THE NEGOTIATIONS OF DUKE WILLIAM.[752]
January–August, 1066.
[Sidenote: Position of William at the death of Eadward.]
The people of England had made their choice. They had placed the Crown
of England upon the head of the foremost man of their own race. Harold,
the son of Godwine, the son of Wulfnoth, sat in the kingly seat which
had never before received an occupant of other than kingly birth. The
news was not slow in reaching the ears of that mighty rival beyond
the sea, who had long marked that kingly seat as his own heritage,
and who could now complain to the world that his heritage had been
torn from him by his own sworn vassal. We cannot doubt that William
had long been watching every breeze which could bring tidings from
England. The failing health of Eadward was known at Rouen as well as
at Westminster,[753] and William was doubtless ready to put in his
claim at the first moment that the throne should be actually vacant.
Even after the homage done by Harold, even if we enlarge that homage
to the full extent which it assumes in the statements of William’s own
laureate, the Duke could hardly have looked forward with any confidence
to a peaceful succession to the English Crown. He might well doubt
how far he had really bound Harold, and, if he had bound Harold, he
had at least not bound England. [Sidenote: Effect on his scheme of
the sudden election of Harold.] But William was doubtless ready for
every occasion, ready, whatever might happen, with a plausible case
to set before the world on his own behalf. His claim was not likely
to meet with any acknowledgement in England, but it would at least be
a gain for him to be able to say that it had been formally put forth
at the right moment. And yet the course which events really took was
perhaps, after all, still more to the wily Duke’s advantage. The death,
the burial, the coronation, followed so fast upon one another that
William had no opportunity of pressing his claim till after the choice
of England had been irrevocably made. He might now, if he would, call
on the reigning King to descend from an usurped throne; he could not
call on the English nation to elect himself to a vacant throne. But he
gained thereby an advantage of which the writers in his interest have
not been slow to make use, the advantage of being able to represent
the reigning King as an intruder. He could speak of him as one placed
on the throne by some hasty and irregular act, as one reigning in any
case in opposition to William’s own earlier right, perhaps even as
reigning without the full and free consent of the English people. It is
not to be forgotten that one count which Norman partizans bring against
England is that the English people failed in gratitude to the deliverer
who came to set them free from a tyrannical usurper.[754]
§ 1. _The Negotiations between William and Harold._
[Sidenote: The news brought from England to Normandy.]
Events had happened so fast at Westminster, on the eve of the Epiphany
and on the festival itself, that the Duke of the Normans heard the
whole story in a single message.[755] An English ship carried the
news to Normandy; whether it was sent specially by any of William’s
friends in England, or whether it went simply in the ordinary course
of communication between two friendly countries, we are not distinctly
told. But, as a special messenger brought the news to the Duke, we may
conceive that some of the strangers whom Harold’s clemency had allowed
to remain in the land[756] took the earliest opportunity of sending
the news [Sidenote: Reception of the news by William.] to their native
sovereign.[757] A graphic description is given of the reception of the
news by the Duke.[758] He was in his park of Quevilly near Rouen,[759]
with many knights and esquires[760] around him, going forth to the
chase. He had in his hand his bow—the bow which, like that of Odysseus,
no other man could bend[761]—strung and bent and ready for the arrow.
He was in the act of giving it to a page to bear after him, when there
came to the gate a messenger, a man-at-arms from England. The new comer
went straight to the Duke; he greeted him, he took him aside, and told
him the news privily and briefly. “King Eadward has ended his days
and Earl Harold is raised to the Kingdom.”[762] The message at least
acted as a respite for the destined victims of William’s bow, for the
Duke had now other matters than hunting to think about. He turned aside
from the craft of the woods; he was as a man in anger; ofttimes he
laced and ofttimes he unlaced his mantle; he spake to no man and no man
dared to speak to him.[763] He crossed the Seine in a boat; he went to
his hall, and entered therein; he sat down on a bench and turned from
one side to another. His head rested against a pillar,[764] and his
face was covered with his mantle. Long time he thus sat in thought, no
man daring to speak to him, though many asked one another what ailed
him. [Sidenote: Dialogue between the Duke and William Fitz-Osbern.]
At last one drew near whom long and intimate friendship allowed to
deal more freely with his sovereign. The famous Seneschal, William
Fitz-Osbern,[765] of whom we have so often heard, now rode back from
the park and entered the hall, humming a tune[766] as he walked. He
passed straight by the Duke, and many asked him what the news was
which so ailed their sovereign. The Duke, hearing what passed between
the Seneschal and the others, looked up. William Fitz-Osbern then told
him that it was in vain for him to try to hide the news which he had
heard, for that it was already blazed abroad through all the streets
of Rouen. Every man in the city knew that Eadward was dead, and that
Harold held the Kingdom of England. The Duke answered that that news
was indeed the thing which grieved him. No news could grieve him more;
he sorrowed alike for the death of Eadward and for the wrong done to
him by Harold. Was he simply proving his friend? or were even his
stout heart and wily brain cowed and perplexed for a moment by the
suddenness of the tidings? At all events it is in the mouth of William
Fitz-Osbern—the bold of heart[767]—that the first exhortation to action
is placed in our story. He bids the Duke not mourn, but arise and be
doing. Let him begin, let him carry through what he begins; let him, in
a word, cross the sea and wrest the Kingdom from the usurper.
[Sidenote: William’s Embassy to Harold.]
The result of William’s deliberations with this trusty counsellor
was the sending of an embassy to the King [Sidenote: Contradictory
accounts of the nature of William’s message.] of the English. The
nature of the message is as diversely told as the rest of the story
of which it forms the sequel. Again the contemporary English writers
are silent; they make no mention of Norman affairs till later in the
year, till the very eve of the Norman invasion. And of the other
writers, each naturally throws the message into such a shape as suits
his own version of that oath of which the message was necessarily the
counterpart. Whatever Harold had sworn, whatever it suited William
to give out that Harold had sworn, that of course William now called
on Harold to perform. But that demand ranges in different versions
from a summons to Harold to resign his Kingdom to a simple summons to
marry William’s daughter.[768] We hear of more messages than one, and
in one account the tone of the second message is wonderfully lowered
from the tone of the first. If Harold will not resign the Kingdom,
nor give up the castle of Dover, nor do any of the other things which
he has promised, let him at least marry the Duke’s daughter. If he
declines to do even that, the Duke will certainly come against him in
arms to support his rights. The date of the embassy, and the place
of its reception by Harold, are as uncertain as the exact nature of
the message or of the oath. It was a matter on which William was not
likely to delay, and the number of events and negotiations which were
crowded into a few months [Sidenote: Date of the Embassy uncertain.]
show that he did not delay. But our only statement as to time is the
assertion of a very untrustworthy writer that the message was either
sent or received on the tenth day [Sidenote: [January 15, 1066?]] after
Eadward’s death.[769] One would like on many grounds to know whether
it was received before or after Harold had set forth on his mission to
win the hearts of the malecontents of Northumberland. One would like to
know whether Harold received the message of William when surrounded by
his own West-Saxons, or whether it reached him, as an earlier embassy
from Gaul had reached Glorious Æthelstan,[770] while he was engaged
in arranging the affairs of the most distant and most troublesome
portion of his [Sidenote: Possible bearing of the message on the
discontents of Northumberland.] Kingdom. The point is interesting, as
it is just possible that the Northumbrian opposition to Harold may
have been in some degree connected with the challenge brought to him
from Normandy. The succession of William was indeed not likely to be
looked on with a whit more of favour in Northumberland than it was
looked on in Wessex. But crafty spirits were at work, who might easily
turn the claims of the Norman to their own ends. Such, it might be
argued, were the results of the hasty election of Harold; such were the
results of binding the free sons of the North by the voices of Wessex
and East-Anglia. It would be better for the North again to choose
its own King, a King who had never become the man of the stranger, a
King whose right could not be challenged by any rival beyond the sea.
Such arguments as these seem quite in character with the position of
parties at the time, but we can neither affirm nor deny that they were
actually used. The exact time of Harold’s northern journey, the exact
time, place, and substance of the message which Harold received from
the Norman Duke, are among those details of our story which must remain
unknown to us.
[Sidenote: Object of William in the negotiation; the embassy intended
to be fruitless.]
Whatever was the exact purport of the embassy, there can be no doubt
as to its object. It was sent simply in order that William might add
another count to his indictment against the English King. It was sent
in order that William might be able to say, not only that Harold had
neglected to perform his engagements, whatever they were, but that
he had formally refused to perform them when formally called upon.
Whatever William demanded, we may be sure that he demanded it only in
the expectation, and even in the hope, that Harold would refuse it. He
could not seriously expect that Harold would, at his bidding, either
come down from his throne or consent to hold his Crown in vassalage.
William knew the temper both of England and of her King a great deal
too well for this. Even the summons to marry William’s daughter could
hardly have been seriously meant; if Harold were already married, it
could only have been sent in mockery.[771] At all events, the one
object of the embassy was to put Harold, according to William’s view of
the case, still further in the wrong. Its object was to supply William
with fresh topics for argument and for rhetoric in the appeal which he
was about to make to Normandy, to Gaul, and to Christendom.
[Sidenote: Different forms given to Harold’s answer.]
The answer of Harold to the message is of course differently conceived,
according as the message is differently conceived. The answer depends
on the message, just as the message depends on the oath. But all
accounts agree [Sidenote: His answer in any case a distinct refusal.]
in describing the answer as a complete refusal. Whatever William
summoned Harold to do, Harold refused to do it. And, according to
some versions, if mockery was intended by the Norman, it was answered
with mockery in return. The English King is called upon to fulfil his
promise of giving his sister in marriage to a Norman noble. Harold
answers that his sister is dead, and he asks whether the Duke wishes
her corpse to be sent to him for the purpose.[772] When called on
himself to marry the Duke’s daughter, he answers, according to one
version, that the daughter whom he promised [Sidenote: Constitutional
language attributed to Harold. He cannot marry a foreign wife without
the consent of the Witan.] to marry is already dead.[773] According
to another account, he takes a high constitutional ground. A King of
the English cannot marry a foreign wife without the consent of the
Witan of England. Such an act could not be done without doing great
damage to his Kingdom.[774] This answer, whether ever really made or
not, is not likely to point to any formal enactment on the subject of
royal [Sidenote: English feeling with regard to foreign marriages.]
marriages. But it expresses the universal feeling of the nation that
none but Englishwomen were fit to be wives and mothers of English
Kings. England had seen one Norman Lady, and one King who was Norman
on his mother’s side. There was no wish among the English people to
see such another Lady or such another King. The marriage of Emma, and
the Norman connexion which followed it, had well nigh been the undoing
of England. That they had not been wholly her undoing was due to the
reigning King and his father. Their dynasty at least, the Kings of
the House of Godwine, should be for ever kept free from all foreign
elements. Harold’s own Danish mother, the kinswoman or ally of the
great Cnut, could hardly be looked on as a stranger. Tostig and his
foreign wife were in banishment, and England had no wish for their
return. The whole nation was no doubt fully purposed that the next
brood of Æthelings whom England saw should be no half-caste offspring
of Norman or even of German or Flemish mothers, but Englishmen of
purely English blood. Against such a feeling as this Harold, even if he
had wished, could not have dared to struggle. The answer put into his
mouth, whether historically genuine or not, well expresses uncorrupted
English feeling on this important point. It well expresses too the
necessity under which a King of the English lay, not only to obey the
written Law, but to consult in all things the wishes and feelings of
the English people.
[Sidenote: Argument attributed to Harold as to the validity of his
oath.]
Another form of the answer put into Harold’s mouth breathes an
equally sound and constitutional spirit. William demands the Kingdom
of England, which Harold, he alleges, had sworn to make over to him.
The English King [Sidenote: The oath null without the consent of the
Witan.] answers that such an oath was in itself void; to break it were
a less evil than to keep it. The oath was one by which Harold bound
himself to transfer to Duke William an heritage which was neither
Harold’s nor William’s, but which only the voice of the English
people could bestow on any man.[775] The oath or vow which a maiden
in her father’s house made without her parents’ knowledge was void by
the laws of God and man.[776] Much more then was the oath void which
he, when still a subject, without the knowledge of King or people,
had sworn under the pressure of a momentary constraint, on a matter
touching the whole realm.[777] It was not reasonable to ask him to give
up a Crown which had been placed on his head by the common voice of
his countrymen, and of which their voice alone could lawfully deprive
him.[778] Such is the doctrine which is put into Harold’s mouth by
a writer whose divided [Sidenote: Constitutional importance of the
answer.] sympathies lean decidedly to the Norman side. It is a doctrine
most wholesome and necessary for a constitutional King, a doctrine
which the historian himself allows to be true or at least highly
plausible.[779] Valuable, if it be a genuine record of what Harold
said, this speech becomes almost more valuable if we look on it as the
speech which a writer a generation later deemed most in keeping with
Harold’s character and position. The argument, for its own purpose,
as an answer to William, is perfect. The accession of Harold was not
the act of Harold only; it was equally the act of the English people.
However guilty Harold might be towards William, the English people
were free from all guilt towards William and towards all mankind. And,
whatever might be the guilt of Harold, it was a guilt which, as his own
argument assumes, lay wholly in taking the oath, not at all in breaking
it.
[Sidenote: The Embassy fruitless in form, but William’s real point
gained.]
The errand then of the Norman ambassadors was a bootless one. No doubt
it was the intention of him who sent them that it should be bootless.
Whatever were their demands, whether they came once only or oftener,
whether they raised their demands or lowered them, whether they dealt
in persuasion only or in threats as well as persuasion,[780] Harold,
evidently speaking the voice of the English people, refused all that
was demanded of him. No other course indeed was possible. The point
hardly needs to be argued. Harold could not, without the consent of
the Witan, either resign the Crown to William or hold it of him in
vassalage. And the consent of the Witan would certainly not have been
given for any such purpose. The whole question in short was frivolous.
The dispute had reached a stage which was past negotiation, and Harold
and William alike knew that all negotiation was vain. What William
gained by his embassy was again to entangle Harold in the meshes of his
subtle craft. Harold could only refuse every demand of William; but
Harold’s refusal of William’s demands made another point on William’s
side, of which he was not slow to take advantage.
§ 2. _Claims and Arguments of William._
[Sidenote: William’s only hope lay in war.]
William had now no chance—in truth there had never been a time when
he really had a chance—of winning the English Crown except by the
sword. But, before he made that last appeal, he had many minds to work
upon and to win over to his cause. An enterprise such as he designed
was one such as no Norman Duke had ever before attempted. It was one
which might seem altogether beyond the power of Normandy to achieve.
William’s own father had indeed [Sidenote: 1028–1035.] contemplated
an English war, and he had actually gathered together a fleet for the
invasion of England.[781] But the enterprise of Robert was undertaken
to restore the banished heir of England, driven from his native realm
by a foreign invader. Such at least was the colour which Robert would
put upon his schemes, and in carrying out such schemes he doubtless
reckoned on a certain measure of English support. It was not really
likely that Englishmen would have joined a Norman army to drive out
Cnut in favour of the sons of Æthelred. But dreams of this kind are
ever the food of exiles,[782] and of princes who take up the cause of
exiles. But in William’s case there was [Sidenote: No English party in
favor of William.] no room for any delusions of this kind. William had
no rights but his own to assert, and those rights, he must have known
very well, were not acknowledged by a single native partizan. He might
gain somewhat by sowing dissensions within the island, by abetting any
schemes on the part of Eadgar or Tostig or the sons of Ælfgar. But
his only gain in this way would be the gain of dividing and weakening
England. Any English party which was dissatisfied with the election
of Harold would assert the claims, not of William but of some English
competitor. For direct [Sidenote: Difficulties of his enterprise.]
help in England William could look only to the Norman settlers whom
Harold had allowed to remain in the country. He had, in short, to win
the English Crown, if he won it at all, by no means but that of open
war. And he had to wage his warfare at a time when England was ruled
by a King who was his own peer in the art of war, when the land was
defended by an army in the highest state of efficiency, an army which
had never known defeat, and which was flushed with the remembrance of
hard-won victories. William had in short to make good his rights in the
absence of the least hope of native help, and withal in the teeth of
King Harold and his Housecarls.
[Sidenote: Comparison of the Norman exploits in Apulia.]
Such an enterprise as this might well seem to be beyond the powers of
a Duke of the Normans and of his Duchy. The successes of the Normans
in Apulia might indeed make it seem as if no enterprise could be
impossible to Norman valour. If private adventurers could thus carve
out principalities for themselves, what conquests might not be made
by the Duke himself at the head of the whole force of the Duchy? And
no doubt the example of the conquests made by his countrymen in the
South of Europe was ever present to the mind of William in planning
his [Sidenote: Differences between the two cases.] great undertaking
in the North. But the mere fact that the warfare was in the one case
waged in the South and in the other in the North, was an important
element of difference between the Apulian and the English enterprise.
The actors indeed in the one case were private adventurers, while in
the other it would be a sovereign at the head of his subjects and
vassals. Duke William could no doubt command a far greater force than
the sons of Tancred of Hauteville, but then he was also obliged to
[Sidenote: Greater difficulty of the English enterprise.] wage a wholly
different kind of warfare. The Duke of the Normans could not afford to
sit down in some corner of England, and to win his way step by step,
ever and anon gaining this or that skirmish or taking this or that
castle. And again, without joining in any ignorant depreciation of
Byzantine military prowess, we may doubt whether the sons of Tancred
had ever joined battle with enemies who could be at all compared
with the enemies with whom Duke William would have to join battle in
England. If they had ever met with really equal foes, it was when they
[Sidenote: 1053.] encountered Pope Leo’s German auxiliaries,[783] and,
by that time, they had risen somewhat above the condition of private
adventurers. They had waged a desultory warfare against a town here and
a castle there, towns and castles defended for the most part by the
mercenaries of a distant Emperor. They had never faced, what William
would have to face in England, a native King at the head at once of an
armed nation and of a native standing army. [Sidenote: William’s daring
the highest prudence.] All ordinary prudence would naturally shrink
from such a risk. It is only minds like that of William which can rise
above all ordinary prudence, which know their own power as none but
themselves can know it, which feel instinctively that undertakings
which would be madness in [Sidenote: Necessity of winning public favour
for his enterprise.] others are in their hands certain of success.
But William himself could not hope for success, unless he could win
over others far and near to look with favour upon his schemes, and
unless he could inspire them with that confidence in themselves and
in their leader without which [Sidenote: First in his own Duchy.]
such an undertaking would be simply hopeless. He had first to deal
with the chiefs and people of his own Duchy. Without their consent,
without their thorough good-will, he could do nothing. To cross the sea
to conquer England was quite another matter from putting down Norman
rebels, from driving out French and Angevin invaders, or even from
annexing neighbouring towns and provinces, like Domfront and Le Mans.
William’s men were bound by their feudal tenure to follow his standard
on the field of Val-ès-dunes and beneath the walls of Alençon. But it
might well be doubted whether their feudal tenure bound them to follow
his standard beyond the sea in an enterprise in which Normandy had no
interest. At all events they were not likely to muster with the like
zeal for the more hazardous undertaking. The Cenomannian war had been a
war of aggression no less than the English war would be, and the spoils
of conquered England would doubtless be far richer than the spoils of
conquered Maine. But men would not be so ready to trust themselves
in hope of spoil in the unknown land beyond the sea as they were to
go on a foray in an adjoining province, from which it was an easy
matter to make their way back to their [Sidenote: The Normans to be
persuaded, not compelled, to the undertaking.] own homes. To attempt,
by any mere stretches of the ducal authority, to carry men across the
seas to win crowns for William’s own personal behoof would have been
simply hopeless. William knew better than to risk his popularity and
his authority by any attempt of the kind. His object was to carry the
feelings of his people with him, and to conquer England by the swords
of Norman volunteers.
[Sidenote: Various feelings to which William appealed.]
But the feeling to which William was about to appeal was something
more than the mere desire of spoil, or even than the higher sentiment
of feudal loyalty. Nor did he design to make his appeal to his own
Normandy only. It suited William’s purpose and disposition to give
his enterprise a [Sidenote: Religious character of the age; specially
religious character of William.] far higher character and a far wider
range. The age was a religious age; Normandy was an eminently religious
country; William professed, and in many respects honestly practised,
a devotion to religion beyond that of other men. It is not without
real propriety that the panegyrist of William stops at this stage of
his narrative to tell us of the flourishing state of Normandy and
the Norman Church under a prince equally valiant, just, and devout.
William laboured to preserve the peace of his Duchy by keeping down
all its disturbers with the strong hand; the Truce of God was nowhere
so strictly kept as in the Norman land.[784] William in his own
person heard and judged the cause of the poor, the fatherless, and the
widow; his justice kept back his courtiers and favourites from deeds
of wrong; in his days the mighty man durst not remove the landmark of
his poorer neighbour.[785] An orthodox believer, a diligent student of
scripture, a devout worshipper and communicant,[786] a father careful
for the education of his children,[787] William from his youth up,
layman and prince as he was, set a model to priests and prelates. He
chose the good among them for his friends and counsellors, and he
visited the unjust and neglectful with his severest displeasure. A
zealous reformer, he constantly attended in person at ecclesiastical
synods,[788] and he kept a watchful eye over the administration of the
episcopal and archidiaconal courts.[789] Under his government churches
rose, monasteries were restored to the purity of their rule, Abbots,
Bishops, all ranks of the clergy, became models [Sidenote: Influence of
Lanfranc on William’s counsels.] of the due discharge of their several
duties. Nor is it without reason that, immediately on this panegyric,
our author adds his first mention of the great man whom William had now
chosen as his special counsellor in all matters touching the Church and
religion. The Prior of Bec, the renowned Lanfranc, was now, not indeed
in rank but in influence, the first man in the Norman Church.[790] And
it is impossible not to trace the hand of Lanfranc in the course which
William now followed. The minds of the Duke and the Prior, exercised as
they had been in such different pursuits, had still much in common. In
both we see the same wide grasp, the same subtlety, the same daring.
In many things Lanfranc would be the teacher, but he would ever find
in William a pupil worthy of his teaching. The cosmopolitan traveller,
who had migrated from Pavia to Bec—the scholar who had turned from the
study of the laws of Cæsar[791] to the study of the laws of God—the
theologian who had refuted the heretic face to face—the diplomatist
who had won the consent of the [Sidenote: The religious character of
the enterprise] Roman Court to his sovereign’s marriage—he it was,
we cannot doubt, who put into William’s hands the surest weapon for
his conquest. He it was who taught him to [Sidenote: probably due
to Lanfranc.] lay his claim, not only before Normandy, but before
all Christendom, and to cloke a wrongful aggression under the guise
of a Holy War. He it was who taught him to gather round his standard
crusaders from well nigh every Western land, and in the end to set foot
on English ground, not as an adventurer avenging his private quarrel,
but as the champion of the Church, marching forth with the approval and
the blessing of the temporal and the spiritual chiefs of Christendom.
[Sidenote: Nature of William’s claim to the English Crown.]
Let us then see what was the case against Harold and against England
which William thus brought to be judged, as we may say, by the public
conscience of Europe. The pleading of William and his advocates, not
only in his own Norman Parliament, but at the bar of the Pope, the
Emperor, and the whole world, is one of the most memorable instances
of human subtlety. It was a wonderful example of the way in which wily
men, men like William and Lanfranc, can persuade others, and most
likely persuade [Sidenote: No valid claim, either by hereditary right,
by bequest, or by election.] themselves also, that the worse cause is
the better. I have more than once incidentally shown that William had
no valid claim of any kind to the English Crown. He had no claim by
hereditary right; for the Crown of England was not hereditary, and, if
it had been hereditary, no conceivable theory of succession could make
William the heir. He had no claim by bequest; for a King of the English
could not bequeath his Kingdom like a private estate, and such power
of recommendation as the King did possess had been exercised in favour
of another. He had no claim by election; for the people of England, in
full Gemót assembled, had chosen another as their [Sidenote: Harold’s
oath irrelevant to the question.] King. He had indeed suffered a
wrong, whatever was its nature and degree, at the hands of the King
whom England had chosen. Harold had sworn to do something, and he had
not done what he had sworn to do. That was literally all, and, as
a claim on the Crown of England, it was nothing. If Harold were to
resign the Crown, if Harold were killed in battle or in single combat,
William would not thereby gain any right to the Crown which he had not
before. Harold had no power, any more than Eadward had, to make over
the Crown to another; his resignation or death would simply create a
vacancy, which the people of England might fill as they would. The
utmost that could be said on William’s side was that Harold’s injury
gave William a _casus belli_, and that a victory over Harold would give
William, by right of conquest, all that Harold possessed, the English
Crown included. But so odious a straining of the Law of Nations was
too clearly unjust for William to venture publicly upon [Sidenote:
The right of conquest not put forward. William’s appeal to public
opinion a mark of advancing civilization,] it. The right of conquest
was a right which he took care never to put prominently forward. He
always claimed as a lawful heir defrauded of a lawful possession. And
it marks a stage in the growth of European civilization, when William
saw that his cause would be strengthened by making his claim, formally
and solemnly, in the eyes of all men. The age of mere brute force was
clearly past, when a prince claiming a foreign Crown took such infinite
pains to win the public opinion of Europe, when he employed so many
pens and so many voices on his side. Unjust and delusive as were his
claims, it marks a great step in human progress that any man’s claims
should be put forward in so solemn a way. It was a distinct [Sidenote:
and of the growing power of the Papacy.] tribute to the power of law
and right and opinion. But it was a tribute no less distinct to the
growing power of the Papacy. The Bishop of Rome was invited, if not
to dispose of the Crown of England, at least to determine who was its
lawful possessor. Herein, if Lanfranc the Churchman triumphed, William
the statesman undoubtedly erred. He did not indeed err as regarded his
own personal interests. No crown that William held or won could ever
be at the disposal of any other mortal. But he erred as regarded the
common interest of Kings and [Sidenote: Effect of William’s application
to Rome.] of all independent governments. He invited the alliance and
interference of a power which he himself knew how to manage, but which
proved too strong for smaller men. The blast of the Roman trumpet which
declared Harold a perjured usurper, and William the lawful heir of
England, was but the forerunner of a still mightier blast which pealed
forth ten years later. The power which William now invoked to bless
and hallow the schemes of his ambition learned, from the precedent
set by William himself, to venture on that crowning act of daring
which declared [Sidenote: 1076.] how King Henry, the son of Henry the
Emperor, stood deprived of the Crowns of Italy and of the Teutonic
Kingdom.[792]
[Sidenote: Fair colouring put by William and Lanfranc on a bad cause.]
The case then which William laid before Normandy, before Rome, and
before all Western Christendom, was, in itself, a pretence utterly weak
and fallacious. He claimed a crown which the solemn act of those who
alone could dispose of it had, freely and lawfully, given to another.
But the craft of William—we must doubtless add, the craft of his
monastic ally—knew well how to put a fair colouring on their cause. The
Law of England utterly rejected William’s claim; but the Law of England
was likely to be known to few beyond the bounds of the island realm.
Worthless as were William’s claims, they had a side which to many
minds would be more attractive than that great principle of English
Law that no man could reign in England save by the will of the English
[Sidenote: Mixture of various irrelevant considerations.] people. It
was easy to put William’s claims into a taking and rhetorical shape; it
was easy to mix them up with a whole crowd of considerations, which
had no real bearing on the case, but which were admirably fitted to
enlist the sympathies of different classes of men. It was easy, by
skilful management, to insist now on one point, now on another, with
little care as to their logical consistency, provided one point gained
one class of supporters and another point gained another.[793] In a
large part of Europe, wherever the ideas of feudalism and chivalry
had taken firm hold, the doctrine that the people alone had a right
to choose their prince was fast passing [Sidenote: The hereditary
principle was gaining strength on the Continent.] out of memory. The
doctrine of hereditary right was daily spreading. It was daily taking
firmer and firmer root, with regard both to the Crown of France and
to the great fiefs which were held of that Crown. The doctrine that
the King never dies had indeed not yet arisen; but the Parisian Kings
had learned how to avoid the inconveniences of the interregnum and
election by having their sons crowned in their own life-time.[794]
That the Empire was other than elective no man had dared to affirm; no
man then, or seven hundred years later, would have ventured to deny
that the highest place on earth was in theory open to every baptized
man. But the moment with which we are dealing was precisely the
moment when the Empire was showing the strongest tendency to become
practically hereditary. In the Teutonic Kingdom, no less than in Latin
France,[795] the reigning King was at this moment a boy crowned as
his father’s successor while his father still lived.[796] The great
fiefs of both crowns were fast changing, from great magistracies like
English Earldoms, into hereditary principalities. In France indeed they
had passed the stage of change; they had been for some time, to all
intents and purposes, sovereignties which passed as a matter of course
to the heir of the last possessor. Kingdoms, Duchies, Counties, were
now looked upon as, wherever strict feudal notions prevail, they cannot
fail to be looked upon, as possessions in which the princes invested
with them had a personal [Sidenote: Different position of England from
other countries.] right. In England, almost alone, an Earldom still
kept its character as a great office, for the good administration of
which the magistrate entrusted with it was answerable to the power
which appointed him, the King and the general Assembly of the Nation.
In short, the political constitution, once common to every Teutonic
people, still flourished in England, while it had greatly decayed in
Germany and [Sidenote: Harold’s claim strange in continental eyes.]
had quite died out in France. It follows that, to most continental
hearers, the claim of Harold, a man not of kingly blood, to reign
solely by the will of the people would already sound something strange
and unnatural. The claim of William, a prince, would, simply because
he was a prince, be looked on with more favourable eyes. A reigning
prince, a kinsman of the late King, would seem far better fitted to
reign than a mere subject, possibly the grandson of a churl.[797]
Nor would the repugnance of the English to a King not of their own
blood and speech be thoroughly intelligible on the Continent. England
had never, except under constraint, chosen a foreign King, and Cnut
the Dane was, after all, hardly a foreigner in the eyes of half the
Kingdom. But on the Continent, at any rate among the nations of the
various Romance tongues, princes had freely passed from one kingdom
to another, as they could win them by conquest or by inheritance. Hugh
of Provence had reigned in Italy;[798] Odo of Chartres had sought,
not without a fair chance of success, for a kingdom in Burgundy;[799]
and, the greatest instance of all, the Crowns of Burgundy and Italy,
the Imperial Crown of Rome itself, were now, by the public Law of
Europe, held to pass of right to the King of the Teutonic Kingdom. For
the Duke of the Normans to grow into the King of the English would
therefore seem a change far less strange in [Sidenote: No fixed law
of succession anywhere.] continental than it seemed in insular eyes.
And again, it was for William’s advantage that, though the doctrine of
hereditary right was fast growing, the laws of hereditary succession
had not yet been strictly fixed in any country. No one doubted that a
son ought to succeed to his father, but it was by no means clear who
ought to succeed to a prince who left no son. In fact this point has
not to this day been settled by the common consent of Europe; it has
followed in each kingdom the local law of that kingdom, and, I need not
say, it is a point on which the Law of France and the Law of England
have differed for ages. In truth it was only in an age when the law
of hereditary succession was still very unsettled, that William the
Bastard could have succeeded to anything, [Sidenote: No hereditary
right in William.] whether in Normandy or in England. With regard to
England, his claims would be at once set aside by a modern lawyer. He
and Eadward had indeed a common ancestor in Richard the Fearless, but
Richard the Fearless never was sovereign of England, nor was he in any
line of succession which could have made him, under any circumstances,
sovereign of England. Such a common ancestry [Sidenote: Doctrine of
nearness of kin.] could give William no claim on the English Crown.
But, till the law is very distinctly settled, the notion of nearness
of kin is really more intelligible, and awakens more of sympathy, than
the technical doctrine of representation. [Sidenote: Mixed nature of
William’s claim.] William could therefore easily work on men’s minds
by enlarging on his nearness of kin to Eadward, especially when that
claim was mingled up with the claim founded on the alleged bequest of
Eadward.[800] He could talk of the kindred by blood between himself and
the English King; he could talk of their mutual affection and mutual
good offices; he could tell of the promise of the succession made to
him by his childless cousin. All this could easily be wrought up into
a claim which, in the eyes of men ignorant of the Law of England and
knowing no very strict law of succession of their own, might easily
seem stronger than the claims of Harold, which rested solely on the
election of the English people. As for Eadgar, nearer of kin to
Eadward than William was, and born withal of the true kingly stock of
England, it best suited William’s purpose to say nothing about him.
Out of England his existence was most likely hardly known. Nay, in the
unsettled state of men’s minds, William might, if the objection was
ever started, argue that Eadward might rightly pass by an incompetent
minor, and bequeath his Crown to a kinsman almost as near in blood and
so much better fitted to rule.[801]
[Sidenote: William’s claim adapted to]
We thus see that William’s claim to the Crown, a claim artfully made
up of bequest and hereditary right, was one [Sidenote: continental
opinion at the time.] by no means ill suited to commend itself to many
minds at the time. But it was not merely his claim as heir or legatee
of Eadward that William now put forth to the world. There never was
a more memorable example of the way in which one utterly fallacious
argument can sometimes be made to bolster up another argument equally
[Sidenote: The wrong done by Harold mixed up with William’s original
claim.] fallacious. With William’s supposed original right by kindred
or bequest the wrong done to him by Harold was cunningly mixed up. I
have already argued that that wrong, whatever was its nature, could
not really give William any right which he did not possess already.
[Sidenote: Ingenuity and fallaciousness of this argument.] Neither
Harold’s oath nor Harold’s breaking of his oath could, in law or
morals, make William’s claim to the Crown one jot better or worse. But
no tale could be better fitted further to inflame the minds of those
who were already disposed to look on the Norman Duke as an injured
man. It would indeed be a spirit-stirring tale in which William, and
those who pleaded in William’s name, would set forth the wrong-doings
of the faithless Englishman. [Sidenote: Aspect of the tale as told by
William.] Harold, the sworn man of William, had turned against his
lord; he had trodden under foot every duty of a vassal; rescued from
the dungeon of Beaurain by William’s bounty, honoured with William’s
personal friendship, admitted to the ranks of Norman chivalry by
William’s hand, bound to William and his house by the promise of a
daughter of Normandy to his wife—he had despised so many and so great
favours; he had lifted up his heel against his lord and benefactor; the
Kingdom which he had sworn to make over to William he had traitorously
seized as his own; he had added, it might be, to his crime the further
guilt of abusing the confidence of his own dying sovereign, and of
wringing from him in his last moments an unwilling assent to the
usurpation which he plotted. This was the light in which the tale of
the election of Harold, a tale which seems so glorious in English
eyes, would look in the eyes of those before whom William pleaded,
of those on whom he called on to help him to assert his right and to
chastise the wrong-doer. [Sidenote: Appeal to religious feelings.] Nor
was this all; William had that to add which would speak at once to the
deep religious feelings of his age and [Sidenote: Harold’s perjury
no ordinary breach of feudal obligation, but a direct insult to the
Norman Saints.] people. This was no common case of a vassal forgetting
his duty to his lord. Who in that age could boast that he had always
faithfully discharged all the duties arising out of the intricate, and
often contradictory, relations of feudalism? On such mere backslidings
as these William had never been unduly harsh. He had over and over
again forgiven the men who had rebelled against him, and in the moment
of victory he had ever kept his hands clean from bloodshed. But here
was a wrong which he never could forgive, because a higher duty called
on him to avenge it. He might pass by wrongs done against himself; but
he would be himself a partaker in the guilt, if he passed by the wrongs
done against a mightier power. Normandy had this time been wronged, not
only in the person of her mortal sovereign but in the persons of her
immortal guardians. Harold had done despite to all the saints of the
Norman land; he had arrayed against him the wrath of every patron of
every holy place from the stream of Eu to the Mount of the Archangel.
The powers of Heaven were ready to fight against their blasphemer,
and to bless the arms of him who stood forth as their earthly
[Sidenote: The Crusades forestalled in William’s expedition.] avenger.
Forestalling the enthusiasm with which, thirty years later, men pressed
to wipe out their sins by a Crusade against the Infidel, William now
called on all who would to win the favour of Heaven by going forth with
him to avenge the insult offered to the saints of Normandy. William, in
self-delusion, let us hope, rather than in conscious hypocrisy, called
on all who would to aid him in the attack on an independent nation
which he cloked under the name of a Holy War.
[Sidenote: General character of William’s case.]
Such was in truth the claim by virtue of which William threw down his
challenge to England and to the King whom England had chosen. In the
eye either of logic or of sound morals, his fabric was but as a house
of cards; each fallacy rested on another fallacy as weak as itself, and
when one frail support gave way, the fall of the whole must follow.
But men are in general but little under the rule either of logic or of
morals; they are apt to be guided by impulse rather than by judgement;
they find it much less fatiguing to echo some easily repeated formula
than to go into the facts or the reason of anything. A case then like
William’s, artfully put together, and in which each fallacy fitted
ingeniously into another, really told with more effect than the few
plain facts which formed the defence of Harold and of England. Instead
of being a house of cards, William’s fabric of fallacies, each resting
on the other, did, as a matter of practical policy, win for itself the
strength of the firmest arch. [Sidenote: Various incentives appealed
unto.] And artfully mixed up with his formal claims were incentives of
all kinds, adapted to the character and passions of the various kinds
of men with whom he had to deal. [Sidenote: The plunder of England
promised.] To all, of whatever nation, who would flock to his standard
he offered a share in the spoils of England. He would lead them to a
land abounding in all manner of good things, a land fruitful in meat
and drink and rich in gold and silver.[802] The wealth of that goodly
land should be the guerdon of all who had a share in its conquest. In
that spirit of confident boasting which, in men like him, is often
the highest wisdom, he promised beforehand all that was Harold’s,
while Harold, he said, had not strength of mind to promise a single
thing that was his.[803] William here lighted on the true difference
between his own position and that of his rival. Harold, content with
his own, planning no aggression against William or against any other
man, was not likely to promise rewards in Normandy to his Thegns or his
Housecarls. And, with his own people, William could appeal to feelings
which were at least [Sidenote: Appeal to Norman patriotism.] higher
than the mere love of plunder. It was possible to appeal to a certain
vein of Norman patriotism, and to represent, not only the English King,
but the English [Sidenote: Norman grudges against England.] nation, as
laden with a heavy weight of offences against the Norman Duchy. The
English invasion in Æthelred’s time[804] was perhaps forgotten—some
critics may perhaps say that it never happened—at any rate it does not
seem to have been prominently put forward. But William took care to
announce himself as the true successor of his father in the expedition
which his father undertook against England to support the rights of his
cousins, [Sidenote: The murder of Ælfred.] the banished Æthelings.[805]
He, the chosen heir of Eadward, went forth, among other high and
righteous purposes, to avenge the blood of Ælfred, shed by the father
of the reigning King, who was himself—so it was given out—art and part
in his father’s deed.[806] The blood of a prince, partly Norman by
birth, and endeared to Normandy by long residence in childhood and
youth, might well call for vengeance at the hands of loyal Normans.
[Sidenote: Expulsion of the Normans in 1052.] Then there was the wrong
done, fourteen years back, to so many Normans, friends and guests of
the late venerated King. Norman Knights and Prelates had had to flee
for their lives before a lawless crowd of English rebels, hounded
on against their own sovereign by the traitor Harold and [Sidenote:
Special case of Archbishop Robert.] his traitor father. Chief among
the victims was one whose wrongs, wrongs done against the Church
and all godliness, were but the fit forerunners of the fouler wrong
which had since been done directly against the saints in glory. The
blasphemer of the Norman saints had been the despoiler of the Norman
Primate. Robert of Jumièges, driven from the throne of Augustine, had
come back to spend the remnant of his days in his own land, and to
lay his bones beneath the slender towers and massive arches of the
mighty minster which he himself had reared.[807] That the murder of
Ælfred was a crime in which Harold could have had no share, that the
flight of Robert was his own act, that his deprivation was a righteous
process of English Law, that, even had Harold been the murderer of
Ælfred and the unrighteous despoiler of Robert, neither count could in
any way strengthen William’s claim to the English Crown—all these were
points on which few minds in Normandy were likely to dwell. All these
irrelevant matters could easily be made use of to stir up the mind of
Normandy against Harold and against England. And, if this was done, no
matter how logically weak were the arguments by which it was done, the
aim of William was gained.
[Sidenote: General appeal against England.]
But William, in the course of this great argument, showed himself
emphatically all things to all men. There were other minds than those
of his own Normans to be persuaded, there were ears in which another
line of argument [Sidenote: The invasion represented as a missionary
enterprise.] would sound more convincing. No diplomacy short of that
of William and Lanfranc could have contrived to represent the invasion
of England as an undertaking designed for the spiritual welfare of
England. No brains less subtle than theirs could have converted
William and his host into armed missionaries, eager to reform at
the sword’s point the evil lives and the ecclesiastical abuses of
[Sidenote: Charges brought against the English Church.] the ungodly
islanders.[808] A land which had not lost its ancient character of
the Isle of Saints—a land which had so lately boasted of a King like
Eadward and an Earl like Leofric—a land which was still illustrated by
the virtues of the holy Wulfstan—a land where so many minsters were
rising in increased stateliness, and where the wealth of the Church was
daily added to—a land whose Earls and Bishops and sons of every degree
pressed, year after year, to worship and to offer at the tombs of the
Apostles—a land like this was branded as a land which needed to be
again gathered [Sidenote: The Crusade preached against England.] in to
the true fold, and the Crusade which had not yet been preached against
Turks or Prussians or Albigenses was prematurely preached against the
people of England. It was indeed easy to gather together, in England
or in any other land, tales which showed that the Church had fallen
from her first love. It was easy to tell of breaches of discipline and
breaches of morals, to tell of the vast pluralities of Stigand and of
the deeds of sacrilege wrought at Berkeley and Leominster. The orators
of William may well have set forth tales like these before the Roman
Court, alongside of the tale of the perjury of Harold and of the wrong
done to their own master. But these were not the [Sidenote: Real crime
of England its independence of Rome.] real crimes of England. Her crime
in the eyes of Rome, the crime to punish which the Crusade of William
was approved and blessed, was the independence still retained by the
island Church and nation. A land where the Church and the nation were
but different names for the same community, a land where Priests and
Prelates were subject to the Law like other men, a land where the
King and his Witan gave and took away the staff of the Bishop, was a
land which in the eyes of Rome was more dangerous than a land of Jews
or Saracens. Rome, ever watchful, ever mindful, had not forgotten
the note of insular defiance when the heart of England spoke by the
mouth of Tostig, and threatened the Pontiff on his throne.[809] Even
under Eadward, England had been no unresisting bond-slave, and her
independence, so boldly asserted by one son of Godwine, was likely to
be as boldly maintained by another. The opportunity which Rome had
doubtless long looked for now offered itself. A sword was put into her
hand by which the rebellious islanders might be brought under her full
obedience. It was a policy worthy of William to send to the threshold
of the Apostles to crave their blessing on his [Sidenote: William
outwitted by HILDEBRAND.] intended work of reducing the rebellious
land. And it was a policy worthy of one greater than William himself to
make even William, for once in his life, the instrument of purposes yet
more daring, yet more far-sighted, than his own. On the steps of the
Papal chair, and there alone, had William and Lanfranc to cope with an
intellect loftier and more subtle than even theirs. The counsellor of
so many Pontiffs, so soon to be himself the most renowned of Pontiffs,
knew with whom he had to deal, and knew how to bide his time as well as
William himself. William was sent on an errand which none but William
could perform, but of which William himself knew not the full bearing.
Under his rule no man could doubt that England would be subject to none
but him. With William for her King, she was as little likely to be the
unresisting slave of Rome as if Harold himself should continue to guard
her. But a seed was sown which was to bear fruit in other times and
under weaker rulers. When Rome once took upon her to adjudge the Crown
of England, the path was opened for that day of [Sidenote: 1213.] shame
and sorrow when a descendant of William stooped to receive the Crown of
England as a fief of Rome.
§ 3. _The Norman Council and the Assembly of Lillebonne._
[Sidenote: Various negotiations carried on by William.]
The case of William had thus to be brought to bear on the minds of
his own people, on the minds of the neighbouring countries whence
he invited and looked for volunteers, on the minds of the foreign
princes whose help or at least whose neutrality he asked for, and,
above all, on the minds of the Roman Pontiff and his advisers. The
order of these various negotiations is not very clear,[810] and in
all probability all [Sidenote: He first consults a select Council of
his own Duchy.] were being carried on at once. But there is little
doubt that William’s first step, on receiving the refusal of Harold
to surrender his Crown—or whatever else was the exact purport of the
English King’s answer—was to lay the matter before a select body of his
most trusty counsellors. The names of most of the men whom William thus
honoured with his special confidence are already familiar to us. They
were the men of his own blood, the friends of his youth, the faithful
vassals who had fought at his side against French [Sidenote: Names
and characters of the men assembled by William.] invaders and Norman
rebels. There was his brother, Robert Count of Mortain, the lord of the
castle by the waterfalls,[811] the spoil of the banished Warling.[812]
And there was one closer than a brother, the proud William the son
of Osbern, the son of the faithful guardian of his childhood.[813]
There, perhaps the only priest in that gathering of warriors, was
his other brother, Odo of Bayeux, soon to prove himself a warrior as
stout of heart and as strong of arm as any of his race.[814] There
too, not otherwise renowned, was Iwun-al-Chapel, the husband of the
sister of William, Robert, and Odo.[815] There was a kinsman, nearer
in legitimate succession to the stock of Rolf than William himself,
Richard of Evreux, the son of Robert the Archbishop, the grandson of
Richard the Fearless.[816] There was the true kinsman and vassal who
guarded the frontier fortress of Eu,[817] the brother of the traitor
Busac and of the holy Prelate of Lisieux.[818] There was Roger of
Beaumont, who rid the world of Roger of Toesny,[819] and Ralph, the
worthier grandson of that old foe of Normandy and mankind.[820] There
was Ralph’s companion in banishment, Hugh of Grantmesnil,[821] and
Roger of Montgomery, the loyal son-in-law of him who cursed the Bastard
in his cradle.[822] There too were the other worthies of the day of
Mortemer, Walter Giffard[823] and Hugh of Montfort,[824] and William
of Warren, the valiant youth who had received the chiefest guerdon of
that memorable ambush.[825] These men, chiefs of the great houses of
Normandy, founders, some of them, of greater houses in England, were
gathered together at their sovereign’s bidding. They were to be the
first to share his counsels in the enterprise which he was planning,
an enterprise planned against the land which, with so many in that
assembly, was to become a second home, a home perhaps all the more
cherished that it was won by the might of their own right hands.
[Sidenote: William consults the Council.]
To this select Council the Duke made his first appeal. He told them,
what some of them at least knew well already, of the wrongs which he
had suffered from Harold of England.[826] It was his purpose to cross
the sea, in order to assert his rights and to chastise the wrong-doer.
With the help of God and with the loyal service of his faithful
Normans, he doubted not his power to do what he purposed.[827] He had
gathered them together to know their minds upon the matter. Did they
approve of his purpose? Did they deem the enterprise within his power?
Were they ready themselves to help him to the uttermost to [Sidenote:
Answer of the Council.] recover his right? The answer of the Norman
leaders, the personal kinsmen and friends of their sovereign, was wise
and constitutional. They approved his purpose; they deemed that the
enterprise was not beyond the power of Normandy to accomplish. The
valour of the Norman knighthood, the wealth of the Norman Church,[828]
was fully enough to put their Duke in possession of all that he
[Sidenote: They pledge their own service, but recommend the calling of
a larger assembly.] claimed. Their own personal service they pledged at
once; they would follow him to the war; they would pledge, they would
sell, their lands to cover the costs of the expedition. But they would
not answer for others. Where all were to share in the work, all ought
to share in the counsel.[829] Those whom the Duke had gathered together
were not the whole baronage of Normandy. There were other wise and
brave men in the Duchy, whose arms were as strong, and whose counsel
would be as sage, as those of the chosen party to whom he spoke. Let
the Duke call a larger meeting of all the Barons of his Duchy, and lay
his designs before them.
[Sidenote: The Assembly of Lillebonne.]
The Duke hearkened to this advice, and he at once sent forth a summons
for the gathering of a larger Assembly. This is the only time when we
come across any details of [Sidenote: Difference between Norman and
English Assemblies.] the proceedings of a Norman Parliament. And we
at once see how widely the political condition of Normandy differed
from that of England. We see how much further England had advanced,
or, more truly, how much further Normandy had gone back, in the path
of political freedom. The Norman Assembly which assembled to discuss
the war against England was a widely different body from the Great
Gemót which had voted for the restoration of Godwine. Godwine had
made his speech before the King and all the people of the land.[830]
That people had met under the canopy of heaven, beneath the walls of
the greatest city of [Sidenote: No Clergy or Commons in the Norman
Assembly.] the realm. But in William’s Assembly we hear of none but
Barons. The old Teutonic constitution had wholly died away from the
memories of the descendants of the men who followed Rolf and Harold
Blaatand. The immemorial democracy had passed away, and the later
constitution of the mediæval States had not yet arisen. There was no
Third Estate, because the personal right of every freeman to attend had
altogether vanished, while the idea of the representation of particular
privileged towns had not yet been heard of. And, if the Third Order was
wanting, the First Order was at least less prominent than it was in
other lands. The wealth of the Church had been already pointed out as
an important element in the Duke’s ways and means, and both the wealth
and the personal prowess of the Norman Clergy were, when the day
came, freely placed at William’s disposal. The peculiar tradition of
Norman Assemblies,[831] which shut out the Clergy from all share in the
national deliberations, seems now to have been relaxed. It is implied,
rather than asserted,[832] that the Bishops of Normandy were present in
the Assembly which now met; but it is clear that the main stress of the
debates fell on the lay Barons, and that the spirit of the Assembly was
a spirit which was especially theirs.
[Sidenote: Place of Meeting.]
And, if the constitution of the Assembly differed widely from that
of an English Gemót, the place of its meeting differed no less
characteristically from the places of meeting most familiar to
Englishmen. The law or custom of Eadward’s reign had chosen three of
the chief cities of England to be, each in turn, the place of meeting
for English national assemblies. The Norman Assembly met in a ducal
dwelling far away from any of the great cities of the Duchy. It was
gathered on a spot which had been a post of strength in far earlier
times, and which, after ages of neglect, had been once more called into
importance by [Sidenote: Juliobona or Lillebonne; its Roman remains.]
William himself. The old Roman town of Juliobona stood at no great
distance from the right bank of the Seine, and its representative,
the modern Lillebonne, is familiar to travellers and students as one
of the spots in Northern Gaul which are most rich in antiquities of
Roman date.[833] Within the present century a Roman theatre has been
brought to light, where the main arrangements of the building are
still perfectly preserved. Its solid arches and vast masses of walls
still attest that matchless skill of the ancient conquerors in the
constructive art of the builder which has made their works survive
those of so many later ages. So it has been at Lillebonne; the works
of the Roman Cæsars have proved more permanent than [Sidenote: Decay
of the place.] the works of the Norman Dukes. Juliobona seems to have
sunk into insignificance during the later days of Roman sway. It
seems that, before the Imperial dominion had fully ceased, while the
land was wasted alike by the Teutonic invasions and by the disputes
of contending Emperors or Tyrants, the ancient buildings of the city
had been largely destroyed of set purpose, in order to employ their
materials in the construction of defences to shelter what was allowed
to remain. Juliobona dwindled away, and the town makes no figure in
history, until William called it again into being, as if expressly
to become the scene of [Sidenote: The castle built by William.] this
memorable meeting.[834] On a slight elevation alike above the modern
town and above the old Roman relic, William had reared a fortress which
has now given way, partly to the military reconstructions of later
ages, partly to the sheer barbarism of times which are almost our own.
The site was a noble one. The theatre below, if it was not already
hidden, might have seemed but a feeble reproduction by the hand of man
of the glorious amphitheatre in which Lillebonne has been placed by the
hand of nature. [Sidenote: Present state of Lillebonne.] From the top
of a lofty tower of later days the eye looks down on the theatre on one
side, on the other side on the modern town, with the graceful spire
of its church, a work of the latest days of mediæval art. But the eye
may almost pass by both to gaze on the wooded hills which, save at one
point alone, shut in the view on every side. At that point, immediately
above the Roman ruin, the hills, like the walls of the theatre, leave
a gap which opens a view of the Seine glistening in the distance, and
of the higher hills of the land between the Seine and the Dive which
form the distant horizon. But no portion of the work of the great Duke
now remains on that noble site. His donjon has given way to a grand
round tower of later times, and to a taller one of octagonal shape,
whose shattered walls still rise as the loftiest point of town or
fortress. These changes were doubtless due to the fair requirements of
the military art of later ages. But William’s noblest work has yielded
to baser agents of destruction. Within his fortress, immediately
above the theatre, as if to put the skill of his own age in direct
competition with that of the old masters [Sidenote: William’s hall; its
destruction.] of the world, William had built a noble hall, every stone
of which has been destroyed in utter wantonness, but of whose general
aspect a sufficient record has been preserved.[835] Like most halls
of that and of the two immediately succeeding ages—like that noble
episcopal hall at Angers which we may take as the best representative
of the ducal hall at Lillebonne—a vaulted undercroft supported the
hall itself. A lower range of doorways, above them a range of the
small coupled windows of the age, marked the two stages, and produced
the effect, at once rich and solid, so characteristic of the best
works of Norman skill. Within that stately hall, divided, no doubt, by
ranges of pillars and arches which were then fresh from the hand of
the craftsman, William now, as on more than one other occasion,[836]
gathered together the wisdom and valour of his Duchy, to hear and to
ponder the mighty scheme on which his heart was bent.
[Sidenote: Genuine parliamentary spirit of the Assembly.]
Narrow as was the constitution of the Assembly, it showed, when it met,
no lack either of political foresight or of parliamentary boldness. In
a society so aristocratically constituted as that of Normandy was,
the nobles are in truth, in a political sense, the people, and we must
expect to find in any gathering of nobles both the virtues and the
vices of a real popular assembly.[837] William had already consulted
his Senate; he had now to bring his resolution, fortified by their
approval, before the body which came as near as any body in Normandy
could come to the character of an Assembly of the Norman People.
The valiant gentlemen of Normandy, as wary as they were valiant,
proved good guardians of the public purse, trusty keepers of what one
knows not whether to call the rights of the nation or the [Sidenote:
William’s opening speech; he assumes the willingness of the Assembly,
and asks only what amount they will contribute.] privileges of their
order. The Duke laid his case before them. He told once more the tale
of his own rights and of the wrong which Harold had done him. He
said that his own mind was to assert his rights by force of arms. He
would fain enter England in the course of the year on which they had
entered.[838] But without their help he could do nothing. Of his own
he had neither ships enough nor men enough for such an enterprise. He
would not ask whether they would help him in such a cause. He took
their zeal and loyalty for granted; he asked only how many ships, how
many men, each of his hearers would bring as a free-will offering.[839]
[Sidenote: The Assembly asks time to consider.]
A Norman Assembly was not a body to be surprised into a hasty assent,
even when the craft and the eloquence [Sidenote: Mingled feelings
of the Assembly.] of William was brought to bear upon it. The Barons
asked for time to consider of their answer. They would debate among
themselves, and they would let him know the conclusion to which
they came.[840] William was obliged to consent to this delay, and
the Assembly broke up into knots, greater or smaller, each eagerly
discussing the great question. Parties of fifteen, twenty, thirty,
forty, sixty, a hundred, gathered round this or that energetic
speaker.[841] Some professed their readiness to follow the Duke; others
were in debt, and were too poor to venture on such hazards.[842]
[Sidenote: Strong opposition to the enterprise.] Other speakers set
forth the dangers and difficulties of the enterprise. Normandy could
not conquer England; their fair and flourishing land would be ruined
by the attempt.[843] The conquest of England was an undertaking beyond
the power of a Roman Emperor.[844] Harold and his land were rich; they
had wealth to take foreign Kings and Dukes into their service;[845]
their own forces were in mere numbers such as Normandy could not hope
to strive against.[846] They had abundance of tried soldiers, and,
above all, they had a mighty fleet, with crews skilled beyond other
men in all that pertained to the warfare of the sea.[847] How could a
fleet be raised, how could the sailors be gathered together, how could
they be taught, within a year’s space, to cope with such an enemy?[848]
The feeling of the Assembly was distinctly against so desperate an
enterprise as the invasion of England. It seemed as if the hopes and
schemes of William were about to be shattered in their beginning
through the opposition of his own subjects.
[Sidenote: Attempt of William Fitz-Osbern to cajole the Assembly.]
A daring, though cunning, attempt was now made by William Fitz-Osbern,
the Duke’s nearest personal friend, to cajole the Assembly into an
assent to his master’s will. He appealed to their sense of feudal
honour; they owed the Duke service for their fiefs; let them come
forward and do with a good heart all, and more than all, that their
tenure of their fiefs bound them to. Let not their sovereign be driven
to implore the services of his subjects. [Sidenote: He points out the
danger of opposition.] Let them rather forestal his will; let them win
his favour by ready offerings even beyond their power to fulfil.[849]
He enlarged on the character of the lord with whom they had to deal.
William’s jealous temper would not brook disappointment at their hands.
It would be the worse for them in the end, if the Duke should ever have
to say that he had failed in his enterprise because they had failed in
readiness to support him.[850]
[Sidenote: He is commissioned to speak in]
The language of William Fitz-Osbern seems to have startled and
perplexed even the stout hearts with whom [Sidenote: the name of the
Assembly.] he had to deal. The Barons prayed him to be their spokesman
with the Duke. He knew their minds and could speak for them all, and
they would be bound by what he said.[851] But they gave him no direct
commission to bind them to any consent to the Duke’s demand. Their
words indeed tended ominously the other way; they feared the sea—so
changed was the race which had once manned the ships of Rolf and Harold
Blaatand—and they were not bound to serve beyond it.[852]
[Sidenote: His speech to the Duke;]
A point seemed to have been gained by the seeming licence given by the
Assembly to the Duke’s most intimate friend to speak as he would in the
name of the whole baronage. William Fitz-Osbern now spoke to the Duke.
He began with an exordium of almost cringing loyalty, setting forth how
great was the zeal and affection of the Normans for their prince, and
how there was no danger which they would not willingly undergo in his
service.[853] [Sidenote: his large offers] But the orator soon overshot
his mark. He promised, in the name of the whole Assembly, that every
man would not only cross the sea with the Duke, but would bring with
him double the contingent to which his holding bound him. The lord of
twenty knights’ fees would serve with forty knights, and the lord of a
hundred with two hundred.[854] He himself, of his love and zeal, would
furnish sixty ships, well equipped, and filled with fighting men.[855]
[Sidenote: disowned by the Barons.]
The Barons now felt themselves taken in a snare. They were in nearly
the same case as the King against whom they were called on to march.
They had indeed promised; they had commissioned William Fitz-Osbern to
speak in their names. But their commission had been stretched beyond
all reasonable construction; their spokesman had pledged them to
engagements which had never entered into their minds.[856] Loud shouts
of dissent rose through the hall. The mention of serving with double
the regular [Sidenote: Fears and confusion of the Assembly.] contingent
awakened special indignation. With a true parliamentary instinct, the
Norman Barons feared lest a consent to this demand should be drawn into
a precedent, and lest their fiefs should be for ever burthened with
this double service.[857] The shouts grew louder; the whole hall was in
confusion; no speaker could be heard; no man would hearken to reason or
render a reason for himself.[858]
[Sidenote: No common vote passed, but the Barons severally]
The rash speech of William Fitz-Osbern had thus destroyed all hope
of a regular parliamentary consent on the part of the Assembly. But
it is possible that the Duke gained in the end by the hazardous
experiment of [Sidenote: won over by the Duke.] his Seneschal. It is
even possible that the manœuvre may have been concerted beforehand
between him and his master. It was not likely that any persuasion could
have brought the Assembly as a body to agree to the lavish offer of
volunteer service which was put into its mouth by William Fitz-Osbern.
There was no hope of carrying any such vote on a formal division. But
the confusion which followed the speech of the Seneschal hindered
any formal division from being taken. The Assembly, in short, as an
assembly, was broken up. The fagot was unloosed, and the sticks could
now be broken one by one. The baronage of Normandy had lost all the
strength of union; they were brought, one by one, within the reach
of the personal fascinations of their sovereign. William conferred
with each man apart;[859] he employed all his arts on minds which,
when no longer strengthened by the sympathy of a crowd, could not
refuse anything that he asked. He pledged himself that the doubling
of their services should not become a precedent; no man’s fief should
be burthened with any charge beyond what it had borne from time
immemorial.[860] Men thus personally appealed to, brought in this way
within the magic sphere of princely influence, were no longer slack
to promise, and having once promised, they were not slack to fulfil.
William had more than gained his point. If he had not gained the formal
sanction of the Norman baronage to his expedition, he had won over
each individual Norman Baron to serve him as a volunteer. And, wary as
ever, William took heed that no man who had promised should draw back
from his promise. His scribes and clerks were at hand, and the number
of ships and soldiers promised by each Baron was at once set down in a
book.[861] A Domesday of the conquerors was in short drawn up in the
ducal hall at Lillebonne, a forerunner of the greater Domesday of the
conquered, which, twenty years later, was brought to King William of
England in his royal palace at Winchester.
§ 4. _William’s Alliance with Tostig._
[Sidenote: William’s chances of support in England]
William had thus, by a characteristic effort of his craft, won over
his own Duchy to support him in his enterprise. He had now to seek for
allies beyond his own borders. And, first and foremost, it concerned
him to know whether he could look for any support in the land to
whose dominion he aspired. There is not a shadow of evidence to show
that William had a single native partizan within the four [Sidenote:
confined to the Normans settled there.] seas of Britain.[862]He may
have carried on intrigues with the Normans whom Harold had allowed to
remain in England. But even on this head we have no distinct evidence.
A single notice some months later seems to show that, even at the time
of William’s landing, the Normans in England, however eagerly they may
have wished for his success, looked on his enterprise as hopeless.[863]
But it is certain that one, perhaps two,[864] native Englishmen
[Sidenote: William’s cause embraced by the banished Tostig.] were
zealous on William’s behalf. At what stage of his negotiations we know
not, but seemingly early in the year, one Englishman at least came to
William’s court, to excite him to war against England and to offer his
own services for the cause. But that Englishman was no discontented
noble at Harold’s court, no leader of a powerful faction within his
realm. He was an exile, buoyed up by an exile’s proverbially desperate
hopes. The first foreign volunteer who answered to William’s summons
was Tostig the son of Godwine.[865]
[Sidenote: Position and schemes of Tostig.]
In the banished brother of the English King, William found an ally
willing to help him in all his schemes, an ally far more impetuous than
himself, far more eager to strike a blow at once and at all hazards.
The fallen Earl of the Northumbrians had sunk from bad to worse. He
had now thrown off every feeling of an Englishman and a brother of the
English King. He had once perhaps dreamed of the Kingdom for himself;
he now found himself shut out from all hopes of his Earldom, or indeed
of restoration in any shape. Harold, as Earl, at the Northampton
conference, had done all that he could do for his brother; but he
had agreed to the sentence of outlawry which the national voice had
called for, and he had not as King done anything to recall Tostig
to his country. In fact the restoration of Tostig was in every way
impossible. [Sidenote: His hopelessness of restoration.] He had shown
his thorough unfitness to rule, and it is absurd to suppose that he
would have been satisfied to sit down and live peaceably in England as
a private man. Harold could have had neither the will nor the power to
break the Oxford compact, to dispossess Morkere of the Earldom which
had been so solemnly confirmed to him, and to set his brother to rule
once more over the unwilling people of Northumberland. Nor could he
be asked to depose in favour of a pardoned outlaw either of his two
loyal brothers who ruled in Kent and in East-Anglia. Nor could Tostig
reasonably hope that Harold would put him in a still closer relation to
himself by restoring the West-Saxon Earldom in his favour. In short,
no banished man ever seemed doomed to a more hopeless banishment.
It is not wonderful then that the heart of Tostig was turned to an
exceeding bitterness against the country which had cast him out, and
against the brother who had refused to sacrifice the public weal to his
interests. If he still retained the consciousness of originally right
intentions, such a consciousness would only add fuel to the fire. It
is quite possible that the murderer of Gamel and Ulf may have looked
on himself as a martyr to the cause of good order among the barbarous
Northumbrians. At all events, he looked on himself as absolved from
all ties either to his [Sidenote: He determines on a restoration by
force.] brother or to his country. An attempt at an armed return on the
part of Tostig was no more than was to be expected. It was what any
banished man of that age was sure to attempt, if he could only collect
the needful force in any quarter. Osgod Clapa, Godwine, Ælfgar, Harold
himself, had all set him the example. The practice was so common that
it could hardly be looked upon as specially blameworthy. If we blame
Harold severely for the slaughter at Porlock, it is really because he
pays the penalty of his greatness, because we cannot help judging him
by a severer standard than that by which we judge smaller [Sidenote:
Difference between the case of Tostig and the cases of other returning
exiles.] men.[866] But there are very marked degrees in a course
which, however usual at the time, must be set down as being in every
case contrary to ideal loyalty and patriotism. The case of Godwine
needs no defence; it is covered by the general right of insurrection
against mis-government. If Godwine came to restore himself, he came
also to deliver England. Harold, like Osgod Clapa, tried to effect his
return by the help of mercenaries hired in a foreign land. But he
did not ally himself with any enemies of the King or Kingdom. Ælfgar,
on his first banishment, went a step further by leaguing himself with
a rebellious vassal, if not within the Kingdom of England, at least
within the Empire of Britain.[867] On the occasion of his second
banishment, he did not scruple to employ the help of a fleet of
Wikings, who must have been cruising on the shores of England with no
friendly intent.[868] All these are steps in a descending scale. But
neither Osgod nor Harold nor Ælfgar sank to the wickedness of roaming
over the world in search of any foreign potentate who would restore
him by force, even at the expense of the utter subjugation of England.
Tostig alone did not scruple at this depth of treason. He stands before
us as acting more distinctly as the enemy of his country than any
Englishman whom we have come across since the days of Ælfric and Eadric.
[Sidenote: Tostig goes from Flanders to Normandy.]
Tostig, we have seen, on his banishment from England, took refuge
with his brother-in-law Count Baldwin, and spent the winter at his
court.[869] But, early in the next year, perhaps not very long after
the election of Harold, most likely as soon as the news of the messages
which passed between William and Harold had found its way to Bruges,
Tostig was at the Court of William, urging him to the invasion of
England. He eagerly asked the Duke how he could suffer the perjurer to
reign,[870] and promised his own [Sidenote: Relations between William
and Tostig.] vigorous help in promoting all his plans.[871] It would
seem that he reached Normandy before the Assembly at Lillebonne,
and it is even implied that the exhortations of Tostig were among
the inducements which led William to summon that Assembly.[872] But
Tostig’s exhortations could have been only a very secondary inducement,
serving at most to strengthen and hasten a resolution which William
had already formed. It would be an insult to William to suppose that
he really needed Tostig as a counsellor. The relations between the two
men are perfectly easy to understand; the small man was likely to be
useful as a momentary tool in the hands of the great man. Though Tostig
left his wife at the court of her brother, the family connexion between
Judith and Matilda would secure him a brotherly reception at the Court
of Rouen; indeed we are told that, on the strength of that connexion,
Tostig and William had long been intimate friends.[873] And now each of
the two friends was in a position to be useful to the other. Tostig,
driven from England, was in search of foreign help, and the Court of
Normandy was the natural place for him to seek for it in the first
instance. As soon as he knew of William’s designs on the English Crown,
he would hail in him the very man for his purpose. And the prince
who already contemplated the invasion of England would rejoice at an
alliance with the banished and hostile brother of the English King.
Tostig had doubtless, after the manner of exiles, persuaded himself
that all England was ready to welcome, not only himself, but any
stranger who might appear under the pretext of restoring him. William
was too wise to believe tales of this kind, but he might well look on
Tostig as likely to prove an useful tool, as one whose incursions might
serve to harass the King of the English, and to distract his attention
from the main danger. Tostig’s impetuous temper would naturally call
for earlier and more effective support than the prudence of William
would be inclined to give, or indeed than, at that early stage of his
preparations, he was able to give. It was undesirable utterly to thwart
Tostig, or to make an enemy of him; it was perhaps becoming [Sidenote:
Tostig attacks England with William’s sanction. May, 1066.] desirable
to get rid of him. He was therefore allowed to make an incursion on
the English coasts. At his own risk, but with the Duke’s sanction, he
set sail from the Côtentin at the head of such a naval force as he
could get together. This force would doubtless consist of Flemish and
Norman mercenaries and volunteers. The Norman account tells us that
King Harold’s fleet was so vigorously on the alert that Tostig was
unable to land in England, while contrary winds hindered his return to
Normandy.[874] We know however that he did land in England, and that he
committed considerable ravages. [875] But, from this point, the career
of Tostig and that of William become altogether distinct, and the
story of Tostig’s later doings will join itself to another thread of
my narrative. Tostig probably chafed under the restraints of William’s
prudence; perhaps he thought himself forsaken, or even betrayed, by an
ally whose support was so slowly and grudgingly given. It is certain
that he soon threw up his alliance with the Norman Duke, and sought for
more ready aid elsewhere.
§ 5. _William’s Negotiations with Foreign Powers._
[Sidenote: William invites volunteers from all parts.]
The alliance with Tostig was a mere episode. The banished Earl could
only be useful so far as he was likely to make a diversion of which
William might take advantage. The Duke’s serious business lay on
the continent. He invited soldiers from every quarter; the spoils
of England were promised as their reward, and that promise brought
abundance of volunteers from all parts of Gaul, from the royal domains,
from Britanny, from Poitou and Aquitaine, and from the more distant
land of Burgundy.[876] Some accounts even bring men to William’s
muster from the Norman colonies in Southern Italy.[877] The presence
of large bodies of these mercenaries or volunteers from all parts of
Romance-speaking Europe is an undoubted fact, and it is [Sidenote:
The Conquest not a national Norman enterprise.] one which it is most
important to bear in mind. There can be no greater mistake than to
look on William’s invasion as a national Norman undertaking, or on his
army as consisting wholly of native Normans. We have just seen that
it was only as volunteers that William’s own subjects followed him,
and as volunteers men of any nation who chose to join him followed him
equally. But it is a speaking witness, alike to William’s personal
capacity for rule and to the inherent superiority of the Norman
national character, that all this mixed multitude should have received
a thoroughly Norman impress. The [Sidenote: Norman character impressed
on the whole.] spoils of England were offered to all who would come,
and from a large part of Europe men flocked eagerly to share them.
But the head and the heart of the whole enterprise was Norman. The
leaders of the enterprise, the Duke himself and most of the chief
commanders, [Sidenote: Few foreign princes served; the mass of the
foreign troops mere adventurers.] were Norman. A few princes or men
of princely houses, like Eustace of Boulogne and Alan of Britanny,
commanded their contingents in person. But the mass of the foreigners
were mere adventurers, and we shall find that, when the day of battle
came, they served under a Norman commander. We are indeed told that men
came from all lands, not only for the sake of plunder, but to maintain
the righteous cause of William.[878] It is likely enough that, when the
Papal approval was once given to the enterprise, men pressed, as they
did in after years to the Crusade, to atone for past acts of robbery
and slaughter by renewing them with the Church’s blessing. But all
that redeemed William’s enterprise from being an enterprise of mere
brigandage came from the presence of his own subjects. The instinct of
mankind is right, after all, in looking on the Conquest as a Norman
Conquest. It was the native Normans who were really foremost in the
strife, and it was the native Normans who took the firmest root in the
conquered land. William’s true strength lay, after all, in the gallant
men who could at least boast of the comparatively ennobling motive
that they were supporting their native sovereign in the pursuit of his
fancied rights.
[Sidenote: William’s embassies to foreign powers.]
The share then, numerically a very important share, taken in the
expedition by foreign adventurers is beyond all doubt. But the
negotiations between William and the neighbouring potentates are
involved in no small obscurity and contradiction.[879] It was William’s
manifest interest to obtain, if not the active alliance, at any rate
the neutrality of all his neighbours. It was necessary for his purpose
to feel as secure as he could make himself that no French or Angevin
or Breton invasion of Normandy would take place during his absence. It
was also an important subsidiary object to obtain from the neighbouring
princes full licence for their subjects to take a share in the
enterprise. For these [Sidenote: His embassy to King Henry. Condition
of Germany and the Empire. 1056–1066.] objects he sent embassies as far
as Germany and Denmark. The great Emperor Henry the Third had been,
as I need hardly repeat, the constant ally of England. But he had now
been dead ten years, and the childhood and youth of his son, the young
King Henry, was a time of distress and confusion for the Teutonic
Kingdom. The minority [Sidenote: Comparison between the minorities of
William and of Henry the Fourth.] of Henry had been, in many points,
a repetition of the minority of William. But there was one marked
difference between the German and the Norman period of chaos. William
had been constantly exposed to the attacks of traitors, and of foreign
enemies who sought to deprive him of his coronet and his life. Henry
had not as yet had to fear either foreign invaders or home-bred rebels;
he was simply passed to and fro between the hands of several ambitious
men who sought to reign in his name. And it is an instructive mark of
the difference between the political systems of Germany and Normandy
that the men who sought to rule in Henry’s name were almost wholly the
great spiritual Princes of the Empire. While still a child, he had
been, by [Sidenote: 1062.] a mixture of craft and violence, transferred
from the care of his mother to that of Hanno Archbishop of Köln,[880]
and [Sidenote: 1063.] from the hands of Hanno he had passed into those
of another princely churchman, the famous Adalbert of Bremen.[881] The
young King was now perhaps just beginning in some degree to exercise a
will of his own. [Sidenote: 1065.] He had, in the course of the last
year, been girded with [Sidenote: 1066.] the sword of knighthood;[882]
and this very year had witnessed the fall of Adalbert and the partial
restoration of the power [Sidenote: No mention of the Norman embassy
in German writers.] of Hanno.[883] But, full as the German writers
are as to the reign of Henry the Third and the minority of Henry the
Fourth, they tell us absolutely nothing as to any relations between
the Empire and Normandy.[884] William is not spoken of by them till
after he had obtained the Crown of England.[885] From Norman sources
we seem to hear both of an alliance with the great Emperor himself and
of a later alliance entered into during his son’s minority.[886] Such
an alliance in the Emperor’s life-time, ten years or more back, need
not have been in any way directed against England. [Sidenote: Possible
influence of the Empress Agnes in favour of Normandy.] And an alliance
with Normandy during the earliest years of King Henry, while he was
still under his mother’s guardianship, might seem no unlikely object
of his mother’s policy. The Empress Agnes, it must be remembered, was
a member of that house of Poitiers which had suffered so deeply at the
hands of Geoffrey of Anjou,[887] and she might very naturally seek to
maintain or to renew a connexion with a power which was the strongest
enemy of the enemy of her own family. But, at the time which we have
now reached, the power of Agnes had wholly passed away; alliance with
Normandy moreover now meant hostility to England; and it is utterly
impossible to see what interest either the young King or his successive
archiepiscopal advisers could have in supporting the claims of William
against the claims of [Sidenote: German help said to be promised to
William.] Harold. Our Norman informant however describes Henry as,
in high-sounding but somewhat vague terms, committing his Kingdom to
an active support to the Norman side.[888] This again, strange as it
sounds, can hardly be sheer invention, though we instinctively suspect
exaggeration [Sidenote: Probable state of the case.] in no small
degree. It may be enough if we suppose that Henry or his counsellors
agreed to put no hindrance in the way of such subjects of the Empire as
might choose to join the Norman standard as volunteers.
[Sidenote: Negotiations with Swend of Denmark; his alleged promises and
faithlessness.]
The negotiations with Swend of Denmark again rest wholly on Norman
authority. We are told that the Danish King promised help to William,
which promise he was so far from keeping that he sent a large body of
troops to the support of Harold.[889] With this latter statement I
shall deal in its proper place. As for negotiations between William and
Swend, they are perfectly possible. [Sidenote: Position and interests
of Swend.] But it is hard to see what interest Swend could have had in
supporting William. Swend was the cousin of Harold, and, though Godwine
had resisted his claims on the English Crown, alliance with him as King
of the Danes had always formed part of the Earl’s policy.[890] If Swend
at this time cherished any hopes of the English Crown, the succession
of William stood far more directly in the way of those hopes than the
succession of Harold. Nothing could be a more complete hindrance to any
schemes of the kind than the transfer of the Crown to a wholly alien
invader. On the other hand, Swend’s chances were distinctly bettered
by the transfer of the Crown to a dynasty of which he might almost
count as a member. If then Swend had really determined to interfere in
English affairs, we may be sure that his intervention would have been
on the side of Harold and not on the side of William. But it is far
more probable that the wariest prince in Europe promised neutrality and
kept it.
[Sidenote: Negotiations with King Philip. Difficulty as to the
relations between Philip and Baldwin.]
Even the negotiations of William with princes much nearer home are
wrapped up in no small obscurity. One manifest object was to insure
the safety of his frontier in the direction of Paris. William’s close
connexion with Baldwin of Flanders, and the guardianship exercised by
Baldwin over the young King Philip, might seem enough to make matters
tolerably safe on that side. If Baldwin’s affinity with William did
not absolutely secure the co-operation both of France and Flanders, it
would at any rate, it might be thought, secure Normandy against all
fear of attack from either quarter while her sovereign was engaged in
his great enterprise. But, in the only account that we have, Baldwin
is not introduced as acting at all in his character of guardian.
William goes as [Sidenote: Interview between Philip and William.]
his own ambassador to King Philip. The two princes meet at the great
Abbey of Saint Germer in the district of Beauvais, a spot within the
royal dominions, but only a few miles from the border Norman town of
Gournay.[891] [Sidenote: William offers to hold England as a fief
of the French Crown.] William asks for his overlord’s help in his
enterprise, and offers, in return for such help, to hold England, no
less than Normandy, as a fief of the French Crown.[892] Philip consults
his nobles, who argue, naturally enough, that nothing can be more
dangerous to the French Kingdom than any increase of the strength of
the Norman Duchy. The offer to hold England in fief does not blind
them; William’s vassalage for England will be still more nominal
than his [Sidenote: Philip hostile to the enterprise.] vassalage for
Normandy.[893] The answer given is therefore unfavourable; and William
leaves the presence of his suzerain with very high words on his lips.
Whether this story be literally true or not, it shows how familiar
to men’s minds the notion of _Commendation_, even on the greatest
scale,[894] still was. It shows how little of indignity attached to the
vassal’s position, and of how little practical value was the oath of
homage. We are presently told that Philip in no way promoted William’s
object, but that he rather did all that he [Sidenote: Negotiations
with Baldwin of Flanders.] could to hinder it.[895] Instead of any
distinct account of William’s negotiations with his father-in-law,
we get only an unintelligible romance.[896] But the practical issue
of both the French and the Flemish negotiations seems plain. Neither
Philip nor Baldwin, in their character as sovereigns, gave William any
help. It is even probable that Philip, so far as he either had a will
of his own or was guided by French counsellors, discouraged William’s
enterprise rather than [Sidenote: French and Flemish volunteers in
William’s army.] promoted it. But abundance of volunteers from both
France and Flanders took service in William’s army. The Flemings, above
all, the countrymen of Matilda, pressed eagerly to his standard, and
they formed an important element in the Conquest and in the settlement
which followed it. Matilda’s son Gerbod,[897] Gilbert of Ghent,[898]
and Walter of Flanders,[899] are all names which occur among the
conquerors of England, and those of Gerbod and Gilbert will again
appear in our history.
[Sidenote: Eustace of Boulogne a zealous ally of William.]
In the region intermediate between Normandy and Flanders, the cause
of William was eagerly taken up by Count Eustace of Boulogne, the
brother-in-law of King Eadward. He had, of all men, wrongs, as he would
deem them, to avenge on Harold and on England. The chastisement which
Godwine had refused to work on the insolent burghers of Dover[900]
might now at last be wrought on them and on their whole race, with the
usurping son of the old traitor at their head. Eustace probably needed
no invitation to take his share in the enterprise. He came himself, and
he induced others to follow the same course. An incidental notice of
one of his followers throws some light on the class of men who flocked
to William’s banners, and on [Sidenote: Story of Arnold of Ardres.]
the rewards which they received. One Geoffrey, an officer of the Abbey
of Saint Bertin at Saint Omer, who had the charge of its possessions
in the County of Guisnes, sent his sons Arnold and Geoffrey to the
war. A daily pay and various gifts from the Duke were their immediate
reward, and in the end they received an establishment of lands both in
Essex and in the border shires of Mercia and East-Anglia, under the
superiority of their patron Count Eustace.[901]
[Sidenote: Great number of auxiliaries from Britanny.]
But the country from which, next to his own Duchy, William drew most
support in his enterprise, was undoubtedly the neighbouring, the
nominally vassal, land of Britanny. When we remember the internal
dissensions of [Sidenote: State of the country; war against England
probably popular in Britanny.] that country, and the way in which
a party among the Bretons had supported William against their own
sovereign,[902] this is in no way wonderful. And, though loyalty to a
Norman overlord is not likely to have counted for much, another motive
may well have worked to fill the Norman host with Breton recruits.
The Celtic race has a long memory, and the prospect of waging war
in the insular Britain against the Saxon intruder may not have been
without charms for the descendants of the Armorican exiles. [Sidenote:
Services of Alan Fergant.] Certain it is that the Breton auxiliaries,
under Alan Fergant, a cousin of the reigning Count Conan, one of
the many sons of his uncle Odo,[903] played an important part in
the conquest of England. Even Dinan, so lately besieged by William,
now sent its lord to swell William’s muster.[904] Helpers came also
from more southern regions; Hamon, Viscount of Thouars in the land
of Poitou, came at the head of his force, and, as we shall hereafter
see, [Sidenote: Volunteers from Anjou, Touraine, &c.; Geoffrey of
Chaumont.] was admitted to William’s most intimate counsels.[905]
Angevin auxiliaries we should have been less inclined to look for; but
they too are mentioned in our lists.[906] We find also a warrior from
the marchland of Tours and Blois, Geoffrey of Chaumont, a homager of
Count Stephen of Chartres. He, as we read in the annals of his house,
gave up all his fiefs to Sulpicius of Amboise the husband of his niece,
and himself went forth to win new fortunes in England.[907] [Sidenote:
State of Anjou.] Yet one would have thought that the condition of that
part of Gaul would just now have afforded scope enough [Sidenote:
War between Geoffrey and Fulk Rechin.] for the energies of the most
warlike. The two successors of Geoffrey Martel, Geoffrey the Bearded
and our historian Fulk Rechin, were now engaged in a war of brother
against brother.[908] It was in this very year that the city of Angers
was betrayed[909] to Fulk, and that Count [Sidenote: Geoffrey betrayed
to Fulk. 1066.] Geoffrey was led away as a captive to Chinon,[910] the
fortress overhanging the Vienne, the fortress so famous in the days
when Counts of Anjou were also Kings of England, and so famous again
when Capetian royalty, banished from its own Paris, found shelter
in the lands which had once [Sidenote: Conan of Britanny; his war
against Anjou and death. 1066.] been Angevin. In this same year too
Conan of Britanny met with his death, and met it, as some said, by the
machinations of William.[911] Strange to say, this suspicion reaches
us only from the Norman side. Other authorities, Breton and Angevin,
speak only of a war which Conan waged against Anjou, and in which, by
whatever means, [Sidenote: Legend of Conan’s death.] he lost his life.
It is a Norman writer[912] who tells us how, when William was preparing
for the invasion of England, Conan sent to wish him good luck in his
enterprise, but at the same time to demand the cession of Normandy to
himself. He, Conan, was the lawful heir of the Duchy; the Bastard could
have no right; the Bastard too, with his accomplices, had poisoned
Conan’s father Alan, and had, up to that day, usurped the possession
of a land which should have been his. If Normandy was not at once
surrendered to its lawful prince, Conan would at once assert his rights
with his whole force. William, we are told, was somewhat frightened,
but God delivered him out of his danger. There was a Breton noble, a
chamberlain of Conan, who had sworn fealty to William and to Conan
alike, and who had borne the message to William as Conan’s ambassador.
He undertook—at whose bidding or from what motive we are not told—to
rid the world of his Breton master. He anointed the gloves, the bridle,
and the hunting-horn of Conan with poison. The Count was engaged in his
Angevin campaign, and was besieging the fortress of Château-Gontier,
not far from the Cenomannian border. The defenders had capitulated, and
Conan seems to have been in the very act of making his triumphal entry
into the town. The Count put on his gloves, he grasped the bridle, and
unwittingly raised his hand to his mouth. The poison took effect, and
before long Conan was a corpse. The murderer left the Breton army, and
brought the news to William. The Duke was now at leisure to give his
whole mind to the expedition against England.
[Sidenote: William charged with the death of Conan; probabilities of
the case.]
If such a tale as this was current, it is not wonderful that rumour
went on to charge William with having instigated a crime by which he
so greatly profited. As to the probabilities of the case, I might
almost repeat what I have already said when the same charge was brought
against William in the matter of Walter and Biota.[913] The whole
tale, from the threat of Conan onwards, reads like a romance. Did we
find it in a hostile Breton or Angevin writer, we should at once set
it down as an invention of hostile spite. And does the romance really
gain any further authority, because it has found its way into a Norman
chronicle? The silence of the hostile writers surely tells more on the
other side. Conan, it seems plain, died suddenly during his Angevin
expedition; it was easy to attribute the deed to William; it was no
less easy to deck out the story with romantic details. That William was
a secret poisoner I, for one, do not believe; but an English writer
can hardly avoid the remembrance that, while the deaths of Walter and
Conan were attributed to William, perhaps in the eleventh, certainly
in the twelfth century, it was reserved for the nineteenth century to
attribute the death of the Ætheling Eadward to Harold.[914]
[Sidenote: Negotiations with the Pope.]
The exact order of all these proceedings it is hopeless to try to
fix, and it is equally hopeless to try to fix their relations to
the great embassy of all. Negotiations with Counts and Kings were,
in the age which was just opening, of less moment than negotiations
with the Apostolic throne. And indeed it marks a distinct epoch in
the history of European politics, when, for the first time, the
occupant of the Apostolic throne was called on to adjudge [Sidenote:
Alexander the Second. 1061–1073.] a disputed diadem.[915] The reigning
Pontiff was Anselm of Lucca, who, under the title of Alexander the
Second, had succeeded Nicolas; and, after a violent struggle with the
[Sidenote: 1064.] Anti-pope Cadalous of Parma, he was now in full
possession [Sidenote: Influence of HILDEBRAND.] of the Holy See.[916]
But the ruling genius of the Papacy was already the Archdeacon
Hildebrand. He it was who discerned how much the Roman Church might
[Sidenote: William’s embassy.] gain by identifying itself with the
cause of William. The ambassador of William, Gilbert, Archdeacon
of Lisieux,[917] came and pleaded his master’s cause. He told the
tale which had been so often told before, the rights of William, the
usurpation and perjury of Harold, the despite done [Sidenote: He asks
the Papal approval of his enterprise.] by him to the holy relics.
William craved the blessing of the Holy See upon his righteous cause;
he offered, we are told, but in vague and ambiguous language, to hold
of God and of the Apostle the Kingdom which he hoped [Sidenote: Debate
in the Conclave. No advocate sent by Harold.] to win.[918] The cause
was debated in the Conclave, but it was debated after the hearing of
one side only. No advocate of England appeared at the bar of Alexander
to defend the right of Harold to the Crown which England had given
him. It is needless to seek for the English King’s reasons for not
appearing to answer the accusation [Sidenote: A defence on Harold’s
side would have compromised the rights of his Crown.] of William.[919]
It is enough that, however ready Harold, as a loyal son of the Church,
might be to seek spiritual benefits at the threshold of the Apostles,
he could not, as a King of the English, allow that any power to give or
take away the English Crown was vested anywhere save in the Assembly
of the English people. To plead before Alexander would have been to
recognize his jurisdiction; it would have been to acknowledge that the
Emperor of Britain had a superior [Sidenote: No summons probably sent
to Harold.] upon earth. But, before we ask why Harold did not appear,
we might perhaps ask whether he was ever summoned to appear, and
whether the Roman judgement was not pronounced without so much as an
opportunity for defence being allowed to the accused. No writer speaks
of any summons as being addressed to the English King; one writer
alone hints at the possibility of any hearing [Sidenote: William’s
cause opposed by many of the Cardinals.] of the defence.[920] But the
cause of justice did not lack advocates even in the Roman Conclave.
When Hildebrand dwelt on the benefits which the Church would gain by
accepting the jurisdiction thus laid at its feet, many of the Cardinals
rejected his arguments with horror. It was not for the Church to become
a partaker in deeds of blood, and to sanction claims which could only
be enforced by the slaughter of so many men.[921] But in the end the
worse reason prevailed. Even in ordinary times, it would have been no
more than sound policy to welcome, as far as might be, the advances of
a prince like William, who, pious as he might be, had not always shown
himself the obedient servant of Rome. His uncanonical marriage,[922]
and one or two other exercises of independence on William’s part,[923]
would not be forgotten. But, far above all these [Sidenote: Policy of
Hildebrand.] lesser questions, Rome was already beginning to practise
her characteristic arts under their greatest master. Slaughter,
robbery, devastation, all the horrors of an unprovoked war against an
unoffending nation, were to be held as nothing when the interest of the
Roman See was in the other scale. Never before had such an opportunity
been offered to the successor of the Fisherman. It was not merely to
win greater authority over a single island. The appeal of William to
the Papal Court created a precedent by which the Papal Court might
claim the disposal of all the Crowns in Christendom. The voice of
[Sidenote: Alexander issues a Bull in favour of William.] Hildebrand
conquered. The decree went forth which declared Harold to be an usurper
and William to be the lawful claimant of the English Crown. It would
even seem that it declared the English King and all his followers to
be cut off from the communion of the faithful.[924] William was sent
forth as an avenger, to chastise the wrong and perjury of his faithless
vassal. But he was also sent forth as a missionary, to guide the erring
English into the true path, to teach them due obedience to Christ’s
Vicar, and to secure a more punctual payment of the temporal dues of
his Apostle.[925] The cause of the invasion was blessed, and precious
gifts were sent as the [Sidenote: His gifts to William.] visible
exponents of the blessing. A costly ring was sent containing a relic
holier, it may be, than any on which Harold had sworn, a hair of the
Prince of the Apostles.[926] [Sidenote: The consecrated banner.] And
with the ring came a consecrated banner, to hallow the cause of fraud
and usurpation.[927] Every help that the [Sidenote: Perversion of the
religious sentiment against England.] religious arts of the age could
give was bestowed on the man who craved a blessing on the removal of
his neighbour’s landmark. Every terror that those religious arts kept
in store for the blasphemer and the heretic was hurled against the King
whose axe was lifted only to defend his own rights and the rights of
his people. The [Sidenote: A Crusade preached against England.] name
had not yet been heard; but in truth it was now that the first Crusade
was preached, and it was preached by the voice of Rome against the
liberties of England.
[Sidenote: Complete success of William’s diplomacy.]
The diplomacy of William and Lanfranc had thus completely triumphed.
The great fabric of deception by which their subtle wits had cheated
both themselves and others was now brought to perfection. The cause of
William was accepted by the voice of his own Duchy; it was accepted
by the public voice of Europe; it was hallowed by the judgement of
the common Father of Christendom. At whatever stage in William’s
negotiations the final answer from Alexander came, there can be no
doubt that, from that moment, his own preparations were more vigorously
pressed on, and that recruits pressed more eagerly to his standard. His
own hopes and the hopes of his followers now rose higher. It was now
not only booty and lands and lordships, English Earldoms for Norman
knights and English Bishopricks for Norman priests, that William could
offer to those who followed him. To every man, from whatever quarter of
the earth, who came to serve under the consecrated banner he could now
offer the blessing of the Roman Pontiff and every spiritual gift that
the Pontiff’s hand could bestow. Never surely did the world see a more
perfect triumph of unrighteous craft than when the invasion of England
was undertaken in the name of religion.
[Sidenote: Summary.]
The first part then of William’s work was done. We must now return
to our own island, threatened as she was by the Norman Duke from the
South, threatened, as we shall presently see her, by an enemy hardly
less terrible from the quarter whence her older enemies had come. It
was the fate of England in this memorable year to be exposed to two
invasions at the same moment, and against two invasions at the same
moment the heart and arm of Harold himself could not prevail.