William the Conqueror and the Rule of the Normans F. M. Stenton 1354 downloads.pdf

The Project Gutenberg eBook of William the Conqueror and
the Rule of the Normans
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: William the Conqueror and the Rule of the Normans

Author: F. M. Stenton

Release date: May 8, 2019 [eBook #59444]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/59444

Credits: E-text prepared by KD Weeks, MWS, and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from
page images generously made available by Internet Archive
(https://archive.org)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WILLIAM THE
CONQUEROR AND THE RULE OF THE NORMANS ***

E-text prepared by KD Weeks, MWS,
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
(http://www.pgdp.net)
from page images generously made available by
Internet Archive
(https://archive.org)

Note: Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See
https://archive.org/details/gri_33125000734182

Transcriber’s Note:
Footnotes have been collected at the end of each chapter,
and are linked for ease of reference.
There are eight genealogical tables at the end of the book,
several of them quite large. Each of the images serve as a link
to a larger version. Each caption includes a link to a
transcription based on the Henry System of genealogical
notation (see here for an explanation. Some modifications were
made to that system to accomodate the complicated nature of
these families.
Sites of corrections are underlined. Hover the cursor over
the underlined text and the original text will appear in a small
popup.
Please see the transcriber’s note at the end of this text for
details regarding the handling of any textual issues
encountered during its preparation.

Heroes of the Nations
A Series of Biographical Studies presenting the lives and work
of certain representative historical characters, about whom have
gathered the traditions of the nations to which they belong, and
who have, in the majority of instances, been accepted as types of
the several national ideals.

12°, Illustrated, cloth, each $1.50
Half Leather, gilt top, each $1.75
No. 33 and following Nos. net $1.35
Each (By mail, $1.50)
Half Leather, gilt top, net $1.60
(By mail, $1.75)

FOR FULL LIST SEE END OF THIS VOLUME

Heroes of the Nations

EDITED BY
H. W. C. Davis
FACTA DUCIS VIVENT, OPEROSAQUE
GLORIA RERUM—-OVID, IN LIVIAM, 255.
THE HERO’S DEEDS AND HARD-WON
FAME SHALL LIVE.

WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR

SEAL OF WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR

William
The Conqueror
AND THE RULE OF THE NORMANS
BY

FRANK MERRY STENTON, M.A.
Late Scholar of Keble College, Oxford

G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
The Knickerbocker Press

1908

Copyright, 1908
BY
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

The Knickerbocker Press, New York

PREFACE

In attempting to write a life of William the Conqueror, one is confronted,
at the outset, by a question of considerable urgency. The mere details of the
King’s history, if full discussion were given to all matters which have been
the subjects of controversy, would far exceed the possible limits of a
volume to be included in the series to which the present book belongs. On
the other hand, a life of William the Conqueror which ignored the changes
in constitutional organisation and social life which followed the events of
1066 would obviously be a very imperfect thing. Accordingly, I have
reserved the last three chapters of the book for some examination of these
questions; and I hope that the footnotes to the text may serve as, in some
sort, a guide to the more difficult problems arising out of the Conqueror’s
life and reign.
There is no need to enter here upon a description of the authorities on
which the following book is based. For the most part they have been the
subjects of thorough discussion; and, with one exception, they are
sufficiently accessible in modern editions. The writs and charters issued
over England by William I. are only to be found scattered among a great
number of independent publications; and the necessity of forming a
collection of these documents has materially delayed the appearance of the
present work.
It remains that I should here tender my thanks to all those who have
rendered assistance to me during the writing of this book. In particular I
would express my gratitude to my friend Mr. Roland Berkeley-Calcott, and
to the general editor of this series, Mr. H. W. C. Davis. To Mr. Davis I am
indebted for invaluable help and advice given to me both during the
preparation of the book and in the correction of the proof-sheets. To those
modern writers whose works have re-created the history of the eleventh
century in England and Normandy I hope that my references may be a
sufficient acknowledgment.

F. M. S.
South Hill, Southwell, Notts,
August 27, 1908.

CONTENTS

PAGE

INTRODUCTION 1

CHAPTER I

THE MINORITY OF DUKE WILLIAM AND ITS RESULTS 63

CHAPTER II

REBELLION AND INVASION 96

CHAPTER III

THE CONQUEST OF MAINE AND THE BRETON WAR 126

CHAPTER IV

THE PROBLEM OF THE ENGLISH SUCCESSION 143

CHAPTER V

THE PRELIMINARIES OF THE CONQUEST AND THE BATTLE OF 180
HASTINGS

CHAPTER VI

FROM HASTINGS TO YORK 211

CHAPTER VII

THE DANISH INVASION AND ITS SEQUEL 267

CHAPTER VIII

THE CENTRAL YEARS OF THE ENGLISH REIGN 304

CHAPTER IX

THE LAST YEARS OF THE CONQUEROR 344

CHAPTER X

WILLIAM AND THE CHURCH 376

CHAPTER XI

ADMINISTRATION 407

CHAPTER XII

DOMESDAY BOOK 457

INDEX 503

ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE
SEAL OF WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR Frontispiece
From Rymer’s Fœdera (published 1704).

JUMIÈGES ABBEY—FAÇADE 66
Reproduced by permission of Levy et ses Fils, Paris.

JUMIÈGES ABBEY—INTERIOR 80
Reproduced by permission of Levy et ses Fils, Paris.

THE SIEGE OF DINANT 140
FROM THE BAYEUX TAPESTRY
From Vetusta Monumenta of the Society of Antiquaries of
London (published 1819).

SEAL OF EDWARD THE CONFESSOR 148
From Rymer’s Fœdera (published 1704).

HAROLD ENTHRONED 158
FROM THE BAYEUX TAPESTRY
From Vetusta Monumenta of the Society of Antiquaries of
London (published 1819).

HAROLD’S OATH 162
FROM THE BAYEUX TAPESTRY
From Vetusta Monumenta of the Society of Antiquaries of
London (published 1819).

THE BUILDING OF HASTINGS CASTLE 188
FROM THE BAYEUX TAPESTRY
From Vetusta Monumenta of the Society of Antiquaries of
London (published 1819).

THE DEATH OF HAROLD 198
FROM THE BAYEUX TAPESTRY
From Vetusta Monumenta of the Society of Antiquaries of
London (published 1819).

FOSSE DISASTER, BATTLE OF HASTINGS 204
FROM THE BAYEUX TAPESTRY
Reproduced from Vetusta Monumenta of the Society of
Antiquaries of London (published 1819).

ST. JOHN’S CHAPEL, IN THE TOWER OF LONDON 228

CHARTER OF WILLIAM I. TO THE LONDONERS 230
IN THE ARCHIVES OF THE CORPORATION
Facsimile prepared by F. Madan, M. A., Reader in
Palæography in the University of Oxford.

THE BAILE HILL, YORK 270

THE SITE OF WILLIAM I.’S SECOND CASTLE
Reproduced from Traill’s Social England.

TOMB OF ROBERT COURTHOSE, THE ELDEST SON OF WILLIAM 350
THE CONQUEROR, DUKE OF NORMANDY, GLOUCESTER
CATHEDRAL
THE EFFIGY IS OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY
Reproduced from a photograph by Pitcher, Gloucester,
England.

WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR 360
AS CONCEIVED BY A FRENCH PAINTER OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
The original of this picture, now lost, was painted by an
artist when the tomb of the Conqueror was opened in
1522. A copy executed in 1708, is preserved in the
sacristy of St Etienne’s Church at Caen; the present
illustration is from a photograph of that copy.

REDUCED FACSIMILE OF THE CHARTER OF WILLIAM THE 382
CONQUEROR TO HYDE ABBEY
Reproduced from Liber Vitæ of New Minster and Hyde
Abbey, Winchester. Edited by W. de Gray Birch.

GAMEL SON OF ORME’S SUNDIAL 388

From A Short Account of Saint Gregory’s Minster, Kirkdale,
by Rev. F. W. Powell, Vicar.

WILLIAM’S WRIT TO COVENTRY 420
From Facsimiles of Royal and Other Charters in the British
Museum. Edited by George F. Warner and Henry J. Ellis.

PLAN OF GREAT CANFIELD CASTLE, ESSEX 440
From Victoria History of the Counties of England.

AUTOGRAPH SIGNATURES TO WINDSOR AGREEMENT 448
Reproduced from Palæographical Society’s Facsimiles of
Manuscripts and Inscriptions.

A PORTION OF A PAGE OF DOMESDAY BOOK 458
THE BEGINNING OF THE BERKSHIRE SECTION
Facsimiles prepared by F. Madan, M.A., Reader in
Palæography in the University of Oxford.

A PORTION OF A PAGE OF DOMESDAY BOOK 466
THE BEGINNING OF THE BERKSHIRE SECTION
Facsimiles prepared by F. Madan, M.A., Reader in
Palæography in the University of Oxford.

COINS
[1]
PENNY OF EDWARD THE CONFESSOR 62

[2]
DENIER OF GEOFFREY MARTEL 95

[2]
DENIER OF HENRY I. OF FRANCE 125

[2]
DENIER OF CONAN II. OF BRITTANY 142

[2]
PENNY OF HAROLD HARDRADA 179

[1]
PENNY OF HAROLD II. 210

[2]
DENIER OF BALDWIN OF LILLE 266

[2]
PENNY OF SWEGN ESTUTHSON 303

[2]
DENIER OF ROBERT LE FRISON 343

[2]
DENIER OF PHILIP I. OF FRANCE 375

[3]
PENNY OF WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR 406

[3]
PENNY OF WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR 456

[3]
PENNY OF WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR 501

FACING PAGE 502
GENEALOGICAL CHARTS
TABLE A—THE DUCAL HOUSE OF NORMANDY

TABLE B—THE COUNTS OF BRITTANY

TABLE C—THE DESCENDANTS OF ARLETTE

TABLE D—THE COUNTS OF MAINE

TABLE E—THE COUNTS OF THE VEXIN

TABLE F—THE SUCCESSION IN 1066

TABLE G—THE COUNTS OF FLANDERS

TABLE H—THE EARLS OF NORTHUMBRIA

MAPS
MAP OF EASTERN NORMANDY AND THE BORDER COUNTIES 64

MAP OF YORKSHIRE IN 1066–1087 268

MAP OF WESTERN NORMANDY 360

MAP OF ENGLAND IN 1087 374

MAP OF EARLDOMS, MAY, 1068 412

MAP OF EARLDOMS, JANUARY, 1075 414

MAP OF EARLDOMS, SEPTEMBER, 1087 416

WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR

INTRODUCTION

I

Since the current of barbarian immigration which overthrew the
civilisation of Rome in the West, probably no national movement of the
kind has more profoundly affected the general course of history than the
expansion of Scandinavia which fills the ninth and tenth centuries. Alike in
their constructive and destructive work, in the foundation of new
communities on conquered soil, as in the changes produced by reaction in
the states with which they came in contact, the Northmen were calling into
being the most characteristic features of the political system of medieval
Europe. Their raids, an ever-present danger to those who dwelt near the
shores of the narrow seas, wrecked the incipient centralisation of the
Carolingian Empire, and gave fresh impetus to the forces which were
already making for that organisation of society which we describe as
feudalism; and yet in other lands the Northmen were to preserve their own
archaic law and social custom longer than any other people of Germanic
stock. The Northmen were to bring a new racial element into the life of
Western Europe, but whether that element should adapt itself to the
conditions of its new environment, or whether it should develop new forms
of political association for itself, was a question determined by the pre-
existing facts of history and geography.
For the geographical extent of Scandinavian enterprise is as remarkable
as its political influence. At the close of the third quarter of the tenth
century it seemed likely that the future destinies of northern Europe would
be controlled by a great confederation of Scandinavian peoples. In the
parent lands of Norway, Denmark, and Sweden three strong kingdoms had
been created by Harold Fair Hair, Gorm the Old, and Eric of Upsala; the
Orkneys and Shetlands formed a Norwegian earldom, and a number of
vigorous Norse principalities had been planted along the east coast of
Ireland. In the extreme north Scandinavian adventurers were already
settling the inhospitable shores of Greenland, and lawless chieftains from
Norway had created the strange republic of Iceland, whose stormy life was
to leave an imperishable memorial in the wonderful literature of its sagas.
Normandy was still the “pirates’ land” to the ecclesiastical writers of
France, and the designation was correct in so far that the duchy still

maintained frequent relations with the Scandinavian homeland and had as
yet received no more than a superficial tincture of Latin Christianity.
England, at the date we have chosen, was enjoying a brief respite between
two spasms of the northern peril, but the wealthiest portion of the land was
Scandinavian in the blood of its inhabitants, and within twenty years of the
close of the century the whole country was to be united politically to the
Scandinavian world.
The comparative failure of this great association of kindred peoples to
control the subsequent history of northern Europe was due in the main to
three causes. In the first place, over a great part of this vast area the
Scandinavian element was too weak in mere numbers permanently to
withstand the dead weight of the native population into which it had
intruded itself. It was only in lands such as Iceland, where an autochthonous
population did not exist, or where it was reduced to utter subjugation at the
outset, as in the Orkneys, that the Scandinavian element permanently
impressed its character upon the political life of the community. And in
connection with this there is certainly to be noted a distinct decline in the
energy of Scandinavian enterprise from about the middle of the eleventh
century onward. For fully a hundred years after this time the Northern lands
continued to send out sporadic bodies of men who raided more peaceful
countries after the manner of the older Vikings, but Scandinavia produced
no hero of more than local importance between Harold Hardrada and
Gustavus Vasa. The old spirit was still alive in the North, as the stories of
the kings of Norway in the Heimskringla show; but the exploits of Magnus
Bareleg and Sigurd the Jerusalem-farer are of far less significance in
general history than the exploits of Swegen Forkbeard and Olaf
Tryggvasson, and trade and exploration more and more diverted the energy
which in older times would have sought its vent in warlike adventure. And
of equal importance with either of the causes which have just been
described must be reckoned the attraction of Normandy within the political
system of France. By this process Normandy was finally detached from its
parent states; it participated ever more intimately in the national life of
France, and the greatest achievement of the Norman race was performed
when, under the leadership of William the Conqueror, it finally drew
England from its Scandinavian connections, and united it to the richer
world of western Europe. It was the loss of England which definitely

compelled Scandinavia to relapse into isolation and comparative political
insignificance.
But the Norman Conquest of England was a many-sided event, and its
influence on the political destiny of Scandinavia is not its most important
aspect. The events of 1066 derive their peculiar interest from the fact that
they supply a final answer to the great problem which underlies the whole
history of England in the eleventh century—the problem whether England
should spend the most critical period of the Middle Ages in political
association with Scandinavia or with France. The mere fact that the
question at issue can be stated in this simple form is of itself a matter of
much significance; for it implies that the continuance of the independent
life of England had already in 1000 become, if not an impossibility, at least
a very remote contingency. To explain why this was so will be the object of
the following pages, for it was the weakness of the Anglo-Saxon polity
which permitted the success of William of Normandy, as it gave occasion of
conquest to Cnut of Denmark before him, and the ill governance on which
their triumph was founded takes its main origin from events which
happened a hundred years before the elder of them was born.
At the beginning of the third quarter of the ninth century, England was in
a state of utter chaos under the terrible strain of the Danish wars. Up to the
present it has not been possible to distinguish with any certainty between
the various branches of the great Scandinavian race which co-operated in
the attack on England, nor is the question of great importance for our
immediate purpose. The same may be said of the details of the war, the
essential results of which were that the midland kingdom of Mercia was
overrun and divided in 874 into an English and a Danish portion; that
England, north of the Humber, became a Danish kingdom in or about 875;
and that Wessex, after having been brought to the brink of ruin by that
portion of the Northern host which had not founded a permanent settlement
in the north, was saved by its King Alfred in a victory which he won over
the invaders at Edington in Wiltshire, in 878. As a result of this battle, and
of some further successes which he gained at a later date, Alfred was
enabled to add to his dominions that half of the old kingdom of Mercia
which the Danes had not already appropriated[4]; a district which included
London and the shires west of Buckinghamshire, Northamptonshire,
Leicestershire, and Derbyshire. For the first half of the tenth century, the
main interest of English history centres round the relations between the

rulers of Wessex and its Mercian dependency, and the people of the
Danelaw.
As the final result of twenty years of incessant warfare, the Danes had
succeeded in establishing three independent states on English soil.
Guthrum, the leader with whom Alfred had fought at Edington, founded in
East Anglia and the eastern midlands a short-lived kingdom which had been
reconquered by Edward the Elder before his death in or about 924. To the
north of Guthrum’s kingdom came the singular association of the Five
Boroughs of Derby, Nottingham, Lincoln, Leicester, and Stamford, whose
territory most probably comprised the shires to which the first four of them
have given name, together with Rutland and north-east Northamptonshire.
Apart from its anomalous government, of which nothing is really known,
this district is distinguished from Guthrum’s kingdom by the fact that the
Danish invaders settled there in great numbers, founded many new villages,
and left their impress upon the administrative and fiscal arrangements of the
country. The Five Boroughs were occupied by Edward the Elder and
conquered by his son Edmund, but their association was remembered in
common speech as late as the time of the wars of Ethelred and Swegen, and
the district, as surveyed in Domesday Book, is distinguished very sharply
from the shires to its south and west.[5]
Beyond the Humber the Northmen had founded the kingdom of York,
which maintained its independent existence down to Athelstan’s time and
which was only connected with the south of England by the slackest of
political ties when William the Conqueror landed at Pevensey. In this
kingdom, whose history is very imperfectly known, but of which abundant
numismatic memorials remain, the Norwegian element appears to have
predominated over the Danish and its kings were closely connected with the
rulers of the Norse settlements in Ireland. But the peculiar importance of
this Northumbrian kingdom lies in the persistent particularism which it
continued to display long after it had been nominally merged in the
kingdom of the English. Its inhabitants were barbarous beyond the ordinary
savagery of the Anglo-Saxons, and bitterly resented any attempt to make
them conform to the low standard of order which obtained elsewhere in the
land. Among so anarchical a people, it would be useless to look for any
definite political ideas, and the situation was complicated by the union of
Scandinavian Yorkshire with English Bernicia in one earldom, so that it is
difficult to say how far the separatist spirit of Northumbria was due to the

racial differences which distinguished it from the rest of the land, how far to
surviving memories of the old kingdom which had existed before the wars
of the ninth century, and how far to simple impatience of ordered rule by
whomsoever administered. But the existence of such a spirit is beyond all
doubt; it manifested itself in 957 when Northumbria joined with Mercia in
rejecting King Edwy of Wessex; it is strikingly illustrated in the northern
legend which represents the sons of Ethelred the Unready as offering
Northumbria to Olaf of Norway as the price of his assistance in their
struggle with Cnut; it came to the front in 1065, when the northern men
rebelled against their southern earl, Tostig Godwinsson; it culminated in the
resistance which they offered to William of Normandy, and was finally
suppressed in the harrying to which he subjected their province in the
winter of 1069. For a century and a half the men of Northumbria had
persisted in sullen antagonism to the political supremacy of Wessex.
But the fact remained that within fifty years of Alfred’s death the house
of Wessex had succeeded in extending its sway, in name at least, over all
the Scandinavian settlers within the limits of England. The “Rex
Westsaxonum” had become the “Rex Anglorum,” and Edmund and Edgar
ruled over a kingdom which to all appearance was far more coherent than
the France of Louis d’Outremer and Hugh Capet. But the appearance was
very deceptive, and the failure of the kings of Wessex was so intimately
connected with the success of William the Conqueror that its causes
demand attention here.
In the first place, the assimilation of the Scandinavian settlers into the
body of the English nation should not hide from us the fact that a new and
disturbing element had in effect been intruded into the native population.
This amalgamation was very far from resulting in a homogeneous
compound. The creation of the “Danelaw” in its legal sense—that is, a
district whose inhabitants obeyed a new law perfectly distinct from that of
any native kingdom—was an event of the greatest consequence. It imposed
a tangible obstacle to the unification of the country which was never
overcome until the entire system of old English law had become obsolete.
The very fact that the geographical area of the Danelaw did not correspond
with that of any English kingdom or group of kingdoms makes its legal
individuality all the more remarkable. The differences of customary practice
which distinguished the east from the west and south were a permanent
witness to the success of the Danes in England and they applied to just

those matters which concerned most deeply the ordinary life of the common
people. A man of Warwickshire would realise the fact that his limbs were
valued at a higher or lower rate than those of his neighbour of
Leicestershire, when he would be profoundly indifferent to the actions of
the ruler of both counties in the palace at Winchester.
More important for our purpose than these general legal peculiarities
were the manifold anomalies of the Old English land law. Were it not for
the existence of Domesday Book we should be in great part ignorant of the
main features of this system; as it is we need have no hesitation in carrying
back the tenurial customs which obtained in 1066 well beyond the
beginning of the century. So far as the evidence before us at present goes, it
suggests that for an indefinite period before the Norman Conquest the social
structure of the English people had remained in a condition of unstable
equilibrium; in a state intermediate between the primitive organisation of
Anglo-Saxon society and the feudalism, though rudimentary, of
contemporary France. However strong the tie of kindred may have been in
drawing men together into agrarian communities in former days, by the
eleventh century at latest its influence had been replaced by seignorial
pressure and the growth of a manorial economy. Of itself this was a natural
and healthy process, but in England, from a variety of causes it had been
arrested at an early stage. The relationship between lord and man was the
basis of the English social order, but this relationship over a great part of the
country was still essentially a personal matter; its stability had not
universally acquired that tenurial guarantee which was the rule in the
Frankish kingdom. The ordinary free man of inferior rank was expected to
have over him a lord who would be responsible for his good behaviour, but
the evidence which proves this proves also that in numberless cases the
relationship was dissoluble at the will of the inferior party. In the Domesday
survey of the eastern counties, for example, no formula occurs with more
striking frequency than that which asserts that such and such a free man
“could depart with his land whither it pleased him”; a formula implying
clearly enough that the man in question could withdraw himself and his
land from the control of his temporary lord, and seek, apparently at any
time, another patron according to the dictate of his own fancy. In such a
system there is room for few only of the ideas characteristic of continental
feudalism; it is clear that the man in no effective sense holds his land of his
lord, nor is the former’s tenure conditional upon the rendering of service to

the latter. The tie between lord and man was that of patronage rather than
vassalage; and its essential instability meant that the whole of the English
social order was correspondingly weak and unstable. The Old English state
had accepted the principle that a man must needs look for protection to
someone stronger than himself, but it had not advanced to the further idea
that, for the mere sake of social cohesion, the relationship thus created must
be made certain, permanent, and, so far as might be, uniform throughout the
whole land.
On the whole it is probable that this result was mainly due to the peculiar
settlement which the Danish question had received in the early tenth
century. Had the Danes conquered Wessex in Alfred’s time, so that the
whole of England had been parcelled out among four or five independent
Scandinavian states, the growth of seignorial control over free men and
their land might have been indefinitely postponed. Had Alfred’s successors
been able to effect the incorporation of the Danelaw with the kingdom of
Wessex, the incipient manorialism of the south might have been extended to
the east and a rough uniformity of custom in this way secured, giving scope
for the gradual development of feudalism according to the continental
model. But the actual course of history decided that the native kingdom of
Wessex should survive, assert its superiority over the Scandinavian portion
of the land, and yet be unable to achieve the conformity of its alien subjects
to its own social organisation. Such at least is the conclusion suggested to
us by the evidence of Domesday Book. Broadly speaking, Wessex and its
border shires had presented in 1066 social phenomena which Norman
lawyers were able to co-ordinate with the prevailing conditions of their
native land. In Wessex each village would probably belong to a single lord,
its land would fall into the familiar divisions of demesne and “terra
villanorum,” its men would owe labour service to their master. But beyond
the Warwick Avon and the Watling Street, the Normans encountered
agrarian conditions which were evidently unfamiliar to them, and to which
they could not easily apply the descriptive formula which so admirably
suited the social arrangements of the south. They had no previous
knowledge of wide tracts of land whose inhabitants knew no lord of lower
rank than king, earl, or bishop; of villages which furnished a meagre
subsistence to five, eight, or ten manorial lords; of estates whose owner
could claim service from men whose dwellings were scattered over half a
county. In twenty years the Normans, by conscious alterations, had done

more to unify the social custom of England than had been accomplished by
the gradual processes of internal development in the previous century; but it
was the social division, underlying the obvious political decentralisation of
the country, which had sent down the Old English state with a crash before
the first attack of the Normans themselves.
But social evils of this kind do their work beneath the surface of a
nation’s history, and it is the complete decentralisation of the Old English
commonwealth which first occurs to our minds when we wish to explain
the double conquest which the land sustained in the eleventh century; a
decentralisation expressed in the creation of the vast earldoms which
controlled the politics of England in the last years of its independence. The
growth of these earldoms is in many respects obscure; to a limited extent
they represent old kingdoms which had lost their independence, but in the
main they are fortuitous agglomerations of territory, continually changing
their shape as the intrigues of their holders or the political sense of the king
of Wessex might from time to time determine. From the narrative of the
Danish war presented by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, it seems certain that
each county south of Thames possessed an earl of its own in the ninth
century; but this arrangement appears to have been modified by Edward the
Elder, and it has been estimated that from the accession of Edward to the
close of the tenth century Wessex and English Mercia were divided into a
group of earldoms whose number never exceeded eight, a change which
inevitably magnified the importance of the individual earl. In the meantime,
Northumbria and the territory of the Five Boroughs were being ruled by
men of Scandinavian blood, who claimed the title of earl but are very rarely
found in attendance at the courts of the King of Wessex.[6] In the wars of
Ethelred II. and Edmund Ironside with Swegen and Cnut, the issue of each
campaign is decided by the attitude of such men as Aelfric, ealdorman of
Hampshire, or Eadric of Mercia, to whom it belonged of right to lead the
forces of their respected earldoms, and who seem to have carried their
troops from one side to the other without being influenced in the smallest
degree by any tie of allegiance which would bind them permanently to
either the English or the Danish king. To Cnut himself is commonly
attributed a reorganisation of the earldoms, in which their number was
temporarily reduced to four, and in which for the first time Wessex as a
whole was placed on an equality with the other provincial governments.
The simplicity of this arrangement was soon distorted by the occasional

dismemberment of the West Saxon and Mercian earldoms, and by the
creation of subordinate governments within their limits; but throughout the
reign of Edward the Confessor it is the earls of Wessex, Mercia, East
Anglia, and Northumbria who direct the policy of the kingdom.
The privileges and powers inherent in the dignity of an earl were very
considerable. We have already referred to his military authority, but he also
seems to have enjoyed a judicial prerogative overriding the competence of
the local assemblies of the hundred. His wergild was seemingly fixed at a
higher rate than that of the ordinary noble, and the fine paid to him for a
breach of his peace was half the amount which would be paid to the king,
and double the amount paid to the thegn on account of a similar offence.[7]
More important from the standpoint of politics was the fact that in every
shire certain lands seem to have been appurtenant to the comital office,[8]
and these lands formed a territorial nucleus around which an unscrupulous
man like Godwine could gather the vast estates of which Domesday reveals
him to have been in possession. In practice, too, it was the earls who seem
to have gained more than any other men of rank by the growth of that
system of patronage which has been described in a preceding paragraph; the
natural influence of their position attracted to them the unattached free men
of their spheres of government, and they became possessed of a body of
personal retainers who might be expected to fight for them at any crisis in
their fortunes and who would not be unduly scrupulous as to the causes of a
quarrel in which they might be called upon to take part. Fortified by such
advantages, the earls were able at an early date to make their dignities
hereditary under all normal circumstances, and the attempt of Ethelred to
nominate an earl of his own choice to Mercia in the person of Eadric
Streona, and of Edward the Confessor to displace the house of Godwine in
Wessex in 1051, led to disaster in each case, though the occasion of the
respective disasters was somewhat different.
Just as the power of the great earls limited the executive freedom of the
monarchy, so in general matters of policy the king’s will was circumscribed
by the opinion of the body of his counsellors, his Witanagemot. Now and
then a strong king might perhaps enforce the conformity of his witan to his
personal wishes; but the majority of the later Anglo-Saxon kings were not
strong, and when, on rare occasions, we obtain a glimpse into the
deliberations of the king and the wise men, it is the latter who decide the
course of action which shall be pursued.[9] That this was a serious evil

cannot possibly be disputed. The political supremacy of the Witanagemot
bears no analogy to constitutional government in the modern sense of the
term: the witan were not responsible to the nation; they were not, in fact,
responsible to anybody, for a king who tried to insist on their obedience to
his will might find himself, like Ethelred II., deserted by his leading nobles
at some critical moment. Also, if we estimate the merit of a course of policy
by its results, we shall not be disposed to rate the wisdom of the wise men
very highly. In 1066 England was found with an obsolete army, a financial
system out of all relation to the facts on which it was nominally based, and
a social order lacking the prerequisites of stability and consistency; that the
country had recently received a comprehensive restatement of its ancient
laws was due not to its wise men, but to its Danish conqueror Cnut. The
composition of the Witanagemot—a haphazard collection of earls, bishops,
royal officials, and wealthy thegns—afforded no security that its leading
spirits would be men of integrity and intelligence; if it gave influence to
men like Dunstan and Earl Leofric of Mercia, men who were honestly
anxious to further the national welfare, it gave equal influence to
unscrupulous politicians like Eadric Streona and Godwine of Wessex. The
results of twenty-five years of government by the Witanagemot would
supply a justification, if one were needed, for the single-minded autocracy
of the Anglo-Norman kings.
The early history of the Witanagemot, like that of so many departments
of the Anglo-Saxon constitution, is beset by frequent difficulties; but it
seems certain that the period following the middle of the tenth century
witnessed a great extension of its actual influence. In part, no doubt, this is
due to the increasing power of its individual members, on which we have
already commented in the case of the earls, but we certainly should not fail
to take into account the personal character of the kings of England during
this time. The last members of the royal house of Wessex are a feeble folk.
Their physical weakness is illustrated less by the rapidity with which king
succeeded king in the tenth century—for Edmund and Edward the Martyr
perished by violence—than by the ominous childlessness of members of the
royal house. Of the seven kings whose accession falls within the tenth
century, four died without offspring. The average fertility of the royal house
is somewhat raised by the enormous family of Ethelred the Unready; but
fifty years after his death his male line was solely represented by an old
man and a boy, neither of whom was destined to leave issue. Nor do the

kings of this period appear in a much more favourable light when judged by
their political achievements. Edward the Elder, Athelstan, and Edmund
make a creditable group of sovereigns enough, though their success in the
work they had in hand, the incorporation of Scandinavian England into the
kingdom of Wessex, was, as we have seen, extremely limited. Edred, the
next king, crippled as he was by some hopeless disease, made a brave
attempt to assert the supremacy of Wessex over the midlands and north, but
Edwy his successor was a mere child, and under him the southern kingdom
once more becomes bounded by the Thames and Bristol Avon. The reign of
Edgar was undoubtedly regarded by the men of the next generation as a
season of good law and governance, and the king himself is portrayed as a
model prince by the monastic historians of the twelfth century; but on the
one hand the long misery of Ethelred’s time of itself made men look back
regretfully to Edgar’s twenty years of comparative quiet, and also there can
be no doubt that the king’s association with St. Dunstan gave him a
specious advantage in the eyes of posterity.[10] Nothing in Edgar’s recorded
actions entitles him to be regarded as a ruler of exceptional ability. The
short reign of Edward the Martyr is fully occupied by the struggle between
the monastic party and its opponents, in which the young king cannot be
said to play an independent part at all, and the twenty years during which
Ethelred II. misconducted the affairs of England form a period which for
sheer wretchedness probably has no equal in the national history. Had
Ethelred been a ruler of some political capacity, his title of “the Unready,”
in so far as it implies an unwillingness on his part to submit to the dictation
of the Witanagemot, would be a most honourable mark of distinction; but
the series of inopportune acts[11] and futile expedients which mark the
exercise of his royal initiative were the immediate causes of a national
overthrow comparable only to the Norman conquest itself. With Edmund
Ironside we reach a man who has deservedly won for himself a place in the
accepted list of English heroes and we may admit his claim to be reckoned
a bright exception to the prevailing decadence of the West Saxon house,
while at the same time we realise that the circumstances of his stormy
career left him no opportunity of showing how far he was capable of
grappling with the social and political evils which were the undoing of his
country. And then, after twenty-five years of Danish rule, the mysterious
and strangely unattractive figure of Edward the Confessor closes the regnal
line of his ancient dynasty. Of Edward we shall have to speak at more

length in the sequel, noting here only the fact that under his ineffective rule
all the centrifugal tendencies which we have considered received an
acceleration which flung the Old English state into fragments before the
first impact of the Norman chivalry.
It follows from all this that, according to whatever standard of political
value we make our judgment, the England of the tenth and eleventh
centuries will be found utterly lacking in all qualities which make a state
strong and keep it efficient. The racial differences which existed within the
kingdom were stereotyped in its laws. The principles which underlay its
social structure were inconsistent and incoherent. It possessed no
administrative system worthy of the name and the executive action of its
king was fettered by the independence of his counsellors and rendered
ineffective by the practical autonomy of the provincial governments into
which the land was divided. The ancient stock of its kings had long ceased
to produce rulers capable of rectifying the prevailing disorganisation and
was shortly to perish through the physical sterility of its members. Nor were
these political evils counterbalanced by excellence in other fields of human
activity. Great movements were afoot in the rest of Europe. The Normans
were revolutionising the art of war. The Spanish kingdoms were trying their
young strength in the first battles of the great crusade which fills their
medieval history; in Italy the great conception of the church purified, and
independent of the feudal world, was slowly drawing towards its
realisation. England has nothing of the kind to show; her isolation from the
current of continental life was almost complete, and the great Danish
struggle of the ninth century had proved to be the last work undertaken by
independent England for the cause of European civilisation. In Alfred, the
protagonist of that struggle, the royal house of Wessex had given birth to a
national hero, but no one had completed the task which he left unfulfilled.

II

On turning from the history of England between 950 and 1050 to that of
Normandy during the same period, one is conscious at once of passing from
decadence to growth; and this although the growth of the Norman state was
accompanied by an infinity of disorder and oppression, and the decadence
of England was relieved by occasional manifestations of the older and more
heroic spirit of the race. Nothing is more wonderful in Norman history than
the rapidity with which the pirates’ land became transformed into a
foremost member of the feudal world of France, and the extraordinary
rapidity of the process seems all the more remarkable from the sparseness
of our information with regard to it. The story of the making of Normandy,
as told by the Norman historians, is so infected with myth that its barest
outlines can scarcely now be recovered. We can, however, see that during
the ninth century the north and west coasts of France had been subjected to
an incessant Scandinavian attack similar in character to the contemporary
descents which the Northmen were making upon England. It is also certain
that the settlement of what is now Normandy did not begin until thirty or
forty years after the conquest of the English Danelaw, and that for a
considerable, if indefinite, term of years new swarms of Northmen were
continually streaming up the valleys which debouch on the Channel
seaboard. Of Rollo, the traditional founder of the Norman state, nothing is
definitely known. The country from which he derives his origin is quite
uncertain. Norwegian sagamen claimed him for one of their own race, the
Normans considered him to be a Dane, and a plausible case has been made
out for referring him to Sweden.[12] His followers were no doubt recruited
from the whole of the Scandinavian north, but it is probable that the great
mass of the original settlers of Normandy were of Danish origin, and
therefore closely akin to the men who in the previous century had found a
home in the valleys of the Yorkshire Ouse and Trent. As in the case of
Guthrum in East Anglia the conquests of Rollo were defined by a treaty
made between the invading chief and the native potentate of greatest
consequence; and the agreement known in history as the treaty of Claire sur
Epte is the beginning of Norman history. Great obscurity overhangs the
terms of this settlement, and we cannot define with any approach to

certainty the extent of territory ceded by it to the Northmen.[13] On the east it
is probable that the boundary line ran up the Epte, thence to the Bresle, and
so down that stream to the port of Eu; but the extension of the original
Normandy towards the west is very uncertain, and with regard to its
southern frontier there was still room in the eleventh century for border
disputes in which William the Conqueror became engaged at an early date.
The succeeding history, however, proves clearly enough that the Bessin,
Cotentin, and Avranchin formed no parts of Normandy as delimited at
Claire sur Epte, and it was in this last quarter, peopled by an influx of later
immigrants, that the Scandinavian element in the duchy presented the most
obstinate resistance to Romance influences.
The prince with whom Rollo had concluded this memorable treaty was
Charles III., king of the West Franks, and the reputed descendant of
Charlemagne. The importance of the settlement of Claire sur Epte lay in the
future, and in its immediate significance it was little more than an episode
in a struggle which had been carried on for nearly half a century between
the Carolingian sovereign and the powerful house of the counts of Paris, of
which the head at this time was Robert, the grandfather of Hugh Capet. The
conquests of Rollo had been made at the expense of Count Robert, and
Charles III. in his session of Normandy, like Alfred in the treaty of
Wedmore, was abandoning to an invading host a district which had never
been under his immediate rule. It was certain that the counts of Paris would
sooner or later attempt to recover the valley of the lower Seine, and this fact
produced an alliance between the first two dukes of Normandy and their
Carolingian overlords which lasted for twenty years. The exact nature of the
legal tie which united the earliest dukes of Normandy to the king of France
is a disputed question, but we may well doubt whether Rollo had done more
than commend himself personally to Charles III., and it is not even certain
that the Viking leader had received baptism at the time when he performed
the act of homage. As a final question which still awaits settlement, we may
note that the date of the treaty of Claire sur Epte is itself uncertain, but that
921 seems the year to which with most probability it may be referred.
If this is so, the conclusion of this settlement must have been the last
event of importance in the reign of Charles III., for in 922 he was
overthrown by his enemy Robert of Paris, and spent the remaining eight
years of his life in prison. Robert thereupon assumed the title of king, but
was killed in 923; and the crown passed to Rudolph of Burgundy, who held

it until 936. On his death the royal title was offered to Hugh, surnamed the
Great, count of Paris, but he preferred to restore the Carolingian line, rather
than to draw upon himself the enemity of all his fellow-nobles by accepting
the precarious throne himself. Charles III. had married Eadgifu, one of the
many daughters of Edward the Elder of Wessex, and Louis the Carolingian
heir was residing at Athelstan’s court when Hugh of Paris called on him to
accept his inheritance. The refusal of Hugh the Great to accept the crown
did not materially improve the relations existing between the Carolingian
house and the Parisian county, and Louis “from beyond the sea” found it
expedient to maintain the alliance which his father had founded with the
Norman lords of Rouen. But, long before the accession of Louis
d’Outremer, Rollo the old pirate had died, and William Longsword, his son,
felt himself less vitally dependent on the support of the king of the Franks.
In the confused politics of the period William was able to assert a freedom
in making and breaking treaties and in levying external war no less
complete than that which was enjoyed by the other princes of France. In
general he remained true to the Carolingian friendship; and at the close of
his reign Normandy and the French monarchy were jointly opposed to the
Robertian house, leagued with the counties of Vermandois and Flanders.
The latter county, in particular, was directly threatened by the growth of a
powerful state within striking distance of her southern borders; and in 943
William Longsword was murdered by Arnulf of Flanders, the grandson of
Alfred of England.
We should naturally wish to know in what way the foundation of
Normandy was regarded by the contemporary rulers of England. It is
generally assumed, and the assumption is reasonable enough, that Athelstan
feared the assistance which the Normans might give to the men of the
Danelaw, and that he endeavoured to anticipate any movement on the part
of the former by forming a series of marriage alliances with powers capable
of forcing Normandy to remain on the defensive. It is probable that
Athelstan’s sister Eadhild married Hugh the Great,[14] the natural enemy of
William Longsword, and we know that Athelstan lent his support to Alan
Barbetorte, who at this time was struggling with indifferent success to
preserve Brittany from being overrun by Norman invaders. On the other
hand, it would be easy to exaggerate the solidarity of feeling which existed
between the Northmen in Normandy and in England; nor do our authorities
countenance the belief that the various continental marriages of Athelstan’s

sisters formed part of any consistent scheme of policy. There is no evidence
that direct political intercourse existed at any time between Athelstan and
William Longsword; although we know that the Englishmen who were
appointed by the king to negotiate for the reception of Louis d’Outremer in
France paid a visit to the court of Rouen.
The murder of William Longsword was followed by the first of the two
minorities which occur in Norman history, for Richard the illegitimate heir
of the late duke was only a child of ten on his father’s death. The
opportunity was too good to be missed, and Louis d’Outremer succeeded
for a brief period in making himself master of Normandy, not improbably
asserting as a pretext for his intervention a claim to the guardianship of the
young duke. Whatever its legal foundation Louis’s action outraged the
political individuality of the duchy, and when Richard came to years of
discretion he abandoned the traditional Carolingian friendship and attached
himself to the Robertian house. He commended himself to Hugh the Great,
and thus began a friendship between the lords of Paris and their Norman
neighbours which continued for nearly a century and was not the least
among the causes which enabled the Robertian house in 987 to crown its
existing pre-eminence with the royal title. The reign of Richard I. lasted for
more than fifty years, and the history of Normandy during this period is
extremely obscure, but there can be no question that it witnessed the
gradual consolidation of the duchy, and its no less gradual absorption into
the political system of France.
The seventh year of the reign of Richard II. was marked by an event of
the first importance for the history of both England and Normandy—the
marriage of Ethelred II. and Emma the duke’s sister. England was at the
time in the very centre of the great Danish war which marks the close of the
tenth and the beginning of the eleventh century, and it is distinctly possible
that the match may have been prompted by a desire on Ethelred’s part to
close the Norman harbours to his enemies’ ships. But, apart from all
dubious attributions of political motive, the importance of the marriage lies
in the fact that Normandy remains thenceforward a permanent factor in
English politics. The marriage must have produced an immediate
immigration of Normans into England; so early as 1003 we find a French
reeve of Queen Emma in charge of the city of Exeter. The mere union of the
dynasties—the marriage of the representative of the ancient and decadent
royal house of Wessex to the great-granddaughter of the pirate chief Rollo

—was alone a sufficiently striking event. But by chance it happened that the
strain of Norman blood in the offspring of the marriage came of itself to
produce political results of the gravest consequence. No one in 1002 could
foresee that the new queen would bear a son whose early life would be
passed in exile in his mother’s land, and who would return thence to his
father’s inheritance saturated with Norman ideas of the art of government;
still less could anyone foresee that in virtue of this marriage a Norman duke
would one day claim the throne of England by right of inheritance. But less
striking results of the new alliance would soon enough become apparent.
The ubiquitous Norman trader would become a more frequent visitor to the
English ports, and Normandy would at once become a friendly land to
Englishmen crossing the Channel for purposes of trade or pilgrimage. Nor
should the marriage be considered exclusively from the English standpoint.
The reception of a Norman princess as queen of England proved at least
that the Norman duke was no longer a barbarian intruder among the higher
nobility of France; he might not be a sovereign prince as yet, but he was
certainly a ruler of greater consequence beyond the borders of the French
kingdom than were any of his fellow-vassals of the French crown. It is true
that the alliance of 1002 marks no immediate change in the French relations
of the duke of Normandy; his energies were still confined to the petty
struggles which he, like his father and grandfather, carried on with varying
success against this neighbour or that. But events were soon to prove how
strong a state had really been created in Normandy by the obscure dukes of
the tenth century, and the marriage of Ethelred and Emma pointed to the
quarter in which the strength of Normandy would find its field at last.
It must be owned that we can only describe the internal condition of
Normandy, as it existed at the beginning of the eleventh century, in very
general terms. Normandy, like the rest of the French kingdom, was passing
through a phase in which the legislative power of the sovereign was in
abeyance; and in default of written laws we can only rely upon the
incidental information afforded by legal documents or by the casual
expressions of later chroniclers.[15] But the main features of Norman
feudalism at this time are fairly certain, and sufficient to point a contrast
with the contemporary constitution of England in almost every particular in
which the details of the two systems are known to us.[15]
In the first place, vassalage had become localised in Normandy. The
relationship between lord and man would in most cases imply that the latter

held his land of the former. So far as we can tell, the course of Norman
feudalism started from a point of departure different from that with which
the English system takes its origin. The history of the terms employed to
designate dependent tenure seems to make this clear. At an early date a
great man’s vassal will hold of him a precarium; he will be a tenant at will,
his tenure will be revocable at his lord’s instance. To the precarium
succeeds the beneficium; a term which sufficiently expresses the fact that
the tenant’s rights over his land are derivable from his lord, although it does
not, like the older word, imply their temporary character. In the meantime,
the hereditary principle in regard to dependent tenure is continually
securing a wider extension, and the feudum, the fee, the term which
ultimately supplanted the precarium and beneficium, denotes an estate
which will in the normal course of things descend to a tenant’s heir. Some
such succession of ideas can distinctly be traced in the Frankish kingdom,
and the Anglo-Saxon land books here and there contain words and phrases
which suggest that the English land law would have followed a similar
development, had it not been arrested by the general dislocation of society
occasioned by the wars of the ninth century. The wide estates with which
the newly converted kings of Wessex, the Hwicce and the Middle Angles,
endowed the churches founded in their dominions afforded an excellent
field for the growth of dependent tenure, which was not neglected by thegn
and free man, anxious to participate in the wealth of the saints by virtue of
discharging military obligations which monks and clerks could not perform
in person. But the Danish wars stripped the eastern churches of their
possessions and peopled the eastern counties with settlers of approximately
equal rank; and when in the century before the Norman Conquest the land
loan reproduces many of the features of the continental precarium, it
appears as an exotic institution rather than as a normal development of
previous tenurial custom. It would be very easy to exaggerate the
distinction which exists between England and Normandy in this matter; the
mass of our contemporary information about Old English land tenure
relates to ecclesiastical estates; but with Domesday Book before us we
cannot doubt that the distinction was very real and of deep importance in
connection with the other divergent features of the Anglo-Saxon social
organisation.
Everything, then, seems to show that, for at least a hundred years before
1086, dependent tenure and the hereditary descent of fiefs had been

recognised features of the land system of Normandy. We also know that
these principles had, long before the conquest of England, produced their
corollaries in the rights of wardship, marriage, and relief, which a lord
would enjoy upon occasion with reference to his vassals.[16] Women were
capable of inheriting land and Norman custom allowed at least to the duke
the privilege of choosing a husband for his female vassal. The rights of
assuming the guardianship of a minor’s land, and of receiving a money
payment upon the succession of a new heir, were obvious developments of
the originally precarious character of the fief, and we shall see that King
Henry of France exercised the former right over Normandy itself upon the
death of Duke Robert in 1035. There does not seem to be any direct
evidence for the existence of the relief as a Norman custom before 1066,
but its appearance in England immediately after the Conquest is sufficient
proof of its previous recognition by the feudal law of Normandy. None of
these customs, so far as we can tell, had found a place in the social system
of independent England.
Private jurisdiction was undoubtedly an essential feature of Norman
feudalism, though we may well doubt whether the principles on which it
was based had ever been defined by Norman lawyers. It is also clear that
the duke possessed upon occasion the power of overruling the judgment of
his barons, and that his exercise of this power was applauded by all who
were interested in the welfare of the humbler classes of society. The
military character of feudalism made it imperative that there should be
some power in the land capable of vindicating right by force, and the
stronger dukes of Normandy were not slow in the assertion of their judicial
supremacy. How far the ubiquitous manorial court of Norman England
represents an imitation of continental practice, and how far it is referable to
the “sake and soke” possessed by Anglo-Saxon thegns, is a difficult
question, and the explanation given by the legal writers of the generation
succeeding the Conquest must be reserved for a later chapter.
It is, however, clear, that one custom which to modern ideas would be
ruinous to any social order distinguishes Norman life from that of England
in the eleventh century. Private war was a recognised custom in Normandy.
For obvious reasons this custom was fenced round with stringent
regulations; the duke’s license was necessary before a campaign could be
opened and its conduct was subject to his general supervision. But private
war is separated by no certain barrier from anarchy, and under a weak duke

or during a minority the barons of Normandy would take the law into their
own hands. Herein lay the real cause of the disorders which prevailed
during the minority of William the Conqueror; and in the abeyance of state
intervention the church endeavoured with considerable success to confine
the practice within reasonable limits. The Truce of God, in the limitations
which it enforced upon the operations of war, made life more tolerable for
peasant and burgess, but it was at best an inefficient substitute for the hand
of a strong ruler. William the Conqueror made good peace in Normandy, as
well as in England, and we may well doubt whether even private war, so
long as its legal sanctions were respected, was not less harmful to the well-
being of a community than were the savage outbreaks of internal strife
which from time to time occurred under the helpless government of Edward
the Confessor.
The exact nature of the feudal tie which bound the duke of Normandy to
the king of France is a very difficult question.[17] It undoubtedly comprised
all those obligations which were implied in the performance of the act of
homage, but these would vary indefinitely in stringency according to the
status of the parties concerned. An oath of fealty and service was certain to
be kept only so long as the man to whom the oath was sworn could compel
its observance by the threat of confiscation. When made between two
parties who were for effective purposes equal in power, there was no
certainty that the oath would imply more than an assertion of dependence
on the part of the man who swore. On the other hand, it would be an error to
regard the homage which a duke of Normandy paid to his overlord merely
as a ceremonial form. Even in the early feudal times the sense of personal
honour would generally serve to prevent a man from wantonly attacking his
lord. William the Conqueror, whenever possible, refrained from violating
the fealty which he had sworn to King Henry; and if put on his defence for
his conduct at Varaville, he would probably have pleaded that the necessity
of self-preservation outweighed all other considerations. But in earlier times
the maintenance of feudal relations between Normandy and France was less
dependent upon the personal loyalty of the reigning duke. Occasionally, the
king of France will confirm the grants of land with which the duke of
Normandy endowed some religious house; he may, as we have seen, claim
the right of wardship over a duchy during a minority. Also, it should not be
forgotten that in the case of the dukes between Richard I. and Robert I. the
traditional alliance between Normandy and the Capetian dynasty disguised

the practical autonomy of the former. So long as the knights of Normandy
were at the disposal of the king of France for an attack upon Flanders or
Blois, the king would not be concerned to argue the question whether they
were furnished to him in obedience to his claim to feudal service, or merely
in pursuance of the territorial interests of his vassal.
Within the limits of his territory, the duke of the Normans enjoyed an
almost absolute sovereignty. The external limitation of his authority—the
suzerainty of the king of France—was at its strongest very ineffectual, and
within the duchy the barons were to an exceptional degree subject to the
ducal power. All the members of the Norman baronage stood very much on
a level in regard to the extent of their fiefs, and the political influence which
any individual baron might from time to time exercise depended mainly on
his personal favour with the duke. Here and there among the mass of the
Norman nobility we meet with a family claiming a more ancient origin and
a purer descent than that of the ducal house, and disposed towards
insurrection thereby; but such cases are highly exceptional, and the names
which are of most significance in the history of William the Conqueror are
those of men who held official positions at his court, or were personally
related to his line. In Normandy there were no baronies of the first rank, and
the number of counties was small; also most of them, by the policy of dukes
Richard I. and II., had been granted on appanages to junior members of the
reigning family. One striking exception to the territorial significance of the
Norman baronage existed in the great fief of Bellême, which lay on the
border between Normandy and Maine, and was regarded as dependent on
the French crown.[18] The lords of Bellême in early times are certainly found
behaving as sovereign princes, but it fortunately happened that the male line
of the family became extinct during William’s reign, and a standing
obstacle to the centralisation of the duchy was removed when Mabel, the
heiress of this formidable house, carried its vast possessions to her husband,
the duke’s loyal friend, Roger de Montgomery.
The ecclesiastical, like the lay, baronage of Normandy had no members
fitted by their territorial influence to lead an opposition to the ducal power.
The greater abbeys of Normandy, Fécamp, St. Wandrille, Jumièges, had
been founded or refounded by the dukes themselves, and the restoration of
the western bishoprics had mainly been the pious work of Richard I. The re-
establishment of the Norman episcopate after the disorder of the settlement
could never have been effected had it not been for the countenance afforded

to the movement by successive dukes, and the connection between church
and state in Normandy was peculiarly intimate. The rights of patronage,
elsewhere jealously guarded by the king of the French, in Normandy
belonged to the duke, and his power of nominating the official leaders of
the church enabled him to govern the whole ecclesiastical policy of the
land. Naturally, there occur from time to time gross instances of nepotism,
as when Odo, Duke William’s brother, was thrust into the see of Bayeux at
the age of ten; but in general the dukes of Normandy were at pains to select
worthy candidates for bishoprics and abbeys, and in 1066 the spiritual
quality of the Norman episcopate was extraordinarily high. Over the
independent ecclesiastical jurisdiction which had arisen in the duchy under
the influence of the great Cluniac movement the duke kept a steady control;
when in England the Conqueror is found insisting that no ecclesiastical law
shall be introduced into the country without his sanction, he was but
asserting a principle which had governed his conduct in regard to those
matters in Normandy.
This intimate connection of church and state had, even before the
accession of William, produced a powerful indirect result upon the
ecclesiastical culture of Normandy. In Normandy, as in England, the Danish
wars of the previous century had been fatal to the monastic life of the
districts affected, and with monasticism perished such elements of literary
culture as the Carolingian age could show. It was nearly a century after the
treaty of Claire-sur-Epte before monasticism revived in Normandy, and this
revival was due almost entirely to the importation of foreign monks into the
duchy under the patronage of Richard II. and his successors. In connection
with the newly founded monasteries there arose schools, some of which in a
surprisingly short time rivalled the older institutions of Chartres and Tours,
and participated to the full in the cosmopolitan culture which underlay the
development of medieval scholasticism. Of these schools, the most famous
was undoubtedly that of Bec, the rise of which well illustrates the character
of the revival of learning in Normandy.[19] The abbey of Bec itself was only
a recent institution, having been founded in 1034 by an unlettered knight,
named Herlwin, who was desirous of living a monastic life in association
with a few chosen companions. Nothing in any way distinguished Bec from
half a dozen other abbeys founded during the same decade, and the house
owes its unique distinction to the circumstance that in 1042 an able young
Italian jurist and grammarian, Lanfranc of Pavia, undertook the direction of

its school. As a logical and speculative theologian Lanfranc is said to
display small original ability, but no one was better fitted than he by nature
to superintend the early development of an institution to which we may
conveniently, if inaccurately, apply the designation of a university. In the
eleventh and twelfth centuries the reputation of the individual teacher was a
matter of much greater importance than were the traditions of the school
which he taught, and the school of Bec, under Lanfranc’s guidance, rapidly
became the education centre of eastern Normandy. Its fame was vastly
increased by the fact that its leader became involved in a theological
controversy in which the whole of the Catholic Church was interested. A
famous theologian, Berengar, a teacher in the school of Tours, had taken
upon himself the task of controverting the received opinion as to the nature
of the Eucharist, and Lanfranc stepped forward as the leading
controversialist on the conservative side. In the dialectical struggle which
followed, the honours of debate fell to Lanfranc; Berengar’s opinions were
condemned both by a provincial synod under Archbishop Maurilius, of
Rouen, and also by a general council held at Rome in 1056, and Lanfranc,
to the men of his time, appeared to be the foremost theologian in
Normandy. But wider duties than the charge of the school of Bec rapidly
devolved upon him as the friend and intimate counsellor of the duke, and on
his translation to the newly founded abbey of St. Stephen’s, at Caen, his
place was taken by a man of greater subtlety of mind if no less
administrative capacity. The career of Anselm of Aosta, who succeeded
Lanfranc in the priorate of Bec, raises issues which lie beyond the life and
reign of William the Conqueror, but reference should certainly be made to
the educational work which Anselm performed in the days before his name
was famous as the champion of Hildebrandine ideas in the ecclesiastical
polity of England. As a teacher, it is probable that Anselm had no rival
among the men of his time, and if his educational efforts were solely
directed at the production of learned and zealous monks, this does not in the
least detract from the greatness of the work to which the prime of his life
was devoted. It is under Anselm, rather than under Lanfranc, that the
influence of the school of Bec reaches its height, and the gentle character
and deep philosophical insight of the monk from Aosta supply a pleasant
contrast to the practical and at times unscrupulous activity of his
predecessor at Bec and Canterbury.

III

It must be owned that we possess very little information as to the causes
which towards the close of the tenth century led to a revival of the
Scandinavian raids upon England. No consistent tradition upon this matter
was preserved in the north, and the first descent of the Vikings upon
England in 981 provokes no especial comment from the native chroniclers
who have recorded it. Now, as in the previous century, the Danes had the
command of the sea, and the settlements of the ninth-century Vikings in the
east of England offered to their descendants an excellent base of operations
in the heart of the realm. For the first ten or twelve years after 980 the
Danish and Norse raiders contented themselves with plunder and tribute,
and the definite conquest of England was not achieved before 1013, when
Swegen Forkbeard, king of Denmark, expelled Ethelred from his kingdom
and enjoyed a few months’ uncontested reign as the uncrowned king of the
land. The English reaction under Edmund Ironside is a brief although
brilliant episode in the war, but the superior numbers of the enemy told in
the end, and from 1016 to 1042 England remained politically united to the
Scandinavian world.
The rule of Cnut, Swegen’s son, met with no opposition on the part of his
English subjects. But although Cnut ruled England with such strictness and
justice that on the eve of the Norman Conquest his reign was still regarded
as a model of good government, his rule was nevertheless that of a
Scandinavian king.[20] All the surviving sons of Ethelred met with death or
banishment at his hands, and his marriage with Ethelred’s widow was much
more probably the result of passion than of policy. In the personnel of the
local government of England his reign witnessed a complete change. His
earldoms were given either to the companions of his early warfare, such as
Eric of Northumbria[21] and his son Hakon of Worcestershire, or to new
men, such as Godwine of Wessex, whom he had raised from insignificance
and could depose at pleasure. So far as we know only one native family of
ancient rank received favour from the foreign king. The earldom of Mercia,
which had been left vacant by the summary execution of Eadric Streona
early in 1017, was given to Leofwine, a representative of a noble midland
family and the father of the more famous Leofric, the wisest of the

counsellors of Edward the Confessor. Such Englishmen as received secular
promotion at Cnut’s hand received it for the most part in Scandinavia,
where the honour which they enjoyed had apparently become a cause of
discontent to the Danes before Cnut’s death. In general policy also Cnut’s
attention was directed towards the north rather than towards the Romance
lands, with which Ethelred’s marriage had brought England into contact. It
is very probable that Cnut dreamed of an empire which should include
England and the whole of Scandinavia, and it is certain that in 1028 he
conquered Norway and claimed the submission of the king of Sweden. In
all this Cnut was behaving as the heir of Harold Blue-tooth and Swegen
Forkbeard, rather than as the successor of Edgar and Ethelred. His rule
brought peace to England and Englishmen needed no more to induce them
to submit to it.
In the machinery of the English government, it does not appear that
Cnut’s reign marks any changes of importance. He governed England, as he
governed Norway, through viceroys; and if his earls bear more the character
of royal officials than did Ethelred’s ealdormen, this was due rather to
Cnut’s superior power than to any fundamental change in the character of
their positions. Under Edward the Confessor the provincial governments
became again as autonomous as ever. It was a matter of great importance
that Cnut ordered the compilation of a general code of the law current at
this time, a work which may be held to earn for him the title of the greatest
legislator of the eleventh century.[22] When the battle of Hastings was
fought, Cnut’s code was still the newest and most explicit statement of Old
English custom, and the additions which the Conqueror made to it were few
and for the most part of minor importance.
Cnut’s death was followed by the immediate disruption of his empire.
Norway passed to Swegen, his eldest son; and on his death after a brief and
troubled reign was rapidly conquered by Magnus, the son of Cnut’s
Norwegian rival Olaf the Holy. Denmark was taken by Harthacnut, a son of
Cnut and Emma of Normandy, and Harold, the third surviving brother,
secured England and held it for five years. His short reign was marked by a
dramatic event which is of importance as furnishing one of the ostensible
motives assigned by the Conqueror’s apologists for his invasion of England.
In 1036 the Etheling Alfred, son of Ethelred and Emma, left his secure exile
in Normandy and came to England. His object, we are told, was to visit his
mother, the lady Emma, and to take council with her how he might best

endeavour to gain the kingdom for himself. He therefore landed with but
few companions, and before he had seen his mother he was met by
Godwine, the Earl of Wessex, who received him peaceably and entertained
him with lavish hospitality at Guildford. Thereupon Godwine’s name
vanishes from the story, but the same night the etheling and his party were
surrounded by King Harold’s men and taken prisoners; Alfred was so
horribly blinded that he soon died from his injuries, and his companions
were mutilated, imprisoned, or sold as slaves according to the king’s fancy.
The whole affair was clearly the result of foul treachery and it is impossible
to doubt that the surprise at Guildford was Godwine’s work.[23] The
traitorous earl, indeed, skilfully evaded the penalty of his crime, but when
William of Normandy was about to cross the sea, he was careful to appear
as the avenger of the wrongs which his cousin had suffered thirty years
before.
At some time between the death of Cnut in 1035 and the death of Harold
I. in 1040, the latter’s brother Harthacnut, as king of Denmark, had made a
treaty with Magnus of Norway which served as the pretext for twenty years
of war between the two states, and as the foundation of the Norwegian
claims on England which were asserted by Harold Hardrada in the
campaign which ended at Stamfordbridge. The secession of Norway under
Magnus from the Danish connection was not likely to pass uncontested, and
the host of both nations prepared to try the matter in a great battle at the Elf
in the winter following Magnus’s succession. On both sides, however, there
was a strong party in favour of peace, and a compromise was arranged by
which the kings swore brotherhood and promised that in the event of either
dying without a son to succeed him his dominions should pass to the
survivor or his heir.[24] The succession of Harthacnut to England in 1040
took place without protest from Magnus, but on the former’s childless death
in 1042 the treaty should have come into operation, and Magnus was
careful to claim the crown of England from Edward the Confessor. Edward
denied the Norwegian king’s right, and he was so strongly supported by the
leading men of the land that Magnus deemed it best to let him reign in
peace, but the claim was undoubtedly present to the mind of Magnus’s heir,
Harold Hardrada, when he started on his memorable expedition in 1066,[25]
and it accounts for the alarm which noblemen of Scandinavian tendencies
were able to arouse in England during the earliest years of Edward’s rule.

The man who had played the leading part in the events which led to the
acceptance of Edward as king of England, was undoubtedly Earl Godwine;
and the chief interest of Edward’s reign lies in the varying fortunes of the
family of which Godwine was the founder. With notable skill the earl used
the influence which he possessed as King Edward’s protector to further the
territorial interests of his family, and within three years of Edward’s
accession Godwine and his sons were in possession of a belt of earldoms
which extended without a break along the south coast of England, from the
Wash to the Bristol Channel. By 1050 the whole of England was divided
between Godwine and his two eldest sons, Swegen and Harold, Leofric of
Mercia, Siward of Northumbria, and Ralf of Mantes, a nephew of King
Edward, who had received from his uncle the earldom of Hereford, and was
making of that distant shire an outpost of Norman influence already before
the middle of the century.
In 1051 the power of the house of Godwine was suddenly overthrown for
a time by an unexpected revolution. The immediate cause of the catastrophe
was very trivial, but there can be little doubt that it was really due to the
jealousy which the king felt at the inordinate power possessed by the Earl of
Wessex. Godwine in 1042 had played the part of a king-maker; but, like
other king-makers, he found that the sovereign whom he had created began
to resent his influence. In the summer of 1051 Count Eustace of Boulogne,
who had married King Edward’s sister, paid a visit to his brother-in-law,
and on his return prepared to cross the Channel from Dover to the capital of
his own country. Arrived at Dover, Eustace demanded from the citizens
entertainment for himself and his suite; a demand which was seemingly
quite in accordance with the custom by which the inhabitants of a town in
the eleventh century were liable to find quarters for the retinue of a king, or
for persons whom the king might send down to them.[26] On the present
occasion, however, the men of Dover showed signs of disallowing the
custom, and a fight ensued in the streets of the town, in which each side lost
some twenty men. Eustace immediately returned to the king’s court, and
demanded the punishment of the citizens, which was granted to him, and its
execution entrusted to Godwine, within whose earldom Dover lay. The earl
flatly refused to carry out the king’s orders, whether through a
magnanimous objection to the justice of the sentence or through fear of
incurring local unpopularity by enforcing it. Thereupon, Edward for once
asserted his royal independence, and events proved that for the moment at

least he had reserves of strength upon which Godwine and his party cannot
have counted. The king summoned a meeting of the Witanagemot to be held
at Gloucester, at which, among other charges, Godwine was to be accused
of complicity in the death of Alfred the Etheling, fifteen years before.
Godwine refused to stand his trial, and proceeded to collect troops from all
the family earldoms, a move which was discovered by a similar levy made
on the king’s behalf by the earls of Hereford, Mercia, and Northumbria.
Civil war was averted by the moderation of the chiefs of the king’s party,
who arranged a postponement of the charges against Godwine until the next
Michaelmas, when a gemot was to be held in London for their discussion.
Godwine agreed to this; and, that he might not be taken unawares, he
moved from the west country to Southwark, where he took up his abode
supported by a great host drawn from his earldom. But the delay was fatal
to his cause: his troops lost heart and deserted, and before long the king was
able to decree summary banishment for the earl and all the family. The earl
fled to Flanders, Harold to the Ostmen of Dublin,[27] and for a year Edward
remained the undisputed master of his own realm.
The royalist party which had achieved this memorable success was in the
main recruited from two sources. The hostility of Mercia and Northumbria
to the domination of a West Saxon earl brought over to the king’s side a vast
number of supporters who were doubtless no more loyal in reality to the
king than were Godwine and his men, but who welcomed so fair an
opportunity of striking a blow at the rule of the southern family. On the
other hand, it is clear that racial feeling entered into the quarrel, and that the
Norman settlers whom Edward had invited to take land and lordship in
England were the avowed enemies of Godwine and his party. It is only
natural to infer that Edward, in addition to the predilection which he must
have felt for men of the race among which he had found shelter in the days
of his exile, should wish to find in them some counterpoise to the power of
the Earl of Wessex and his associates. It is certain that there was a powerful
Norman element at court, and in the country, which contributed very
materially to the king’s success in 1051. The archbishopric of Canterbury
and the sees of London and Dorchester were held by Norman priests, and in
Herefordshire, under the jurisdiction of Earl Ralf, a flourishing Norman
colony had been planted on the Welsh border. Under this Norman influence
the art of castle-building was introduced into England, to the infinite disgust
of the country folk in the neighbourhood of the new fortresses, and the Earl

of Hereford tried very unsuccessfully to induce the local militia, of which
he was the official leader, to serve on horseback in their campaigns against
the Welsh. In another direction, the king’s “chancery,” which was gradually
becoming an organised medium for the discharge of the king’s legal
business, was largely staffed by Norman clerks, and the service of the royal
chapel was in part, at least, conducted by priests from across the Channel.
In the sphere of commerce the connection between England and Normandy,
which can be traced already in the time of King Ethelred, was steadily
becoming closer and more permanent; before 1066 at least five of the ports
of Sussex were in Norman hands, and Norman merchants possessed a
haven of their own in the estuary of the Thames. We can never hope to form
an exact estimate of the extent of Norman influence in the last days of the
Anglo-Saxon state, but there can be no doubt either of its general
significance or of its importance in lessening the shock occasioned by the
rapid Normanisation of England after 1066.
For the present, however, the Normans in England were not strong
enough permanently to assume the direction of the commonwealth, and in
1052 Godwine and his sons made a triumphant return. The old earl had no
difficulty in recruiting a powerful force in Flanders, and Harold in Danish
Ireland found numbers of adventurers only too eager to follow the fortunes
of a leader who could promise excitement and booty. In the middle of 1052,
Harold, acting no doubt in concert with his father, set sail from Ireland with
nine ships, landed on the coast of Somerset at Porlock, and there proceeded
to slay and harry in true Viking fashion, passing on round the Land’s End
and so along the Channel. In the meantime Godwine with his Flemish
pirates had reached the Isle of Wight and plundered it until the inhabitants
were driven to pay whatever ransom the earl might demand. Off the Isle of
Wight Harold joined forces with his father, and the earls sailed on past
Pevensey and Hastings and along the Kentish shore, drawing many
volunteers from the friendly ports at which they called, while their crews
indulged in sporadic devastation elsewhere. Without serious opposition the
exiles entered the Thames, and sailed up the river as far as London Bridge;
Godwine disembarked at Southwark and the feeling of the city declared
itself unmistakably on his side. The archbishop of Canterbury and the
bishop of Dorchester made a hurried escape from the town and rode for
their lives to the Essex coast, where they crossed to Normandy. The king,
powerless to protect his friends in the moment of the reaction, had no

option but to restore Godwine and his family to all their honours and
offices, and he was forced to declare outlaw “all Frenchmen who had raised
disorder and proclaimed bad law and had plotted evil against the land.” He
was, however, even allowed to retain about his person such Normans as
Godwine’s party chose to consider loyal to the king and his people; and
indeed it does not appear that the triumph of the nationalists in 1052 was
followed by any considerable exodus of foreign settlers from the country.
Godwine had thus secured an unequivocal victory, but he and his friends
proceeded to make a false move, the result of which was to throw the whole
influence of the church on to the side of the Norman invader in 1066. The
flight of the archbishop of Canterbury had left the metropolitan see at the
mercy of Godwine’s party, and it was immediately given to Stigand, bishop
of Winchester, the leading ecclesiastical partisan of the earl of Wessex. The
act was a gross violation of law and decency, for the exiled archbishop had
been deposed by no clerical tribunal, and Stigand did not improve his
position by continuing to hold the see of Winchester in plurality with that of
Canterbury. The Curia refused to recognise him as metropolitan, and in
1058 Stigand aggravated his guilt by accepting the pallium, the badge of the
archiepiscopal rank, from an antipope, thereby in effect giving defiance to
that section of the church which represented its highest ideals, and was
destined to exercise most influence in the coming years. Before long
Stigand’s political associates perceived the mistake that had been made, and
for the next fifteen years the province of Canterbury was, in matters of
spiritual jurisdiction, left without a head. Between 1058 and 1066 Stigand
never consecrated a bishop, and at ecclesiastical ceremonies of especial
importance his place was taken by the primate of York. To all strict
churchmen the nominal head of the church in England was a schismatic,
disowned by his own suffragans and banned by the Holy See; and it would
be difficult to overestimate the importance of this fact in preparing the
public opinion of Europe to support the enterprise of William of Normandy
in 1066.
Godwine survived his restoration for little more than a year, and on his
death in 1053 his earldom of Wessex passed to Harold as his eldest
surviving son. For thirteen years it is probable that Harold was the real head
of the English government. Until the very close of this period the internal
history of England is almost barren of recorded events, and its significance
lies in the steady aggrandisement of the family of which Harold was now

the head. By the beginning of 1065 the wealthiest and most warlike parts of
the country were divided into earldoms held by members of the house of
Godwine. Wessex, Harold kept under his own rule, with the addition of the
shires of Gloucester and Hereford; Leofwine, his youngest brother,
governed a province comprising Essex, Hertford, Middlesex, Kent, Surrey,
and Sussex; Gyrth, a third brother, held East Anglia; to which was added
the midland shire of Oxford.[28] Even Northumbria had been secured by an
earl of the family, for Tostig, the only one of Godwine’s sons for whom
King Edward seems to have felt personal affection, had received the
government of that lawless land upon the death of its native earl, Siward, in
1055. Less obvious, but equally suggestive of the general trend of Harold’s
policy, is the enormous amount of land of which he held direct possession
at the Confessor’s death. There was scarcely a shire in which a certain
number of estates were not held by the earl of Wessex in 1066; and
Domesday Book, in recording the fact of his ownership, will often also
record that it had been acquired by force or injustice. Harold, like his father,
was quite unscrupulous in the advancement of his interests, and his greed
for land and revenue is one of the few traits in his character of which we
can be certain. Of his brothers, Gyrth and Leofwine are very imperfectly
known to us, although in the Norman traditions of the twelfth century the
former is represented as the real hero of the campaign of Hastings on the
English side. But Tostig, the earl of Northumbria, was a man of stronger
character, and the circumstances of his fall from power demand a brief
account in this place.
Tostig’s appointment in 1055 had been an experiment and a rash one.
From the overthrow of the Northumbrian kingdom by Edred, down to the
last year of Harthacnut, a dynasty of native earls had presided over the
north. The succession in the southern half of the earldom, between Tees and
Humber, had been broken in the reign of Cnut, but the ancient family
continued to rule in Bernicia until in 1041 Ealdwulf II., the last earl of the
house, was murdered by Siward the Danish ruler of Yorkshire. Siward
thereupon reunited the two halves of the Northumbrian earldom, gaining in
local eyes some title to the government by his marriage with Aelflaed, the
niece of his victim Eadwulf; and for fourteen years his ruthless severity
kept his province in comparative quiet. In Tostig, Siward’s successor, the
Northumbrians for the first time were expected to obey a south-country
stranger, and hence there was no qualification to the hatred which Tostig

caused by his imitation of his predecessor’s methods of government. As a
personal favourite of the king, Tostig was absent from his province for long
spaces of time, and it is not easy to understand why the Northumbrians
submitted for ten years to the spasmodic tyranny of a stranger. But at last, in
1064, Tostig entrapped and murdered two leading thegns of the north,
named Gamel the son of Orm, and Ulf; and at Christmas time in the same
year Gospatric, the last male descendant of the ancient earls of Bernicia,
was slain at the king’s court in Tostig’s interest.[29] For nine months there
was ominous peace in Northumbria, and then, very unexpectedly, in
October, 1065, a great revolt burst out. Two hundred thegns marched to
York, held a meeting in which we may possibly recognise a Northumbrian
gemot, deposed Tostig, and offered the earldom to Morcar, brother of Edwin
the reigning earl of Mercia, and grandson of Leofric. These events were
followed by a general massacre of Tostig’s adherents in York, and then the
rebel army, with Morcar, the new earl, at its head, rolled southwards to
force a confirmation of its revolutionary acts from the king.
At the moment of the outbreak Tostig was absent in Hampshire, hunting
with King Edward. Events had now passed quite beyond his control;
Morcar had been joined by his brother Earl Edwin with the fyrd of Mercia,
and a contingent of Welshmen, and the combined force had reached
Northampton, their line of advance being marked with wholesale ravages
which can be traced very clearly in the pages of the Northamptonshire
Domesday.[30] At Northampton the rebels were met by Harold bearing a
message from the king to the effect that, if they were to disperse, their
charges against Tostig should be heard and decided in lawful manner. They
returned a blank refusal to accept Tostig again as their earl, swept on down
the Cherwell Valley, and next appear in occupation of Oxford. In the
meantime Edward had called a council at Bretford near Salisbury, at which
there was a long and angry debate, and Harold was roundly accused of
stirring up the present rising for his own advantage. The earl cleared
himself of the charge with an oath, and the discussion turned to the
measures to be adopted to restore order. Edward himself was for putting
down the revolt by force; but his counsellors urged the difficulty of
conducting a campaign in winter, and the king was seized with a sudden
illness which left the immediate control of affairs in the hands of Harold.
Accordingly Harold paid a second visit to the rebels’ camp, this time at
Oxford, and formally granted their demands. Tostig was outlawed, Morcar

was recognised as earl of Northumbria, and Waltheof, the son of Siward,
who might consider himself aggrieved by this alienation of his father’s
earldom, was portioned off with the midland shires of Northampton,
Huntington, Bedford, and Cambridge. Tostig himself, to the king’s great
regret, took ship for Flanders, and spent the winter at St. Omer.
The above course of events is clear, and attested by good contemporary
authority, but there is evidently much beneath the surface which is not
explained to us. The revolt must clearly have been planned and organised
some time before its actual outbreak, but who was really responsible for it?
It would be natural enough to lay the blame on Edwin and Morcar, and on
any showing they can hardly be acquitted, but it is at least doubtful whether
the causes of the rising do not lie deeper. It is hard to avoid suspicion that
the men who accused Harold in the council at Bretford may have had
knowledge of the facts behind their accusation. It is quite certain that
Harold was forming plans for his own succession to the throne upon
Edward’s death—would those plans be furthered by the substitution of
Morcar for Tostig as earl of Northumbria? From this point we are in the
region of conjecture, but our authorities give us certain hints which are
significant. It was certain that the last wishes of the king would be a most
powerful factor in determining the choice of his successor; Tostig was
Edward’s favourite, Harold might well feel anxious about the manner in
which the old king would use his influence when the end came. Then, too,
there is evidence that Harold about this time was trying to conciliate the
great Mercian family; and the suspicion is raised that Edwin’s acquiescence
in Harold’s schemes in 1066 was not unconnected with Morcar’s elevation
in 1065. Lastly, Harold’s action in granting the demands of the rebels, the
moment that Edward’s illness had given him a free hand, is itself suggestive
of some collusion with the authors of the rising. If Harold’s policy had been
strictly honourable his conduct should hardly have given rise to doubts like
these; and if on the evidence before us we may hesitate to condemn him
outright, we may at least acknowledge that his contemporary accusers
deserved a respectful hearing.
More important and less conjectural than the nature of Harold’s conduct
is the picture given by these events of the conditions of England in 1065.
All the symptoms of political disorganisation on which we have already
commented—the independence of the great earls, the importance of the
executive, the fatuity of the royal counsellors, the personal weakness of the

king—are illustrated by the narrative of Tostig’s expulsion. For just another
year the Old English state was to stand trembling to its fall, and then the
final test of political stability would be applied and a conquering race would
slowly rebuild the social fabric which it had overthrown.

Penny of Edward the Confessor

CHAPTER I
THE MINORITY OF DUKE WILLIAM AND ITS RESULTS

Among the famous stories which enliven the history of the early dukes of
Normandy there stands out prominently the tale of the romantic
circumstances which led to the birth of Duke William II., the greatest of his
line. The substantial truth of the legend has never been called in question,
and we may still read in safety how Robert, the young count of the
Hiesmois, the Son of Duke Richard I. and the fourth in descent from Rollo,
was riding towards his capital of Falaise when he saw Arlette, the daughter
of a tanner in the town, washing linen in a stream, according to one account
—dancing, according to another; how he fell in love at first sight, and
carried her off straightway to his castle; and how the connection thus begun
lasted unbroken until Robert’s death seven or eight years later. The whole
course of William’s early history was determined by the fact of his
illegitimacy, and the main points of the story as we have it must already
have been known to the citizens of Alençon when they cried out “Hides for
the tanner” as the duke came up to their defences in the famous siege of
1049. In fact, the tale itself is thoroughly in keeping with the sexual
irregularity which was common to the whole house of Rollo, with the single
exception of the great Conqueror himself, and we may admit that there is a
certain dramatic fitness in this unconventional origin of the man who more
than any other of his time could make very unpromising conditions the
prelude to brilliant results.[31] The exact date of William’s birth is not
certain; it is very probable that it fell between October and December, 1027,
but in any case it cannot be placed later than 1028, a fact which deserves
notice, for even at the latter date Robert himself cannot possibly have been
older than eighteen and may very well have been at least a year younger.

EASTERN NORMANDY
and the border Counties

The reign of Robert I., by some caprice of historical nomenclature
surnamed the Devil, was a brilliant period of Norman history. Succeeding to
the ducal throne on the sudden, perhaps suspiciously sudden, death of his
brother Richard III., in 1028, Robert, in the six years of his rule, won for the
duchy an unprecedented influence in the affairs of the French kingdom. The
first duty of a Norman duke, that of keeping his greater vassals in order,
Robert seems to have performed very effectively; we may perhaps measure
the strength of his hand by the outburst of anarchy which followed the news
of his death. And his intervention in the general feudal politics of France,
interesting enough in itself, gains in importance when viewed with

reference to the history of his greater son. William the Conqueror inherited
the rudiments of a policy from his father; throughout much of his reign he
was following lines of action which had been suggested between 1028 and
1035.
This was so with reference to the greatest of all his achievements, the
conquest of England. There seems no reason to doubt that Robert had gone
through the form of marriage with Estrith, the sister of Cnut, and there is a
strong probability that he planned an invasion of England on behalf of the
banished sons of Ethelred. The marriage of Robert’s aunt, Emma, first to
Ethelred and then to Cnut,[32] began, as we have seen, that unbroken
connection between England and Normandy which culminated in the
Norman Conquest. Norman enterprise was already in Robert’s reign
extending beyond the borders of the French kingdom to Spain and Italy;
that it should also extend across the Channel would not be surprising, for
Normandy was connected with England by commercial as well as dynastic
ties. And William of Jumièges, writing within fifty years of the event, has
given a circumstantial account of Robert’s warlike preparations. According
to him the invasion of England was only prevented by a storm, which threw
the duke and his cousin Edward, who was accompanying him, on to the
coast of Jersey. Robert does not seem to have repeated the attempt, and
before it was made again England had suffered a more subtle invasion of
Norman ideas under the influence of Edward the Confessor.
Nor was Norman intervention lacking at the time beyond the western
border of the duchy. Robert had inherited old claims to suzerainty over
Brittany, and he tried to make them a reality. For some time past Normandy
and Brittany had been drawing nearer to each other; Robert was himself a
Breton on his mother’s side, and if one aunt of his was queen of England,
another was the dowager countess of Brittany. Breton politics were never
quite independent of one or other of the great powers of north France,
Normandy, Anjou, or Blois, each of which could put forward indeterminate
feudal claims over the peninsula. Anjou, under its restless, aggressive
counts, was here as elsewhere a formidable rival to Normandy, and in face
of its competition Robert could not allow his claims on Brittany to lapse.
Hence, when Count Alan repudiated his homage, a Norman invasion
followed, the result of which was a fresh recognition of Robert’s
overlordship, and the establishment of still closer relations between the two
states.[33] Alan is found acting as one of the guardians of William’s minority

—in fact he died, probably from poison, while besieging the revolted
Norman castle of Montgomery in his ward’s interest—and his successor
Conan was never really friendly towards Normandy. Yet, notwithstanding
his hostility, Norman influence steadily gained the upper hand in Brittany
during William’s life. It is significant that he drew more volunteers for his
invasion of England from Brittany than from any other district not under his
immediate rule.

JUMIÈGES ABBEY—FAÇADE

The relations of Robert with the French crown were still more important.
The ancient alliance between the dukes of Normandy and the Capetian
dynasty which William inherited, and which was to be his chief safeguard
during the first fifteen years of his reign, had been greatly strengthened by
the action taken by Robert in the internal affairs of the Isle de France. One
of the few threads of consistent policy which run through the complicated
history of this period is the persistent mistrust of successive kings of France
towards their formidable neighbours, the counts of Blois. The possessions
of the latter lay astride the royal demesne in two great blocks, the county of
Blois, which bordered it on the west, and the county of Troyes or
Champagne, which lay along its eastern frontier. The whole territorial group
far exceeded the royal possessions in extent and resources, and its
geographical position gave its lords the strategical advantage as well.
Accordingly, the French kings were driven to seek countervailing support
among their greater vassals, and at this time they found it in the duchy of
Normandy. A similar alliance had been formed in the tenth century against
the Carolingians; the traditional friendship was readily adapted to new
conditions.
Its value was clearly proved by the events which followed the death of
King Robert the Pious. Henry, his eldest surviving son, had been associated
with him in the kingship and designated as his successor, but Constance the
queen dowager intrigued against the eldest brother in favour of her younger
son Robert. Odo II., the able and ambitious count of Blois, took the side of
the latter and drove Henry out of the royal demesne. He fled to Normandy
and was well received by Robert; there exists a charter of the latter to the
abbey of St. Wandrille which Henry attests as a witness in company with
his fellow-exiles, Edward, afterwards king and confessor, and Edward’s
unlucky brother the Etheling Alfred.[34] Well supported with Norman
auxiliaries Henry returned and conquered the royal demesne piecemeal;
and, in return for Robert’s help, we are told that the king ceded to him the
Vexin Français, the district between the Epte and the Oise.[35]
The internal condition of Normandy at this period might perhaps
compare favourably with that of any of the greater fiefs of north France. A
succession of able dukes had, for the time being, reduced the Norman
baronage to something like order. Other countries also at this time offered a
fairer field for the exercise of superfluous activity; the more unquiet spirits
went off to seek their fortune in Spain or Italy. But in Normandy, as

elsewhere, everything depended on the head of the state. All the familiar
features of feudal anarchy, from the illicit appropriation of justice and the
right of levying taxes to simple oppression and private war, were still ready
to break out under a weak ruler. And there existed an additional
complication in the large extent of territory which was in the hands of
members of the ducal house. The lax matrimonial relations of the early
dukes had added a very dangerous element to the Norman nobility in the
representatives of illegitimate or semi-legitimate lines of the reigning
family. They are collectively described by William of Jumièges as the
“Ricardenses,” and he tells us with truth that it was these oblique kinsmen
of William who felt most aggrieved at, and offered most opposition to, his
accession. They were especially formidable from the practice, which had
been followed by the early dukes, of assigning counties to younger brothers
of the intended heir. Duke Robert himself had before his accession held the
county of the Hiesmois. Of the illegitimate sons of Richard I., Robert,
archbishop of Rouen, the eldest, held in his lay capacity the county of
Evreux; his next brother, Malger, the county of Mortain; his youngest
brother, William, the county of Eu; while William, the youngest son of
Richard II., possessed the county of Arques. It is noteworthy that each of
these appanages was, at one period or another in the life of William, the
scene of a real or suspected revolt against him.
Such was the general condition of the Norman state when Robert, in the
winter of 1034, meditating a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, held a council at
Fécamp to decide who should be his successor in case of misadventure, and
brought with him in that capacity his seven-year-old son William.[36]
Notwithstanding the discreet reticence of the later writers who describe the
scene, we can see that the proposal was intensely distasteful to the Norman
baronage. To any law-abiding section of the assembly it must have meant
entrusting the welfare of the duchy to the most doubtful of hazards, and it
was a direct insult to the family pride of the older Norman nobility. Had
there existed at this time any member of the ducal house who combined
legitimacy of birth with reasonable proximity in the scale of succession,
Duke Robert would undoubtedly have had the greatest difficulty in carrying
his point. But among his many kinsmen there was not one who did not
labour under some serious disqualification. Nicholas, the illegitimate son of
Richard III., would have been a possible claimant, but Duke Robert had
taken the precaution of compelling him, child as he was, to become a monk,

and he was now safely bestowed in the ducal monastery of Fécamp.[37] Guy
of Brionne, the son of Robert’s sister, was legitimate indeed, but was
younger than William, and would be counted a member of a foreign house;
Malger and William, Robert’s two surviving brothers, were both
illegitimate, and the former was a churchman. Members of the older line,
descending from Richard I., probably stood too far back from the line of
succession to admit of their appearance as serious competitors, and after all
there was a strong probability that the question would not become a matter
of immediate importance. Pilgrimages to Jerusalem were not infrequent
events at this time[38] and Robert’s age was considerably under thirty. He
had previously secured the assent of his overlord King Henry to his
proposed heir, and the end of the deliberations at Fécamp was the
recognition of William by the Normans as their future duke.
As it happened, Duke Robert’s pilgrimage turned out ill; he died on the
homeward journey, at Nicea, on the second of July, 1035, and the
government fell to William, or rather to the guardians whom his father had
provided for him before his departure. Of these the highest in rank was
Count Alan of Brittany, William’s cousin,[39] with whom were associated
Count Gilbert of Brionne, the ancestor of the mighty house of Clare,[40]
Osbern the seneschal of Normandy, and a certain Thorold or Thurcytel de
Neufmarché, the latter having personal charge of the young duke. It was an
ominous circumstance that each of these men came to a violent end within
five years of William’s accession. The house of Montgomery alone
accounted for two of them: Osbern the seneschal was cut down in William’s
bedroom by William, son of Roger de Montgomery; Count Alan met his
death, as we have seen, during the siege of Montgomery Castle itself. The
assassins of Thurcytel de Neufmarché are not recorded by name, and a
certain amount of confusion hangs over the end of Count Gilbert of
Brionne; but William of Jumièges, a good authority, states that he fell a
victim to murderers hired by Ralf de Wacy, the son of Archbishop Robert of
Rouen. It is at least certain that shortly after this last event Ralf de Wacy
was chosen by William himself, acting, as is said, upon the advice of his
chief men, as his guardian and the commander of the Norman army.
More important than this list of crimes is the general question of the
relations which existed at this critical period between William and the king
of France. We have seen that Duke Robert had secured the king’s consent to
his nomination of William as the heir of Normandy; and we have good

reason for believing that William after his accession was, in the feudal sense
of the phrase, under the guardianship of his overlord. Weak as the French
monarchy seems to be at this time it had not, thus early in the eleventh
century, finally become compelled to recognise the heritable character of its
greater fiefs. Its chances of interfering with credit would vary with each
occasion. If a tenant in chief were to die leaving a legitimate son of full age,
the king in normal cases would not try to change the order of inheritance;
but a dispute between two heirs, or the succession of a minor, would give
him a fair field for the exercise of his legal rights. Now William of
Normandy was both illegitimate and a minor and his inheritance was the
greatest fief of north France; by taking up the office of guardian towards
him the king would at once increase the prestige of the monarchy, and also
strengthen the ancient friendship which existed between Paris and Rouen.
Nor are we left without direct evidence on this point. William of
Malmesbury, in describing the arrangements made at Fécamp, tells us that
Count Gilbert of Brionne, the only one of William’s guardians whom he
mentions by name, was placed under the surveillance of king Henry[41]; and
Henry of Huntingdon incidentally remarks that in 1035 William was
residing with the king of France and that the revenues of Normandy were
temporarily annexed to the royal exchequer. In view of the statements of
these independent writers, combined with the antecedent probability of the
case, we may consider it probable that William, on his father’s death,
became the feudal ward of his suzerain,[42] and that very shortly after his
own accession he spent some time in attendance at the royal court.
It must be confessed that we know very little as to the events of the next
ten years of William’s life. They were critical years, for in them William
was growing up towards manhood and receiving the while a severe
initiation into the art of government. The political conditions of the eleventh
century did not make for quiet minorities; they left too much to the strength
and discretion of the individual ruler. Private war, for instance, might be a
tolerable evil when duly regulated and sanctioned by a strong duke; under
the rule of a child the custom merely supplied a formal excuse for the
prevailing anarchy. Later writers give various incidental illustrations of the
state of Normandy at this period. We read, for instance, how Roger de
Toeny, a man of most noble lineage, on returning to Normandy from a
crusade against the Moors in Spain, started ravaging the land of his
neighbours in sheer disgust at the accession of a bastard to the duchy, and

was killed in the war which he had provoked.[43] But such stories only
concern the history of William the Conqueror in so far as they indicate the
nature of the evils the suppression of which was to be his first employment
in the coming years. To turn the fighting energy inherent in feudal life from
its thousand unauthorised channels, and to direct it towards a single aim
controlled and determined by himself, was to be the work which led to his
greatest achievements. In the incessant tumults of the first ten years of his
reign we see the aimless stirring of that national force which it is William’s
truest glory to have mastered and directed to his own ends.
We get one glimpse of William at this time in a charter[44] which must
have been granted before 1037, as it is signed by Archbishop Robert of
Rouen, who died in that year. The document is of interest as it shows us the
young duke surrounded by his court, perhaps at one of the great church
festivals of the year. Among the witnesses we find Counts Waleran of
Meulan, Enguerrand of Ponthieu, and Gilbert of Brionne; the archbishop of
Dol, as well as his brother metropolitan of Rouen; Osbern the seneschal,
and four abbots, including the head of the house of Fécamp, in whose
favour the charter in question was granted. The presence of the count of
Ponthieu and the archbishop of Dol is important as showing that even at this
stormy time the connection between Normandy and its neighbours to east
and west had not been wholly severed; and it is interesting to see two of
William’s unlucky guardians actually, in attendance on their lord. It may
also be noted that at least one other charter[45] has survived, probably a little
later in date, but granted at any rate in or before 1042, in which among a
number of rather obscure names we find the signature of “Haduiardus Rex,”
which strange designation undoubtedly describes Edward of England, then
nearing the end of his long exile at the court of Normandy.
To this difficult period of William’s reign must apparently be assigned a
somewhat mysterious episode which is recorded by William of Jumièges
alone among our authorities. One of the strongest border fortresses of
Normandy was the castle of Tillières, which commanded the valley of the
Arve and was a standing menace to the county of Dreux. The latter was at
this time in the hands of the crown, but in the tenth century it had been
granted to Richard the Fearless, duke of Normandy. He had ceded it to
Count Odo of Blois as the marriage portion of his daughter Mahaut, but on
her speedy death without issue Odo had refused to return it to his father-in-
law; and in the border warfare which followed, the duke founded the castle

of Tillières as a check upon his acquisitive neighbour.[46] On Odo’s death in
1018 the county of Dreux passed to his overlord the king of France, but
Tillières continued to threaten this latest addition to the royal demesne. We
know very little as to what went on in the valley of the Arve during the
twenty years that followed Odo’s death, but by the beginning of William’s
reign it seems certain that the Norman claims on Dreux itself had been
allowed to lapse, and the present dispute centres round Tillières alone. At
some unspecified period in William’s minority we find King Henry
declaring that, if William wished to retain his friendship, Tillières must be
dismantled or surrendered. The young duke himself and some of his barons
thought the continued support of the king of France more valuable than a
border fortress and were willing to surrender the castle; but its commander,
one Gilbert Crispin, continued to hold out against the king. Tillières was
thereupon besieged by a mixed force of Frenchmen and Normans, and
William, possibly appearing in person, ordered Gilbert Crispin to capitulate.
He obeyed with reluctance and the castle was at once burned down, the
king swearing not to rebuild it within four years, but within the stipulated
period it seems that the treaty was broken on the French side. The king at
first retired, but not long afterwards he recrossed the border, passed across
the Hiesmois, burned Argentan, and then returning rebuilt the castle of
Tillières in defiance of his oath, while at the same time it would appear that
the viscount of the Hiesmois, one Thurstan surnamed “Goz,” was in revolt
against William and had garrisoned Falaise itself with French troops.
Falaise was at once invested, William again appearing on the scene to
support Ralf de Wacy, the commander of his army, and it seemed probable
that the castle would be taken by storm; but Thurstan Goz was allowed to
come to terms with the duke and was banished from Normandy, his son
Richard continuing in William’s service as viscount of Avranches. The
family is of great interest in English history, for Hugh the son of the latter
Richard was to become the first earl “palatine” of Chester. And so it may be
well to note in passing that the rebel Thurstan is described by William of
Jumièges as the son of Ansfrid “The Dane,” a designation which is of
interest both as proving the Scandinavian origin of the great house of which
he was the progenitor, and also as suggesting that a connection, of which we
have few certain traces, may have been maintained between Normandy and
its parent lands for upwards of a century after the treaty of Claire-sur-Epte.

The above is the simplest account that we can give of these transactions,
which are not very important in themselves, but have been considered to
mark the rupture of the old friendship between the Capetian dynasty and the
house of Rollo.[47] But the whole subject is obscure. The king’s action, in
particular, is not readily explicable on any theory, for there is good reason to
believe that at this time he was actually William’s feudal guardian and
certainly a few years later he appears as fully discharging the duties of that
office on the field of Val-es-dunes; so that it is not easy to see why on the
present occasion he should inflict gratuitous injury on his ward by sacking
his towns and burning his castles. The affair of Tillières would be quite
intelligible if it stood by itself: it was only natural that the king should take
advantage of his position to secure the destruction or surrender of a fortress
which threatened his own frontier, and the fact that William himself appears
as ordering the surrender would alone suggest that he was acting under the
influence of his overlord. But the raid on Argentan is a more difficult
matter. We do not know, for instance, whether there was any connection
between the revolt of Thurstan Goz and the king’s invasion of the Hiesmois;
the mere fact that the rebel commander of Falaise took French knights into
his pay, by no means proves that he was acting in concert with the French
king. The story as we have it suggests that there may have been two parties
in Normandy at this time, one disposed to render obedience to the king of
France as overlord, the other maintaining the independence of the Norman
baronage; a state of affairs which might readily lead to the armed
intervention of the king of France, half in his own interest, half in that of his
ward. But considering the fact that we owe our knowledge of these events
to one chronicler only, and that he wrote when the rivalry between
Normandy and France had become permanent and keen, we may not
improbably suspect that he antedated the beginning of strife between these
two great powers, and read the events of William’s minority in the light of
his later history.
The revolt of western Normandy which took place in the year 1047
marks the close of this obscure and difficult period in William’s life; it is in
the crisis of this year that something of the personality of the future
Conqueror is revealed to us for the first time. With the battle of Val-es-
dunes William attained his true majority and became at last the conscious
master of his duchy, soon to win the leading place among the greater
vassals of the French crown. For ten years more, indeed, he was to be

confronted, at first by members of his own family, whose ill-will became at
times something more than passive disaffection, and afterwards by his
overlord made jealous by his increasing power, but the final issue was never
again in serious doubt after his barons had once tried conclusions with him
in pitched battle and had lost the game.

JUMIÈGES ABBEY—INTERIOR

For all this, the revolt of 1047 came near putting a summary close to
William’s career and life. Normandy at this time was far from being a
homogeneous state; apart from the general tendency of feudalism towards

the isolation of individual barons, the greater divisions of the duchy had as
yet little real cohesion; and a line of cleavage which is all-important in this
revolt is marked by the river Dive, which separates Rouen and its territory,
where the ducal power might be expected to be at its strongest, from the
lands of the Bessin and Cotentin, which were always predisposed to local
independence. These districts, as we have seen, formed no part of the
territory ceded to Rollo by the treaty of Claire-sur-Epte, and it is quite
possible that the course of events in the present year may have been
affected by the distinction between the Gallicised Northmen of the
Rouennais and Evrècin and the more primitive folk of the lands west of
Dive. At any rate it was from the latter quarter that the main strength of the
rising was drawn. The Bessin and Cotentin revolted under their respective
viscounts, Randolf de Brichessart and Neel de Saint Sauveur, the latter
being the most prominent leader in the whole affair; and with them were
associated one Hamo, nicknamed “Dentatus,” the lord of Thorigny and
Creuilly, and Grimbald the seigneur of Plessis. The nominal head of the
revolt was William’s cousin Guy, son of Reginald, count of the Burgundian
Palatinate by Adeliz, daughter of Duke Richard II. of Normandy, a young
man, who up to this time had been the constant companion of William, and
had received from him Brionne and Vernon, two of the most important
castles of eastern Normandy. Guy was one of the few legitimate members
of the ducal family, and he and his confederates found a justification for
their rising in the stain which rested upon William’s birth. We are told that
their ultimate object was to divide the duchy among themselves, and we
may suppose that Guy would have taken Rouen and the surrounding
country with the title of duke, leaving the western lords in practical
independence. The latter took an oath to support his claims and to depose
William, and they put their castles into a state of defence.
When the revolt broke out William was in the heart of the enemies’
country at Valognes, a town which seems to have been his favourite hunting
seat in the west of Normandy. The opportunity was too good to be missed,
and a plot was laid for his capture which came within an ace of success, and
according to later tradition was only discovered, on the point of its
execution, by Gallet, William’s fool. The duke had gone to bed when Gallet
burst into his room and called on him to escape for his life. Clad in such
garments as came to hand William sprang on horseback, and rode away
through the dead of night eastwards towards his native and loyal town of

Falaise. He took the coast road, crossing the estuary of the Vire at low
water, and by day-break he had covered the forty miles which separate
Valognes from Rye. It so chanced that Hubert the lord of Rye was standing
between his castle mound and the neighbouring church as the duke came
riding by, and recognising his lord he asked the reason of his haste. Upon
learning of his danger Hubert called three of his sons and bade them escort
the duke to Falaise; but even in the capital of his native province William
made no delay, and hastened across the borders of his duchy to ask help of
his overlord and guardian, King Henry of France.[48] The king and the duke
met at Poissy, and a French army prepared to enter Normandy under the
leadership of the king in person, while on his part William summoned the
men of Rouen, Auge, Lisieux, Evreux, and the Hiesmois, men, that is, from
all Normandy east of the Dive and from the territory belonging to Falaise,
west of that river. The Normans assembled in the latter district and
concentrated on the Meance near Argences; the French army drew together
on the Laison between Argences and Mezidon. King Henry heard mass and
arranged his troops at Valmeray, then crossed the Olne on to the plain of
Val-es-dunes and drew up his men on the bank of the river. In that position
he was joined by William, who had crossed at the ford of Berangier, and the
combined force prepared for battle, the Frenchmen forming the left wing
and the Normans the right.[49]
In the meantime the revolt had spread apace. The rebels had seized the
duke’s demesne and, it would seem, were prepared to invade the loyal
country across the Dive, for they had reached Val-es-dunes before the king
and the duke had arrived there. Like their opponents, they drew up their
army in two divisions, the men of the Cotentin forming the right wing and
those of the Bessin the left. The battle seems to have begun by a charge of
the Cotentin men on the French, but of the struggle which followed we have
only a confused and indefinite account; it appears to have been a simple
cavalry encounter, calling for no special tactical skill in the leaders of either
side. Even in most of the Norman accounts of the battle William plays a
part distinctly secondary to that of his overlord, although the latter had the
ill luck to be unhorsed twice during the day, once by a knight of the
Cotentin and once by the rebel leader Hamo “Dentatus.” Before long the
fight was going decisively in favour of the loyal party. The rebel leaders
seem to have mistrusted each other’s good faith. In particular Ralf of
Brichessart began to fear treachery; he suspected that Neel de Saint Sauveur

might have left the field, while one of his own most distinguished vassals
had been cut down before his eyes, by the duke’s own hand as later Norman
tradition said. Accordingly, long before the fight was over he left the field,
but the western men were still held together by Neel, who made a
determined stand on the high ground by the church of St. Lawrence. At last
he too gave way, the flight became general, and it was at this point that the
rebel force suffered its heaviest losses, for the broken army tried to make its
way into the friendly land of the Bessin, and the river Olne lay immediately
to the west of the plateau of Val-es-dunes. Large numbers of the rebels
perished in the river and the rest escaped between Alegmagne and Farlenay,
while Guy himself, who had been wounded in the battle, fled eastward to
his castle of Brionne.
The reduction of this fortress must have been for William the most
formidable part of the whole campaign. Even in the middle of the eleventh
century the art of fortification was much more fully developed than the art
of attack, and at Brionne the site of the castle materially aided the work of
defence. The castle itself stood on an island in the river Risle, which at that
point was unfordable, and it was distinguished from the wooden
fortifications common at the time by the fact that it contained a stone “hall,”
which was evidently considered the crowning feature of its defences.[50]
Immediately, it would seem, after the battle of Val-es-dunes King Henry
retired to France, while William hastened to the siege of Brionne. A direct
attack on the castle being impossible, William built counterworks on either
bank of the Risle and set to work to starve the garrison into surrender. By
all accounts the process took a long time,[51] but at last the failure of
supplies drove Guy to send and ask for terms with William. These were
sufficiently lenient; Guy was required to surrender Brionne and Vernon, but
was allowed to live at William’s court if he pleased. No very drastic
measures were taken with regard to the rebels of lower rank, but William,
realising with true instinct where his real danger had lain, dismantled the
castles which had been fortified against him; and with the disappearance of
the castles the fear[52] of civil war vanished from Normandy for a while. The
capital punishment of rebellious vassals was not in accordance with the
feudal custom of the time.[53] The legal doctrine of sovereignty, which made
the levying of war against the head of the state the most heinous of all
crimes, was the creation of the revived study of Roman law in the next
century; and a mere revolt, if unaggravated by any special act of treason,

could still be atoned for by the imprisonment of the leaders and the
confiscation of their lands. To this we must add that William as yet was no
king, the head of no feudal hierarchy; the distance that separated him from a
viscount of Coutances was far less than the distance that came to separate a
duke of Somerset from Edward IV. The one man who was treated with
severity on the present occasion was Grimbald of Plessis, on whom was laid
the especial guilt of the attempt on William’s life at Valognes. He was sent
into perpetual imprisonment at Rouen, where he shortly died, directing that
he should be buried in his fetters as a traitor to his lord.[54] Guy of Burgundy
seems to have become completely discredited by his conduct in the war, life
in Normandy became unbearable to him, and of his own free will he retired
to Burgundy, and vanishes from Norman history.
The war was over, and William’s future in Normandy was secured, but
the revolt had indirect results which extended far beyond the immediate
sequence of events. It was William’s duty and interest to return the service
which King Henry had just done to him, and it was this which first brought
him into hostile relations with the rising power on the lower Loire, the
county of Anjou. The history of Anjou is in great part the record of a
continuous process of territorial expansion, which, even by the beginning of
the eleventh century had raised the petty lordship of Angers to the position
of a feudal power of the first rank. Angers itself, situated as it was in the
centre of the original Anjou, was an excellent capital for a line of aggressive
feudal princes, who were enabled to strike at will at Brittany, Maine,
Touraine, or Saintonge, and made the most of their strategical advantage.
With Normandy the counts of Anjou had not as yet come into conflict; the
county of Maine had up to the present separated the two states, and the
collision might have been indefinitely postponed had not the events of 1047
compelled William of Normandy to bear his part in a quarrel which shortly
afterwards broke out between the king of France and Count Geoffrey II. of
Anjou.
The first five years of William’s minority had coincided, in the history of
Anjou, with the close of the long reign of Count Fulk Nerra, who for more
than fifty years had been extending the borders of his county with
unceasing energy and an entire absence of moral scruple, and has justly
been described as the founder of the Angevin state. His son and successor
Geoffrey, commonly known in history, as to his contemporaries, under the
significant nickname of Martel, continued his father’s work of territorial

aggrandisement. He had three distinct objects in view: to round off his
hereditary possessions by getting possession of Touraine, and to extend his
territory to the north and south of the Loire at the expense of the counts of
Maine and Poitou respectively. His methods, as described by Norman
historians, were elementary; his favourite plan was to seize the person of his
enemy and allow him to ransom himself by the cession of the desired
territory. This simple device proved effective with the counts of Poitou and
Blois; from the former, even before the death of Fulk Nerra, Geoffrey had
extorted the cession of Saintonge, and from the latter, after a great victory at
Montlouis in 1044, he gained full possession of the county of Touraine. The
conquest of Touraine was undertaken with the full consent of the king of
France; the counts of Blois, as we have seen, were ill neighbours to the
royal demesne, and King Henry and his successors were always ready to
ally themselves with any power capable of making a diversion in their
favour. On the other hand their policy was not, and could not be, consistent
in this respect; the rudimentary balance of power, which was all that they
could hope to attain at this time, was always liable to be overthrown by the
very means which they took to preserve it; a count of Anjou in possession
of Saintonge and Touraine could be a more dangerous rival to the monarchy
than the weakened count of Blois. Accordingly, less than four years after
the battle of Montlouis, we find King Henry in arms against Geoffrey
Martel, and William of Normandy attracted by gratitude and feudal duty
into the conflict.[55]
When William, archdeacon of Lisieux, the Conqueror’s first biographer,
was living, an exile as he styles himself, in Poitou shortly after this time, the
prowess of the young duke in this campaign was a matter of current
conversation.[56] The Frenchmen, we are told, were brought to realise
unwillingly that the army led by William from Normandy was greater by far
than the whole force supplied by all the other potentates who took part in
the war. We are also told that King Henry had the greatest regard for his
protégé, took his advice on all military matters, and remonstrated with him
affectionately on his too great daring in the field. William seems in his early
days to have possessed a full share of that delight in battle which is perhaps
the main motive underlying the later romances of chivalry, and his
reputation rose rapidly and extended far. Geoffrey Martel himself said that
there could nowhere be found so good a knight as the duke of Normandy.
The princes of Gascony and Auvergne and even the kings of Spain sent him

presents of horses and tried to win his favour.[57] Also it must have been
about this time that William made overtures to Baldwin, count of Flanders,
for the hand of his daughter, while in 1051 we know that he made a journey,
fraught with memorable consequences, to the court of Edward the
Confessor. In fact, with the subjugation of his barons and his first Angevin
war William sprang at a bound into fame; the political stage of France
lacked an actor of the first order, and William in the flush of his early
manhood was an effective contrast to the subtle and dangerous count of
Anjou.
At some undetermined point in the war an opportunity presented itself for
Geoffrey Martel to gain a foothold in Norman territory. On the border
between Normandy and Maine stand the towns of Domfront and Alençon,
each commanding a river valley and a corresponding passage from the
south into Normandy. Domfront formed part of the great border fief of
Bellême, and at this time it was included in the county of Maine, over
which, as we shall see later, Geoffrey Martel was exercising rights of
suzerainty. Alençon was wholly Norman, but its inhabitants found
William’s strict justice unbearable, and being thus predisposed for revolt
they admitted a strong Angevin garrison sent by Geoffrey Martel. William
decided to retaliate by capturing Domfront, leaving Alençon to be retaken
afterwards.[58] The plan was reasonable, but it nearly led to William’s
destruction, for a traitor in the Norman army gave information as to his
movements to the men of Domfront, and it was only through his personal
prowess that William escaped an ambush skilfully laid to intercept him as
he was reconnoitring near the city. The siege which followed was no light
matter. It was winter, Geoffrey had thrown a body of picked men into the
castle, and, unlike Brionne, Domfront was a hill fortress, accessible at the
time only by two steep and narrow paths. It would thus be difficult to carry
the place by sudden assault; so William, as formerly at Brionne and later at
Arques, established counterworks and waited for the result of a blockade,
harassing the garrison meanwhile by incessant attacks on their walls. The
counterworks, we are told, consisted of four “castles,” presumably arranged
so as to cover the base of the hill on which Domfront stands, and William
contented himself for the present with securing his own supplies and
preventing any message being carried from the garrison to the count of
Anjou, in the meantime making use of the opportunities for sport which the
neighbouring country offered. At last the men of Domfort contrived to get a

messenger through the Norman lines and Geoffrey advanced to the relief of
his allies with a large army. What followed may be told in the words of
William of Poitiers:

“When William knew this he hastened against him [Geoffrey], entrusting
the maintenance of the siege to approved knights, and sent forward as
scouts Roger de Montgomery and William fitz Osbern, both young men and
eager, who learned the insolent intention of the enemy from his own words.
For Geoffrey made known by them that he would beat up William’s guards
before Domfront at dawn the next day, and signified also what manner of
horse he would ride in the battle and what should be the fashion of his
shield and clothing. But they replied that he need trouble himself no further
with the journey which he designed, for he whom he sought would come to
him with speed, and then in their turn they described the horse of their lord,
his clothing and arms. These tidings increased not a little the zeal of the
Normans, but the duke himself, the most eager of all, incited them yet
further. Perchance this excellent youth wished to destroy a tyrant, for the
senate of Rome and Athens held such an act to be the fairest of all noble
deeds. But Geoffrey, smitten with sudden terror, before he had so much as
seen the opposing host sought safety in flight with his whole army, and lo!
the path lay open whereby the Norman duke might spoil the wealth of his
enemy and blot out his rival’s name with everlasting ignominy.”[59]

It is painful to pass from this rhapsody to what is perhaps the grimmest
scene in William’s life. The retreat of Geoffrey, to whatever cause it is to be
assigned, exposed Alençon to William’s vengeance. Leaving a sufficient
force before Domfront to maintain the siege, in a single night’s march he
crossed the water-parting of the Varenne and the Sarthe, and approached
Alençon as dawn was breaking. Facing him was the fortified bridge over
the Sarthe, behind it lay the town, and above the town stood the castle, all
fully defended. On the bridge certain of the citizens had hung out skins, and
as William drew near they beat them, shouting “Hides for the tanner.”[60]
With a mighty oath the young duke swore that he would prune those men as
it were with a pollarding knife, and within a few hours he had executed his
threat. The bridge was stormed and the town taken, William unroofing the
houses which lay outside the wall and using the timber as fuel to burn the
gates, but the castle still held out. Thirty-two of the citizens were then

brought before the duke; their hands and feet were struck off and flung
straightway over the wall of the castle among its defenders.[61] With the
hasty submission of the castle which followed William was free to give his
whole attention to the reduction of Domfront, and on his return he found the
garrison already demoralised by the news of what had happened at Alençon,
and by the ineffective departure of Geoffrey Martel. They made an
honourable surrender and Domfront became a Norman possession,[62] the
first point gained in the struggle which was not to end until a count of
Anjou united the thrones of Normandy, Maine, and England.

Denier of Geoffrey Martel

CHAPTER II
REBELLION AND INVASION

Between the first Angevin war and the outbreak of overt hostilities
between Normandy and France, there occurs a period of five or six years
the historical interest of which lies almost entirely in the internal affairs of
the Norman state. It was by no means an unimportant time; it included one
external event of great importance, William’s visit to England in 1051, but
its real significance lay in the gradual consolidation of his power in
Normandy and its results. On the one hand it was in these years that
William finally suppressed the irreconcilable members of his own family;
on the other hand the gradual dissolution of the traditional alliance between
Normandy and the Capetian house runs parallel to this process and is
essentially caused by it. From the very time when William attained his
majority these two powers begin steadily to drift apart; the breach widens as
William’s power increases, and the support given by the king of France in
these years to Norman rebels such as William Busac and William of Arques
is naturally followed by his invasions of Normandy in 1054 and 1058. As
compensation for this William’s marriage with Matilda of Flanders falls
within the same period, and events ruled that the alliance thus formed was
to neutralise the enmity of the Capetian house at the critical moment of the
invasion of England. There is indeed a sense in which we may say that it
was William’s success in these six years which made the invasion of
England possible; whether consciously or not, William was making
indispensable preparation for his supreme endeavour when he was taking
the castles of his unquiet kinsmen and banishing them from Normandy.
The first of them to go was William surnamed “the Warling,” count of
Mortain and grandson of Duke Richard the Fearless. His fall was sudden
and dramatic. As we have only one narrative of these events it may be given
here at length:

“At that time William named the Warling, of Richard the Great’s line,
was count of Mortain. One day a certain knight of his household, called
Robert Bigot, came to him and said, ‘My Lord, I am very poor and in this
country I cannot obtain relief; I will therefore go to Auplia, where I may
live more honourably.’ ‘Who,’ said William, ‘has advised you thus?’ ‘The
poverty which I suffer,’ replied Robert. Then said William, ‘Within eight
days, in Normandy itself, you shall be able in safety to seize with your own
hands whatever you may require.’ Robert therefore, submitting to his lord’s
counsel, bided his time, and shortly afterwards, through Richard of
Avranches his kinsman, gained the acquaintance of the duke. One day they
were talking in private when Robert among other matters repeated the
above speech of Count William. The duke thereupon summoned the count
and asked him what he meant by talk of this kind, but he could not deny the
matter, nor did he dare to tell his real meaning. Then said the duke in his
wrath: ‘You have planned to confound Normandy with seditious war, and
wickedly have you plotted to rebel against me and disinherit me, therefore it
is that you have promised booty to your needy knight. But, God granting it,
the unbroken peace which we desire shall remain to us. Do you therefore
depart from Normandy, nor ever return hither so long as I live.’ William
thus exiled sought Apulia wretchedly, accompanied by only one squire, and
the duke at once promoted Robert his brother and gave him the county of
Mortain. Thus harshly did he abuse the haughty kindred of his father and
honourably exalt the humble kindred of his mother.”[63]

The moral of the story lies in its last sentence. The haughty kindred of the
duke’s father were beginning to show themselves dangerous, and William
threw down the challenge to them once for all when he disinherited the
grandson of Richard the Great in favour of the grandson of the tanner of
Falaise. But, apart from the personal questions involved, the tale is
eminently illustrative of William’s conception of his duty as a ruler. By
policy as well as prepossession he was driven to be the stern maintainer of
order; the men who would stir up civil war in Normandy wished also to
disinherit its duke, and from this followed naturally that community of
interest between the ruler and his meaner subjects as against the greater
baronage which was typical of the early Middle Ages in Normandy and
England alike. It is inadvisable to scrutinise too narrowly the means taken
by William to secure his position; if on the present occasion he exiled his

cousin on the mere information of a single knight, he had already been
taught the wisdom of striking at the root of a rebellion before it had time to
grow to a head. We must not expect too much forbearance from the head of
a feudal state in his dealings with a suspected noble when the banishment of
the latter would place a dangerous fief at the former’s disposal. Lastly, we
may notice the way in which Apulia is evidently regarded as a land of
promise at this time by all who seek better fortune than Normandy can give
them. In the eleventh century, as in the fifteenth, Italy was exercising its
perennial attraction for the men of the ruder north, and under the leadership
of the sons of Tancred of Hauteville a new Normandy was rising on the
wreck of the Byzantine Empire in the West by the shores of the Ionian Sea.
Probably about this time, and possibly not without some connection with
the disaffection of William the Warling, there occurred another abortive
revolt, of which the scene was laid, as usual, in one of the semi-independent
counties held by members of the ducal house. In the north-east corner of
Normandy the town of Eu with its surrounding territory had been given by
Duke Richard II. to his illegitimate brother William. The latter had three
sons, of whom Robert, the eldest, succeeded him in the county, Hugh, the
youngest, subsequently becoming bishop of Lisieux. The remaining brother,
William, surnamed Busac, is a mysterious person whose appearance in
history is almost confined to the single narrative which we possess of his
revolt. The latter is not free from difficulty; William was not his father’s
eldest son, and yet at the period in question he appears in possession of the
castle of Eu, and, which is much more remarkable, he is represented as
laying claim to the duchy of Normandy itself. At present this is
inexplicable, but it is certain that the duke besieged and took Eu and drove
William Busac into exile. The place of refuge which he chose is very
suggestive. He went to France and attached himself to King Henry, who
married him to the heiress of the county of Soissons, where his descendants
were ruling at the close of the century.[64] It is plain that the king’s
opportunist policy has definitely turned against William of Normandy,
when we find a Norman rebel received with open arms and given an
important territorial position on the border of the royal demesne.[65]
The third and last of this series of revolts can be definitely assigned to the
year 1053. It arose like the revolt of William Busac in the land east of
Seine, and its leader was again one of the “Ricardenses,” a member of a
collateral branch of the ducal house. William count of Arques was an

illegitimate son of Duke Richard II., and therefore brother by the half blood
to Duke Robert I., and uncle to William of Normandy. With the object of
conciliating an important member of his family the latter had enfeoffed his
uncle in the county of Arques, the district between Eu and the Pays de
Caux. Before long, however, relations between the duke and the count
became strained; William of Arques was said to have failed in his feudal
duty at the siege of Domfront, and when a little later he proceeded to fortify
the capital of his county with a castle, it was known that his designs were
not consonant with loyalty towards the interests of his lord and nephew. In
the hope of anticipating further trouble the duke insisted on his legal right
of garrisoning the castle with his own troops, but the precaution proved to
be quite futile, for the count soon won over the garrison, defied his nephew,
and spread destruction over as wide an area as he could reach from his base
of operations. At this time, as at the similar crisis of 1047, William seems to
have been at Valognes; he was certainly somewhere in the Cotentin when
the news of what was happening at Arques was brought to him.[66] Without a
moment’s delay he rode off towards the scene of the revolt, crossing the
Dive estuary at the ford of St. Clement and so past Bayeux, Caen, and Pont
Audemer to the Seine at Caudebec, and then to Baons-le-Comte and
Arques, his companions dropping off one by one in the course of his
headlong ride until only six were left. Near to Arques, however, he fell in
with a party of three hundred horsemen from Rouen, who had set out with
the object of preventing the men of Arques from carrying supplies into the
castle. William had not yet outgrown the impetuosity which called forth
King Henry’s admonitions in the campaign of 1048: he insisted on
delivering an instant attack, believing that the rebels would shrink from
meeting him in person, and dashed on to the castle regardless of the
remonstrances of the Rouen men, who counselled discretion. Charging up
the castle mound he drove the count and his men within the fortress as he
had anticipated, and we are given to understand that but for their hastily
shutting the gates against him the revolt would have been ended then and
there.
The surprise assault having failed, nothing was left but a blockade, and
accordingly William established a counterwork at the base of the castle and
entrusted it to Walter Giffard, lord of the neighbouring estate of
Longueville, while he himself went off, “being called by other business,” as
his panegyrist tells us. As a matter of fact it is probable that he withdrew

from a sense of feudal propriety,[67] for no less a person than King Henry of
France was advancing to the relief of the garrison. On all grounds it was
desirable for William to refrain from setting a bad example to his barons by
actually appearing in arms against his own overlord, and so the operations
against the king were left to the direction of others. At the outset they were
fortunate. There were still a few barons in the county of Arques who had
not joined the rebels, and one of them, Richard of Hugleville, possessed a
castle, a few miles from Arques itself, at St. Aubin, which lay on the line of
march of the French king. Possibly it was this fact which suggested to the
besiegers the idea of intercepting the king before he reached Arques; at any
rate, they formed a plan of the kind, which proved successful and curiously
anticipates one of the most famous episodes in the greater battle of
Hastings. The king, who had been marching carelessly with a convoy of
provisions intended for the garrison within Arques, halted near to St. Aubin.
In the meantime the Normans before Arques had sent out a detachment
which they divided into two parts, the greater part secreting itself not far
from St. Aubin, while the rest made a feint attack on the royal army. After a
short conflict the latter division turned in pretended flight, drew out a
number of the king’s army in pursuit, and enticed them past the place where
the trap was laid, whereupon the hidden Normans sallied out, fell on the
Frenchmen, and annihilated them, slaying Enguerrand, count of Ponthieu,
and many other men of note. Notwithstanding this check, the king hurried
on to Arques, and succeeded in throwing provisions into the castle, and
then, eager to avenge the disaster at St. Aubin, he made a savage attack on
the counterwork at the foot of the hill. But its defences were strong and its
defenders resolute: so the king, to avoid further loss, beat a hasty retreat to
St. Denis, and with his withdrawal Duke William reappeared upon the
scene.[68] Then the blockade was resumed in earnest, and we are told that its
severity convinced the count of Arques of his folly in claiming the duchy
against his lord. Repeated messages to King Henry begging for relief found
him unwilling to risk any further loss of prestige, and at last hunger did its
work. The garrison surrendered, asking that life and limb might be
guaranteed to them, but making no further stipulation, and William of
Poitiers gleefully describes the ignominious manner of their exit from the
castle.[69] Here, as after Val-es-dunes, it was not the duke’s policy, if it lay in
his power, to proceed to extremities against the beaten rebels, and William
was notably lenient to his uncle, who was deprived of his county and his

too-powerful castle, but was granted at the same time a large estate in
Normandy. However, like Guy of Burgundy, he declined to live in the
country over which he had hoped to rule and he went into voluntary exile at
the court of Eustace of Boulogne.
One outlying portion of the duchy remained in revolt after the fall of
Arques. On the south-western border of Normandy the fortress of Moulins
had been betrayed to the king by Wimund, its commander, and had received
a royal garrison under Guy-Geoffrey, brother of the duke of Aquitaine. The
importance of this event lay in the fact that Moulins in unfriendly hands
threatened to cut off communications between the Hiesmois and the half-
independent county of Bellême. Fortunately for the integrity of the duchy,
the fate of Moulins was determined by the surrender of Arques; the garrison
gave up their cause as hopeless, and retired without attempting to stand a
siege.[70]
At some indefinite point in the short interval of peace which followed the
revolt of William of Arques, William of Normandy was married to Matilda,
daughter of Baldwin count of Flanders, in the minster at Eu. On William’s
part the consummation of the marriage was an act of simple lawlessness
noteworthy in so faithful a son of Holy Church, for in 1049 the General
Council of Rheims had solemnly forbidden Count Baldwin to give his
daughter to William of Normandy, and had simultaneously inhibited
William from receiving her.[71] A mystery which has not been wholly solved
hangs over the motives which underlay this prohibition; for genealogical
research has hitherto failed to discover any tie of affinity which might
furnish an impediment, reasonable or otherwise, to the proposed marriage,
while at the middle of the eleventh century the provisions of the canon law
on the subject of the prohibited degrees were much less rigid and fantastic
than they subsequently became. Yet the decree is duly entered among the
canons of the Council of Rheims, and it served to keep William and his
chosen bride apart for four years. Early in 1053, however, Pope Leo IX. had
been taken prisoner by the Normans in Italy at the battle of Aversa, and the
coincidence of his captivity with William’s defiance of the papal censure
has not escaped the notice of historians.[72] By all churchmen of the stricter
sort a marriage celebrated under such conditions was certain to be regarded
as a scandal. Normandy was laid under an interdict, and in the duchy itself
the opposition was headed by two men of very different character. Malger,
the archbishop of Rouen at the time, was a brother of the fallen count of

Arques, and the excommunication which he pronounced against his erring
nephews was probably occasioned as much by the political grievances of
his family as by righteous indignation at the despite done to the Council of
Rheims. William speedily came to an understanding with the Pope by
means of which he was enabled to remove Malger from his archbishopric,
but the marriage was also condemned by the man who both before and after
that event held above all others the place of the duke’s familiar friend. The
career of Lanfranc of Pavia, at this moment prior of Bec, will be more
fittingly considered elsewhere, but his opposition to William’s marriage was
especially significant because of his great legal knowledge and the
disinterestedness of his motives, and the uncompromising attitude of his
most intimate counsellor cut the duke to the quick. In the outburst of his
anger William savagely ordered that the lands of the monastery of Bec
should be harried, and that Lanfranc himself should instantly depart from
Normandy. A chance meeting between the duke and the prior led to a
reconciliation, and Lanfranc was thereupon employed to negotiate with the
papal court for a recognition of the validity of the marriage. Nevertheless
five years passed before Pope Nicholas II. in 1059 granted the necessary
dispensation, accompanied by an injunction that William and his wife
should each build and endow a monastery by way of penance for their
disobedience; and the reasons for this long delay are almost as difficult to
understand as are the grounds for the original prohibition in 1049. But it is
probable that William, having once taken the law into his own hands and
gained possession of his bride, was well content that the progress of his suit
at Rome should drag its slow length along, trusting that time and the
chances of diplomatic expediency might soften the rigours of the canon law,
and bring the papal curia to acquiescence in the accomplished fact.
The county of Flanders, with which Normandy at this time became
intimately connected, held a unique position among the feudal states of the
north. Part only of the wide territory ruled by Baldwin IV. owed feudal
service to the king of France, for the eastern portion of the county was an
imperial fief, and the fact of his divided allegiance enabled the count of
Flanders to play the part of an international power. By contemporary writers
Count Baldwin is occasionally graced with the higher title of Marquis,[73]
and the designation well befitted the man who ruled the wealthiest portion
of the borderland between the French kingdom and the German empire. The
constant jealousy of his two overlords secured him in practical

independence, and in material resources it is probable that no prince
between the English Channel and the Alps could compete with the lord of
Bruges and Ghent; for the great cities of Flanders were already developing
the wealth and commercial influence which in the next generation were to
give them the lead in the movement for communal independence. For some
thirty years we find Baldwin cultivating the friendship of England, as
became a ruler whose subjects were already finding their markets in English
ports; and as the political situation unfolded itself, the part he chose to take
in the strife of parties across the Channel became a matter of increasing
concern for English statesmen. “Baldwin’s land,” as the English chronicler
terms it, was the customary resort of political exiles from England, and in
1066 it was the attitude of the count of Flanders which, as we shall see,
really turned the scale in favour of William of Normandy. At the early date
with which we are dealing no one could have foreseen that this would be so,
but the value of a Flemish alliance was already recognised in England by
the aggressive house with which William was at last to come into deadly
conflict. In 1051, Tosig, son of Earl Godwine of Wessex, wedded Judith,
Count Baldwin’s sister,[74] and this fact inevitably gave a political
complexion to William’s marriage to Matilda, two years later. Godwine, as
leader of the English nationalists, and William as ultimate supporter of the
Normans in England, were each interested to secure the alliance of a power
which might intervene with decisive effect on either side and could not be
expected to preserve strict neutrality in the event of war. William was too
shrewd a statesman to ignore these facts; yet after all he probably regarded
his marriage rather as the gratification of a personal desire than as a
diplomatic victory.
Long before the political results of William’s marriage had matured
themselves, the relations between the duke of Normandy and the king of
France had entered upon a new phase. The event of the war of 1053 had
shewn that it was eminently in the interests of the French monarchy that the
growth of the Norman power should be checked before it could proceed to
actual encroachment on the royal demesne; and also that if this were to be
accomplished it would no longer suffice for King Henry to content himself
with giving support to casual Norman factions in arms against their lawful
ruler. This plan had led to ignominious failure, and it was clear that in future
it would be necessary for King Henry to appear as a principal in the war and
test whether the Norman duke was strong enough to withstand the direct

attack of his suzerain. These considerations produced a phenomenon rarely
seen at this date, for the king proceeded to collect an army in which,
through the rhetoric in which our one contemporary writer veils its
composition, we must recognise nothing less than the entire feudal levy of
all France. So rarely does French feudalism combine to place its military
resources at the disposal of its sovereign that the fact on this occasion is
good evidence of the current opinion as to the strength of Normandy under
its masterful duke. In the war which followed, the territorial principles
which found their fullest expression in the policy of the dukes of Normandy
gained a signal victory over incoherent feudalism represented by the king of
France at the head of the gathered forces of his heterogeneous vassals. Not
until successive kings had reduced the royal demesne to such unity as had
already been reached by Normandy in the eleventh century, could the
French crown attempt successful aggressive war.
In addition to their feudal duty, certain of the king’s associates in the
forthcoming campaign had their individual reasons for joining in an attack
on Normandy. The ducal house of Aquitaine would naturally be attracted
into the quarrel by the failure of Guy-Geoffrey to hold Moulins in the late
war; Guy of Ponthieu had to avenge his brother’s death at St. Aubin. Little
as the several feudal princes of France may have loved their suzerain, their
jealousy would readily be roused by the exceptional power of one of their
own number, and the king seems to have found little difficulty in collecting
forces from every corner of his realm. From the Midi the counts of Poitou
and Auvergne and the half-autonomous dukes of Aquitaine and Gascony
sent contingents; north of the Loire, every state from Brittany to the duchy
of Burgundy was represented in the royal army with one singular exception.
Whatever the reason of his absence, Geoffrey Martel, William’s most
formidable rival, does not appear in the list of the king’s associates as given
by William of Poitiers.[75] This may be due to a mere oversight on the
latter’s part, or more probably it may be that Geoffrey was too independent
to take part in an expedition which, although directed against his personal
enemy, was commanded by his feudal lord. But with or without his aid the
army which obeyed the king’s summons was to all seeming
overwhelmingly superior to any force which the duke of Normandy could
put into the field.
With so great an army at his disposal, the king could well afford to divide
his forces and make a simultaneous invasion of Normandy at two different

points. The lower course of the Seine supplied a natural line of demarcation
between the spheres of operation of the two invading armies, and
accordingly the royal host mustered in two divisions, one assembling in the
Beauvoisis to ravage the Pays de Caux, the other assembling at Mantes, and
directed at the territory of Evreux, Rouen, and Lisieux. The first division
was drawn from those lands between the Rhine and the Seine, which owed
allegiance to the French crown, and was placed under the command of Odo
the king’s brother and Reginald of Clermont. The army which gathered at
Mantes comprised the Aquitanian contingent, together with troops drawn
from the loyal provinces north of Loire and west of Seine, and was led by
the king in person. The general plan of campaign is thus intelligible enough,
but its ultimate purpose is not so clear, perhaps because the king himself
had formed no plans other than those which related to the actual conduct of
the war. On his part William formed a scheme of defence corresponding to
his enemies’ plan of attack. He took the field in person with the men of the
Bessin, Cotentin, Avranchin, Auge, and Hiesmois, the districts, that is,
which were threatened by the king and his southern army, entrusting the
defence of the Pays de Caux to leaders chosen on account of their local
influence, Count Robert of Eu, Hugh of Gournai, Hugh de Montfort, Walter
Giffard, and Gilbert Crispin, the last a great landowner in the Vexin.
William’s object was to play a purely defensive game, a decision which was
wise as it threw upon the king and his brother the task of provisioning and
keeping together their unwieldly armies in hostile territory. The invading
force moved across the country, laying it waste after the ordinary fashion of
feudal warfare, William hanging on the flank and rear of the king’s army,
cutting off stragglers and foraging parties and anticipating the inevitable
devastation of the land by removing all provisions from the king’s line of
advance. The king had penetrated as far as the county of Brionne when
disaster fell on the allied army across the Seine. Thinking that William was
retiring in front of the king’s march the leaders of the eastern host ignored
the local force opposed to themselves in the belief, we are told, that all the
knights of Normandy were accompanying the duke. But the count of Eu and
his fellow-officers were deliberately reserving their blow until the whole of
their army had drawn together, and the French met little opposition until
they had come to the town of Mortemer, which they occupied and used as
their headquarters while they ravaged the neighbourhood in detail at their
leisure. Spending the day in plunder they kept bad watch at night, and this

fact induced the Norman leaders to try the effect of a surprise. Finding out
the disposition of the French force through spies, they moved up to
Mortemer by night and surrounded it before daybreak, posting guards so as
to command all the exits from the town; and the first intimation which the
invaders received of their danger was the firing of the place over their heads
by the Normans. Then followed a scene of wild confusion. In the dim light
of the wintry dawn the panic-struck Frenchmen instinctively made for the
roads which led out of the town, only to be driven in again by the Normans
stationed at these points. Some of course escaped; Odo the king’s brother
and Reginald of Clermont got clear early in the day, but for some hours the
mass of the French army was steadily being compressed into the middle of
the burning town. The Frenchmen must have made a brave defence, but
they had no chance and perished wholesale, with the exception of such men
of high rank as were worth reserving for their ransoms. Among these last
was Count Guy of Ponthieu, whose brother Waleran perished in the
struggle, and who was himself kept for two years as a prisoner at Bayeux
before he bought his liberty by acknowledging himself to be William’s
“man.” The victory was unqualified, and William knew how to turn it to
fullest account.
He received the news on the night following the battle, and instantly
formed a plan, which, even when described by his contemporary
biographer, reads like a romance. As soon as he knew the result of the
conflict he summoned one of his men and instructed him to go to the
French camp and bring to the king himself the news of his defeat. The man
fulfilled his directions, went off, climbed a high tree close to the king’s tent,
and with a mighty voice proclaimed the event of the battle. The king,
awakened by these tidings of disaster from the air, was struck with terror,
and, without waiting for the dawn, broke up his camp, and made with what
haste he might for the Norman border. William, seeing that his main
purpose was in a fair way of achievement, refrained from harassing the
king’s disorderly retreat; the French were anxious to end so unlucky a
campaign, and peace was soon made. According to the treaty the prisoners
taken at Mortemer were to be released on payment of their ransoms, while
the king promised to confirm William in the possession of whatever
conquests he had made, or should thereafter make, from the territory of
Geoffrey of Anjou.[76] Herein, no doubt King Henry in part was constrained
by necessity, but in view of his defeat it was not inappropriate that he

should make peace for himself at the expense of the one great vassal who
had neglected to obey the summons to his army.[77] And it should be noted
that William, though he has the French king at so great a disadvantage,
nevertheless regards the latter’s consent to his territorial acquisitions as an
object worth stipulation; King Henry, to whatever straits he might be
reduced, was still his overlord, and could alone give legal sanction to the
conquests made by his vassals within the borders of his kingdom.
It would, however, be a mistake to regard this treaty as marking a return
to the state of affairs which prevailed in 1048, when the king and the duke
of Normandy were united against the count of Anjou in the war which
ended with the capture of Alençon. The peace of 1054 was little more than a
suspension of hostilities, each party mistrusting the other. The first care of
the duke, now that his hands were free, was to strengthen his position
against his overlord, and one of the border fortresses erected at this time
was accidentally to become a name of note in the municipal history of
England. Over against Tillières, the border post which King Henry had
taken from Normandy in the stormy times of William’s minority, the duke
now founded the castle of Breteuil, and entrusted it to William fitz Osbern,
his companion in the war of Domfront.[78] Under the protection of the castle,
by a process which was extremely common in French history, a group of
merchants came to found a trading community or bourg. The burgesses of
Breteuil, however, received special privileges from William fitz Osbern and
when he, their lord, became earl of Hereford these privileges were extended
to not a few of the rising towns along the Welsh border. The “laws of
Breteuil,” which are mentioned by name in Domesday Book, and were
regarded as a model municipal constitution for two centuries after the
conquest of England, thus take their origin from the rights of the burgesses
who clustered round William’s border fortress on the Iton.[79]
Another castle built at this time was definitely intended to mark the
reopening of hostilities against the count of Anjou. At Ambrières, near the
confluence of the Mayenne and the Varenne, William selected a position of
great natural strength for the site of a castle which should command one of
the chief lines of entry from Normandy into the county of Maine. The
significance of this will be seen in the next chapter, and for the present we
need only remark that in 1051, on the death of Count Hugh IV., Geoffrey
Martel, by a brilliant coup d’état had secured his recognition by the
Manceaux as their immediate lord, and was therefore at the present moment

the direct ruler of the whole county. On the other hand, the widow of the
late count had sought refuge at William’s court, and her son Herbert, the last
male of the old line of the counts of Maine, had commended himself and his
territory to the Norman duke. For three years, therefore, William had
possessed a good legal pretext for interference in the internal affairs of
Maine; and but for the unquiet state of Normandy during this time, followed
by the recent French invasion, it is probable that he would long ago have
challenged his rival’s possession of the territory which lay between them.
That the foundation of the castle of Ambrières was regarded as something
more than a mere casual acquisition on William’s part, is shewn by the
action of Geoffrey of Mayenne, one of the chief barons of the county of
Maine, on hearing the news of its intended fortification. With the
punctiliousness which distinguishes all William’s dealings with Geoffrey
Martel, William had sent word to the count of Anjou that within forty days
he would enter the county of Maine and take possession of Ambrières.
Geoffrey of Mayenne, whose fief lay along the river Mayenne between
Ambrières and Anjou, thereupon went to his lord and explained to him that
if Ambrières once became a Norman fortress his own lands would never be
safe from invasion. He received a reassuring answer; nevertheless, on the
appointed day, William invaded Maine and set to work on the castle
according to his declaration; and, although rumour had it that Geoffrey
Martel would shortly meet him, the days passed without any sign of his
appearance. In the meantime, however, the Norman supplies began to run
short, so that William thought it the safest plan to dismiss the force which
he had in the field, and to content himself with garrisoning and provisioning
Ambrières, leaving orders that his men should hold themselves in readiness
to reassemble immediately on receiving notice from him. Geoffrey Martel,
who had probably been counting on some action of the kind, at once seized
his opportunity, and, as soon as he heard that the Norman army had broken
up, he marched on Ambrières, having as ally his stepson William, duke of
Aquitaine, and Éon, count of Penthievre, the uncle of the reigning duke of
Brittany. With William still in the neighbourhood and likely to return at any
moment, it was no time for a leisurely investment, so Geoffrey made great
play with his siege engines, and came near to taking the place by storm. His
attack failed, however, and William, drawing his army together again, as
had been arranged, compelled the count to beat a hasty retreat. Shortly
afterwards Geoffrey of Mayenne was taken prisoner; and William, with a

view to further enterprises in Maine, seeing the advantage of placing a
powerful feudatory of that county in a position of technical dependence
upon himself, kept him in Normandy until he consented to do homage to his
captor.[80] It is also probable that on this occasion William still further
strengthened his position with regard to Maine by founding on the Sarthon
the castle of Roche-Mabille, which castle was entrusted to Roger of
Montgomery, and derives its name from Mabel, the heiress of the county of
Bellême, and the wife of the castellan.
Three years of quiet followed these events, about which, as is customary
with regard to such seasons, our authorities have little to relate to us. In
1058 came the third and last invasion of Normandy by King Henry of
France, with whom was associated once more Count Geoffrey of Anjou. No
definite provocation seems to have been given by William for the attack,
but in the interests of the French crown it was needful now as it had been in
1053 to strike a blow at this over-mighty vassal, and the king was anxious
to take his revenge for the ignominious defeat he had sustained in the
former year. Less formidable in appearance than the huge army which had
obeyed the king’s summons in the former year, the invading force of 1058
was so far successful that it penetrated into the very heart of the duchy,
while, on the other hand, the disaster which closed the war was something
much more dramatic in its circumstances and crushing in its results than the
daybreak surprise of Mortemer. This expedition is also distinguished from
its forerunner by the fact that the king does not seem to have aimed at the
conquest or partition of Normandy: the invasion of 1058 was little more
than a plunder raid on a large scale, intended to teach the independent
Normans that in spite of his previous failures their suzerain was still a
person to be feared. The king’s plan was to enter Normandy through the
Hiesmois; to cross the Bessin as far as the estuary of the Dive and to return
after ravaging Auge and the district of Lisieux. Now, as five years
previously, William chose to stand on the defensive; he put his castles into a
state of siege and retired to watch the king’s proceedings from Falaise. It
was evidently no part of the king’s purpose to attempt the detailed reduction
of all the scattered fortresses belonging to, or held on behalf of, the duke[81];
and this being the case it was best for William to bide his time, knowing
that if he could possess his soul in patience while the king laid waste his
land, the trouble would eventually pass away of its own accord. And so
King Henry worked his will on the unlucky lands of the Hiesmois and the

Bessin as far as the river Seule, at which point he turned, crossed the Olne
at Caen, and prepared to return to France by way of Varaville and Lisieux.
William in the meantime was following in the track of the invading army.
The small body of men by which he must have been accompanied proves
that he had no thought of coming to any general engagement at the time, but
suddenly the possibilities of the situation seem to have occurred to him, and
he hastily summoned the peasantry of the neighbourhood to come in to him
armed as they were. With the makeshift force thus provided he pressed on
down the valley of the Bavent after the king, who seems to have been quite
unaware of his proximity, and came out at Varaville at the very moment
when the French army was fully occupied with the passage of the Dive. The
king had crossed the river with his vanguard[82]; his rearguard and baggage
train had yet to follow. Seizing the opportunity, which he had probably
anticipated, William flung himself upon the portion of the royal army which
was still on his side of the river and at once threw it into confusion. The
Frenchmen who had already passed the ford and were climbing up the high
ground of Bastebourg to the right of the river, seeing the plight of their
comrades, turned and sought to recross; but the causeway across the river
mouth was old and unsafe and the tide was beginning to turn. Soon the
passage of the river became impossible, the battle became a mere slaughter,
and the Norman poet of the next century describes for us the old king
standing on the hill above the Dive and quivering with impotent passion as
he watched his troops being cut to pieces by the rustic soldiery of his
former ward. The struggle cannot have taken long; the rush of the incoming
tide made swimming fatal, and the destruction of the rearguard was
complete. With but half an army left to him it was hopeless for the king to
attempt to avenge the annihilation of the other half; he had no course but to
retrace his steps and make the best terms he could with his victorious
vassal. These terms were very simple—William merely demanded the
surrender of Tillières, the long-disputed key of the Arve valley.[83] With its
recovery, the tale of the border fortresses of Normandy was complete; the
duchy had amply vindicated its right to independence, and was now
prepared for aggression.
Thus by the end of 1058 King Henry had been definitely baffled in all his
successive schemes for the reduction of Normandy. With our knowledge of
the event, our sympathies are naturally and not unfairly on the side of Duke
William, but they should not blind us to the courage and persistency with

which the king continued to face the problems of his difficult situation. In
every way, of course, the weakest of the early Capetians suffers by
comparison with the greatest of all the dukes of Normandy. The almost
ludicrous disproportion between the king’s legal position and his territorial
power, his halting, inconsistent policy, and the ease with which his best-laid
plans were turned to his discomfiture by a vassal who studiously refrained
from meeting him in battle, all make us inclined to agree with William’s
panegyrical biographer as he contemptuously dismisses his overlord from
the field of Varaville. And yet the wonder is that the king should have
maintained the struggle for so long with the wretched resources at his
disposal. With a demesne far less in area than Normandy alone, surrounded
by the possessions of aggressive feudatories and itself studded with the
castles of a restive nobility, the monarchy depended for existence on the
mutual jealousy of the great lords of France and on such vague, though not
of necessity unreal, respect as they were prepared to show to the successor
of Charlemagne. The Norman wars of Henry I. illustrated once for all the
impotence of the monarchy under such conditions, and the kings who
followed him bowed to the limitations imposed by their position. Philip I.
and Louis VI. were each in general content that the monarchy should act
merely as a single unit among the territorial powers into which the feudal
world of France was divided, satisfied if they could reduce their own
demesne to reasonable obedience and maintain a certain measure of
diplomatic influence outside. Accordingly from this point a change begins
to come over the relations between Normandy and France; neither side aims
at the subjugation of the other, but each watches for such advantages as
chance or the shifting feudal combinations of the time may present. Within
a decade from the battle of Varaville the duke of Normandy had become
master of Maine and England, but in these great events the French crown
plays no part.

Denier of Henry I. of France

CHAPTER III
THE CONQUEST OF MAINE AND THE BRETON WAR

By a curious synchronism both King Henry of France and Count
Geoffrey Martel died in the course of the year 1060; and, with the
disappearance of his two chief enemies of the older generation, the way was
clear for William to attempt a more independent course of action than he
had hitherto essayed. Up to this year his policy had in great measure been
governed by the movements of his overlord and the count of Anjou, both of
them men who were playing their part in the political affairs of France at
the time when he himself was born. From this date he becomes the definite
master of his own fortunes, and the circumstances in which the king and the
count left their respective territories removed any check to his enterprise
and aggression which might otherwise have come from those quarters. The
king was succeeded by his son Philip, at this time a child of scarcely seven
years old, and the government of France during his minority was in the
hands of Baldwin of Flanders, William’s father-in-law. In Anjou a war of
succession broke out which reduced that state to impotence for ten years.
Geoffrey Martel had left no sons, but had designated as his successor
another Geoffrey, nicknamed “le Barbu,” the elder son of his sister
Hermengarde by Geoffrey count of the Gatinais.[84] The younger son,
however, Fulk “le Rechin,” had determined to secure the Angevin
inheritance for himself, and by the time that he had accomplished his
purpose most of the territorial acquisitions of Geoffrey Martel had been torn
from Anjou by the neighbouring powers. Saintonge and the Gatinais fell
respectively into the possession of the duke of Aquitaine and the king of
France; and, more important than all, the Angevin acquisition of Maine, the
greatest work of Geoffrey Martel, was reversed when in 1063 William of
Normandy entered Le Mans and made arrangements for the permanent
annexation of the country.

The counts of Maine had never enjoyed such absolute sovereignty over
their territory as was possessed by the greater feudatories of the French
crown.[85] In addition to the usual vague claims which both Normandy and
Anjou were always ready to assert over their weaker neighbours, and which
nobody would take seriously when there was no immediate prospect of their
enforcement, the suzerainty of the king of France was much more of a
reality over Maine than over Flanders or Aquitaine. In particular the
patronage of the great see of Le Mans rested with the king for the first half
of the eleventh century; and this was an important point, for the bishops of
the period are prominent in the general history of the county. For the most
part they are good examples of the feudal type of prelate, represented in
Norman history by Odo of Bayeux and Geoffrey of Coutances; and several
of them were drawn from a house fertile in feudal politicians, that of the
counts of Bellême, whose great fief lay on the border between Maine and
Normandy. This connection of the episcopate of Le Mans with a great
Norman family might be taken as itself implying some extension of
Norman influence over Maine were it not that the house of Bellême, half
independent and altogether unruly, was quite as likely to work against its
overlord as in his favour. In fact, it was largely through the Bellême bishops
of Le Mans that Angevin power came to be established in Maine for a
while; the bishops were steadily opposed to the line of native counts, and
looked to Anjou for a counterpoise. In particular, Bishop Gervase (1036–
1058) brought it about that King Henry made a grant of all the royal rights
over the see to Count Geoffrey Martel for the term of his life, the bishop
taking this step in pursuance of an intrigue against the guardian of the
reigning count, who was at the time a minor. Having served his turn
Gervase quickly fell into disfavour with Geoffrey and endured a seven
years’ imprisonment at his hands; but it was through his false step that
Geoffrey first secured a definite legal position in Mancel politics.
The counts of Maine themselves are rather shadowy people, but it is
necessary to get a clear idea of their mutual relationships. Count Herbert,
surnamed “Eveille Chien,” the persistent enemy of Fulk Nerra of Anjou and
the last of his line to play a part of his own in French affairs, had died in
1035, leaving a son, Hugh IV., and a daughter, Biota, married to Walter of
Mantes, count of the Vexin Français. Hugh, being under age, was placed
under the governance of his father’s uncle, Herbert “Bacco,” the regent with
whom Bishop Gervase was at enmity. When the above-mentioned grant of

the patronage of the bishopric of Le Mans to Geoffrey Martel had given the
latter a decent pretext for interference in the quarrel, the expulsion of
Herbert Bacco quickly followed; and while the bishop was in captivity
Geoffrey ruled the country in the name of the young count. Upon his death,
in 1051, Geoffrey himself, in despite of the claims of Hugh’s own children,
was accepted by the Manceaux as count of Maine—for it should be noted in
passing that the Mancel baronage was always attached to Anjou rather than
to Normandy. The date at which these events happened is also worthy of
remark, for it shows that during that rather obscure war in the Mayenne
valley which was described in the last chapter William of Normandy was
really fighting against Geoffrey Martel in his position as count of Maine. A
legal foundation for Norman interference lay in the fact, which we have
already noticed, that Bertha of Blois, the widow of Hugh III., had escaped
into Normandy, and that by her advice her son Herbert, the heir of Maine,
had placed himself and his inheritance under the protection of his host.
William, seeing his advantage, was determined to secure his own position
in the matter. He made an arrangement with his guest by which the latter’s
sister Margaret was betrothed to his own son Robert, who here makes his
first appearance in history, with the stipulation that if Hugh were to die
without children his claims over Maine should pass to his sister and her
husband. We do not know the exact date at which this compact was made,
but it is by no means improbable that some agreement of the kind underlay
that clause in the treaty concluded with King Henry after Mortemer by
which William was to be secured in all the conquests which he might make
from Geoffrey of Anjou.
On the latter’s death in 1060 Norman influence rapidly gained the upper
hand in Maine.[86] The war of succession in Anjou prevented either of the
claimants from succeeding to the position of Geoffrey Martel in Maine; and
if Count Herbert ruled there at all during the two years which elapsed
between 1060 and his own death, in 1062, it must have been under Norman
suzerainty. With his death the male line of the counts of Maine became
extinct, and there instantly arose the question whether the county should
pass to Walter, count of Mantes, in right of his wife Biota, the aunt of the
dead Herbert, or to William of Normandy in trust for Margaret, Herbert’s
sister, and her destined husband, Robert, William’s son. In the struggle
which followed, two parties are clearly to be distinguished: one—and
judging from events the least influential—in favour of the Norman

succession, the other, composed of the nationalists of Maine, supporting the
claims of Biota and Walter. The latter was in every way an excellent leader
for the party which desired the independence of the county. As count of the
Vexin Français, Walter had been steadily opposed to the Norman suzerainty
over that district, which resulted from the grant made by Henry I. to Robert
of Normandy in 1032. His policy had been to withdraw his county from the
Norman group of vassal states, and to reunite it to the royal demesne; he
acknowledged the direct superiority of the king of France over the Vexin,
and he must have co-operated in the great invasion of Normandy in 1053;
for it was at his capital that the western division of the royal host assembled
before its march down the Seine valley. Even across the Channel the
interests of his house clashed with those of William. Walter was himself the
nephew of Edward the Confessor, and his brother Ralph who died in 1057
had been earl of Hereford. The royal descent of the Vexin house interfered
seriously with any claim which William might put forward to the
inheritance of Edward the Confessor on the ground of consanguinity. It is
only by placing together a number of scattered hints that we discover the
extent of the opposition to William which is represented by Walter of
Mantes and his house, but there can be no doubt of its reality and
importance.
In Maine itself the leaders of the anti-Norman party seem to have been
William’s own “man” Geoffrey of Mayenne and the Viscount Herbert, lord
of Sainte-Suzanne. There is no doubt that the mass of the baronage and
peasantry of the county were on their side, and this fact led William to form
a plan of operations which singularly anticipates the greater campaign of
the autumn of 1066. William’s ultimate objective was the city of Le Mans,
the capital of Maine and its strongest fortress, the possession of which
would be an evident sanction of his claims over the county. But there were
weighty reasons why he should not proceed to a direct attack on the city.
Claiming the county, as he did, in virtue of legal right, it was not good
policy for him to take steps which, even if successful, would give his
acquisition the unequivocal appearance of a conquest; nor from a military
point of view was it advisable for him to advance into the heart of the
county with the castles of its hostile baronage unreduced behind him. He
accordingly proceeded to the reduction of the county in detail, knowing that
the surrender of the capital would be inevitable when the whole country
around was in his hands. The initial difficulties of the task were great, and

the speed with which William wore down the resistance of a land bristling
with fortified posts proves by how much his generalship was in advance of
the leisurely, aimless strategy of his times. We know few particulars of the
war, but it is clear that William described a great circle round the doomed
city of Le Mans, taking castles, garrisoning them where necessary with his
own troops, and drawing a belt of ravaged land closer and closer round the
central stronghold of the county. By these deliberate measures the defenders
of Le Mans were demoralised to such an extent that William’s appearance
before their walls led to an immediate surrender. From the historical point
of view, however, the chief interest of these operations lies in the curiously
close parallel which they present to the events which followed the battle of
Hastings. In England, as in Maine, it was William’s policy to gain
possession of the chief town of the country by intimidation rather than by
assault, and with the differences which followed from the special conditions
of English warfare his methods were similar in both cases. London
submitted peaceably when William had placed a zone of devastation
between the city and the only quarters from which help could come to her;
Le Mans could not hope to resist when the subject territory had been wasted
by William’s army, and its castles surrendered into his hands. Nor can we
doubt that the success of this plan in the valleys of the Sarthe and Mayenne
was a chief reason why it was adopted in the valley of the Thames.
At Le Mans, as afterwards at London, William, when submission had
become necessary, was received with every appearance of joy by the
citizens; here, as in his later conquest, he distrusted the temper of his new
subjects, and made it his first concern to secure their fidelity by the erection
of a strong fortress in their midst—the castle which William planted on the
verge of the precincts of the cathedral of Le Mans is the Mancel equivalent
of the Tower of London. And, as afterwards in England, events showed that
the obedience of the whole country would not of necessity follow from the
submission of its chief town; it cost William a separate expedition before
the castle of Mayenne surrendered. But the parallel between the Norman
acquisition of Maine and of England should not be pressed too far; it lies
rather in the circumstances of the respective conquests than in their ultimate
results. William was fighting less definitely for his own hand in Maine than
afterwards in England; nominally, at least, he was bound to respect the
rights of the young Countess Margaret, and her projected marriage with
Robert of Normandy proves that Maine was to be treated as an appanage

rather than placed under William’s immediate rule. And to this must be
added that the conquest of Maine was far less permanent and thorough than
the conquest of England. The Angevin tendencies of the Mancel baronage
told after all in the long run. Before twelve years were past William was
compelled to compromise with the claims of the house of Anjou, and after
his death Maine rapidly gravitated towards the rival power on the Loire.
While the body of the Norman army was thus employed in the reduction
of Maine, William despatched a force to make a diversion by ravaging
Mantes and Chaumont, the hereditary demesne of his rival,—an expedition
in its way also anticipating the invasion which William was to lead thither
in person in 1087, and in which he was to meet his death. Most probably it
was this invasion, of which the details are entirely unknown, which
persuaded Walter of Mantes to acquiesce in the fait accompli in Maine; at
least we are told that “of his own will he agreed to the surrender [of Le
Mans], fearing that while defending what he had acquired by wrong he
might lose what belonged to him by inheritance.” Within a short time both
he and his wife came to a sudden and mysterious end, and there was a
suspicion afloat that William himself was not unconcerned in it. It was one
of the many slanders thrown upon William by Waltheof and his boon
companions at the treasonable wedding feast at Exning in 1075 that the
duke had invited his rival and his wife to Falaise and that while they were
his guests he poisoned them both in one night. Medieval credulity in a
matter of this kind was unbounded; and a sinister interpretation of Walter’s
death was inevitably suggested by the fact of his recent hostilities against
his host.
One check to the success of William’s plans followed hard on the death
of Walter and Biota. Margaret, the destined bride of Robert of Normandy,
died before the marriage could be consummated. In 1063 Robert himself
could not have been more than nine years old; while, although Margaret
must have reached the age of twelve, the whole course of the history
suggests that she was little more than a child, a fact which somewhat tends
to discount the pious legend, in which our monastic informants revel, that
the girl shrank from the thought of marriage and had already begun to
practise the austerities of the religious profession. She left two sisters both
older than herself, whose marriage alliances are important for the future
history of Maine[87]; but their claims for the present were ignored, and
William himself adopted the title of count of Maine.

Somewhere about the time of these events (the exact date is unknown)
William was seized with a severe illness, which brought him to the point of
death. So sore bestead was he that he was laid on the ground as one about to
die, and in his extreme need he gave the reliquary which accompanied him
on his progresses to the church of St. Mary of Coutances. No chronicler has
recorded this episode, of which we should know nothing were it not that the
said reliquary was subsequently redeemed by grants of land to the church
which had received it in pledge; yet the future history of France and
England hung on the event of that day.[88]
It was probably within a year of the settlement of Maine that William
engaged in the last war undertaken by him as a mere duke of the Normans,
the Breton campaign which is commonly assigned to the year 1064. As in
the earlier wars with Anjou, a border dispute seems to have been the
immediate occasion of hostilities, though now as then there were grounds of
quarrel between the belligerents which lay deeper. Count Alan of Rennes,
William’s cousin and guardian, had been succeeded by his son Conan, who
like his father was continually struggling to secure for his line the
suzerainty of the whole of Brittany as against the rival house of the counts
of Nantes, a struggle which, under different conditions and with additional
competitors at different times had now been going on for more than a
century. The county of Nantes at this particular time was held by a younger
branch of the same family, and there are some slight indications that the
counts of Nantes, perhaps through enmity to their northern kinsmen, took
up a more friendly attitude towards Normandy than that adopted by the
counts of Rennes. However this may be, Count Conan appears in the
following story as representing Breton independence against Norman
aggression; and when William founded the castle of Saint James in the
south-west angle of the Avranchin as a check on Breton marauders, Conan
determined on an invasion of Normandy, and sent word to William of the
exact day on which he would cross the border.
By the majority of Frenchmen it would seem that Brittany was regarded
as a land inhabited by savages; in the eleventh century the peninsula stood
out as distinct from the rest of France as it stands to-day. Its inhabitants had
a high reputation for their courage and simplicity of life, but they were still
in the tribal stage of society, and their manners and customs were regarded
with abhorrence by the ecclesiastical writers of the time. Like most tribal
peoples they had no idea of permanent political unity; and the present war

was largely influenced by the fact that within the county of Rennes a Celtic
chief named Rhiwallon was holding the town of Dol against his immediate
lord on behalf of the duke of Normandy.[89] Instead of invading Normandy
as he had threatened, Conan was driven to besiege Dol, and it was
William’s first object in the campaign to relieve his adherent there.
What gives exceptional interest to the somewhat unimportant expedition
which followed is the undoubted presence in William’s army of his future
rival for the crown of England, Harold the earl of Wessex.[90] The reason for,
and the incidents connected, with, his visit to Normandy will have to be
considered in a later chapter, but there cannot be any question as to its
reality; and in a famous section, the Bayeux tapestry, our best record of this
campaign, shows us Harold rescuing with his own hand a number of
Norman soldiers who were being swept away by the Coesnon as the army
crossed the border stream of Brittany. On the approach of the Norman army
Conan abandoned the siege of Dol and fell back on his capital of Rennes;
but relations soon seem to have become strained between Rhiwallon and his
formidable ally, for we find Rhiwallon remarking to William that it
mattered little to the country folk around Dol whether their substance were
to be consumed by a Norman or a Breton army. Possibly it may have been
the remonstrances of Rhiwallon which induced William to retire beyond the
Norman border, but we are told that as he was in the act of leaving Brittany
word was brought to him that Geoffrey (le Barbu) count of Anjou had
joined himself to Conan with a large army and that both princes would
advance to fight him on the morrow. It does not appear that William gave
them the opportunity, but the tapestry records what was probably a sequel to
this campaign in the section which represents William as besieging Conan
himself in the fortress of Dinan. From the picture which displays Conan
surrendering the keys of the castle on the point of his spear to the duke it is
evident that the place was taken, but we know nothing of the subsequent
fortunes of the war nor of the terms according to which peace was made.
Within two years of these events, if we are right in assigning them to 1064,
Conan died suddenly,[91] and was succeeded by his brother-in-law Hoel,
count of Cornouaille, who united in his own person most of the greater
lordships into which Brittany had hitherto been divided.

THE SIEGE OF DINANT FROM THE BAYEUX TAPESTRY

It may be well at this point briefly to review the position held by William
at the close of 1064. With the exception of his father-in-law of Flanders, no
single feudatory north of the Loire could for a moment be placed in
comparison with him. Anjou and the royal demesne itself were, for different
reasons, as we have seen, of little consequence at this time. The influence of
Champagne under its featureless rulers was always less than might have
been expected from the extent and situation of the county; and just now the
attention of Count Theobald III. was directed towards the recovery of
Touraine from the Angevin claimants rather than towards any rivalry with
the greater power of Normandy. Brittany indeed had just shown itself
hostile, but the racial division between Bretagne Brettonante and the
Gallicised east, which always prevented the duchy from attaining high rank
among the powers of north France, rendered it quite incapable of competing
with Normandy on anything like equal terms. With the feudal lords to the
east of the Seine and upper Loire William had few direct relations, but they,
like the princes of Aquitaine, had received a severe lesson as to the power
of Normandy in the rout of the royal army which followed the surprise of
Mortemer. On the other hand, Normandy, threaded by a great river, with a
long seaboard and good harbours, with a baronage reduced to order and a
mercantile class hardly less prosperous than the men of the great cities of
Flanders, would have been potentially formidable in the hands of a ruler of
far less power than the future conqueror of England. Never before had
Normandy attained so high a relative position as that in which she appears
in the seventh decade of the eleventh century; and, kind as was fortune to
the mighty enterprise which she was so soon to undertake, its success and
even its possibility rested on the skilful policy which had guided her history
in the eventful years which had followed Val-es-dunes.

Denier of Conan II. of Brittany

CHAPTER IV
THE PROBLEM OF THE ENGLISH SUCCESSION

The idea of a Norman conquest of England was no new thing when the
actual blow fell in the autumn of 1066. The fateful marriage of Ethelred and
Emma, sixty years before, had made it impossible that the politics of the
island and the duchy should ever again be independent of each other; it led
directly to the English expedition of Robert of Normandy in 1034, and in
Edward the Confessor it gave England a king who was half a Norman in
blood, and whose ideas of government were derived from the political
conditions of his mother’s land. To whatever aspect of the history of this
period we may turn, this Norman influence will sooner or later become
apparent; in religion and commerce, as in the narrower field of politics, the
Norman is working his way into the main current of English national life.
All this, however, is somewhat apart from the question as to the date at
which Duke William began to lay plans for carrying out the conquest of
England in his own person. There are two unknown quantities in the
problem: the date at which it was generally recognised that Edward the
Confessor would leave no direct heir to the English throne, and the king’s
own subsequent intentions with respect to the succession. Had such an heir
been forthcoming in 1066 we may be sure that his inheritance would have
been undisturbed from the side of Normandy, for William’s claim to
succeed his childless cousin by right of consanguinity was something more
than a matter of form. Now Edward was married in 1045, being then in the
very prime of life, and we must certainly allow for the passage of a
reasonable period of time before we can feel certain that the politicians of
England and Normandy were treating the succession as an open question. In
particular it is difficult to be confident that in 1049, when the negotiations
for the marriage of William and Matilda of Flanders were in progress, the

ultimate childlessness of Edward the Confessor was known to be inevitable.
[92]

A similar uncertainty hangs over the plans which the Confessor formed in
the latter event for the future of his kingdom. His Norman blood, his early
residence in the duchy, and the marked predilection which he showed for
men of Norman race, very naturally lead to the impression that, in the
earlier part of his reign at least, his desire was to provide for the
transmission of his inheritance to his mother’s family. But even this
conclusion is not beyond question. Edward on his accession in 1042
occupied a most difficult position. After twenty-five years of Danish rule a
very distinct party in the state wished to maintain the Scandinavian
connection. Edward’s recognition as king was mainly the work of Earl
Godwine and his party, and the earl expected and could enforce full
payment for his services. Edward would have shown less than the little
intelligence with which he is to be credited if he had failed to see that some
counterpoise to the power of his overmighty subject might be found by
giving wealth and influence to strangers from across the Channel. Hence
arose that stream of Norman immigration which distinguishes the reign and
the consequent formation of a royalist, non-national party; for each
individual settler must have understood that all he might possess in the
island depended on the king’s favour. Such a policy was bound sooner or
later to produce a reaction on the part of Godwine and his associates; and
thus arose the famous crisis of the autumn of 1051. Godwine, trying to
reassert his influence in the state, fails to carry with him the other earls of
England in an attack on the king’s favourites and is driven to flee the
country. What Godwine resented was clearly the existence of a rival power
at court, and the apathy in his cause of such men as Leofric of Mercia and
Siward of Northumbria suggests that he was not recognised by them as in
any real sense the champion of national as against foreign influences. With
his flight the first period of the reign of Edward the Confessor ends, and in
the interval before his restoration William of Normandy made his first
appearance on the shores of England.
Of this visit we know very little; the native chronicler of Worcester
simply tells us that “Earl William came from over sea with a great company
of Frenchmen, and the king received him and as many of his companions as
pleased him and let them go again.” The question at once presents itself, did
Edward at this time make any promise of the English crown to William? If

he ever did make an explicit promise to this effect it can scarcely be placed
at any other date, for this was the only occasion after Edward’s departure
from Normandy in 1042 on which the king and the duke are known to have
met in person. The fact that such a promise forms an essential part of the
story of the Conquest as told by all Norman writers is an argument in its
favour which would more than counterbalance the natural silence of the
English authorities, were they much better informed upon matters of high
policy than is actually the case. But, after all, the question is really of
secondary importance, for in the next year Godwine returned to power, and
Edward for the rest of his reign seems to have made no serious attempt to
disturb the ascendency of the English party.
The death of Godwine in 1053 made little immediate difference to the
political situation in general nor to the existing relations between Normandy
and England. The succession of his son Harold to the earldom of Wessex
provokes no comment on the part of the contemporary chroniclers; the
semi-hereditary character of the great earldoms was by this time recognised
for all working purposes. Nevertheless, we can see that the accession of
Harold to a provincial government of the first rank, and most probably to
the unofficial primacy in the state which had been held by Earl Godwine,
takes place among the chief events in the sequence of causes which ended
in the great overthrow of 1066. On the other hand we should not be led by
the actual cause of the history into the assumption that Harold’s designs
upon the crown had already begun at this early date. With all his personal
weakness, King Edward’s own wishes were likely to be the decisive factor
in the choice of his successor, nor have we any record that Harold opposed
the candidate whom we know to have received the king’s favour shortly
after this time.
This candidate, whose appearance in the field with the king’s sanction
was likely to prove fatal to any aspirations to the throne in which either
William or Harold might have begun to indulge, was Edward the Etheling,
son of the famous Edward Ironside, and therefore nephew by the half-blood
to the Confessor. He had been sent by Cnut into remote exile, and the
summons which brought him back to England as its destined heir was the
work of King Edward himself. By a strange chance, immediately on his
arrival in 1057, and before he had even seen the king, the etheling fell ill
and died,[93] and, although there was something about his end which was
rather mysterious, there is nothing to suggest that it was accelerated in the

interest of any other pretender to the crown. With his death there really
passed away the one promising chance of perpetuating the old English
dynasty, for Edgar, the son of the dead etheling, who was to live until 1126
at least, can only have been the merest child in 1057.

SEAL OF EDWARD THE
CONFESSOR

It would seem then that 1057 is the earliest possible year from which the
rivalry of William of Normandy and Harold Godwinson for the throne of
England can be dated. The recall of Edward the Etheling suggests that it
cannot be placed earlier, while the state of preparedness in which both
parties are found at the beginning of 1066 shows that their plans must have
been formed for some years at least before the Confessor’s death. And there
is one mysterious episode which may very possibly have some connection
with the change in the succession question caused by the death of Edward
the Etheling. In or about 1058 Earl Harold made a tour on the continent,
reaching as far as Rome, but also including Normandy and North France
generally, and we are told that he made arrangements for receiving help
from certain French powers if he should need it at any time.[94] The passage
in which we are told of these negotiations is very obscure, but it is by no
means improbable that Harold, when the death of the etheling had opened
for him a possibility of succeeding to the crown, may have tried to find
allies who would hamper the movements of his most formidable rival when
the critical time came. Also it is not without significance that 1058 is the
year of Varaville, a date at which French jealousy of Norman power would
be at its height. At any rate we may at this point stop to consider the relative
position occupied by the earl and the duke respectively with respect to their

chances of succeeding to the splendid inheritance of the oldest dynasty in
Western Europe.
The first point which deserves discussion is the nature of the title to the
English crown. “Hereditary” and “elective,” the words which one naturally
contrasts in this connection, are terms of vague and fluctuating meaning in
any case, while it has always been recognised that neither can be employed
in relation to the tenure of the crown at any period of English history
without due qualification. To say simply that the English monarchy was
“elective” at the period with which we are dealing, is an insufficient
statement unless we also consider the limits within which the choice lay on
any given occasion, the process involved in the act of election, and the body
which exercised the elective right. With regard to the first of these matters
there undoubtedly existed an ancient and deep-seated feeling that a king
should only be chosen from a kingly stock; in the eleventh century the
sentiment still survived with which at an earlier period the nation had
demanded that its rulers should have sprung from the blood of the gods.
This idea was far older than any feeling of nationality, to which it might
from time to time run counter—it helps, for instance, to explain the ease
with which the English had accepted the royal Dane Cnut for their ruler—
but with this highly important reservation it is very improbable that the
succession was determined by anything which could be called general
principles. The crown would naturally pass to the most popular kinsman of
the late ruler, and the question of the exact relationship between the dead
king and his heir would be a secondary matter.
William of Normandy was of sufficiently noble birth to satisfy the
popular sentiment in the former respect, for Rollo himself was the scion of
an ancient line of Norwegian chieftains. Harold on his mother’s side
inherited royal blood, for Gytha, Earl Godwine’s wife, was descended from
the family of the kings of Sweden; but whereas no writer near the time
remarks on this feature in Harold’s descent, the origin of the “jarls of
Normandy” was still a living memory in the north. Far more important in
every way, however, was the undoubted kinship between William and King
Edward, a fact which William made the very foundation of his claim and
which was undoubtedly recognised by the men of the time as giving him an
advantage which could not be gainsaid. At the present day, indeed, it is
rather difficult to understand the influence exercised by the somewhat
distant relationship which was all that united William and Edward,

especially in view of the fact that Edgar, son of Edward the Etheling, still
continued the male line of the royal house of Wessex. We can only explain
it on the ground that in 1066 Edgar was under the age at which he would be
competent to rule independently, and that the public opinion of the time
would not accept a minor as king so long as there existed another candidate
connected with the royal house and capable of taking up the reins of
government in his own hands. In fact, of the three candidates between
whom the choice lay on the Confessor’s death William, after all, was the
one who combined the greatest variety of desirable qualifications. Edgar
was nearest to the throne by order of birth, but his youth placed him at a
fatal disadvantage; Harold was a man of mature years and of wide
experience in the government, but his warmest supporters could not pretend
that he was a kinsman of King Edward; William was already a ruler whose
fame had spread far beyond the borders of his own duchy, and in the third
generation he could claim a common ancestor with the dead king. Lastly,
we should remember that the fact which under modern conditions would
outweigh all other considerations, the fact that William was a foreigner, was
less important in the eleventh century than at any later time. It was certainly
a disadvantage, but one which was shared in a less degree by both
William’s competitors: if he was a pure Norman, Harold was half a Dane,
Edgar was half a German. The example of Cnut showed that there was
nothing to prevent a man of wholly foreign blood from receiving general
acceptance as king of England; and if the racial differences which existed in
the country prepared the way for his reception, something of the same work
was done for William by those Normans who had flocked into England
under King Edward’s protection.
In all those cases in which the late king had left no single, obvious, heir
to the throne, the succession would naturally be settled by the great men of
the land—by that informal, fluctuating body known as the “witan.” So far
as we can tell, the witan would be guided in part by the prevailing popular
opinion, but more effectually by the known wishes of the dead sovereign
with respect to his successor; we know, for instance, that both these
influences contributed to the election of Edward the Confessor himself.[95] It
is, however, probable that, so far from the elective nature of the monarchy
having been a main principle of English institutions from the earliest date,
the idea was really an importation of the eleventh century. It has recently
been suggested that the action of the witan in early times with regard to the

choice of a new king was something which would be much better described
as “recognition” than as election in any modern sense, that there is no
evidence to prove that the witan behaved as a united body, and that it was
the adhesion of individual nobles to the most likely heir which really
invested him with the royal power.[96] According to this account, such traces
of election in the wider sense as are discernible in the eleventh century may
with probability be set down to Danish influence, for the three
Scandinavian nations had advanced much further than other Teutonic
peoples in the development of their native institutional forms. But, even so,
there is much in the history of the year 1066 to suggest that the older ideas
still prevailed: William claimed the throne by hereditary right and it was the
submission of Stigand, Edwin, Morcar, Edgar the Etheling, and the citizens
of London, not the vote of any set assembly, which gave sanction to his
claim.
In the light of this anticipation we may now consider the most perplexing
question in William’s life, the truth underlying the famous story of Harold’s
visit to Normandy and the oath which he there swore to William. Unlike
most questions relating to the eleventh century, the difficulty in the present
case arises from the wealth of our information on the subject; with the
exception of those purely English writers Florence of Worcester and the
authors of the Anglo-Saxon chronicle, the significance of whose silence will
be seen shortly, every historical writer of the fifty years succeeding the
Conquest tells the story at length, and no two writers tell the same story.
And yet we cannot safely reject the tale as fabulous for two reasons: the
silence of those who wrote with native sympathies proves that there was an
element of truth in the Norman story which they did not feel themselves at
liberty to deny, while the rapid diffusion of the tale itself among writers
widely separated in point of place and circumstance would be unintelligible
if it were the result of sheer invention. Nor is a story necessarily suspicious
because its details are romantic.
The skeleton of the tale is that Harold, happening, for reasons diversely
stated, to be sailing in the Channel, was driven by a storm on to the coast of
Ponthieu, and that being thereby regarded as the lawful prey of the count he
was thrown into prison at Beaurain, evidently to be held to ransom. While
Harold was in prison the Duke of Normandy became apprised of the fact,
and sending to Count Guy, who had become his feudal dependant after the
battle of Mortemer, William had Harold brought with all honour into the

duchy. For an indefinite time the earl stayed at the court of the duke, and
even accompanied him on the Breton expedition which was described in the
last chapter; but before his departure he placed himself under some
obligation to his host, the nature of which is the key to the whole matter, but
with regard to which scarcely any two writers are in unison. There is no
doubt that Harold became William’s man, and it would seem certain that he
took an oath which bore some reference to the rivalry for the English throne
in which both were evidently engaged. Most writers make the essence of
the oath to be a promise on the part of Harold to do all in his power to
secure the crown for William upon Edward’s death, and there is a powerful
current of tradition which asserts that Harold pledged himself to marry one
of William’s daughters. In other words, Harold undertook to recognise
William as king of England in due season, and to secure for him the
adhesion of such of the English nobility as were under his influence; his
marriage with William’s daughter being doubtless intended to guarantee his
good faith when the critical moment came. Such an agreement would still
leave Harold obviously the first man in England; indeed the relationship
which would have been created between William and Harold, if it had been
carried into effect, would in some respects have reproduced the relationship
in which Edward the Confessor had stood with regard to Earl Godwine in
1042. This fact makes it difficult to believe that Harold was necessarily
acting under compulsion when he took the oath; he had many rivals and
enemies in England, and it was well worth his while to secure his position
in the event of Edward’s death before his own plans were mature.[97]
William on his part had everything to gain by causing Harold to enter
into such an engagement. If the oath were kept William would have turned
a probable rival into an ally; if it were broken he would secure all the moral
advantage which would accrue to him from the perjury of his opponent. But
there is no reason to believe that he insisted on Harold taking the oath
merely in order that he might break it, nor is there any good authority for
the famous story that William entrapped Harold into taking a vow of
unusual solemnity by concealing a reliquary beneath the chest on which the
latter’s hand rested while he swore. It was inevitable that an incident of this
kind should gather round it a mythical accretion: but the whole course of
the history proves that some such episode really took place. William’s
apologists could put it in the forefront of their narratives of the Conquest,
and all subsequent writers have dwelt upon it as a main cause of the

invasion; yet, although scepticism is from time to time expressed upon this
detail or that, not one of the historians of the next century, some of whom
were possessed of distinct critical powers, and had access to good sources
of information, has given a hint that the whole story was a myth.
On January 5, 1066, King Edward died, and on Thursday, January 6th,
Earl Harold was chosen as king by the Witan assembled at Westminster for
the Christmas feast, and crowned that same day by Ealdred, archbishop of
York. We possess a circumstantial account of the last days of Edward,
written only a few years after these events, which describes how the King,
within an hour of his death, had emphatically commended his wife and his
kingdom to the care of Harold.[98] With little debate, as it would seem, the
last wishes of the last king of the line of Egbert were carried into effect;
Harold was chosen king forthwith, and on the same day the sanction of the
church made the step irrevocable. England was now committed to the rule
of a king whose title to the crown depended solely upon the validity of the
elective principle, and whose success or failure would depend upon the
recognition which this principle would obtain among foreign powers, and
upon the support which those who had chosen to accept him as their lord
were prepared to extend to him, should his claim be challenged. Under the
circumstances the choice of Harold was perhaps inevitable. The dying wish
of Edward could not with decency be disregarded; the scene of the election
lay in just that part of the country where the interest of the house of
Godwine was at its strongest; and if traditional custom were to be
disregarded and the royal line forsaken no stronger native candidate could
have been found. On the other hand, there could be no doubt that the event
of that memorable Epiphany was fraught with danger on every side. Even if
it had not thrown defiance to the most formidable prince in Europe, it
founded an ominous precedent, it showed that the royal dignity was not
beyond the grasp of an aspiring subject, it exposed the crown to intrigues of
a class from which England, weak at the best as was its political structure,
had hitherto been exempt. The Norman Conquest was an awful catastrophe;
but at least it saved England from the perils of an elective monarchy.

HAROLD ENTHRONED
FROM THE BAYEUX TAPESTRY

The impression which the coronation of Harold made upon the
politicians of Europe was unmistakable. From Rome to Trondheim every
ruler to whom the concerns of England were a matter of interest realised
that a revolutionary step had been taken. From the crude narrative of the
Latin historian of the Norwegian kings, as from the conventional periods of
the papal chancery, we gather that the accession of Harold was regarded as
an act of usurpation, although there is no unanimity as to the personality of
the rightful heir whom he had supplanted. Old claims, long dormant, were
revived; the kings of Norway and Denmark remembered that England had
once belonged to the Scandinavian world. Had Edgar the Etheling or
William of Normandy been elected, murmurings from this quarter at least
would no doubt have been heard, but they would have lost half their force:
the former could have appealed to the prevailing sentiment in favour of
hereditary right; the latter could in addition have poured at once into
England a military force sufficient to meet all possible invaders on equal
terms. Harold had neither of these safeguards, and his oath to William had
given to the most powerful section of his opponents an intelligible ground
on which to base their quarrel. Seldom in any country has a new dynasty
been inaugurated under circumstances so full of foreboding.
All this, of course, meant a corresponding increase of strength to
William. Vague as is our knowledge of the negotiations with the several

powers whose good-will was desirable for his enterprise, we can see that he
brought them at least into a general attitude of friendly neutrality. We are
told that the Emperor Henry IV. promised the unqualified support of
Germany if it should be needed,[99] and also that Swegen Estrithson of
Denmark joined William’s side, though our informant adds that the Danish
king proved himself in effect the friend of William’s enemies. The French
crown was, as we have seen, under the influence of Baldwin of Flanders,
William’s father-in-law; and so long as a war of succession distracted
Anjou, William need fear no danger from that quarter. Maine was a
dependency of the Norman duchy. Nothing, in fact, in William’s history is
more remarkable than the way in which, at the very moment of his great
attempt, the whole political situation was in his favour. No invasion of
England would have been possible before 1060, when King Henry of
France and Geoffrey Martel were removed from William’s path, while the
growth of King Philip to manhood and the formation of Flanders into an
aggressive anti-Norman state under Robert the Frisian would have
increased William’s difficulties a thousandfold if Edward the Confessor had
lived for five years longer. In great part William’s advantageous position in
1066 was due to his own statesmanship; in no small degree it resulted from
the discredit which the national cause of England suffered in the eyes of
Europe from the election of Harold; but above all it must be set down to
William’s sheer good luck. William the Conqueror, like Napoleon, might
have believed in his star without incurring the reproach of undue
superstition.
Of all William’s negotiations that which was most characteristic of the
temper in which he pursued his claim was an appeal to the head of the
church to decide between his right and that of Harold:

“That no rashness might stain his righteous cause he sent to the Pope,
formerly Anselm, bishop of Lucca, asserting the justice of the war he had
undertaken with all the eloquence at his command. Harold neglected to do
this; either because he was too proud by nature, or because he mistrusted
his own cause, or because he feared that his messengers would be hindered
by William and his associates, who were watching all the ports. The Pope
weighed the arguments of both sides, and then sent a banner to William as
an earnest of his kingdom.”[100]

The nature of this transaction should not be misunderstood. By inviting
the papal arbitration William was in no sense mortgaging any of the royal
prerogatives in the island which he hoped to conquer. His action, that is,
does not in any way resemble the step which his descendent John took a
hundred and fifty years later, when he surrendered his kingdom to Innocent
III. to be held thenceforward as a papal fief.[101] William was simply
submitting his cause to the court which was the highest recognised authority
in all matters relating to inheritance, and which was doubly competent to try
the present case, involving as it did all the questions of laesio fidei which
arose out of Harold’s oath. Nor need we doubt that the verdict given
represented the justice of the case as it would be presented to the pope and
his advisers; we know at least, on the authority of Hildebrand himself, that
it was not without an acrimonious discussion that judgment was given in
favour of William. It would seem, in fact, that it required all the personal
influence that Hildebrand could exercise to persuade the leaders of the
church to commit themselves to the support of claims which, if prosecuted,
must inevitably lead to bloodshed. And in later years Hildebrand told
William that his action had been governed by his knowledge of the latter’s
character, and by the hope that when raised to a higher dignity he would
continue to show himself a dutiful subject of the church.[102] Hildebrand
added that he had not been disappointed; and in fact the attraction of the
great island of the west within the influence of the ideas of the reformed
papacy was worth the suppression of a few scruples on the part of the Curia.

HAROLD’S OATH
FROM THE BAYEUX TAPESTRY

Seventy years afterwards the papal court was again called upon to
adjudicate in a dispute relating to the succession to the English throne, and
this under circumstances which deserve notice here as illustrating the nature
of William’s appeal. In 1136, immediately, it would seem, after the
coronation of Stephen, his rival, the Empress Matilda sent envoys to Pope
Innocent II. to protest against the usurpation. Stephen, wiser in his
generation than Harold, replied by sending his own representative, and the
case was argued in detail before a council specially convened for the
purpose by the pope. Just as in the more famous episode of 1066, the point
on which the plaintiff’s advocates grounded their case was the fact that the
defendant had taken an oath to secure the succession of his rival; and it
rested with the pope to decide whether this oath were valid. It is with
reference to this last point that the parallel between the events of 1066 and
1136 ceases: in the latter case the pope by refusing to give judgment tacitly
acquitted Stephen of the guilt of perjury; in 1066 Harold’s neglect to lay a
statement of his case before the papal court produced its natural result in the
definite decision which was given against him.[103] In either case it will be
seen that what is submitted to the Curia is a question of law, not of politics;
the pope is not regarded as having any right to dispose of the English
crown; he is merely asked to consider the respective titles of two disputants.
Armed thus with the sanction of the church there lay before William the
serious task of raising an army sufficiently large to meet the military force
at his rival’s command on something like equal terms. Such an army could
not possibly be derived from Normandy alone, great as was the strength of
the duchy in comparison with its area. However favourable the general
outlook might be for William’s plans, he cannot have thought for an instant
of staking the whole resources of Normandy upon a single venture; a
venture of which the possible results might be very brilliant but of which
the immediate risk was very great. Nor was it possible for William by any
stretch of feudal law to summon his vassals and their men to follow him
across the Channel as a matter of right and duty; if he were to obtain their
support he was bound to place the expedition before them as a voluntary
enterprise. Thus stated there can have been little doubt as to the response

which would be made to his appeal. The Norman conquest of Naples and
the Norman exploits in Spain had proclaimed to the world the mighty
exploits of which the race was capable, nor need we believe that the
Normans themselves mistrusted their reputation. And although William’s
contemporary biographer, anxious to display the magnanimity of his hero,
has represented the latter’s subjects as viewing the enterprise with dismay,
[104]
it is not really probable that the Norman knighthood was seriously
deterred from adventuring itself for unlimited gains in the rich and
neighbouring island by the prospect of having to fight hard for them.
In the early part of 1066, but most probably after the termination of
William’s cause at Rome, a council of the Norman baronage met at
Lillebonne[105] to discuss the proposed invasion of England. It is plain that
what most exercised the minds of William and his barons was the difficulty
of building, equipping and manning a number of ships sufficient for the
transport of the army within a reasonable time. In fact it seems probable
that one special purpose of the council was to ascertain the number of ships
which each baron was prepared to contribute towards the fleet—a matter
which lay altogether outside the general question of military service and
could only be solved by amicable agreement between the duke and his
vassals taken individually. William stipulated that the ships should be ready
within the year; a demand which to some at least appeared impossible of
fulfilment; and, indeed, the creation of an entire fleet of transport vessels
within six months is a wonderful illustration of the energy with which the
Norman nobility adopted the cause of the duke. Transport vessels the ships
were, and nothing else, as is evident from the representation of them in the
Bayeux tapestry, and we are bound to conclude that it was well for William
that his passage of the Channel met with no serious opposition on the part
of Harold. As might be expected, the number of ships actually provided is
very variously given by different writers. Curiously enough the most
probable, because the lowest, estimate is made by a very late authority, the
Norman poet Wace, who says that when he was a boy his father told him
that six hundred and ninety-six ships assembled at St. Valery. There have
also come down to us several statements of the contribution which the
greater barons of Normandy made to the fleet, which are probably true in
substance although the lists differ among themselves and the totals which
they imply exceed the modest figures presented by Wace.[106] It would
appear that William’s two half-brothers headed the list; Robert of Mortain

giving a hundred and twenty ships, Odo of Bayeux a hundred. The counts
of Evreux and Eu, both members of the ducal family, furnished eighty and
sixty ships respectively. William Fitz Osbern, Roger de Beaumont, Roger
de Montgomery, and Hugh d’Avranches gave sixty ships each; Hugh de
Montfort, fifty. Two men who do not appear in the subsequent history, a
certain Fulk the Lame and one Gerald, who, although styled the seneschal,
is difficult to identify at William’s court, gave forty ships each. Thirty ships
were given by Walter Giffard and by Vulgrin, bishop of Le Mans; and
Nicholas, abbot of St. Ouen, and the son of Duke Richard III. contributed
twenty. An interesting figure in the list is Remi, the future bishop of
Lincoln, who in 1066 was only almoner of Fécamp abbey, but nevertheless
provided a ship and manned it with twenty knights. The Duchess Matilda
herself supplied the ship, named the Mora, which was to carry her husband.
One fact stands out clearly enough on the surface of this list—the great bulk
of the fleet was supplied by William’s kinsmen and by men whom we know
to have enjoyed his immediate confidence, and it is significant that we can
recognise in this brief account just those men who received the greatest
spoils of the conquered land. Among these few names the future earldoms
of Kent, Shrewsbury, Hereford, Chester, Buckingham, Warwick, and
Leicester are represented. Doubtless the rest of the Norman nobility in one
way or another contributed in proportion to its wealth, but we have just
accounted for nearly eight hundred vessels, and it is clear that in the all-
important matter of the fleet William found his fullest support among his
relatives and personal friends.
How far this statement would hold good in relation to the army of the
Conquest is a question which we have no detailed means of answering.
Doubtless the lords of Montfort, Longueville, Montgomery, and their
fellows brought the full complement of their vassals to the duke’s muster,
but the essential fact in the composition of William’s army lies in the width
of the area from which it was recruited. From every quarter of the French
kingdom, and from not a few places beyond its borders, volunteers crowded
in to swell the Norman host. Brittany supplied the largest number of such
volunteers, and next to Brittany came Flanders, but the fame of William’s
expedition had spread beyond the Alps, and the Norman states in South
Italy and Sicily sent their representatives.[107] And this composite character
of the army which fought at Hastings had deep and abiding results. A
hundred years after the Conquest, Henry II. will still be sending out writs

addressed to his barons and lieges “French and English,” and the
terminology here expresses a fact of real importance. The line of racial
distinction which was all-important in later eleventh-century England was
not between Englishmen and Normans, but between Englishmen and
Frenchmen. England fell, not before any province, however powerful, of
the French kingdom, but, in effect, before the whole of French-speaking
Europe, and, by her fall, she herself became part of that whole. For nearly a
hundred years England had been oscillating between the French and the
Scandinavian world; the events of 1066 carried her finally within the
influence of Southern ideas in religion, politics, and culture.
The French auxiliaries of William have often been described as
adventurers, and adventurers in a sense no doubt they were. But the word
should not be pressed so as to imply that they belonged to a social rank
inferior either to their Norman associates or to the English thegnhood whom
they were to displace,—there should be no talk of “grooms and scullions
from beyond the sea”[108] in this connection. Socially there was little to
distinguish a knight or noble from Brittany or Picardy from Normans like
Robert d’Oilly or Henry de Ferrers; nor, rude as their ideas of comfort and
refinement must seem to us, have we any warrant for supposing that Wigod
of Wallingford or Tochi the son of Outi had been in advance of either in this
respect. Like the Normans themselves the Frenchmen varied indefinitely in
point of origin. Some of them were the younger sons of great houses, some
belonged to the lesser baronage, some to the greater; Count Eustace of
Bologne might by courtesy be described as a reigning prince. Some of the
most famous names in the succeeding history can be traced to this origin—
Walter Tirel was lord of Poix in Ponthieu, Gilbert of Ghent was the ancestor
of the medieval earls of Lincoln. But the best way of realising the
prevalence of this non-Norman element among the conquerors of England
is to work through one of the schedules which the compilers of Domesday
Book prefixed to the survey of each county, giving the names of its land-
owners, and to note the proportion of “Frenchmen” to pure Normans. In
Northamptonshire, for example, among forty-three lay tenants there occur
six Flemings, three Bretons, and two Picards, and Northamptonshire in this
respect is a typical county.
At or about the time of the council of Lillebonne there is reason to
believe that messages were passing between William and Harold
concerning the fulfilment of the fateful oath. It is fairly certain that William

demanded the surrender of the crown and Harold’s immediate marriage to
his daughter, agreeing in return to confirm him in his earldom of Wessex,
which last is probably what is meant when our rhetorical informants tell us
that William promised to grant half the kingdom to his rival. Such
negotiations were bound to fall through; Harold had gone too far to
withdraw, even if he had been so minded, and William’s object in making
these proposals could only have been to maintain in the eyes of the world
the appearance of a lawful claimant deprived of his inheritance. Also we
may be quite sure that the building of the fleet was not interrupted during
the progress of the negotiations.
The difficulties of Harold’s reign began early. The weakness of his
position was revealed at the outset by the refusal of Northumbria to accept
him as king, a refusal very possibly prompted by Earl Morcar, who could
not be expected to feel much loyalty towards the new dynasty. By making a
special journey to York, Harold succeeded in silencing the opposition for
the moment, and his marriage with Ealdgyth, the sister of Earls Edwin and
Morcar, which may be dated with probability to about this time,[109] was
very possibly intended to conciliate the great midland house. It would
certainly serve as a definite assertion that Harold had no intention of
fulfilling that part of his oath to William which pledged him to a marriage
with the duke’s daughter, nor can we doubt that Harold realised the
expediency of providing an heir to his crown with the least possible delay.
At any rate he seems to have been enjoying a few weeks of tranquillity after
his visit to York when he received an unmistakable intimation of the coming
storm, which was none the less ominous because its immediate results were
insignificant.
Tostig, the dispossessed earl of Northumbria, had spent the winter of
1065–6, as we have seen, with Baldwin of Flanders,[110] a fact which is
suggestive when we remember the relations between Baldwin and William
of Normandy. It is evident that Tostig was spending the period of his
banishment in forming schemes for his restoration, and the fact that his
brother on becoming king dare not or would not recall him made him
inevitably a willing tool of William’s policy. Accordingly, early in 1066
Tostig moved from Flanders into Normandy, appeared at the duke’s court,
and urged him on to an invasion of England. It is quite possible that he was
present at the assembly of Lillebonne; one writer goes so far as to say that
the arguments of Tostig contributed largely to persuade the Norman nobility

to undertake the enterprise,[111] and William may have derived some little
advantage from the fact that he could point to one man of high rank among
the English nation as an adherent. But it would seem that Tostig was
unwilling to await the development of his host’s plans, and in May he set
off from the Cotentin on an expedition of his own intended to ravage the
English coasts. He landed first in the Isle of Wight, where the inhabitants
bought him off with money and provisions, and then sailed, ravaging the
coast of Sussex and Kent, until he came to Sandwich. At Sandwich he
raised a small force of sailors, but at the same time the news of his
expedition was brought to his brother in London, who at once set out for the
Kentish coast. Before he could reach Sandwich, however, Tostig had started
northward again and finally entered the Humber with sixty ships, harrying
the coast of Lindsey. Upon receiving the news Earls Edwin and Morcar,
having called out the local fyrd, marched with it to the Humber and
compelled Tostig to take refuge in his ships. At this point Tostig was
deserted by the men of Sandwich whom he had impressed, and, his fleet
being now reduced to twelve ships, he made his way to Scotland and spent
the summer, we are told, with King Malcolm.[112]
Tostig’s futile raid has an interest of its own in the glimpse which it gives
us of the English defences just before the Norman invasion. The evidence
of Domesday Book shows that an Anglo-Saxon king had some sort of naval
force permanently at his disposal, and we know that Harold built and
manned a number of ships to keep the Channel against his Norman rival,
but, from whatever cause, the English navy in this critical year proved itself
miserably ineffective.[113] A mere adventurer, with no foreign aid of any
consequence and no local support in England, Tostig could still spread
devastation with impunity along half the English coast. The story of
Tostig’s expedition reads like a revival of one of the Danish raids of the
ninth century—the enemy sacks a town, the fyrd are summoned and hurry
to the spot to find that the raiders have just left to plunder the nearest
unprotected locality. Clearly the coast defences of England, for all the bitter
experience of the Danish wars, had made no real advance since the days of
Alfred, and it is not unfair to remark that this fact reflects little credit upon
the statesmanship of Harold. He had himself been an exile and had made a
bid for power by a piratical descent upon England very similar to the
present expedition of Tostig’s. If he really possessed the power, during the
last ten years of the Confessor’s reign, with which he is usually credited, it

should not have been impossible for him to create a naval force strong
enough to counteract such attempts for the future. The events of 1066 are an
excellent illustration of the influence of sea power in history; wind and
weather permitting, an invader could land an army in England at whatever
time and place best suited him. As for Tostig himself, his expedition had
been ignominious enough, but before the year was out he was to earn
immortality by his association with the last great Scandinavian invasion of
England and by the part which he is made to play in the magnificent saga of
Stamfordbridge.
The summer visit of Tostig to Scotland must have been interrupted by
another voyage of greater distance and followed by most momentous
consequences. Very possibly he was dissatisfied with the amount of
immediate support which his claims had received from William of
Normandy; at all events he now made application to a prince of higher rank,
more restless spirit, and still more varied experience in the art of war.
Although there are chronological difficulties in the story which cannot be
discussed here, there can be little real doubt that Tostig in person sailed to
Norway, was received by Harold Hardrada, and incited the most warlike
king in Europe to an invasion of England. As a matter of fact it is probable
that Harold Hardrada, like William of Normandy, would have made his
attempt even if Tostig had never come upon the scene; the passage of the
English crown to a subject house, coming at a time when there was a
temporary lull in the chronic warfare between the three Scandinavian
powers, might remind the king of Norway that he could himself, if he
chose, put forward a decent pretext for an adventure which would be certain
to bring him fame and might rival the exploits of Swegen and Cnut.[114] The
extent of the preparations which Harold Hardrada had evidently made for
his enterprise would of itself suggest that they were independent of the
representations of the banished earl of Northumbria, while on the other
hand Tostig plays too prominent a part in the Norwegian traditions of the
expedition for us to reject his voyage to Norway as mere myth, and his
presence may have had some influence in determining the objective of the
invaders when once they had touched the shores of England.
After making his appeal to Harold Hardrada, Tostig returned to Scotland
and began to raise a force of volunteers there on his own account. Early in
September the king of Norway set sail from the Sogne Fiord near Bergen,
due west to the subject earldom of the Orkneys and Shetlands, where he

was joined by Paul and Erling, the two joint earls, and by a large
reinforcement of the islanders.[115] From the Orkneys Harold sailed on
without recorded incident as far as the Tyne, where he was joined,
according to agreement, by Tostig with his Scottish auxiliaries, and then the
combined force made for the Yorkshire coast and began offensive
operations by a harrying of Cleveland. Passing southward the invaders
encountered an ineffectual resistance at Scarborough and along the coast of
Holderness, but were able to round Spurn Head without any opposition
from the English fleet. The Humber and the inland waters of Yorkshire lay
open to Harold, and it would seem that as the Norwegian fleet sailed up the
Ouse the English fleet retreated up the Wharfe, for Harold chose to
disembark at Riccall, a village some five miles below the confluence of
these rivers. Riccall was chosen as the headquarters of the fleet, which
could easily block at this point any attempt on the part of the English
vessels to break out to the open sea while Harold and his army marched
straight on York. At Fulford, two miles from the city, the invaders met the
fyrd of Yorkshire under Earls Edwin and Morcar, and the defeat of the local
force led to the surrender of York four days afterwards. The city was not put
to the sack; hostages[116] were exchanged between Harold and the men of
York, and it was very possibly to await the delivery of further sureties from
the rest of the shire that the king moved out of his new conquest to the
otherwise undistinguished village of Stamfordbridge.
On the following day King Harold of England himself arrived at York.
News of what was happening in Yorkshire must have been brought to
London with extraordinary rapidity, for the battles of Fulford and
Stamfordbridge were fought, as men remarked at the time, within five days
of each other. Harold possessed the permanent nucleus of an army in the
famous body of “huscarles” who resided at his court, and with them he
dashed up the great road from London to York, taking along with him so
much of the local militia of the counties through which he passed as
happened to fall in with his line of march. At Tadcaster, where the north
road crosses the Wharfe, he found and inspected the English “fleet,” and on
Monday, the 25th of September, one day after Harold Hardrada had entered
the capital of Northumbria, it opened its gates to Harold of England. At this
time Harold can have done scarcely more than pass through the city for the
same day he covered the ten miles which separate York from
Stamfordbridge and fell unexpectedly upon the Norwegian army scattered

in utter unpreparedness along either bank of the Derwent. The Norwegians
on the right, or York, bank of the Derwent were driven into the river by the
English attack, and then occurred a strange incident of which the record,
curiously enough, is only preserved in the chronicle of the distant
monastery of Abingdon. It was essential for the English to get possession of
the bridge which spanned the unfordable river before the Norwegians on the
left bank should have time to form up in line of battle, and we are told:

“There was one of the Norwegians who withstood the Englishmen so that
they could not climb over the bridge and gain the victory. Then one of the
Englishmen shot with an arrow and that did nothing, and then came another
under the bridge and stabbed him underneath his coat of mail, and then
Harold king of the English came over the bridge and his army with him.”[117]

We have no details of the struggle which must have raged along the
rising ground on which the modern village of Stamfordbridge stands, nor do
we know with certainty how Harold Hardrada and Tostig fell, but it is clear
that the result of that day’s fighting was an unequivocal victory for the
English; the men who had been left in charge of the Norwegian fleet at
Riccall were willing to accept peace at Harold’s hands and were allowed to
depart with their ships to Norway. Harold indeed in this great fight had
proved himself a worthy inheritor of the crown of the West Saxon kings,
and it was a strange destiny which ruled that the last victory in the struggle
of three centuries between Englishman and Northman should fall to no
descendant of Egbert or Alfred, but to an English king who was half a
Northman himself by blood. But a stranger destiny was it which ruled that
one week should see the overthrow of the last great invader from the north
and the opening of a new era for England in the entry of the greater invader
from beyond the Channel. Harold Hardrada fell at Stamfordbridge on
Monday, William of Normandy landed at Pevensey on Thursday.

Penny of Harold Hardrada

CHAPTER V
THE PRELIMINARIES OF THE CONQUEST AND THE
BATTLE OF HASTINGS

The spring and summer of 1066 must have been a time of restless activity
on the part of William and of those who were associated with him in the
preparations for the great enterprise of the autumn. The building of the fleet
was being pushed forward, and volunteers from kindred states were
continually arriving to be incorporated in the Norman army; this much we
may infer from the fact that by August both fleet and army were ready for
the expedition, but we know scarcely anything as to William’s own
movements in the interval. On the fifteenth of June a council was held at
Bonneville at which Lanfranc was appointed abbot of William’s new
foundation of St. Stephen’s Caen, and three days later Cicely, the eldest
daughter of William and Matilda, was formally dedicated to the religious
life at the consecration of her mother’s house, the sister monastery of the
Holy Trinity. The motives which prompted the duke and duchess to
complete their religious undertakings were widely felt among the Norman
baronage. The conquerors of England appear in a somewhat unaccustomed
light as we read the charters by which they gave or confirmed land, each to
his favoured monastery, “when Duke William was setting out across the
sea.” It was fully realised that the enterprise might end in utter disaster; the
prudent abbot of Marmoutier, for instance, in case of accidents, secured
from Robert, the heir of Normandy, at his father’s request, a confirmation of
all the grants which the latter had made to the house during his reign.[118]
The temporal affairs of Normandy were also discreetly arranged at this
time. Matilda was appointed regent, and was supported by a council
presided over by Roger de Beaumont, a man of age and experience, and a
personal friend of the duke. No doubt if William had perished in England
Robert would have succeeded him, but, although he was now of sufficient
age to make a voluntary confirmation of his father’s grants of land, he was

clearly not old enough to undertake the government of the duchy during an
interregnum. The fact that the expedition itself provided employment for
the great mass of the fighting men of Normandy would promise a quiet rule
for Matilda and her advisers, nor indeed do we hear of any disturbances
taking place in the duchy while William was across the Channel.
Before the close of August the fleet was ready at last, and lay at the
mouth of the Dive ready to set sail at any moment.[119] The army also was
ready for embarkation, and the only thing which was lacking to the
expedition was a south wind to carry the fleet to the Sussex coast. But for
six weeks at least that south wind refused to blow, and every week of delay
increased William’s difficulties a hundredfold. Nothing could have been
more discouraging to an army of adventurers than week after week of
compulsory inaction; and the fact that William was able to keep perfect
order, among a force part only of which owed direct allegiance to him as
feudal lord, suggests that he possessed qualities of leadership which were
not very common among the captains of his day. At more than one crisis in
his life William had already shown that he could possess his soul in
patience until the moment arrived at which it was possible to strike, and he
must have succeeded in imparting something of this spirit to his troops in
their vigil by the Dive. In the more definite work of commissariat we know
that he proved himself a master; for no shortage of provisions was felt at
any time during the unexpected delay, and few eleventh-century armies
could have remained for a month in the same quarters without being driven
to find their own means of subsistence in plunder. William’s biographer was
justified in remarking on the fact that the unarmed folk of the
neighbourhood could pass to and fro without trembling when they saw a
body of soldiers;[120] and before the task of provisioning the army by regular
means had become an impossibility, a west wind served to carry the fleet to
a point which offered a shorter passage across into England than that which
was presented by its original station on the Dive.
Within the county of Ponthieu, which had become a member of the
Norman group of vassal states when Count Guy became William’s “man”
after the battle of Mortemer, the estuary of the Somme supplied an excellent
natural harbour beneath the town of Saint Valery. The passage from the
mouth of the Dive seems to have been accomplished without incident, and
William and his forces took possession of their new quarters on the twelfth
day of September. For more than a fortnight the situation did not seem to

have improved in any way; the wind which was carrying Harold Hardrada
down the coast of Yorkshire kept William locked in the mouth of the
Somme. The weather was cold and squally and we have a contemporary
description of the way in which William kept watching the weathercock on
the church tower and of his joy if for a moment the gale drove it to point
northward.[121] The strain of suspense was now beginning to tell upon the
army:

“The common soldiers, as frequently happens, began to murmur in their
tents that the man must be mad to wish to conquer a foreign country, that
his father had proposed to do the same and had been baffled in the same
way, that it was the destiny of the family to try for things beyond their reach
and to find God for their enemy.”[122]

It was clearly necessary to do something to relieve the prevailing tension,
and the expedient chosen was characteristic of the time; the relics of the
patron saint of the town were brought with great solemnity out of the
church, and the casket which contained them was exhibited to receive the
prayers and offerings of the duke and his army. The result was a convincing
proof of the virtue of the bones of St. Valery; without further delay the
south wind blew.[123]
The same day saw the embarkation of the Norman army, the work being
carried through as quickly as possible in evident fear that the wind might
slip round again to its former quarter. Night was falling before all was
ready, and before the duke, after a final visit to the church of St. Valery, had
given his last orders on the Norman shore. It was important that the fleet
should be prevented from scattering in the darkness, so each vessel was
ordered to carry a light, a lantern of special power adorning the masthead of
the duke’s own ship. With the same object it was directed that the fleet
should anchor as soon as it was clear of the estuary of the Somme, and
await further orders. Through the dead of night the fleet hung outside the
harbour, and it was still dark when the expedition ventured out at last into
the open waters of the Channel. The great body of the ships, each of which
carried a heavy load of horses in addition to its freight of men-at-arms, was
inevitably outstripped by the unimpeded galley which bore William to his
destiny; and when the dawn began to break, the duke found himself out of
sight of the rest of the fleet, and not yet within view of the English shore. In

these circumstances William cast anchor and breakfasted “as it had been in
his own hall,” says one of his companions; and, under the influence of the
wine with which the Mora was well supplied, his spirits rose, the prospects
of his enterprise seemed golden in the morning light, and he spoke words of
encouragement to his companions. And at last the sailors reported that the
rest of the fleet began to come in sight; the four ships which first appeared
together upon the horizon grew more and more until the man on the look-
out could be made by our imaginative informant to remark that the masts of
the fleet showed like a forest upon the sea.[124] Then the duke weighed
anchor for the last time, and the south wind still holding carried him and his
fleet into Pevensey bay at nine in the morning; the day being St. Michael’s
Eve—by an appropriate chance, for the archangel was highly honoured in
the Norman land.
William’s landing was entirely undisputed; the good luck which, as we
have noticed, waited on his expedition in its diplomatic antecedents,
attended its military details also. During the summer months, Harold,
making what use he could of the antiquated military system of England, had
called out the fyrd, and lined the south coast with troops, which, however
helpless they might be in a pitched battle with the Norman chivalry, might
have brought considerable inconvenience to William, if they had been in
evidence at the moment of his landing. From May to September the Sussex
coast in general, Hastings and Pevensey in particular, were guarded by the
rural forces of the shire.[125] At last, about the time when William was
moving from the Dive to St. Valery, the patience and provisions of the fyrd
gave out together; the rustics had been kept away from their homes for four
times the customary period of service without anything happening, and they
refused to stay on guard any longer. They probably would not have made
any difference to the ultimate result in any case, nor need we blame Harold
for being unable to keep them together; but the fact is another illustration of
the hopeless inefficiency of the old English state. And then, one week
before William’s landing, Harold had gathered the whole of such
professional soldiers as England contained, and had spent them in the life-
and-death struggle at Stamfordbridge. Harold Hardrada had fallen, but his
overthrow had gone far to exhaust the military resources of England, and it
was a shattered, if victorious, army which was resting with Harold
Godwinson, at York, when a fugitive from Sussex arrived to tell that
William of Normandy had landed, and that the south lay at his mercy.

William’s first movements in England were very deliberate. His
immediate care was to fortify his position at Pevensey and so protect his
fleet against surprise. At Pevensey, as afterwards at Lincoln, a line of
Roman walling could be turned to account in the construction of a castle,[126]
which was run up in the course of the day; and having thus, like his
Scandinavian ancestors, secured for himself a base of operations if events
turned out ill, William marched to Hastings, which was to be his base of
operations for the rest of the campaign.[127] At Hastings, therefore, another
castle was thrown up, the building, like nearly all the castles built during the
twenty years which followed the Conquest, consisting merely of a mound,
with wooden defences on the top and a ditch and one or more outer works
below. Hastings is a point of departure for many roads; a fact which no
doubt very largely accounts for William’s choice of the town as his
headquarters; for it could easily be provisioned by supplies from the
neighbouring country, and it lay very conveniently as a base for an attack
on London.
The men of east Sussex were not long before they felt the pressure of the
invading army. Most of the villages in the neighbourhood of Hastings are
recorded in Domesday to have been “waste” at some period between the
death of King Edward and 1066, and the connection between these signs of
ravage and William’s camp at Hastings is sufficiently obvious. But it is not
probable that William attempted any systematic harrying of this district
such as that which three years afterwards he carried out with grim success
in the country beyond the Humber; the Sussex villages, as a rule, had quite
recovered their former prosperity by the date of the great survey. The
passage of foraging parties over the land demanding provisions, which
would be none too readily granted, and the other incidents of a medieval
war of invasion, are enough to account for depreciation of the kind
recorded. Harold himself, as he drew towards Hastings, left traces of his
march in similar cases of temporary devastation, and there is no reason to
suppose that William undertook a deliberate harrying of Sussex in order to
provoke Harold to a general engagement.[128]

THE BUILDING OF HASTINGS CASTLE FROM THE
BAYEUX TAPESTRY

William, indeed, as yet can hardly have known the result of
Stamfordbridge with any degree of certainty. Rumours of the great battle in
the north would no doubt gradually filter down into Sussex during the week
following the event, but for some days after his arrival at Hastings William
cannot have ignored the possibility that it might be a Norwegian host which
would ultimately appear upon the edge of the downs. Definite news,
however, at some unspecified date, was brought to William by a message
from an unexpected quarter.[129] Robert, the son of Wymarc, a Breton knight,
who in some unknown way could claim kindred with both William and
Edward, had been “staller” or master of the horse to the latter, and had
stood together with Harold and Stigand by the king’s deathbed. Whether he
had actually been present at the battle of Stamfordbridge is uncertain; but
shortly after the fight he sent a messenger to William to advise a speedy
withdrawal to Normandy before something worse happened to him. The
message ran that Harold had destroyed the huge forces of the king of
Norway, himself the bravest man in the world, and that now, inspired by
victory, he was turning upon the duke with a great and enthusiastic army.
Rather unwisely Robert went on to add that the Normans were no match for
the English, either in numbers or bravery, and that William, who had always

shown himself discreet hitherto, would do well to retire at once, or at all
events to keep within his fortifications and avoid a battle in the open field.
To this well-meaning person William replied that his one desire was to
come to blows with Harold, that although Robert’s advice might have been
better expressed yet he thanked him for it, and that if he had with him but
ten thousand instead of sixty thousand men[130] he would never retire
without wreaking vengeance on his enemy. It is not unlikely that Robert’s
message was really inspired by Harold himself, and from one or two turns
of expression in William’s reply we may perhaps gather that he suspected as
much; although it might be thought that Harold, who had seen something of
his rival in past years, cannot have had much hope of getting rid of him by
mere intimidation. However this may be, it is interesting to find Robert, a
prominent member of a class which has suffered much abuse because of an
assumed lack of patriotism towards its adopted country, playing a part
which so admirably saves his duty to his king and his kinsman alike.
We have two poetical accounts of the way in which the news of
William’s landing was brought to Harold at York. Wace, the Norman poet of
the twelfth century, tells how a Sussex “chevalier” heard the shouting of the
“peasants and villeins” as the fleet drew in to the shore, and how, attracted
by the noise, he came out, hid behind a hill and lay there until the work of
disembarkation was over and the castle at Pevensey thrown up; then riding
off with lance and sword, night and day, to York, to tell the king the news of
what he had seen.[131] Guy, bishop of Amiens, who wrote within a short time
of the event, makes the news of the Norman arrival be borne by a rustic
from Hastings, not Pevensey; and the details which are told to Harold relate
to the devastation caused by the invaders near Hastings, not to the landing
itself.[132] Perhaps these two stories are not quite incompatible with each
other; but we need not attempt to reconcile them here, in view of the
undoubted fact that Harold was informed of William’s landing within some
three days of the event.
At this crisis Harold acted with astonishing energy. Taking with him his
faithful huscarles, a body sadly thinned by the battle of a few days before,
he hurried southwards by way of Tadcaster, Lincoln, Stamford, and
Huntingdon, the same route which in the reverse direction he had followed
in the previous week; now as then drawing into his force the fyrd of the
shires through which he passed. Edwin and Morcar were directed to raise
the levies of their respective earldoms, and in their expected absence the

government of the north was entrusted to Marleswegen, the sheriff of
Lincolnshire,[133] an Englishman who remains little more than a name in the
narrative of the Conquest, but who, if Harold had triumphed at Hastings
might probably have played an important part in the history of the
following years. How far Harold really believed in the fidelity of the
northern earls is uncertain; they had shown no overt signs of disaffection
during the last months since he had married their sister. On the other hand,
considering the long-standing rivalry between his house and theirs, and
their probable share in the Northumbrian difficulties at the beginning of his
reign, Harold was perhaps not altogether surprised that Edwin and Morcar,
in the words of Florence of Worcester, “withdrew themselves and their men
from the conflict.” With the best intentions they would have found it
difficult to join him in time for the battle; it would not have been easy for
them to raise the fyrd from all the shires between the Humber and the
Tweed on the one part and between the fens and the Severn on the other,
and to bring the troops to London within the five days which Harold spent
there. For on October 11th,[134] a fortnight after the battle of Stamfordbridge,
Harold set out from London on his last march towards the Sussex downs.
It is an interesting, but not very profitable, speculation how far Harold
was justified in staking his all upon the result of a single battle with the
invader. With our knowledge of what happened it is natural to condemn
him; he was condemned by the general opinion of the historians of the next
generation, and very possibly their sentence is right. On the other hand we
cannot but feel that we know very little of the real facts of the case; even
the essential question of the relative numbers of the English and Norman
armies cannot be answered with any degree of accuracy. It may be argued
with much plausibility that the wisest course for Harold would have been to
let William work his will upon the unfortunate inhabitants of Sussex,
trusting to time and the national feeling likely to be aroused by the ravages
of an invader to bring an overwhelming superiority in numbers over to his
side. This, we may be sure, would have been the course taken by William
himself in such a case, but Harold was probably by nature incapable of
playing a waiting game of this kind. His ability, so far as we can tell, lay in
sudden assaults and surprises; the more deliberate processes of generalship
were foreign to his temperament. And then there remains the fact that the
loyalty of Mercia and Northumbria was at least doubtful; delay on Harold’s
part might only mean that Edwin and Morcar with their forces would have

time to come over effectively to William’s side, while another great victory
so soon after Stamfordbridge would have placed Harold in a position from
which, for the time being, he could defy all rivals. At any rate he took the
step, and paid the penalty of failure.
But, whatever we may think of the general wisdom of Harold’s strategy,
it is impossible to deny that he showed a general’s appreciation of the
tactical possibilities of the ground on which he chose to put the fate of
England to the test. After a forced march through the thick woods which at
that time covered the Sussex downs, the king halted his army on a barren
ridge of ground seven miles north-east of the town of Hastings. It is plain
from all the narratives of the forthcoming encounter that the ridge in
question was quite unoccupied at the time of the battle; and when the
English chroniclers wish to describe its site they can only tell us that Harold
and William came together “by the hoar apple-tree.”[135] The strength of the
position was determined, not so much by the general elevation of the
ground, which at no point reaches a greater height than 300 feet above sea
level, as by the fact that it was surrounded by country very hilly and much
broken by streams, and that its physical features lent natural support to the
disposition of an army which relied for success on its capacity for stolid
resistance. The position was undoubtedly chosen by Harold with the object
of forcing his enemy to an immediate battle; for William could not move
either east or west from Hastings without exposing his base to an English
attack; and Harold, who knew that the main strength of a Norman army lay
in its troops of mailed horsemen, had been careful to offer battle on a site in
which the cavalry arm would be placed by the ground at a natural
disadvantage.[136]
From the nature of the case it has come about that we possess very little
information either as to the numbers of the English army or as to the details
of its formation on the day of battle. The Norman writers, on whom we are
compelled to rely, have naturally exaggerated the former, nor did any
survivor from the English army describe the order of its battle array to the
chroniclers of Worcester or Peterborough. In recent studies of the great
battle there is manifested a strong unwillingness to allow to either the
English or the Norman host more than a small proportion of the numbers
which used to be assigned to it thirty years ago.[137] It is very improbable
that William led more than 6000 men into action on October 15, 1066, and
there is good reason for doubting whether the knightly portion of his army

can have exceeded 5000. Small as this last number may appear, every man
included in it was an efficient combatant; but the English force was largely
composed of rustics impressed from the shires through which Harold had
rushed on his great march from York to London after the battle of
Stamfordbridge, and even so, it is far from certain that the native force was
materially stronger than the army of invasion. With regard to its
distribution, we know that the English line of battle seemed convex to the
Normans on their approach from the south-east,[138] and it is probable that it
ran for some 800 yards along the hill of battle, the flanks being thrown well
back so as to rest upon the steep bank which bounds the ridge towards the
north. It is certain that the English troops were drawn up in extremely close
order, and it is a natural assumption that Harold would place the kernel of
his army, the huscarles who had survived Stamfordbridge, in the front rank;
stationing his inferior troops in the rear so as to support the huscarles in
resisting the impact of the Norman cavalry.[139] On the highest point of the
whole line, a spot now marked by the high altar of the Abbey church of
Battle, Harold planted his standard; and it was round the standard that the
fight was most stoutly contested, and that, after seven hours of struggle, the
king at last fell.
In speaking of the generalship displayed by Harold’s rival on this
occasion, it is important to beware of the associations aroused by modern
military terminology. At least if we speak of him as a strategist or tactician,
we should be careful to remember that strategy and tactics themselves had
attained to but a rudimentary stage of development in Northern Europe in
the eleventh century. Recent studies of the battle of Hastings, the one fight
of the period in regard to which we possess a considerable amount of
detailed information, have brought out the fact that William’s host was far
too stiff and unwieldy a body to perform the complicated evolutions by
which it used to be assumed that the day was won.[140] We should be
committing a grave error if we were to suppose that the Norman army
possessed that mobility and capacity for concerted action among its several
divisions which belonged to the forces led by Turenne or Marlborough.
Feudal battles were determined more by the event of simple collisions of
large masses of men than by their manœuvres when in the field: the skill of
a great feudal captain lay chiefly in his ability to choose his ground so as to
give his side the preliminary advantage in the shock of battle; apart from the
example of his personal valour he had but little influence upon the

subsequent fortunes of the day. On the present occasion William was
compelled to fight on the ground of his opponent’s choice; and this initial
disadvantage cost the Norman leader an indefinite number of his best
troops, and, even after the issue of the battle had been decided, protracted
the English resistance until nightfall had put an end to the struggle. On the
other hand, there was one fatal weakness in the English host which must
have been recognised by the other side already before the fight had begun.
The fact that Harold, for all effective purposes, was totally unprovided with
either archers or cavalry exposed his army to a method of attack which he
was quite unable to parry, and the arrangement of the Norman line of battle
shows that William from the first relied for success on this advantage. The
battle of Hastings was won by the combination of archery and cavalry
against infantry whose one chance of success lay in the possibility that it
might keep its formation unbroken until the strength of the offensive had
been exhausted.[141]

THE DEATH OF HAROLD
(FROM THE BAYEUX TAPESTRY)]

In the early morning of the 14th of October the Norman army moved out
of Hastings and advanced across the seven miles of broken country which
lay between the English army and the sea. The march must have been a
toilsome business, and the rapidity with which it was accomplished is
remarkable.[142] At the point marked by the modern village of Telham, the

road from Hastings to Battle passes over a hill which rises to some 350 feet
above sea-level, and commands a view of the English position. On the far
side of this hill it is probable that William halted, waited for his scattered
troops to come together, and then drew them out in order of battle. In his
first line he placed his light-armed infantry, who probably formed a very
inconsiderable portion of his army, and were unprovided with defensive
harness. To these inferior troops succeeded infantry of a higher class,
protected by armour, but, like the light-armed skirmishers in the front rank,
armed only with bows and arrows and slings. The function of the infantry in
the coming encounter was to harass the English with their missiles and
tempt them to break their ranks. Lastly came the main body of the Norman
army, the squadrons of cavalry, on whom it rested to attack the English line
after it had been shaken by the missiles of the previous ranks.[143] The whole
army was further arranged in three great divisions, the native Normans
composing the centre, the Bretons, under the command of Alan, son of
Count Éon of Penthievre, forming the left wing, and the French volunteers
the right.[144] In the centre of the whole line of advance, the Norman
counterpart of the English standard, there was borne the consecrated banner
which William had received from the pope.[145]
So quickly had the march from Hastings been made that the actual
fighting was opened at about nine in the morning[146] by an advance of the
Norman foot. Galled by a heavy fire from the archers, which could only be
answered very ineffectively by the spears and stones which were almost the
sole missile weapons of the English, numbers of the native troops broke
away from their line, in defiance of the strict orders issued by Harold to the
effect that no man should leave his post. In the meantime, the Norman
cavalry had been steadily making its way to the front in order to take
immediate advantage of the disorder caused in the English ranks by the fire
of the archers. But the knights could only move their horses slowly up the
hill; the solidity of the English formation had not been seriously affected as
yet, and the cavalry were compelled to attack an unbroken line. The result
was disaster. The Breton auxiliaries on the left fell back, the confusion
spread rapidly, and the English, seizing their advantage, sallied forth and
drove the entire Norman line before them in headlong flight down the hill.
[147]
Fortunately William had not joined in this first attack in person, and
when in their panic the Normans believed that their leader had fallen, they
were soon recalled to their senses by the sight of the duke with bared head,

laying about him with his spear, and shouting words of reproof and
encouragement.[148] Mounted as they were, the flying knights could have but
little difficulty in outstripping their pursuers, but, if we may trust the
Bayeux tapestry, a number of English and Normans perished together in the
course of the flight, by falling into a deep depression in the ground situated
somewhere between the base of the hill and the duke’s post. According to
the same authority, the bishop of Bayeux did good service at this moment,
restoring order among the baggage-carriers and camp-followers, who were
apparently becoming infected with the panic which had seized their
masters.[149] Between the duke and his brother, the flight was checked, and
then the knights, eager to avenge their disgrace, rallied, turned, and cut off
their pursuers from their comrades on the hill, making a wholesale slaughter
of them.[150] Mainly through William’s self-possession the Norman rout had
ended after all in a distinct success gained for his side.
As soon as the cavalry had re-formed, the attack on the English position
was resumed; this time under the immediate leadership of the duke. The
struggle at the foot of the hill had given its defenders time to close their
ranks, and the English continued to present an impenetrable front to the
Norman cavalry. All along the line a desperate struggle raged for some
hours, but of its details no tale can be told, although it is probable that it
was at this point in the battle that Gyrth and Leofwine, Harold’s brothers,
fell, and there is good reason for believing that the former was struck down
by the hand of the duke himself. William, indeed, in all our authorities is
represented as the life and soul of the attack, “more often calling to his men
to come on than bidding them advance” says William of Poitiers; he had
three horses killed under him before the day was over, and he did all that
might be done by a feudal captain to keep his troops together and to inspire
them by his example. But notwithstanding his exertions it is evident that the
English were more than holding their own,[151] and a second repulse suffered
thus late in the day by the Norman cavalry would almost certainly have
passed into a rout of the whole army. At this crisis it occurred to some
cunning brain, whether that of the duke or another, that it might be possible
by feigning flight to tempt the English troops to break their formation, and
then, by turning on suitable ground, to repeat the success which had ended
the real flight in the forenoon. The movement was easily carried out; a body
of Normans rode away, and a crowd of Englishmen, regardless of
everything except the relief from the immediate strain of keeping their

ranks, hurled themselves down the hill shouting curses and cries of victory.
No discipline could have been kept under the circumstances, and when the
galloping knights suddenly spread out their line, wheeled around their
horses, and surrounded the disordered mob of their pursuers the latter were
ridden down and cut to pieces by scores.[152]

FOSSE DISASTER, BATTLE OF HASTINGS
FROM THE BAYEUX TAPESTRY

It is, of course, impossible to estimate the actual extent of the loss which
the English sustained in the episode of the feigned flight, but there can be
little doubt that its success marks the turning-point in the fortune of the day.
No incident in the great battle made a deeper impression upon the historians
who have described it for us, and the tale of the feigned flight is told in
different narratives with great variety of circumstance and detail. But from
the writers who lived nearest to the time we may infer with tolerable
certainty that the manœuvre in question was a sudden expedient, devised
and acted upon without previous organisation, and also that it was a simple,
not a combined movement. The whole business of decoying the English
from the hill, turning upon, and then surrounding them, was the work of one
and the same body of knights. On the other hand, it is probably incorrect to
speak of the feigned flight in the singular, for our best authority distinctly

asserts that the same stratagem was used twice[153]; fighting was going on
along a front of at least half a mile in length, and different sections of the
Norman army may very well have carried out the movement at different
times, and in complete independence of each other. However this may be,
the effect of the manœuvre was soon apparent. The English line, though
shrunken in numbers, closed its ranks and kept its formation, wedged
together so tightly that the wounded could not fall behind to the rear, nor
even the dead bodies drop to the ground. But the superior endurance of the
Norman troops was beginning to tell; the English were rapidly losing heart,
[154]
and the consummation of William’s victory only waited for the
destruction of King Harold, and of the warriors who fought with him round
the standard.
The attack which finally beat down the resistance of the English line
seems to have been delivered from some point to the south-east of the hill.
[155]
The battle had already continued for seven or eight hours, and twilight
was beginning to fall,[156] but its approach could only remind the shaken
remnant of the native host that the day was lost, and the end of the great
fight was now very near. It was in the last confused struggle which raged
round the standard in the fading light that Harold met his death; and then
his companions, tired out and hopeless of reinforcement, yielded the ground
they had defended for so long, and broke away to the north-west along the
neck of land which connects the hill of battle with the higher ridges of the
downs beyond it. The victors followed in hot pursuit; but a strange chance
gave to Harold, in the very hour of his death, a signal revenge over the men
at whose hands he had just fallen. A little to the west of the original position
of the English army one of the head-waters of the Asten had cut a deep
ravine, of which the eastern face was so steep as to be a veritable trap for
any incautious horsemen who might attempt to ride down it. In the
gathering darkness knight after knight, galloping after the English fugitives
in secure ignorance of the ground, crashed down into this gully; and the
name Malfosse, borne throughout the Middle Ages by the ravine in
question, bears witness to the extent of the disaster which the victorious
army suffered at this point.[157] Harold, after he had lost life and kingdom,
was still justified of the ground which he had chosen as the place of battle.
Late in the night William returned to the battlefield and pitched his tent
there. There could be no doubt that he had gained an unequivocal victory;
his rival was dead, the native army annihilated; he could well afford to give

his troops the rest they needed. The early part of the following day was
spent in the burial of the Norman dead; the work being carried out under the
duke’s immediate care. The English folk of the neighbourhood soon came
in numbers to the battlefield and begged for the bodies of their fallen
kinsfolk, which they were allowed to carry away for burial; but the
unclaimed corpses were left strewn about the hill. Before long the bodies of
Harold, Gyrth and Leofwine were found lying close together; but Harold’s
corpse had been horribly mangled, and, according to the later romantic
story, it was only identified by means of certain marks upon the body which
were known and recognised by the dead man’s mistress, Edith the Swan-
necked. Towards the close of the morrow of the battle, William returned to
his castle at Hastings, bearing Harold’s body with him for burial upon the
shore in unconsecrated ground as befitted an excommunicate, and an urgent
message from Gytha, Godwine’s widow, offering for her son’s body its
weight in gold, did nothing to shake his purpose.[158] With characteristic
irony William remarked that it was but fitting that Harold in death should be
appointed guardian of the shore and sea, which he had tried to defend in
life; and the dead king’s body, wrapped in a purple robe, was laid out of
sight somewhere among the rocks along the shore of Hastings bay. Later
tradition indeed asserted that Harold before long was translated from this
unhallowed grave to a tomb in the minster of the Holy Cross at Waltham,
which he had founded three years before[159]; but the authority on which this
story depends is none of the best, and, for all that we really know to the
contrary, the last native king of England is still the guardian of the Sussex
shore.
Harold, above all kings in English history with the possible exceptions of
Richard III. and Charles I., was happy in the circumstances of his death. He
gained thereby an immediate release from the performance of an impossible
task, and he was enabled to redeem the personal ambitions which governed
his past life by associating them in the moment of his fall with the cause of
the national independence of England. It has been possible for historians to
regret the outcome of the battle of Hastings only because it overthrew
Harold before he could prove the hopelessness of the position in which he
had placed himself. What chance had he, a man of uncertain ancestry and
questionable antecedents, of completing the work which had overcome
every king before him: the work of reconciling the antagonism of north to
south, of making the royal word supreme in the royal council, of making the

provincial nobility of England and its dependents the subjects of the king
and of the king only? It may well be that such a task would have proved
beyond the power of any native king, though descended from the
immemorial line of Cerdic; how could it be completed by an ambitious earl,
invested indeed with the royal authority, but crippled in its exercise by the
bitter rivalry of men who had formerly been his fellow-subjects; whose
birth was more noble, whose wealth was scarcely less, who, in opposition to
his rule, could rely upon endless reserves of local patriotism, the one source
of political strength which the land contained? To genius, indeed, all things
are possible, but to ascribe genius to this commonplace, middle-aged earl
would be to do sheer violence to the meaning of words. Harold will always
hold a noble place in the record of English history; but he owes that place
solely to the events of his last month of life, when the terrible necessity of
straining every faculty he possessed in the support of his trembling throne
roused in him a quickness of perception and a rapidity of action which his
uneventful career as earl of Wessex could never have called into being.
Harold was undoubtedly the best captain that England had seen since the
death of Edmund Ironside, just fifty years before the battle of Hastings; but
the work which Harold had undertaken would have called for quite other
powers than those which he revealed so unexpectedly on the eve of his
death. William the Conqueror, endowed as he was by nature with the
faculties of a great ruler to an extent perhaps without parallel in English
history; superior by the fact that he came in by conquest to all the local
jealousies which distracted Anglo-Saxon politics; and with unique
opportunities of recasting the social and tenurial features of English life;
could only create a strong and uniform government in England after three
years of almost incessant war, the reduction of a third of England to a
wilderness, and the remodelling in principle of the whole fabric of the
English administration, civil and military. When it is remembered that the
resistance to William was made essentially on grounds not of national
feeling, but of local particularism, and that these forces would undoubtedly
have conspired against Harold as they afterwards conspired against his
rival, we can only conclude that fate was kind which slew Harold in the
heat of battle in a noble cause, instead of condemning him to witness the
disintegration of his kingdom, in virtual impotence, varied only by
spasmodic outbreaks of barren civil war.

Penny of Harold II.

CHAPTER VI
FROM HASTINGS TO YORK

Catastrophic as the battle of Hastings seems to us now, in view of the
later history, its decisive character was not recognised at once by the
national party. The very incoherence of the Anglo-Saxon polity brought a
specious advantage to the national cause, in that the defeat of one part of the
nation by an invader left the rest of the country comparatively unaffected by
the fact. The wars of Edmund Ironside and Cnut, fifty years before, show us
groups of shires one after the other making isolated attempts to check the
progress of the enemy, and few men could already have realised that the
advent of William of Normandy meant the introduction of new processes of
warfare which would render hopeless the casual methods of Anglo-Saxon
generalship. Neither side, in fact, understood the other. William, on his part
expecting that the total overthrow of the English king with his army would
imply the immediate submission of the whole land, took up his quarters at
Hastings on the day after the battle to receive the homage of all those
Englishmen who might come in person to accept him as their lord. The
passage of five days without a single surrender taught him that the fruits of
victory would not fall into his hands without further shaking, and
meanwhile the English nobility began to form plans for a continued
resistance to his pretensions in the name of another national king.
Who that king should be was the first question which demanded
settlement. There was no hope of preserving the English crown in the house
of Godwine: the events of the past three weeks had been fatal to all the
surviving sons of the old earl, with the exception of Wulfnoth the youngest,
and he was most likely a prisoner or hostage in Normandy.[160] Harold’s one
legitimate son was most probably as yet unborn; he had at least three
illegitimate sons of sufficient age, but their candidature, if any one had
suggested it, would certainly have been inacceptable to the churchmen on
whom it rested to give ultimate sanction to any choice which might be

made. Two alternatives remained: either a return might be made to the old
West Saxon line in the person of Edgar the Etheling, or a new dynasty
might be started again by the election of Edwin or Morcar. The one
advantage which the former possessed, now as earlier in the year, was the
fact that his election would not outrage the local particularism of any part of
the country; it might not be impossible for Wessex, Mercia, and
Northumbria to unite round him in a common cause. Nor was it unnatural
that in this hour of crushing disaster men’s minds should involuntarily turn
to the last male heir of their ancient kings. Apart from these considerations,
there was something to be said in favour of the choice of one of the
northern earls. It must have been clear that Mercia and Northumbria would
have to bear the brunt of any resistance which might subsequently be made
to the invader, whose troops were already occupying the eastern shires of
the earldom of Wessex, and who would be certain before long to strike a
blow at London itself. But the success of Harold’s reign had not been such
as to invite a repetition of the experiment of his election. Edgar the Etheling
was chosen king, and the two brother earls withdrew to Northumbria,
imagining in their own minds, says William of Malmesbury, that William
would never come thither.[161]
This motive gives an interest to their withdrawal which is lost if we
regard it as a mere act of treachery to the national cause. There can be little
doubt that what Edwin and Morcar intended was a partition of the kingdom
between themselves and William, and it is at least questionable whether
such a plan had not a better prospect of success than an attempt to recover
the whole land for a king who had no personal qualities of leadership, and
who could never hope to attach to himself any of that local sentiment in
which lay the only real strength of the national party. The idea of a divided
kingdom was by no means chimerical. Old men still living could remember
the partition made by the treaty of Alney between Edmund Ironside and
Cnut, and it was not a sign of utter folly for any man to suppose, within a
week of the battle of Hastings, that William, having settled his score with
Harold, might content himself with his rival’s patrimonial earldom of
Wessex, leaving the north of England to its existing rulers. No one at this
date could be expected to understand the extent to which William’s political
ideas differed from those of Cnut; nor need we suppose that Edwin and
Morcar were mistaken as to the reality, though they may have
overestimated the military value, of the feeling for local independence in

their two great earldoms. In the case of Northumbria, indeed, even after
William’s presence had been felt in every part of the land, so acute an
observer as Archbishop Lanfranc insisted on the subordination of the see of
York to that of Canterbury on the ground that an independent archbishop of
York might canonically consecrate an independent king of the
Northumbrians.[162] What was lacking to the plan was not local separatism,
but the skill and consistency of purpose which alone could turn it to
account. Neither the ignominious failure of Edwin and Morcar, on the one
hand, nor the grandiose phrases of chancery clerks about the “Empire of
Britain,” on the other, should blind us to the fact that England was united
only in name until the strong rule of its Norman lords had made the king’s
word as truly law in Yorkshire as in Middlesex.
While the English leaders were disposing of their crown William was
pursuing his deliberate course towards London by a route roughly parallel
with the coast of Kent and Sussex. His delay at Hastings had not been time
wasted; it allowed his troops to recover from the strain and excitement of
the great battle, and it gave him the opportunity of receiving badly needed
reinforcements from Normandy. On the 20th of October, six days after the
battle, the second stage of the conquest began; William, with the main body
of his army, moved out of Hastings, leaving a garrison in the newly built
castle, and marched across the border of Kent to Romney. The men of the
latter place had cut off a body of Norman soldiers who had landed there by
mistake before the battle of Hastings; and the most famous sentence written
by the Conqueror’s first biographer relates how William at Romney “took
what vengeance he would for the death of his men.”[163] Having thus
suggested by example the impolicy of resistance, a march of fifteen miles
between the Kentish downs and the sea brought William to the greatest port
and strongest fortress in south England, the harbour and castle of Dover.
The foundation of the castle had probably been the work of Harold while
earl of Wessex, and, standing on the very edge of the famous cliffs
overhanging the sea, the fortress occupied a site which to Englishmen
seemed impregnable, and which was regarded as very formidable by the
Norman witnesses of this campaign.[164] The castle was packed with
fugitives from the surrounding country, but its garrison did not wait for a
formal demand for its surrender. Very probably impressed by what had
happened on the previous day at Romney, they met William half way with
the keys of the castle, and the surrender was duly completed when the army

arrived at Dover. It was William’s interest and intention to treat a town
which had submitted so readily as lightly as possible, but the soldiers,
possibly suspecting that the booty of the rich seaport was to be withheld
from them, got out of hand for once, and the town was set on fire. William
attempted to make good the damage to the citizens, but found it impossible
to punish the offenders as he wished, and ended by expelling a number of
Englishmen from their houses, and placing members of his army in their
stead.[165] Eight days were spent at Dover, during which the fortifications of
the castle were brought up to an improved standard, and then William set
out again “thoroughly to crush those whom he had conquered.” But before
his departure he appointed the castle as a hospital for the invalided soldiers;
for dysentery, which was set down at the time to over-indulgence in fresh
meat and strange water, had played havoc with the army.[166]
With the surrender of Dover William’s communications with Normandy
were firmly secured, and he now struck out directly towards his destined
capital, along the Roman road which then, as at every period of English
history, formed the main line of communication between London and the
Kentish ports. Canterbury was the first place of importance on the way, and
its citizens followed the prudent example of the men of Dover. Before
William had gone far from Dover, the Canterbury men sent messengers who
swore fealty to him, and gave hostages, and—an act which was a more
unequivocal recognition of his title to the crown—brought him the
customary payment due yearly from the city to the king. From this point,
indeed, William had little reason to complain of the paucity of surrenders;
the Kentishmen, we are told, crowded into his camp and did homage “like
flies settling on a wound.”[167] But the even course of his success was
suddenly interrupted. On the last day of October, he took up his quarters at
a place vaguely described by William of Poitiers as the “Broken Tower,”
and was there seized by a violent illness, which kept him for an entire
month incapable of moving from the neighbourhood of Canterbury. But, if
we can trust the chronology of our authorities, it was during this enforced
delay that William received the submission of the capital of Wessex.
Winchester at this time had fallen somewhat from its high estate under the
West Saxon kings; along with certain other towns it had been given by
Edward the Confessor to his wife Eadgyth as part of her marriage
settlement, and it was now little more than the residence of the dowager
queen. On this account, we are told that William thought it would be

unbecoming in him to march and take the town by force and arms, so he
contented himself with a polite request for fealty and “tribute.” Eadgyth
complacently enough agreed, took counsel with the leading citizens, and
added her gifts to those which were brought to William on behalf of the
city.[168] This ready submission was a fact of considerable importance.
Winchester lay off the track of an invader whose objective was London, and
apart from his illness William could scarcely have afforded to part with a
detachment of his small army sufficiently large to make certain the capture
of the town. Yet the old capital was a most ancient and honourable city,
containing the hall of the Saxon kings, in which probably were deposited
the royal treasure and regalia; and its surrender with the ostentatious
approval of King Edward’s widow was a useful recognition of William’s
claim to be the true heir of the Saxon dynasty. In his dealings with
Winchester the Conqueror’s example was followed by William Rufus,
Henry I., and Stephen, though the paramount necessity for them of seizing
the royal hoard at the critical moment of their disputed successions made
them each visit the royal city in person.[169]
On his recovery, at or near the beginning of December, William resumed
his advance on London. Doubtless Rochester made a peaceful surrender,
but we have no information as to this, nor as to any further details of the
long march until it brought the Conqueror within striking distance of
London. London, it is plain, was prepared for resistance; and the narrow
passage of the bridge, the only means of crossing the river at this point,
made the city virtually impregnable from the south. William was not the
man to waste valuable troops in a series of hopeless assaults when a less
expensive method might prevail, and on the present occasion he merely sent
out a body of five hundred knights to reconnoitre. A detachment of the
English was tempted thereby to make a sally, but was driven back across
the bridge with heavy loss, Southwark was burned to the ground,[170] and
William proceeded to repeat the plan which had proved so successful in
Maine three years before. Abandoning all attempt to take the city by storm,
he struck off on a great loop to the west, and his passage can be traced
clearly enough in Domesday Book by the devastation from which a great
part of Surrey and Berkshire had not fully recovered twenty years
afterwards. The Thames was crossed at last at Wallingford, and it was there
that William received the submission of the first Englishman of high rank
who realised that the national cause was doomed. Stigand, the schismatic

archbishop of Canterbury, did homage and swore fealty, explicitly
renouncing his allegiance to Edgar the Etheling, in whose ill-starred
election he had played a leading part.[171] The weakness of Stigand’s
canonical position, which was certain to be called in question if William
should ever be firmly seated on the throne, made it advisable for him to
make a bid for favour by an exceptionally early submission, and it was no
less William’s policy graciously to accept the homage of the man who was
at least the nominal head of the church in England. Probably neither party
was under any misapprehension as to the other’s motives; but in being
suffered to enjoy his pluralities and appropriated church lands for three
years longer Stigand was not unrewarded for his abandonment of the
national cause at the critical moment.
The exact time and place at which the remaining English leaders gave in
their allegiance are rather uncertain. There is some reason, in the
distribution of the lands which Domesday implies to have undergone
deliberate ravage about this time, to suppose that, even when William was
on the London side of the Thames, he did not march directly on the city, but
continued to hold a north-easterly course, not turning southwards until he
had spread destruction across mid-Buckinghamshire and south-west
Bedfordshire. The next distinct episode in the process of conquest occurred
at a place called by the Worcester Chronicle “Beorcham,” where allegiance
was sworn to William on a scale which proved that now at last his
deliberate policy had done its intended work, and that the party of his rival
had fallen to pieces without daring to contest the verdict given at Hastings
in the open field. Edgar the king-elect, and Archbishop Ealdred of York,
with the bishops of Worcester and Hereford, and a number of the more
important citizens of London “with many others met him [William], gave
hostages, made their submission, and swore fealty to him.” And William of
Poitiers tells us that when the army had just come in sight of London the
bishop and other magnates came out, surrendered the city, and begged
William to assume the crown, saying that they were accustomed to obey a
king, and that they wished to have a king for their lord. One is naturally
tempted to combine these two episodes, but this can only be done by
abandoning the old identification of “Beorcham” with Great
Berkhampstead, thirty miles from London, and by assuming the surrender
to have taken place when the army appeared on the edge of the

Hertfordshire Chilterns overlooking the Thames Valley, fifteen miles away,
from the high ground of Little Berkhampstead near Hertford.[172]
Whatever the exact place at which the offer of the crown was made to
William, it was straightway submitted by him to the consideration of the
chiefs of his army. Two questions were laid before them: whether it was
wise for William to allow himself to be crowned with his kingdom still in a
state of distraction, and—this last rather a matter of personal feeling than of
policy—whether he should not wait until his wife could be crowned along
with him. Apart from these considerations, the assumption of the English
crown was a step which concerned William’s own Normans scarcely less
intimately than his future English subjects. The transformation of the duke
of the Normans into the king of the English was a process which possessed
a vital interest for all those Normans who were to become members of the
English state, and William could not well do less than consult them on the
eve of such a unique event. As to the ultimate assumption of the crown by
William, no two opinions were possible: Hamon, viscount of Thouars, an
Aquitanian volunteer of distinction, in voicing the sentiments of the army,
began by remarking that this was the one object of the enterprise; but he
went on to advocate a speedy coronation on the ground that were William
once crowned king resistance to him would be less likely undertaken and
more easily put down. With quite unintentional irony he added that the
wisest and most noble men of England would surely never have chosen
William for their king, unless they had seen in him a suitable ruler and one
under whom their own possessions and honours would probably be
increased. To guard against any wavering on the part of these
“prudentissimi et optimi viri,” William immediately sent on a detachment to
take possession of London and to build a castle in the city, while he himself,
during the few days which had to pass before the Christmas feast for which
he had fixed his coronation, devoted himself to sport in the wooded country
of south Hertfordshire.[173]
Of the deliberations within London which led to this unconditional
surrender on the part of the national leaders, we know little with any
certainty, but it is not improbable that at some stage in his great march
William had entered into negotiations with some of the chief men in the
etheling’s party. Our most strictly contemporary account of these events[174]
makes the final submission the result of a series of messages exchanged
between the duke and a certain “Esegar” the Staller, on whom as sheriff of

London and Middlesex fell the burden of providing for the defence of the
city. We are given to understand that William sent privately to “Esegar”
asking that he should be recognised as king and promising to be guided in
all things by the latter’s advice. On receiving the message Esegar decided,
rather unwisely, as the event proved, to try and deceive William; so he
called an assembly of the eldest citizens and, laying the duke’s proposal
before them, suggested that he should pretend to agree with it and thus gain
time by making a false submission. We are not told the exact words of the
reply which was actually sent, but we are informed that William saw
through the plan and contrived to impress the messenger with his own
greatness and the certain futility of all resistance to him to such an extent
that the messenger on his return, by simply relating his experiences,
induced the men of London to abandon the etheling’s cause straightway.
The tale reads rather like an improved version of some simpler negotiations,
but that is no reason for its complete rejection, and we may not
unreasonably believe that, in addition to intimidating the city by his ravages
in the open country, William tried to accelerate matters by tampering with
some at least of those who were holding his future capital against him.
On Christmas day William was crowned King of England in Westminster
Abbey by Archbishop Ealdred of York, a clear intimation that Stigand’s
opportunist submission would not avail to restore to him all the prerogatives
of the primacy. The ceremony was conducted with due regard, as it would
seem, to all the observances which had usually attended the hallowing of
the Anglo-Saxon kings, only on the present occasion it was necessary to ask
the assembled people in French as well as in English whether they would
accept William as their king. The archbishop of York put the question in
English, Geoffrey, bishop of Coutances, that in French, and the men of both
races who were present in the Abbey gave a vociferous assent.
Unfortunately the uproar within the church was misunderstood by the guard
of Norman horsemen who were stationed outside, and they, imagining that
the new subjects of their duke were trying to cut him down before the altar,
sought to relieve his immediate danger by setting fire to the wooden
buildings around,[175] and so creating a diversion. In this they were quite
successful; amid indescribable confusion the congregation rushed headlong
out of the church, some to save their own property, and some to take
advantage of so exceptional an opportunity of unimpeded plunder. The duke
and the officiating clergy were left almost alone; and in the deserted abbey

William, quivering with excitement,[176] became by the ritual of unction and
coronation the full and lawful successor of Alfred and Athelstan. But before
the crown was placed upon his head the Conqueror swore in ancient words,
which must have sounded ironical amid the noise and tumult, that he would
protect God’s churches and their rulers, would govern all the people
subjected to him with justice, would decree and keep right law, and would
quite forbid all violence and unjust judgments.[177] And so the seal of the
Church was set upon the work which had been in fact begun on that
morning, three months before, when William and his army disembarked on
the shore of Pevensey.
The disorder which had attended the coronation was actually the result of
a misapprehension on the part of William’s own followers, but he evidently
felt that the possibility of a sudden rising on the part of the rich and
independent city was a danger which should not be ignored. Accordingly, to
avoid all personal risk, while at the same time keeping in close touch with
his capital, William moved from London to Barking, and stayed there while
that most famous of all Norman fortresses, the original “Tower of London,”
was being built. Most probably it was during this stay at Barking that
William received the homage of such leading Englishmen as had not been
present at the submission on the Hertfordshire downs. In particular Edwin
and Morcar would seem to have recognised the inevitable at this time[178];
the coronation of William as king of all England by the metropolitan of
York may have taught them that a division of the kingdom no longer lay
within the range of practical politics. At any rate William did not think that
it would be well for him to let them out of his sight for a season, and within
a few days of the New Year they are found accompanying him as hostages
into Normandy.
Our sole knowledge of the general state of the country at this most
critical time comes from certain scattered writs which can be proved to
have been issued during the few weeks immediately following the
coronation. The information which they give is but scanty; they were of
course not intended to convey any historical information at all, but they
nevertheless help us to answer the important question how much of England
had really submitted for the time to William’s rule by the end of 1066, and
they do this in two ways. On the one hand, they were witnessed by some of
the more important men, English as well as Normans, who were present in
William’s court; on the other hand, we may safely acquit William of the

folly of sending his writs into counties in which there was no probability
that they would be obeyed. Foremost among the documents comes a writ
referring to land on the border of Wiltshire and Gloucestershire, which
shows us King William, like King Edward before him, sending his orders to
the native authorities of the shire—in the present case the bishops of
Ramsbury and Worcester, and two thegns named Eadric and Brihtric, with
whom, however, Count Eustace of Boulogne is significantly associated.[179]
From the other side of the country comes a more famous document in
which William, “at the request of Abbot Brand,” grants to the said abbot
and his monks of Peterborough the free and full possession of a number of
lands in Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire. Leofric, abbot of Peterborough,
had been mortally wounded at the battle of Hastings, and on his death the
monks had chosen their provost Brand as his successor. He, not discerning
the signs of the times, had gone and received confirmation from Edgar the
Etheling, of whose inchoate reign this is the only recorded event; and it
required the mediation of “many good men” and the payment of ten marks
of gold to appease the wrath of William at such an insult to his claim. The
present charter is the sign of William’s forgiveness, but for us its special
interest lies in the fact that it shows us the king’s word already current by
the Trent and Humber, while the appearance among its witnesses of
“Marleswegen the sheriff” shows that the man to whom Harold had
entrusted the command of the north did not see fit to continue resistance to
the new king of England.[180]

ST. JOHN’S CHAPEL, IN THE TOWER OF LONDON

Much more evidence, if we can trust it, pointing in the same direction,
can be derived from a number of writs in English, which were apparently
granted at this time in favour of Westminster Abbey.[181] Nothing could be
more natural than that William at this time should show especial favour to
the great religious house within whose precincts he had so recently been
crowned, and although the language of these documents is very corrupt, and
the monks of Westminster Abbey were practised and successful
manufacturers of forged charters, there is not sufficient reason for us to
condemn the present writs as spurious. And if genuine, and correctly dated,
they add to the proof that William’s rule was accepted in many shires which
had never yet seen a Norman army. The king greets Leofwine, bishop of
Lichfield and Earl Edwin and all the thegns of Staffordshire in one writ;
Ealdred, archbishop, and Wulfstan, bishop, and Earl William and all the
thegns of Gloucestershire and Worcestershire in another; and if his rule was
accepted in these three western shires, and also in the eastern counties
represented by the Peterborough document, the submission of the midlands
and in fact of the whole earldom of Mercia would seem to follow as a
matter of course. It is also worth noting that no document relating to
Northumbria, the one part of the country which offered a really protracted

resistance to the Norman Conquest, can be referred to this early period in
William’s reign.

CHARTER OF WILLIAM I. TO THE LONDONERS
(IN THE ARCHIVES OF THE CORPORATION)

All this, therefore, should warn us against underrating the immediate
political importance of the battle of Hastings. It did much more than merely
put William into possession of the lands under the immediate rule of the
house of Godwine; the overthrow of the national cause which it implied
brought about so general a submission to the Conqueror that, with the
possible exception of the Northumbrian risings, all subsequent resistance to
him may with sufficient accuracy be described as rebellion. William, it
would seem, at the time of his coronation, was the accepted king of all
England south of the Humber, and the evidence which suggests this
conclusion suggests also that at the outset of his reign he wished to interfere
as little as possible with the native system of administration. Even in the
counties which had felt his devastating march, English sheriffs continued to
be responsible for the government of their wasted shires. Edmund, the
sheriff of Hertfordshire, and “Sawold,” the sheriff of Oxfordshire, may be
found in other writs of the Westminster series on which we have just
commented. The Norman Conquest was to be followed by an almost
complete change in the personnel of the English administration, but that
change was first felt in the higher departments of government; the sheriffs
of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire were not displaced, but Earl William
Fitz Osbern, Count Eustace of Boulogne, and Bishop Odo of Bayeux begin
to be held responsible for the execution of the king’s will in the shires
where they had influence.
To the close of 1066 or the beginning of 1067 must also be assigned a
charter of exceptional form and some especial constitutional interest in
which King William grants Hayling Island, between Portsmouth and

Chichester, to the monastery of Jumièges. In this document William is made
to describe himself as lord of Normandy and “basileus” of England by
hereditary right, and to say that, “having undertaken the government of
England, he has conquered all his enemies.” One of these enemies, namely
Earl Waltheof, attests the charter in question, and is flanked in the list of
witnesses by Bishop Wulfwig of Dorchester, who died in 1067, and by one
Ingelric, a Lotharingian priest who is known to have enjoyed William’s
favour in the earliest years of his reign.[182] But it is the phrase “hereditario
jure” which deserves particular attention. Rarely used in formal documents
in later years, when the chancery formulas had become stereotyped, the
words have, nevertheless, a prospective as well as a reflexive significance.
They contain not only an enunciation of the claims in virtue of which King
William had “undertaken the government of England,” but also a statement
of the title by which that government would be handed down to his
descendants. For, whatever may have been the title to the crown in the old
English state, from the Norman Conquest onwards it has clearly become
“hereditary” in the only sense in which any constitutional meaning can be
attached to the word. Not a little of the evidence which has been adduced in
favour of an “elective” tenure of the crown in Anglo-Norman and Angevin
times is really the creation of an arbitrary construction of the terms
employed. “Hereditary right” is not a synonym for primogeniture; the
former words imply no more than that in any case of succession the
determining factors would be the kinship of the proposed heir to the late
ruler and the known intentions of the latter with respect to his inheritance.
Disputed successions there were in plenty in the hundred and fifty years
which followed the Conquest, but the essence of the dispute in each case
was the question which of two claimants could put forward the best title
which did not run counter to hereditary principles. The strictest law of
inheritance is liable to be affected by extraneous complications when the
crown is the stake at issue, and the disqualification which in 1100 attached
to Robert of Normandy as an incapable absentee, in 1135 to Matilda the
empress as a woman and the wife of an unpopular foreigner, in 1199 to
Arthur as an alien and a minor, should not be allowed to mask the fact that
in none of these cases did the success of a rival claimant contravene the
validity of hereditary ideas. It was inevitable that, where the very rules of
inheritance themselves were vague and fluctuating, the application made of
them in any given instance should be guided by expediency rather than by a

rigid adherence to the strict forms of law; yet nevertheless we may be sure
that William Rufus and Henry I., like William the Conqueror, would claim
to hold the throne of England not otherwise than “hereditario jure.”
At Barking the submission of the leading Englishmen went on apace.
Besides Edwin and Morcar, Copsige, a Northumbrian thegn, and three other
Englishmen called Thurkill, Siward, and Ealdred, were considered by
Norman writers men of sufficient importance to deserve mention by name,
and in addition to these shadowy figures we are told that many other
“nobles” also came in at this time.[183] No apparent notice was taken by
William of the tardiness of their submissions; all were received to favour,
and among them must very probably be included the victim of the one great
tragedy which stands out above all the disaster of the Conquest, Waltheof,
the son of Siward. Waltheof was confirmed in his midland earldom of
Northampton, and received a special mark of grace in being allowed to
marry the Conqueror’s niece Judith, daughter of Enguerrand, the count of
Ponthieu who had perished in the ambuscade at St. Aubin in 1054, by
Adeliz, the daughter of Robert of Normandy and Arlette. Nor was this an
isolated measure of conciliation, for one of William’s own daughters was
promised to Earl Edwin, and in general it would seem that at this time any
Englishman might look for favour if he liked to do homage and propitiate
the new king with a money gift. The latter was essential, and from an
incidental notice in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and a chance expression in
the Domesday of Essex, it has been inferred that a formal “redemption” of
their lands on the part of the English took place at this time.[184] The direct
evidence for so far-reaching an event is certainly slight, but it would fall in
well with the general theory of the Conquest if all Englishmen by the mere
fact of their nationality were held to have forfeited their lands. William, it
must always be remembered, claimed the throne of England by hereditary
right. He had been defrauded of his inheritance by the usurpation of Harold,
in whose reign, falsely so called according to the Norman theory, all
Englishmen had acquiesced, and might therefore justly incur that
confiscation which was the penalty, familiar alike to both races, for treason.
Stern and even grotesque as this theory may seem to us, it was something
more than a legal fiction, and we should be driven to assume for ourselves
some idea of the kind even if we did not possess these casual expressions of
the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and the Domesday scribe. On the one hand, all
Englishmen had rejected William’s claim, and so many as could be hurried

down to Hastings in time had resisted him in the open field; on the other
hand, the number of Englishmen who were still holding land of the king
twenty years after the Conquest was infinitesimal in comparison with the
number who had suffered displacement. It would be natural to connect these
two facts, but nothing is more probable in itself than that, before repeated
rebellions on the part of the English had sharpened the edge of the Norman
theory, the conquered race was given an opportunity of compounding for its
original sin by making a deprecatory payment to the new lord of the land.
Nevertheless, it is to this period that we must undoubtedly assign the
initial stages of the process which, before twenty years were over, was to
substitute an alien baronage for the native thegnhood of England. It was
clearly necessary that William should give some earnest at least of the
spoils of war to his leading followers, and the amount of land already at his
disposal must have been very considerable. The entire possessions of the
house of Godwine were in his hands, and the one form of statecraft which
that family had pursued with consistency and success had been the
acquisition of landed property, nor do the dubious methods by which much
of that property had been originally acquired seem to have invalidated King
William’s tenure of it. The battle of Hastings, moreover, had been very fatal
to the land-owning class of the southern shires, and no exception could be
taken to William’s right to dispose of the lands of men who had actually
fallen whilst in arms against him. Even in this simple way, the king had
become possessed of no small territory out of which he could reward his
followers, and the complicated nature of the Anglo-Saxon land-law assisted
him still further in this respect. If, for instance, a thegn of Surrey had
“commended” himself and his land to Harold as earl of Wessex, King
William would naturally inherit all the rights and profits which were
involved in the act of commendation: he could make a grant of them to a
Norman baron, and thus, without direct injury being done to any man, the
Norman would become possessed of an interest in the land in question,
which, under the influence of the feudal ideas which accompanied the
Conquest, would rapidly harden into direct ownership. In fact, there exists a
considerable quantity of evidence which would suggest that a portion at
least of the old English land-owning class was not displaced so much as
submerged; that the Norman nobility was superimposed upon it as it were,
and that the processes of thought which underlay feudal law invested the
newcomers with rights and duties which made them in the eyes of the state

the only recognised owners of the lands they held. We possess no detailed
account of the great “confiscation” earlier than the Domesday Survey of
twenty years after the battle of Hastings, and apart from the changes which
must have occurred in the course of nature in that time, the great survey is
not the sort of authority to which we should look for an accurate register of
the fluctuating and inconsistent principles of a law of ownership which was
derived from, and had to be applied to, conditions which were unique in
Western Europe. But a priori it is not probable that all the thousands of
cases in which an English land-owner has disappeared, and is represented
by a Norman successor, should be explained by exactly the same principle
in every instance. In one case the vanished thegn may have set out with
Harold to the place of battle, and his holding have been given outright by
the new king to some clamorous follower; in another, a dependent of the
English earl of Mercia may have become peaceably enough a dependent of
the Norman earl of Shrewsbury, and have sunk into the undifferentiated
peasant class before the time arrived for Domesday to take cognisance of
him; a third Englishman may have made his way to the court at Barking and
bought his land of the Conqueror for his own life only, leaving his sons to
seek their fortunes in Scotland or at Constantinople. The practical
completeness of the actual transfer from the one race to the other should not
lead us to exaggerate the simplicity of the measures by which it was
brought about.[185]
One word should perhaps be said here about the character of the Anglo-
Saxon thegnhood, on which the Conqueror’s hand fell so heavily. It was far
from being a homogeneous class. At one end of the scale were great men
like Esegar the Staller or Tochi the son of Outi, whose wide estates formed
the bulk of the important Domesday fiefs of Geoffrey de Mandeville and
Geoffrey Alselin. But, on the other hand, a very large proportion of the total
number of men styled “thegns” can have been scarcely superior to the great
mass of the peasantry whom the Norman lawyers styled collectively
“villeins.” When we find in a Nottinghamshire village five thegns, each in
his “hall,” owning between them land worth only ten shillings a year,[186] we
see that we must beware of the romantic associations aroused by the word
“thegn.” These men can have been distinguished from the peasantry around
them by little except a higher personal status expressed in a proportionately
higher wergild, and their depression into the peasant class would be
rendered fatally easy by the fact that the law of status was the first part of

the Anglo-Saxon social system to become antiquated. When the old rules
about wer and wite had been replaced by the new criminal jurisprudence
elaborated by the Norman conquerors, the one claim of these mean thegns
to superior social consideration vanished. And lastly, it should be noted that
where the Domesday Survey does reveal members of the thegnly class
continuing to hold land directly of the king in 1086, it shows us at the same
time that the class is very far from being regarded as on an equality with the
Norman baronage. The king’s thegns are placed after the tenants in chief by
military service, even after the king’s servants or “sergeants” of Norman
birth; they are only entered as it were on sufferance, under a heading to
themselves, at the very end of the descriptions of the several shires in which
they are to be found.[187] They belonged in fact to an order of society older
than the Norman military feudalism which supplanted them, and by the date
of the Domesday Survey they were rapidly becoming extinct as a class in
the shires south of the Humber, but no financial record like Domesday
Book could be expected to tell us what became of them. Mere violent
dispossession would no doubt be a great part of the story if told, but much
of the change would have to be set down to the silent processes of
economic and social reorganisation.
There remains one other legal document, more famous than any of these
which we have considered, which was most probably granted at or about
this time. The city of London had to be rewarded for its genuine, if belated,
submission, and the form of reward which would be likely to prove most
acceptable to the citizens would be a written security that their ancient
customs and existing property should be respected by the new sovereign.
And so “William the king greets William the bishop and Geoffrey the port-
reeve and all the burghers, French and English, within London,” and tells
them that they are to enjoy all the customs which they possessed in King
Edward’s time, that each man’s property shall descend to his children, and
that the king himself will not suffer any man to do them wrong.[188] Yet,
satisfactory as this document may have been as a pledge of reconciliation
between the king and his capital, it nevertheless bears witness in its formula
of address to a significant change. Geoffrey the port-reeve is a Norman; he
is very probably the same man as Geoffrey de Mandeville, the grandfather
of the turbulent earl of Essex of Stephen’s day,[189] and his appearance thus
early in the place of Esegar the Staffer suggests that the latter had gained
little by his duplicity in the recent negotiations. It was of the first

importance for William to be able to feel that London at least was in safe
hands; he could not well entrust his capital and its new fortress to a man
who had so recently held the city against him.
William’s rule in England was by this time so far accepted that he could
afford to recross the Channel and show himself to his old subjects invested
with his new dignities. The regency of Matilda and her advisers had, as far
as we know, passed in perfect order, but it was only fitting that William
should take the earliest opportunity of proving to the men of the duchy the
perfect success of the enterprise, the burden of which they had borne with
such notable alacrity. It was partly no doubt as an ostensible mark of
confidence in English loyalty that, before crossing the Channel, William
dismissed so many of his mercenary troops as wished to return home[190];
but their dismissal coincides in point of time with a general foundation of
castles at important strategic points all over the south of England. The
Norman castle was even more repugnant than the Norman man-at-arms to
the Anglo-Saxon mind, and when the native chronicler gives us his estimate
of William’s character and reign he breaks out into a poetic declamation as
he describes the castles which the king ordered to be built and the
oppression thereby caused to poor men.[191] But deeper than any memory of
individual wrong must have rankled the thought that it was these new
castles which had really rendered hopeless for ever the national cause of
England; that local discontent might seethe and murmur in every shire
without causing the smallest alarm to the alien lords ensconced in their
stockaded mounds. The Shropshire-born Orderic, writing in his Norman
monastery, gives us the true military reason for the final overthrow of his
native country when he tells us that the English possessed very few of those
fortifications which the Normans called castles, and that for this reason,
however brave and warlike they might be, they could not keep up a
determined resistance to their enemies. William himself had learned in
Normandy how slow and difficult a task it was to reduce a district guarded
by even the elementary fortifications of the eleventh century; he might be
confident that the task would be impossible for scattered bodies of rustic
Englishmen, in revolt and without trained leadership.
But for the present there seems to have been no thought of revolt; the
castles were built with a view to future emergencies. No very elaborate
arrangements were made for the government of England in William’s
absence. It was entrusted jointly to William Fitz Osbern, the duke’s oldest

friend, and Odo of Bayeux, his half-brother, who were to be assisted by
such distinguished leaders of the army of invasion as Hugh de
Grentmaisnil, Hugh de Montfort, and William de Warenne. The bishop of
Bayeux was made primarily responsible for the custody of Kent, with its
all-important ports, and the formidable castle of Dover. Hugh de
Grentmaisnil appears in command of Hampshire with his headquarters at
Winchester; his brother-in-law, Humphrey de Tilleul, had received the
charge of Hastings castle when it was built and continued to hold it still;
William Fitz Osbern, who had previously been created earl of Hereford,
seems to have been entrusted with the government of all England between
the Thames and the earldom of Bernicia, with a possible priority over his
colleagues.[192] On his part, William took care to remove from the country as
many as possible of the men round whom a national opposition might
gather itself. Edgar the Etheling, earls Edwin, Morcar, and Waltheof, with
Archbishop Stigand, and a prominent Kentish thegn called Ethelnoth, were
requested to accompany their new king on his progress through his
continental dominions.[193] We cannot but suspect that William must have
felt the humour as well as the policy of attaching to his train three men each
of whom had hoped to be king of the English himself; but it would have
been impossible for the native leaders to refuse to grace the protracted
triumphs of their conqueror, and early in the year the company set sail, with
dramatic fitness, from Pevensey.
In the accounts which we possess of this visit, it appears as little more
than a series of ecclesiastical pageants. William was wisely prodigal of the
spoils of England to the churches of his duchy. The abbey church of
Jumièges, whose building had been the work of Robert, the Confessor’s
favourite, was visited and dedicated on the 1st of July, but before this the
king had kept a magnificent Easter feast at Fécamp[194] where, thirty-two
years before, Duke Robert of Normandy had prevailed upon the Norman
baronage to acknowledge his seven-year-old illegitimate son as his destined
successor. The festival at Fécamp was attended by a number of nobles from
beyond the Norman border, who seem to have regarded Edwin and Morcar
and their fellows as interesting barbarians, whose long hair gave unwonted
picturesqueness to a formal ceremony. At St.-Pierre-sur-Dive, where
William had spent four weary weeks in the previous autumn, waiting for a
south wind, another great assembly was held on the 1st of May, to witness
the consecration of the new church of Notre Dame. Two months later came

the hallowing of Jumièges; and the death of Archbishop Maurilius of
Rouen, early in August, seems to have given occasion for another of these
great councils to meet and confirm the canonical election of his successor.
The monks of Rouen cathedral had chosen no less a person than Lanfranc
of Caen as their head, but he, possibly not without a previous consultation
with his friend and lord King William, declined the office, and when on a
second election John, bishop of Avranches, was chosen, Lanfranc went to
Rome and obtained the pallium for him.[195] Whether Lanfranc’s journey
possessed any significance in view of impending changes in the English
Church, is unfortunately uncertain for lack of evidence; but his refusal of
the metropolitan see of Normandy suggests that already he was privately
reserved for greater things. In any case, he is the man to whom we should
naturally expect William to entrust such messages as he might think prudent
to send to the Pope concerning his recent achievements and future policy in
England.
From his triumphal progress in Normandy, William was recalled by bad
news from beyond the Channel. Neither of his lieutenants seems to have
possessed a trace of the more statesmanlike qualities of his chief. William
Fitz Osbern, good soldier and faithful friend to William as we may
acknowledge him to have been, did not in the least degree understand the
difficult task of reconciling a conquered people to a change of masters, and
Bishop Odo has left a sinister memory on English soil. William’s departure
for Normandy was signalised by a general outbreak of the characteristic
vices of an army of occupation, in regard to which the regents themselves,
according to the Norman account, were not a little to blame. Under the
stimulus of direct oppression, and in the temporary absence of the dreaded
Conqueror, the passive discontent of the English broke out into open revolt
in three widely separated parts of the kingdom.
Of the three risings, that in the north was perhaps the least immediately
formidable, but the most suggestive of future difficulties for the Norman
rulers. Copsige, the Northumbrian thegn who had submitted at Barking, had
been invested with the government of his native province, but the men of
that district continued to acknowledge an English ruler in Oswulf, the son
of Eadwulf, who had been subordinate earl of Bernicia under Morcar.
Copsige in the first instance was able to dispossess his rival, but the latter
bided his time, collected around him a gang of outlaws, and surprised
Copsige as he was feasting one day at Newburn-on-Tyne. The earl escaped

for a moment, and took sanctuary in the village church; but his refuge was
betrayed, the church was immediately set on fire, and he himself was cut
down as he tried to break away from the burning building.[196] The whole
affair was not so much a deliberate revolt against the Norman rule as the
settlement of a private feud after the customary Northumbrian fashion, and
it may quite possibly have taken place before William had sailed for
Normandy. Oswulf was able to maintain himself through the following
summer, but then met his end in an obscure struggle with a highway robber,
and the province was left without an earl until the end of the year, when
Gospatric, the son of Maldred, a noble who possessed an hereditary claim
to the title, came to court and bought the earldom outright from William.[197]
In the meantime, however, the Northumbrians were well content with a
spell of uncontested anarchy, and they made no attempt to assist the
insurgents elsewhere in the country.
The leader of the western rising was a certain Edric, nicknamed the
“Wild,” whom the Normans believed to be the nephew of Edric Streona, the
famous traitor of Ethelred’s time. This man had submitted to the Conqueror,
but apparently refused to accompany him into Normandy, and the Norman
garrison of Hereford castle began to ravage his lands. In this way he was
driven into open revolt, and he thereupon invited Bleddyn and Rhiwallon,
the kings of Gwynedd and Powys, to join him in a plundering expedition
over Herefordshire, which devastated that country as far as the river Lugg,
but cannot have done much to weaken the Norman military possession of
the shire.[198] Having secured much booty, Edric withdrew into the hills with
his Welsh allies, and next appears in history two years later, when he
returned to play a part in the general tumult which disquieted England in
1069.
The most formidable of the three revolts which marked the period of
William’s absence had for its object the recovery of Dover castle from its
Norman garrison.[199] It is the one rising of the three which has an
intelligible military motive, and it contains certain features which suggest
that it was planned by some one possessed of greater political ability than
can be credited to the ordinary English thegn. Count Eustace of Boulogne,
the man of highest rank among the French auxiliaries of the Conqueror, had
already received an extensive grant of land in England as the reward for his
services in the campaign of Hastings, but he had somehow fallen into
disfavour with the king and had left the country. The rebel leaders knowing

this, and judging the count to be a competent leader, chose for once to
forget racial differences in a possible chance of emancipation, and invited
him to cross the Channel and take possession of Dover castle. Eustace, like
Stephen of Blois, a more famous count of Boulogne, found it an advantage
to control the shortest passage from France to England; he embarked a large
force of knights on board a number of vessels which were at his command,
and made a night crossing in the hope of finding the garrison within the
castle off their guard. At the moment of his landing Odo of Bayeux and
Hugh de Montfort happened to have drawn off the main body of their
troops across the Thames; a fact which suggests that the rebels had
observed unusual secrecy in planning their movements. The count was
therefore able to occupy the town, and to lay siege to the castle without
hindrance, but failed to take the garrison by surprise, as he had hoped, and
met a spirited resistance. The assault lasted for some hours, but the garrison
more than held their own, and at last Eustace gave his troops the signal to
retire to their ships, although it was known that a delay of two days would
have brought large reinforcements to the side of the insurgents. It must also
have been known that the same time would have brought Odo of Bayeux
with his trained troops within dangerous proximity to Dover; and the
impossibility in the eleventh century of successfully conducting a siege
against time is some excuse for Eustace’s rather ignominious withdrawal.
The first sign of retreat, however, was turned to the advantage of the
garrison, who immediately made a sally and threw the besiegers into a state
of confusion which was heightened by a false rumour that the bishop of
Bayeux was at hand. A large part of the Boulogne force was destroyed in a
desperate attempt to reach the ships, a number of men apparently trying to
climb down the face of the cliffs on which Dover castle stands. Count
Eustace himself, who knew the neighbourhood, became separated from his
men and escaped on horseback to an unrecorded port, where he was
fortunate enough to find a ship ready to put out to sea. The English, thus
deprived of their leader, dispersed themselves over the country, and so
avoided the immediate consequences of their rout, since the Norman force
in Dover was not strong enough to hunt down the broken rebels along all
their scattered lines of retreat.[200]
With his kingdom outwardly restored to order, but simmering with
suppressed revolt, William set sail from Dieppe on the 6th of December,
and landed at Winchelsea on the following day. Queen Matilda was still left

in charge of Normandy, but her eldest son, Robert, was now associated with
her in the government, and Roger de Beaumont, who had been the leading
member of her council during her regency in 1066, on this occasion
accompanied his lord to England.[201] The king kept his Christmas feast at
Westminster; a ceremony in which the men of both races joined on an equal
footing, and for the moment there may have seemed a possibility that the
recent disorders had really been the last expiring efforts of English
nationalism. Yet the prospect for the new year was in reality very
threatening. The political situation in England at this time is well described
by Ordericus Vitalis, who tells us that every district of which William had
taken military possession lay at his command, but that in the extreme north
and west men were only prepared to render such obedience as pleased
themselves, wishing to be as independent of King William as they had
formerly been independent of King Edward and his predecessors.[202] This
attitude, which supplies a partial explanation of the overthrow of England in
1066, and a partial justification of the harrying of Northumbria in 1069,
supplies also a clue to the purpose underlying William’s ceaseless activity
during the next two years. At Exeter, Stafford, and York, William was, in
effect, teaching his new subjects that he would be content with nothing less
than the unqualified submission of the whole land; that England was no
longer to be a collection of semi-independent earldoms, but a coherent state,
under the direct rule of a king identified with Wessex no more than with
Northumbria or East Anglia. The union of England, thus brought at last into
being, was no doubt achieved almost unconsciously under the dictation of
the practical expediency of the moment, but this does not detract from the
greatness of the work itself, nor from the strength and wisdom of the
Conqueror whose memorial it is.
Meanwhile, danger from a distant quarter was threatening the Norman
possession of England. Events which were matters of very recent history
had proved that English politics were still an object of interest to the rulers
of Norway and Denmark; and the present was an opportunity which could
not fail to attract any Scandinavian prince who would emulate the glory of
the great kings of the last generation. The death of Harold Hardrada, which
had thrown the Norwegian claims on England into abeyance for a time, had
left Swegn Estrithson, king of Denmark, unquestionably the most
considerable personage in the Scandinavian world; and to him accordingly
the English leaders, or such at least of them as were at liberty, had appealed

for help during the preceding months.[203] As a Dane himself and the nephew
of Cnut, Swegn Estrithson could command the particular sympathy of the
men of Northumbria and would not be unacceptable to the men of the
southern Danelaw; no native claimant possessed similar advantages in
respect to anything like so large a part of England. Swegn indeed, whose
prevailing quality was a caution which contrasts strangely with the
character of his Danish ancestors and of his great Norwegian rival, had
delayed taking action up to the present, but it was the fear that a northern
fleet might suddenly appear in the Humber which had really been the
immediate cause of William’s return from Normandy.
At this moment, with the imminent probability of invasion hanging over
the north and east of his kingdom, William was called away from his head-
quarters at London by the necessity of suppressing a dangerous rising in the
extreme west. It is probable that William’s rule had not yet been commonly
recognised beyond the eastern border of Devonshire, although on the
evidence of writs we know that Somerset was already showing him
ostensible obedience. But the main interest of the following episode lies in
the strangely independent attitude adopted by the city of Exeter. In the
eleventh century the capital of Devon could undoubtedly claim to rank with
York, Norwich, and Winchester among the half-dozen most powerful cities
in England. With its strong fortifications which made it in a sense the key of
the Damnonian peninsula, commanding also important trade routes between
England, Ireland, and Brittany, Exeter in English hands would be a standing
menace to the Norman rule scarcely less formidable than an independent
York. The temper of the citizens was violently anti-Norman, and they
proceeded to take energetic measures towards making good their defence,
going so far as to impress into their service such foreign merchants within
the city as were able to bear arms. We are also told that they tried to induce
other cities to join them in resisting the foreign king, and it is not
impossible that they may have drawn reinforcements from the opposite
shore of Brittany. It was of the first importance for William to crush a revolt
of this magnitude before it had time to spread, but before taking action, and
probably in order to test the truth of the reports which had come to him as
to what was going on in Devonshire, he sent to demand that the chief men
of Exeter should take the oath of allegiance to him. They in reply proposed
a curious compromise, saying that they were willing to pay the customary
dues of their city to the king, but that they would not swear allegiance to

him nor admit him within their walls. This was almost equivalent to
defiance and elicited from William the remark that it was not his custom to
have subjects on such terms. Negotiations in fact ceased; Devonshire
became a hostile country, and William marched from London, making the
experiment, doubly bold at such a crisis, of calling out the native fyrd to
assist in the reduction of their countrymen.
The men of Exeter, on hearing the news of William’s approach, began to
fear that they had gone too far; and, as the king drew near, the chief men of
the city came out to meet him, bringing hostages and making a complete
capitulation. William halted four miles from the city, but the envoys on their
return found that their fellow-citizens, unwilling apparently to trust to the
king’s mercy, were making preparations for a continued resistance, and they
threw in their lot with their townsmen. William was filled with fury on
hearing the news. His position was indeed sufficiently difficult. It was the
depth of winter; part of his army was composed of Englishmen whose
loyalty might not survive an unexpected check to his arms, and Swegn of
Denmark might land in the east at any moment. Before investing the city
William tried a piece of intimidation, and when the army had moved up to
the walls, one of the hostages was deliberately blinded in front of the gate.
But it would seem that the determination of the citizens was only
strengthened by the ghastly sight, and for eighteen days William was
detained before the gates of Exeter, despite his constant endeavours either
to carry the walls by assault or to undermine them.
At last, after many of his men had fallen in the attack, it would seem that
the Conqueror for once in his life was driven to offer terms to the defenders
of a revolted city. The details of the closing scene of the siege are not very
clear; but it is probable that the more important citizens were now, as earlier
in the struggle, in favour of submission, and that they persuaded their
fellows to take advantage of King William’s offer of peace. They had
indeed a particular reason for trying to secure the royal favour, for the chief
burden of taxation in any town fell naturally upon its wealthier inhabitants,
and on the present occasion William seems to have given a promise that the
customary payments due to the king from the town should not be increased.
The poorer folk of Exeter secured a free pardon and a pledge of security for
life and property, but the conduct of their leaders undoubtedly implies a
certain lack of disinterested zeal for the national cause; and the native
chronicler significantly remarks that the citizens gave up the town “because

the thegns had betrayed them.” The other side of the picture is shown by
Ordericus Vitalis, who describes how “a procession of the most beautiful
maidens, the elders of the city, and the clergy carrying their sacred books
and holy vessels” went out to meet the king, and made submission to him. It
has been conjectured with great probability that the real object of the
procession was to obtain from the king an oath to observe the terms of the
capitulation sworn on the said “sacred books and holy vessels,” and in any
case the witness of Domesday Book shows that Exeter suffered no fiscal
penalty for its daring resistance. To keep the men of Exeter in hand for the
future a castle was built and entrusted to Baldwin de Meules, the son of
Count Gilbert of Brionne, but this was no mark of particular disfavour, for
it was universally a matter of policy for William to guard against civic
revolts by the foundation of precautionary fortresses.[204]
One immediate consequence of the fall of Exeter was the flight and final
exile of one of the two greatest ladies in England at this time. Gytha, the
niece of Cnut, and the widow of Earl Godwine, through whom Harold had
inherited a strain of royal blood, had taken refuge in Exeter, and now,
before William had entered the city, made her escape by water with a
number of other women, who probably feared the outrages which were
likely to occur upon the entry of the northern army. They must have
rounded the Land’s End, and sailed up the Bristol Channel, for they next
appear as taking up their quarters on a dismal island known as the Flat
Holme, off the coast of Glamorgan. Here they stayed for a long while, but
at last in despair the fugitives left their cheerless refuge and sailed without
molestation to Flanders, where they landed, and were hospitably entertained
at St. Omer. Nothing more is recorded of the countess; but her daughter
Gunhild entered the monastic life and died in peace in Flanders in 1087,
some two months before the great enemy of her house expired at Rouen.
It is likely enough that Gytha chose the Flat Holme as her place of refuge
with the hope of joining in a movement which at this time was gathering
head among the English exiles in Ireland. It is at least certain that, before
the summer was over, three of Harold’s illegitimate sons, who had spent the
previous year with the king of Dublin, suddenly entered the Devon seas
with fifty-four ships. They harassed the south coast of the Bristol Channel,
and even made bold to enter the Avon and attack Bristol itself, but were
driven off without much difficulty by the citizens of the wealthy port, and
sailing back disembarked at some unknown point on the coast of Somerset.

Here they were caught and soundly beaten by the Somersetshire natives
under the leadership of Ednoth, an Englishman who had been master of the
horse to Edward the Confessor, but who was clearly ready to do loyal
service to the new king. Ednoth was killed in the battle, but the raiders were
compelled to take to their ships, and after a brief spell of desultory ravage
along the coast they sailed back to Ireland, having done nothing to weaken
the Norman grip upon the south-west of England, but gaining sufficient
plunder to induce them to repeat their expedition in the course of the
following year.[205]
It was well for William that even at the cost of some loss of prestige he
had gained possession of Exeter in the first months of 1068, for the
remainder of the year saw a general outburst of revolt against the Norman
rule. Before returning to the east of England, William made an armed
demonstration in Cornwall; and it was very possibly at this time that he
established his half-brother, Count Robert of Mortain, in a territorial
position in that Celtic land which shows that the Conqueror was quite
willing upon occasions to create compact fiefs according to the continental
model. Count Robert was never invested with any formal earldom of
Cornwall, but in the western peninsula he occupied a position of greater
territorial strength, if of lower official rank, than that held by his brother,
Bishop Odo, in his distant shire of Kent. The revolt of Exeter had no doubt
taught William that it would be advisable to take any future rising in
Devonshire in the rear by turning Cornwall into a single Norman estate, and
his own presence with an army in the west at this time would go far to
simplify the preliminary work of confiscation.
His Cornish progress over, King William marched eastwards, disbanded
the fyrd, and kept his Easter feast (March 23d) at Winchester. For a few
weeks the land was at peace, and during this breathing space the Duchess
Matilda came across into England, and was crowned at Westminster on
Whitsunday (May 11th), by Ealdred, archbishop of York. The event was a
clear expression of William’s desire to reign as an English king, for Matilda
stayed in England, and her fourth son, Henry, who was born early in the
next year, possessed in English eyes the precedence, which by Anglo-Saxon
custom belonged to the son of a crowned king and his lady, born in the land.
Robert, the destined heir of Normandy, seems to have remained in charge of
the duchy, and Richard, the Conqueror’s second son, probably accompanied
his mother across the Channel. By a fortunate chance, we happen to know

with exactitude the names of those who were present at the Whitsuntide
festival,[206] and the list is significant. Among the members of the clerical
estate the Norman hierarchy supplied the bishops of Bayeux, Lisieux, and
Coutances, but the arch-bishops of Canterbury and York and the bishops of
Exeter, Ramsbury, Wells, and London were all of English appointment,
although the last four of them were of foreign birth, and the eight abbots
who were present were also men of King Edward’s day. The laymen who
attended the ceremony formed a more heterogeneous group; Edwin,
Morcar, and Waltheof seem strangely out of place side by side with the
counts of Mortain and Eu; with William Fitz Osbern, Roger de
Montgomery and Richard, the son of Count Gilbert of Brionne. The
company which came together in Westminster Abbey on that Whitsunday
supplies a striking picture of the old order which was changing but had not
yet given place to the new, and it is a notable thing that the ancestress of all
Plantagenet, Tudor, and Stuart kings should have been crowned in the sight
of men who had held the highest place in the realm in the last days of
independent England.
This solemn inauguration of the new dynasty can have been passed but a
few weeks before William had to resume the dreary task of suppressing his
irreconcilable subjects. After a year and a half of acquiescence in the
Norman rule, Earls Edwin and Morcar suddenly made a spasmodic attempt
to raise the country against the foreigners. Their position at William’s court
must have been ignominious at the best, and although, as we have seen, the
king had promised one of his daughters in marriage to Edwin, he had
withheld her up to the present in deference to the jealousy which his
Normans felt for the favoured Englishman. Under the smart of their
personal grievances, Edwin and his brother broke away from the court, and
headed a revolt which, although general in character, seems to have
received most support in Morcar’s earldom of Northumbria. The rising is
also marked by a revival of the alliance between the house of Leofric and
the Welsh princes which had been an occasional cause of disquiet during
the Confessor’s reign; for Bleddyn, the king of North Wales, came to the
assistance of Edwin and Morcar,[207] as in the previous year he had joined
the Herefordshire raid of Edric the Wild. The rising was the occasion for a
general secession of the leading Englishmen from William’s court, for
Edgar the Etheling and his mother and sisters, together with Marleswegen
and many prominent Northumbrians, headed by Gospatric, their newly

appointed earl, probably fearing that they might be held implicated in the
guilt of Edwin and Morcar, made a speedy departure for the north country.
[208]

The focus of disturbance was evidently the city of York. It is not probable
that William had hitherto made any systematic attempt to establish Norman
rule beyond the Humber, but we get a glimpse of the venerable Archbishop
Aldred making strenuous efforts to restrain the violence of the men of his
city. His protestations were useless, and while the Northumbrians were
enthusiastically preparing for war after the manner of their ancestors,
William was taking steps which brought the revolt to an end within a few
weeks without the striking of a single blow.
It is in connection with these events that Orderic makes the observations
which have already been quoted about the part played by the Norman castle
in thwarting the bravest efforts of insurgent Englishmen. Some of the
greatest fortresses of medieval England derive their origin from the
defensive posts founded by William during the war of 1068. “In
consequence of these commotions,” said Orderic, “the King carefully
surveyed the most inaccessible points in the country, and, selecting suitable
places, fortified them against the raids of the enemy.”[209] But besides these
“inaccessible points” we have seen that William made it a matter of regular
policy to plant a castle in all the greater boroughs and along all the more
important lines of road in the country, and, the present campaign affords an
excellent example of his practice in this matter. The first fortress recorded
as having been built at this time was the humble earthwork which
developed in the next two centuries into the magnificent castle of Warwick.
Henry de Beaumont, son of the Roger de Beaumont who had been Queen
Matilda’s adviser in 1066, was placed in command of it, and the Conqueror
marched northward; but, possibly before he had left the Avon valley, Edwin
and Morcar, now as ever unable to follow a consistent course of action,
suddenly abandoned their own cause and made an ignominious submission.
The surrender of the rebel leaders did not affect the king’s movements; he
continued his advance, probably harrying the plain of Leicester as he passed
across it, and at Nottingham, on a precipitous cliff overhanging the town, he
placed another castle, commanding the Trent valley at the point where the
river is crossed by one of the great roads from London to the north of
England. The march was resumed without delay, and at some point on the
road north of Nottingham the army was met by the citizens of York,

bringing the keys of their city, and offering to give hostages for their future
good behaviour. The defection of Edwin and Morcar had deprived the rising
of its nominal leaders, and the military occupation of Nottingham had
threatened to isolate the revolted area; but it is also probable that William’s
rapid movements had surprised the defenders of the northern capital before
their preparations were completed. At York itself a certain Archil, who was
regarded by the Normans as the most powerful man in Northumbria, came
in to William and gave his son as a hostage, and on the line of the city
walls, at the junction of the rivers Ouse and Foss, there arose the third castle
of this campaign, now represented only by the mound on which rests the
famous medieval keep known as “Clifford’s Tower.” The fortress was
garrisoned with picked men, but its castellan, Robert Fitz Richard, is only
known to us through the circumstances of his death in the next year.
Other matters than the fortifications of York demanded King William’s
attention at this time. Danger was threatening from the side of Scotland, for
the rebels had sought the help of King Malcolm Canmore, and a great army
was gathering beyond the Tweed. The northern frontier of England was as
yet unprotected by the castles of Berwick and Carlisle, and on the west the
possessions of the king of Scots extended as far south as Morecambe Bay.
Also the best English authority asserts that Edgar the Etheling and his
friends had already taken refuge with King Malcolm on their flight from
William’s court, and the marriage of the etheling’s sister to the Scottish king
was very shortly to make the northern kingdom a point d’appui for all
unquiet nationalists in England. There was clearly good reason for William
to define his position with regard to the king of Scots, and this the more as
it would give him an opportunity of claiming fealty as well as submission at
a moment when he was all-powerful in the north. An ambassador was found
in the person of Bishop Ethelwine of Durham, who had revolted with the
rest of Northumbria, but had made his peace with the Conqueror, and
conducted the present business to a successful issue. King Malcolm sent
representatives to York in company with the bishop of Durham, and
according to the Norman account they swore fealty to William in the name
of their master. It was no part of the Conqueror’s plan to engage in an
unnecessary war in Scotland, and, all the purposes of his northern journey
being for the present accomplished, he turned south again by way of
Lincoln, Huntingdon, and Cambridge, at each of which places the inevitable
castle was raised and garrisoned.[210]

Denier of Baldwin of Lille

CHAPTER VII
THE DANISH INVASION AND ITS SEQUEL

The year 1068 had closed under a specious appearance of peace, and the
only result of the revolts of Exeter and York had been a proof of the futility
of isolated resistance to a king who could strike with equal decision at the
west or north. The following year opened with two north-country risings
which formed an unconcerted prelude to fifteen months of incessant strife,
in which the strength of the Norman hold on England was finally tested and
proved. The flight of Gospatric in the previous summer had vacated the
Bernician earldom, and at the beginning of 1069 the Conqueror tried the
experiment of appointing a Norman baron to the command of the border
province. His choice fell on one Robert de Comines, who immediately set
out for the north at the head of a force of five hundred knights. The news of
his appointment preceded him, and the men of Northumbria, who had
enjoyed virtual independence for two years, were not minded to submit
quietly to the rule of a foreign earl. A league was accordingly formed, the
members of which bound themselves either to kill the stranger or to perish
in the attempt. Bishop Ethelwine of Durham had evidently heard rumours
of the plot, for as the earl approached Durham he was met by the bishop,
who warned him of the impending danger. Robert took no heed, and his
troops behaved badly as they entered Durham, killing certain of the
bishop’s humbler tenants, but meeting no armed opposition. The earl was
entertained in a house belonging to the bishop, and his men were quartered
all over the town, in open defiance of the bishop’s warning. But during the
night a large body of Northumbrians moved up to the city, and as dawn
broke they burst through the gates and began a deliberate massacre of the
Frenchmen. The surprise was complete, but the earl and his immediate
companions were aroused in time to enable them to make a fight for their
lives. They could expect no quarter, and their defence was so desperate that
the rebels were unable to break into the house, and at last set it on fire, the

earl and his men perishing in the flames. Of the five hundred Normans in
Durham, only one survivor made his escape.[211]

YORKSHIRE
1066–1087

This episode was quickly followed by the death of Robert Fitz Richard,
the governor of York, who perished with a number of his men in an obscure
struggle, which nevertheless left the castle untaken in Norman hands.
Encouraged by these events, Edgar the Etheling, Marleswegen, Archil, and
Gospatric reappeared upon the scene, and made a determined attack upon
the fortress, so that William Malet, who would appear to have become
castellan on Robert Fitz Richard’s death, sent an urgent message to the king,
saying that he must surrender at once unless he received reinforcements.
Upon receiving this appeal, the Conqueror flew in person to York, scattered

the rebels with heavy loss, and planted a second castle within a few hundred
yards of the first, but on the opposite bank of the Ouse. This fortress, of
which the mound, known as the Baile Hill, still rests against the city wall,
was committed to the charge of no less a person than Earl William Fitz
Osbern, and the king after eight days returned to Winchester to keep his
Easter feast there. His departure was followed by a renewal of the English
attack, now directed against both the castles, but William Fitz Osbern and
his men gave a good account of themselves against the insurgents.[212]
It was, however, apparent by this time that a spirit of revolt was generally
abroad, and Queen Matilda was sent back into Normandy to assume
command of the duchy once more. No very coherent narrative of the
military events of this year can be extracted from the confused tale of
Ordericus Vitalis or the jejune annals of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, but the
outline of the history is fairly plain. We seem to recognise three distinct
areas of revolt: Devon and Somerset, Shropshire and Staffordshire, and,
most dangerous of all, Yorkshire and the north. We have no reason to
suppose that the English leaders had any thought of uniting in common
resistance to the Norman rule; their plans extended to nothing more than the
destruction of single fortresses, the execution of isolated revenge for local
injuries. On the other hand the dispersion of the centres of revolt
incidentally produced some of the effects of combination; the Normans
were compelled to divide their forces, and the rapidity with which King
William dashed about the country from point to point proved that he at least
thought the situation sufficiently precarious.

THE BAILE HILL, YORK
THE SITE OF WILLIAM I.’S SECOND CASTLE

Early in the summer the three sons of Harold repeated their piratical
excursion of the previous year. They landed on the 24th of June in the
mouth of the Taw with sixty-six ships and raided over a large part of
Devonshire, but were beaten off at last by Brian of Penthievre, and vanish
therewith from English history.[213] The local forces were capable of dealing
with an unsupported raid of this kind, but the case was otherwise with the
powerful armament which at this time was being prepared in the fiords of
Denmark. Swegn Esthrithson at last was about to take action, and the news
excited once more the unstable patriotism of the men of Northumbria. The
Danish army was recruited from a wide area to the south of the Baltic; there
were numerous adventurers from Poland, Frisia, and Saxony, and we read
of a contingent of heathen savages from Lithuania. The fleet was reported
to consist of two hundred and forty vessels; a number capable, if each ship
was fully laden, of carrying a force considerably larger than any army
William could put into the field without calling out the native militia. The
expedition was under the command of Harold and Cnut, the sons of King

Swegn, and Asbiorn, his brother, and included many Danes of high rank,
among whom Christian, bishop of Aarhus, is mentioned by name.[214]
The fleet set sail towards the end of August, and must have hugged the
shores of Frisia and Holland, for it first touched the English coast at Dover.
The royal forces were strong enough to prevent a landing both here and at
Sandwich, where the Danes repeated the attempt, but the mouth of the
Orwell was unguarded, and a body of the invaders disembarked at Ipswich
with the intention of plundering the neighbourhood. We are, however, told
that the “country people,” by which phrase the English peasantry of the
district are probably meant, came out and, after killing thirty of the raiders,
drove the rest to seek refuge in their ships. A similar descent on Norwich
was repulsed by Ralf de Wader, earl of East Anglia and governor of
Norwich castle, and the Danes passed on towards the Humber. In the
meantime, news of these events was brought to King William, who, we are
told, was hunting at the time in the forest of Dean away on the Welsh
border; and he, seeing where the key to the situation really lay, instantly
sent a messenger to York to warn the garrison and to direct that they should
summon him in person if they were hard pressed by the enemy. He received
the reassuring answer that they would require no assistance from him for a
year to come, and he accordingly continued to leave the defence of the
north in the hands of his subordinates, while the Danes were sailing along
the coast of Lindsey.
It is an interesting question how far the men of the English Danelaw may
have been led by a remembrance of their Scandinavian origin to make
common cause with the army of the king of Denmark at this time. At the
beginning of the century Swegn Forkbeard had been welcomed on this
account by the men of the shires along the lower Trent, and had fixed his
headquarters at Gainsborough in this district. So long as the Anglo-Saxon
legal system retained a semblance of vitality a very definite barrier of
customary law separated the Danelaw from the counties of the eastern
midlands, and the details of its local organisation still preserved not a few
peculiar features, plainly referable to a northern origin. On the other hand,
in the names of the pre-Conquest owners of land in this district as recorded
in Domesday Book the English element distinctly preponderates, while the
particularism of Northumbria itself was perhaps rather political than racial.
It is probable that the men of Lincolnshire would have preferred a Danish to
either a Norman or an English king, but they play no distinctive part in the

incidents of this campaign, which centres round the city of York and its
approaches by land and water.
While the Danish fleet still hung in the Humber, it was joined by the
English exiles from Scotland, Edgar the Etheling, Gospatric, and
Marleswegen, with whom Waltheof, the earl of Huntingdon, and others of
lesser fame now associated themselves. Edgar, who had been raiding in
Lincolnshire independently of his Danish friends, had narrowly escaped
capture by the garrison of Lincoln castle; but he reached the Humber in
safety though with only two companions, and the combined force, like that
of Harold Hardrada three years before, passed on up the Ouse and
disembarked for a direct attack on York. Volunteers assembled from all the
neighbouring country, and in numbers at least it was a formidable army
which on the 21st of September appeared before the northern capital, the
English forming the van, the Danish host the rear. The Normans in York
made no attempt to hold the city wall, and concentrated their defence on the
two fortresses by the Ouse, setting fire to the adjoining buildings, so that
their timber might not be used to fill up the castle ditches. The flames
spread, the city was gutted, and, what was worse to the medieval mind, the
church of St. Peter was involved in the ruin. The struggle which followed
was soon over; on the very day of the Danish arrival, while the city was still
burning, the garrison of the castles made a sally, were outnumbered by the
enemy within the city walls and destroyed, after which the capture of the
actual fortifications was an easy matter. The castles themselves were only
wooden structures planted on mounds of earth; their defenders had been
hopelessly weakened by the failure of the sally, and later tradition recounted
in verse how Waltheof, Siward’s son, stood by the gate and smote down the
Normans one by one to the number of a hundred with his axe as they tried
to break away.[215] The castles once taken, the English hatred of these signs
of bondage broke out with fury; the wooden buildings were instantly broken
up and hurled to the ground, and the luckless William Malet, with his wife
and children, a prisoner, was one of the few Normans in York who survived
the day.
On the 11th of September, before the Danish army had sighted the walls
of York, Archbishop Ealdred, one of the few Englishmen of high rank who
accepted the Norman Conquest as irreversible, died, being worn out by
extreme age, and grief at the ruin which he foresaw was about to fall on the
men of his province. The fall of York was the most serious check which had

hitherto crossed King William’s plans in Normandy or England; it might
easily lead to the formation of a Danish principality beyond the Humber; it
was certain to give encouragement to rebellious movements in the south. In
his rage at the news the king caused the fugitives who had told the tale to be
horribly mutilated as a warning to his captains against possible treachery[216]
and then set out for the north. As he drew towards the Northumbrian border,
the Danes abandoned their new conquest, and made for their ships, crossing
the Humber in them, and established themselves among the marshes of the
Isle of Axholme. This movement diverted the king’s march; he struck
straight for Lindsey with a force of cavalry and crushed sundry isolated
bodies of the enemy which were dispersed among the fens. The Danes,
finding their position untenable, took to their ships again and crossed over
to the Yorkshire bank, whither William had no means of following them. He
therefore left part of his troops under the counts of Mortain and Eu, to
protect Lindsey, while he himself turned westwards to suppress a local
rising which had broken out at Stafford.
We know nothing as to the persons who were responsible for this last
revolt, nor have we any clue as to their objects, but it is quite possible that
they were acting in concert with the men who at this time were laying siege
to the new castle of Shrewsbury. William in this year was contending with
men of Celtic as well as of Scandinavian race; for Bleddyn, king of
Gwynedd, for the third time within three years, had taken arms against the
Normans on the Welsh border. To the men of North Wales, Edric the Wild
brought a contingent from Herefordshire, and the citizens of Chester, which,
it would seem, had not as yet been occupied by the Normans, joined in the
attack. The allies were successful in burning the town of Shrewsbury and
getting away before a Norman force arrived in relief of the castle, but the
Staffordshire insurgents were less fortunate. We are merely told that King
William “wiped out great numbers of the rebels with an easy victory at
Stafford,” but the Domesday survey of the country, in the large proportion
of land which it returns as “waste,” suggests that Staffordshire at this time
received at William’s hand some measure of the doom which was to fall
upon Yorkshire before the year had closed.
In the meantime the revolt of the south-west had run its course. Here as
elsewhere the plans of the revolted English do not seem to have extended
beyond the capture of individual castles; notably the royal fortress which
had been built in Exeter after the the siege of the previous year, and the

private stronghold of Count Robert of Mortain at Montacute in Somerset.
The command against the besiegers of Montacute was assumed by Bishop
Geoffrey of Coutances, who speedily scattered the insurgents with an army
drawn from London, Winchester, and Salisbury, the chief towns on the main
road from the east to Devon and Somerset. The situation at Exeter was
complicated by the attitude of the citizens themselves, who must have been
anxious not to forfeit the privileges which they had obtained from King
William by the treaty which had so recently concluded their own revolt.
Accordingly, when the new castle was beset by a host of Devonians and
Cornishmen, the townspeople took the Norman side; and the garrison on
making a sally threw the rebels into a state of confusion which was
completed by the arrival of Brian of Penthievre, who was advancing to the
relief of the castle men.
Now that no further danger was to be apprehended, from the lands
between Trent and Severn King William’s hands were free to deal with the
Northumbrian difficulty. His lieutenants in Lindsey had contrived to
surprise a number of the Danes as they were participating in the village
feasts with which the men of that district were anticipating the customary
orgies of midwinter and to which they had apparently invited their Danish
friends. This, however, was a trivial matter; there was a probability that the
Danes would return to take possession of York, and when the Conqueror
next appears after the battle of Stafford, he is found at Nottingham on his
way to the northern capital. For fifty miles north of Nottingham he followed
the route by which he had advanced on to York in the previous year, but he
received a sudden check at the point where the road in question crosses the
Aire near to the modern town of Pontefract. The bridge was broken, and the
river, swollen most probably by the winter’s rains, could neither be forded
nor crossed in boats, while the enemy lined the opposite bank in force. On
this last account it was impossible to rebuild the bridge, and for three weeks
the army was kept inactive by this unexpected obstacle. At last a knight
called Lisois de Monasteriis, after examining the river in search of a ford
for miles above and below the camp by the broken bridge, discovered a
practicable crossing somewhere among the hills to the west of Leeds, and
forced a passage with sixty horsemen in despite of the efforts of the enemy
on the left bank. Having demonstrated the possibility of a crossing at this
point Lisois returned to Pontefract; and under his guidance the whole army
passed the Aire, and then wheeled round towards York through the difficult

country which borders the great plain of the Ouse. As the army drew near to
York, news came that the Danes had evacuated the city, so the king divided
his force, sending one detachment to occupy and repair the ruined castles,
and another to the Humber to keep the Danes in check. But he himself had
other work to do, and did not enter York at this time.
It would seem that the Norman passage of the Aire, hazardous as it had
been, had really demoralised the Northumbrian insurgents and their Danish
allies. The latter, as we have seen, fell back on the Humber at once without
striking a blow; the mass of the native English under arms would seem to
have retired simultaneously among the hills of western Yorkshire, for the
Conqueror now turned to their pursuit and to the definite reduction of the
inhospitable land. With grim determination he worked his way along the
wooded valleys which intersect the great mountain chain of northern
England, and deliberately harried that region so that no human being might
find the means of subsistence there. Resistance isolated and ineffectual he
must have met; but now for once submission brought no favour, and those
who perished in the nameless struggles in which despairing men flung
themselves hopelessly upon the line of his inexorable march, underwent a
shorter agony than remained for those who survived to see their homes,
with all their substance, smouldering in the track of the destroying army.
But the spirit was soon beaten out of the ruined men, and without fearing
surprise or ambush William could divide his army still further and quicken
the dismal process of destruction. Soon his soldiers were scattered in camps
over an area of a hundred miles, and the north and east of Yorkshire
underwent the fate which the Conqueror in person had inflicted on the West
Riding. Before Christmas it is probable that the whole land from the North
Sea to Morecambe Bay had become with the rarest exceptions a deserted
wilderness.
The harrying of Yorkshire is one of the few events of the kind in regard
to which the customary rhetoric of the medieval chronicler is only
substantiated by documentary evidence. From the narratives of Ordericus
Vitalis and Simeon of Durham alone, we should gain a fair impression of
the ghastly reality of the great devastation, but a few columns of the
Domesday survey of Yorkshire, where the attempt is made to estimate the
result of the havoc for the purposes of the royal treasury, are infinitely the
more suggestive. On page after page, with deadly iteration, manor after
manor is reported “waste,” and even in the places where agricultural life

had been re-instituted, and the burned villages rebuilt, the men who
inhabited them formed but pitiful little groups in the midst of the
surrounding ruin. As to the fate of the individuals who had fled before King
William’s army, in the fatal December, no certain tale can be told. Many
sold themselves into slavery in return for food, many tried to make their
way southward into the more prosperous midland shires; the local history of
Evesham Abbey relates how crowds of fugitives from the districts visited
by the Conqueror in this campaign thronged the streets of the little town,
and how each day five of six of them, worn out by hunger and weariness,
died, and received burial by the prior of the monastery. Many no doubt tried
to keep themselves alive in the neighbourhood of their old homes until the
rigour of the winter had passed away; but fifty years later it was well
remembered in the north how the bodies of those who were now overtaken
by famine lay rotting by the roadsides. Even so late as Stephen’s time, a
southern writer, William of Malmesbury, tells us how the fertile lands of the
north still bore abundant traces of what had passed during the winter of
1069.
The festival of Christmas caused a short break in the grim progress of
King William. His work was not by any means completed in the north; the
Danes were still in the Humber; Chester remained in virtual independence.
And so the regalia and royal plate were brought from the treasury at
Winchester, and the Christmas feast was held at York with so much of the
traditional splendour as the place and occasion permitted. The ceremony
over, the campaign was resumed, and in the New Year the Conqueror set
out to hunt down a body of Englishmen who seem to have entrenched
themselves among the marshes which then lay between the Cleveland hills
and the estuary of the Tees.[217] The rebels, however, decamped by night on
hearing of the king’s advance, and William spent fifteen days by the Tees,
during which time Earl Waltheof made his submission in person and
Gospatric sent envoys who swore fealty on his behalf. Gospatric was
therefore restored to his earldom, and William returned to York, keeping to
the difficult country of the East Riding in preference to the Roman road
which led southward from the Tees near Darlington down the plain of the
Ouse.[218] It is probable that William chose this route with the object of
hunting down any scattered bands of outlawed Englishmen which might
have hung together thus far in this inaccessible region; but his force
suffered severely through the cold, many of the horses died, and on one

occasion he himself lost his way and became separated from his army with
only six companions for an entire night. York, however, was reached in
safety at last, and the reduction of Northumbria was accomplished.
It was now possible to enter upon the final stage of the campaign, and,
after making the arrangements necessary for the safety of York, William set
out on the last and most formidable of the many marches of this memorable
winter, towards the one important town in England which had never
submitted to his rule. Chester still held out in English hands, and apart from
its strategical importance the citizens of the great port had definitely
attracted King William’s attention by the part which they had played in the
recent siege of Shrewsbury. His hold on the north would never be secure
until he had reduced the town where Irish Vikings and Welsh mountaineers
might at any time collect their forces for an attack upon the settled
midlands. On the other hand, the geographical difficulties in the way of a
direct march from York to Chester were enormous. From the edge of the
plain of York to the Mersey Valley, the altitude of the ground never
descends to a point below 500 feet above sea level; and, since the Roman
highway from York to Manchester had fallen into ruin, no roads crossed this
wild country except such tracks as served for communication between
village and village. But a more serious cause of danger lay in the fact that
the army itself now began to show ominous symptoms which might easily
develop into actual mutiny. The strain of the protracted campaign was
telling upon the men; and the mercenary portion of the army, represented by
the soldiers from Anjou, Brittany, and Maine, began to clamour for their
discharge, complaining that these incessant marches were more intolerable
than even the irksome duty of castle guard. The Conqueror in reply merely
declared that he had no use for the cowards who wished to desert him,[219]
and, trusting himself to the loyalty of his own subjects in the army, he
plunged straightway into the hills which separate the modern counties of
Yorkshire and Lancashire. Part at least of the route now followed at the
close of January must have lain through districts which had been swept bare
of all provisions in the great harrying of December; and the army was at
times reduced to feed on the horses which had perished in the swamps, that
continually intercepted the line of advance. The storms of rain and hail
which fell at this time were considered worthy of mention in the earliest
account of the march which we possess, and we can see that nothing but the
example of King William’s own courage and endurance held the army

together and brought it down in safety into the Cheshire plain. Chester
would appear to have surrendered without daring to stand a siege, and with
its submission, guaranteed as usual by the foundation of a castle,[220] the
Conqueror’s work was done at last in the north. From Chester he moved to
Stafford, where another castle was raised and garrisoned, and then marched
directly across England to Salisbury, at which place the army was
disbanded, with the exception of the men who had protested against the
present expedition and were now kept under arms for forty days longer as a
mark of the king’s disfavour.
In the meantime, by a skilful piece of diplomacy, William had been
insuring himself against active hostility on the part of the Danish fleet. Earl
Asbiorn and his associates had taken but little gain as yet from their English
adventure; and the earl proved very amenable when a secret embassy came
to him from the king, promising him a large sum of money and the right of
provisioning his men at the expense of the dwellers along the coast for the
remainder of the winter, on the sole condition that he should keep the peace
towards the royal troops thenceforward until his departure. The earl, thus
made secure of some personal profit, agreed to the terms, and until the
spring was far advanced, the Danish ships still hung in the English waters.
The harrying of Northumbria, the most salient event of these twelve
months of ceaseless activity, was a measure which it would be impossible to
justify and impertinent to excuse. It was the logical result of the opposition
of an irreconcilable people to an inflexible conqueror. After the battle of
Hastings had shattered the specious unity of the old English state, each of
its component parts might still have secured peace by full submission, or
honour by consistent and coherent resistance; the men of Northumbria took
the one course which was certain to invite disaster, nor, terrible as was the
resultant suffering, can we say that vengeance was undeserved. War in the
eleventh century was at best a cruel business, but we cannot fairly accuse
the Conqueror of deliberately aggravating its horrors without the impulse of
what he must have regarded as necessity. He had to deal with a people
whom he could not trust, who had sworn submission and had broken their
oaths, and the means at his disposal were few. He could not deport the
population of Northumbria as Cromwell was to deport the native Irish under
not dissimilar circumstances; his Normans were too few as yet to garrison
effectively all the wild land between the Humber and the Scottish border.
The one course which remained to the Conqueror was for him to place the

rebels beyond the possibility of revolting again, and he followed this course
with terrible success. And it was on this account—that Northumbria was
wasted, not in the heat of wars, but deliberately, at the bidding of political
necessity—that the act seemed most dreadful to the chroniclers who have
described it. Men were only too well accustomed to the sight of ruined
villages, of starving women and children; but these things seemed less
terrible as the work of Scotch and Danish freebooters than as the conscious
intention of the crowned king of the land. Nor must we forget that we do
not know how far King William was really sinning against the current
military practice of his time. The monastic chroniclers, whose opinion of
the case commends itself to us in virtue of its humanity, were men brought
by the fact of their vocation to a clearer sense of the value of the individual
life than that possessed by the lay world around them. We know what
Ordericus Vitalis thought of the great harrying, perhaps even what William
of Poitiers, the Conqueror’s own chaplain, thought of it, but we do not
know how it appeared to William Fitz Osbern or Roger de Montgomery.
According to his approved custom, the Conqueror kept the Easter
following these events at Westminster, and the feast was attended by three
papal legates of high rank whose presence marks the beginning of the
ecclesiastical reformation which we shall have to consider in its place as the
counterpart of the legal and administrative changes produced by the
Norman Conquest. In the meantime, however, the broken national party was
gathering its forces for a last stand, and the focal point of the English
resistance shifts to the extreme east of the land.
At each stage in the Norman Conquest there is always one particular
district round which the main interest centres for the time, the operations of
war elsewhere being of subsidiary importance. It was the men of Kent and
Sussex who bore the brunt of the first shock of the invasion; it was the men
of the north who held the field in 1069, and now, in the last period of
English resistance, our attention is concentrated on the rectangular tract of
land which lies between Welland, Ermine Street, Ouse, and Wash. Even at
the present day, after eight centuries of drainage, it is not difficult to
reconstruct the geographical features which in 1070 made the Fenland the
most inaccessible part of England south of the Humber. Except for a narrow
tract north of Huntingdon and St. Ives, no part of this district rises to one
hundred feet above sea-level, and in great part it was still covered with the
swamps and meres of stagnant water which gave to the eastern half of this

region the name of the Isle of Ely. In so far as cultivation had already
extended into this inhospitable quarter, it may fairly be set down to the
credit of the five great abbeys of Peterborough, Thorney, Crowland,
Ramsey, and Ely, which dominated the fens and round which the events of
the campaign of 1070 arrange themselves.
Abbot Brand of Peterborough, whose recognition of Edgar the Etheling
as king had so deeply moved the Conqueror’s wrath at the time of his
coronation, had died on November 27, 1069.[221] At this moment King
William was in the thick of his Northumbrian difficulties, and it does not
appear that any appointment to Peterborough was made until the quieter
times of the following spring. In or before May, however, the abbey was
given to a man whose selection for the post proves that the king had
received warning of the coming disquiet in the east. Thorold of Fécamp,
abbot of Malmesbury, had probably made himself useful in north Wiltshire
while William was engaged beyond the Humber, for the reputation for
militant severity which he had created in the south was the reason for his
translation to a post of danger in the Fenland. “By God’s splendour,” said
King William, “if he is more of a knight than an abbot I will find him a man
who will meet all his attacks, where he can prove his valour and his
knighthood and practise the art of war.”[222] The man in question was no
other than the famous Hereward, and Thorold was not long before he saw
traces of his handiwork.
The amount of authentic fact which we know about Hereward is in very
small proportion to the great mass of legend which has gathered round his
name. His parentage is quite unknown, but there are several incidental
entries in Domesday which connect him with the western edge of the
Fenland and which all occur in the Lincolnshire portion of the survey. From
these entries we learn that Hereward had been a tenant of two of the great
Fenland abbeys, namely Crowland and Peterborough, and we also gather
that the former house had found him an unsatisfactory person with whom to
have dealings. The jurors of Aveland Wapentake in Lincolnshire told the
Domesday commissioners that Abbot Ulfketil of Crowland had let the
abbey’s estate in the vill of Rippingale to Hereward on terms to be arranged
mutually year by year, but they add that the abbot took possession of the
land again before Hereward fled from the country because he did not keep
to his agreement.[223] On the other hand, Hereward was seemingly still in the

possession of the lands which he held of Peterborough abbey at the moment
when his name first appears in the national history.
At some time in the course of May, but before Abbot Thorold had taken
possession of his abbey, the Danish fleet, of which we have heard nothing
since the previous year, sailed up the Ouse to Ely. Thus far its leaders would
seem to have kept the agreement which they had made with King William
after his capture of York, and the fact that they now appear as taking the
offensive once more is probably explained by a statement in the Anglo-
Saxon Chronicle that King Swegn of Denmark had come in person to the
Humber.[224] The men of the Fenland were clearly expecting a Danish
reconquest of England, and on the appearance of Earl Asbiorn at Ely they
joined him in great numbers. Among them, and probably at their head, was
Hereward, and the first fruit of the alliance was a successful raid on the
wealthy and unprotected monastery of Peterborough. The monks received
just sufficient warning of approaching danger to enable them to send an
urgent message to Abbot Thorold, asking for help, and also to hide some of
the more precious treasures of their house, and then at mid-day Hereward
and his gang were on them. They came by boat, for even at this date there
were canals which connected the Ouse at Ely with the Nene at
Peterborough, and began to clamour for admission to the abbey.[225] But the
monks had closed their doors and defended them stoutly, so that Hereward
was driven to burn the houses which clustered round the abbey gate in order
to force an entrance. Incidentally the whole of Peterborough was burned
down, with the exception of the church and a single house, but the outlaws
had got inside the monastery. The monks begged them to do no harm, but,
without heeding, they burst into the church, seized all the movable articles
of value on which they could lay their hands, and tried to tear down the
great rood cross. To the clamours of the monks around them they shouted
that they did it all for the good of the church, and as Hereward was a tenant
of the abbey the monks believed him. Indeed, Hereward himself in after
years declared that he had been guided in this matter by the best intentions,
for he believed that the Danes would beat King William and he thought that
it would be better that the treasures of the church should remain in the
hands of his friends for a little while, than that they should fall for ever into
the possession of the Frenchmen.
So the monks were scattered and the wealth of the Golden Borough was
carried off to Ely and handed over to the Danes, who do not seem to have

shared Hereward’s sentiments with regard to its ultimate destination.
Among the captives who were carried off from Peterborough was
Ethelwold, the prior, who, in hope of better days, devoted himself secretly
to the recovery of the relics contained in the jewelled shrines which formed
the most valuable part of the plunder that had just been taken. With this
object in view, he deliberately set himself to win the favour of the
despoilers of his home, and succeeded so well, that the Danes committed
their treasure to his custody, and promised him a bishopric in Denmark if he
chose to return with them. Being a discreet man, he pretended to comply
with their wishes, and in the meantime possessed himself of the tools which
were necessary for the abstraction of the relics. And on a certain day, while
the Danes were holding a great feast, to celebrate the winning of so great a
treasure at so small a cost, Ethelwold took his tools and set to work,
beginning his operations on the reliquary which he knew to contain the arm
of St. Oswald. To prevent interruption he placed two servants on guard, one
in the house where the Danes were feasting, and the other midway between
the latter place and the scene of his own labours. The task progressed
without greater difficulty than was to be expected, although one of the
chests was so tightly clamped with iron that Ethelwold would have
abandoned it had he not trusted in God and St. Oswald. At last the relics
were all secured and hidden temporarily in the straw of the prior’s bed, he
being careful to replace the gold and silver fittings of the shrines as they
were before. But at the critical moment the Danes broke up to go to vespers
and Ethelwold was in imminent danger of being taken, in which event it is
probable that his pious zeal would have been rewarded with the crown of
martyrdom. But, without leaving his room, the prior, who was covered with
sweat and very red from his labour in the heat of a June afternoon, washed
his face in cold water and went out to his captors as if nothing had
happened, and they, who we are told reverenced him as a father, flocked
round him but asked no inconvenient questions. And on the following day
he sent his two servants to Hereward—because his comrades were infesting
all the water-ways—under the pretence that they wished to fetch something
from Peterborough, but in reality they went to the nearer monastery of
Ramsey and gave the relics into the charge of the abbot of that place.
At this point the adventures of Prior Ethelwold touch the current of the
general history. King William, in order, presumably, to divide the insurgent
Englishmen from their Danish allies, made a treaty with Swegn of

Denmark, by which his subjects were to be allowed to sail for their
fatherland without hindrance and in possession of all the spoil they had
gained in the course of the past months. They took advantage of the offer,
but gained little by it in the event, for a great storm arose which scattered
their ships, and the last we hear of the treasures of Peterborough is their
destruction, in a nameless Danish town, in a great fire which arose through
the drunkenness of their guardians. In the meantime, Ethelwold, his troubles
over, collected his fellow-monks and came back to Peterborough, where
they found Abbot Thorold, and restored the services which had been
suspended during the recent disturbances. One unexpected difficulty indeed
manifested itself: the Ramsey people refused to give up the relics which had
been entrusted to their care in the moment of peril. But the abbot of Ramsey
was soon brought into a better mind; the sacristan of the monastery received
a supernatural intimation that his house was acting unjustly, and Thorold of
Peterborough threatened to burn Ramsey abbey to the ground unless the
relics were given back. And so the heroic efforts of Ethelwold were not
frustrated of their purpose.
So quickly had events moved that only one week had elapsed between
the coming of Hereward to Peterborough and the departure of the Danish
fleet. But an entire year had yet to pass before the Isle of Ely was finally
cleared of its rebel garrison. It does not seem that the withdrawal of the
Danes made any difference to the occupation of Ely by the English, and
during the winter of 1070 the Isle became a gathering point for the last
adherents of the broken national party. Very few of them were left now.
Edgar, their nominal head, was living in peace with King Malcolm of
Scotland; Waltheof, the last representative of the Danish earls of
Northumbria, was at this moment in enjoyment of an earldom in the
midlands which there is every reason to believe included the Isle of Ely
itself. On the other hand, Edwin and Morcar now finally took their
departure from William’s court, and raised the last of their futile protests
against the Norman rule.
Hitherto inseparable, on this occasion the brother earls took different
courses, and the result was disastrous to both of them. Morcar joined the
outlaws in Ely; Edwin struck out for the Scotch kingdom, and from our
meagre information about his last months it would seem that he had in view
some great scheme of reviving once more the old friendship between his
house and the Welsh princes and of supporting the combination with Scotch

aid. But fate overtook him before he had time to give another exhibition of
his political worthlessness, and the circumstances of his end were tragic and
mysterious. Three brothers, who were on terms of intimacy with him and
were attending him in his wanderings, betrayed him to the Normans, and in
attempting to escape, his retreat was blocked by a river swollen at the
moment by a high tide. On its bank the last earl of Mercia turned at bay, and
with twenty horsemen at his side made a desperate defence until the whole
band was cut down; Edwin himself, it would appear, falling by the hands of
the three traitors of his household. His head was cut off and the same three
brothers brought it to King William in the expectancy of a great reward. But
the Conqueror on the spot outlawed them for their treason to their lord, and
shed tears of grief over Edwin’s head; for the handsome, fickle young earl,
with all his faults, had really won the love of the grim sovereign from
whom he had thrice revolted.[226]
Edwin fell through treachery, but he met his death in the sight of the sun;
another fate remained for his brother and for those of his associates whose
end is known to us. The cause of the defenders of Ely was hopeless from
the outset. Their revolt was a hindrance to the orderly conduct of the Anglo-
Norman government, but a band of outlaws in the fenland could do little to
affect the course of events elsewhere; Ely commanded no great road or
river, and its Isle was too small an area to support an independent existence
apart from the rest of the land. Its reduction was only a question of time,
complicated by the geographical difficulties of the district. It was necessary
that all the waterways leading from the fens to the open sea should be
blocked, and this implied the concentration of a considerable number of
ships and men-at-arms along the Great and Little Ouse. The siege of a
quarter of Cambridgeshire demanded a greater expenditure of men and
money than that of a single town or castle; but Hereward and his friends in
due time were driven back on Ely itself, from which their raiding parties
would make occasional descents upon the neighbouring villages. The
Conqueror fixed his headquarters at Cambridge, some fifteen miles from
Ely, and his main attack was directed at the point where the Ouse is crossed
by an ancient causeway near the village of Aldreth. But even from the latter
place there remained some six miles of fen to be crossed before Ely itself
could be reached, and we are told on good authority that William caused a
bridge, two miles long, to be built on the western side of the Isle.[227]

The legendary accounts of the exploits of Hereward tell many tales of the
struggle which raged before the Norman army had pierced the natural
defences of Ely, but we cannot be sure of the exact means by which the
place was finally reduced. One stream of tradition assigned the fall of the
Isle to the treachery of the abbot and monks of Ely, and, although the
authority for such a statement is not first-rate, it has commonly been
accepted as representing the truth of the matter.[228] It is at least certain that
the position in which the monks of Ely found themselves was undesirable at
the best. The conduct of Hereward and his men at Peterborough proves
them to have been no respecters of holy places, and if the abbey bought
immediate safety by conniving at the deeds of the outlaws in its
neighbourhood, it ran the risk of the ultimate confiscation of its lands when
King William had restored order. Small blame should rest upon the abbot if
he broke through the dilemma in which he was placed by assisting the
Conqueror in the reduction of the Isle. But whatever the immediate cause of
the fall of Ely, a large number of its defenders fell into William’s hands and
many of them received from him such measure as twenty years before he
had dealt to the men of Alençon. Some were blinded or otherwise mutilated
and allowed to go free, others were thrown into prison. Earl Morcar himself
was sent into Normandy a prisoner and committed to the charge of Roger
de Beaumont[229]; the other captives of note were scattered over the country
in different fortresses. But Hereward, who in all our authorities stands out
as the leader of the resistance, escaped through the marshes and a small part
of his band got clear of the Isle in his company.[230]
Whatever the recent behaviour of the monks of Ely may have been, the
abbey was constrained to buy the king’s peace at a heavy price. Seven
hundred marks of silver were originally demanded by the Conqueror, but
the money was found to be of light weight, and three hundred marks more
were exacted before the abbot and monks were reckoned quit by the king’s
officer. Moreover, the very precincts of the abbey were invaded to find the
site for a castle to command the southern fenland: King William himself
having chosen the ground during a flying visit which he had paid to Ely one
day while the monks were seated at dinner. The building of the castle, by a
Norman interpretation of the Anglo-Saxon duty of burhbot, was laid upon
the men of the three adjacent counties of Cambridge, Huntingdon, and
Bedford, and it was garrisoned when built by a body of picked knights.
Another castle at Aldreth commanded the eastern approaches to the Isle.[231]

On the other hand, it would be some compensation for these disturbances
that within four years from the fall of Ely, and in the lifetime of Abbot
Thurstan, King William decreed a formal restitution to the abbey of all the
lands of which it had unjustly been despoiled in recent years.[232] Now that
no further danger was to be apprehended from the nationalist proclivities of
the monks of Ely, there was no reason why the abbey should not be suffered
to enjoy its ancient possessions in peace; but the record of the plea which
followed the Conqueror’s writ directing restitution proves that many of the
greater people of the land, including the archbishop Stigand and Count
Eustace of Boulogne, had been committing wholesale depredations on the
estates of St. Ethelthryth.
The subsequent fate of Hereward is a matter of utter uncertainty; with his
flight across the marshes of Ely he vanishes into the night which has
engulfed the entire class to which he belonged, the smaller native land-
owners of King Edward’s day. Two lines of tradition were current in later
years about the manner of his end. According to the more dramatic
narrative, Hereward became reconciled to the Conqueror, accompanied him
in the Mancel campaign of 1074, married a noble and wealthy
Englishwoman, and fell at last, before overwhelming odds, at the hands of a
number of Normans, whose feud he would seem to have provoked in the
wild days of his outlawry.[233] In the other story, Hereward still receives
King William’s favour and marries the same English lady as in the former
legend, but he dies at last in peace after many years in the quiet possession
of his father’s lands.[234] The choice which we may make between these
divergent traditions will largely be guided by inference from more truly
historical sources of information. It is very probable that Hereward made
his peace with King William—both traditions agree upon this point; and
that casual expression in the narrative of the sack of Peterborough, that
Hereward “in after time often told the monks that he had done all for the
best,” proves at least that there had been a period after the troubles of 1071
in which Hereward had been on terms of peaceful intercourse with his
monkish neighbours. So too the coincidence of both lines of tradition with
regard to his marriage is in favour of its probability, but the negative
evidence of Domesday Book compels us to put a period to his life before
the winter of 1085. In no part of England did a more numerous body of
native thegns hold land at the latter date than in Hereward’s own county of
Lincoln, but Hereward’s name is not written among them, and the lands

which he had held of Peterborough abbey had been let to a stranger. But if
the Hereward legend is not consistent with itself, there is a more significant
discrepancy between the part which its subject plays in recorded history and
his position as a hero of romance. It is at least certain that the man must
have been something more than the vulgar freebooter who appears in the
story of the ruin of Peterborough. To him we may safely credit the long
defence of the Isle of Ely, and we may feel confident that that defence was
accompanied by deeds of gallantry round which minstrel and gleeman
might weave their fabric of legend and marvel. Hereward, after all, in
literature, if not in fact, is the English hero of the Norman Conquest. A
native annalist might express his bitter regret for the tragedy of King
Harold, the common folk of England might turn Earl Waltheof into an
uncanonised saint, but Hereward was removed by no great chasm of rank
from the humble people who made his deeds their story. And it is not a
small thing that the tale of the resistance to the Norman Conqueror,
inglorious as much of it had been, should end with the name of a man in
whom the succeeding generations might see a true champion of the
independence of the beaten race.

Penny of Swegn Estuthson

CHAPTER VIII
THE CENTRAL YEARS OF THE ENGLISH REIGN

The conquest of England had exalted William of Normandy to a position
of dignity and influence far above all his fellow-vassals of the French
crown, it had renewed the lustre of the fame which the Norman race had
won in its earlier conquest of southern Italy, but it did not mean an
unqualified gain to the Norman state, considered merely as a feudal power.
The process which had turned the duke of the Normans into the king of the
English had meant the withdrawal of Normandy from the feudal politics of
France for four years, and in that interval certain changes of considerable
importance had taken place within the limits of the French kingdom. The
Angevin succession war was now over; Fulk le Rechin had his brother
safely bestowed in prison and could begin to prove himself the true heir of
Geoffrey Martel by renewing the latter’s schemes of territorial
aggrandisement. King Philip of France had reached an age at which he was
competent to rule in person, and it was inevitable that the enmity between
Normandy and France should become deeper and more persistent now that
William had attained to a rank which placed him on an equality with his
suzerain, and could employ the resources of his new kingdom for the
furtherance of any designs which he might form upon the integrity of the
royal demesne. More important than all, Count Baldwin of Flanders had
died in 1067, and events were in progress which for twenty years placed the
wealthy county in steady opposition to the interests of the Anglo-Norman
state.
Between 1067 and 1070 Flanders was under the rule of Count Baldwin
VI., the eldest son of Baldwin of Lille, who had greatly increased his
borders by a marriage with Richildis, the heiress of the neighbouring
imperial fief of Hainault. The counts of Flanders made it a matter of policy
to transmit their inheritance undivided to the chosen heir, and Robert, the
younger son of the old Count Baldwin, before his father’s death had secured

himself against his ultimate disinherison by marrying Gertrude, widow of
Florent I., count of Holland, and assuming the guardianship of her son
Theodoric. On the death of Baldwin VI., the ancestral domain of Flanders
descended to his eldest son, Arnulf, who was placed under the wardship of
his uncle Robert, while Hainault passed to Baldwin, the second son, under
the regency of his mother Richildis. The two regents were on bad terms
from the start, but Robert at the time was hard pressed to maintain his
position in Holland, and Richildis soon got possession of Arnulf, the heir of
Flanders, and ruled there in his name. But her overbearing conduct rapidly
made her unpopular in the county, and Robert was soon invited to invade
Flanders and reign there in his own right. He accepted the invitation, and
Richildis thereupon hired King Philip of France to support her with an
army, and offered her hand and her dominions to William Fitz Osbern, Earl
of Hereford. The earl, like a good knight-errant, accepted the adventure and
hastened to the succour of the lady with the full assent of his lord King
William, but fell into an ambush laid by his enemy Robert, at Bavinkhove,
near Cassel, and perished there together with Arnulf his ward. Richildis
maintained the struggle for a short time longer with the aid of troops
supplied by the prince-bishop of Liège; but on their defeat near Mons,
followed a little later by the surrender of Terouenne, the ecclesiastical
capital of Flanders, she retired into the monastery of Maxines, and Robert,
who is generally described in history as the “Frisian” from the name of his
earlier principality on the shores of the Zuyder Zee, had the permanent
possession of Flanders thenceforward.
The enterprise of William Fitz Osbern meant the dissolution of the
alliance between Normandy and Flanders, which had been founded by the
Conqueror’s marriage in 1053. It was true that French as well as Norman
troops had been involved in the disaster at Bavinkhove, but William
deliberately refused to make peace with Robert by recognising his right to
Flanders, and threw him into the arms of the king of France by maintaining
the claims of Baldwin, the brother of the dead Arnulf. The close friendship
which this policy produced between France and Flanders for a time may
suggest that William for once subordinated questions of state to personal
feeling, but his own relations with a former king of France may have taught
him that the alliances which a French monarch founded with one feudatory
on a common hostility towards another were not likely to be very strong or
permanent. It was not long after these events that King Philip threw away

his Flemish connections by the unprovoked capture of Corbie, preferring,
perhaps wisely, a definite territorial gain to a hazardous diplomatic
understanding; and when Robert the Frisian, in 1085, at last tried to take the
offensive against William, he found support, not in the French monarchy,
but in the distant powers of Norway and Denmark.[235]
More dangerous than the open hostility of Flanders were the symptoms
of disaffection which at this time were beginning to show themselves in the
Norman dependency of Maine. Fortunately for William, the county had
kept quiet during his occupation with the affairs of England, and the revolt
which we have now to consider occurred at a time when he could give his
full attention to the work of its reduction. The nationalist party in Maine had
only been suppressed, not crushed, by the conquest of 1063, and after some
five years of Norman rule their hopes began to revive, fomented probably
by external suggestion on the part of Count Fulk of Anjou. There were in
the field two possible claimants, both connected by marriage with the line
of native counts: Azo, marquis of Liguria, husband of Gersendis, the eldest
sister of the Herbert whose death in 1063 had led to the Norman
occupation, and John de la Flèche, who had married Paula, the youngest of
Herbert’s three sisters. The seigneur of La Flèche was an Angevin lord, but
he took the Norman side in the war which followed, and the nationalists
made their application to the marquis of Liguria, who appeared in Maine
with Gersendis his wife and Hugh their son, the latter being received as the
heir of the county.[236] Azo had brought with him great store of treasure from
his Italian lordship, with which he secured a recognition of his son’s claims
from great part of the Mancel baronage, but upon the failure of his supplies
his supporters began to fall away, and he soon retired in disgust beyond the
Alps, leaving behind his wife and son to maintain the family cause under
the guardianship of Geoffrey of Mayenne.
Thus far the Mancel revolt had run the normal course of its kind, but a
more interesting development followed.[237] Shortly after the departure of
Azo the citizens of Le Mans, rejecting the leadership of their baronial
confederates, broke away on a line of their own which gives them the
distinction of anticipating by some twenty years the movement of municipal
independence which in the next generation was to revolutionise the status of
the great cities of Flanders and northern France. The men of Le Mans
formed themselves into a “commune”[238]; that is, a civic republic
administered by elective officers and occupying a recognised legal position

in the feudal hierarchy to which it belonged. Had this association persisted,
the citizens in their collective capacity might have held their city of the
duke of Normandy or the count of Anjou, but they would have enjoyed
complete independence in their local government and no principle of feudal
law would have prevented them from appearing, still collectively, as the
lord of vassals of their own. We do not know whether they may have been
prompted to take this step by news of Italian precedents in the same
direction, but the formation of a commune raised the revolt at a bound to
the dignity of a revolution. The citizens, as was usual in such cases, united
themselves in an oath to maintain their constitution and they compelled
Geoffrey of Mayenne and the other barons of the neighbourhood to
associate themselves in the same. Herein lay the seeds of future trouble, for
Geoffrey of Mayenne, a typical feudal noble, had no liking for municipal
autonomy, and it was largely his oppression as the representative of Azo
and his heir which had stung the citizens into this assertion of their
independence.
At the outset all went well with the young republic. We hear rumours of
various violations of accepted custom, of the death penalty inflicted for
small offences, and of a certain disregard for the holy seasons of the church;
but the citizens were able to enter without immediate mishap upon the work
of reducing the castles which commanded the country around. The
commune of Le Mans did not live long enough to face the problem of
welding a powerful rural feudality into a coherent city state, and its
overthrow, when it came, came suddenly and disgracefully. Some twenty
miles from Le Mans, the castle of Sillé was being held by Hugh its lord
against the commune, and the men of the capital called out a general levy of
their supporters within the county to undertake the siege of the fortress. A
considerable body of men obeyed the summons, and the communal army
set out for Sillé with Arnold, bishop of Le Mans, marching at its head. Hard
by the castle the army from Le Mans was joined by Geoffrey of Mayenne
with his tenants; but Geoffrey felt the incongruity of joining with a host of
rebellious burghers in an attack on the castle of a fellow-noble, and he
secretly entered into communications with Hugh of Sillé. Whether the rout
of the civic host which occurred on the following day was the result of
Geoffrey’s treason cannot now be decided, but a sudden sally on the part of
the garrison threw the besiegers into confusion, and, although they
recovered themselves sufficiently to maintain the fight, they were finally

scattered by a report that Le Mans itself had fallen into the enemy’s hand.
Great numbers of them perished in the panic which followed, more by the
precipitancy of their flight than by the efforts of the men of Sillé, and
Bishop Arnold was among the prisoners.
Within the capital all was confusion. The cause of the commune had been
hopelessly discredited, and there was treachery within the city as well as in
the camp by Sillé. The castle of Le Mans was occupied in the nationalist
interest by Gersendis of Liguria, who, immediately upon the retreat of her
elderly husband to Italy, had become the mistress of Geoffrey of Mayenne.
But Geoffrey, after his conduct at Sillé, did not venture to return to the
capital, and Gersendis, unable to endure her lover’s absence, began to plot
the surrender of the castle to him. Her object was soon gained, and a fierce
struggle raged for many days between the citizens and Geoffrey of
Mayenne, now in the possession of their fortress. Betrayed and desperate,
the men of Le Mans appealed for help to Fulk of Anjou, and pressed on the
siege with such fury that Geoffrey was driven to make his escape by night.
On Fulk’s arrival the castle surrendered to him, and was dismantled, with
the exception of such of its fortifications as could be turned to the general
defence of the city against the greater enemy who was already on the way.
Quickly as events seem to have moved, there had yet been time for news
of the revolt to be brought to King William in England, and the messenger
of evil had been no less a person than Arnold bishop of Le Mans himself.
Long before William’s army had been set in motion Arnold had returned to
Le Mans to play, as we have seen, a somewhat ignominious part in the
catastrophe at Sillé. Meanwhile William had gathered a force, which is
especially interesting from the fact that in it for the first time Englishmen
were combined with Normans in the service of the lord of both races
beyond the sea. Englishmen in the next generation believed that it was their
compatriots who did the best service in this campaign, and William of
Malmesbury thought that though the English had been conquered with ease
in their own land yet that they always appeared invincible in foreign parts.
[239]
On the present occasion, however, there was little call for feats of arms.
William entered Maine by the Sarthe Valley and besieged Fresnay, whose
lord, Hubert, was soon driven by the harrying of his lands to surrender
Fresnay itself and the lesser castle of Beaumont lower down the river. Sillé
was the next point of attack, but Hugh of Sillé made his submission before
the investment of his castle had begun, and William moved on southward

towards Le Mans. After the strife and confusion of the past months men
were everywhere disposed to welcome the King as the restorer of peace,
castles were readily surrendered to him, and the way lay open to the
distracted capital. Here too, after a brief delay, he was received without
opposition, but the men of Le Mans, before they surrendered the keys of the
city, obtained from the king a sworn promise that he would pardon them for
their revolt, and would respect their ancient customs and the independence
of their local rights of jurisdiction.[240] The commune of Le Mans ceased to
exist, but in its last moments it had shown itself strong enough to win an act
of indemnity from its formidable conqueror, and to guard itself against the
possible consequences of a feudal reaction.
The war now entered upon another phase. Count Fulk was little minded
to forego the position he had won in Le Mans as the protector of its
commune, and, but for the unwonted strength of the Anglo-Norman army, it
is likely enough that he would have made some effort to oppose William’s
march to the city. As it was, however, he contented himself with turning
upon John de la Flèche, William’s leading Angevin adherent, who
immediately appealed to his ally for help. William at once despatched a
force to his assistance under William de Moulins and Robert de Vieux Pont,
a move which had the effect of widening the area of hostilities still further.
Fulk proceeded to the siege of La Flèche, and called to his assistance Count
Hoel of Brittany.[241] The combined Breton and Angevin host would be far
superior to any force which William’s lieutenants had in the field in that
quarter; and at the head of a large army, now as formerly composed of
English as well as Norman troops, he hastened to La Flèche in person and
everything betokened a pitched battle of the first class. But, at the supreme
moment, an unnamed cardinal of the Roman Church, together with some
pious monks, intervened in favour of peace, and within the circle of the
Norman leaders Counts William of Evreux and Roger of Montgomery were
of the same mind. Various conferences were held to discuss the conditions
of a possible settlement, and at last, at Blanchelande, just outside the walls
of La Flèche, a treaty was concluded.[242] Now, as ten years earlier, Robert
of Normandy was selected as count of Maine, and to him Fulk of Anjou
released the direct suzerainty which he claimed over the barons of the
county, together with all the fiefs which were Robert’s marriage portion
with Margaret, his affianced bride in 1061. Robert, in return, recognised
Fulk as the overlord of Maine, and did homage to him in that capacity.

William promised indemnity to those Mancel barons who had taken the
Angevin side in the late war, and Fulk was formally reconciled to John de la
Flèche, and the other Angevin nobles who had leagued themselves with the
king of England.
The treaty was in effect a compromise. All the immediate advantage, it is
true, lay on the Norman side: the heir of Normandy was now the lawful
count of Maine, and Robert’s countship meant the effective rule of William
the Conqueror, who even appropriated his son’s title and in solemn
documents would at times add to his Norman and English dignities the style
of “Prince of the men of Maine.” Yet, on the other hand, the formal
recognition of the Angevin overlordship was no small thing. It gave to
succeeding counts of Anjou a vantage ground which they did not neglect.
The line which separated suzerainty from immediate rule, clear enough in
law, would rapidly become indistinct when a strong prince like Fulk the
Rechin was the overlord, and a feckless creature like Robert Curthose the
tenant in possession. More than sixty years were to pass before a count of
Anjou became the immediate lord of Maine, but the seeds of such a
development were laid by the treaty of Blanchelande.
In the period which follows the suppression of the fenland rising of 1070,
the bulk of our historical information relates to the affairs of the
Conqueror’s continental dominions. But in English history proper the time
was one of crucial importance. Its character was not such as to invite the
attention of a medieval chronicler, eager to fill his pages with a succession
of battlepieces: with the exception of the revolt of the earls in 1075,
England was outwardly at peace from the flight of Hereward to the
Conqueror’s death; but it is to this time that we must assign the systematic
introduction of Norman methods of government, and the gradual
reconciliation of the English people to the fact that they had thrown their
last try for independence, and that for good or ill they must make the best of
the permanent rule of their alien masters. A process of this kind, in itself
largely subconscious, lay beyond the understanding of the best monastic
annalist or chronicler, and we shall never know exactly in what light the
great change presented itself to the peasantry of a single English village; but
there are certain matters, more on the surface of the history, with regard to
which we possess definite information, and which themselves are of some
considerable importance.

Prominent among these last stands the question of the relations between
the Conqueror and his unquiet neighbour, or, as William would probably
have described him, his unruly vassal, Malcolm Canmore, king of Scots.
The Scotch question had merely been shelved for a little time by the
submission of 1068, and up to the Conqueror’s death there remained several
matters in dispute between the kings, each of which might serve as a decent
pretext for war if such were needed. In particular the English frontier on the
north-west emphatically called for rectification from King William’s
standpoint. Ever since the commendation of Cumbria to Malcolm I., in or
about 954, the south-western border of Scotland had cut the English frontier
at a re-entrant angle at a particularly dangerous point. From the hills which
rise to 2000 feet along the boundary between Cumberland and Durham, the
valley of the Tees affords a gradual descent to the fertile country which lies
between the moors of the North Riding of Yorkshire and the hills of
Cleveland. So long as Lothian remained part of the Bernician earldom, the
strategical significance of Teesdale was to a great extent masked; no king of
Scots could ravage the plain of north Yorkshire without facing the
possibility that his country might be harried and his own retreat cut off by a
counter raid from Bamburgh or Dunbar. But the cession of Lothian to
Malcolm II. after the battle of Carham in 1018 materially altered the
military situation, and but for the dissensions within the Scotch kingdom
which followed Malcolm’s death, it is probable that Yorkshire during the
Confessor’s reign would have received sharp proof of the danger which
impended from the north-west.
Malcolm was succeeded by Duncan, the son of his sister by Crinan, lay
abbot of Dunkeld; and on Duncan’s displacement by Macbeth, leader of the
Picts beyond the Forth, the position of the new king was too unstable to
allow him to interfere effectively on the side of Northumbria. Relying as he
did on Highland support, Macbeth seems to have left Cumberland in virtual
independence, and it has recently been proved that during some part of the
first fifteen years of his reign Cumberland was largely settled by English
thegns who seem to have regarded themselves as subject to Earl Siward of
Northumbria.[243] On his part, Siward supported the party of Malcolm,
Duncan’s son; but when, three years after Siward’s death, Malcolm had
become king of Scots, the tide began to turn, and Cumberland became once
more a menace to the peace of northern England.

The restoration of the son of Duncan to the throne of Scotland brought
into importance the marriage relationship which existed between his line
and the family which for a century had held hereditary possession of the
Bernician earldom. The complicated relationships which united the local
earls of Bernicia will best be illustrated in tabular form,[244] but the outline
of the Northumbrian succession is fairly clear. Siward, although a Dane by
birth, was connected by marriage with the great Bernician house, but on his
death in 1055 the ancient family was dispossessed of the earldom in favour
first of Tostig and then of Morcar. Their earldoms, however, were mere
incidents in the general rivalry between the houses of Godwine and Leofric,
and the attachment of the Northumbrians to their local dynasty is shown by
the fact that, at the crisis of 1065, Morcar is found appointing Oswulf, son
of Earl Eadwulf II., subordinate earl of Bernicia beyond the Tyne. Upon
Oswulf’s murder his cousin Gospatric, as we have seen, bought a
recognition of the family claims from the Conqueror; and it is not
improbable that the latter, when making Gospatric his lieutenant in
Northumbria, may have had in mind some idea of securing peace from the
side of Scotland and conciliating the local sentiment of the north through an
earl who inherited the blood of the ancient lords of Bamburgh and was near
of kin to the king of Scots. The plan in the first instance failed through the
defection of Gospatric in the summer of 1068, but the rapidity with which
his restoration followed the submission which he tendered by proxy to
William on the bank of the Tees at the close of 1069 is itself significant. In
the interval created by Gospatric’s deposition there had occurred the
disastrous experiment of the appointment of Robert de Comines. It was as
important now as two years previously to prevent the men of
Northumberland and Durham from making common cause with Malcolm of
Scotland against the Norman government; and now as formerly Gospatric
was the one man who could, if he chose, perform this work. But before
another year had passed the precarious tranquillity of the north was again
broken, and the Scotch danger reasserted itself in the acutest of forms.
We might gather from the table above referred to, alone, that Malcolm,
by his English connections, would be the natural protector of any
dispossessed natives who might choose to seek refuge at his court, and we
have seen that Edgar the Etheling had twice been driven to escape beyond
the Tweed. We possess no information as to the motives which induced
Malcolm in the course of 1070 to break peace with King William. In his

barbarian mind Malcolm may have conceived of himself as avenging the
wrongs of his English friends by harrying the land from which they had
been driven, or, more probably, the withdrawal of the Conqueror from the
north may have seemed to him to open a safe opportunity for an extended
plunder raid. Possibly he regarded his cousin Gospatric as having betrayed
the cause of his people by doing homage to the Norman Conqueror, but
whatever the immediate cause, he suddenly fell upon Northumbria by way
of Cumberland and Teesdale, harried Cleveland and Holderness, and then
turned back again upon the modern shire of Durham.[245] And it was while
he was in the act of burning the town of Wearmouth that Edgar the Etheling,
with his mother and sisters, accompanied by Marleswegn, Harold’s former
lieutenant in the north, and other battered relics of the national party, landed
from their ships in the harbour.[246] So long as the Danes under Earl Asbiorn
had kept to the Humber, it would seem that the etheling had been content to
drift about aimlessly with them, but their departure for Ely had driven him
to seek refuge for a third time within two years at the Scottish court.
Malcolm went down to the fugitives and assured them of a welcome in
Scotland, whither they sailed off without delay, while he betook himself
with renewed energy to his work of devastation.
For in the meantime Gospatric had been doing what he would consider to
be his duty as the lawful earl of Bernicia: while Malcolm was harrying
Durham, Gospatric was harrying Cumberland. The action taken by King
Malcolm had for the time being destroyed all possibility of a coalition
between Scot and Bernician, and, on the present occasion, Gospatric’s
fidelity was unimpeachable, if his generalship was bad. He was successful
in carrying off much booty to his fortress of Bamburgh, but he did nothing
to check the Scot king’s depredations, and the news of what had been
happening in Cumberland excited Malcolm to a state of fury, in which he
committed the most appalling atrocities on the country folk of the region
through which his northward march lay. Red-handed as he was, Malcolm on
his return to Scotland found the English exiles in the enjoyment of his
peace, and forthwith insisted that Margaret, the etheling’s sister, should be
given to him in marriage. Some project of the kind had undoubtedly been
mooted during the etheling’s earlier visits to Scotland, but Margaret felt a
desire to enter the religious life; and nothing but the fact that the very
existence of the fugitives lay at Malcolm’s mercy induced the etheling to
give his consent to the union. The exact date of the ceremony is uncertain,

but it may not unreasonably be placed in the course of 1071, and with the
alliance of the royal houses of Scotland and Wessex the northern kingdom
begins to emerge from its barbaric isolation, and to fill a permanent place in
the political scheme of English statesmen.
To William the marriage was no matter of congratulation. It meant that
the Scottish court would become definitely interested in the restoration of
the old English dynasty; so long as such an event were possible, it was
likely to make Scotland both a refuge and a recruiting ground for any
political exile who might choose to attempt his return by force and arms. To
minimise these evils, and to avenge the harrying of 1070, the Conqueror in
the summer of 1072 set out for Scotland in person. The expedition was
planned on a great scale; the fyrd was called out, and the naval force which
was at William’s command co-operated with the native host. Malcolm
seems to have felt himself unequal to meeting a force of this size in the
open field; he allowed William to pass through Lothian and to cross the
Forth without any serious obstruction, and the two kings met at Abernethy
on the Tay. There Malcolm renewed his homage to William, made peace,
and gave hostages for its observance, among them Donald, his son by his
first wife, Ingibiorg. The expedition could not have been intended to
accomplish more than this, and William at once turned southwards,
retracing his steps along the great east coast road.[247]
Nothing appears to have been done at this time to improve the defences
of the northern border. Carlisle remained in Scotch hands, and the site of the
future Newcastle on the Tyne is only mentioned in the record of this march
through the fact of the river being flooded at the moment when the army
sought to cross it, thereby causing an inconvenient delay. The importance of
the Teesdale gap had been sufficiently proved by the events of 1070, but no
attempt was made to guard the course of the river in any special manner. On
the other hand we should do well not to ignore the possibility that the first
creation of the earldom of Richmond immediately to the south of the Tees
may not have been unconnected with the advisability of keeping a
permanent military force in this quarter. The earldom in question had been
conferred upon Brian of Penthievre in or before 1068, and had passed from
him to his brother Alan by the date of the events with which we are dealing.
[248]
So far as we know King William never created an earldom save for
purposes of border defence, and the geographical facts which we have just

noted make it distinctly improbable that Richmond was an exception to this
rule.

Two important changes in the government of Northumbria would seem to
have been carried out at this time. The first was the installation of Walcher
of Lorraine as bishop of Durham, and his establishment in a castle
especially built for him, so that he might be secure against any spasmodic
rising on the part of the men of his great diocese. The second event was the
deposition of Earl Gospatric. He was held guilty, we are told, of complicity
in the murder of Robert de Comines, and the Danish storm of York in 1069,
although his offences in both these matters had been committed previous to
his reconciliation with William in 1070. Whatever may have been the true
cause of his downfall, it was followed immediately by the restoration of the
house of Siward to its former position in the north, for the earldom of
Northumbria was now given to Waltheof of Huntingdon, Siward’s son, and
remained in his hands until the catastrophe which overtook him three years
later. Gospatric in the meantime betook himself to his cousin’s court and
received from him a large estate in Lothian, centring round the town of
Dunbar, until he might be restored to King William’s favour. With this act
his political importance ceases; Domesday proves that the whole or part of
his Yorkshire estates had been restored to him by the time of the taking of
the Survey, but he never recovered his former rank and influence.
It has been conjectured with much probability that one of the conditions
of the peace of Abernethy was the expulsion of Edgar the Etheling from
Scotland.[249] Shortly after this time he appears as beginning a series of
journeys, which before long brought him once more into England as the
honoured guest of King William. His first visit was paid to Flanders, where
he would be sure of a kindly reception from Robert the Frisian, by this time
William’s mortal enemy. After a stay of uncertain length in Flanders he
returned to Scotland, where he landed early in July 1074, and was
hospitably entertained by his sister and her husband. Before long, however,
he received an invitation from King Philip of France, offering to put him in
possession of the castle of Montreuil, which he might use as a base from
which to attack his enemies.[250] The offer shows considerable strategical
sense in the young king of France. Montreuil was the first piece of territory
which the Capetian house had gained on the Channel coast, but it was
separated by the possessions of the house of Vermandois from the body of

the royal demesne, and it lay between the counties of Ponthieu and
Boulogne. Once established in Montreuil Edgar could have received
constant support from Robert the Frisian; and if the counts of Ponthieu or
Boulogne wished to revolt from the Norman connection Edgar’s territory
would have made it possible to form a compact and powerful league against
the most vulnerable part of the Norman frontier.
Edgar complied with King Philip’s request, and set out by sea to take
possession of his castle; the good-will of his Scottish protectors being
expressed in a multitude of costly gifts. Unfortunately for the success of his
enterprise he was speedily driven on to the English coast by a storm and
some of his men were taken prisoner, but he succeeded in reaching Scotland
again, although in very miserable condition. Curiously enough this slight
check to his plans seems to have caused him to abandon outright the idea of
occupying Montreuil, and we are told that his brother-in-law advised him to
make terms with King William. The Conqueror was at the time in
Normandy, but he gave a ready hearing to the overtures from Edgar and
directed that an escort should be sent to accompany him through England
and across the Channel. Of the meeting between the king and the etheling in
Normandy we possess no details, but the English writers were struck with
the honours which the Conqueror showed to his former rival,[251] and
Domesday reveals the latter in peaceable possession of upwards of a
thousand acres of land in the north-east of Hertfordshire. For the rest of
William’s reign Edgar remained a political cipher.
We have now reached the central event of William’s rule in England, the
revolt of the earls in 1075. The rising in question is sufficiently
characterised by the name which is generally assigned to it; it was a
movement headed by two of the seven earls who held office in England,
incited by the motives proper to men of their rank, and finding little support
outside the body of their personal dependants. It had no popular or
provincial feeling behind it; it cannot even be described as a purely Norman
revolt, for the mass of the English baronage held true to King William, and
its most striking result was the execution of the last English earl, for
complicity in the designs of his Norman confederates.
On the death of William Fitz Osbern in 1071 his earldom of Hereford had
passed to his son, a stupid and vicious young man, in every way a
degenerate successor to the tried and faithful friend of the Conqueror. From
the moment of his succession to his earldom Roger seems to have kept

himself in sullen isolation in his palatinate across the Severn; his name has
not yet been found among the visitors to William’s court who witnessed the
charters which the king granted during these years, and we should know
nothing about the man or his character if it were not for the preservation of
three letters addressed to him by his father’s old friend Archbishop
Lanfranc. At the time when these letters were written, William was in
Normandy, and Lanfranc had been left in a sort of unofficial regency, in
which position he had clearly been rendered uneasy by rumours of Roger’s
growing disaffection. Lanfranc, in his correspondence, was tactfully
indefinite on the latter point, but he was very outspoken in regard to
Roger’s personal acts of oppression and injustice. By the example of
William Fitz Osbern, “whom,” says Lanfranc, “I loved more than anyone
else in the world,” the archbishop pleaded with his friend’s son to amend
his conduct, and promised to see him and give him counsel on whatever
occasion he might choose. But Roger remained obdurate, and in the last
letter of the three which we possess Lanfranc declares Roger
excommunicate until he has compensated those whom he has injured, and
has made his peace with the king for his arbitrary acts in his earldom.
The position of Waltheof at this time has already been described. His
Bernician earldom was less important on this occasion than were the group
of shires in the eastern midlands over which he also possessed comital
rights. The four counties of Northampton, Bedford, Huntingdon, and
Cambridge, together with Waltheof’s extensive estates in Leicestershire and
Warwickshire, went far towards connecting the palatinate of Hereford with
the distant earldom of East Anglia, the most dangerous quarter of the
present rebellion.
The earl of East Anglia, Ralf of Wader, might, like Waltheof, claim to be
considered an Englishman; for, although his mother was a Breton and his
father also bore the Norman name of Ralf, the latter was an Englishman of
Norfolk birth, and had been earl of East Anglia under Edward the Confessor
and during the earliest years of the Conqueror. Ralf the younger, despite his
succession to his father’s earldom, is identified with his mother’s land of
Brittany, where he held the estates of Wader and Montfort, rather than with
England.[252] Like Roger of Hereford, and judging from the same evidence,
Earl Ralf would seem to have been a consistent absentee from William’s
court, and his one appearance in the history of the latter’s reign, previous to

his own revolt in 1075, took place in 1069, when he beat off the Danes from
the estuary of the Yare.
The immediate cause of the present outbreak was the Conqueror’s
objection to a marriage which had been projected between Earl Ralf and
Emma, daughter of William Fitz Osbern and sister of Roger of Hereford.
The reasons for the Conqueror’s action are intelligible enough; nothing
could be further from his interest than the creation of a series of marriage
ties among the greater vassals of his crown, especially when the parties to
be connected in this way held the wide military and territorial powers which
at this early date were inherent in the dignity of an earl. There is no reason
to suppose that Earl Ralf’s loyalty had been suspected at any earlier time or
that there was anything deeper than the royal prohibition of his marriage
which now drove him into revolt. Without the king’s consent, the marriage
was celebrated and the wedding feast held at Exning in Cambridgeshire, a
vill within Waltheof’s earldom. Earls Roger and Ralf had already made
preparations for their rising, their friends had been acquainted with their
intention, and their castles were prepared to stand a siege; and at Exning a
determined attempt was made to seduce Waltheof from his temporary
fidelity to King William. His accession to their cause might very possibly
bring with it some measure of English support, he had a great popular
reputation as a warrior, and the plans and motives of the conspirators were
unfolded to him at the wedding feast with startling frankness. The occasion
was hardly such as to produce sobriety of counsel, and in the one extended
narrative which we possess of the original plot, the terms of the offer now
made to Waltheof were involved in a long harangue, in which the deposition
of the Conqueror was declared to be a matter pleasing to God and man, and
every event in William’s life which could be turned to his discredit was
brought forward, heightened according to the taste of the conspirators or the
literary skill of our informant. More important than the grotesque crimes
attributed to the Conqueror are the plans formed by the earls for the event
of his expulsion. Their object, we are told, was to restore England to the
condition in which it had existed in the days of Edward the Confessor. With
this object, one of the three chief plotters was to be king, the other two
earls; Waltheof in particular was to receive a third part of England. William
was declared to be fully occupied beyond the sea, his Normans in England
were assumed to be discontented with the reward they had received for their
services, and it was suggested that the native English might be willing to

rise once more if a chance of revenge were offered them. Waltheof was
assured that the chances of a successful rising could never be higher than at
the moment in question.[253]
The narrative of Ordericus Vitalis, which we have hitherto been
following, makes Waltheof indignantly refuse to be a party to any scheme
of the kind. By the examples of Ahitophel and Judas Iscariot he
demonstrated the sinister fate that was the portion of a traitor, and declared
that he would never violate the confidence that King William had placed in
him. On his refusal to join the plot, he was compelled to take a terrible oath
not to betray the scheme and the rising was accomplished without his
assistance; but after its suppression the tale makes Waltheof accused of
treason by Judith his wife before the king, and describes his behaviour in
prison and the manner of his end with great wealth of detail and a not
improbable approximation to the facts of the case. It seems fairly certain
that Waltheof took no effective part in the military operations which
followed the bridal of Exning, and we may consider the difficult question
connected with his trial and execution apart from the details of the war.
The plan of campaign followed by both sides was extremely simple.
Neither the earldom of East Anglia or of Hereford acting by itself could
obtain any permanent success against the loyal portions of the country; the
object of the rebel leaders was to join their forces, and the object of King
William’s lieutenants was to prevent the combination. The line of the
Severn was guarded against Earl Roger of Hereford by the local magnates
of Worcestershire, Wulfstan the bishop, and Urse d’Abetot the sheriff of the
shire, Agelwig, abbot of Evesham, and Walter de Lacy, at the head of a
force composed of the local fyrd in conjunction with the knightly tenants
from their own estates.[254]
The Herefordshire revolt had soon run its course; Earl Roger never got
across the Severn and within a short time had been taken prisoner, but the
earl of East Anglia was a person of greater ability. Before engaging in the
rebellion the earls had sought for external help; application had been made
to the King of Denmark for a fleet, and reinforcements had been drawn
from Brittany, recruited in great part, no doubt, from the Breton estates of
Ralf de Wader. From the latter’s head-quarters at Norwich a highroad of
Roman origin stretched invitingly across the Norfolk plain towards the
royal castle of Cambridge, and Earl Ralf moved westward in the hope of
effecting a junction with Roger of Hereford; but at an unknown place in the

neighbourhood of this line, designated by Ordericus Vitalis as “Fagadun,”
the rebel army was broken and scattered, and from a letter which Lanfranc
wrote to the king immediately after this event, the archbishop was evidently
in expectation of a speedy suppression of the whole rising. That this hope
was frustrated was due to the heroism of Earl Ralf’s bride, who undertook
the defence of Norwich castle in person, while her lord went off to
Denmark, and held out for three months against all that the Norman
commanders could do. At last she was compelled to surrender upon
conditions. The Breton tenants of Earl Ralf in England were required to
abandon their lands and to withdraw to Brittany within forty days; the
mercenaries of the same race were allowed a month to get away from the
country. Emma herself, to whom belonged all the honours of the war, went
to Brittany, where she met her husband, and Norwich castle was once more
occupied in the king’s name.
Earl Ralf’s journey to Denmark had not been fruitless, for a fleet of two
hundred Danish ships appeared in the Humber shortly after the fall of
Norwich, under the command of Cnut, son of King Swegn Estrithson, and a
certain earl called Hakon.[255] Their coming reopened an endless possibility
of further trouble; the Conqueror, through Archbishop Lanfranc, enjoined
Bishop Walcher of Durham to look well to the defences of his castle.[256] But
the first object of the ordinary Danish commander of those times was
always plunder, and Cnut after successfully evading the royal troops
contented himself with the sack of York cathedral, and quickly sailed away
to Flanders. In the very year of this expedition (1075), Swegn Estrithson
died, and Harold, his eldest son, who succeeded him, kept peace towards
England throughout his reign. In the autumn of 1075 William had returned
to England, and at Christmas he proceeded to deal with the persons and
property of the revolted earls. Waltheof and Roger were in his power; Ralf
was safe beyond the sea, but his English lands remained for confiscation,
and such of his Breton associates as were in the king’s hands were punished
according to the fashion of the times. Earl Roger was sent to prison, but his
captivity at first was not over severe, and had it not been for his
contumelious conduct towards the king he might have obtained his release
in due course. Unfortunately for himself, he mortally offended William by
throwing into the fire a rich present of silks and furs which the king sent to
him one Easter, and perpetual captivity was the return for the insult. The
relative leniency of the Conqueror’s treatment of Roger contrasts very

strikingly with his attitude to the third earl implicated in the revolt, and no
incident in King William’s career has won more reprobation from medieval
and modern historians than the sentence which he allowed to be passed on
Earl Waltheof.
We have already sketched in outline the narrative of Waltheof’s action as
given by Ordericus Vitalis, and it will be well now to consider briefly the
independent story told by the native English chronicles.[257] On all accounts
it is certain that Waltheof had been implicated in the treason proposed at
Exning, and it is no less clear, though the fact is suppressed by Orderic, that
he had speedily repented and under the advice of Lanfranc had revealed the
whole scheme to King William in Normandy.[258] The part played by
Lanfranc is explicable, not only by the species of regency he held in the
kingdom at the time, but also by his position as metropolitan of the English
church, and his reputation as a famous doctor of the canon law. No man was
better qualified to give a sound opinion as to the circumstances under which
an indiscreet oath might be broken without the guilt of perjury; and the
penances which he imposed on Waltheof for his intended breach of the
engagement which he had taken at Exning seem to have been accepted by
all parties as a satisfactory solution of the matter. On his part, William bided
his time; he appears to have accepted the gifts which Waltheof offered as
the price of his peace, and he contented himself with keeping the earl under
his own supervision until his return to England. Not till then was Waltheof
placed under actual arrest, and it has been conjectured that the reason for
this action was the fear that he might make his escape to the Danes in the
Humber.[259] At the midwinter council of 1075 he was brought to trial,
whether or not upon information laid against him by his wife, the countess
Judith, and although no definite sentence was passed against him at this
time he was sent into closer imprisonment at Winchester.
For the first five months of 1076 Waltheof’s cause remained undecided.
It is clear that there was considerable uncertainty in high quarters as to what
should be done with him. Lanfranc interceded on his behalf, apparently
going so far as to declare him innocent of all complicity in the revolt. We
are told nothing of the Conqueror’s own sentiments in the matter, but the
strange delay in the promulgation of definite sentence suggests that
throughout these months he had been halting between two opinions. At last
the sterner view prevailed, and under the influence of Waltheof’s Norman

rivals at the royal court, according to Ordericus Vitalis, the king gave orders
for the execution of the last English earl.
Early on the morning of the 31st of May, Waltheof was taken from his
prison in Winchester to die on the hill of St. Giles outside the city.
Accustomed hitherto to the active life of his northern ancestors, the
monotony of his imprisonment would seem to have destroyed his courage,
and the fatal morning found him in bitter agony of soul. The executioners,
who feared a rescue, and were anxious to get through with the work, had
little patience with his prayers and weeping, and bade him rise that they
might carry out their orders. Waltheof begged that he might be allowed to
say a pater noster for himself and them, and they granted his request, but at
the clause “et ne nos inducas in tentationem” his voice failed him, and he
burst into a storm of tears. Before he could recover his strength, his head
had been struck from him at a single blow, but the monks of Crowland
abbey, where his body lay in after years, told their Norman visitor
Ordericus Vitalis that the severed head was heard duly to finish the prayer
with “sed libera nos a malo, Amen.”
The case of Earl Waltheof involves two separate questions which it is
well to keep distinct in estimating the justice of King William’s conduct in
the matter. The first is how far Waltheof had really implicated himself in the
designs of the earls of East Anglia and Hereford; the second is what, on the
assumption of his serious guilt, would have been the lawful punishment for
it. It does not seem likely that the first question will ever be finally
answered, for by a singular chance none of our authorities are quite
disinterested when they relate the circumstances of Waltheof’s fall. The
Anglo-Saxon chronicler and Florence of Worcester, compatriots of the dead
earl, lie under some antecedent suspicion of minimising the extent to which
he had compromised himself; and Ordericus Vitalis, to whom we should
naturally turn for a statement of the Norman side of the case, based his
account of Waltheof upon information received from the monks of
Crowland at a time when the earl was, in popular sentiment, rapidly
becoming transformed into a national martyr. Orderic’s narrative, written
under such influences, has just as much historical value as any professed
piece of martyrology; that is, it probably presents the authentic tradition of
the details of its hero’s death, but it is not concerned to pay a scrupulous
regard to facts which might be inconvenient for his reputation. And so King
William for once has no apologist; but sixty years after the event it was

recognised by an impartial writer like William of Malmesbury[260] that the
Norman story about Waltheof was very different from that which the
English put forward. With such untrustworthy authorities as our only
guides, we should scarcely attempt to settle a matter which in the days of
King Stephen was already a burning question, but our hesitancy should
make us pause before we accuse King William of judicial murder.
To the second of the problems arising out of the case—the sentence
which followed Waltheof’s condemnation—it is possible to find a more
satisfactory answer. Nothing is more probable than that the Conqueror, in
sending Roger of Hereford into prison and beheading Waltheof, was simply
applying to criminals of high rank the great principle that men of Norman
or of English race should be judged respectively according to Norman or
English law.[261] Earl Roger as a Norman, according to a practice on which
we have already had occasion to remark, was condemned to imprisonment,
but English law regarded treason as a capital offence, and Waltheof suffered
the strict legal penalty of his crime. Indeed, Waltheof himself, in Orderic’s
version of his reply to the conspirators at Exning, is made to declare that the
English law condemned a traitor to lose his head, and it is probable that he
was better informed on this point than have been some of the later
historians who have undertaken his defence. During the next century,
members of the Norman baronage established in England who had raised an
unsuccessful revolt uniformly received sentence according to the rule which
applied to men of their race; and the execution of a traitor against the king
will scarcely occur between 1100 and 1200, and but rarely in the course of
the thirteenth century. But Waltheof had no privilege of the kind, and, stern
as was his sentence, he might not complain that formal justice had been
denied him.
The revolt of 1075 produced a sequel in a small continental war. Earl
Ralf, as we have seen, had fled to his estates in Brittany, and his appearance
coincided in point of time with the outbreak of a general revolt among the
Breton baronage. Count Hoel, who possessed in his own right five-sixths of
Brittany, was the first of his line to exercise effective rule over the whole
peninsula, and the fact was little to the liking of his greater subjects. The
malcontents found a leader in Geoffrey “Grenonat,” count of Rennes, an
illegitimate son of Alan III.; and the dispossessed earl of East Anglia
brought the resources of his barony of Wader to their side. Ralf and
Geoffrey seized the castle of Dol; and the rising assumed such serious

proportions that Hoel sent to England, and requested King William’s
assistance. William, ever desirous of asserting Norman influence in
Brittany, took the present opportunity, and in 1076 he crossed the Channel
with a force which to the chroniclers of Worcester and Peterborough
represented an English fyrd, and laid siege to Dol. The result was a serious
loss of prestige, for the garrison had answered Hoel’s application to William
by making a counter-appeal to Philip of France, and held out valiantly in the
expectation of relief. Philip took the field with a large army, advanced to
Dol, and took a measure of revenge for his father’s discomfitures at
Mortemer and Varaville, by compelling William to beat a hasty retreat with
the loss of his baggage and stores. William engaged no further in the war
which dragged on for three years longer, but ended in 1079 with the final
success of Hoel.[262]
In the meantime, certain important changes had taken place in the
administrative geography of England. The earldoms of Hereford and East
Anglia, vacant through the treason of Earls Roger and Ralf, were allowed to
fall into abeyance. Waltheof’s earldom of Northampton likewise became
extinct, although his widow, the countess Judith, was possessed in 1086 of
large estates scattered over the shires which had lain within her husband’s
government. There was no particular reason why Northamptonshire should
possess an earl, but it was still abundantly necessary that William should be
represented by a permanent lieutenant on the Scotch border. An earl for
Bernicia was now found in the person of Walcher of Lorraine, whose
appointment anticipated by more than sixty years the beginning of the long
series of bishops of Durham, whose secular powers within their diocese
produced the “county palatine” which lasted until 1836.[263] The experiment
made in Walcher’s appointment was destined to end in tragic failure, but for
four years Northumbrian affairs relapse into unwonted obscurity, and the
Conqueror was never again called upon to lead an army into the north.

Denier of Robert le Frison

CHAPTER IX
THE LAST YEARS OF THE CONQUEROR

With the peace of Blanchelande we enter upon the last phase in the life of
William the Conqueror, and this although more than the half of his English
reign still lay in the future. It must be owned that no unity of purpose or
achievement can be traced underlying this final stage; the history of these
last years is little more than a series of disconnected episodes, of which the
details themselves are very imperfectly known to us. It has, in fact, been
customary for historians to regard this period as marking somewhat of a
decline in the character and fortunes of the Conqueror; a decline which the
men of the next generation were inclined to attribute to supernatural
vengeance pursuing the king for his execution of Earl Waltheof in 1076.
“Such was his resolution,” says Orderic, “that he still maintained a brave
fight against his enemies, but success did not crown his enterprises now as
formerly, nor were his battles often crowned with victory.”[264] This idea of
retributive fate, characteristic of the medieval mind, has received from
historians various adaptations and exemplifications, but perhaps a more
reasonable explanation of the tameness of the last years of the Conqueror
would be that the achievements of the decade between 1060 and 1070
inevitably make the succeeding history something of an anticlimax. The
Conqueror’s last wars are indeed inconsiderable enough when compared
with the campaigns of Le Mans and Hastings, but the most unique
undertaking of his life falls within two years of its close; and with the
Domesday Survey before us we need no further proof that the far-
sightedness of the king’s policy and the strength of his executive power
were still unimpaired at the very close of his career.
The main cause of the difficulties which beset the King in these latter
years was the undutiful eagerness of Robert of Normandy to anticipate his
inheritance. It was natural enough that Robert should wish to enjoy the
reality of power; for a dozen years at least he had been the recognised heir

of Normandy, and the peace of Blanchelande had recently assigned him the
county of Maine. But so early as 1074 the earls of Hereford and Norfolk, in
planning their revolt, are understood to have reckoned the disagreement
between the King and his eldest son among the chances in their favour,[265]
and it is certain that Robert had been bitterly discontented with his position
for some time before he broke out into open revolt. The chronology of his
movements is far from clear; but at some time or other he made a wild
attempt to seize the castle of Rouen, and when this failed he found an
immediate refuge and base of operations in the land of Hugh de
Châteauneuf, a powerful lord on the border between Normandy and the
royal demesne, who allowed him to occupy his castles of Raimalast, Sorel,
and Châteauneuf. King William, on his part, confiscated the lands of the
rebels; he also took into his pay Count Rotrou of Mortagne, the overlord of
Hugh of Châteauneuf for Raimalast; and Robert was soon driven to seek a
more distant exile in foreign parts. He first visited Flanders, but Robert the
Frisian, notwithstanding his enmity towards his formidable brother-in-law,
did not think it worth while to spend his resources upon his irresponsible
nephew, for the latter is represented as wandering vaguely over Touraine,
Germany, Aquitaine, and Gascony in great destitution. To such straits was
he reduced, that his mother provoked the one dispute which varied the
domestic peace of the Conqueror’s married life by sending supplies to her
son in exile. The king, on discovering this, became convulsed with rage,
poured reproaches on his queen for her support of a rebel, and ordered one
of her messengers, who happened to be within his power, to be seized and
blinded. The latter, however, a Breton named Samson, received a timely
hint of his danger from persons in the confidence of the queen, and took
refuge in the monastery of St. Evroul, “for the safety alike of his soul and
body,” says Ordericus Vitalis, who for some forty years was his fellow-
inmate in the abbey.
At last King Philip took pity upon the fugitive Robert and allowed him to
establish himself in the castle of Gerberoi in the Beauvaisis. The king’s
patronage of Robert ranks, as a matter of policy, with his gift of Montreuil
to Edgar the Etheling in 1074; Philip was always ready to take an
inexpensive opportunity of harassing his over-mighty vassal. Around
Robert, in this cave of Adullam, there gathered a force of adventurers from
Normandy and the French kingdom, including many men who had hitherto
been good subjects to King William, but now thought it expedient to follow

the rising fortunes of his heir. William retaliated by garrisoning the Norman
castles which lay nearest to Gerberoi, so as to prevent the rebels from
harrying the border; and in some way he must have brought the king of
France over to his side; for when, in the last days of 1078, he laid formal
siege to his son’s castle, we know on good authority that King Philip was
present in his camp.[266] The siege lasted for three weeks, and in one of the
frequent encounters between the loyalists and the rebels there occurred the
famous passage of arms between the Conqueror and his son. William was
wounded in the hand by Robert, his horse was killed under him, and had not
a Berkshire thegn, Tokig, son of Wigod of Wallingford, gallantly brought
another mount to the king,[267] it is probable that his life would have come to
an ignominious close beneath the walls of Gerberoi. It was very possibly
the scandal caused by this episode which led certain prominent members of
the Norman baronage to offer their mediation between the king and his heir.
The siege seems to have been broken up by mutual consent; William retired
to Rouen, Robert made his way once more into Flanders, and a
reconciliation was effected by the efforts of Roger de Montgomery, Roger
de Beaumont, Hugh de Grentemaisnil, and other personal friends of the
king. Robert was restored to favour, his confederates were pardoned, and he
once more received a formal confirmation of his title to the duchy of
Normandy. For a short time, as charters show, he continued to fill his
rightful place at his father’s court, but his vagabond instincts soon became
too strong for him and he left the duchy again, not to return to it during his
father’s lifetime.
One is naturally inclined to make some comparison between these events
and the rebellion which a hundred years later convulsed the dominions of
Henry II. Fundamentally, the cause of each disturbance was the same—the
anxiety of the reigning king to secure the succession, met by equal anxiety
on the part of the destined heir to enjoy the fruits of lordship. And in each
case the character of the respective heirs was much the same. Robert
Curthose and Henry Fitz Henry, both men of chivalry, rather than of
politics, showed themselves incapable of appreciating the motives which
made their fathers wish to maintain the integrity of the family possessions;
the fact that they themselves were debarred from rewarding their private
friends and punishing their enemies, seemed to them a sufficient reason for
imperilling the results of the statesmanship which had created the very
inheritance which they hoped to enjoy. Robert of Normandy, a gross

anticipation of the chivalrous knight of later times, represents a type of
character which had hitherto been unknown among the sons of Rollo, a type
for which there was no use in the rough days when the feudal states of
modern Europe were in the making, and which could not attain any refined
development before the Crusades had lifted the art and the ideals of war on
to a higher plane. William the Conqueror, by no means devoid of chivalrous
instincts, never allowed them to obscure his sense of what the policy of the
moment demanded; Henry II. was much less affected by the new spirit;
both rulers alike were essentially out of sympathy with sons to whom great
place meant exceptional opportunities for the excitement and glory of
military adventure, rather than the stern responsibilities of government.
We know little that is definite about the course of events which followed
upon the reconciliation of King William and his heir. The next two years
indeed form a practical blank in the personal history of the Conqueror, and
it does not seem probable that he ever visited England during this interval.
In his absence the king of Scots took the opportunity of spreading
destruction once again across the border, and in the summer of 1079 he
harried the country as far as the Tyne, without hindrance, so far as our
evidence goes, from the clerical earl of Northumbria. The success of this
raid was a sufficient proof of the weakness of the Northern frontier of
England, and in the next year[268] Robert of Normandy was entrusted with
the command of a counter-expedition into Scotland, with orders to receive
the submission of the king of Scots, or, in case he proved obdurate, to treat
his land as an enemies’ country. The Norman army penetrated Scotland as
far as Falkirk, and, according to one account, received hostages as a
guarantee of King Malcolm’s obedience. Another and more strictly
contemporary narrative, however, states that this part of the expedition was
fruitless; but, in any case, Robert on his return founded the great fortress of
Newcastle-on-Tyne as a barrier against future incursions from the side of
Scotland.

PITCHER, PHOTO. GLOUCESTER

TOMB OF ROBERT COURTHOSE

Some information as to William’s own movements in Normandy during
1080 may be gathered from charters and other legal documents. On the 7th
of January he was at Caen,[269] and on the 13th he appears at Boscherville on
the Seine[270]; at Easter he held a great court probably at Rouen.[271] At
Whitsuntide he presided over a council at Lillebonne,[272] where a set of
canons was promulgated which strikingly illustrates his opinion as to the
relations which should exist between church and state.
Whitsunday in 1080 fell on the 31st of May, and serious disturbances had
been taking place in England earlier in the month. Bishop Walcher of
Durham had proved an unpopular as well as an inefficient earl of
Northumbria. Himself a foreigner and a churchman, he must from the outset
have been out of touch with the wild Englishmen placed under his rule, and
the situation was aggravated by the fact that the bishop’s priestly office
compelled him to transact the work of government in great part by deputy.
He entrusted the administration of his earldom to a kinsman of his own
called Gilbert,[273] and in all matters of business he relied on the counsel of
an ill-assorted pair of favourites, one of them a noble Northumbrian thegn
called Ligulf, who found his way to his favour by the devotion which he
professed to Saint Cuthbert, the other being his own chaplain, Leobwine, a

foreigner. Jealousy soon broke out between the thegn and the chaplain, and
at last the latter, being worsted by his rival in a quarrel in the bishop’s
presence, took the above mentioned Gilbert into his confidence and
prevailed on him to destroy the Englishman secretly. On hearing the news
the bishop was struck with dismay, and, in his anxiety to prove his
innocence, summoned a general meeting of the men of his earldom to
assemble at Gateshead. The assembly came together, but the Bernicians
were in a dangerous humour; the bishop dared not risk a deliberation in the
open air, and took refuge in the neighbouring church. Instantly the gathering
got out of hand, the church was surrounded and set on fire, and the bishop
and his companions were cut to pieces by the mob.
For such an act as this there could be no mercy. The punishment of the
murderers was left to Walcher’s fellow-prelate Odo of Bayeux, and the
vengeance which he took was heavy. It must have been impossible to
determine with accuracy the names of those who had actually joined in the
crime, but it is evident that men from all parts of Bernicia had taken part in
the meeting at Gateshead, and the whole earldom was held implicated in the
murder. Accordingly the whole district was ravaged, and the bishop of
Bayeux administered death and mutilation on a scale unusual even in the
eleventh century.[274] To the thankless dignity of the Northumbrian earldom,
the Conqueror appointed Aubrey de Coucy, a powerful Norman baron; but
he soon abandoned the task of governing his distressful province and retired
to his continental estates. To him there succeeded Robert de Mowbray, who
was destined to be the last earl of Bernicia, but who proved more successful
than any of his predecessors in the work of preserving order and watching
the movements of the king of Scots; and for the next ten years Northumbria
under his stern rule ceases to trouble the central administration.
The chief interest of the following year in the history of the Conqueror
lies in the singular expedition which he made at this time beyond the limits
of his immediate rule into the extreme parts of Wales. The various but
scanty accounts of this event which we possess are somewhat conflicting.
The Peterborough chronicler says that the king “in this year led an army
into Wales and there freed many hundred men.” The Annales Cambriæ tell
us that “William, king of the English, came to St. David’s that he might
pray there.” Very possibly the Conqueror did in reality pay his devotions at
the shrine of the apostle of Wales, but secular motives were not lacking for
an armed demonstration in that restless land. So long as the Normans in

England itself were only a ruling minority, holding down a disaffected
population, the conquest of Wales was an impossibility; and yet on all
grounds it was expedient for the king to show the Welshmen what reserves
of power lay behind his marcher earls of Shrewsbury and Chester. The
expedition has a further interest as one of the earliest occasions on which it
is recorded that the feudal host of England was called to take the field; the
local historian of Abingdon abbey remarked that nearly all the knights
belonging to that church were ordered to set out for Wales, although the
abbot remained at home.[275] It does not appear that any of the native princes
of South Wales suffered displacement at this time; the one permanent result
of the expedition would seem to have been the foundation of Cardiff
castle[276] as an outpost in the enemies’ land. The strategical frontier of
England in this quarter consisted of the line of fortresses which guarded the
lower course of the Wye, and the settlement of the Welsh question, like the
settlement of the Scotch question, was a legacy which the Conqueror left to
his successors.
After these events, but not before the end of the year, King William
withdrew into Normandy, and probably spent the greater part of 1082 in his
duchy. But his return to England was marked by one of the most dramatic
incidents in his whole career, the famous scene of the arrest of Odo, bishop
of Bayeux and earl of Kent. Up to the very moment of the bishop’s fall, the
relations between the brothers appear to have been outwardly friendly, and
in an English charter of the present year, the bishop appears at court in full
enjoyment of his lay and spiritual titles.[277] The cause of the final rupture is
uncertain. Ordericus Vitalis[278] assigned it to the unprecedented ambition of
Bishop Odo, who, not content with his position in England and Normandy,
was supposed to be laying his plans to secure his election to the papal chair
at the next vacancy. According to this tale, the bishop had bought himself a
palace in Rome, bribed the senators to join his side, and engaged a large
number of Norman knights, including no less a person than the earl of
Chester, to follow him into Italy when the time for action came. Whatever
Odo’s plans may have been, William received news of them in Normandy,
and he hurried across the Channel, intercepting Odo in the Isle of Wight.
Without being actually arrested, Odo was placed under restraint, and a
special sitting of the Commune Concilium was convened to try his case.
The subsequent proceedings were conducted in the Isle of Wight, very
possibly in the royal castle of Carisbrooke, and King William himself seems

to have undertaken his brother’s impeachment. The articles laid against Odo
fell into two parts, a specific charge of seducing the king’s knights from
their lawful duty, and a general accusation of oppression and wrong-doing
to the church and to the native population of the land. The task of giving
judgment on these points belonged by customary law to the barons in
council, but they failed to give sentence through fear of the formidable
defendant before them, and the Conqueror himself was compelled to issue
orders for Odo’s arrest. Here another difficulty presented itself, for no one
dared lay hands on a bishop; and upon William seizing his brother with his
own hands, Odo cried out, “I am a bishop and the Lord’s minister; a bishop
may not be condemned without the judgment of the Pope.” To this claim of
episcopal privilege William replied that he arrested not the bishop of
Bayeux, but the earl of Kent, and Odo was sent off straightway in custody
to the Tower of Rouen. At a later date it was suggested that the distinction
between the bishop’s lay and spiritual functions was suggested to the king
by Lanfranc,[279] whose opinion as an expert in the canon law was
incontrovertible; and apart from the dramatic interest of the scene the trial
of Odo has special importance as one of the few recorded cases in which a
question of clerical immunity was raised before the promulgation of the
Constitutions of Clarendon.
The one extended narrative which we possess of these events was
composed some forty years after the date in question, and the scheme which
is attributed to Bishop Odo may well seem too visionary a project to have
been undertaken by that very hard-headed person, yet on the whole we shall
probably do well to pay respect to Orderic’s version of the incident. For,
although the militant lord of Bayeux might seem to us an incongruous
successor for the saintly Hildebrand, it must as yet have been uncertain how
far the church as a whole had really identified itself with the ideals which
found their greatest exponent in Gregory VII., and the situation in Italy
itself was such as to invite the intervention of a prelate capable of wielding
the secular arm. The struggle between pope and emperor was at its height,
and within three years from the date of Odo’s arrest Hildebrand himself was
to die in exile from his city, while Norman influence was all-powerful in
south Italy. The tradition represented in Orderic’s narrative shows an
appreciation of the general situation, and if we regard the motive assigned
for Odo’s preparations as merely the monastery gossip of the next
generation, yet the bishop’s imprisonment is a certain fact, and the unusual

bitterness of King William towards his half-brother would suggest that
something more than political disloyalty gave point to the latter’s schemes.
Nevertheless the captivity in which Bishop Odo expiated his ambition
cannot have been enforced with very great severity, for in the five years
which intervened between his disgrace and William’s death he appears at
least occasionally in attendance at his brother’s court.
The circle of the Conqueror’s immediate companions was rapidly
breaking up now. On November 3rd, 1083, Queen Matilda died, and was
buried in the convent of the Holy Trinity at Caen, which she had founded in
return for her lord’s safety amid the perils of his invasion of England.
Archbishop Lanfranc and Earl Roger of Montgomery almost alone
represented the friends of King William’s early manhood at the councils of
his last four years. Through all the hazards of her married life Matilda of
Flanders had played her part well; if William the Conqueror alone among
all the men of his house kept his sexual purity unstained to the last,
something at least of this may be set down to his love for the bride whom
he had won, thirty years before, in defiance of all ecclesiastical censure.
Nor should Matilda’s excellence be conceived of as lying wholly in the
domestic sphere; William could leave his duchy in her hands when he set
out to win a kingdom for himself and her, and William was no contemptible
judge of practical ability in others. We shall hardly find in all English
medieval history another queen consort who takes a place at once more
prominent and more honourable.
In the year following Queen Matilda’s death, the Conqueror’s attention
was for the last time concentrated on the affairs of Maine, and in a manner
which illustrates the uncertain tenure by which the Normans still held their
southern dependency. Twenty years of Norman rule had failed to reconcile
the Manceaux to the alien government. The rising of 1073 had proved the
strength and extent of the disaffection, and from the events of the present
year it is plain that the Norman element in Maine was no more than a
garrison in hostile territory, although the disturbance which called William
into the field in 1084 was merely the revolt of a great Mancel baron fighting
for his own hand, which should not be dignified with the name of a national
movement. In the centre of the county the castle of Sainte-Suzanne stands
on a high rock overlooking the river Arne, one of the lesser tributaries of the
Sarthe. This fortress, together with the castles of Beaumont and Fresnay on
the greater river, belonged to Hubert the viscount of Maine, who had been a

prominent leader of the Mancel nationalists in the war of 1063, and had
subsequently married a niece of Duke Robert of Burgundy. Formidable
alike from his position in Maine and his connection with the Capetian
house, Hubert proved himself an unruly subject of the Norman princeps
Cenomannorum and after sundry acts of disaffection he broke into open
revolt, abandoned his castles of Fresnay and Beaumont, and concentrated
his forces on the height of Sainte-Suzanne. Like Robert of Normandy at
Gerberoi, five years before, Hubert made his castle a rendezvous for all the
restless adventurers of the French kingdom, who soon became intolerable to
the Norman garrisons in Le Mans and its neighbourhood. The latter, it
would seem, were not strong enough to divide their forces for an attack on
Sainte-Suzanne, and sent an appeal for help to King William, who
thereupon gathered an army in Normandy, and made ready for his last
invasion of Maine.

WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR

(AS CONCEIVED BY A FRENCH PAINTER OF THE SIXTEENTH
CENTURY)

THE ORIGINAL OF THIS PICTURE, NOW LOST, WAS PAINTED
BY AN ARTIST WHEN THE TOMB OF THE CONQUEROR WAS
OPENED IN 1522. A COPY EXECUTED IN 1708, IS PRESERVED
IN THE SACRISTY OF ST. ETIENNE’S CHURCH AT CAEN; THE
PRESENT ILLUSTRATION IS FROM A PHOTOGRAPH OF THAT
COPY

WESTERN NORMANDY

But for once in his life the Conqueror found himself confronted by an
irreducible fortress. “He did not venture to lay siege to the castle of Sainte-
Suzanne,” says Orderic,

“it being rendered impregnable by its position on rocks and the dense
thickets of vineyards which surrounded it, nor could he confine the enemy
within the fortress as he wished, since the latter was strong enough to
control supplies and was in command of the communications. The king
therefore built a fortification in the valley of Bonjen, and placed therein a
strong body of troops to repress the raids of the enemy, being himself
compelled to return into Normandy on weighty affairs.”[280]

As William had no prospect of reducing the castle, either by storm or
blockade, he was well advised to save his personal prestige by retreat, but
the garrison of his counterwork under his lieutenant Alan Earl of Richmond
proved themselves unequal to the task assigned them. For three years,
according to Orderic, the operations in the Arne valley dragged on, and the
fame of Hubert’s successful resistance attracted an increasing stream of
volunteers from remote parts of France. At last, when many knights of fame
had been killed or taken prisoner, the disheartened Normans at Bonjen
resolved to bring about a reconciliation between the king and the viscount.
William was in England at the time, and on receiving details of the Norman
losses before Sainte-Suzanne he showed himself willing to come to terms
with Hubert, who thereupon crossed the Channel under a safe conduct and
was restored to favour at the royal court.[281]
With this failure closes the record of the Conquerors achievements in
Maine. The events of the next ten years proved that the triumph of Hubert
of Sainte-Suzanne was more than the accidental success of a rebellious
noble; a national force lay behind him and his crew of adventurers, which
came to the front when Helie de la Flèche struggled for the county of Maine
with William Rufus. In the process which during the next half-century was
consolidating the feudal world of France, Maine could not persist in
isolated independence, but its final absorption into Anjou was less
repugnant to local patriotism and the facts of geography than its annexation
by the lords of Rouen. Those who have a taste for historical parallels may
fairly draw one between William’s wars in Maine and his descendant
Edward I.’s attack on the autonomy of Scotland, with reference to the
manner in which an initial success was reversed after the death of the great
soldier who had won it, by the irreconcilable determination of the
conquered people. But there lies a problem which cannot be wholly
answered in the question why King William’s work, so permanent in the
case of England, was so soon undone in the case of the kindred land of
Maine.
It is possible that the Conqueror’s placability toward Hubert of Sainte-
Suzanne was not unconnected with a more formidable danger threatening
England from the north and east. Once more the Scandinavian peril hung
over the land. Harold of Denmark, the eldest son of Swegn Estrithson, had
died in 1080, and his brother and successor Cnut married the daughter of
William’s inveterate enemy, Count Robert of Flanders. In this way a family

alliance between the two strongest naval powers of the north was called into
being; and in 1085 the king and the count planned a joint invasion of
England. Cnut attempted to draw King Olaf of Norway into the expedition,
and received from him a contingent of sixty ships, but Olaf would not join
in person, giving as his reason that the kings of Norway had always been
less successful than the kings of Denmark in enterprises against England,
and that his kingdom had not yet recovered from the disaster of 1066.[282]
But now, as in the former year, England had no fleet available for serious
naval operations; and King William’s subjects must have thought that his
defensive measures were as ruinous to the districts affected as the passage
of an invading army itself. The king was in Normandy when he became
apprised of the danger, and he hastened across the Channel, with a great
force of French and Breton mercenaries, “so that people wondered how the
land could feed all that army,” remarks the Peterborough chronicler. The
king arranged for the billeting of the host among his barons, and then
proceeded deliberately to lay waste the parts of the country exposed to
attack; a precaution which would have kept the enemy from advancing far
from the coast, but which must have cruelly afflicted the poorer folk of the
eastern shires.[283] Meanwhile a great armament from Flanders and Denmark
had been gathered in the Lijm fiord, and all was ready for the voyage when
on July 10, 1086, Cnut was murdered in the church of Odensee.[284] His
death meant the abandonment of the expedition, but is probable that his
abortive schemes contributed to one of the most notable events of William’s
reign—the oath of Salisbury of 1086.
The king had kept the feast of 1086 at Winchester and had knighted his
youngest son, Henry, in the Whitsuntide council at Westminster. Not long
afterwards he turned westward again, and by the first of August had come
to Salisbury, where he held an assembly of very exceptional character.
“There his Witan came to him,” says the Anglo-Saxon chronicler, “and all
the landholding men in England, no matter whose men they might be, and
swore him fealty that they would be true to him against all men.”[285] The
native chronicler in his cell at Peterborough was evidently impressed by the
scale of all the Conqueror’s measures in these last years, and his statement
that all the land-holding men in England came to the Salisbury meeting
must not be construed too literally, but he has seen clearly enough what was
the real purpose of the famous oath. It was no slight matter that King
William was strong enough to exact from each mesne tenant in his kingdom

an absolute oath of allegiance to himself in person, without explicit
reference to the tie of homage which bound individual tenants to their
immediate lords. But, significant as is this clear enunciation of the principle
that the king’s claim to fealty overrides the lord’s claim to service, it should
not be taken to imply any revolutionary change in the current doctrines of
feudal law. It is highly probable that this general oath was demanded with
the single purpose of providing against the defection of disloyal knights and
barons to Cnut of Denmark in the imminent event of his landing. News
travelled slowly in the eleventh century, and King William at Salisbury on
August 1st could not well have heard of the murder at Odensee on July
10th. But apart from this, any feudal monarch could have maintained in
theory that the facts of subinfeudation should not invalidate his sovereign
rights; the question was merely as to the possibility of enforcing the latter.
The exceptional power enjoyed by William and his successors in this
respect was due to the intimate relations established between the king and
his feudatories by the circumstances of the Conquest; the Oath of Salisbury
was a striking incident and little more.
It was probably not long after the famous scene at Salisbury that the
Conqueror crossed the Channel for the last time. No chronicler has recorded
the name of the port which witnessed King William’s last embarkation, but
we know that he called at the Isle of Wight on his way to Normandy, and
we may suppose that he had set sail from some Hampshire or Sussex haven.
His subjects probably rejoiced at his departure, for England had fallen on
evil times in these last years. The summer of 1086 had been disastrous for a
population never living far from the margin of subsistence. “This year was
very grievous,” laments the native chronicler, “and ruinous and sorrowful in
England through the murrain; corn and fruit could not be gathered and one
cannot well think how wretched was the weather, there was such dreadful
thunder and lightning, which killed many men, and always kept growing
worse and worse. God Almighty amend it when it please him.” But the bad
harvest brought its inevitable train of famine and pestilence, and 1087 was
worse than 1086 had been. It was the agony of this year that called forth the
famous picture of the Conqueror’s fiscal exactions, how the miserly king
leased his lands at the highest rent that could be wrung out of the poor men
by right or wrong; how his servants exacted unlawful tolls. Medieval
finance was not elastic enough to adapt itself to the alternation of good and
bad seasons; and in a time of distress men were crushed to the earth by rents

and taxes, which, as Domesday Book shows, they could afford to bear well
enough in years of normal plenty. The monk of Peterborough took no
account of this, and yet he clearly felt that he had reached the climax of
disaster as he recorded the death of William the Conqueror.
The question of the Vexin Française, which, by a singular chance, was to
cost the Conqueror his life, originated in the days of Duke Robert of
Normandy and Henry I. of France. We have seen that King Henry, in return
for help given by Robert to him in the difficult time of his accession, ceded
the Vexin Française to the Norman Duke. Drogo, the reigning count,
remained true to the Norman connection, and accompanied Duke Robert to
the Holy Land, where he died; but his son Walter wished to detach the
Vexin from association with Normandy and to replace himself under the
direct sovereignty of the king of France. He proved his hostility to William
of Normandy in the campaign of Mortemer, and by the claims which he
raised to the county of Maine in 1063, but he died without issue, and his
possessions passed to his first cousin, Ralf III., count of Valois. The house
of Valois was not unfriendly to Normandy, and from 1063 to 1077 its
powerful possessions were a standing menace to the royal demesne. But in
the latter year the family estates were broken up by a dramatic event. Simon
de Crepy, the son of Count Ralf, who had successfully maintained his
position against Philip I., felt nevertheless a desire to enter the religious life,
and on his wedding night he suddenly announced his determination,
persuaded his young bride to follow his example, and retired from the
world. Philip I. thereupon reunited the Vexin to the royal demesne without
opposition from William of Normandy, who was at the time much occupied
with the affairs of Maine.[286] For ten years William acquiesced in the state
of affairs, and his present action took the form of a reprisal for certain raids
which the Frenchmen in Mantes had lately been making across the Norman
border. It would clearly have been useless to expect King Philip to
intervene, and William accordingly raised the whole Vexin question once
more, and demanded possession of Pontoise, Chaumont, and Mantes, three
towns which command the whole province.
It does not seem that Philip made any attempt to defend his threatened
frontier, and he is reported to have treated William’s threats with contempt.
Thereupon, the Conqueror, stung by some insult which passed at the time,
suddenly threw himself with a Norman force across the Epte, and harried
the country until he came to Mantes itself. The garrison had left their posts

on the previous day, in order to inspect the devastation which the Normans
had wrought in the neighbourhood, and were surprised by King William’s
arrival. Garrison and invaders rushed in together headlong through the gates
of the city, but the Normans had the victory, and Mantes was ruthlessly
burned. And then King William, while riding among the smouldering ruins
of his last conquest, in some way not quite clearly known, was thrown
violently upon the pommel of his saddle, and his injury lay beyond the
resources of the rough surgery of the eleventh century.
Stricken thus with a mortal blow, King William left the wasted Vexin for
his capital of Rouen, and for six weeks of a burning summer his great
strength struggled with the pain of his incurable hurt. At first he lay within
the city of Rouen itself, but as the days passed he became less able to bear
the noise of the busy port, and he bade his attendants carry him to the priory
of Saint-Gervase, which stands on a hill to the west of the town. The
progress of his sickness left his senses unimpaired to the last, and in the
quiet priory the Conqueror told the story of his life to his sons William and
Henry, his friend and physician Gilbert Maminot, bishop of Lisieux,
Guntard, abbot of Jumièges, and a few others who had come to witness the
end of their lord. Two independent narratives of King William’s apologia
have survived to our day, and, although monastic tradition may have framed
the tale somewhat to purposes of edification, yet we can see that it was in
no ignoble spirit that the Conqueror, under the shadow of imminent death,
reviewed the course of his history. He called to mind with satisfaction his
constant devotion and service to Holy Church, his patronage of learned
men, and the religious houses founded under his rule. If he had been a man
of war from his youth up he cast the blame in part upon the disloyal
kinsmen, the jealous overlord, the aggressive rivals who had beset him from
his childhood, but for the conquest of England, in this his supreme moment,
he attempted no justification. In his pain and weariness, the fame he had
shed upon the Norman race paled before the remembrance of the slaughter
at Hastings, and the harried villages of Yorkshire. No prevision, indeed, of
the mighty outcome of his work could have answered the Conqueror’s
anxiety for the welfare of his soul, and under the spur of ambition he had
taken a path which led to results beyond his own intention and
understanding. We need not believe that the bishop of Lisieux or the abbot
of Jumièges have tampered with William’s words, when we read his
repentance for the events which have given him his place in history.

It remained for the Conqueror to dispose of his inheritance, and here for
once political expediency had to yield to popular sentiment. We cannot but
believe that the Conqueror, had it been in his power, would have made
some effort to preserve the political union of England and Normandy. But
fate had struck him down without warning, and ruled that his work should
be undone for a while. With grim forebodings of evil William
acknowledged that the right of the first-born, and the homage done by the
Norman barons to Robert more than twenty years before, made it
impossible to disinherit the graceless exile, but England at least should pass
into stronger hands. William Rufus was destined to a brief and stormy
tenure of his island realm, but its bestowal now was the reward of constant
faithfulness and good service to his mighty father. To the English-born
Henry, who was to be left landless, the Conqueror bequeathed five thousand
pounds of silver from his treasury, and, in answer to his complaint that
wealth to him would be useless without land, prophesied the future reunion
of the Anglo-Norman states under his rule. And then, while Henry busied
himself to secure and weigh his treasure, the Conqueror gave to William the
regalia of the English monarchy, and sealed a letter recommending him to
Archbishop Lanfranc as the future king, and kissing him gave him his
blessing, and directed him to hasten to England before men there knew that
their lord was dead.
In his few remaining hours King William was inspired by the priests and
nobles who stood around his bed to make reparation to certain victims of
his policy, who still survived in Norman prisons. Among those who were
now released at his command were Wulfnoth, Earl Godwine’s son, and
Wulf the son of King Harold; the prisoners of Ely, Earl Morcar and Siward
Barn; Earl Roger of Hereford, and a certain Englishman named Algar. Like
ghosts from another world these men came out into the light for a little time
before they vanished finally into the dungeons of William Rufus; but there
was one state prisoner whose pardon, extorted reluctantly from the
Conqueror, was not reversed by his successor. It was only the special
intercession of Count Robert of Mortain which procured the release of his
brother, Bishop Odo. The bishop had outdone the Conqueror in oppression
and cruelty to the people of England, and regret for his own sins of
ambition and wrong had not disposed the king for leniency towards his
brother’s guilt in this regard. At length in sheer weariness he yielded against

his will, foretelling that the release of Odo would bring ruin and death upon
many.
It is in connection with Bishop Odo’s liberation that Orderic relates the
last recorded act of William’s life. A certain knight named Baudri de Guitry,
who had done good service in the war of Sainte-Suzanne, had subsequently
offended the king by leaving Normandy without his license to fight against
the Moors in Spain. His lands had been confiscated in consequence, but
were now restored to him, William remarking that he thought no braver
knight existed anywhere, only he was extravagant and inconstant, and loved
to wander in foreign countries. Baudri was a neighbour and friend to the
monks of St. Evroul, hence no doubt the interest which his restoration
possessed for Ordericus Vitalis.
In the final stage of King William’s sickness, the extremity of his pain
abated somewhat, and he slept peacefully through the night of Wednesday
the 8th of September. As dawn was breaking he woke, and at the same
moment the great bell of Rouen cathedral rang out from the valley below
Saint-Gervase’s priory. The king asked what it meant; those who were
watching by him replied, “My lord, the bell is tolling for primes at St.
Mary’s church.” Then the Conqueror, raising his hands, exclaimed: “To
Mary, the holy mother of God, I commend myself, that by her blessed
intercession I may be reconciled to her beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.”
The next instant he was dead.
For close upon six weeks the king had lain helpless in his chamber in the
priory, but death had come upon him suddenly at last, and the company
which had surrounded him instantly scattered in dismay. Each man knew
that for many miles around Rouen there would be little security for life or
property that day, and the dead king was left at the mercy of his own
servants, while his friends rode hard to reach their homes before the great
news had spread from the city to the open country. By the time that the
clergy of Rouen had roused themselves to take order how their lord might
be worthily buried, his body had been stripped, his chamber dismantled,
and his attendants were dispersed, securing the plunder which they had
taken. The archbishop of Rouen directed that the king should be carried to
the church of his own foundation at Caen, but no man of rank had been left
in the city, and it was only an upland knight, named Herlwin, who
accompanied the Conqueror on his last progress over his duchy. By river
and road the body was brought to Caen, and a procession of clergy and

townsfolk was advancing to meet it, when suddenly a burst of flame was
seen arising from the town. The citizens, who knew well what this meant
among their narrow streets and wooden houses, rushed back to crush the
fire, while the monks of Saint Stephen’s received the king’s body and
brought it with such honour as they might to their house outside the walls.

ENGLAND
In 1087

Shortly afterwards, the Conqueror was buried in the presence of nearly
all the prelates of the Norman church. The bishop of Evreux, who had