the post of Harold's benefactor, and he played the part gallantly.
Not only the duke but the duchess treated their guest with [Pg265]
uncommon courtesy, and he was admitted to the closest intimacy with
the household. If Harold had been wise he would have gone back to
England as fast as sails could carry him, but instead of that he
lingered on, equally ready to applaud the Norman exploits in camp and
court, and to show his entertainers what English valor could achieve.
He went with the duke on some petty expedition against the rebellious
Britons, but it is hard to make out a straight story of that
enterprise. But there is a characteristic story of Harold's strength
in the form of a tradition that when the Norman army was crossing the
deep river Coesnon, which pours into the sea under the wall of Mount
St. Michel, some of the troops were being swept away by the waves,
when [Pg266] Harold rescued them, taking them with great ease, at
arm's length, out of the water.
There is a sober announcement in one of the old chronicles, that the
lands of Brittany were included in Charles the Simple's grant to Rolf,
because Rolf had so devastated Normandy that there was little there to
live upon. At the time of William's expedition, Brittany itself was
evidently taking its turn at such vigorous shearing and pruning of the
life of its fertile hills and valleys. The Bretons liked nothing so
well as warfare, and when they did not unite against a foreign enemy,
they spent their time in plundering and slaughtering one another.
Count Conan, the present aggressor, was the son of Alan of Brittany,
William's guardian. Some of the Bretons were loyal to the Norman
authority, and Dôl, an ancient city renowned for its ill luck, and
Dinan were successively vacated by the rebels. Dinan was besieged by
fire, a favorite weapon in the hands of the Normans; but later we find
that both the cities remained Breton, and the Norman allies go back to
their own country. There is a hint somewhere of the appearance of an
army from Anjou, to take the Bretons' part, but the Norman chroniclers
ignore it as far as they can.
It is impossible to fix the date of this campaign; indeed there may
have been more than one expedition against Brittany. Still more
difficult is it to learn any thing that is undisputed about the famous
oath that Harold gave to William, and was afterward so completely
punished for breaking. Yet, while we do not know exactly what the
oath was, [Pg267] Harold's most steadfast upholders have never been
able to deny that there was an oath, and there is no contradiction,
on the English side, of the whole affair. His best friends have been
silent about it. The most familiar account is this, if we listen to
the Norman stories: Harold entered into an engagement to marry one of
William's daughters, who must have been very young at the time of the
visit or visits to Normandy, and some writers claim that the whole
cause of the quarrel lay in his refusal to keep his promise. There
is a list beside of what appears to us unlikely concessions on the
part of the English earl. Harold did homage to the duke, and formally
became his man, and even promised to acknowledge his claim to the
throne of England at the death of the Confessor. More than this, he
promised to look after William's interest in England, and to put him
at once into possession of the Castle of Dover, with the right of
establishing a Norman garrison there. William, in return, agreed to
hold his new vassal in highest honor, giving him by and by even the
half of his prospective kingdom. When this surprising oath was taken,
Harold was entrapped into swearing upon the holiest relic of Norman
saints which had been concealed in a chest for the express purpose.
With the superstitious awe that men of his time felt toward such
emblems, this not very respectable act on William's part is made to
reflect darkly upon Harold. Master Wace says that "his hand trembled
and his flesh quivered when he touched the chest, though he did not
know what was in it, and how much more distressed he was when he
[Pg268] found by what an awful vow he had unwittingly bound his soul."
So Harold returned to England the duke's vassal and future son-in-law,
according to the chronicles, but who can help being suspicious, after
knowing how Harold was indebted to the duke and bound with cunningly
contrived chains until he found himself a prisoner? William of
Poitiers, a chronicler who wrote in the Conqueror's day, says that
Harold was a man to whom imprisonment was more odious than shipwreck.
It would be no wonder if he had made use of a piece of strategy, and
was willing to make any sort of promise simply to gain his liberty.
The plot of the relic-business put a different face upon the whole
matter, and yet, even if Harold was dazzled for the time being by
William's power and splendor, one must doubt whether he would have
given up all his ambition of reigning in England. He was already
too great a man at home to play the subject and flatterer with much
sincerity, even though his master were the high and mighty Duke of the
Normans, and he had come from a ruder country to the fascination and
elegance of the Norman court. Whatever the oath may have been that
Harold gave at Bayeux, it is certain that he broke it afterward, and
that his enemies made his failure not only an affair of state, but of
church, and waged a bitter war that brought him to his sad end.
Now, the Norman knights might well look to it that their armor was
strong and the Norman soldiers provide themselves with arrows and
well-seasoned bows. It was likely that Harold's promise was no
[Pg269] secret, and that some echo of it reached from one end of
the dukedom to the other. There were great enterprises on foot, and
at night in the firelight there was eager discussion of possible
campaigns, for though the great Duke William, their soldier of
soldiers, had bent the strength of his resistless force upon a new
kingdom across the Channel and had won himself such a valuable ally,
it was not likely that England would be ready to fall into his hand
like a ripe apple from the bough. There was sure to be fighting, but
there was something worth fighting for; the petty sorties against the
provincial neighbors of Normandy were hardly worth the notice of her
army. Men like the duke's soldiers were fit for something better than
such police duty. Besides, a deep provocation had not been forgiven
by those gentlemen who were hustled out of England by Godwine and his
party, and many an old score would now stand a chance of repayment.
Not many months were passed before the news came from London that the
holy king Eadward was soon to leave this world for a better. He was
already renowned as a worker of miracles and a seer of visions, and
the story was whispered reverently that he had given his ring to a
beggar who appeared before him to ask alms in the middle of a crowd
assembled at the dedication of a church. The beggar disappeared, but
that very night some English pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem are
shelterless and in danger near the holy city. Suddenly a company of
shining acolytes approach through the wilderness, carrying two tapers
before an old man, as if he were [Pg270] out on some errand of the
church. He stops to ask the wondering pilgrims whence they come and
whither they are going, and guides them to a city and a comfortable
lodging, and next morning tells them that he is Saint John the
Evangelist. More than this, he gives them the Confessor's ring, with
a message to carry back to England. Within six months Eadward will
be admitted to paradise as a reward for his pure and pious life. The
message is carried to the king by miraculous agency that same night,
and ever since he prays and fasts more than ever, and is hurrying
the builders of his great Westminster, so that he may see that holy
monument of his piety dedicated to the service of God before he dies.
The Norman lords and gentlemen who listened to this tale must have
crossed themselves, one fancies, and craved a blessing on the saintly
king, but the next minute we fancy also that they gave one another a
glance that betokened a lively expectation of what might follow the
news of Eadward's translation.
Twice in the year, at Easter and Christmas, the English king wore his
crown in the great Witanagemôt and held court among his noblemen.
In this year the midwinter Gemôt was held at the king's court at
Westminster, instead of at Gloucester, to hallow the Church of St.
Peter, the new shrine to which so much more of the Confessor's thought
had gone than to the ruling of his kingdom.
But in the triumphant days to which he had long looked forward, his
strength failed faster and faster, and his queen, Edith, the daughter
of Godwine, had [Pg271] to take his place at the ceremonies. The
histories of that day are filled with accounts of the grand building
that Eadward's piety had reared. He had given a tenth part of all
his income to it for many years, and with a proud remembrance of the
Norman churches with which he was familiar in his early days, had made
Westminster a noble rival of them and the finest church in England.
The new year was hardly begun, the Witan had not scattered to their
homes, before Eadward the Confessor was carried to his tomb—the last
of the sons of Woden. He had reigned for three and twenty years, and
was already a worn old man.
"Now, in the falling autumn, while the winds
Of winter blew across his scanty days
He gathered up life's embers——"
But as he lay dying in the royal palace at Westminster everybody
was less anxious about the king, than about the country's uncertain
future. Harold had been a sort of under-king for several years, and
had taken upon himself many of the practical duties of government.
He had done great deeds against the Welsh, and was a better general
and war-man than Eadward had ever been. Nobody had any hope of the
Confessor's recovery, and any hour might find the nation kingless. The
Atheling's young son was a feeble, incompetent person, and wholly a
foreigner; only the most romantic and senseless citizen could dream
of making him Lord of England in such a time as that. There were a
thousand rumors afloat; every man had his theory and his prejudice,
and at last there must have been a general feeling of relief [Pg272]
when the news was told that the saint-king was dead in his palace and
had named Harold as his successor. The people clung eagerly to such a
nomination; now that Eadward was dead he was saint indeed, and there
was a funeral and a coronation that same day in the minster on the
Isle of Thorney; his last word to the people was made law.
No more whispering that Harold was the Duke of the Normans' man, and
might betray England again into the hands of those greedy favorites
whom the holy king had cherished in his bosom like serpents. No
more fears of Harold's jealous enemies among the earls; there was a
short-sighted joy that the great step of the succession had been made
and settled fast in the consent of the Witan, who still lingered; to
be dispersed, when these famous days were at an end, by another king
of England than he who had called them together.
[Illustration: FUNERAL OF EADWARD THE CONFESSOR. (FROM THE BAYEUX
TAPESTRY.)]
The king had prophesied in his last hours; he had seen visions and
dreamed dreams; he had said that great sorrows were to fall upon
England for her sins, and that her earls and bishops and abbots were
but ministers of the fiend in the eye of God; that within a year and
a day the whole land would be harried from one end to another with
fire and slaughter. Yet, almost with the same breath, he recommends
his Norman friends, "those whom in his simplicity he spoke of as men
who had left their native land for love of him," to Harold's care, and
does not seem to suspect their remotest agency in the future harrying.
True enough some of the Norman officers were loyal to him and to
England. This death-bed scene [Pg273] is sad and solemn. Norman
Robert the Staller was there, and Stigand, the illegal archbishop;
Harold, the hope of England, and his sister, the queen, who mourns now
and is very tender to her [Pg274] royal husband, who has given her a
sorry lot with his cold-heartedness toward her and the dismal exile
and estrangement he has made her suffer. He loves her and trusts her
now in this last day of life, and her woman's heart forgets the days
that were dark between them. He even commends her to Harold's care,
and directs that she must not lose the honors which have been hers as
queen.
There is a tradition that when Eadward lay dying he said that he was
passing from the land of the dead to the land of the living, and the
chronicle adds: "Saint Peter, his friend, opened to him the gates
of Paradise, and Saint John, his own dear one, led him before the
Divine Majesty." The walls that Eadward built are replaced by others;
there is not much of his abbey left now but some of the foundation
and an archway or two. But his tomb stands in a sacred spot, and the
prayers and hymns he loved so devoutly are said and sung yet in his
own Westminster, the burying-place of many another king since the
Confessor's time.
[Illustration]
[Pg275]
[Illustration]
XIV.
NEWS FROM ENGLAND.
"Great men have reaching hands."
—SHAKESPEARE.
So Harold was crowned king of England. Our business is chiefly with
what the Normans thought about that event, and while London is divided
between praises of the old king and hopes of the new one, and there
are fears of what may follow from Earl Tostig's enmity; while the
Witan are dispersing to their homes, and the exciting news travels
faster than they do the length and breadth of the country, we must
leave it all and imagine ourselves in Normandy.
Duke William was at his park of Quevilly, near Rouen, and was on his
way to the chase. He had been bending his bow—the famous bow that was
too strong for other men's hands—and just as he gave it to the page
who waited to carry it after him, a man-at-arms came straight to his
side; they went apart together to speak secretly, while the bystanders
watched them curiously and whispered that the eager messenger was an
Englishman.
"Eadward the king is dead," the duke was told, [Pg276] but that not
unexpected news was only half the message. "Earl Harold is raised to
the kingdom."
There came an angry look into the duke's eyes, and the herald
left him. William forgot his plans for the hunt; he strode by his
retainers; he tied and untied his mantle absent-mindedly, and
presently went down to the bank of the Seine again and crossed over
in a boat to his castle hall. He entered silently, and nobody dared
ask what misfortune had befallen him. His companions followed him and
found him sitting on a bench, moving restlessly to and fro. Then he
became quieter; he leaned his head against the great stone pillar and
covered his face with his mantle. Long before, in the old Norse halls,
where all the vikings lived together, if a man were sick or sorry or
wished for any reason to be undisturbed, he sat on his own bench and
covered his head with his cloak; there was no room where he could be
alone; and after the old custom, in these later days, the knights of
William's court left him to his thoughts. Then William Fitz-Osbern,
the "bold-hearted," came into the quiet hall humming a tune. The
awe-struck people who were clustered there asked him what was the
matter; then the duke looked up.
"It is in vain for you to try to hide the news," said the Seneschal.
"It is blazing through the streets of Rouen. The Confessor is dead,
and Harold holds the English kingdom."
The duke answered gravely that he sorrowed both for the death of
Eadward and for the faithlessness of Harold. [Pg277]
[Illustration: STIGAND, ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY.]
"Arise and be doing," urges Fitz-Osbern. "There is no need for
mourning. Cross the sea and snatch the kingdom out of the usurper's
hand," and in this way stern thought and dire purpose were thrown
into the duke's holiday. The messenger had brought a lighted torch in
his hand that was equal to kindling great plans that winter day in
Normandy. [Pg278]
William and all his men, from the least soldier to the greatest,
knew that if they wished for England the only way to get it was to
fight for it. There had never been such a proof of their mettle as
this would be. The Normans who went to Italy had no such opponents as
Harold and the rest of the Englishmen fighting on their own ground
for their homes and their honor; but Norman courage shone brightest
in these days. This is one of the places where we must least of all
follow the duke's personal fortunes too closely, or forget that the
best of the Normans were looking eagerly forward to the possession of
new territory. Many of their cleverest men, too, were more than ready
to punish the English for ejecting them from comfortable positions
under Godwine's rule, and were anxious to reinstate themselves
securely. There was no such perilous journey before the army as the
followers of the Hautevilles had known, while their amazing stories
of gain and glory incited the Normans at home to win themselves new
fortunes. It is a proof that civilization and the arts of diplomacy
were advancing, when we listen (and the adventurers listened too)
while excuse after excuse was tendered for the great expedition. The
news of Harold's accession was simply a welcome signal for action,
but the heir of Rolf the Ganger was a politician, an astute wielder
of public opinion, and his state-craft was now directed toward giving
his desire to conquer England and reign over it a proper aspect in the
eyes of other nations.
The right of heritage was fast displacing [Pg279] everywhere the
people's right to choose their kings. The feudal system was close and
strong in its links, but while Harold had broken his oath of homage
to William, that alone was not sufficient crime. Such obligations
were not always unbreakable, and were too much a matter of formality
and temporary expediency to warrant such an appeal to the common law
of nations as William meant to make. As nearly as we can get at the
truth of the matter, the chief argument against Harold the Usurper
was on religious grounds—on William's real or assumed promise of the
succession from Eadward, and Harold's vow upon the holy relics of
the saints at Rouen. This at least was most criminal blasphemy. The
Normans gloried in their own allegiance to the church. Their duke was
blameless in private life and a sworn defender and upholder of the
faith, and by this means a most formidable ally was easily won, in the
character of Lanfranc the great archbishop.
Lanfranc and William governed Normandy hand in hand. In tracing
the history of this time the priest seems as familiar with secular
affairs, with the course of the state and the army and foreign
relations, as the duke was diligent in attending ecclesiastical synods
and church services. It was a time of great rivalry and uncertainty
for the papal crown; there was a pope and an anti-pope just then who
were violent antagonists, but Archdeacon Hildebrand was already the
guide and authority of the Holy See. Later he became the Pope famous
in history as Gregory VII. We are startled to find that the expedition
against England was made to [Pg280] take the shape of a crusade, even
though England was building her own churches, and sending pilgrims to
the Holy Land, and pouring wealth most generously into the church's
coffers. "Priests and prelates were subject to the law like other
men," that was the trouble; and "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."
"It was a policy worthy of William to send to the threshold of the
apostles to crave their blessing on his 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."[9]
[9] Freeman: "The Norman Conquest."
William sent an embassy to Harold probably very soon after the receipt
of the news of his coronation. The full account of both the demand and
its reply have been forgotten, but it is certain that whatever the
duke's commands were they were promptly disobeyed, and certain too
that this was the result that William expected and even desired. He
could add another grievance to his list of Harold's wrongdoings, and
now, beside the original disloyalty, William could complain that his
vassal had formally refused to keep his formal promise and obligation.
Then he called a council of Norman nobles at Lillebonne and laid his
plans before them.
[Pg281]
[Illustration: NORMANDY (IN 1066).]
[Pg282]
It was a famous company of counsellors and made up of the duke's
oldest friends. There were William Fitz-Osbern, and the duke's
brother Odo of Bayeux, whose priesthood was no hindrance to his good
soldiery; Richard of Evreux, the grandson of Richard the Fearless;
Roger of Beaumont and the three heroes of Mortemer; Walter Giffard;
Hugh de Montfort and William of Warren; the Count of Mortain and
Roger Montgomery and Count Robert of Eu. All these names we know, and
familiar as they were in Normandy, they were, most of them, to strike
deeper root in their new domain of England. We do not find that they
objected now to William's plans, but urged only that they had no right
to speak for the whole country, and that all the Norman barons ought
to be called together to speak for themselves.
This was a return to the fashions of Rolf's day, when the adventurers
boasted on the banks of the Seine that they had no king to rule over
them, and were all equal; that they only asked for what they could win
with their swords. We do not find any other record of a parliament in
Normandy; perhaps nothing had ever happened of late which so closely
concerned every armed man within the Norman borders. The feudal barons
had a right to speak now for themselves and their dependants, and in
the great ducal hall of the castle at Lillebonne William duke told
them his story and called upon them for help. He had a great wish to
revenge Harold's treatment of him by force of arms, and asked the
noble company of barons what aid they would [Pg283] render; with how
many men and how many ships and with what a sum of money they would
follow him and uphold the weighty and difficult enterprise.
Now we find many of the barons almost unwilling; even doubtful of the
possibility of conquering such a kingdom as England. After insisting
that they had longed to go plundering across the Channel, and that the
old love for fighting burned with as hot a fire as ever within their
breasts, the chronicles say that this Norman parliament asked for time
to talk things over in secret before the duke should have any answer.
We are given a picture of them grouped around this and that pleader
for or against the duke, and are told that they demurred, that they
objected to crossing the sea to wage war, and that they feared the
English. For a moment it appears as if the whole mind of the assembly
were opposed to the undertaking. They even feared if they promised
unusual supplies of men and treasure that William would forever keep
them up to such a difficult standard of generosity. I must say that
all this does not ring true or match at all with the Norman character
of that time. It would not be strange if there were objectors among
them, but it does not seem possible when they were so ready to
go adventuring before and after this time; when they were after
all separated by so short a time from Rolf the Ganger's piracies,
that many could have been so seriously daunted by the prospect of
such limited seafaring as crossing the Channel. It appears like an
ingenious method of magnifying the greatness and splendor of the
Norman victory, and the valiant leadership of the duke and his most
trusted aids. [Pg284]
William Fitz-Osbern was chosen to plead with the barons, and persuade
them to follow the duke's banner. He reminded them that they were
William's vassals, and that it would be unwise to disappoint him.
William was a stern man and fearful as an enemy. If any among them
loved their ease, and wished to avoid their lawful tribute of service,
let them reflect that they were in the power of such a mighty lord and
master. What was their money worth to them if the duke branded them as
faithless cowards, and why did they wish to disgrace their names and
take no part in this just and holy war against the usurper?