The monastery of Ouche or Saint Evroul had, as far as the eleventh

century was concerned, an origin of a different kind from that of Bec;

but its story is really little more than that of Bec carried back into

an earlier age. That is to say, while Bec was altogether a new

foundation, Saint Evroul was, like many other religious houses both in

England and Normandy, a restoration of an earlier one. In both countries

the Scandinavian invaders had destroyed or pillaged countless churches

and monasteries. Many of these last, sometimes after complete

destruction, sometimes after dragging on a feeble existence during the

intermediate time, rose again, like Crowland and Jumièges, in more than

their former greatness. But the case of Saint Evroul was a peculiar one.

Its temporary fall was owing, not to the devastations of heathen

Northmen, but to the wars between Christian [Sidenote: Story of Ebrulf

or Evroul. 575.] Normandy and Christian France. The history of its

founder, Ebrulf or Evroul, a saint of the sixth century, is, in many

respects, a forestalling of the history of Herlwin of Bec.[684] Of noble

birth in the city of Bayeux,—perhaps therefore of Saxon, rather than of

either Frankish or Gaulish, blood,—high in favour at the court of

Hlothar the son of Hlodwig, he lived, even as a layman, the life of a

saint.[685] At last he forsook the world; his wife and himself both took

monastic vows; but Ebrulf, as Lanfranc had wished to do, presently

forsook his monastery for a deeper seclusion. With three companions

only, he sought out a lonely spot by the river Charenton, close by the

forest of Ouche, on the borders of the dioceses of Lisieux, Evreux, and

Seez. There he lived a hermit’s life, adorned, as we are told, by many

miracles,[686] and his cell, like the cell of Guthlac at Crowland,

became the small beginning of a [Sidenote: Monastery of Saint Evroul; it

escapes the Danish ravages;] famous monastery. The secluded site of the

house saved it from the ravages of the Northmen, and the votaries of

Saint Evroul, with almost unique good luck, remained undisturbed, while

Hasting and Rolf were overthrowing so many holy places of their brethren

elsewhere.[687] But, during the troubled minority of Richard the

Fearless, when King Lewis of Laôn and Duke Hugh of Paris were invading

the defenceless Duchy,[688] the monks of Saint Evroul received two

seemingly honourable, but, as it [Sidenote: but is pillaged by Hugh the

Great. 943.] turned out, highly dangerous, guests. These were Herlwin,

Abbot of Saint Peter’s at Orleans, the Chancellor of Hugh the Great, and

Ralph of Drangy his Chamberlain.[689] Both, we are told, were men of

great piety, but they showed their piety in a strange fashion. Soon

after their visit, Duke Hugh gave orders for the ravage of that part of

Normandy. His devout officers either despised or scrupled at plunder of

a more vulgar kind;[690] they remembered the hospitality of the monks of

Saint Evroul, and requited it by carrying off all the ornaments of their

church, including, what they most valued, the relics of their founder

and other saints. The holy spoil was duly shared among various churches

of the Duchy of France,[691] and a large [Sidenote: The monastery

forsaken.] body of the monks of Saint Evroul followed the objects of

their veneration. A few however remained behind, and the brotherhood

still dragged on a feeble existence for some time. At last the house of

Saint Evroul was utterly forsaken and forgotten, and miracles were

needed to point [Sidenote: The church restored by Restold.] out the spot

where it had stood. A pious priest[692] from Beauvais, Restold by name,

moved by a divine vision, came and dwelt on the spot, and found

benefactors willing to repair the ruined church.[693] At last one

special benefactor [Sidenote: Geroy and his family.] arose. Geroy, a man

of great valour and piety, was lord of Escalfoy by the forest of Ouche,

and of Montreuil near the Dive.[694] Of mingled French and Breton

extraction, he had been attached to the fortunes of the elder William of

Belesme, probably as a vassal of some of the estates held by him under

the Crown of France. In a [Sidenote: c. 1015.] fight against Count

Herbert of Maine, when William and all the rest of his followers had

fled, Geroy regained the day by his single valour.[695] In return for

this exploit, William introduced him at the court of Richard the Good,

by whom he was allowed to succeed to the lordships already spoken

of.[696] They had been the property of Helgo, a Norman noble, to whose

daughter Geroy had been betrothed, but the marriage was hindered by the

premature death of the bride.[697] By another wife he had a numerous

family, many of whom were distinguished in Norman [Sidenote: William son

of Geroy.] history.[698] He was himself succeeded by his second son

William who, like his father, was attached to the house of Belesme, and

also distinguished himself in the war with Maine.[699] He had however to

contend for the possession of his estates against the violence of Count

Gilbert of Brionne, a man who, on this as on some other occasions,[700]

seems to have failed to carry into his private relations those

principles of honourable conduct which in so marked a way distinguished

his administration of public affairs. William was a brave soldier and a

faithful vassal, ready to undergo any personal loss on behalf of his

lord or of his friend.[701] He was also bountiful to the Church, though

he strictly maintained the ecclesiastical privileges of his own

lordships.[702] Twice he made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem, once during

the height of his prosperity, and once after the great misfortune which

clouded his later days. For [Sidenote: Blinded by William Talvas.] he it

was whom the fierce Talvas, in defiance of every tie of gratitude, of

hospitality, and of feudal honour, blinded and mutilated when he came as

a guest to his bridal.[703] The daughter of Talvas too, the cruel Mabel,

pursued the house of Geroy throughout life with unrelenting hatred.[704]

[Sidenote: He grants Saint Evroul to Bec.] In his old age he became a

monk at Bec, a house to which he had already been a benefactor.[705] He

had given to Herlwin and his monks the lands of Saint Evroul and the

church lately restored by Restold. It now became a cell to the Abbey,

inhabited by a small body of monks with Lanfranc at their head.[706] But

presently William’s nephews, Hugh and Robert of Grantmesnil,[707] were

designing the foundation of a monastery near the lordship on the Oudon

from which they took their name. Of these two brothers, Robert became a

monk of Saint Evroul; of Hugh we shall hear again in the history both

[Sidenote: Restoration of Saint Evroul. 1050.] of Normandy and of

England. Their pious uncle approved of the design, but pointed out that

the site which they had chosen was lacking in the two great monastic

necessaries of wood and water.[708] Let them rather join with him in

restoring to its ancient splendour the fallen house of Saint Evroul,

placed on a spot suited for every monastic want.[709] Uncle and nephews

joined their energies and their purses; the rights of Bec over the

church and lands were exchanged for another estate, and the new Saint

Evroul arose with the full licence of Duke William, of Archbishop

Malger, and of the other Prelates of Normandy. Monks were brought from

Jumièges, and a brother of [Sidenote: 1050.] that house, Theodoric by

name, became the first Abbot of the new foundation.[710] But the house

seems to have been [Sidenote: 1058.] far less fortunate than Bec in its

rulers. Theodoric after a while laid aside his office, driven to

resignation, it is said, by the cabals of the co-founder Robert of

Grantmesnil, who, having made his profession in the house, had obtained

[Sidenote: 1059.] the rank of Prior.[711] Robert was chosen to the

[Sidenote: 1063.] Abbotship, but, a few years after, he was himself

deposed, or driven to resignation, by Duke William,[712] and long

controversies followed between him and his successor Osbern.[713]

I have given a sketch of the origin of these two famous monasteries,

partly because their stories bring before us so many members of the

leading Norman families, but mainly [Sidenote: Connexion of the

religious movement in Normandy with the Conquest of England.] as

illustrating the great religious movement which was then at work in

Normandy, and which was not without its share in bringing about the

Conquest of England. When we come to a later stage in our history, we

shall see with what art William, and his trusty counsellor Lanfranc,

contrived to appeal to the religious feelings of the Normans, to

represent the English King as a sinner against the local saints of

Normandy, and to represent the Conquest of England as a holy war

undertaken to chastise the ungodly. Such a vein of sentiment could

hardly have been safely appealed to except at a time when there was a

great religious stir in the national mind. One side of this movement is

shown in the foundation of so many monasteries, in the zeal with which

men gave of their substance for their erection, in the eagerness with

which men, often the same men, pressed to become members of the holy

brotherhoods. But a still more honourable fruit of the religious mind of

Normandy, one however which Normandy only shared with many other parts

of Europe, is to be found in the acceptance during this period of the

famous Truce of God.

[Sidenote: The Truce of God.]

This extraordinary institution is the most speaking witness, at once to

the ferocity of the times, and also to the deep counter feeling which

underlaid men’s minds. Clergy and laity alike felt that the state of

things which they saw daily before their eyes was a standing sin against

God and man, repugnant alike to natural humanity and to the precepts of

the Christian religion. States were everywhere so subdivided,

governments were everywhere so weak, that, in most parts of Europe,

every man who had the needful force at his command simply did that which

was right in his own eyes. We cannot doubt that in those parts of

Britain where the authority of the English Kings was really established,

the evil was smaller than it was in any part of Gaul.[714] Neither can

we doubt that in Normandy, during the minority of William, the evil was

even greater than it was in other parts of Gaul. But the extreme

disorder of that minority was simply an exaggerated form of what might

be called the normal state of things throughout the greater part of

Western [Sidenote: Private war.] Europe. Every man claimed the right of

private war against every other man who was not bound to him by any

special tie as his lord or his vassal. And the distinction between

private war and mere robbery and murder was not always very sharply

drawn. It is clear that, in such a state of things, an utterly

unscrupulous man, to whom warfare, however unjust, was a mere trifle,

had a decided advantage over his more peaceable neighbours. A few such

men as William Talvas might throw a whole province into disorder; and

men who were in no way naturally disposed to wrong or violence were

necessarily driven to constant warfare in sheer self-defence. The poor

and the weak were of course the chief victims; when one gentleman

harried the lands of another, the immediate tillers of the earth must

have suffered far more severely than their master. It was the tenants of

Herlwin, rather than Herlwin himself, who had most bitterly to complain

[Sidenote: Undercurrent against the violence of the time.] of the

ravages of Count Gilbert.[715] The lower classes then had especial

reason to curse the lawlessness of the times; yet we can well believe

that there were many men of higher rank, who were dragged into these

wretched contests against their own will, and who would have been well

pleased to keep their swords sheathed, save when the lawful command of

their sovereign required them to be drawn. These two contending feelings

can always be traced side by side. Every attempt to put any kind of

check on the violence of the times was always received with general good

will; and yet the practical result of so many praiseworthy attempts was,

after all, something extremely small. The men who were ready to keep the

peace, and to observe the rules made to preserve it, were left in a

manner at the mercy of those who refused to obey any rule whatsoever.

Whatever laws were made to preserve the peace, the peaceable man was

still, as before, driven to fight in his own defence. Still the movement

in favour of law and order was a very remarkable and a very general one.

The call to observe peace towards Christians at home was a call, quite

as general, though much more gradual, than the call to wage war against

the [Sidenote: Comparison between the Truce of God and the Crusades.]

Infidels in other lands. But the call to the Crusade fell in with every

side of the temper of the times; the proclamation of the Truce of God

fell in with only one, and that its least powerful, side. Good and bad

men alike were led by widely different motives to rush to the Holy War.

The men who endeavoured to obey the Truce of God must often have found

themselves the helpless victims of those who despised it.

A movement on behalf of peace and good will towards [Sidenote: The form

taken by the movement necessarily ecclesiastical.] men could not fail in

those days to assume an ecclesiastical form. As of old the Amphiktyonic

Council, the great religious synod of Greece, strove to put some bounds

to the horrors of war as waged between Greek and Greek,[716] so now, in

the same spirit, a series of Christian synods strove, by means of

ecclesiastical decrees and ecclesiastical censures, to put some bounds

to the horrors of war as [Sidenote: Moderation of the reform attempted.]

waged between Christian and Christian. And at both times the spiritual

power showed its wisdom in not attempting too much. War was not wholly

forbidden in either case, for such a precept would have been hopelessly

impossible to carry out. But certain extreme measures were to be

avoided, certain classes of persons were to be respected, certain holy

seasons were to be kept altogether free from warfare. Such at least was

the form in which the Truce of God was preached in Normandy. But

Normandy was one of the last countries to receive the Truce, and it

seems not to have appeared there in its earliest shape. It would rather

seem as if the first attempts at its establishment had tried to compass

too much, and as if later preachers of peace had been driven to content

themselves with a much less close approach to [Sidenote: The Truce first

preached in Aquitaine. 1034.] universal brotherhood. The movement began

in Aquitaine, and the vague and rhetorical language of our authority

would seem to imply that all war, at any rate all private war, was

forbidden under pain of ecclesiastical censures.[717] It must not be

forgotten that, in that age, it [Sidenote: Difficulty of defining public

and private war.] must have been exceedingly difficult to draw the

distinction between public and private war. In England indeed, where an

efficient constitutional system existed, the distinction was plain.

Except when sudden invasion required the immediate action of the local

power, no war could be lawful which was not decreed by the King and his

Witan. There might be rebellions and civil wars, but there was no

recognized private warfare in the continental sense. But in Gaul it

would have been impossible to deny the right of war and peace to the

great vassals of the Crown, to the sovereigns of Normandy and Aquitaine.

And, if the vassals of the Crown might make war on each other, on what

principle could the same right be refused to their vassals, to the Lords

of Alençon and Brionne? Among the endless links of the feudal chain, it

was hard to find the exact point where sovereignty ended and where

simple property began. A preacher therefore who denounced private war

must have had some difficulty in [Sidenote: Enthusiastic reception of

the Truce.] so doing without denouncing war altogether. But the

doctrine, hard as it might be to carry out in practice, was rapturously

received at its first announcement. As the first preaching of the

Crusade was met with one universal cry of “God wills it,” so the

Bishops, Abbots, and other preachers of the Truce were met with a like

universal cry of Peace, Peace, Peace.[718] Men bound themselves to God

and to one another to abstain from all wrong and violence, and they

engaged solemnly to renew the obligation every five years.[719] From

Aquitaine the movement spread through Burgundy, royal and ducal.[720]

But it seems to have been gradually found that the establishment

[Sidenote: Relaxation about 1041.] of perfect peace on earth was

hopeless. After seven years from the first preaching of peace, we find

the requirements of its apostles greatly relaxed. It was found vain to

forbid all war, even all private war. All that was now attempted was to

forbid violence of every kind from the evening of Wednesday till the

morning of Monday.[721] It [Sidenote: Reception of the Truce in Burgundy

and Lotharingia.] was in this shape that the Truce was first preached in

northern and eastern Gaul. The days of Christ’s supper, of His passion,

of His rest in the grave and His resurrection, were all to be kept free

from strife and bloodshed. The Burgundian Bishops were zealous in the

cause; so especially was Richard, Bishop of Verdun in Lotharingia.[722]

But Bishop Gerard of Cambray maintained, on the other [Sidenote:

Opposition of Gerard of Cambray.] hand, that the whole affair was no

concern of the ecclesiastical power. It was, he argued, the business of

temporal rulers to fight, and the business of spiritual men to pray; the

pious scheme of his brethren could never be carried out, and the attempt

to enforce it could lead only to an increase of false-swearing.[723]

This Prelate, in his worldly wisdom, seems to have looked deeper into

the hearts of the men of his time than his more hopeful and enthusiastic

brethren. At last the new teaching reached Normandy. The luxury of

mutual destruction was dear to the Norman mind; for a long time any

restraint upon it was strongly resisted, and even the preaching of

Bishop Richard himself had for a long time no effect.[724] Miracles were

needed to convince so stiff-necked a generation, but at last the

apostolic labours of Hagano, the successor of Richard, [Sidenote: The

Truce received at the Councils of Caen [1042],] brought even Normandy to

a better mind.[725] The young Duke and his counsellors were urgent in

behalf of the Truce, and it was at last received by the Clergy and Laity

of Normandy in the famous Council held for that purpose at Caen.[726] We

are told that it was most carefully observed;[727] but, nearly forty

years after, when the long reign of William was drawing towards its end,

it had to be [Sidenote: and Lillebonne [1080].] again ordained in

another Council at Lillebonne, and all the powers of the State,

ecclesiastical and temporal, were called on to help in enforcing its

observance.[728]

The men who laboured to put even this small check on the violence of the

times are worthy of eternal honour, and it is probable that the

institution of the Truce of God really did something for a while to

lessen the frightful anarchy into which Normandy had fallen. But we can

hardly doubt that a far more effectual check was supplied by the

increasing strength of William’s government, as he drew nearer to

manhood, and more and more fully displayed the stern and vigorous

determination of his character. But neither the one nor the other could

avail wholly to preserve Normandy for some years to come [Sidenote: Wide

spread conspiracy against William. 1047.] either from civil war or from

foreign invasion. A far more deeply spread conspiracy than any that we

have as yet heard of was now formed against the Duke. We have now

reached one of the great epochs in the life of the Conqueror; we shall

soon have to tell of his first battle and his first victory. Within a

few years after the proclamation of the Truce of God, not this or that

isolated Baron, but the whole of the most Norman part of Normandy

[Sidenote: Intrigues of Guy of Burgundy.] rose in open revolt against

its sovereign. The prime mover in the rebellion was Guy of

Burgundy.[729] He [Sidenote: His friendship with the Duke, and his large

possessions.] had been brought up with the Duke as his friend and

kinsman,[730] and he had received large possessions from his bounty.

Among other broad lands, he held Vernon, the border fortress on the

Seine, so often taken and retaken in the wars between France and

Normandy. He held also Brionne, the castle on the Risle, lately the home

of William’s faithful guardian Count Gilbert.[731] But the old jealousy

was never lulled to sleep; the sway of the Bastard was insupportable,

and, the greater the qualities that William displayed, the more

insupportable was it doubtless felt to be. William had now reached

manhood. After such a discipline as he had gone through, his nineteen

years of life had given him all the caution and experience of a far more

advanced age. He was as ready and as able to show himself a born leader

of men as Cnut had been at the same time of life.[732] The turbulent

spirits of Normandy began to feel that they had found a master; unless a

blow were struck in time, the days of anarchy and licence, the days of

castle-building and oppression, would [Sidenote: He plots with the lords

of the Bessin and Côtentin.] soon be over. Guy of Brionne therefore

found many ready listeners, especially among the great lords of the true

Norman land west of the Dive. He, the lawful heir of their Dukes, no

bastard, no tanner’s grandson, but sprung of a lawful marriage between

the princely houses of Burgundy and Normandy, claimed the Duchy as his

right by birth.[733] But, if the lords of the Bessin and the [Sidenote:

Scheme for a division of the Duchy.] Côtentin would aid him in

dispossessing the Bastard, he would willingly share the land with

them.[734] This most probably means that he would content himself with

the more purely French parts of the Duchy, the original grant to Rolf,

and would leave the Barons of the later settlements in the enjoyment of

independence. We can thus understand, what at first sight seems

puzzling, why the cause of Guy was taken up with such zeal. Otherwise it

is hard to see why the chiefs of any part of Normandy, and, above all,

the chiefs of this more strictly Scandinavian part, should cast aside a

prince who was at any rate a native Norman, in favour of one whose

connexion with Normandy was only by the spindle side, and who must have

seemed [Sidenote: Geographical division of Parties;] in their eyes

little better than a Frenchman. We can thus also understand the

geographical division of parties during the war which followed. William

is faithfully supported by the French districts to the East; by Rouen

and the [Sidenote: Rouen and the French lands loyal to William.] whole

land to the right of the Dive. These are the districts which the

division between Guy and the confederate Lords would have given to the

Burgundian prince, and which no doubt armed zealously against any such

arrangement. To them the overthrow of William’s authority meant their

own handing over to a foreign ruler. But to [Sidenote: Bayeux and the

Danish lands join the rebellion.] the inhabitants, at any rate to the

great lords, of the Lower Normandy, the Scandinavian land, it would seem

that the struggle against the ducal power was simply a struggle for

renewed independence. We are told that the sympathies of the mass of the

people, even in the Bessin and the Côtentin, lay with William.[735] This

is quite possible. The peasant revolt may well have left behind it some

root of abiding bitterness, bitterness which would show itself far more

strongly against the immediate lords of the soil than against the

distant sovereign, who is, in such cases, always looked to as a possible

protector. But the great lords of the western districts joined eagerly

in the rebellion; and the smaller gentry, willingly or unwillingly,

followed their banners. The descendants of the second colony of

Rolf,[736] of the colonies of William Longsword and Harold Blaatand,

drew the sword against the domination of the districts which, even a

hundred years before, had become French.[737] Saxon Bayeux and Danish

Coutances rose against Romanized Rouen and Evreux. We know not whether

the old speech and the old worship may not still have lingered in some

out-of-the-way corners; it is certain that the difference in feeling

between the two districts was still living and working, just as the

outward difference is still to this day stamped on their inhabitants.

[Sidenote: Rebel leaders;] The foremost men of western Normandy at once

attached themselves to Guy, and joined zealously in his plans. First in

the revolt was Nigel or Neal of Saint Saviour, Viscount[738] of

Coutances, the son of the chief who had, forty-six [Sidenote: Neal of

Saint Saviour.] years before, beaten back the host of Æthelred.[739] The

elder Neal had died, full of years, during the days of anarchy,[740] and

his son was destined to an equally long possession of his honours. In

the very heart of his peninsula stood his castle by the Ouve, already

consecrated by a small college of Canons, the foundation of his

grandfather Roger, soon to give way to his own famous Abbey of Saint

Saviour.[741] This point formed the natural centre of the whole

conspiracy. From that castle, Neal, the ruler of the Côtentin, commanded

the whole of that varied region, its rich meads, its hills and valleys,

its rocks and marshes, the dreary _landes_ by the great minster of

Lessay, the cliffs which look down on the fortress of Cæsar, and which

had stood as beacons to guide the sails of Harold Blaatand to the

rescue.[742] The Viscount of Saint Saviour now became the chief leader

of the rebellion, won over by the promises and gifts of Guy, who did not

scruple to rob his mother of her possessions, and to bestow them on his

ally.[743] With Neal [Sidenote: Randolf, Viscount of Bayeux.] stood

Randolf, Viscount of Bayeux, who, from his castle of Brichessart, held

the same sway over the Saxons of the Bessin which Neal held over the

Danes of the Côtentin.[744] [Sidenote: Hamon Dentatus.] In the same

company was Hamon, lord of Thorigny, lord too of the steep of Creuilly,

where a vast fabric of later times has displaced his ancient donjon, and

where the adjoining church bears witness to the splendour and bounty of

the generation immediately following his own.[745] Some personal

peculiarity entitled him to bear, in the language of our Latin

chroniclers, one of the most glorious cognomina of old Rome, and Hamon

_Dentatus_ became the forefather of men famous in British as well as in

Norman history.[746] One loyal chronicler, in his zeal, speaks of the

rebel by the strange name of Antichrist;[747] but, as in the case of

Thurstan of Falaise, the stain was wiped out in the next generation. His

son, Robert Fitz-Hamon, was destined to set the seal to the work of Offa

and of Harold, to press down the yoke for ever upon the necks of the

southern Cymry, and to surround his princely fortress of Cardiff with

the lowlier castles of his twelve homagers of [Sidenote: Grimbald of

Plessis.] the land of Morganwg. Hardly less famous was a third Baron

from the Saxon land, Grimbald of Plessis, whose ancestors and whose

descendants have won no renown, but whose own name still remains

impressed upon his fortress, and whose sister’s son became the

forefather of a mighty house in England. Of her stock came William of

Albini, who, like the Tudor of later days, won the love of a widowed

Queen, and whose name still lives among his works in the fortresses of

Arundel and Castle Rising.[748] By the help of these men the claims of

the Burgundian became widely acknowledged. They swore to support his

rights, and to deprive the Bastard of the Duchy which he had invaded,

whether by force of arms or by the baser acts [Sidenote: Preparations

for the revolt.] of treachery. They put their castles into a state of

thorough defence; they stored them for a campaign or a siege,[749] and

made ready for the most extensive and thoroughly organized revolt which

the troubled reign of the young Duke had yet beheld.

The revolt began, as an earlier revolt had begun,[750] with a

treacherous attempt to seize or murder the Duke, in which Grimbald seems

to have been the immediate agent.[751] [Sidenote: Attempt to seize

William at Valonges.] The opportunity was tempting, as William was now

at a point in Neal’s own Viscounty, at no great distance from his own

castle. He was at Valognes, the old town so rich in Roman remains, and

the rich and fanciful outline of whose Gothic cupola is one of the most

striking objects in the architecture of the district. Perhaps some scent

of the coming danger had reached him, and he had ventured into the

enemy’s country in order to search out matters for himself. But, in any

case, he did not neglect the chosen amusement to which he and his race

were given up, even beyond other men of their time. Several days had

been spent in the employment of William’s favourite weapon the bow[752]

against either savage or harmless victims. At [Sidenote: William warned

by his fool.] last, one night, when all his party, except his immediate

household, had left him, while he was yet in his first sleep, Gallet his

fool, like his uncle Walter at an earlier stage of his life,[753] burst

into his room, staff in hand, and aroused him. If he did not arise and

flee for his life, he would never leave the Côtentin a living man. The

Duke arose, [Sidenote: His escape.] half dressed in haste, leaped on his

horse, seemingly alone, and rode for his life all that night. A bright

moon guided him, and he pressed on till he reached the estuary formed by

the rivers Ouve and Vire. There the ebbing tide supplied a ford, which

was afterwards known as the Duke’s Way. William crossed in safety, and

landed in the district of Bayeux, near the church of Saint Clement. He

entered the building, and prayed for God’s help on his way. His natural

course would now have been to strike for Bayeux; but the city was in the

hands of his enemies; he determined therefore to keep the line between

Bayeux and the sea, and thus to take his chance of reaching the loyal

districts. As the sun rose, he drew near to the church and castle of

Rye,[754] the dwelling-place of a faithful vassal named Hubert. The Lord

of Rye was standing at his own gate, between the church and the mound on

which his castle was raised.[755] William was still urging on [Sidenote:

His reception by Hubert of Rye.] his foaming horse past the gate; but

Hubert knew and stopped his sovereign, and asked the cause of this

headlong ride. He heard that the Duke was flying for his life before his

enemies. He welcomed his prince to his house, he set him on a fresh

horse, he bade his three sons ride by his side, and never leave him till

he was safely lodged [Sidenote: He reaches Falaise.] in his own castle

of Falaise.[756] The command of their father was faithfully executed by

his loyal sons. We are not surprised to hear that the house of Rye rose

high in William’s favour; and we can hardly grudge them their share in

the lands of England, when we find that Eudes the son of Hubert, the

King’s _Dapifer_ and Sheriff of Essex, was not only the founder of the

great house of Saint John at Colchester, but won a purer fame as one of

the very few Normans in high authority who knew how to win the love and

confidence of the conquered English.[757]

[Sidenote: Progress of the rebellion.]

The Bessin and the Côtentin were now in open rebellion. We are told that

men cursed the rebels, and wished well to the Duke in their hearts. But

the revolted Barons had for the time the upper hand. They seized on the

ducal revenues within their districts, and robbed and slew many who

still clave to their allegiance. The dominion of the male line of Rolf,

the very existence of Normandy as an united state, seemed in jeopardy.

William did not venture to meet his enemies with the forces of the

districts which [Sidenote: He seeks help of the King of the French.]

still remained faithful. He was driven to seek for foreign aid, and he

sought it in a quarter where one would think that nothing short of

despair could have led him to think of seeking for it. He craved help of

one who was indeed bound to grant it by every official and by every

personal tie, but who had hitherto acted towards William only as a

faithless enemy, ready to grasp at any advantage, however mean and

treacherous. The Duke of the Normans, driven to such humiliation by the

intrigues of an ungrateful kinsman, crossed the French border, and made

his suit to his [Sidenote: Henry comes to his help in person.] Lord King

Henry at Poissy.[758] He met with favour in the eyes of his suzerain; a

French army, with the King at its head, was soon ready to march to the

support of Duke William against his rebels. It is hard to see why Henry,

whose whole earlier and later conduct is of so opposite a kind, stood

forth for this once faithfully to discharge the duties of an honourable

overlord towards an injured [Sidenote: His probable motives.] vassal.

One would have thought that a revolt which, above all others, tended to

the dismemberment of Normandy would have been hailed by Henry as exactly

falling in with the interests of the suzerain power. Instead of the one

strong and united state which had hitherto cut him off from the whole

coast from Britanny to Ponthieu, there was now a chance of the

establishment of two or three small principalities, each insignificant

in itself, and all probably hostile to one another. Such states would

run a fair risk of being recovered one by one by their overlord. Henry

had himself in past years encroached on the Norman territory, and he had

not scrupled to give encouragement to Norman traitors against their own

sovereign. Yet the common interest of princes may have led him to see

that it was bad policy to abet open rebellion, and he may have doubted

whether the aggrandizement of the mutinous Barons of the Bessin and the

Côtentin would be any real gain to France. Such neighbours might prove

far more turbulent as vassals, and might not be much more easy to subdue

as enemies, than the comparatively firm and orderly government of the

Dukes of Rouen. At all events French aid was freely granted to the

princely suppliant.[759] The King set forth at the head of his army to

join the troops which William had gathered from the loyal districts, and

to share with them in a decisive encounter with the rebel forces.

[Sidenote: BATTLE OF VAL-ÈS-DUNES, 1047;]

The French and the loyal Normans joined their forces some miles to the

east of Caen, in the neighbourhood of the memorable field of

Val-ès-dunes. The spot is not one specially attractive in itself; it is

not one of those spots which seem marked out by the hand of nature as

specially designed to become the scene of great historical events. But

we shall see that, for the purposes of the particular battle which was

fought there, no ground could have been better suited. Nor, at first

sight, does the fight of Val-ès-dunes, an engagement of cavalry between

two Norman factions, seem to have any claim to a place among the

[Sidenote: its importance in the life of William.] great battles of

history. But Val-ès-dunes was the first pitched battle of the Conqueror;

it was the field on which he first won a right to that lofty title, and

the lessons which he learned there stood him in good stead on a far more

awful day. And, more than this, it was there that William conquered his

own land and his own people, and by that earlier conquest both schooled

and strengthened himself for his mightier conquest beyond the sea.

Normandy had first to be firmly grasped, and her fierce Barons to be

brought under the yoke, before the hand of William could be stretched

forth to fix its grasp on England, and to press the yoke upon the necks

of her people. In a word, the strife with Randolf and Neal and their

revolted provinces was the needful forerunner of the strife with Harold

and his Kingdom. The tourney of Norman horsemen upon the open slope of

Val-ès-dunes was William’s school of fence for the sterner clashing of

axe and spear upon the palisaded heights of Senlac.

[Sidenote: Val-ès-dunes a battle between Romanized and Teutonic

Normandy.]

And there is another aspect in which the two battles have a common

feature. Val-ès-dunes, no less than Senlac, was a struggle between the

Roman and the Teuton. The fact was not indeed forced in the same way

upon men’s minds by the outward contrast of language, of tactics, of

every badge of national difference. Still it is none the less true that,

at Val-ès-dunes, the old Scandinavian blood of Normandy found its match,

and more than its match, in the power of France and of the French

portions of the Norman Duchy. Danish Coutances and Saxon Bayeux were

brought face to face with Romanized [Sidenote: District which supported

William.] Rouen and Evreux and with royal Paris itself. From all the

lands east of the Dive men flocked to the Ducal standard. The episcopal

cities of Lisieux and Evreux, along with primatial Rouen, sent forth

their loyal burghers, and the men of the surrounding districts pressed

no less eagerly to the muster. They came, according to the old division,

which the suppression of the peasant revolt had not wholly broken up,

arranged in companies which still retained the name of _communes_,

suggesting the freedom which they had perhaps not wholly lost.[760] From

beyond the Seine came the troops of Caux, and from the south of the

Duchy came the men of Auge, and of Duke Robert’s County of Hiesmes. And

who can doubt that foremost among them all were the burghers of

William’s own Falaise, zealous on behalf of a Prince who was also their

own immediate countryman? But the whole west of Normandy, the land where

the old Norman speech and spirit had longest lingered, was arrayed on

the side of the rebels. Except the contingent of his own birthplace and

its neighbourhood, no part of the Duke’s force seems to have come from

the lands west of the Dive; all else came from the old domain of Rolf,

the oldest, but, then as now, not the most Norman Normandy.[761]

[Sidenote: Description of the field of battle.]

The field of battle lies just within the hostile country.[762]

South-east of Caen, in continuation of the high ground of Allemagne[763]

immediately south of the town, stretches a long, broad, and slightly

elevated plain, sloping gently towards the east.[764] It hardly deserves

to be called a hill, and the indentations with which its sides are

broken hardly deserve to be called valleys.[765] Several villages and

churches, Secqueville, Bellengreville, Billy, Chicheboville, form the

boundaries of the field, but the plain itself is open and without any

remarkable feature. A ridge somewhat higher than the rest of the ground,

known as Mount Saint Lawrence, is the only conspicuous point of the

plain itself, and this marks the western boundary of the actual

battle-ground. The little stream of the Muance, a tributary of the Orne,

bounds the plain to the south-east.[766] To the north lies the high

ground of Argences, over which William advanced with the troops of the

loyal districts. The French auxiliaries, approaching from the south by

way of Mezidon, first reached the little village of Valmeray, where a

ruined tower of later date marks the site of the church of Saint Brice

in which King Henry heard mass [Sidenote: Junction of the Ducal and

French forces.] before the battle.[767] Meanwhile the Duke’s forces

crossed the Muance at the ford of Berengier,[768] and at once joined the

French. King and Duke now ranged their troops in the order in which it

was most natural to meet an enemy advancing from the west. The Normans,

who had come from the north, formed the right wing, while the French,

coming from the south, naturally formed the left.[769] There was pitched

the royal standard, on which we are told that the presumption of the

upstart house of Paris had dared to emblazon the eagle of Julius and

Charles.[770] King Henry and Duke William, each baton in hand,[771] were

now marshalling their troops, and the battle seemed about to begin,

when, if we may trust our only detailed narrative of that day’s fight,

one side was cheered and the other dispirited by an unlooked for

incident.

Ralph of Tesson was lord of the forest of Cingueleiz, [Sidenote: Ralph

of Tesson joins the Duke.] the forest some way to the south of Caen,

between the rivers Orne and Lise, and his chief seat was at Harcourt

Thury. He was a lord of great power, and his contingent is said to have

mustered no less than a hundred and twenty knights with their banners

and tokens.[772] He had no ground of offence against the Duke; yet he

had joined in the conspiracy, and had sworn on the saints at Bayeux to

smite William wherever he found him.[773] But his heart smote him when

he found himself standing face to face against his lord in open battle.

His knights too pressed around him, and reminded him of his homage and

plighted faith, and how he who fought against his natural lord had no

right to fief or honour.[774] On the other hand the Viscounts Neal and

Randolf pressed him to stand firmly by them, and promised great rewards

as the price of his adherence. For a while he stood doubtful, keeping

his troop apart from either army. We are told that the King and the Duke

marked them as they stood, and that William told Henry that he knew them

for the men of Ralph of Tesson, that their leader had no grudge against

him, and that he believed that they would all soon be on his side.

Presently the arguments of his own knights prevailed with Ralph; he bade

them halt, and he himself spurred across the field, shouting as his

war-cry the name of his lordship of Thury.[775] He rode up to the Duke,

he struck him with his glove, and so performed his oath to smite William

wherever he found him.[776] The Duke welcomed the returning penitent,

and Ralph rode back to his men. His detachment stood aside for a space

till the two hosts were engaged in the thick of the battle. He then

watched his opportunity, and made a vigorous charge on the side of the

Duke.

[Sidenote: Character of the battle; a mere combat of cavalry.]

Such an auspicious reinforcement might well stir up the spirits of the

young Duke and his followers. Every man was eager for battle. A fierce

combat of cavalry began. We have heard of the infantry of the communes

as appearing at the ducal muster, but we hear nothing of them in the

battle. We hear nothing of the Norman archers, who were to win so

terrible a renown upon a later field. All is one vast tourney, mounted

knights charging one another with shield, sword, and lance. The first

great battle of William, like the first great battle of Alexander,[777]

was truly a battle of chivalry in every sense of the word, a hand to

hand personal fight between mounted nobles on either side. On pressed

the Duke, sword in hand, seeking out the perjured Viscounts,[778] and

shouting the war-cry of Normandy, “_Dex aie_.”[779] On the same side

rose the shout of “_Montjoye-Saint-Denys_,” the national war-cry of the

French Kingdom. From the rebel host arose the names of various local

saints, patrons of the castles and churches of the revolted leaders,

Saint Sever, Saint Amand, and others of less renown.[780] On the rebel

left rode the men of the Bessin, on the right those of the Côtentin. The

men of the peninsula thus came face to face with the [Sidenote: Personal

exertions of King Henry.] royal troops; the King of the French, as in

the old days of Lewis and Harold,[781] had to meet in close fight with

the fiercest and most unconquerable warriors of the Norman name. And

well and bravely did King Henry do his duty on that one day of his life.

Even in the Norman picture, it is around the King, rather than around

the Duke, that the main storm of battle is made to centre. The knights

now met on each side, lance to lance, and, when their lances were

shivered, sword to sword. There was no difference of tactics, no

contrast between one weapon and another; the fight of Val-ès-dunes was

the sheer physical encounter of horse and man, the mere trial of

personal strength and personal skill in knightly exercises. The King, as

in such a fight any man of common courage must do, exposed himself

freely to danger; but, as far as his personal adventures went, the royal

share in the battle was somewhat unlucky. Once, if not twice, the King

of the French, the overlord of Normandy, was hurled from his horse by

the thrust of a Norman lance. A knight of the Côtentin first overthrew

him by a sudden charge. The exploit was long remembered in the rhymes of

his warlike province,[782] but the hero of it purchased his renown with

his life. The King was unhurt, but the report of such an accident might

easily spread confusion among his army. Like more renowned warriors

before and after, like Eadmund at Sherstone,[783] like William at

Senlac, it was needful that he should show himself to his followers, and

wipe out the misfortune by fresh exploits. Henry was therefore soon

again in the thickest of the fight; but, less fortunate than either

Eadmund or William, the like mishap befell him a second time.[784] The

King presently encountered one of the three great chiefs of the

rebellion; another thrust, dealt by the lance of Hamon, again laid Henry

on the ground; but a well timed stroke from a French knight more than

avenged this second overthrow; the Lord of Thorigny was carried off dead

on his shield like an old Spartan.[785]

The King honoured his valiant adversary, and, by his express order,

Hamon was buried with all fitting splendour before the Church of Our

Lady at Esquai on the Orne.[786]

The King is thus made decidedly the most prominent figure in the

picture, and, somewhat inglorious as were Henry’s personal experiences

that day, it is to him and his Frenchmen that the Norman poet does not

scruple to attribute the victory.[787] The fight appears throughout as

[Sidenote: Exploits and good fortune of William.] a fight between

Normans and Frenchmen.[788] But the Duke of the Normans himself was not

idle. If his royal ally was personally unlucky, it was on this day that

William began that career of personal success, of good fortune in the

mere tug of battle, which, till the clouded evening of his life, was as

conspicuous as the higher triumphs of his military genius and his

political craft. Men loved to tell how the young Duke slew with his own

hand the beloved vassal of Randolf, Hardrez, the choicest warrior of

Bayeux;[789] how the veteran champion, in the pride of his might, rode

defiant in the front rank; how the Duke rode straight at him, not

justing with his lance as in a mimic tourney, but smiting hand to hand

with the sword. The poet rises to an almost Homeric flight, when he

tells us how William smote the rebel below the chin, how he drove the

sharp steel between the throat and the chest, how the body fell beneath

his stroke and the soul passed away.[790]

[Sidenote: Randolf loses heart and flees.]

The fortune of the day was now distinctly turning against the rebels;

but, had all of them displayed equal courage, the issue of the struggle

might still have been unfavourable to King and Duke. Neal of Saint

Saviour still fought among the foremost of the men of his peninsula, but

the heart of his accomplice from Bayeux began to fail him. Randolf had

seen his most cherished vassal fall by the hand of his young sovereign;

his heart quailed lest the like fate should be his own; he feared lest

Neal had fled; he feared that he was betrayed to the enemy; he repented

that he had ever put on his helmet; it was sad to be taken captive, it

was a still worse doom to be slain. The battle ceased to give him any

pleasure;[791] he gave way before every charge; he wandered in front and

in rear; at last he lost heart altogether; he dropped his lance and his

shield, he stretched forth his neck,[792] and rode [Sidenote: Neal

continues the fight to the last.] for his life. The cowards, we are

told, followed him; but Neal still continued the fight, giving and

taking blows till his strength failed him. The French pressed upon him;

their numbers increased, the numbers of the Normans lessened; some of

his followers had fled, others lay dead and dying around him. At last

the mighty lord of the Côtentin saw that all hope was lost. On the

rising ground of Saint Lawrence the last blow seems to have been struck.

The spot was afterwards marked by a commemorative chapel, which was

destroyed by the Huguenots in the religious wars. On its site it

doubtless was that the valiant Neal at last turned and left the field,

seemingly the last man of the whole rebel army.

[Sidenote: Rout of the Rebels.]

The rout now became general. The example of Randolf drew after it far

more followers than the example of Neal. The rebels rode for their lives

in small parties, the troops of the King and the Duke following hard

upon them, and smiting them from the rear. From the ridge of Saint

Lawrence they rode westward, to reach the friendly land of Bayeux;[793]

they rode by the Abbey of Fontenay and the quarries of Allemagne; but

the flood of the Orne checked their course; men and horses were swept

away by the stream, or were slaughtered by the pursuers in the attempt

to cross; the mills of Borbillon, we are told, were stopped by the dead

bodies.[794]

[Sidenote: Completeness of the victory.]

The victory was a decisive one, and it was one which proved no less

decisive in its lasting results than it had been [Sidenote: The French

auxiliaries return.] as a mere success on the field of battle. King

Henry, who had done his work well and faithfully, now went back to his

own land, and left William to complete the reduction of his revolted

subjects. One of them, the original author of the plot, still offered

him a long and vigorous resistance. Of the conduct of Guy of Burgundy in

the field we hear nothing, except an incidental mention of a wound which

he received there.[795] Indeed, since the appearance of his three great

Norman adherents, the [Sidenote: Escape of Guy.] Burgundian prince has

nearly dropped out of sight.[796] He now reappears, to receive from the

Norman writers a vast out-pouring of scorn on account of his flight from

the field,[797] though it does not appear to have been in any way more

ignominious than the flight of the mass of his Norman allies. At any

rate he was not borne away in the indiscriminate rush of his comrades

towards the Orne. He escaped, with a large body of companions,[798] in

quite the opposite direction, to his own castle of Brionne on the

[Sidenote: He defends himself at Brionne.] Risle. There he took up a

position of defence, and was speedily followed and besieged by Duke

William. The castle of Brionne of those days was not the hill fortress,

the shell of a donjon of that or of the next age, which now looks down

upon the town and valley beneath. The stronghold of Count Guy had

natural defences, but they were defences of another kind. The town

itself seems to have been strongly fortified; but the point of defence

which was most relied on at Brionne was the fortified hall of stone

which stood on an island in the river.[799] William had, before now, by

one vigorous assault, brought his own native Falaise to surrender;[800]

but, though we are expressly told that the stream was everywhere

fordable, the island fortress seems to have been deemed proof against

any attacks [Sidenote: Siege of Brionne 1047–1050?] of this kind. A

regular siege alone could reduce it, and William was driven to practise

all the devices of the military art of his day against his rebellious

cousin. He built a castle, this time very possibly of wood, on each side

of the river, and thus cut off the besieged from their supplies of

provisions.[801] Constant assaults on the beleaguered castle are spoken

of, but their aim seems to have been mainly to frighten the besieged

rather than to produce any more practical effect;[802] hunger was the

sure and slow means on which William relied to bring Guy to reason. The

siege was clearly a long one, though it is hardly possible to believe,

on the incidental statement of a single authority, that it was spread

over a space of three years.[803] [Sidenote: Surrender of Brionne.] At

last the endurance of Guy and his companions gave way, and he sent

messengers praying for mercy. The Duke required the surrender of the

castle; but touched, we are told, by the tie of kindred blood, he bade

Guy [Sidenote: William’s clemency to the vanquished.] remain in his

court.[804] Nor was the Duke’s hand, on the whole, heavy on the other

offenders. No man was put to death, though William’s panegyrist holds

that death [Sidenote: Rarity of political executions.] was the fitting

punishment for their offences.[805] But in those days, both in Normandy

and elsewhere, the legal execution of a state criminal was an event

which seldom happened. Men’s lives were recklessly wasted in the endless

warfare of the times, and there were men, as we have seen, who did not

shrink from private murder, even in its basest form.[806] But the formal

hanging or beheading of a noble prisoner, so common in later times, was,

in the eleventh century, distinctly an unusual sight.[807] And, strange

as it may sound, there was a sense in which [Sidenote: William’s

ordinary treatment of enemies.] William the Conqueror was not a man of

blood. He would sacrifice any number of lives to his boundless ambition;

he did not scruple to condemn his enemies to cruel personal mutilations;

he would keep men for years, as a mere measure of security, in the

horrible prison-houses of those days; but the extinction of human life

in cold blood was something from which he shrank. His biographer

exultingly points out this feature in his character, and his recorded

acts do not belie his praise.[808] Once only did he swerve from this

rule, when he sent the noble Waltheof to the scaffold. And, as that act

stands out conspicuously from its contrast to his ordinary conduct, so

it is the act from which it is impossible not to date the decline of his

high fortune. And, at the time of his first great victory, William was

of an age which is commonly disposed to be generous, and none of the

worse features of his character had hitherto come to the surface. With

one exception only, no very hard punishments were inflicted on the

conquered [Sidenote: Destruction of the castles.] rebels. The mass of

the rebellious Barons paid fines, gave hostages, and had to submit to

the destruction of the castles which they had raised without the ducal

licence.[809] To this, and to other measures of the same kind, it is

owing that such small traces of the Norman castles of the eleventh

century now remain. Neal of Saint Saviour had to retire for a time to

Britanny, but his exile must have been short, as we find him, seemingly

in the very next year, again in office and in the ducal favour. He

survived his restoration forty-four years;[810] he lived to repay at

Senlac the old wrong done by Englishmen to his father’s province; but,

almost alone among the great Norman chiefs, he received [Sidenote: Guy

returns to Burgundy.] no share in the spoils of England. As for Guy, he

presently left the country of his own free will. His sojourn at

William’s court must have been little else than an honourable

imprisonment, and it would seem that he now found little respect or

sympathy in Normandy.[811] He returned to his native land, the

Burgundian Palatinate, and there, we are told, spent the rest of his

days in plotting against his brother, the reigning Count William.[812]

[Sidenote: Fate of Grimbald.] One criminal only was reserved for a

harsher fate. Grimbald was taken to Rouen, and there kept in prison—such

as prisons were in those days—and in fetters. He was looked on as the

foulest traitor of all; he it was whom the Duke charged with the

personal attempt on his life at Valognes.[813] Grimbald confessed the

crime, and named as his accomplice a knight named Salle the son of Hugh.

The accused denied the charge, and challenged Grimbald to the judicial

combat. Before the appointed day of battle came, Grimbald was found dead

in his prison. He was buried with his fetters on his legs, his lands

were confiscated, and part of them was given to the church of Bayeux.

Plessis became a domain of the see, and other portions of the estates of

Grimbald became the corpses of various prebends in the cathedral

church.[814]

[Sidenote: Establishment of William’s power in Normandy.]

The power of William was now on the whole firmly established. He had

still to repel many attacks from hostile neighbours, and we shall have

yet to record one more considerable revolt within the Norman territory.

But the Norman Barons now knew that they had a master.[815] For some

years to come, internal discord, strictly so called, underwent a sort of

lull to a degree most remarkable in such an age. Under the firm and

equal government of her great Duke, Normandy began to recover from her

years of anarchy, and to rise to a higher degree of prosperity than she

had ever yet attained to.[816] [Sidenote: Effect of the struggle.] The

Duchy became, more completely than it had ever been before, a member of

the European and of the Capetian [Sidenote: The supremacy of the French

element confirmed.] commonwealth. The Capetian King indeed soon learned

again to look with a grudging eye on his northern neighbour; but the

general result of the struggle must have been to make Normandy still

more French than before. The French and the Scandinavian elements had

met face to face, and the French element had had the upper hand.

Frenchmen and French Normans had overthrown the stout Saxons of the

Bessin and the fierce Danes of the Côtentin. The distinction between the

two parts of Normandy is still one which even the passing traveller may

remark; but, from the day of Val-ès-dunes, it ceased to manifest itself

in the great outward expressions of language and political feeling. The

struggle which began during the minority of Richard the Fearless was now

finally decided at the close of the minority of William the Bastard. The

Count of Rouen had overcome Saxons and Danes within his own dominions,

and he was about to weld them into his most trustworthy weapons

wherewith to overcome Saxons and Danes beyond the sea. The omen of the

fight against Neal and Hamon might well have recurred to the mind of

William, when Neal himself and the son of Hamon marched forth at his

side from the camp at Hastings, and went on to complete the conquest of

England at Exeter and York.

§ 3. _From the Battle of Val-ès-dunes to William’s Visit to England._

1047–1051.

William was thus at peace at home; his next war was indeed one of his

own seeking, but it was one from which he could not have shrunk without

breaking through every [Sidenote: The Counts of Anjou; their connexion

with Norman and English history.] tie alike of gratitude and of feudal

duty. This is the first time that I have had directly to mention a

power, which had been, for more than a hundred years, steadily growing

up to the south of Normandy, and which was to exercise a most important

influence on the future history of Normandy and, through Normandy, on

that of England. I mean the dynasty of the Counts of Anjou. That

[Sidenote: 1154.] house, the house which mounted the throne of England

in the person of a great-grandson of William, produced a succession of

princes to whose personal qualities it must mainly have been owing that

their dominions fill the place which they do fill in French and in

European history. [Sidenote: Characteristics of Angevin history.] Anjou

holds a peculiar position among the great fiefs of France. It was a

singular destiny which gave so marked a character, and so conspicuous a

history, to a country which seems in no way marked out for separate

existence by any geographical or national distinction. Normandy,

Britanny, Flanders, Aquitaine, Ducal Burgundy, all had a being of their

own; they were fiefs of the Crown of France, but they were in no sense

French provinces. But Anjou was at most an outpost on the Loire, a

border district of France and Aquitaine; beyond this position it had

nothing specially to distinguish it from any other part of the great

[Sidenote: Saxon occupation. 464.] Parisian Duchy.[817] A momentary

Saxon occupation in the fifth century[818] cannot be supposed to have

left behind it any such abiding traces as were certainly left by the

settlement of the same people at Bayeux, perhaps even by their less

famous settlement at Seez.[819] It was wholly to the energy and the

marked character of its individual rulers that Anjou owes its distinct

and prominent place among the principalities of Gaul. The restless

spirit of the race showed itself sometimes for good and sometimes for

evil, but there was no Count of Anjou who could be called a fool, a

coward, or a _fainéant_. The history or legends of the family which was

to rise to such greatness laid claim [Sidenote: Ingelgar, first Count.

870?] to no very remote or illustrious pedigree.[820] The first Count of

Anjou, who held a part only of the later County,[821] was invested with

that dignity either by Charles the Bald or by his son Lewis the

Stammerer.[822] He bore the name of Ingelgar, and he seems to be the

first member of the family who can be unhesitatingly set down as

historical. His grandfather, [Sidenote: Peasant origin of the family.]

Torquatius or Tortulfus, was, according to the legend, a peasant, and

seems to have sprung from that Breton race of which his descendants

became the most persevering enemies. It must have been a later version

of the tale which invented for him a Roman name and a Roman

descent.[823] [Sidenote: Torquatius and Tertullus.] The son of

Torquatius, Tertullus, rose, we are told, to importance at the court of

Charles, and founded the [Sidenote: Historical value of these tales.]

greatness of his house.[824] Whatever may be the amount of strictly

historical truth preserved in these stories, they are, in one point of

view, of no small historical value. Like the similar story of the origin

of Godwine, they point to a belief, which can hardly have been

ill-founded, that, in Gaul in the ninth century and in England in the

eleventh, ignoble birth did not disqualify a man from rising to the

highest dignities, or from founding a dynasty of Princes or even of

Kings.[825] But, when we reach Ingelgar, we seem to stand on more

distinctly historical ground. He held Amboise in Touraine as an allodial

possession,[826] and he was, as we have seen, invested with the

Countship of Anjou on the hither side of the Mayenne. But it is plain

that no detailed account of his actions, or of those of his immediate

successors, was preserved.[827] [Sidenote: Fulk the Red. 888.] His son

Fulk the Red received from Charles the Simple the remaining portion of

the County of Anjou, that beyond the Mayenne, and he vigorously defended

his enlarged dominions against the attacks of Northmen and Bretons.[828]

[Sidenote: Fulk the Good. 938.] This Romulus was appropriately succeeded

by a Numa, Fulk the Good, renowned for his piety, his almsdeeds, his

just and peaceful government, and for being the traditional author of

the proverb that an unlettered King is but [Sidenote: Geoffrey

Grisegonelle. 958.] a crowned ass.[829] His son, Geoffrey

Grisegonelle,[830] renewed the warlike fame of his house; he fought with

his neighbours of Britanny and Aquitaine; and he is said to [Sidenote:

978.] have borne an important share in the wars between King Lothar and

the Emperor Otto the Second.[831] After [Sidenote: Fulk Nerra. 987.] him

came his son Fulk,[832] surnamed Nerra or the Black, renowned as a

warrior and still more renowned as a pilgrim, and who is the first

prince of his house whose name has found its way into the general

history of France. He overthrew his brother-in-law Conan of Britanny in

one or [Sidenote: 992.] more pitched battles, which French, as well as

Breton and [Sidenote: His war with Odo of Chartres.] Angevin, writers

thought worthy of record. He was also engaged in a war with his

neighbour Odo the Second, Count of Blois and Chartres, the grandson of

the famous Theobald, a war which passed on as an inheritance to the next

generation, and which proved the origin of the first entanglements

between Normandy and Anjou.[833] It sounds like an incursion from

another hemisphere, when we read how Aldebert, Count of Perigueux,

Perigueux with its cupolas and its Roman tower, far away in the heart of

Aquitaine, appeared as an ally of the Angevin [Sidenote: Fulk gains and

loses Tours. 990.] Count. He took Tours and gave it to Fulk, but the

citizens were ill disposed to their new master, and Odo [Sidenote:

Battle of Pontlevois. 1016.] recovered it after a short time. Later in

his reign, Fulk defeated Odo in a great battle at Pontlevois in the

territory [Sidenote: 1031.] of Touraine, and afterwards gained or

recovered Saumur. We have already met with him in the character of a

mediator between contending candidates for the Crown of France,[834] and

he appears also in the less honourable light of an assassin, who removed

a courtier of King Robert who stood in the way of the plans of his own

termagant niece Queen Constance.[835] We hear also heavy complaints of

him as a violator of ecclesiastical rule, by setting up the usurped

authority of the See of Rome against the rights [Sidenote: His

pilgrimages. 1028, 1035.] of the independent metropolitans of Gaul.[836]

But he is perhaps best known for his two pilgrimages to the Holy

Sepulchre, for the ready ingenuity which he displayed on his first

journey, and for the extreme of penitential humiliation by which he

edified all men on the second.[837] Less happy in his private than in

his public career, he was troubled in his last years by a rebellion of

his son;[838] he was charged, truly or falsely, with the murder of one

wife, and with driving another from him by ill-treatment.[839] A reign

of unusual length made him, during a few years, a contemporary of the

Great William, and at last he left his dominions to a son under whom

Normans and Angevins met for the first time in open warfare.

[Sidenote: Geoffrey Martel. 1040.]

This son, Geoffrey by name, rejoiced in the surname of Martel, which he

bestowed upon himself to express the heavy blows which, like the victor

of Tours, he dealt around upon all his enemies.[840] He began his career

in his father’s lifetime. A dispute for the possession of the County of

Saintonge led to a war between him and William the Sixth or the Fat,

Duke of Aquitaine and [Sidenote: He imprisons William of Aquitaine.

April 22, 1033.] Count of Poitou.[841] Geoffrey was successful; he took

the Aquitanian prince prisoner, and kept him in close bondage, till his

wife Eustacia ransomed him at a heavy price. According to one version,

the ransom consisted only of gold and silver, the spoil or contribution

of the monasteries of his Duchy. Others however assert that it was

nothing short of the cession of Bourdeaux and other cities, and an

engagement to pay tribute for the rest of his dominions. Three days

after this hard bought deliverance, William died. Immediately

afterwards, or, according to some accounts, in the course of the year

before, Geoffrey married Agnes, the step-mother of his victim, the widow

of William’s father, William the Fifth or the Great. The marriage was,

on some ground or other, branded as incestuous, and it was this

imprisonment of William and [Sidenote: Geoffrey rebels against his

father. 1033.] this marriage with Agnes which, we are told, gave rise in

some way to Geoffrey’s rebellion against his father and to the discord

between Fulk and his second wife Hildegardis the mother of Geoffrey.

The imprisonment of William of Aquitaine evidently made a deep

impression upon men’s minds at the time; but it was the standing war

with the house of Chartres which brought Anjou into direct collision

with Normandy, and thereby, at a somewhat later time, into connexion

[Sidenote: Last days of Odo of Chartres.] with England. The last

energies of Odo were mainly directed to objects remote from Anjou, and

even from Chartres and Blois. He was one of the party which opposed the

succession of King Henry, and in so doing he must have crossed the

policy of Henry’s great champion [Sidenote: His war with King Henry.

1034.] Duke Robert. In a war which followed with the King Odo was

unsuccessful,[842] but his mind was now set upon greater things. Already

Count of Champagne, he aimed [Sidenote: His attempt on the Kingdom of

Burgundy. 1033.] at restoring the great frontier state between the

Eastern and the Western Franks, at reigning as King of Burgundy, of

Lotharingia, perhaps of Italy. After meeting [Sidenote: His defeat and

death at Bar. 1037.] for a while with some measure of success, he was at

last defeated and slain by Duke Gozelo, the father of Godfrey of whom we

have already heard,[843] in a battle near Bar in the Upper

Lotharingia.[844] His great schemes died with him. His sons were only

Counts and not Kings, and their father’s dominions were divided between

them. The [Sidenote: His sons Stephen and Theobald.] sons of both of

them obtained settlements in England, and a grandson of one figures

largely in English history. Stephen reigned in Champagne; his son Odo

married a sister of the Conqueror, and was one of the objects of his

brother-in-law’s bounty in England.[845] Theobald inherited Blois and

Chartres. His son Stephen married [Sidenote: Their wars with King Henry

and with Geoffrey.] William’s daughter Adela, and thereby became father

of a King of the English. But at present we have to deal with Count

Theobald as a vassal of France at variance with his overlord, as a

neighbour of Anjou inheriting the hereditary enmity of his forefathers.

Touraine, part of which was already possessed by Geoffrey,[846] and,

above all, the metropolitan city of Tours, were ever the great objects

of Angevin ambition. It was a stroke of policy on the part of Henry,

when he formally deprived the rebel Theobald of [Sidenote: Geoffrey

receives Tours as a grant from Henry, and imprisons Theobald. 1044.]

that famous city, and bestowed it by a royal grant on the Count of

Anjou.[847] Geoffrey was not slow to press a claim at once fresh and

most plausible. He advanced on the city to assert his rights by force.

Saint Martin, we are specially told, favoured the enterprise.[848] The

brothers resisted in vain. Stephen was put to flight; Theobald was taken

prisoner, and was compelled, like William of Aquitaine, to obtain his

freedom by the surrender of the city.[849]

Both French and Angevin writers agree in describing Geoffrey as taking

possession of Tours with the full consent of King Henry. Yet, in the

first glimpse of Angevin affairs given us by our Norman authorities, the

relations between the King of the French and the Count of Anjou are set

forth in an exactly opposite light. Geoffrey is [Sidenote: William helps

King Henry against Geoffrey. 1048.] engaged in a rebellious war against

Henry, and the Duke of the Normans appears simply to discharge his

feudal duty to his lord, and to return the obligation incurred by the

King’s prompt and effectual help at Val-ès-dunes.[850] These two

accounts are in no way inconsistent; in the space of four years the

relations between the King and so dangerous a vassal as Geoffrey may

very well have changed. Henry may well have found that it was not sound

policy to foster the growth of one whose blows might easily be extended

from Counts to Kings. The campaign which followed is dwelt on at great

length by our Norman authorities and is cut significantly short by the

Angevins. [Sidenote: Personal exploits of William.] In its course, we

are told, William gained the highest reputation. The troops of Normandy

surpassed in number the united contingents of the King and of all his

other vassals.[851] The Duke’s courage and conduct were preeminent, and

they won him the first place in the King’s counsels.[852] But on one

point Henry had to remonstrate with his valiant ally. He was forced,

says the panegyrist, to warn both William himself and the chief Norman

leaders against the needless exposure of so precious a life.[853]

William at no time of his life ever shrank from danger, and we may be

sure that, at this time of his life especially, he thoroughly enjoyed

the practice of war in all its forms. But William’s impulses were

already under the control of his reason. He knew, no doubt, as well as

any man, that to plunge himself into needless dangers, and to run the

risk of hairbreadth scapes, was no part of the real duty of a prince or

a general. But he also knew that it was mainly by exploits of this kind

that he must dazzle the minds of his own generation, and so obtain that

influence over men which was needful for the great schemes of his

life.[854] In any other point of view, one would say that it was

unworthy of William’s policy to win the reputation of a knight-errant at

the expense of making for himself a lasting and dangerous enemy in the

Count of Anjou.

[Sidenote: Position of Maine under Geoffrey.]

The undisputed dominions of the two princes nowhere touched each other.

But between them lay a country closely connected both with Normandy and

with Anjou, and over which both William and Geoffrey asserted rights.

This was the County of Maine, a district which was always said to have

formed part of the later acquisitions of Rolf,[855] but of which the

Norman Dukes had never taken practical possession. The history of the

Cenomannian city and province will be more fittingly sketched at another

stage of William’s [Sidenote: Count Herbert. 1015.] career; it is enough

to say here that Geoffrey was now practical sovereign of Maine, in the

character of protector, [Sidenote: Hugh. 1036.] guardian, or conqueror

of the young Count Hugh, the son of the famous Herbert, surnamed

_Wake-the-dog_.[856] William and Geoffrey thus became immediate

neighbours, and Geoffrey, with the craft of his house, knew how to

strike a blow [Sidenote: The fortresses of Domfront and Alençon.] where

William was weakest. Two chief fortresses guarded the frontier between

Maine and Normandy. Each commanded its own valley, its own approach into

the heart of the Norman territory; each watched over a stream flowing

from Norman into Cenomannian ground. These were Domfront towards the

western, and Alençon towards the eastern, portion of the frontier.

Domfront commanded the region watered by the Mayenne and its

tributaries, while Alençon was the key of the valley of the Sarthe, the

keeper of the path which led straight to the minster of Seez and to the

donjon of Falaise. Of these two strongholds, Alençon stood on Norman,

Domfront on Cenomannian soil.[857] But Norman writers maintained that

Domfront, no less than Alençon, was of right a Norman possession, both

fortresses alike having been reared by the licence of Richard the

[Sidenote: Disloyalty of Alençon.] Good.[858] But even Alençon, whatever

may have been its origin, was at this time far from being a sound member

of the Norman body-politic. As a lordship of William Talvas, it shared

in the ambiguous character, half Norman, half French, which attached to

all the border possessions of the house of Belesme. And, as events

presently showed, its inhabitants shared most fully in the spirit in

which the Lord of Alençon had cursed the Bastard in his cradle.[859] We

are told also that the citizens both of Alençon and of Domfront disliked

the rule of William, on account of the strict justice which he

administered and the checks which he put on their marauding

practices.[860] This complaint sounds rather as if it came from

turbulent barons than from burghers; yet it is quite possible that the

burghers of a frontier town, especially on a frontier which was very

doubtful and ill defined, may have indulged in those breaches of the

peace which it was William’s greatest praise, both in Normandy and in

England, to chastise without mercy. [Sidenote: Alençon garrisoned by

Geoffrey.] At any rate, the people of Alençon were thoroughly disloyal

to Normandy, and they willingly received the Angevin Count and his

garrison.[861] William returned the blow of [Sidenote: William marches

ta Domfront;] Geoffrey’s hammer in kind. Leaving Alençon for a while to

itself, he crossed the frontier, Angevin or Cenomannian as we may choose

to call it, and laid siege to Domfront. [Sidenote: his exploits on the

way.] On his march he found that treason was not wholly extinguished,

even among his own troops. He had gone on a foraging or plundering party

with fifty horse;[862] a traitor, a Norman noble, sent word of his

whereabout to the defenders of the town, who sent forth, we are told,

three hundred horse and seven hundred foot to attack the Duke

unexpectedly. It sounds like romance when we read that William at once

charged and overthrew the horseman nearest to him, that the rest were

seized with a sudden panic and took to flight, that the Duke and his

little band chased them to the gates of Domfront, and that William

carried off one prisoner with his own hands.[863] Such stories are no

doubt greatly exaggerated; the details may often be pure invention; but,

as contemporary exaggerations and inventions, they show the kind of

merit which Normans then looked for in their rulers, and they show the

kind of exploit of which William himself was thought capable. [Sidenote:

Traitors in the Norman camp.] And the perfectly casual mention of the

traitor in the Norman camp is instructive in another way. We have here

no doubt merely an example of what often happened, and the way in which

treason is spoken of as an everyday matter sets vividly before us the

difficulties with which William, even now after the victory of

Val-ès-dunes, had still to contend at every step.[864]

[Sidenote: Siege of Domfront.]

William now laid siege to Domfront. The town was strong both by its

fortifications and by its natural position. The spirit of the citizens

was high, and they were further strengthened by the presence of a chosen

body of Angevin troops sent by Count Geoffrey. An assault was hopeless

where two steep and narrow paths were the only ways by which the

fortress could be approached even on foot.[865] William surrounded it

with four towers,[866] and the Norman army sat down before it. The Duke

was foremost in every attack, in every ambush, in every night march to

cut off the approach of those who sought to bring either messages or

provisions to the besieged town.[867] Yet we are told that he found

himself so safe in the enemy’s country that he often enjoyed the sports

of hunting and hawking, for which the neighbouring woods afforded

special opportunities.[868] [Sidenote: 1048–1049.] The siege had

continued for some time in this way, and it was now seemingly

winter,[869] when news was brought that Count Geoffrey was advancing

with a large [Sidenote: Geoffrey comes to relieve Domfront.] force to

the relief of the town. A tale of knight-errantry follows, the main

substance of which, coming as it does from a contemporary writer, we

have no ground for disbelieving, even though some details may have been

heightened to enhance the glory of William. The story is worthy of

attention as showing that, amid all the apparent rudeness of the times,

some germs of the later follies of chivalry had already begun to show

themselves. As the Angevin army [Sidenote: Messages between William and

Geoffrey. Early example of knight-errantry.] approached, William sent a

message to Geoffrey by the hands of two of his chosen friends, two

youths who had grown up along with him, and who were destined to share

with him in all his greatest dangers and greatest successes. Both were

men who lived to be famous in English history, Roger of Montgomery, the

son-in-law of the terrible Talvas,[870] and William, the son of that

Osbern who had lost his life through his faithfulness to his

master.[871] These two trusty companions were sent to see Count

Geoffrey, and to get from him an explanation of his purpose. Geoffrey

told them that, at daybreak the next morning, he would come and beat up

William’s quarters before Domfront. There should be no mistake about his

person; he would be known by such a dress, such a shield,[872] such a

coloured horse. The Norman messengers answered that he need not trouble

himself to come so far as the Norman quarters; he whom he sought would

come and visit him nearer home. Duke William would be ready for battle,

with such a horse, such a dress, such manner of weapons.[873] The

Normans appeared the next morning, eager for fight, [Sidenote: Geoffrey

decamps.] and their Duke the most eager among them.[874] But no enemy

was there to await them; before the Normans came in sight, the Count of

Anjou and his host had decamped. Geoffrey doubtless, like some later

generals, retired only for strategical reasons; but the Norman writers

can see no nobler motive for his conduct than his being seized with a

sudden panic.[875] Here, and throughout the war, the lions stand in need

of a painter, or rather their painters suddenly refuse to do their duty.

We have no Angevin account of the siege of Domfront to set against our

evidently highly coloured Norman picture.

[Sidenote: William marches suddenly to Alençon, and besieges the town.]

The whole country now lay open for William to harry; but he knew better

than to waste time and energy on mere useless ravages.[876] He

determined rather to strike another sudden blow. Leaving a force before

Domfront, he marched all night, through the enemy’s country, along the

course of the Mayenne, passing by Mehendin, Pointel, and

Saint-Samson.[877] He thus suddenly appeared before Alençon with the

morning light.[878] A bridge over the Sarthe, strongly fortified with a

ditch and a palisade, divided the Norman from the Cenomannian

territory.[879] This bridge now served as a barrier against a Duke of

the Normans attacking his own town from the Cenomannian [Sidenote:

Insults offered to William at Alençon.] side. The defenders of the

bridge, whether Angevins or disaffected Normans, received the Duke with

the grossest personal insult. They spread out skins and leather jerkins,

and beat them, shouting, “Hides, hides for the Tanner.”[880] The Duke of

the Normans had acted a merciful and generous part towards the rebels of

Val-ès-dunes and Brionne; but the grandson of Fulbert of Falaise could

not endure the jeers thus thrown on his descent by the spindle side.

Anything like a personal insult is commonly far more unpardonable in

princely eyes than a real injury. The one act of cruelty which

[Sidenote: 1296.] stains the reign of our great Edward is the slaughter

of the inhabitants of Berwick in revenge for a jesting and not very

intelligible ballad sung against him from the walls.[881] So now William

swore, according to his fashion, by the Splendour of God,[882] that the

men who thus mocked him should be dealt with like a tree whose branches

are cut off by the pollarding-knife.[883] He kept his word. A vigorous

assault was made upon the bridge. Houses were unroofed, and the timbers

were thrown into the fosse.[884] Fire was set to the mass; the wood was

dry, the flame spread, the palisades and gates were burned down, and

[Sidenote: He takes the town, and mutilates his prisoners.] William was

master of the bridge, and with it of the town of Alençon. The castle

still held out. The Conqueror, faithful to his fearful oath, now gave

the first of that long list of instances of indifference to human

suffering which have won for him a worse name than many parts of his

character really deserve. Thirty-two of the offenders were brought

before him; their hands and feet were cut off,[885] and the dismembered

limbs were thrown over the walls of the castle, as a speaking menace to

its defenders.[886] The threat did its work; the garrison surrendered,

bargaining only for safety for life and limb.[887] Alençon, tower and

town, was thus taken so speedily that William’s panegyrist says that he

might renew the boast of Cæsar, “I came; I saw; I conquered.”[888]

Leaving [Sidenote: Domfront surrenders.] a garrison in Alençon, the Duke

hastened back to Domfront, the fame of his conquest and of his cruelty

going before him. The man before whom Alençon had fallen, before whom

the Hammer of Anjou had fled without striking a blow, had become an

enemy too fearful for the men of Domfront to face.[889] They surrendered

on terms somewhat more favourable than those which had been granted to

the defenders of the castle of Alençon; they were allowed to retain

their arms as well as their lives and limbs.[890] William entered

Domfront, and displayed the banner of Normandy over the donjon.[891] The

town henceforth became a standing menace on the side of Normandy against

Maine, and it formed, together with Alençon, the main defence of the

southern frontier of the Duchy. If William undertook the war to

discharge his feudal duty towards King Henry, he certainly did not lose

the opportunity for permanently strengthening his own dominions. In

fact, in our Norman accounts, the King of the French has long ago

slipped away from the scene, and the Count of Chartres has vanished

along with him. William and Geoffrey remain the only figures [Sidenote:

William fortifies Ambières.] in the foreground. The Duke, having secured

his frontier, marched, seemingly without resistance, into the undoubted

territory of Maine; he there fortified a castle at Ambières, and

returned in triumph to Rouen.[892]

The men of Alençon had jeered at the grandson of the Tanner; but the

sovereign who so sternly chastised their jests was determined to show

that the baseness of his mother’s origin in no way hindered him from

promoting his kinsmen on the mother’s side. If one grandson of Fulbert

wore the ducal crown of Normandy, another already wore the mitre of

Bayeux; and another great promotion, almost equivalent to adoption into

the ducal [Sidenote: William the Warling;] house, was now to be bestowed

upon a third. The county of Mortain—Moritolium in the Diocese of

Avranches[893]—was now held by William, surnamed Warling, son of Malger,

a son of Richard the Fearless and Gunnor.[894] [Sidenote: his connexion

with the ducal family.] He was therefore a first cousin of William’s

father, a descendant of the ducal stock as legitimate as any other

branch of it. We have not heard his name in the accounts of any of the

former disturbances; but it is clear that he might, like so many others,

have felt himself aggrieved by the accession of the Bastard. Among

[Sidenote: Robert the Bigod.] the knights in Count William’s service was

one, so the story runs, who bore a name hitherto unknown to history,

though not unknown to legend and fanciful etymology, but a name which

was to become more glorious on English ground than the names of

Fitz-Osbern and Montgomery. The sons of Robert the Bigod[895] were to

rule where Harold now held his Earldom, and his remote descendant was to

win a place in English history worthy of Harold himself, as the man who

wrested the freedom of England from the greatest of England’s later

Kings.[896] The patriarch of that great house was now a knight so poor

that he craved leave of his lord to leave his service, and to seek his

fortune among his countrymen who were carving out for themselves

lordships and principalities in Apulia. The Count bade him stay where he

was; within eighty days he, Robert the Bigod, would be able, there in

Normandy, to lay his hands on whatever good things [Sidenote: He charges

William with treason.] it pleased him. In such a speech treason plainly

lurked; and Robert, whether out of duty to his sovereign or in the hope

of winning favour with a more powerful master, determined that the

matter should come to the ears of the Duke. The Bigod was a kinsman of

Richard of Avranches, the son of Thurstan the rebel of Falaise,[897] and

Richard was now high in favour at the court of William. By his means

Robert obtained an introduction to the Duke,[898] and told him of the

treasonable words of the Count of Mortain. William accordingly sent for

his cousin, and charged him with plotting against the state. He had, the

Duke told him, determined again to disturb the peace of the country, and

again to bring about the reign of licence. But, while he, Duke William,

lived, the peace which Normandy so much needed should, by God’s help,

never be disturbed again.[899] Count [Sidenote: William the Warling goes

to Apulia.] William must at once leave the country, and not return to it

during the lifetime of his namesake the Duke. The proud Lord of Mortain

was thus driven to do what his poor knight had thought of doing. He went

to the wars in Apulia in humble guise enough, attended by a [Sidenote:

Robert, Count of Mortain.] single esquire. The Duke at once bestowed the

vacant County of Mortain on his half-brother Robert, the son of Herlwin

and Herleva. Of him we shall hear again in the tale of the Conquest of

England. Thus, says our informant, did William pluck down the proud

kindred of his father and lift up the lowly kindred of his mother.[900]

[Sidenote: Estimate of William’s conduct.]

This affair of William of Mortain is one of which we may well wish for

further explanation. We are hardly in a position to judge of the truth

or falsehood of the charge brought by Robert the Bigod against his

lord.[901] We have no statement from the other side; we have no defence

from the Count of Mortain; all that we are told is that, when arraigned

before the Duke, he neither confessed nor denied the charge.[902] We

need not doubt that William was honestly anxious to preserve his Duchy

from internal disturbances. But in this case his justice, if justice it

was, fell so sharply and speedily as to have very much the look of

interested oppression. It was impossible to avoid the suspicion that

William the Warling was sacrificed to the Duke’s wish to make a

provision for his half-brother. We are not surprised to find that the

charge of having despoiled and banished his cousin on frivolous

pretences was brought up against William by his enemies in later times,

and was not forgotten by historians in the next generation.[903]

The energy of William had thus, for the time, [Sidenote: Prosperous

condition of Normandy. 1049–1054.] thoroughly quelled all his foes, and

his Duchy seems for some years to have enjoyed as large a share of peace

and prosperity as any state could enjoy in those troubled times. The

young Duke was at last firmly settled in the ducal seat, and he now

began to think of strengthening himself by a marriage into the family of

some neighbouring prince. And he seems to have already made up his mind

in favour of the woman who retained [Sidenote: William seeks Matilda of

Flanders in marriage.] his love during the remainder of their joint

lives, Matilda,[904] the daughter of Baldwin, Count of Flanders. He must

have been in treaty for her hand very soon after the Angevin war, as the

marriage was forbidden by a decree [Sidenote: 1049.] of the Council of

Rheims.[905] But the marriage itself did [Sidenote: 1053.] not take

place till several years later, and the negotiation opened so many

questions, and was connected with so many later events, that I reserve

the whole subject of [Sidenote: William’s objects, Duchy, Wife, and

Kingdom, all pursued in the like spirit.] William’s marriage for a later

chapter. William had to struggle through as many difficulties to obtain

undisputed possession of his wife as he had to obtain undisputed

possession of either his Duchy or his Kingdom. And he struggled after

all three with the same deliberate energy, ever waiting his time, taking

advantage of every opportunity, never baffled by any momentary repulse.

His struggle for Normandy was now, for the time, over; he had fairly

conquered his own Duchy, and he had now only to defend it. His struggle

for Matilda had already begun; a struggle almost as hard as the other,

though one which was to be fought, not with bow and spear, but with the

weapons of legal and canonical disputation. Whether he had already begun

to lift up his eyes to the succession of his childless cousin, whether

he had already formed the hope that the grandson of the despised Tanner

might fill, not only the ducal chair of Normandy, but the Imperial

throne of Britain, is a question to which we can give no certain answer.

But there can be little doubt that, soon after this time, the idea was

forcibly brought before his mind. And, with characteristic pertinacity,

when he had once dreamed of the prize, he never slackened in its pursuit

till he could at last call it his own.

[Sidenote: Condition of England. 1051–1052.]

Normandy was now at rest, enjoying the rest of hard-won peace and

prosperity. England was also at rest, if we may call it rest to lie

prostrate in a state of feverish stillness. She rested, as a nation

rests whose hopes are crushed, whose leaders are torn from her, which

sees for the moment no chance of any doom but hopeless submission

[Sidenote: William’s visit to England. 1051.] to the stranger. It was at

this crisis in the history of the two lands that the Duke of the Normans

appeared as a guest at the court of England.[906] Visits of mere

friendship and courtesy among sovereign princes were rare in those days.

The rulers of the earth seldom met, save when a superior lord required

the homage of a princely vassal, or when Princes came together, at the

summons of the temporal or the spiritual chief of Christendom, to

discuss the common affairs of nations and churches. Such visits as those

which William and Eustace of Boulogne paid at this time to Eadward were,

in England at least, altogether novelties. And they were novelties which

were not likely [Sidenote: Estimate of William in English eyes.] to be

acceptable to the national English mind. We may be sure that every

patriotic Englishman looked with an evil eye on any French-speaking

prince who made his way to the English court. Men would hardly be

inclined to draw the distinction which justice required to be drawn

between Eustace of Boulogne and William of Rouen. And yet, under any

other circumstances, England, or any other land, might have been proud

to welcome such a guest as the already illustrious Duke. Under

unparalleled difficulties he had displayed unrivalled powers; he had

shone alike in camp and in council; he had triumphed over every enemy;

he had used victory with moderation; he was fast raising his Duchy to a

high place among European states, and he was fast winning for himself

the highest personal place among European Princes. Already, at the age

of twenty-three, the Duke of the Normans might have disputed the palm of

personal merit even with the great prince who then filled the throne of

the world. He had, on a narrower field, displayed qualities which fairly

put him on a level with Henry himself. But, in English eyes, William was

simply the most powerful, and therefore the most dangerous, of the

greedy Frenchmen who every day flocked in greater numbers to the court

of the English King. William came with a great following; he tarried

awhile in his cousin’s company; he went away loaded with gifts and

honours.[907] [Sidenote: Eadward’s alleged promise of the Crown to

William probably made at this time.] And we can hardly doubt that he

also went away encouraged by some kind of promise, or at any rate by

some kind of implied hope, of succeeding to the Kingdom which [Sidenote:

General appearance of things favourable to William.] he now visited as a

stranger. There was indeed everything to raise the hope in his breast.

He landed in England; he journeyed to the court of England; his course

lay through what were in truth the most purely English parts of England;

but the sons of the soil lay crushed without a chief. On the throne sat

a King of his own kin, English in nothing but in the long succession of

glorious ancestors of whom he showed himself so unworthy. His heart was

Norman; his speech was French; men of foreign birth were alone welcome

at his court; men of foreign birth were predominant [Sidenote: Norman

predominance in England.] in his councils. The highest places of the

Church were already filled by Norman Prelates. The Norman Primate of all

England, the choicest favourite of the King, the man at whose bidding he

was ready to believe that black was white, would doubtless be the first

to welcome his native sovereign to his province and diocese. The great

city which was fast becoming the capital of England, the city beneath

whose walls Eadward had fixed his chosen dwelling, had been made to own

the spiritual rule of another Norman priest. A short journey, a

hunting-party or a pilgrimage, would bring King and Duke within the

ecclesiastical jurisdiction of a third Norman, the unworthy stranger who

disgraced the episcopal throne of Dorchester. Among the temporal chiefs

of the Kingdom there was already one French Earl, kinsman alike of

William and of Eadward, who would not fail in showing honour to the most

renowned of his speech and kindred. Norman Stallers, Treasurers,

personal officers of every kind, swarmed around the person of the King.

Norman Thegns were already scattered through the land, and were already

filling the land with those threatening castles, of which the wise

policy of William had destroyed so many within his own dominions. Robert

the son of Wymarc, Richard the son of Scrob, and the whole herd of

strangers who were fattening on English soil, would flock to pay their

duty to a more exalted countryman who came on the same errand as

themselves. They would tell him with delight.and pride how the insolence

of the natives had been crushed, how the wrongs of Count Eustace had

been avenged, and how the rebel leaders had been driven to flee from

justice. They would speak of England as a land which Norman influences

had already conquered, and which needed only one exertion of the strong

will and the strong hand to enable the Norman to take formal possession.

The land was fast becoming their own. Some wild tribes, in parts of the

island to which William’s journey was not likely to extend, might still

remain under aged chieftains of English or Danish birth. But even these

rude men had been found, whether through fear or policy, ready to fall

in with the plans of the Norman faction, and to range themselves against

the champions of the national cause. And the richest and most civilized

parts of the land, the very parts which had been so lately held by the

sturdiest champions of Norman innovations, had now become one great

field for Normans of every class to settle in. From Kent to Hereford

they might enrich themselves with the lands and largesses which a

gracious King was never weary of showering upon them. That King was

childless; he had no heir apparent or presumptive near to him;[908] he

had had a brother, but that brother had been done to death by English

traitors, with the fallen captain of traitors at their [Sidenote: Lack

of direct heirs in the royal house.] head. Not a single near kinsman of

the royal house could be found in England. The only surviving male

descendant of Æthelred was the banished son of Eadmund, who, far away in

his Hungarian refuge, perhaps hardly occurred to the minds of Norman

courtiers. William was Eadward’s kinsman; it was convenient to forget

that, though he was Eadward’s kinsman, yet not a single drop of royal or

English blood flowed in his veins. It was convenient to forget that,

even among men of foreign birth, there were those who were sprung, by

female descent at least, from the kingly stock of England. Ralph of

Hereford was the undoubted grandson of Æthelred, but the claims of the

timid Earl of the Magesætas could hardly be pressed against those of the

renowned Duke of the Normans. It [Sidenote: Constitutional aspect of the

promise.] was convenient to forget that, by English Law, mere descent

gave no right, and that, if it had given any right, William had no claim

by descent to plead. It was easy to dwell simply on the nearness by

blood, on the nearness by mutual good offices, which existed between the

English King and the Norman Duke. There was everything to suggest the

thought of the succession to William’s own mind; there was everything to

suggest it to the foreign counsellors who stood around the throne of

Eadward. Probably William, Eadward, and Eadward’s counsellors were alike

ignorant or careless of the English Constitution. They did not, or they

would not, remember that the Kingdom was not a private estate, to be

passed from man to man either according to the caprice of a testator or

according to the laws of strict descent. They did not remember that no

man could hold the English Crown in any way but as the free gift of the

English people. The English people would seem to them to be a conquered

race, whose formal consent, if it needed to be asked at all, could be as

easily extorted as it had been by Swend and Cnut. If they dared to

refuse, they might surely be overcome by the Norman no less easily than

they had been overcome by the Dane. It would probably seem to them that

the chances were all in favour of William’s being able to succeed

quietly as the heir or legatee of Eadward. If those chances failed, it

would still be open to him to make his entry by arms as the avenger of

the blood of Ælfred and his companions.

[Sidenote: No direct evidence on the point.]

The moment was thus in every way favourable for suggesting to William on

the one hand, to Eadward on the other, the idea of an arrangement by

which William should succeed to the English Crown on Eadward’s death. We

have no direct evidence that any such arrangement took place at this

time, but all the probabilities of the story lead irresistibly to the

belief that such was the case. The purely English writers are silent,

but then they are silent as to any bequest or arrangement in William’s

favour at any time. They tell us nothing as to the nature of his claim

to the Crown; they record his invasion, but they record nothing as to

its motives.[909] The Norman writers, on the other hand, so full of

Eadward’s promise to William, nowhere connect it with William’s visit to

England, which one only among them speaks of at all.[910] But Norman

writers, Norman records, the general consent of the age, confirmed

rather than confuted [Sidenote: Negative evidence of the English

writers.] by the significant silence of the English writers, all lead us

to believe that, at some time or other, some kind of promise of the

succession was made by Eadward to William. The case of Eadward’s promise

is like the case of Harold’s oath. No English writer mentions either;

but the silence of the English writers confirms rather than disproves

the fact of both. All those Norman calumnies which they could deny, the

English writers do most emphatically deny.[911] The fact then that they

never formally deny the reports, which they must have heard, that Harold

swore an oath to William, that Eadward made a promise in favour of

William, may be accepted as the strongest proof that some kind of oath

was sworn, that some kind [Sidenote: _Some_ promise of Eadward, and

_some_ oath of Harold, historical, but the Norman details untrustworhy.]

of promise was made. Had either Eadward’s promise or Harold’s oath been

a pure Norman invention, William could never have paraded both in the

way that he did in the eyes of Europe; he could never have turned them

to the behoof of his cause in the way that he so successfully did. I

admit then some promise of Eadward, some oath of Harold. But that is

all. The details, Eadward and some oath of Harold, historical, but the

Norman details untrustworthy. as they are given by the various Norman

writers, are so different, so utterly contradictory, that we can say

nothing, on their showing, as to the time, place, or circumstances of

either event. We are left with the bare fact, and for anything beyond it

we must look to the probabilities of the case. The oath of Harold I

shall discuss at the proper time; at present we are concerned with the

bequest of the English Crown said to have been made by Eadward in favour

of William.

Every one who has grasped the true nature of the English Constitution,

as it stood in the eleventh century, [Sidenote: No power of bequest in

the King, only of recommendation.] will fully understand that, strictly

speaking, any bequest of the kind was altogether beyond the power of an

English King. The Law of England gave the King no power to dispose of a

Crown which he held solely by the free choice of the Witan of the land.

All that Eadward could constitutionally do was to pledge himself to make

in William’s favour that recommendation to the Witan which the Witan

were bound to consider, though not [Sidenote: Eadward’s change of

purpose; his final recommendation of Harold.] necessarily to consent

to.[912] That, when the time came, Eadward did make such a

recommendation, and did not make it in favour of William, we know for

certain. The last will of Eadward, so far as such an expression can be

allowed, was undoubtedly in favour of Harold. We shall see, as we go on,

that there is the strongest reason to believe that Eadward at one time

designed his namesake the Ætheling as his successor. It is even possible

that his thoughts were at one time directed towards his nephew Ralph of

Hereford. In a weak prince like Eadward changes of purpose of this kind

are in no way wonderful. And in truth the changes in the condition of

the country were such that a wiser King than Eadward might well have

changed his purpose more than once between the visit of William and his

own death. Now there is not the slightest sign of any intention on

behalf of William during the later years of Eadward; first the Ætheling,

and then the great Earl, are the persons marked out in turn for the

succession. And yet, as we have seen, it is impossible not to believe

that some promise was, at some time or other, made in William’s favour.

The details of the Norman stories are [Sidenote: Impossibility of the

Norman accounts.] indeed utterly incredible.[913] The version which is

least grotesquely absurd represents Eadward as promising the Crown to

his dear cousin and companion William, when they were both boys or

youths living together in Normandy. It is enough to upset this tale,

taken literally, if we remember that Eadward, who is here represented as

the familiar and equal companion of the boy William, was, when he left

Normandy, nearly forty years old, some five and twenty years older than

his cousin. He is moreover made to dispose of a Crown which was not yet

his, and which he afterwards assumed with a good deal of unwillingness.

Yet this story is distinctly less absurd than the other versions. It is

even possible that William or his advisers may have begun to look on the

succession to the English Crown as a matter within the scope of their

policy, from the time when the English embassy came to bring the

King-elect Eadward from Normandy to his own Kingdom.[914] It is a far

wilder story which describes Archbishop Robert as going over to announce

to William the decree of the English Witan in his favour, a decree

confirmed by the oaths of the Earls Leofric, Siward, and—Godwine! But

even this story is less marvellous than that which represents Harold

himself, at a time when he was the first man in England, and when his

own designs on the Crown must have been perfectly well known, as sent by

Eadward into Normandy to announce to the Duke the bequest which the King

had made in his favour. All these stories are simply incredible; they

are simply instances of that same daring power of invention by virtue of

which Dudo of Saint Quintin describes William Longsword and Richard the

Fearless as reigning over half the world,[915] by virtue of which Guy of

Amiens describes Robert the Devil [Sidenote: William’s visit the only

opportunity for the promise.] as the actual conqueror of England.[916]

Yet some promise must be accepted, and some time and some place must be

found for it. What time and place are so obvious William’s visit the

only opportunity for the promise. as the time and place when Eadward and

William, once and once only during their joint reigns, met together face

to face? Every earlier and every later time seems utterly impossible;

this time alone seems possible and probable. At the moment everything

would tend to suggest the idea both to the King and to the Duke. The

predominance of the Norman faction, the actual presence of the Norman

Duke, the renown of his exploits sounding through all Europe, the lack

of any acknowledged English heir, the absence of any acknowledged

English leader, all suggested the scheme, all seemed [Sidenote: Later

circumstances unfavourable to William.] to make it possible. Everything

at that moment tended in favour of William’s succession; every later

event, every later change of circumstances, tended in favour of the

succession of any one rather than of William. At that moment the Norman

party were in the full swing of power. Before another year had passed,

the cause of England had once more triumphed; Eadward had Englishmen

around him; he gradually learned to attach himself to men of his own

race, and to give to the sons of Godwine that confidence and affection

which he never gave to Godwine himself. He either forgot his promise to

William, or else he allowed himself to be convinced that such a promise

was unlawful to make and impossible to fulfil. But William never forgot

it. We may be sure that, from that time, the Crown of England was the

great object of all his hopes, all his thoughts, all his policy. Even in

his marriage it may not have been left quite out of sight. The marriage

of William and Matilda was undoubtedly a marriage of the truest

affection. But it was no less undoubtedly a marriage which was prompted

by many considerations of policy. And, among other inducements, William

may well have remembered that his intended bride sprang by direct, if

[Sidenote: Matilda’s descent from Ælfred.] only by female, descent from

the stock of the great Ælfred.[917] His children therefore would have

the blood of ancient English royalty in their veins. Such a descent

would of course give neither William, nor Matilda, nor their children,

any real claim; but it was a pretension one degree less absurd than a

pretension grounded on the fact that Eadward’s mother was William’s

great-aunt. [Sidenote: Nature of William’s claims.] And William knew as

well as any man that, in politics, a chain is not always of the strength

only of its weakest link. He knew that a skilful combination of

fallacious arguments often has more practical effect on men’s mind than

a single conclusive argument. He contrived, in the end, by skilfully

weaving together a mass of assertions not one of which really proved his

point, to persuade a large part of Europe that he was the true heir of

Eadward, kept out of his inheritance by a perjured usurper. That all

these schemes and pretensions date from the time of William’s visit to

Eadward, that the Norman Duke left the English court invested, in his

own eyes and in those of his followers, with the lawful heirship of the

English Crown, is a fact which seems to admit of as little doubt as any

fact which cannot be proved by direct evidence.[918]

[Sidenote: William’s visit an important stage in the history.]

In short, it marks one of the most important stages of our history, when

“William Earl came from beyond sea with mickle company of Frenchmen, and

the King him received, and as many of his comrades as to him seemed

good, and let him go again.”[919] From that day onwards, we feel that we

have been brought nearer, by one of the longest stages of our journey,

to the fight of Senlac and the coronation of Westminster.

[Sidenote: Lack of details.]

William then visited England at the moment while Godwine was sheltered

at the court of Bruges, while Harold was planning vengeance at the court

of Dublin, while Eadgyth was musing on the vanity of earthly things in

her cell at Wherwell. He therefore met none of the family who were most

steadily hostile to all his projects. But we ask in vain, Did he meet

the stout warrior Siward? Did he meet the mediator Leofric? Did he meet

the Primate who was, fifteen years later, to place the Crown on his own

brow, or that more stout-hearted Primate who either refused or was

deemed unworthy to bear any part in that great ceremony? And we cannot

but ask, Did he meet the now aged Lady, through whom came all his

connexion with England or English royalty, the wife and mother of so

many kings, the victim of so many spoliations? With what grace could

Eadward bring his kinsman into the presence of the parent through whom

alone William could call him kinsman, but between whom and himself there

had been so little love? At all events, if Eadward was now for a season

set free from the presence of his wife, he was soon set free for ever

from the [Sidenote: Death of Emma. March 6, 1052.] presence of his

mother. Early in the next year died Ælfgifu-Emma, the Old Lady, the

mother of Eadward King and of Harthacnut, and her body lay in the Old

Minster by Cnut King.[920]

The course of our story has thus brought us once more to the shores of

our own island. In our next Chapter we shall have to begin the picture

of the bright, if brief, regeneration of England. We shall have to

listen to the spirit-stirring tale, how the champions of England came

back from banishment, how the heart of England rose to welcome her

friends and to take vengeance on her enemies, how for fourteen years

England was England once again under the rule of the noblest of her own

sons.