast herds of cattle of all kinds;

but tillage was hardly known. Milk—and, one may presume, flesh also—was

the chief diet of the people; bread was a rarity.[699] Delighting

in warfare, the Bretons were no mean adversaries, even for Normans;

terrible in the attack, they were used to conquer, and with difficulty

brought themselves to retreat.[700] Their intervals of peace were spent

in plunder and slaughter of one another.[701] The whole picture is

one deeply coloured by national hatred. But the Breton prince must at

least have had the spirit—not to say the follies—of chivalry in him in

full measure. [Sidenote: Conan’s challenge to William.] Like William

himself, in his warfare with Anjou,[702] Conan, we are told, sent word

to William on what day he purposed to cross the Norman frontier.[703]

To meet this threatened invasion, the Duke of the Normans set forth at

the head of his host, with the Duke of the English as his comrade.

[Sidenote: The Castle of Saint James founded by William.]

The object of Conan’s attack was most likely the castle of Saint

James, a border fortress which had been lately raised by William

himself some way south of Avranches, in the south-western corner of his

dominions.[704] William however forestalled his assailant, and met him

within the Breton territory on the day appointed for the invasion of

[Sidenote: Dol held for William by Rhiwallon.] Normandy.[705] William’s

immediate object was to relieve one of those Breton chiefs who held

for him against their immediate lord. The famous but most unfortunate

city of Dol was now held in William’s interest by a leader bearing,

it seems, the genuine Celtic name of Rhiwallon.[706] This, it will be

remembered, was the name of one of the brothers to whom Harold had

committed the under-kingship of the insular Britons.[707] [Sidenote:

Former history of Dol; ravages of the Northmen. 944. 1013.] No town of

Gaul or Britain had suffered more in the days of Scandinavian invasion

than the once metropolitan city of Armorica. Once in the days of

Richard the Fearless,[708] once in the days of Richard the Good,[709]

had Dol been seized, plundered, or burned by Northern pirates. It was

now, [Sidenote: Dol besieged by Conan; William comes to raise the

siege.] by another turn of fortune, besieged by its own sovereign;[710]

and the Norman Duke, accompanied by his English ally, drew near with

the purpose of raising the siege.

[Sidenote: Character of eastern Britanny; the language now no longer

Celtic.]

It would be an interesting question to determine how far the Celtic

language has gone back, and how far the Romance language has advanced,

along the frontier which now became the seat of war. The country

through which William and Harold passed is now wholly French in

speech, and in outward appearance it offers hardly any strictly

Breton peculiarities.[711] Into what is still the true Britanny

further to the west the line of their campaign [Sidenote: March of

William and Harold.] did not reach. Their march led them only through

those border-lands of Normandy and Britanny, where the trees, the

hedges, the rich pastures, the orchards loaded with their autumnal

wealth,[712] might have made the English Earl still deem himself within

the fairest regions [Sidenote: Avranches.] of his own Wessex. Their

course must have passed by Avranches, the city so lately enlightened

by the learning, and made illustrious by the fame, of Lanfranc. From

the height where the now vanished minster once crowned the city, the

eye of Harold would rest for the first time on that other and far

more wondrous minster which crowns the island rock in the distance,

the minster which Æthelred in his wrath and pride had feared to

injure,[713] the guardian [Sidenote: Saint Michael’s Mount.] Mount

of the Archangel, Saint Michael in Peril of the Sea. That princely

Abbey is marked as one of the halting-places of the host, and the rude

art of the times still preserves the pictured representation of the

Duke and his host passing below the sea-girt sanctuary.[714] Beneath

its walls the army crossed over that vast expanse of sand, where the

frontier stream of the Norman and the Breton, [Sidenote: Passage of

the Coesnon;] the deep and rushing Coesnon, then no doubt unfettered

by dykes and fences, pours its flood into the bay at the foot of the

consecrated Mount. In that dangerous passage the [Sidenote: Harold

saves the drowning soldiers.] careless traveller might easily be

engulfed. Even soldiers of the Norman army were sinking in the sands

or were being carried away by the stream, when the strong arm of the

English Earl was stretched forth to save them. This feat of Harold’s

bodily prowess, the ease with which his single strength raised up the

sinking men, made an impression on the minds of his companions which

still lives in the truest record of the one campaign in which Harold

and William fought side by side.[715] The stream was crossed, and the

Norman Duke and his English guest were now landed on Breton ground,

where Harold was ready, perhaps eager, to display the same prowess

which he had already shown in his own island in warfare against a

kindred enemy. [Sidenote: They reach Dol; description of the city.]

A short march from the frontier stream brought them to the first

important post of eastern Britanny, the city which they came to rescue.

The ancient ill luck of Dol has pursued it in all ages, and warfare

later than the days of Harold has swept away nearly every trace of

the city on which he could have gazed. Its cathedral church, small as

compared with the gigantic piles of Amiens and Ely, yields to none

in true stateliness and vigour of design, and it draws only greater

solemnity from its rugged material, the granite of the neighbouring

rock. But that church, even now unfinished, is a work of the thirteenth

century, and it owes its origin to a calamity which fell upon the city

in the wars of John Lackland. And now Dol has wholly sunk from its old

ecclesiastical rank; the church which once aspired to metropolitan

honours has lost even its diocesan Bishop; the cathedral has sunk to

a parish church; the parish church, the only building which can date

from the days of William and Harold, is put to profane uses. The city

itself hardly ranks above a village, though, in the varied and curious

architecture of its long street, its houses ranging from the twelfth

century onwards, we see abundant traces of the greatness which has

passed away. Still Dol has features wrought by the hand of nature, and

by the hand of man in earlier days, which remain now as they were when

Harold and William rode forth to the war [Sidenote: Primæval remains in

the neighbourhood.] against Conan. At no great distance to the south

of the city stands one of the hugest of those huge stones, which were

as mysterious in the days of Harold as they are in our own. There it

still abides, reared, it may well be, by the hands of men by whose side

the Briton himself might stand abashed as a modern intruder. On that

rude pillar the zeal of later days has reared the triumphant cross, to

crown the vast work of heathen times, the monument, it may well be, of

heathen worship. And to the north of the city lies the great natural

feature of the district, the Mount [Sidenote: Mount Dol.] of Dol. The

elevation of the city itself is small; its walls indeed crown what

passes for a height in that vast plain, a height great enough to give

the minster yet further stateliness in the view from the lower ground.

But Dol is no hill-fortress, like Le Mans, Angers, and Domfront. The

spot where one would have almost looked to find the city is the mount

itself, which still rises, a huge stern mass of granite, well nigh as

wild and untilled as in the days of its first inhabitants. But the

presence of man and the dominion of the Christian faith are witnessed

by the village, with its rude and ancient church, nestling at the

base, by the small chapel and the vast statue of Our Lady which crown

the height itself. From that height the eye ranges far and wide over

that noble bay, over the shores of Britanny and of the Constantine

peninsula, over islands dotted here and there, the proud Mount of

the Archangel rising in the foreground as if alike to guard and to

sanctify the landscape. From that height the trembling watchers of

Dol had gazed in fear, when in earlier days the sails of the heathen

pirates were seen in the far horizon. They had gazed, perhaps in hope,

when the fleet of Æthelred drew near to ravage the Norman shore. They

had gazed again in fear, when Duke Robert, when his hopes of English

conquest were dashed to the ground, turned his wrath on neighbours who

were at least guiltless of the death of Ælfred or of the banishment of

Eadward.[716] And now from that height, not indeed the men of Dol, but

the spies of the besieging host of Conan, doubtless looked forth as

the Duke of the Normans and his renowned English guest [Sidenote: Union

of Normans and English against the Celts on both sides of the Channel.]

drew nigh. The men of Britanny might well quake with greater fear than

ever as the two mightiest warriors of their age marched against them

side by side. The presence of William and Harold in the same host might

seem to show that the old strifes of Angle and Saxon and Dane and Frank

and Roman were lulled to rest, that the powers of North and South were

joined together in one great effort to crush the persecuted Briton in

each of his two last homes on either side of his own sea.

[Sidenote: Flight of Conan.]

The besieging host, we are told, did not dare to meet in the field

the enemy whose presence their prince had so unwisely challenged. At

the approach of William the Breton Count fled, laying himself open to

the jeers and mockeries of his rebellious subject within the besieged

city.[717] Nothing could check his flight, which seems not to have

stopped till he found himself safe in his own [Sidenote: Rhiwallon

complains of the damage done by the Normans.] capital at Rennes.[718]

Dol was saved; but its commander found his deliverers almost as

destructive as his enemies. The Norman host, encamped round the city,

was fast eating up the fruits of the ground. Rhiwallon represented to

his Norman ally that it mattered little to him and to his neighbours

whether it was by Norman or by Breton destroyers that their goods were

lost to them.[719] The flight of Conan, however glorious to William,

had as yet done no good to the men of Dol.[720] In the narrative of

the expedition, a [Sidenote: William’s return.] narrative by no means

easy to follow, we are told that these considerations of prudence or

humanity were enough to induce William to withdraw his troops at the

end of a month’s campaign.[721] This retreat however has a strange

sound, when we go on to hear that an Angevin host was said to have

suddenly appeared in support of Conan.[722]

[Sidenote: Probability that Harold accompanied William in more than one

expedition.]

On the whole it seems most probable that Harold accompanied William

in more than one expedition against Britanny.[723] It was most likely

in another raid, though in one, we may be sure, which followed pretty

soon after the earlier one, that William and his English guest made

their way somewhat further into the Breton territory, though still

without reaching the districts most strongly marked with Breton

characteristics. In a campaign of which we have no further account,

Conan was driven to take shelter in what was doubtless one of the most

important [Sidenote: Siege of Dinan.] strongholds of his dominions. His

last stand was made at Dinan, the fortress by the Rance, than which

no town in all Gaul better preserves the character, expressed perhaps

in its Celtic name, of the old Gaulish [Sidenote: Description of the

town.] hill-fort. No remains of castle or minster are there which can

have witnessed the approach of the Norman Conqueror and the English

hero. The chief church, a building which seems more like the work of

Aquitanian than of Breton hands, dates only from the next age, and the

noble mass of the castle, the almost perfect circuit of the town-walls,

are the work of still later times. The heroic associations of Dinan

gather round the name of Bertrand Du Guesclin rather than round those

of Conan, William, or Harold. Yet, save the heights crowned by the

donjons of Domfront and Falaise, few of the spots which figure in our

history more thoroughly preserve the general aspect which they must

have borne in the eleventh century. The peninsular height looking

down on the Rance, the hills, the rocks, the woods, remain doubtless

unchanged. The neighbouring group of buildings at Lehon, the monastery

in the vale, the castle on the height, though their existing buildings

all belong to later times, speak to us of the tastes alike of the monks

and of the warriors of William’s day. They tell of times when the armed

chief reared his eagle’s nest on the height, and when the peaceful

brotherhood below sought for a spot where wood and water would never

fail them.[724] And the town itself, still almost wholly contained

within its ancient walls, crowns the main hill exactly as it must have

done in the days of William. Unmarked as it is by the soaring spires

of Angers, by the spreading apse of Le Mans, or by the twin towers

of Exeter and Geneva, no town better sets before us that distinctive

feature of early times, the city set on an hill which cannot be hid.

The ancient bridge remains, now guarded only by a mere village suburb;

it is only the modern viaduct, a work worthy of old Roman days, which

speaks at all forcibly of the changes which have passed over the world

since William and Harold encamped beneath the height. They crossed the

stream, they compassed the town, and doubtless made their attack on the

western side, where the fall is gentler, where the later fortifications

are stronger, and where the comparatively modern castle no doubt

occupies the site of the donjon of Conan.

[Sidenote: William attacks the town—employment of fire.]

We have no details of the siege. It must be in a great degree a fancy

picture which represents the Norman horsemen as charging with lifted

lances against the defenders of the fortress.[725] But the same

representation implies a vigorous defence on the part of the besieged,

and it shows that the post was at last won by the familiar Norman

means, the application of fire.[726] This seems, as at Mayenne, to have

broken the spirits of the defenders, and, [Sidenote: Conan surrenders

the town.] in our one representation of the siege, Conan is shown,

according to the custom of the time, surrendering the keys of his

fortress by offering them on the point of a spear to his conqueror. It

is in the like fashion that the conqueror receives his submission.[727]

This is all that we hear of the expedition in which Harold took a part.

Whatever may have been its real nature and results, it at least did

not lead to any permanent Norman occupation of the country which had

been the seat of war. Dol and Dinan both remained Breton. And, at a

later period of William’s life, when he could command the whole force

of England and not only an occasional English volunteer, we shall

[Sidenote: 1076.] find him again in arms before Dol, but this time as

the besieger of the doomed city, not as its deliverer.[728]

According to one account, according to that account on which I look

with less of distrust than on the others,[729] [Sidenote: Knighthood

of Harold.] Harold’s knighthood and Harold’s oath did not go before,

but followed, the Breton campaign, and the knighthood seems to be set

forth as taking place within or under the walls of Dinan, immediately

after the capture of the town. Such a ceremony, possibly amounting to a

tie of sworn brotherhood[730] between the two companions-in-arms, may

very well have followed the capture of a town won by the joint prowess

of the Norman Duke and the English [Sidenote: Question of Harold’s

oath.] Earl. But the more famous oath, the oath on which so much of the

history turns, wherever and whenever it was [Sidenote: Contradiction

as to time and place. Probably at Bayeux after the Breton War.] taken,

was, at any rate, taken on Norman ground. One version, as we have seen,

places it before the Breton expedition; the account which I am inclined

to follow places it immediately after. From Dinan William returned to

Bayeux, and at Bayeux it was that Harold took the fatal engagement

upon his soul.[731] Other accounts place it at Bonneville; others at

Rouen, either in the palace, or under [Sidenote: Contradiction as to

the nature of the Oath.] an oak near the city. The nature of the oath,

is as little certain as its time or place. As I have already said,[732]

nearly every account represents it as containing an engagement to

marry one of William’s daughters; some accounts seem to make that

engagement and its breach the whole ground of quarrel between the two

Princes. Others add that Harold further engaged to give his [Sidenote:

Statements as to its terms.] sister in marriage to an unnamed

Norman noble. Most accounts add also far more important political

stipulations. Harold is to become the man of William; he is to receive

him, on Eadward’s death, as his successor on the throne of England;

meanwhile he is to be the guardian of William’s interests in England,

and to act in some sort as his lieutenant. He is at once to give up the

castle of Dover, with its well, to the Duke, and to receive a Norman

garrison in it; he is to build other castles at other points of English

ground, where the Duke may think good, and there also he is to receive

and maintain Norman garrisons. The highest place in William’s favour,

when he shall have attained the English Crown, honours, grants, even to

the half of the Kingdom, are of course promised to Harold as the reward

of faithfully carrying out all these promises.

[Sidenote: Form of the oath, said to be on the relics of the saints.]

To all this, or to some part of all this, we are told that Harold

swore. He swore, it is said, after some form of more than usual

solemnity, something beyond the ordinary oath of homage. He swore

upon the relics of the [Sidenote: Trick played by William about the

relics.] saints.[733] And one famous version of the tale represents

this more solemn form of oath as something into which Harold was

unwittingly entrapped by a base trick on the part of William. It is not

an English apologist of Harold, but a Norman admirer of William,[734]

who tells us how the Duke filled a chest with all the holiest relics of

the saints of Normandy; how Harold swore on the chest, not knowing on

what he swore; how William then drew away the covering with which the

holy things had been hidden, and bade Harold see how fearful was the

oath which he had taken, and how awful was the vengeance which would

light on him who failed to keep it. His hand trembled and his flesh

quivered[735] when he laid his hand on the chest, while still unknowing

of all that was in it; how much more frightened was he when he knew by

how awful a sanction he had unwittingly bound his soul.[736] This may

be history or it may be legend; at any rate it is the honour of the

Norman rather than that of the Englishman which is staked on its truth

or falsehood.

[Sidenote: Harold returns to England, perhaps leaving Wulfnoth as a

hostage.]

The oath then, whatever was its nature, being sworn, Harold left, or

was allowed to leave, the Norman Court. He returned to England in full

outward friendship with the Norman Duke, as his sworn man, his future

son-in-law. With Hakon, and with his sister, if she had accompanied

him, he sailed back to England. Wulfnoth, it would seem, was left with

the Duke as a hostage for his brother’s fidelity.[737]

[Sidenote: Impossibility of fixing the details, but some groundwork of

truth in the story.]

I have told this famous tale in that one of the many shapes which it

has taken which seems least widely removed from the probabilities of

the case. It is at least not impossible, which is more than can be

said of some of the other shapes. But I would not be understood as

pledging myself to the accuracy of a single detail. The charge of

perjury against Harold is a charge in which there is no statement for

the defence, while the witnesses [Sidenote: Negative evidence of the

English writers.] for the prosecution contradict one another. To my

own mind, as I have before said,[738] the strongest argument against

Harold is that there is no statement for the defence. Had there been a

single distinct English contradiction of the story, direct or implied,

I should have cast away the whole tale as pure invention. But, while

we have such contradictions on almost every other point, on this point

we have none. It was clearly a weak point in Harold’s case; it was a

subject on which his friends shrank from entering. This to my mind

proves a great deal; but we must beware of dealing with it as if it

proved more than it really does. It proves that there was something

wrong, something about which Harold’s friends could not speak freely.

It proves that there was some groundwork for the Norman story; it

proves that Harold took some engagement the breach of which could

easily be represented as perjury. But it proves no more. The different

forms of the Norman story remain as contradictory to one another, as

lacking in all corroborative evidence, as they were before. Harold

swore. [Sidenote: No certainty as to the time,] But when? All kinds

of dates are given; our only means of choosing one date rather than

another is by choosing the most vacant year in the English annals. We

know that it must have been before Harold’s marriage with Ealdgyth;

but the date of that marriage is itself matter of conjecture.[739]

Again, we could fix the date, if we had any independent accounts of

the campaigns of Dol and Dinan. But no Breton writer mentions those

campaigns at all; no Norman writer mentions them except in connexion

with the visit and oath of Harold. I have myself placed the event at

the point of time which on the whole seemed least unlikely; but I

confess to have had all along a lurking feeling that the whole story

may have arisen out of something which happened in that earlier French

journey of Harold’s, of which we have no details.[740] Harold then, I

admit, swore, but when he swore must remain matter of conjecture.

[Sidenote: the place,]

And, if we are thus left to conjecture as to the time when Harold

swore, we are equally left to conjecture as to the place. The scene

of such an event might have been expected to be well known. We are

told that the oath was taken in the presence of a full assembly of the

Norman nobles;[741] but even contemporary authorities do not agree as

to the spot where this great council was gathered together. We have to

choose at our pleasure between Bonneville, Bayeux, and Rouen. These

glaring contradictions do not indeed affect the belief that there is

some groundwork of fact for the story, but they are quite enough to

hinder us from putting implicit faith in a single uncorroborated detail.

[Sidenote: or the nature, of the oath.]

Still more important than the questions when and where Harold swore,

is the question what he swore. Even here the witness of his accusers

does not agree together. The engagement to marry William’s daughter,

so prominent in most of the accounts, is passed by in one which ought

to be the most trustworthy of any. There is an utter uncertainty as to

which of William’s many daughters it was that Harold engaged to marry.

According to one version, this part at least of the oath, if not kept,

was at least not broken; one statement, and that put into Harold’s

own mouth,[742] affirms, with whatever truth, that the daughter of

William to whom he had plighted himself died before his accession to

the Crown. Even the most important engagement of all, the promise

to secure William’s succession, or at least to do all that one man

could do to secure it, appears in different shapes in the different

[Sidenote: Impossibility of some of its alleged terms.] accounts. In

most of them it is accompanied by lesser engagements which carry their

own confutation with them. Harold is made to promise to do various

things on William’s behalf forthwith. The engagements to receive a

Norman garrison in Dover Castle, to build other castles elsewhere, and

to receive and maintain Norman garrisons in them—these were engagements

the fulfilment of which was not to wait till the death of Eadward.

They were engagements to be fulfilled at once, as pledges of Harold’s

faith, and as means of paving the way for William’s succession when the

day should come. But it is certain that these lesser engagements never

were fulfilled; it is nowhere stated that any complaint was made during

Eadward’s life as to their non-fulfilment. We hear nothing of any

complaint, of any message, on the part of William, until after Harold’s

election and coronation. They were in truth stipulations the fulfilment

of which was simply impossible, and a prince so clear-sighted as

William must have seen that it was impossible. Harold might indeed

do all that was in one man’s power to secure the election of William

whenever the throne should become vacant; but it would have been beyond

the power of any man, even of an Earl of the West-Saxons, to surrender

English fortresses to William while Eadward still lived. When Eadward

was dead, the Witan might of course, if they would, choose William as

his successor. But, while William was not yet King, it would have been

simple treason in an English Earl to surrender to him a fortress which

the King and people of England had entrusted to his keeping. It is

highly probable that William himself knew the English Constitution much

better than the historians who write as his advocates and flatterers.

But it called for no special knowledge of the English Constitution,

it was little more than a matter of common sense, to see that no

subject, however exalted, either could, or ought to, hand over English

fortresses to a foreign prince, even though that foreign prince was the

destined successor to the English Crown.

[Sidenote: The oath, if the terms were as is alleged, must have been

taken under compulsion.]

Harold then, as I hold, swore, but what he swore is as uncertain as it

is when and where he swore it. We are left as completely to conjecture

as to the matter of his oath as we are left as to its time and its

place. We know only that it was something which gave William a great

advantage, something which enabled him, without much difficulty, to

represent his rival as guilty of a signal perjury. But we can say no

more. If Harold really promised to accept William as King after the

death of Eadward, and to use every means in his power to bring about

his acceptance by the rest of the nation, such an oath could have been

taken only under compulsion. If Harold took such an oath, it could

only have been because he felt that his position in the Norman Court,

however honourable in appearance, was practically the position of a

prisoner. For such an oath was one which he certainly had no intention

of keeping. And, however reckless Harold may have been with regard to

oaths,[743] this was an oath which neither Harold nor any other man in

his senses would have willingly taken, unless he had meant to keep it.

To take such an oath, and then to break it, was to give the enemy the

greatest possible advantage. We may therefore feel sure that, if Harold

did swear to all which the Norman accounts represent him as swearing

to, he must have sworn simply because he felt himself in bonds,

because he saw no other way of escaping from Normandy and returning to

England.[744]

[Sidenote: William’s apparent motives—to entrap Harold into breach of

his oath.]

On the other hand, if William required such an oath, he could have

required it only because he knew that it would not be kept. It is quite

impossible to believe that, at the time when Harold’s visit is commonly

placed, William did not know perfectly well that Harold had designs

on the English Crown, even if Harold were not in some sort already

recognized as Eadward’s destined successor. William could not be so

blind as to think that an extorted oath on the part of Harold would

really hinder the English people from electing Harold King, or would

even hinder Harold from accepting the election of the English people.

A formal oath to receive William as King could have been required with

no other object than that of gaining, on some future day, the advantage

of representing Harold as a perjured man. Harold, in short, was called

on to take an oath, simply in the hope that he might break it. Great

as William’s character was in many ways, I fear that this sort of

trick to entrap a rival would have seemed to him simply a praiseworthy

stratagem. We may be sure that William’s religious feelings, to speak

of no other motive, would have kept him back from a wilfully false oath

in his own person. But the formal religion of those times would perhaps

not have kept him back from throwing an occasion of sin in the way of

another, provided his own hands were kept formally clean from all share

in it. A more enlightened morality will pronounce that, if William

really did thus purposely entrap Harold into the crime of perjury, the

guilt of William was far blacker than the guilt of Harold.

[Sidenote: Probable real nature of the oath.]

But perhaps it is not necessary to suppose that Harold really did

swear to William’s succession in the full and formal way which the

Norman writers assert. It is remarkable how prominent a place is

filled in nearly every account by Harold’s promise to marry William’s

daughter. And it is further remarkable that this promise is the only

part of the story which seems to have reached some writers [Sidenote:

An engagement to marry William’s daughter,] in other lands.[745] I am

inclined to suspect that we have here before us the germ of the whole

matter. Harold may have promised, promised, as we are told his manner

was, too hastily, to marry one of William’s daughters. He may easily

have been thus far cajoled by the blandishments of Matilda, and even,

as some accounts suggest, by the expressed preference of the princess

herself. When once out of the snare, he may have forgotten or laughed

at his promise to so youthful a bride, and love, or policy, or both,

may have attracted him to the widow of Gruffydd. We must remember how

very lightly matrimonial engagements of this sort were both entered

into and cancelled. The whole history of the middle ages is full of

stories of princesses whose marriage engagements were lightly made and

lightly broken, sometimes through the inconstancy of suitors, sometimes

through that of fathers. The diplomacy of days a little later than

those of Harold and William shows us many a treaty of marriage which

became a dead letter almost as soon as it was signed. In the morality

of those times, Harold’s breach of his promise to marry Adeliza or

Agatha, or whatever the maiden’s name was, would certainly not be set

down as a very deadly sin. But, deadly or not deadly, it was manifestly

a sin out of which William could reap no small advantage, one which

could easily be employed to discredit the cause of his adversary.

[Sidenote: combined with an act of formal homage.] The case would

be still stronger if we could suppose, what is really not unlikely,

that either Harold’s knighthood or his engagement to marry William’s

daughter was accompanied by some formal act of homage done by Harold to

William.[746] We must remember that Harold owed William a real and deep

debt of gratitude for his deliverance from Guy’s dungeon. He consented

to serve in William’s army in a quarrel which concerned neither himself

nor his country; and, though older than William, he did not scruple

to enter into what was in some sort a filial relation [Sidenote:

Probability of such homage on Harold’s part.] towards him. It would

really not be wonderful if, under this combination of circumstances,

Harold consented to become William’s man. We must again bear in mind

how lightly engagements of this kind were entered into, [Sidenote:

Complications of the feudal relation.] and how perplexing and clashing

were the endless complications of feudalism. Men did homage on all

kinds of grounds, on the receipt of almost any kind of benefit, and

they were often bound by the tie of homage to several lords at the

same time. William himself was the man of King Henry; but he seems

also to have looked on himself as the man of King Eadward;[747] it is

within the compass of possibility that he did homage to Eadward as

his chosen successor at the time of his visit to England. Herbert of

Maine might have been claimed as the man of the King of the French,

of the Duke of the Normans, and of the Count of Anjou, all at once.

Roger of Mortemer was undoubtedly the man of Duke William; but he

was also the man of so small a lord as Ralph of Montdidier; and we

have seen the difficulties into which he was brought through this

divided allegiance.[748] King Malcolm was the man of Eadward and the

sworn brother of Tostig; yet neither of these obligations kept him

back from ravaging Northumberland.[749] In short the instances are

endless. Most public men of the eleventh century must have been like

the English statesman of the seventeenth, who had taken a great many

oaths, [Sidenote: Effect of homage done by Harold to William.] and was

afraid that he had not kept them all.[750] In such a state of things it

would be nothing amazing if Harold became the man of his benefactor,

his future father-in-law, his military commander in the Breton war.

Such an act of homage would undoubtedly not bind him, either in its

terms or in its spirit, to receive William as Eadward’s [Sidenote: The

advantage given by it to William.] successor on the throne of England.

But it would give William a great advantage nevertheless. Nothing would

be more easy than for William to construe the oath of homage in one way

and for Harold to construe it in another. When the man assumed a crown

to which the lord laid claim, such conduct might easily be represented

as a breach of the man’s duty to his lord. The man had promised to

do his lord faithful service, and he had failed to do that faithful

service in the matter which, of all others, was nearest the lord’s

heart. Here was quite material enough for the craft of William to take

advantage of, and to turn to the discredit of his rival. The relations

of lord and vassal in those days were in a state somewhat like that in

which other relations of life have been at other [Sidenote: Fluctuating

public opinion as to the obligations of homage.] times. There must have

been few princes or nobles in western Europe who had not, at some time

or other, been guilty of some breach of the strict duty of a man to his

lord. The fault thus lightly committed was often as lightly pardoned.

Yet, as special acts of fidelity called for special admiration, so

it was not hard, whenever it was convenient, to insist on and to

aggravate the offence of the faithless vassal.[751] The offence was one

which could, almost at pleasure, be either passed by as altogether

trivial or held up to execration as a sin of the most heinous dye. The

latter course, I need not say, was that which would be followed with

unrelenting eagerness, when the breach of duty to be held up for scorn

and vengeance was one committed by Harold and against William.

[Sidenote: Case of an oath on relics.]

And, in the ideas of those days, it would be held as further

strengthening the case of William, as further aggravating the crime of

Harold, if the oath taken and broken was not merely the common oath of

a man to his lord, but an oath of unusual sanctity, an oath taken upon

the relics of the saints. We must look at the matter with [Sidenote:

General case with regard to oaths.] the feelings of those times. In any

enlightened view of morality, one promise is as binding as another;

the word of an honest man is as sacred as a thousand oaths. But the

fact that oaths are required among all nations and under all religions

shows that this is a morality so high that the mass of mankind do not

practically act upon it. Every oath is in truth a curse, a religious

threat, a calling down of the vengeance of an unseen power on the man

who shall break it. A man, under different forms of religion, swears

by such a god or by such a saint. If he breaks his oath, he offers a

personal insult to the god or the saint by [Sidenote: Personal enmity

of the saints incurred by a false oath on their relics.] whom he

swears. The power whom he thus offends becomes his personal enemy, and

may be expected to mark him out as an object for personal vengeance.

If therefore the story of the relics be true, William’s object was to

work on Harold’s mind by dint of the extreme of superstitious dread, by

pointing to all the saints of Normandy as about to become his personal

enemies in case he should break his oath. The strange thing to our

minds is that it does not seem to have struck any one that the real

sinner against [Sidenote: True moral aspect of the case. William more

guilty than Harold.] the saints was not Harold but William. If the

saints in glory are conceived as being still capable of personal human

passions, one would have expected that they would look on no insult as

so great, so direct, so unpardonable, as that of profaning their holy

relics to a purpose of deliberate fraud. Harold is made to swear; then,

after he has sworn, he is told that he has sworn on these awful and

wonder-working relics, whose vengeance, in case of breach of faith,

will track him like that of the Erinnyes. Strange to say, the author

of so base a deception is looked on as a pious worshipper, deserving

the highest favour of every holy person of whom a bone or a fragment

of clothing lay within the chest. It is the unwitting victim of fraud

whom the saints mark out for what, in the intercourse of mortals upon

earth, would be looked on as a somewhat unjust vengeance. The reader

must judge for himself as to the probability of the tale. The strongest

argument in its favour is that Harold’s alleged perjury seems to have

aroused greater general indignation than could have been aroused by a

mere breach of the common oath of homage. At any rate, the question

whether such a tale be true or false is certainly one which comes much

more nearly home to the apologist of William than to the apologist of

Harold.

[Sidenote: Harold’s sin lay not in breaking the oath, but in taking it.]

As to the bearing of the transaction on Harold’s character, the

morality of the question is easily summed up. Whatever was the

engagement which Harold broke, whether it was a promise to betray

England to the stranger or simply to contract a marriage of absurd

disparity in point of years, his sin lay wholly in taking the oath, not

in breaking it. He yielded to threats or to blandishments, to a vague

sense of danger, to a vague impulse of gratitude or to a momentary

inclination, when in strict morality he ought to have stood firm

against every temptation and every threat. Through one or other of

these motives he allowed himself to be cajoled into making a promise

which he had no serious intention of fulfilling. He incurred whatever

amount of guilt is incurred by thus trifling with what ought to be

solemn engagements. No one, I suppose, will argue that he would at all

have mended matters, had he fulfilled his promise by any act of treason

towards his country. This of course goes on the supposition that his

promise really involved any such acts of treason. But it is just as

likely that Harold really broke no promise of greater moment than that

of marrying, at some unfixed time, a child whose father was younger

than himself.

[Sidenote: Utter obscurity of the whole matter.]

I found the question involved in darkness, and I must leave it in the

darkness in which I found it. I have offered some conjectures, but

it is simply as conjectures that I have offered them. The tale is so

beset with contradictions that it is impossible to attain to anything

like certainty on [Sidenote: The oath in no case affected the English

people.] any single point of detail. One thing at least is certain.

However deeply Harold may have sinned against William, England sinned

not at all. No promise or oath of Harold could bind the people of

England, or could give William any right over them which he did not

possess before. If Harold sinned, his guilt was on his own head. The

people of England were guiltless, and William’s invasion of England was

none the less an unprovoked attack on a people who had never wronged

him. And, if we accept the most famous and most striking part of the

story, it is clear that the guilt of the deceiver was far heavier than

the guilt of the deceived. The question is therefore a Norman rather

than an English question, and as a Norman question I have dealt with it

in one of the Norman chapters of my history.

[Sidenote: Summary.]

I may seem, in the course of this long chapter, to have wandered

far away from Harold and from England. But the whole career of the

Conqueror is an essential part of my subject. Every step in that career

is a step towards the great enterprise of his life. Every event which

illustrates his character belongs alike to the history of both the

lands over which he ruled. We have now seen him completely establish

himself within his own Duchy; we have seen him successful alike against

domestic and against foreign enemies; we have seen him extend his

dominions by a continental conquest which seemed almost designed as a

forestalling of his coming conquest beyond the sea. We again entered

on the direct stream of English history, when we reached that obscure

and mysterious event, which, in some way or another, placed the hero

of England in his power. Our long episode is therefore over. We return

to the point where we left the affairs of England. Harold, in Norman

eyes the faithless vassal of William, is chosen and consecrated to the

Crown which William claimed as his own. We have now to see what steps

William took, when the news reached him of what he deemed, or professed

to deem, so great a wrong. A few bootless attempts at negotiation alone

separate us from actual wars and rumours of wars. A few more pages, and

we shall have fairly entered on the central scene of the great tragedy.

We shall soon have to look on the last warfare of Teutonic England

under the King of her own choice. We shall soon have to behold the

twofold invasion, the twofold struggle, the last and greatest victory

of Harold, his first and his last defeat.