This month of October completes the eighth century since the battle of
Hastings, perhaps the most important action that the modern world has
known, with the single exception of the conflict that checked the
advance of the Saracens in Europe in the eighth century,--if the battle
of Tours can properly be considered an event of modern history. The
issue of the battle of Hastings determined the course of English
history; and when we observe how influential has been the part of
England ever since it was fought, and bear in mind that the English
race, great as it is, can scarcely be said to have got beyond the
morning-time of its existence, we find it difficult to exaggerate the
importance of a conflict by which its career for eight hundred years has
been deeply and permanently colored. There is not a great event in
English or American annals which is not directly traceable to what was
done in the year 1066 by that buccaneering band which William the
Bastard led from Normandy to England, to enforce a claim that had
neither a legal nor a moral foundation, and which never could have been
established had Harold's conduct been equal to his valor, and had
Fortune favored the just cause. The sympathies of every fair-minded
reader of the story of the Conquest must be with the Saxons; and yet is
it impossible to deny that the event at Hastings was well for the world.
It is with Harold as it is with Hannibal: our feelings are at war with
our judgment as we read their histories. It is not possible to peruse
the noble account that Dr. Arnold has left us of the Carthaginian's
splendid struggle against the Roman aristocracy without feeling pained
by its result. The feelings of men are with the man, and adverse to the
order before which his genius failed. So is it with respect to Harold.
Hastings, like Zama, impresses us as having been a "dishonest victory,"
to borrow the words with which Milton so emphatically characterizes
Chaeronea. But "cool reflection" leads to other conclusions, and
justifies the earthly course of Providence, against which we are so
often disposed to complain. There can be no doubt, in the mind of any
moral man, that the invasion of England by Duke William was a wicked
proceeding,--that it was even worse than Walker's invasions of
Spanish-American countries, and as bad as an unprovoked attack on Cuba
by this country, such as would have been made had the pro-slavery party
remained in power. But it is not the less true that much good came from
William's action, and that nearly all that is excellent in English and
American history is the fruit of that action. The part that England has
had in the world's course for eight centuries, including her stupendous
work of colonization, is second to nothing that has been done by any
nation, not even to the doings of the Roman republic: and to that part
Saxon England never could have been equal.
The race that ruled in England down to the day of Hastings--call it the
Saxon race, if you like the name, and for convenience' sake--was a slow,
a sluggish, and a stupid race; and it never could have made a
first-class nation of the insular kingdom. There is little in the
history of the Saxons that allows us to believe they were capable of
accomplishing anything that was great. The Danish invasions, as they are
called, were of real use to England, as they prevented that country from
reverting to barbarism, which assuredly would have been its fate had the
Anglo-Saxons remained its undisturbed possessors. "In the ninth, tenth,
and eleventh centuries," says Mr. Worsaae, "the Anglo-Saxons had
greatly degenerated from their forefathers. Relatives sold one another
into thraldom; lewdness and ungodliness were become habitual; and
cowardice had increased to such a degree that, according to the old
chroniclers, one Dane would often put ten Anglo-Saxons to flight. Before
such a people could be conducted to true freedom and greatness it was
necessary that an entirely new vigor should be infused into the decayed
stock. This vigor was derived from the Scandinavian North, where neither
Romans nor any other conquerors had domineered over the people, and
where heathenism, with all its roughness and all its love of freedom and
bravery, still held absolute sway."[B]
The work which the Danes began was completed by the Normans; and it may
well be doubted if the Normans ever could have effected much in England
had they not been preceded by the Danes. The Danes were Northmen, as are
the Swedes and Norwegians. By Normans are meant the governing race in
Neustria, the duchy of Normandy. The Northmen who settled in Neustria,
and who became the foremost people of those times,--they and their
descendants,--did in a portion of France what their kinsmen the Danes
were doing in England. Circumstances gave to the _Normans_ a consequence
in history that is denied to the _Danes_; but the influence of the
latter was very great on English life, and on the course of English
events; and Norman influence on that life, and over those events, was
materially aided by the earlier action of the Danish invaders of
England. The difference between the Northmen in France and the Northmen
in England was this: the former, to a very great extent, became
Frenchmen, while the latter did not become Englishmen. The former, from
Northmen, became Normans, and took much from the people among whom they
settled. The latter remained Northmen, for the most part, taking little
or nothing from the English, while they bestowed a good deal upon them.
But the Northmen who became Normans underwent changes that rendered it
impossible that the Northmen in England should coalesce with them after
Duke William's victory in 1066. The English Northmen were strongly
attached to individual freedom, as all Northmen were originally; but the
Normans had learned to be feudalists in France, and this necessarily
made foes of men who by blood ought to have been friends. Many of those
who offered the stoutest resistance to the Conqueror were Danes; and it
was not until many years after Hastings that the English Northmen
submitted to the French Normans. The English Northmen, nevertheless,
were of real use to the Normans, by what they had effected long before
the expedition of William was thought of, and when the Normans had not
become the chief champions of feudalism. The immediate effect of Danish
action on William's fortunes, too, was very great. The Saxon Harold was
compelled to fight a battle with the Scandinavian invaders of England
but twenty days before Hastings; and these invaders sought to place a
Danish or Norwegian dynasty on the English throne. Harold was victorious
in his conflict with the Northmen; but the weakness and exhaustion
consequent on the exertions necessary to repel them were among the
leading causes of his failure before the Normans.
The people who gave their name to what is called the Norman Conquest of
England[C] were the most extraordinary race of the Middle Ages. This can
be said of them, too, without subscribing to the extravagant eulogies
of their ardent admirers, who are too much in the habit of speaking of
them in terms that would be misplaced were they applied to Athenians of
the age of Pericles. The simple truth concerning them shows that they
were superior in every respect to all their contemporaries, unless an
exception be made on behalf of the Mussulmans of Spain. The Northmen who
came first upon Southern Europe were mere barbarians, but there were
among them men of great natural powers, as there were among those
barbarians who overran the Roman empire; and they were able to take
advantage of the wretched condition of Europe, as earlier barbarians had
profited from the wretched condition of Rome. Of these men, Rollo was
one of the most eminent; and beyond all others of the Northmen his
action has had the largest influence on human affairs,--an influence,
too, that promises to last; for it is working vigorously at this moment,
though he has been more than nine centuries in his grave, and though to
most persons he is as much a mythical character as Hercules, and more so
than Romulus. We know that he was the founder of Normandy in the early
part of the tenth century; and but for his action in obtaining a
southern home for himself and his heathen followers, the conquest of
England never could have been attempted in a regular manner; and the
stream of English history must have run altogether differently, in a
political sense, even had Northmen, as distinguished from Normans,
succeeded in establishing themselves in that country. It was the French
character of the Normans which rendered their subjugation of England so
important an event, giving to it its peculiar significance, and causing
it to bear so strongly on European, Asiatic, and American history. The
Northmen became Christians and Normans. It is not uncommon to speak of
them as if they retained their Norwegian characteristics in "the
pleasant land of France," and were in the habit of looking back to the
home of their youth, or of their fathers, with that sort of fondness and
regret which were felt by those Englishmen who founded the American
nation. This is all wrong. The Northmen had left the North for the same
reason that other men leave their countries,--the only reason that ever
causes them to do so,--because the North did not afford them means of
support. Had they remained at home, they would have starved; and
therefore they turned their backs on that home, and became plunderers.
Some returned home, bearing with them much spoil; but others settled
abroad, and thought no more of the North. They cut the connection
entirely. Like an earlier "brood of winter," they found ample
compensation for all they had left behind in "the brighter day and skies
of azure hue" of Southern lands. They thought they had made a good
exchange of "Northern pines for Southern roses."
Of these last, the Normans proper were the most noted, and they have the
first place of all their race in the world's annals. They changed in
everything, from soul to skin. They became Christians, and they took new
names. Their original language was soon displaced by the French, and
became so utterly lost that hardly more is known of it than we know of
the Etruscan tongue. "The Danish language," says Sir Francis Palgrave,
"was never prevalent or strong in Normandy. The Northmen had long been
talking themselves into Frenchmen; and in the second generation, the
half-caste Northmen, the sons of French wives and French concubines,
spoke the Romane-French as their mothers' tongue." The same great
authority says: "In the cities, Bayeux only excepted, hardly any
language but French was spoken. Forty years after Rollo's establishment,
the Danish language struggled for existence. It was in Normandy that the
_Langue d'oil_ acquired its greatest polish and regularity. The earliest
specimens of the French language, in the proper sense of the term, are
now surrendered by the French philologists to the Normans. The
phenomenon of the organs of speech yielding to social or moral
influences, and losing the power of repeating certain sounds, was
prominently observable amongst the Normans. No modern French
gazette-writer could disfigure English names more whimsically than the
Domesday Commissioners. To the last, the Normans never could learn to
say 'Lincoln,'--they never could get nearer than 'Nincol,' or 'Nicole.'"
The "chivalry" of Virginia and the Carolinas--our Southern
Northmen--might cite this last fact in evidence of their tongues having
a Norman twang. They never have been able to say "Lincoln," though they
make a nearer approach to proper pronunciation of the word than was
vouchsafed to the genuine Normans when they say "Abe Linkin." That the
Normans cherished the thought of their Northern origin is a modern
error. Sir F. Palgrave, with literal accuracy, assures us that they
"dismissed all practical recollection in their families of their
original Scandinavian ancestry. Not one of their nobles ever thought of
deducing his lineage from the Hersers or Jarls or Vikings who occupy so
conspicuous a place in Norwegian history, not even through the medium of
any traditional fable. Roger de Montgomery designated himself as
'Northmannus Northmannorum'; but, for all practical purposes, Roger was
a Frenchman of the Frenchmen, though he might not like to own it. This
ancestorial reminiscence must have resulted from some peculiar fancy; no
Montgomery possessed or transmitted any memorial of his Norman
progenitors. The very name of Rollo's father, 'Senex quidam in partibus
Daciae,' was unknown to Rollo's grandchildren, and if not known, worse
than unknown, neglected."[D]
Another unfounded notion respecting the Normans relates the purity of
lineage. To read some historians, you might come to the conclusion that
the Normans were an unmixed race, and that they prided themselves on the
blueness of their blood, and were the most exclusive of peoples. Nothing
of the kind. Like most peoples who have done much, the Normans were a
mixed race. They took to themselves all who would come to them, who were
worth the taking. The old Roman lay of the asylum on the Palatine Hill
might almost serve as matter for a Norman _sirvente_, for the policy
which it attributes to Romulus, and which was followed by his
successors, was the policy adopted by Rollo, and which his successors
maintained. Says Sir F. Palgrave, "When treating of the 'Normans,' we
must always consider the appellation as descriptive rather than
ethnographical, indicative of political relations rather than of race.
Like William, the Conqueror's army, the hosts of Rollo were augmented by
adventurers from all countries. Rollo exhibited a remarkable flexibility
of character; he encouraged settlers from all parts of France and the
Gauls and England, and his successors systematically obeyed the
precedent." Most such adventurers in any age of the world must be of the
most ancient of families, the families, to wit, of "robbers and
reivers," the enlisted rascality of the earth, but none the worse
workmen because their patron is St. Cain. There is a great deal of work
to be done that can be done only by such fellows. It is sagely said that
the world would be but ill peopled if none but the wise were to marry.
It is certain that the world would get forward very slowly if none but
the mild and the moral were active in its business. There is an immense
amount of business to be accomplished that the mild cannot do, and which
the moral will not do. How can it be expected of mild men that they
should cut human throats, when they cannot be trusted even to stick the
sheep which they have no hesitation in eating? How unreasonable it would
be to expect moral men to become soldiers,--and the soldier's trade is
the only permanent pursuit, save the pursuits of the grave-digger and
the hangman,--when so exemplary a personage as the great Duke of
Wellington gravely said, on his oath and on his honor, that the army is
no place for moral and religious men? The felons who flocked to Rollo's
standard wellnigh a thousand years ago were recruited from the
"dangerous classes" of those remote days, and were probably as useful in
the task of civilizing the world as, according to the assertion of one
of the most eminent of English divines and historians, are rough and
lawless men in that of Europeanizing Polynesia.[E]
Dr. Lappenberg, whose authority is great in all that relates to the
history of the Normans, confirms what is said by Sir F. Palgrave of the
ignorance of the North and the indifference to it which characterized
the Normans. Speaking of the Norman literature, he observes: "In vain we
seek herein imitations of the old Norse poesy, or allusions to the
history or customs of Scandinavia. There may, perhaps, exist more
resemblance between the heroic sagas of the North and the romances of
chivalry of the South of Europe, both having for subjects wonderful
adventures, and the praise of heroism and beauty; but from this
resemblance it cannot be concluded that the Anglo-Norman poets have
borrowed their fictions from the Norman skalds. We have not a single
proof that they were acquainted with any saga or any skaldic
composition. All remembrance of their national poetry was as completely
obliterated among the posterity of the Northmen in France, as if, in
traversing the ocean, they had drank of the water of Lethe. This total
oblivion of their original home they have in common with the West Goths,
who in Castilian poesy have not left the faintest trace of their
original manners and opinions. The same remark has been applied to the
Vareger, who founded a royal dynasty in Russia, and to whom that
country, as a Russian author remarks, is not indebted for a single new
idea. The causes are here the same with those that effected a complete
oblivion of their mother tongue, namely, their inferior civilization,
their intermixture with the natives, their marriages with the women of
the country, who knew no other traditions than those of their native
land. In Normandy, too, the Christian clergy must have suppressed every
memorial of the ancient mythology."[F] Further, "Whatever partiality the
Normans may have entertained for history, they nevertheless betrayed an
almost perfect indifference for their original country. The historians
of Normandy describe the heathen North as a den of robbers. After an
interval of two centuries, they knew nothing of the events that had
caused the founder of their ruling family to forsake the North; they did
not even know where Denmark and Norway lay. Benoit de Ste More begins
his chronicle with a geographic sketch, in which he takes Denmark for
Dacia, and places it at the mouth of the Danube, between the extensive
countries of the Alani and the Getae, which are always covered with ice,
and surrounded by a chain of mountains." The excellent chronicler's
geographical notions seem to have been about as clear as those of Lolah,
who tells Katinka that
"Spain's an island near
Morocco, betwixt Egypt and Tangier."
The earliest Norman chroniclers show that the Normans, or rather the
Northmen, bore much ill-will toward the French; and this prejudice, it
has correctly been said, "probably lasted as long as their Northern
physiognomy, their fair hair, and other characteristics whereby they
were distinguished from the French." But they soon became the flower of
French races, and were regarded as Frenchmen in all the lands to which
they were led by their valor, their enterprise, their ambition, and
their avarice. They continued to avail themselves of the talents of
other races long after Northmen had been converted into Normans, greatly
to their own advantage, and considerably to the advantage of others.
"Inclination, policy, interest," says Palgrave, "strengthened the
impulse given by the diffusion of the Romane speech. Liberality was the
Norman virtue. 'Norman talent,' or 'Norman taste,' or 'Norman, art,' are
expressions intelligible and definite, conveying clear ideas,
substantially true and yet substantially inaccurate. What, for example,
do we intend when we speak of Norman architecture? Who taught the Norman
architect? Ah, when you contemplate the structures raised by Lanfranc or
Anselm, will not the reply conduct you beyond the Alps, and lead you to
Pavia or Aosta,--the cities where these fathers of the Anglo-Norman
Church were nurtured, their learning acquired, or their taste informed?
Amongst the eminent men who gloriously adorn the Anglo-Norman annals,
perhaps the smallest number derive their origin from Normandy.
Discernment in the choice of talent, and munificence in rewarding
ability, may be truly ascribed to Rollo's successors; open-handed,
open-hearted, not indifferent to birth or lineage, but never allowing
station or origin, nation or language, to obstruct the elevation of
those whose talent, learning, knowledge, or aptitude gave them their
patent of nobility."[G] The Normans won their fame, as the Romans their
empire, through aid of various races, and by borrowing and assimilating
whatever they found of good among all the peoples with whom they came in
contact,--meaning by good what was useful for the promotion of their
purposes.
The old Northmen in Neustria did not give way without a struggle, not
for existence only, but for victory, of which at one time their prospect
was by no means bad. The Danish party was strong in the time of Rollo,
and it might have established itself over Normandy in the early years of
his son, William I., who deemed his Norman sovereignty lost, and who at
one time showed the white feather in a very unNorman-like manner, and in
quite the reverse fashion to that adopted by Henri IV. at Ivry. At
length he recovered his courage, and, delivering battle, he won a
complete victory, which was ruinous to the vanquished. They were
exterminated, and Riulph, their leader, was captured, and blinded by
William's orders. It is supposed he died under the operation. William's
cruelty is attributed to his earlier cowardice, and it is an old saw
that no one is so cruel as a victorious coward; but cruelty was not so
uncommon a thing in the year 933 that there should be any necessity for
attributing the Norman's savageness to the reaction from fear. He
probably had called his cowardice caution. His success settled the
character of Normandy, which became, or rather continued to be, a French
country; and its people were Normans, the result of a liberal mixture of
many races, from whom were to issue the rulers of many lands. The combat
of the _Pre de la Bataille_ took place just four generations before
Hastings, and had its issue been different the current of history might
have run in a very different direction from that in which it has set for
eight centuries; but the consequences of such a change "must be left to
that superhuman knowledge which the schoolmen call _media scientia_, and
which consists in knowing all that would have happened had events been
otherwise than they have been." The question at issue was whether the
Normans should live as Frenchmen or disappear; and William's triumph
secured the ascendency of the Romane party, who alone could establish
Normandy. When his son, Richard sans Peur, became chief of the Normans,
A. D. 943, Normandy was a power in Europe, and virtually a free
state,--for its rulers were "independent as the kings of France, whose
superiority they acknowledged, but whose behests they never held
themselves bound to obey."
The Normans soon made themselves felt in Europe. They became the
foremost of Christian communities, and were distinguished in arts and
arms and letters. They were the politest people of their time, and in
their manners and modes of life they presented strong contrasts to the
general coarseness of the period in which they flourished. Their valor
seemed to increase with their culture; and if they were admired by the
few because of their intellectual superiority, they were dreaded by the
many because of their dauntless bravery and the energy and success which
characterized their military exploits. Though often fighting at great
odds, they were rarely defeated. They furnished the most distinguished
adventurers of an adventurous age. There is nothing more romantic than
the history of the Norman family of Hauteville, which sent forth a
number of men whose exertions in Southern Europe had great effect in the
eleventh century. Foremost of his countrymen in courage and capacity was
the adventurer Robert de Hauteville, better known as Robert Guiscard,
substantially the founder of that Neapolitan kingdom which we have seen
absorbed into the new kingdom of Italy. His daughter married a son of
one of the Byzantine Emperors, who was dethroned; and Robert was thus
enabled to enter on a series of Eastern conquests, which would have
ended in the taking of Constantinople had not imperative circumstances
compelled him to return to Italy. A few years later he resumed his
Oriental schemes, but died before he could complete them, and when
everything promised him success. Had a Norman dynasty been established
at Constantinople, at the close of the eleventh century, by so able a
man as Robert Guiscard, it is probable the Lower Empire would have
renewed its life, and that the Normans would have become as influential
in the East as their contemporary conquest of England had made them in
the West. The feudal system, of which they were the great masters, might
as easily have been introduced into Greece as it was into England, and
with the effect of producing an order of men who would have proved
themselves more than a match for any force that the Mussulman could have
brought against the new nation. There would have been a regular flow of
Normans and other hardy adventurers to Byzantium, and the Turks never
would have been allowed to cross the Hellespont to establish themselves
in Europe, and would have been fortunate had they been able to keep the
Normans from crossing the Hellespont to establish themselves in Asia.
Thousands of those fanatics who were so soon to cover the Syrian sands
with their bones, as Crusaders, would have been attracted to Greece,
and would have done Christendom better service there than ever they were
allowed to render it under the Godfreys and Baldwins and Raymonds, the
Louises and Richards and Fredericks, who piously fought for the
redemption of the Redeemer's sepulchre. Indeed the Holy Sepulchre could
best have been freed from infidel pollution by operations from Greece,
had Greece renewed her life under a dynasty worthy of the Greeks of old;
and Asia, the Land of Light, might have been relieved from the thick
darkness under which it has so long labored, had Norman genius and
Norman valor been authoritatively employed to direct the Christian
populations of the East, reinforced by the surplus adventurers of the
West, against the Mussulmans. The West might have liquidated its debt to
the East, by restoring Christianity to it.
All this was on the cards, had Robert Guiscard lived a few years
longer,--and he was one of many sons of a poor and petty Norman baron,
and superior to thousands of his countrymen only in the circumstance
that he was more favored by Fortune. We are not to judge of what might
have been effected by a Norman dynasty in Greece by the miserable
failure of that Latin empire of which Greece was the scene in the
thirteenth century, and which grew out of the capture of Constantinople
by the French and the Venetians. That empire had not the elements of
success in it; and it was established too late, and on foundations too
feeble, to meet the demands of the time. Its founders lacked that
legislative capacity with which the Normans were so liberally endowed.
Though we cannot subscribe in full to Mr. Acton Warburton's enthusiastic
estimate of the Norman race, we believe him to be substantially correct
in what he says of their legislative genius. He dwells with unction on
the strong tendency to institutions that ever characterized them. This
tendency, he observes, strongly indicates "the profound sentiment of
perpetuity, inherent in the Norman mind, to which everything was
valueless that shared not in some degree its own enduring character.
Abhorrent alike of despotism and license, they imparted this love of
institutions wherever they came. In their days the world was passing
through a fierce ordeal. A stern necessity lay on the whole system of
things, a necessity which may be expressed in this brief formula,--the
sword. In their several missions, if I may so speak, the Normans were
forced to use the appointed instrument of the hour; but the readiness
with which the sword was sheathed, the facility with which the soldier
changed into the citizen, shows how deeply they felt that a state of
hostilities, bloodshed, and disorder could not be the normal condition
of man. And so we see them pass at once from the battle-field to the
council-chamber. The fierce warrior of yesterday is the thoughtful
legislator of to-day. The first interval of repose was ever employed in
devising means for giving stability to their acquisitions, and a
constitutional form to the society in which they were to be vested.
Among the Teutons, such a task was never referred to the wisdom of any
one leader, however successful,--any oligarchy of chiefs, however
eminent. From time immemorial, the provisions from which their laws were
derived, and on which their societies were based, were the emanations of
free public opinion. Their armies were triumphant, because the soldier
yielded up his will implicitly to his general; their societies were
vigorous and stable, because, when the soldier became a citizen, he
resumed that will again. No sooner had conquest and peace transmuted the
army into a society, than the dominant sentiment appeared,--the
sentiment of rational independence,--resulting, as the community formed,
in liberal institutions."[H] Had this legislative spirit been applied to
Greece at the close of the eleventh century, the effect would have been
to create there a powerful nation; and the Crescent never would have
triumphed over the Cross in that land from which the West has drawn so
much that is of the highest value in all its processes of intellectual
culture.
There is a reverse to this picture of the Normans. They had some very
bad qualities, for they had no higher claims to perfection than is found
in the case of any other people. Mr. James Augustus St. John, speaking
of the Norman princess Emma, who married the English Ethelred, says,
after admitting her great personal beauty, that "her mental qualities
were very far from corresponding with the charms of her person. Like all
other Normans, she was greedy of gold, ambitious, selfish, voluptuous,
and in an eminent degree prone to treachery."[I] This may stand for a
portrait of the whole Norman race. Nor does it detract from their
aristocratical spirit that they were ever fond of money, or from their
chivalrous spirit that they were faithless when they supposed treachery
would best promote their interests. Aristocracies are always
money-seekers, and often money-grubbers; and they plunder all whom they
have the power to spoil. _Alieni uppetens_ is ever their motto, but _sui
profusus_ does always go with it. The American slavocracy were the
aristocracy of this country, and they were far more "greedy of gold"
than ever "Yankees" have been. Treachery is common to the chivalrous
classes, and the history of chivalry is full of instances of its display
by men who claimed a monopoly of honor. Our Southern "chivalry" were
unfaithful to every compact they made, and it was their infidelity that
brought about their fall. The dangers that now threaten the country
exist only because the party vanquished in the late civil war are bent
upon breaking the terms on which they were admitted to mercy. They are
fond of calling themselves Normans, though we have not heard much of
their Norman origin since their Hastings went against them; but in
respect to treachery and cruelty, and disregard of the rights of the
poor and the helpless, they are the match of all the barons of Normandy.
The Normans were often cruel, and some of their modes of punishing their
defeated enemies--blinding them, and cutting off their feet and hands,
and inflicting on them the most degrading of mutilations--might lead one
to suppose they were of Eastern origin, were not such practices
traceable to the Northmen. These practices imply a grossness of mind
that is much at war with the common notion of the gentleness and
cultivation of the Norman nobles. They were noted for their craft, their
spirit of intrigue, and their readiness to get possession of the
property of others by any and all means. The most unscrupulous modern
devotee of Mammon would be ashamed of deeds that never disturbed the
placid egotism of men who considered themselves the flower of humanity
and the salt of the earth,--and whose estimate of themselves has seldom
been called in question. The fairer side of their conduct with regard to
money is visible in their sensible encouragement of "business" in all
the forms which it then knew. "Annual Mercantile Fairs," says Sir F.
Palgrave, "were accustomed in Normandy. Established by usage and
utility, ere recognized by the law, their origin bespake a healthy
energy. Foreign manufacturers were welcomed as settlers in the
Burghs,--the richer the better. No grudge was entertained against the
Fleming; and the material prosperity of the country and the briskness of
commerce carried on in all the great towns, proves that the pack-horses
could tramp along the old Roman roads with facility. Indeed, amongst the
Normans the commercial spirit was indigenous. The Danes and the folk of
Danish blood were diligent traders. The greed of gain unites readily
with desperate bravery. When occasion served, Drake would deal like a
Dutchman. Any mode of making money enters into facile combination with
the bold rapacity of the Flibustier." There was much material prosperity
in Normandy at the close of the tenth century, or less than a hundred
years after Rollo had established himself and his followers on French
soil. The burgher class throve amazingly, and were the envy of all who
knew their condition; and their military skill and valor were as famous
as their success in the industrial arts, and their wealth, which was its
consequence. Free they were, or they would have been neither rich nor
valiant. The peasantry, too, were a superior people, who enjoyed much
freedom, and who exhibited their bravery whenever there was call for its
exhibition,--facts which show that they must have been well governed,
and which tend to elevate our conception of the merits of their rulers.
There was no such thing as a caste of nobles in Normandy for very many
years after that country passed into the hands of the Northmen. About
two generations after the death of Rollo, Richard le Bon, one of the
most popular of his descendants, set up the standard of exclusion, and
created that Norman nobility of which the world has heard so much for
eight hundred years. The clergy were too powerful in those days to be
much affected by his action, and the burghers were too rich to be put
down by a newly created nobility; but the peasantry were greatly injured
by the change, as it created an order who were interested in oppressing
them. They conspired, and their course bears some resemblance to that of
the Fenians of our day. The "Commune" was a word as alarming to Richard
le Bon and his nobility as "Fenian" was at first to the most bigoted of
Orangemen. The Duke employed Raoul, Count of Ivri, to crush the
Communists. Raoul was the son of a rich peasant, but he had no sympathy
with his father's order. As in modern life the most determined
aristocrat is often the man whose origin is the lowest, so was it nine
centuries ago, in Normandy. Raoul was a sort of Claverhouse and Jeffreys
in one person, and he "enjoyed the sport of dogging the Villainage. He
fell upon the Communists;--caught them in the very fact,--holding a
Lodge,--swearing in new members. Terrible was the catastrophe. No trial
vouchsafed. No judge called in. Happy the wretch whose weight stretched
the halter. The country was visited by fire and flame; the rebels were
scourged, their eyes plucked out, their limbs chopped off, they were
burnt alive; whilst the rich were impoverished and ruined by
confiscations and fines." Such were the good old times, which never can
return. Heaven be praised! Such was the origin of the Norman nobility,
destined to become the patricians of the world. The cruelty with which
the peasants were treated by the new nobles is a type of the system that
ever was pursued by men of "the gentle Norman blood" toward a restless
people. "The folk of Normandie" had no mercy on men who disputed, or
even called in question, their right to unrestricted dominion.
The Cotentin was the most important part of Normandy,--was to Normandy
what Normandy was to the rest of Europe. It has been well described as
"not merely the physical bulwark of Normandy, but the very kernel of
Norman nationality." It now forms a part of the _Departement de la
Manche_, and it holds Cherbourg in its bosom,--the _Caesaris Burgus_ of
the Romans, which the French imperial historian of the first Caesar is
completing as a defiance to England, thus finishing what was long since
begun under the old monarchy. Ages ago--even before the Romans had
entered Gaul--what we call Cherbourg is believed to have attracted
Gaulish attention because of its marine advantages. It is all but
certain that the Romans fortified it. The Normans were children of the
sea, and they did not neglect it. The Normans of the Cotentin were the
purest men of their race. They kept up that connection with the ocean
from which some other Normans revolted; and they were led from the land
to the sea by the same inducement that had sent their ancestors out of
Scania,--the inability to find food there. "The population," we are
assured, "was teeming, the sterile land could not feed them, but the
roaring surges surrounded them. All loved the sea, and upon, the waves,
and beyond the waves, they were ever seeking their fortunes. From
Hauteville, nigh Coutances, came the conquerors of Apulia and Sicily.
And when we call over Battle-Abbey Roll, or search the Domesday record,
or trace the lineage of our [the British] aristocracy, we shall find
that the lords of these same Cotentin castles, with scarcely an
exception, served in the Conqueror's army, or settled in the realm they
won." The plain English of which is, that they were the cleverest, the
most active, and the most successful robbers of their day and nation.
England was too near Normandy not to be an object of the first interest
to the Normans. At the close of the tenth century King Ethelred II.
adopted a course that was destined to have the most memorable
consequences. Richard le Bon bore himself toward the English much the
same as the English of to-day bore themselves toward us in the Secession
war. The Danes were then the worst enemies of England, and the Norman
government so far anticipated the Palmerstonian policy of neutrality,
which consists in favoring the enemies of those whom you hate, as to
throw open its ports to the ravagers of Normandy's neighbor. "Without
sharing the danger," observes Sir F. Palgrave, "Normandy prospered upon
the prey which the Danskerman made in England. The Normans were a
thriving and money-getting people. The great fair of Guipry attests
their national tendency. The liberal policy of the Dukes is also
forcibly illustrated by the remarkable treaty of peace concluded between
Richard le Bon and Olave, the Norskman, securing to the rovers the right
of free trade in Normandy. No certificate of origin was required when
the big bales of English stuffs were offered to the chapman at the
bridge-head of Rouen; and the perils of England were much enhanced by
the _entente cordiale_--this expression has become technical, and
therefore untranslatable--subsisting between Romane Normandy and the
Northmen of the North."
There is something amusing in this extract; for it describes, as it
were, and in advance, the state of things that existed during our late
war. The Secessionists were our Danes, who, if they did not ravage our
lands, cut up our commerce at a fearful rate, and not only found shelter
and aid wherever the English flag flies in authority, but were furnished
with ships by England and with men to work and to fight them, so that
our last sea-fight was won over our old foe on that summer day when the
Kearsarge sent the Alabama to look after the old Raven craft of the
Northmen that may be lying under the old Norman waters, and did it, too,
off the Cotentin shore, just where the conflict between Saxons and
Normans began.
King Ethelred, like President Lincoln in the case of the English, was so
unreasonable as to complain of the conduct of the Normans; and, again
like our lamented chief, he could not find any excuse for piratical
action in the fact that "the Normans were a thriving and money-getting
people," and supposed they had the right to get money by encouraging
robbery. But, unlike the American President, the Saxon king determined
to have prompt and ample vengeance--if he could get it. He indulged in
as much loud language as was uttered in Vienna last June, when Sadowa
was yet an unknown, name. He was bent upon vengeance, stern and
terrible. Now, vengeance is a commodity that is dear when it is
procurable _gratis_, but sometimes it is not obtainable at any price.
And so Ethelred found it, to his cost. Having formed his resolution to
invade Normandy, and lay it waste with fire and sword, and bring back
Richard le Bon with him in chains to England, it remained only to
execute his design. The English fleet sailed for the Cotentin, and
landed a force which should have done great things. But if the Normans
of the Cotentin were stout thieves, not the less were they stout
soldiers. No greater error than that men must have clean consciences to
be good warriors. The Normans rose to a man--and even to a
woman--against the invaders. Knights and seamen and peasants and the
peasants' wives, all armed; and the English were beaten so badly that
they could not have been beaten worse, had their cause been utterly
devilish. But few of them escaped,--probably those who had the sense to
run first; and they got off in six ships, all the rest of the fleet
falling into the hands of the Normans. The Norman Duke and the British
Basileus proceeded to make peace, and the peace-making business led to a
marriage, one of many royal marriages which have produced extraordinary
consequences, and led to much fighting, as if there were a natural
connection between wedlock and war. In private life, marriage not
unfrequently leads to contention; in public life, contention often leads
to marriage. Ethelred sought to "engraft the branch of Cerdic upon the
stem of Rollo," in the hope of increasing the power of England. He asked
for the hand of Emma, sister of Richard le Bon, and obtained it. This
union was every way unfortunate, and prepared the road for the Conquest.
The Normans who accompanied Emma to England, and those who followed her,
are described as "subtle, intriguing, false, and capable of any act of
treason which promised to further their own fortunes." They behaved as
members of "superior races" generally behave in countries inhabited by
"inferior races." They obtained power and place, and used their
influence to the detriment of England. The king and queen did not live
happily. One of their children was Edward the Confessor, who is
popularly considered the very personification of the Saxon race, but who
was half a Norman by birth, and wholly Norman by education; for the
successes of the Danes compelled his family to become exiles, and his
youth and earlier manhood were passed in Normandy.[J] When he became
king, the Normans had matters pretty much their own way in England. He
remembered that Robert, Duke of Normandy, father of William the
Conqueror, had once made an attempt to restore the Saxon line in
England, and that he failed only because his fleet was destroyed by a
storm. Duke William's influence had aided in his elevation to the
English throne. His gratitude was expressed at the expense of his
people. Once crowned, Edward invited his Norman friends to England. That
country soon swarmed with foreigners, with whom the king was more at
home than he was with his own subjects. Their language, the Romane, was
his language. It was the language of the higher classes, the language of
fashion, "the court tune." Such strong places as then stood in England
were garrisoned by foreigners, and other Normans were settled in the
towns. The country was half conquered years before the year of Hastings.
Duke William visited England in 1051. He was most hospitably received,
and it is supposed that what he saw caused him to form the plan that led
to the Conquest. Edward admired his visitor; and on the death of Edward
the Outlaw,--whom he had recalled from Hungary, with the intention of
proclaiming him as heir to the crown,--he determined that William should
be his successor. He bequeathed the English crown to the ruler of
Normandy. Harold agreed to support this arrangement. On his death-bed,
Edward said to Harold and his kinsmen, "Ye know full well, my lords,
that I have bequeathed my kingdom to the Duke of Normandy, and are there
not those _here_ whose oaths have been given to secure his succession?"
The person to whom the crown should have gone was Edgar Atheling, son of
Edward the Outlaw, and a lineal descendant of Ironside. Neither William
nor Harold had any _claim_ to the succession, whereas Edgar's claim was
as good as that of the Prince of Wales to the throne of Great Britain is
to-day. That Edward did not nominate Edgar must be attributed, in part
at least, to the conviction that his nomination would be treated with
contempt by the partisans of both William and Harold. He feared, it is
probable, that the nomination of Edgar would give England up to the
horrors of war, and that, after that prince should be disposed of by a
union of Saxons and Normans against his claim, there would be another
contest between the two factions of the victors. He was incapable of the
grim humor of the Macedonian Alexander, who on his death-bed bequeathed
his kingdom "to the strongest"; but his bequest was virtually of the
same nature as that which so long before was made in Babylon. His death
led to great funeral games, which are not yet over.
"Harold," says Palgrave, "afterward founded his title upon Edward's
_last_ will; many of our historians prove his claim, and the different
statements are difficult to be reconciled; yet, taken altogether, the
circumstances are exactly such as we meet with in private life. The
childless owner of a large estate at first leaves his property to his
cousin on the mother's side, from whose connections he has received much
kindness. He advances in age, and alters his intentions in favor of a
nephew on his father's side,--an amiable young man, living abroad,--and
from whom he had been estranged in consequence of a family quarrel of
long standing. The young heir comes to the testator's house, is received
with great affection, and is suddenly cut off by illness. The testator
then returns to his will in favor of his cousin, who resides abroad. His
acute and active brother-in-law has taken the management of his affairs;
is well informed of this will; and, when the testator is on his
death-bed, he contrives to tease and persuade the dying man to alter the
will again in his favor. This is exactly the state of the case; and
though considerable doubts have been raised relating to the
contradictory bequests of the Confessor, there can be no difficulty in
admitting that the conflicting pretensions of William and Harold were
grounded upon the acts emanating from a wavering and feeble mind. If
such disputes take place between private individuals, they are decided
by a court of justice; but if they concern a kingdom, they can only be
settled by the sword."[K] And to the sword Harold and William remitted
the settlement of the question.
The two men who were thus arrayed in deadly opposition to each other
were not unworthy of being competitors for a crown. Harold belonged to
the greatest Saxon family of his time, of which he had been the head
ever since the death of his father, the great Earl Godwin, which took
place in 1053. Earl Godwin was one of the foremost men of the
ante-Norman period of England, though his character, as Mr. St. John
observes, "lies buried beneath a load of calumny"; and he quotes Dr.
Hook as saying that "Godwin was the connecting link between the Saxon
and the Dane, and, as the leader of the united English people, became
one of the greatest men this country has ever produced, although, as is
the English custom, one of the most maligned." "Calm, moderate, and
dignified, reining in with wisdom the impetuosity of his nature," says
Mr. St. John, "he presented to those around him the _beau ideal_ of an
Englishman, with all his predilections and prejudices, the warmest
attachment to his native land, and a somewhat overweening contempt of
foreigners. He was without question the greatest statesman of his age;
and, indeed, statesmanship in England may almost be said to have
commenced with him. Whether we look at home or abroad, we discover no
man in Christendom worthy to be ranked with him, in genius or wisdom, in
peace or war. His figure towers far above all his contemporaries; he
constitutes the acme of the purely Saxon mind. No taint of foreign blood
was in him.... Godwin's lot was cast upon evil days. The marriage of
Ethelred with Emma originated a fatal connection between this country
and Normandy, the first fruits of which, forcing themselves but too
obviously on his notice, he prevented, while he lived, from growing to
maturity. The efforts, public and secret, which he found it necessary to
make in the performance of this patriotic task, laid him open to the
charge of craft and subtlety. Let it be granted that he deserved the
imputation; but it must be added, that, if foreign invasion and conquest
be an evil, from that evil England was preserved as long as his crafty
and subtle head remained above ground; and had he lived thirteen years
longer, the accumulated and concentrated scoundrelism of Europe would
have been dashed away in foam and blood from the English shore. Properly
understood, Godwin's whole life was one protracted agony for the
salvation of his country. He had to contend with every species of
deleterious influence,--ferocious, drunken, dissolute, and imbecile
kings, the reckless intrigues of monasticism at the instigation of Rome,
and the unprincipled and infamous ambition of the Norman Bastard, who
crept into England during this great man's exile, and fled in all haste
at his return. What he had to contend with, what plots he frustrated,
what malice he counteracted, what superstition and stupidity he rendered
harmless, will never be known in detail. We perceive the indefinite and
indistinct forms of these things floating through the mists of history,
but cannot grasp and fix them for the instruction of posterity."[L] This
portraiture may be somewhat too highly colored, but it is better
painting than we get from Norman writers, who were no more capable of
writing justly of Godwin and Harold, than Roman authors of Hannibal and
Spartacus. Godwin was an abler man than his son and successor, and
probably the latter would never have been able to aspire to royalty, and
for a few months to wear a crown, had not the fortunes of his house been
raised so high by his father. Nevertheless, Harold was worthy of his
inheritance, and possessed rare qualities, such as made him not
undeserving a throne, and of better fortune than he found at Hastings.
He was patriotic, magnanimous, brave, humane, honorable, and energetic.
His chief fault seems to have been a deficiency in judgment, which led
him rashly to engage in undertakings that might better have been
deferred. Such, at least, is the impression that we derive from his
fighting the battle of Hastings, when he had everything to gain from
delay, and when every day that an action was postponed was as useful to
the Saxon cause as it was injurious to that of the Normans.
Harold's rival was the illegitimate son of Robert the Devil, as he is
commonly called, because he has been, though improperly, "identified
with a certain imaginary or legendary hero," but who was a much better
man than his diabolic _sobriquet_ implies. William's mother was Arletta,
or Herleva, daughter of a tanner of Falaise. The Conqueror never escaped
the reproach of his birth, into which bastardy and plebeianism entered
in equal proportions. He was always "William the Bastard," and he is so
to this day. "William the Conqueror," says Palgrave, "the founder of the
most noble empire in the civilized world, could never rid himself of the
contumelious appellation which bore indelible record of his father's
sin. In all history, William is the only individual to whom such an
epithet has adhered throughout his life and fortunes. Was the word of
affront ever applied to Alphonso, the stern father of the noble house of
Braganza, by any one except a Castilian? Not so William;--a bastard was
William at the hour of his birth; a bastard in prosperity; a bastard in
adversity; a bastard in sorrow; a bastard in triumph; a bastard in the
maternal bosom; a bastard when borne to his horror-inspiring grave.
'William the Conqueror' relatively, but 'William the Bastard'
positively; and a bastard he will continue so long as the memory of man
shall endure." Sir Francis seems to have forgotten the Bastard of
Orleans. Nevertheless, and in spite of his illegitimacy, William became
ruler of Normandy when he was but a child, his father abdicating the
throne, and forcing the Norman baronage to accept the boy as his
successor; and that boy thirty years later founded a royal line, that
yet endures in full strength, Queen Victoria being the legitimate
descendant of William of Normandy.[M] The training that William received
developed his faculties, and made him one of the chief men of his age;
and in 1066 he prepared to assert his right to the English crown.
The Norman barons were at first disinclined to support their lord's
claim upon England. Their tenures did not bind them to cross the sea.
But at last they were won over to the support of his cause, on the
promise of receiving the lands of the English. He called upon foreigners
to join his army, promising them the plunder of England. "All the
adventurers and adventurous spirits of the neighboring states were
invited to join his standard," and his invitation was accepted. "William
published his ban," says Thierry, "in the neighboring countries; he
offered gold, and the pillage of England to every able man who would
serve him with lance, sword, or crossbow. A multitude accepted the
invitation, coming by every road, far and near, from north and south.
They came from Maine and Anjou, from Poitiers and Brittany, from France
and Flanders, from Aquitaine and Burgundy, from the Alps and the banks
of the Rhine. All the professional adventurers, all the military
vagabonds of Western Europe, hastened to Normandy by long marches; some
were knights and chiefs of war, the others simple foot-soldiers and
sergeants-of-arms, as they were then called; some demanded money-pay,
others only their passage, and all the booty they might win. Some asked
for land in England, a domain, a castle, a town; others simply required
some rich Saxon in marriage. Every thought, every desire of human
avarice presented itself. William rejected no one, says the Norman
chronicle, and satisfied every one as well as he could. He gave,
beforehand, a bishopric in England to a monk of Fescamp, in return for a
vessel and twenty armed men."[N] The Pope was William's chief supporter.
Harold and all his adherents were excommunicated, and William received a
banner and ring from Rome, the double emblem of military and
ecclesiastical investiture. Of the sixty thousand men that formed the
Norman army, Normans formed the smallest portion, and most of their
number were not of noble birth.
William sailed on the 28th of September, and landed his army on the
29th, without experiencing any resistance. Harold was in the North,
contending with and defeating the Northmen, one of whose leaders was his
brother Tostig. As soon as he received intelligence of William's landing
he marched south, bent upon giving immediate battle, though his mother
and his brother Gurth and other relatives, and many of his friends,
strongly counselled delay. This counsel was good, for his force was to
William's as one to four; and even a week's delay might have so far
strengthened the Saxons as to have enabled them to fight on an approach
to equal terms with the invaders. But Harold rejected all advice, and
pressed forward to action so imprudently as to countenance, in a
superstitious age, the notion that he was urged on by an irresistible
power, which had decreed his destruction. Certainly he did not display
much sagacity before battle, though both skill and bravery in it were
not wanting on his part The battle of Hastings was fought on the 14th of
October, 1066. The Normans were the assailants; but for six hours--from
nine in the morning till three in the afternoon--they were repulsed; and
had the Saxons been content to hold their ground, victory would have
been theirs. But they left the position they had so valiantly
maintained, to pursue the Normans, when the latter feigned to fly. Even
then they fought with heroic resolution, and might have regained the
day, had not Harold fallen. Soon after, the English position was
stormed, and the king's brother, Gurth, was slain. The combat lasted
till the coming on of darkness. Fifteen thousand of the victors are said
to have fallen,--a number as great as the entire English army.
The event of the battle of Hastings placed all England, ultimately, at
the disposition of the Normans, though many years elapsed before the
country was entirely conquered. Had the English possessed a good
government, or leaders who enjoyed general confidence, their defeat at
Hastings would not have reduced them to bondage, or have converted their
country into a new world. But they, who were even slavishly dependent on
their government for leading, had no government; and they were just as
destitute of chiefs who were competent to assume the lead at so dark a
crisis. Taking advantage of circumstances so favorable to his purpose,
William soon made himself king, but had most of his work to do long
after he was crowned. The battle of Hastings, therefore, was decisive of
the future of England and of the British race. Saxon England
disappeared; Norman England rose. The change was perfect, and quite
warrants Lord Macaulay's emphatic assertion, that "the battle of
Hastings, and the events which followed it, not only placed a Duke of
Normandy on the English throne, but gave up the whole population of
England to the tyranny of the Norman race,"--and that "the subjugation
of a nation by a nation has seldom, even in Asia, been more complete."
The nation that finally was formed by a union of the Saxons and the
Normans, and which was seven or eight generations in forming, was a very
different nation from that which had been ruled by the Confessor. It was
a nation that was capable of every form of action, and had little in
common with the Saxons of the eleventh century. It matters nothing
whether the Conqueror introduced the feudal system into England, or
whether he found it there, or whether that system is almost entirely an
imaginary creation, as most probably is the fact. We know that the event
called the Norman Conquest wrought great changes in England, and through
England in the world; and that Napoleon III. reigns over the French, and
Victor Emanuel II. over the Italians, that the House of Hohenzollern has
triumphed over the House of Hapsburg, that President Johnson rules at
Washington, and that Queen Victoria sits in the seat of Akbar or
Aurungzebe, are facts which must all be attributed to the decision made
by the sword at Hastings, no matter what may have been the particular
process of events after that battle. It is possible that the misery
consequent on the victory of the Normans has been exaggerated, though a
great deal of suffering must have followed from it. But there can be no
exaggeration of the general consequence of the success of the Normans.
That determined the future course of the world, and will continue to
determine it long after the Valley of the Amazon shall be far more
thickly inhabited, and better known, than to-day is the Valley of the
Danube.
There is one popular error with regard to the Norman Conquest which it
may not be amiss to correct. It is taken for granted by most persons who
have written on it, that the triumph of William was the triumph of an
aristocracy over a people, and we often hear the Saxons spoken of as
democrats who were subdued by aristocrats. This is an entirely erroneous
view of the whole subject. So far as there was a contest at Hastings
between aristocrats and democrats, the Normans were champions of
democracy, and the Saxons of the opposite principle. The Saxon
aristocracy was very powerful, and its power was steadily increasing for
generations before the Conquest; and had there not been a foreign
invasion, it is altogether probable that the English system soon would
have become strictly oligarchical. One of the chief causes of Harold's
failure was his inability to command the prompt support of some of the
greatest nobles, as Earls Edwin and Morcar, who paid bitterly for their
backwardness in after days. Something of this may be attributed to the
weakness of his title to the crown, but the mere fact that such men
could so powerfully influence events at a time when the very existence
of the country was at stake, is enough to show how strong were the
insular aristocrats; and it was this selfish aristocracy that was
destroyed by the Normans, most of whom were upstarts, the very scum of
Europe having entered William's army. We doubt if ever there was a
greater triumph effected by the poor and the lowly-born over the rich
and the well-born, than that which was gained at Hastings, though it
required some years to make it complete. "According to the common
report," says Sir F. Palgrave, "sixty thousand knights received their
fees, or rather their livings, to use the old expression, from the
Conqueror. This report is exaggerated as to number; but the race of the
Anglo-Danish and English nobility and gentry, the Earls and the greater
Thanes, disappears; and with some exceptions, remarkable as exemplifying
the general rule, all the superiorities of the English soil became
vested in the Conqueror's Baronage. Men of a new race and order, men of
strange manners and strange speech, ruled in England. There were,
however, some great mitigations, and the very sufferings of the
conquered were so inflicted as to become the ultimate means of national
prosperity; but they were to be gone through, and to be attended with
much present desolation and misery. The process was the more painful
because it was now accompanied by so much degradation and contumely. The
Anglo-Saxons seem to have had a very strong aristocratic feeling,--a
great respect for family and dignity of blood. The Normans, or rather
the host of adventurers whom we must of necessity comprehend under the
name of Normans, had comparatively little; and not very many of the real
old and powerful aristocracy, whether of Normandy or Brittany, settled
in England. The great majority had been rude, and poor, and despicable
in their own country,---the rascallions of Northern Gaul: these,
suddenly enriched, lost all compass and bearing of mind; and no one
circumstance vexed the spirit of the English more, than to see the fair
and noble English maidens and widows compelled to accept these
despicable adventurers as their husbands. Of this we have an example in
Lucia, the daughter of Algar, for Talboys seems to have been a person of
the lowest degree." Ivo Talboys, or Taillebois, was one of the
Conqueror's followers, and his chief gave him lands in the fen country,
near the monastery of Croyland; and this chance of a locality may have
had something to do with the reputation he has, for it brought him under
the lash of the famous Ingulphus, Chronicler of Croyland, (if he was
that Chronicler,) who charges him with all manner of crimes,--and with
reason good, for he bore himself with great harshness toward the
brethren of the great Croyland monastery,--an unpardonable offence. Low
as he was by birth, Taillebois received the hand of Lucia, sister of the
Saxon Earls Edwin and Morcar, and became very wealthy. From this union
came "the great line whence sprang the barons of Kendal and Lancaster."
The last descendant of this Norman baron of William's creation and of
the Saxon Lucia died in 1861, a pauper in the workhouse of
Shrewsbury,--Emily Taillebois, a girl of eighteen.
There were thousands of such fellows as Taillebois in William's army,
and, though all were not so lucky as he, many of them drew good prizes
in the lottery of war, and founded, at the expense of the noblest
Saxons, families from which men are proud to be descended. Sir Walter
has used this fact in "Ivanhoe," when he makes the usually silent
Athelstane reply with so much eloquence to De Bracy's insolent remark
that the princes of the House of Anjou conferred not their wards on men
of such lineage as his. "My lineage, proud Norman," replied Athelstane,
"is drawn from a source more pure and ancient than that of a beggarly
Frenchman, whose living is won by selling the blood of the thieves whom
he assembles under his paltry standard. Kings were my ancestors, strong
in war and wise in council, who every day feasted in their hall more
hundreds than thou canst number individual followers; whose names have
been sung by minstrels, and their laws recorded by Wittenagemotes; whose
bones were interred amid the prayers of saints, and over whose tombs
minsters have been builded." There can be no doubt that Saxons as
far-descended as Scott represents Athelstane to have been were treated
worse than he, and that Saxon ladies of the highest birth and greatest
wealth experienced the fate of the conquered in much severer measure
than it became known to Rowena. Scott has been accused of exaggerating
the effects of the Conquest, but his glowing picture is by no means
overcharged, if we look at the effect of that change on the higher
classes of the vanquished people. The Saxons were very wealthy, and the
invaders obtained an amount of spoil that astonished them, the accounts
of which remind the reader of what was told of the extraordinary
acquisitions made by the ruffians who formed the force of Pizarro in
Peru. Years after the day of Hastings, we are told, William "bore back
with him, to his eager and hungry country, the plunder of England, which
was so varied in kind, so prodigious in amount, that the awe-stricken
chroniclers maintain that all the Gauls, if ransacked from end to end,
would have failed to supply treasures worthy to be compared with it. The
silver, the gold, the vases, vestments, and crucifixes crested with
jewels, the silken garments for men and women, the rings, necklaces,
bracelets, wrought delicately in gold and resplendent in gems, inspired
the Continental barbarians with rapture, and in their imaginations made
England appear the Dorado of those times." One of the writers of that
day states that "incredible treasures in gold and silver were sent from
the plunder of England to the Pope, together with costly ornaments,
which would have been held in the highest estimation even at Byzantium,
then universally regarded as the most opulent city in the world." All
this implies that the Saxon aristocracy were very rich, and it is far
from unlikely that it was the desire to preserve their property that led
them to offer so little resistance to William,--a fatally mistaken
course, for the invading adventurers had entered England in search of
other men's property, and were not to be kept quiet by the quietness of
the owners thereof. The aristocracy alone could afford such plunder as
that described, and that so much of it was obtained shows how extensive
must have been the spoliation, and how thoroughly Saxon nobles were
stripped of their possessions by the low-born ragamuffins who were
induced by William's recruiting sergeants to enlist under his black
banner.