Robert was happily driven out of England, with his brothers and his
whole followings and belongings. It might seem a little hard when King
Henry, in getting rid of the whole stock, seized on the English lands
which Earl Roger had given to his daughter's Norman Abbey. But we
remember that, in so doing, he was forestalling, not the Eighth of his
name, but the Fifth. We did not want alien priories in England. Robert
came back to his native Normandy, began to work every kind of mischief
there, and his brothers Arnulf and Roger helped him for awhile in so
doing. Arnulf is famous at Pembroke.[52] Roger the _Poitevin_, so called
from his marriage, had been lord of that land between Mersey and
Ribble, which afterwards went to patch up the modern shire of Lancaster.
Presently the brothers quarrelled. Robert of Belleme refused to give
Arnulf and Roger any share in their father's inheritance. Then they
forsook him, and Arnulf took an active part against him on behalf of
Duke Robert. We read how, in June, 1103, he seized his brother's
_munitio_ of Almeneches, and how it was occupied for the Duke. This was
dangerous to his sister's abbey, where his followers did not scruple to
occupy the buildings and to stable their horses in the church. Then
Robert of Belleme, looking on the abbey as a hostile fortress, comes
down on Almeneches, burns the church and all the buildings of the
monastery, and leaves his sister and her nuns to find shelter where they
can. The Duke's followers, who fall into his hands, he deals with after
his manner; they are killed, mutilated, or kept in hard bonds. Robert of
Belleme, it must be remembered, is the man of whom it was said that he
refused ransom for his prisoners, despising gain, compared with the
keener pleasure of tormenting them. The Duke then and his following set
forth to do something against the hateful tyrant--"_odibilis tyrannus_"
he is called, a phrase in which we must not forget the ancient sense of
"_tyrannus_."[53] Counts and lords are with him, and the whole force of
the land of Exmes. They hold their councils in the castle of Exmes; they
did what they could against the tyrant; but he was too strong for them.
He defeated the Duke in battle, and got possession of the castle of
Exmes.
Meanwhile Abbess Emma and her Sisterhood had to go whither they could.
"Tener virginum conventus misere dispersus est." Some sought shelter
with kinsfolk and friends. The Abbess herself and three nuns went to
Saint-Evroul, where Orderic, who tells the story, dwelled as the monk
Vital. They found a shelter and a place of worship in an ancient chapel
where Saint Evroul himself had dwelled--"coelesti theoriae intentus
solitarie degebat." There they abode six months, till in the next year
they were able to go back to Almeneches and to begin to set up their
ruined home again. For ten years Abbess Emma laboured at gathering the
sisterhood together and rebuilding the church. Then she died, and, by as
near an approach to hereditary succession as could be in the case of
abbesses, her staff passed to her niece Matilda, daughter of her brother
Philip. She, too, had to rebuild church and monastery after another
fire. We are not told how it was kindled: but by that time her uncle
Robert was safe in prison in England, shorn of all power of burning
anything or of gouging out anybody's eyes.[54]
Our present business is to see the sites of all these events. We hardly
dared to hope that we may see any ecclesiastical work of Abbess Emma or
Abbess Matilda. Still less do we hope to see the castles which Arnulf
and Robert of Belleme seized on standing up as they were in their day.
Both Exmes and Almeneches, in the present state of their military works,
are among the places which most fully bear out the doctrine with which
we started in speaking of Hauteville, that a site is often better when
there is nothing on it. The site of the castle of Exmes is not exactly
in an ideal state. The best case of all would be if it still bore a
castle of the right date; the second best would be if there were only a
green hill and its ditch, with full power of walking freely over them as
one thought good. The castle-hill of Exmes is not in so happy a case as
either of these; but it is much better off than if it were surmounted by
a barrack or a prison. The hill is there; the ditch, as we suppose we
must call it, is there; there is no building on the hill save a small
modern chapel; the only bad thing about it is that the top of the hill
is cut up into small fields with high hedges, and that the ditch is cut
up into gardens. There is therefore no means either of going freely
about, or of taking any connected view of the top of the hill. Still,
the general line of the place can be easily made out, and we soon see
that a site well suited for its purpose has been made the most of. The
actual hill of the castle makes no special show in the distance. No
longer marked by the castle itself, it seems simply part of the general
mass of high ground on which both town and castle stand, and from which
the castle-hill itself stands forward in a peninsular fashion towards
the north. The hill is round, or nearly so; and no small measure of
human skill has been employed in adapting it to purposes of defence. We
spoke of a ditch; but a ditch is hardly the right word. At a good height
above the actual bottom, as one feels very strongly in going up the road
from Argentan, the castle-hill strictly so called is surrounded by the
artificial work which, for want of a better name, we have called a
ditch. But it is safer to say that the hill-side has been cut, leaving
the upper part of the hill with scarped sides rising above a flat piece
of ground all round, which puts on the character of a ditch or not
according as the hill-side at different points supplies a bank on the
other side. It is on the side towards the town that it is most truly a
ditch. The general effect is something like the clerestory of a round
church, the Temple Church or any other, rising above a flat-roofed
surrounding aisle. The ditch is wide, and doubtless has been
deeper--that is, more of a ditch--than it is now; that is, its use for
gardens must have raised its general level. One's thoughts somehow
rather go away to Marsala than to Arques or Old Sarum--perhaps because
in those last we can freely go about, while gardens, houses, what not,
come in the way both at Marsala and at Exmes. If they were away, the
whole thing would be more like some of the ditches on the Malvern hills
than anything else.
Such is all that is to be seen of the castle of Exmes; but, in the
absence of an actual donjon that can have seen the wars of the Conqueror
and his sons, it is quite enough. The look-out is a wide one indeed; but
it is now easier to get it from the road going back to Argentan than
from the top of the hill itself. The eye ranges over a vast space
chiefly to the north-west, over the great forest of Gouffers, over
plains and undulating ground, a wide and striking view, but in which no
remarkable object rises up to catch the eye. We look forth with the
special hope of getting a distant glimpse of Falaise and its donjon.
Perhaps not the donjon itself, but the high ground about it is said to
be seen from the tower of Saint German at Argentan. But we at least
could not see it from Exmes.
The other object in the little town of Exmes, now hardly more than a
village, is the church. This stands on the general mass of high ground
from which the castle hill juts out. It is a building of no small
interest, both from what it has to show and from what it has not. At
first sight it seems utterly shapeless. What first catches the eye is a
very pretty apse of good Flamboyant work, with windows in two ranges, of
which all in the upper and some in the lower are blocked. We see also at
the same glance that something just to the west of the apse has been
destroyed or left unfinished. Beyond this again is a much lower western
body, a nave with its aisles thrown under one roof. This last is not
attractive from without, but when we go in, we find that it is the jewel
of Exmes. There is a nave of five bays, perhaps once of six, of the very
simplest and purest Romanesque, one of the examples which show how that
style, better than any other style, can altogether dispense with
ornament. There are no columns, no capitals, not a moulding of any kind.
Arches of two orders rise from square piers with imposts, and support an
equally plain clerestory. For a clerestory there is, genuine and
untouched, though so strangely hidden outside by the great sloping roof.
This is all; but we ask for no more; the design, plain as it is, leaves
nothing to ask for. One does not rush at a date; it may be twelfth
century; it may be eleventh; but, if so, it is of the second half of the
eleventh. Plain as are the imposts, they show that the work is of the
confirmed Norman variety of Romanesque; there are no Primitive traces
hanging about it, such as we see at Jumieges.
The perfection of the Norman nave seems to have been tampered with in
later days by cutting through a low transepted chapel on each side. The
arches look as if they had supplanted a sixth arch of the nave. But far
greater changes were presently designed. As at Gisors, as at a hundred
other places, the Flamboyant architects thought the elder building too
plain, and above all things too low. In a great number of cases they
rebuilt the choir after their own fashion, but never carried the work on
to the nave. Here at Exmes the work in the eastern part was never
finished. That seems most likely; but it is possible that the work was
finished and has been pulled down. The apse at least was done, and very
pretty it is; but a tall transept on each side with a large chapel to
the east of each, perhaps built, certainly designed, are not there now.
Within, there is no vaulting, and a mean wooden roof has been thrown
across at about half the proper length. The nave, too, is covered with a
wooden roof, a kind of coved roof with tie-beams. A real barrel-vault
would be best of all; but a good flat ceiling, such as was common in
Romanesque times, would do very well. It is one of the differences
between French and English architecture that the French designers always
meant or hoped to have a vault; the wooden roof in a French church is
always a mere shift. It was the builders of English parish churches who
found out that the wooden roof could be made into an equal substitute
for the vault, preferred to it by a deliberate taste.
For one very anxious to work out in detail the curious little bit of
history with which the two places are chiefly concerned, it might be
better, if he could manage it, to take Exmes and Almeneches in a single
round. But it is easier to make them the objects of two separate
excursions from Argentan. We set out then from that town with a twofold
anxiety on the mind. Shall we find any signs of the abbey of the
persecuted Emma? We do not give up all hope till we shall see with our
own eyes. Shall we find any signs of the "_munitio_" occupied by her
brother Arnulf? Signs we may fairly look for, if not for the thing
itself. Our guidebook describes a church of Almeneches, but it does not
distinctly say whether it is the church of the abbey or a separate
parish church. It speaks of a "beau tumulus" in the "environs" of
Almeneches, and says that the neighbourhood is full of "equestrian
memories," whatever those may be. One of them, to be sure, bears the
name of the "Manoir de la Motte," which has a very tempting sound. On
the ordnance map we can find nothing of this manor; but we do find
"Almeneches" and "le Chateau d'Almeneches" marked as two distinct
_communes_. This is encouraging; we seem to have lighted on what at home
we should call "Abbess Almeneches" and "Castle Almeneches." We see Emma
at the one and Arnulf at the other; but we still do not know what traces
either sister or brother may have left. At last we reach Almeneches,
Abbess Almeneches, and we see the church described in our Joanne. It is
not very tempting in its general look, and there is nothing particular
about its site, except that the ground does slope away from its
east-end. Is this Emma's minster or its successor, or is it merely a
parish church, and have we to look for the abbey elsewhere? Some signs
of the cloister roof on the south side soon settle this question. But we
begin to hope, for the credit of the house of Montgomery, that Emma,
either before or after her troubles, and her niece after her, had a
better church than this to preside over. We find from Joanne that
Almeneches boasts of its church; but it doth falsely boast. Instead of
the nave of Romsey or of Matilda's church at Caen, we have a single body
of late Gothic, with windows like very bad Perpendicular, a form not
uncommon hereabouts. We get its date from an inscription:--
"Ce temple lequel a este ruine par l'antiquite fut commence a
reedifier l'a^n de grace 1534 et fut perfaict l'a^n 1550 par
revere^nde dame Madame Loyse de Silly abbesse de cea^ns. Gloire et
hon^r. soyt au seigneur."
Louise of Silly's work may be just endured; it is at any rate better
than the choir built by a later Abbess Louise--we have got out of the
age of Emmas and Matildas--in 1674. That is the lowest depth of all; it
is the depth reached by the choir of Saint Wulfram of Abbeville; that
is, it is of no style at all; a decent Italian building would be welcome
by the side of it. But its modern adornments may teach us the history of
Saint Opportuna down to our own day. That may be said, because it
represents her translation in the days of the second Republic in 1849.
What most strikes one is the appearance in stained glass of modern
uniforms and--we were going to say modern bonnets, only we are told that
the bonnets of 1849 are not counted as modern in 1891. Still we are sure
that neither Abbess Emma nor even Abbess Louise ever wore such before
they entered religion. Altogether one never saw so poor an abbey church
anywhere. One is curious to know what it immediately supplanted, and
whether the sisterhood was again in such straits as those which it had
been in the time of Emma of Montgomery. Did the house never recover
from the seizure of its lands by King Henry?
Of the "Manoir de la Motte" nothing can be heard. But the "_munitio_"
must be represented, at least in name, by Le Chateau d'Almeneches. Our
driver protests that there is no _chateau_ there, only a _commune_. So
much the better. If there is no _chateau_ there in his sense, that is,
no intruding modern house, we are more likely to find the site of the
real _chateau_, the _munitio_. And we presently do find it. We are
going on in some difficulties, amidst a good deal of rain; but we see
something in a field by the roadside, between Almeneches and the church
of Le Chateau d'Almeneches which is evidently the right thing. There is
a manifest mound and ditch of some kind. We go on to the church, one
about as worthless as may be, but which will serve as a place at least
of shelter. But by that time the rain has stopped, and we are able to
study our mound and ditch without let or hindrance. Here is the castle,
the _munitio_, of Almeneches, whence the Duke's followers first troubled
Abbess Emma. But yet more, here is Joanne's "_beau tumulus_" thrown in
along with it. A plan is almost needed to set forth what we see. Here is
a piece of slightly elevated ground girded by a ditch on all sides
except where the sluggish river Don--how many Dons are there in
Europe?--which in times past clearly supplied the ditch with water,
itself flows. Here then is the castle; at least here are its essential
features. And they are all clearer, because there is no _chateau_ in the
driver's sense, but only a farmhouse of decent age, which does no harm.
But then the ditch, on one side at least, is prolonged to follow one
side of a much more striking mound, a long mound which is clearly the
"_beau tumulus_." We do not like to be too positive about prae-historic
tumps, but this certainly looks very like one. Indeed it need not be
prae-historic, it may cover the bones or ashes of some invading Northman,
who was cut off too soon to be christened, to learn French, and to
become the founder of a Norman house. The tump must be older than the
_munitio_ proper; but we may be sure that the makers of the _munitio_
did not leave it out of their reckonings. It had to be guarded; it could
not well be lived on. Here then we have found all that we want at Exmes
and Almeneches. We understand the scene of the petty war which drove
Abbess Emma to Saint-Evroul. We have found our two castles, all that we
cared to find of them. We have found our abbey, or at least a successor
on its site. And we have both the tump and the church of Exmes thrown in
[Greek: en parergoo]. It is not at all a bad two days' work that we have
done in the immediate land of the _Oximenses_.
LAIGLE AND SAINT-EVROUL
1892
Our next halting-place is Laigle on the Rille, the Rille that runs out
to flow by Brionne and the Bec of Herlouin. We choose it as a
halting-place less from any merits of its own than because it is the
best centre for some very remarkable places indeed, and because the
place itself calls up certain associations. There is, perhaps, more
interest attaching to the name of Laigle and to the lords of Laigle than
to Laigle itself. Its name supplies us with the crowning instance of the
singular incapacity of so many in England to understand that these
Norman towns and castles are real places. They give surnames to a crowd
of men who figure in the English history of the eleventh and twelfth
centuries; but, as we have said before, hardly anybody seems to
understand that those surnames are taken from places which are still
standing, and to most of which the railway is open. There is the
renowned Bishop William of Durham in the days of the Conqueror and the
Red King, the greatest name in the history of Romanesque art. He is
_Willelmus de Sancto Carilefo_, just like William of Malmesbury or
William of Newburgh, simply because he had been monk and prior in the
monastery of _Sanctus Carilefus_, in modern form, _Saint-Calais_, in the
land of Maine. It is better to say "William of Saint-Calais" than
"William of Saint-Carilef," because the use of the modern form shows
that we know where the place is; but "William of Saint-Carilef" is not
so bad as "Bishop Carilef," as if Carilef were no place at all, and as
if it had been usual in those days to talk of Bishops or anybody else by
their casual surnames. So with Laigle, _Aquila_, a place which must have
somehow taken its name from an eagle, possibly from some incident or
legend, as there is certainly nothing in the look of Laigle to suggest
eagles in a general way. Its lords of course called themselves
"Gilbertus," "Richeras," or anything else "de Aquila," "of Laigle." On
the whole, for the same reason as in the case of Saint-Calais, it is
better to speak in English of the place and its lords by the now
received form _Laigle_ rather than _L'Aigle_, though _L'Aigle_ is not
quite forgotten on the spot. But the events of the Norman Conquest
brought men of the house of Laigle into England, and their presence led
to a possession in Sussex being called "Honor de Aquila." When
South-Saxon antiquaries, or possibly lawyers, of whatever age,
translated this into "the Honour of the Eagle," they plainly did not
know that _Aquila_, _Laigle_, was a real place from which men had taken
their name and brought it into Sussex. And we have heard of an
Englishman being christened "Richard de Aquila," as if it were hopeless
trying to put "de Aquila" into plain English. We have also heard of a
man being christened "Joseph of Arimathaea"; but that was at least in
English, and not in French, Latin, or Hebrew.
"Richard de Aquila" is a form notable on another ground, as implying a
confusion between the two wholly distinct names of _Richard_ and
_Richer_. We do not at this moment remember a Richard of Laigle, but
Richer of Laigle is, perhaps, the man of his house who is best worth
remembering. He lived in the days of the Conqueror, he bears the best
character possible in those times, and his one recorded act bears it
out. He was fighting for William, Duke and king, against that castle of
Sainte-Susanne in Maine which the Conqueror of Le Mans and Exeter could
not take. In a skirmish below the castle a beardless-boy, sheltered
behind a thicket, aimed an arrow which gave Richer a mortal wound. His
comrades would have killed the lad; but Richer bade them spare him; his
own sins deserved death. For want of a priest, he confessed those sins
to his comrades, and died.
The lords of Laigle did plenty of other things besides this; but it is
the thought of the last act of Richer which cleaves most firmly in the
memory, and makes us most wish to see the place where the lords of
Laigle dwelled. And we set out with some vague notion, a notion not
exactly to be fulfilled, that the home of the lords of Laigle--"domini
de Aquila"--must be something of an eagle's nest. But alas, when we
reach Laigle from Argentan, we find that, with all its historic
associations, it is in itself far from being a town of the same interest
as Argentan. The position of the two is quite different. The chief
buildings of Argentan cover a small hill in the midst of scenery in no
way strongly marked. Laigle covers the slope of the hill which forms one
side of the valley of the young Rille, while another height matches it
on the opposite side. At Laigle the chief church, standing out with a
dignity which it hardly keeps when we come near to it, is the one
striking object. Of the castle we see nothing but the surrounding woods,
and in truth there is nothing more to see. The large brick house known
as _le vieux chateau_, standing a little to the east of the church,
marks, it is to be supposed, the site of the home of Richer and all the
rest of the brood of the eagle. But no site of any castle can well be
further from the eagle's nest which we came in search of. The town, as
distinguished from castle and church, has little or nothing to show;
like Flers, it has risen to some modern importance through manufactures.
The chief church, St Martin, has already struck us on our approach by
its stately tower of late Gothic such as in England we might have looked
to see crowned with battlement and pinnacles, but which here is finished
with a high roof bearing statues on its ridge. Beside the tower there is
something, one hardly knows what, a very high roof and a kind of spire.
When we come near, we find that the church, though very short, has two
western towers. The northern one is the rich piece of Flamboyant work
with which we have already got familiar--or rather not familiar, as its
narrow windows may in the distance be taken for a Romanesque arcade. Its
southern fellow is a real Romanesque tower with pilaster buttresses,
which bears the spire. It is very plain, of the eleventh century rather
than of the twelfth, so that the lord of Laigle, who awakens an interest
above the rest of his house, may have looked at it or even built it. The
same may be said of the apse which ends the central of the three
bodies--they are hardly to be called nave and aisles--which make up the
church of Laigle. But a Romanesque apse, rich or plain, is not improved
by first cutting pointed windows in it and then blocking them up. And
the apse, thus sadly mutilated, is further imprisoned. It barely peeps
out between the east ends of the northern and southern bodies, of which
the northern takes the form of a kind of transept. They are in the
worst style of the late French Gothic, with windows of the same wretched
Perpendicular as those of Almeneches. Whence came this strange taste?
Henry the Fifth and John Duke of Bedford might, somewhat earlier, have
taught their Norman subjects to build good Perpendicular, but not this
kind of stuff.