Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II
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Title: Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II
Author: Charlotte M. Yonge
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CAMEOS FROM ENGLISH HISTORY
FROM ROLLO TO EDWARD II.
By Charlotte Mary Yonge
1873
PREFACE.
The “Cameos” here put together are intended as a book for young people
just beyond the elementary histories of England, and able to enter in
some degree into the real spirit of events, and to be struck with
characters and scenes presented in some relief.
The endeavor has not been to chronicle facts, but to put together a
series of pictures of persons and events, so as to arrest the attention
and give some individuality and distinctness to the recollection, by
gathering together details at the most memorable moments. Begun many
years since, as the historical portion of a magazine, the earlier ones
of these Cameos have been collected and revised to serve for school-room
reading, and it is hoped that, if these are found useful, they may ere
long be followed up by a second volume, comprising the wars in France,
and those of the Roses.
_February 28th, 1868._
CONTENTS.
INTRODUCTION
CAMEO I. ROLF GANGER (900-932)
CAMEO II. WILLIAM LONGSWORD AND RICHARD THE FEARLESS (932-996)
CAMEO III. YOUTH OF THE CONQUEROR (1026-1066)
CAMEO IV. EARL GODWIN (1012-1052)
CAMEO V. THE TWO HAROLDS (1060-1066)
CAMEO VI. THE NORMAN INVASION (1066)
CAMEO VII. THE BATTLE OF HASTINGS (1066) CONTENTS.
CAMEO VIII. THE CAMP OF REFUGE (1067-1072)
CAMEO IX. THE LAST SAXON BISHOP (1008-1095)
CAMEO X. THE CONQUEROR (1066-1087)
CAMEO XI. THE CONQUEROR’S CHILDREN (1050-1087)
CAMEO XII. THE CROWN AND THE MITRE (1087-1107)
CAMEO XIII. THE FIRST CRUSADE (1095-1100)
CAMEO XIV. THE ETHELING FAMILY (1010-1159)
CAMEO XV. THE COUNTS OF ANJOU (888-1142)
CAMEO XVI. VISITORS OF HENRY I. (1120-1134)
CAMEO XVII. THE BATTLE OF THE STANDARD (1135-1138)
CAMEO XVIII. THE SNOWS OF OXFORD (1138-1154)
CAMEO XIX. YOUTH OF BECKET (1154-1162)
CAMEO XX. THE CONSTITUTIONS OF CLARENDON (1163-1172)
CAMEO XXI. DEATH OF BECKET (1166-1172)
CAMEO XXII. THE CONQUEST OF IRELAND (1172)
CAMEO XXIII. THE REBELLIOUS EAGLETS (1149-1183)
CAMEO XXIV. THE THIRD CRUSADE (1189-1193)
CAMEO XXV. ARTHUR OF BRITTANY (1187-1206)
CAMEO XXVI. THE INTERDICT (1207-1214)
CAMEO XXVII. MAGNA CHARTA (1214-1217)
CAMEO XXVIII. THE FIEF OP ROME (1217-1254)
CAMEO XXIX. THE LONGESPÉES IN THE EGYPTIAN CRUSADES (1219-1254)
CAMEO XXX. SIMON DE MONTFORT (1232-1266)
CAMEO XXXI. THE LAST OF THE CRUSADERS (1267-1291)
CAMEO XXXII. THE CYMRY (B.C. 66-A.D. 1269)
CAMEO XXXIII. THE ENGLISH JUSTINIAN (1272-1292)
CAMEO XXXIV. THE HAMMER OF THE SCOTS (1292-1305)
CAMEO XXXV. THE EVIL TOLL (1294-1305)
CAMEO XXXVI. ROBERT THE BRUCE (1305-1308)
CAMEO XXXVII. THE VICTIM OP BLACKLOW HILL (1307-1313)
CAMEO XXXVIII. BANNOCKBURN (1307-1313)
CAMEO XXXIX. THE KNIGHTS OF THE TEMPLE (1292-1316)
CAMEO XL. THE BARONS’ WARS (1310-1327)
CAMEO XLI. GOOD KING ROBERT’S TESTAMENT (1314-1329)
CAMEOS
OF
THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND
INTRODUCTION.
Young people learn the history of England by reading small books which
connect some memorable event that they can understand, and remember,
with the name of each king--such as Tyrrell’s arrow-shot with William
Rufus, or the wreck of the White Ship with Henry I. But when they begin
to grow a little beyond these stories, it becomes difficult to find a
history that will give details and enlarge their knowledge, without
being too lengthy. They can hardly be expected to remember or take an
interest in personages or events left, as it were, in the block. It was
the sense of this want that prompted the writing of the series that here
follows, in which the endeavor has been to take either individual
characters, or events bearing on our history, and work them out as fully
as materials permitted, so that each, taken by itself, might form an
individual Cameo, or gem in full relief, and thus become impressed upon
the mind.
The undertaking was first begun sixteen years ago, for a periodical for
young people. At that time, the view was to make the Cameos hang, as it
were, on the thread furnished by ordinary childish histories, so as to
leave out what might be considered as too well-known. However, as the
work made progress, this was found to be a mistake; the omissions
prevented the finished parts from fitting together, and the characters
were incomplete, without being shown in action. Thus, in preparing the
Cameos for separate publication, it has been found better to supply what
had previously been omitted, as well as to try to correct and alter the
other Cameos by the light of increasing information.
None of them lay claim to being put together from original documents;
they are only the attempt at collecting, from large and often not easily
accessible histories, the more interesting or important scenes and
facts, and at arranging them so that they may best impress the
imagination and memory of the young, so as to prepare them for fuller
and deeper reading.
Our commencement is with the Dukes of Normandy. The elder England has
been so fully written of, and in such an engaging manner for
youthful readers, in the late Sir Francis Palgrave’s “History of the
Anglo-Saxons,” that it would have been superfluous to expand the very
scanty Cameos of that portion of our history. The present volume, then,
includes the history of the Norman race of sovereigns, from Rollo to
Edward of Carnarvon, with whose fate we shall pause, hoping in a second
volume to go through the French wars and the wars of the Roses. Nor have
we excluded the mythical or semi-romantic tales of our early history. It
is as needful to a person of education to be acquainted with them, as
if they were certain facts, and we shall content ourselves with marking
what come to us on doubtful authority.
CAMEO I. ROLF GANGER. (900-932.)
_Kings of England_.
901. Edward the Elder.
924. Athelstan.
_Kings of France_.
898. Charles
the Simple.
923. Rudolf.
_Emperors of Germany_.
899. Ludwig IV.
912. Konrad.
If we try to look back at history nine hundred years, we shall see a
world very unlike that in which we are now moving. Midway from the birth
of our Lord to the present era, the great struggle between the new and
old had not subsided, and the great European world of civilized nations
had not yet settled into their homes and characters.
Christianity had been accepted by the Roman Emperor six hundred years
previously, but the Empire was by that time too weak and corrupt to be
renewed, even by the fresh spirit infused into it; and, from the 4th
century onward, it had been breaking up under the force of the fierce
currents of nations that rushed from the north-east of Europe. The Greek
half of the Empire prolonged its existence in the Levant, but the Latin,
or Western portion, became a wreck before the 5th century was far
advanced. However, each conquering tribe that poured into the southern
dominions had been already so far impressed with the wisdom and dignity
of Rome, and the holiness of her religion, that they paused in their
violence, and gradually allowed themselves to be taught by her doctrine,
tamed by her manners, and governed by her laws. The Patriarch of
Rome--_Papa_, or Father--was acknowledged by them, as by the subjects of
Rome of old; they accepted the clergy, who had already formed dioceses
and parishes, and though much of horrible savagery remained to be
subdued in the general mass, yet there was a gradual work of
amelioration in progress.
This was especially the case with the Franks, who had overspread the
northern half of Gaul. Their first race of kings had become Christians
simultaneously with their conquest; and though these soon dwindled away
between crime and luxury, there had grown up under them a brave and
ambitious family, whose earlier members were among the most
distinguished persons in history.
Charles Martel turned back the Saracens at Tours, and saved Europe from
Mahometanism, and his grandson, Charles the Great, rescued the Pope from
the Lombards, and received from him in return the crown of a new Empire
of the West--the Holy Roman Empire, which was supposed to be the great
temporal power. As the Pope, or Patriarch, was deemed the head of all
bishops, so the Emperor was to be deemed the head of all kings of the
West, from the Danube and Baltic to the Atlantic Ocean--the whole
country that had once been held by Rome, and then had been wrested from
her by the various German or Teutonic races. The island of Great Britain
was a sort of exception to the general rule. Like Gaul, it had once been
wholly Keltic, but it had not been as entirely subdued by the Romans,
and the overflow of Teutons came very early thither, and while they were
yet so thoroughly Pagan that the old Keltic Church failed to convert
them, and the mission of St. Augustine was necessary from Rome.
A little later, when Charles the Great formed his empire of Franks,
Germans, Saxons, and Gauls, Egbert gathered, in like manner, the various
petty kingdoms of the Angles and Saxons under the one dominant realm of
Wessex, and thus became a sort of island Emperor.
It seems, however, to be a rule, that nations and families recently
emerged from barbarism soon fade and decay under the influence of high
civilization; and just as the first race of Frankish kings had withered
away on the throne, so the line of Charles the Great, though not
inactive, became less powerful and judicious, grew feeble in the very
next generation, and were little able to hold together the multitude of
nations that had formed the empire.
Soon the kingdom of France split away from the Empire; and while a fresh
and more able Emperor became the head of the West, the descendants of
the great Charles still struggled on, at their royal cities of Laon and
Soissons, with the terrible difficulties brought upon them by restless
subjects, and by the last and most vigorous swarm of all the Teutonic
invaders.
The wild rugged hills and coasts of Scandinavia, with their keen
climate, long nights, and many gulfs and bays, had contributed to nurse
the Teuton race in a vigor and perfection scarcely found elsewhere--or
not at least since the more southern races had yielded to the enervating
influences of their settled life. Some of these had indeed been tamed,
but more had been degraded. The English were degenerating into
clownishness, the Franks into effeminacy; and though Christianity
continually raised up most brilliant lights--now on the throne, now
in the cathedral, now in the cloister--yet the mass of the people lay
sluggish, dull, inert, selfish, and half savage.
They were in this state when the Norseman and the Dane fitted out their
long ships, and burst upon their coasts. By a peculiar law, common once
to all the Teuton nations, though by that time altered in the southern
ones, the land of a family was not divided among its members, but all
possessed an equal right in it; and thus, as it was seldom adequate to
maintain them all, the more enterprising used their right in it only to
fell trees enough to build a ship, and to demand corn enough to victual
their crew, which was formed of other young men whose family inheritance
could not furnish more than a sword or spear.
Kings and princes--of whom there were many--were exactly in the same
position as their subjects, and they too were wont to seek their
fortunes upon the high seas. Fleets coalesced under the command of
some chieftain of birth or note, and the Vikings, or pirates, sailed
fearlessly forth, to plunder the tempting regions to the south of them.
Fierce worshippers were they of the old gods, Odin, Frey, Thor; of the
third above all others, and their lengthy nights had led to their
working up those myths that had always been common to the whole race
into a beauty, poetry, and force, probably not found elsewhere; and that
nerved them both to fight vehemently for an entrance to Valhalla, the
hall of heroes, and to revenge the defection of the Christians who had
fallen from Odin. They plundered, they burnt, they slew; they specially
devastated churches and monasteries, and no coast was safe from them
from the Adriatic to the furthest north--even Rome saw their long ships,
and, “From the fury of the Northmen, good Lord deliver us,” was the
prayer in every Litany of the West.
England had been well-nigh undone by them, when the spirit of her
greatest king awoke, and by Alfred they were overcome: some were
permitted to settle down and were taught Christianity and civilization,
and the fresh invaders were driven from the coast. Alfred’s gallant son
and grandson held the same course, guarded their coasts, and made
their faith and themselves respected throughout the North. But in
France, the much-harassed house of Charles the Great, and the
ill-compacted bond of different nations, were little able to oppose
their fierce assaults, and ravage and devastation reigned from one end
of the country to another.
However, the Vikings, on returning to their native homes, sometimes
found their place filled up, and the family inheritance incapable of
supporting so many. Thus they began to think of winning not merely gold
and cattle, but lands and houses, on the coasts that they had pillaged.
In Scotland, the Hebrides, and Ireland, they settled by leave of nothing
but their swords; in England, by treaty with Alfred; and in France, half
by conquest, half by treaty, always, however, accepting Christianity as
a needful obligation when they accepted southern lands. Probably they
thought that Thor was only the god of the North, and that the “White
Christ,” as they called Him who was made known to them in these new
countries, was to be adored in what they deemed alone His territories.
Of all the sea-robbers who sailed from their rocky dwelling-places by
the fiords of Norway, none enjoyed higher renown than Rolf, called the
ganger, or walker, as tradition relates, because his stature was so
gigantic that, when clad in full armor, no horse could support his
weight, and he therefore always fought on foot.
Rolf’s lot had, however, fallen in what he doubtless considered as evil
days. No such burnings and plunderings as had hitherto wasted England,
and enriched Norway, fell to his share; for Alfred had made the bravest
Northman feel that his fleet and army were more than a match for theirs.
Ireland was exhausted by the former depredations of the pirates,
and, from a fertile and flourishing country, had become a scene of
desolation; Scotland and its isles were too barren to afford prey to
the spoiler; and worse than all, the King of Norway, Harald Harfagre,
desirous of being included among the civilized sovereigns of Europe,
strictly forbade his subjects to exercise their old trade of piracy on
his own coasts, or on those of his allies. Rolf, perhaps, considered
himself above this new law. His father, Earl Rognwald, as the chief
friend of the King, had been chosen to cut and comb the hair which
Harald had kept for ten years untrimmed, in fulfilment of a vow, that
his locks should never be clipped until the whole of Norway was under
his dominion. He had also been invested with the government of the great
Earldom of Möre, where the sons of Harald, jealous of the favor with
which he was regarded by their father, burnt him and sixty of his men,
in his own house. The vengeance taken by his sons had been signal, and
the King had replaced Thorer the Silent, one of their number, in his
father’s earldom.
Rolf, presuming on the favor shown to his family, while returning from
an expedition on the Baltic, made a descent on the coast of Viken, a
part of Norway, and carried off the cattle wanted by his crew. The King,
who happened at that time to be in that district, was highly displeased,
and, assembling a council, declared Rolf Ganger an outlaw. His mother,
Hilda, a dame of high lineage, in vain interceded for him, and closed
her entreaty with a warning in the wild extemporary poetry of the North:
“Bethink thee, monarch, it is ill
With such a wolf, at wolf to play,
Who, driven to the wild woods away,
May make the king’s best deer his prey.”
Harald listened not, and it was well; for through the marvellous
dealings of Providence, the outlawry of this “wolf” of Norway led to the
establishment of our royal line, and to that infusion of new spirit into
England to which her greatness appears to be chiefly owing.
The banished Rolf found a great number of companions, who, like himself,
were unwilling to submit to the strict rule of Harald Harfagre, and
setting sail with them, he first plundered and devastated the coast of
Flanders, and afterward turned toward France. In the spring of 896, the
citizens of Rouen, scarcely yet recovered from the miseries inflicted
upon them by the fierce Danish rover, Hasting, were dismayed by the
sight of a fleet of long low vessels with spreading sails, heads carved
like that of a serpent, and sterns finished like the tail of the
reptile, such as they well knew to be the keels of the dreaded Northmen,
the harbingers of destruction and desolation. Little hope of succor or
protection was there from King Charles the Simple; and, indeed, had
the sovereign been ever so warlike and energetic, it would little have
availed Rouen, which might have been destroyed twice over before a
messenger could reach Laon.
In this emergency, Franco, the Archbishop, proposed to go forth to meet
the Northmen, and attempt to make terms for his flock. The offer was
gladly accepted by the trembling citizens, and the good Archbishop went,
bearing the keys of the town, to visit the camp which the Northmen had
begun to erect upon the bank of the river. They offered him no violence,
and he performed his errand safely. Rolf, the rude generosity of whose
character was touched by his fearless conduct, readily agreed to spare
the lives and property of the citizens, on condition that Rouen was
surrendered to him without resistance.
Entering the town, he there established his head-quarters, and spent a
whole year there and in the adjacent parts of the country, during which
time the Northmen so faithfully observed their promise, that they were
regarded by the Rouennais rather as friends than as conquerors; and
Rolf, or Rollo, as the French called him, was far more popular among
them than their real sovereign. Wherever he met with resistance, he
showed, indeed, the relentless cruelty of the heathen pirate; but
where he found submission, he was a kind master, and these qualities
contributed to gain for him an easy and rapid conquest of Neustria, as
the district of which Rouen was the capital was then called.
In the course of the following year, he advanced along the banks of the
Seine as far as its junction with the Eure. On the opposite side of the
river, there were visible a number of tents, where slept a numerous army
which Charles had at length collected to oppose this formidable enemy.
The Northmen also set up their camp, in expectation of a battle, and
darkness had just closed in on them when a shout was heard on the
opposite side of the river, and to their surprise a voice was heard
speaking in their own language, “Brave warriors, why come ye hither, and
what do ye seek?”
“We are Northmen, come hither to conquer France,” replied Rollo. “But
who art thou who speakest our tongue so well?”
“Heard ye never of Hasting?” was the reply.
Hasting was one of the most celebrated of the Sea-Kings. He had fought
with Alfred in England, had cruelly wasted France, and had even sailed
into the Mediterranean and made himself dreaded in Italy; but with him
it had been as with the old pirate in the poem:
“Time will rust the sharpest sword,
Time will consume the strongest cord;
That which moulders hemp and steel,
Mortal arm and nerve must feel.
Of the Danish band, whom ‘Earl Hasting’ led,
Many wax’d aged, and many were dead;
Himself found his armor full weighty to bear,
Wrinkled his brows grew, and hoary his hair;
He leaned on a staff when his step went abroad,
And patient his palfrey, when steed he bestrode.
As he grew feebler, his wildness ceased,
He made himself peace with prelate and priest;
He made himself peace, and stooping his head,
Patiently listen’d the counsel they said.
“‘Thou hast murder’d, robb’d, and spoil’d,
Time it is thy poor soul were assoil’d;
Priests didst thou slay and churches burn,
Time it is now to repentance to turn;
Fiends hast thou worshipp’d with fiendish rite,
Leave now the darkness and wend into light;
Oh, while life and space are given,
Turn thee yet, and think of heaven.’
“That stern old heathen, his head he raised,
And on the good prelate he steadfastly gazed,
‘Give me broad lands on the “Eure and the Seine,”
My faith I will leave, and I’ll cleave unto thine.’
Broad lands he gave him on ‘Seine and on Eure,’
To be held of the king by bridle and spear,
“For the ‘Frankish’ King was a sire in age,
Weak in battle, in council sage;
Peace of that heathen leader he sought,
Gifts he gave and quiet he bought;
And the Earl took upon him the peaceful renown,
Of a vassal and liegeman for ‘Chartres’ good town:
He abjured the gods of heathen race,
And he bent his head at the font of grace;
But such was the grizzly old proselyte’s look,
That the priest who baptized him grew pale and shook.”
Such had been the history of Hasting, now Count of Chartres, who without
doubt expected that his name and example would have a great effect upon
his countrymen; but the answer to his question, “Heard ye never of
Hasting?” met with no such answer as he anticipated.
“Yes,” returned Rollo; “he began well, but ended badly.”
“Will ye not, then,” continued the old pirate, “submit to my lord the
King? Will ye not hold of him lands and honors?”
“No!” replied the Northmen, disdainfully, “we will own no lord; we will
take no gift; but we will have what we ourselves can conquer by force.”
Here Hasting took his departure, and returning to the French camp,
strongly advised the commander not to hazard a battle; but his counsel
was overruled by a young standard-bearer, who, significantly observing,
“Wolves make not war on wolves,” so offended the old sea-king, that he
quitted the army that night, and never again appeared in France. The
wisdom of his advice was the next morning made evident, by the total
defeat of the French, and the advance of the Northmen, who in a short
space after appeared beneath the walls of Paris.
Failing in their attempt to take the city, they returned to Rouen, where
they fortified themselves, making it the capital of the territory they
had conquered.
Fifteen years passed away, the summers of which were spent in ravaging
the dominions of Charles the Simple, and the winters in the city of
Rouen, and in the meantime a change had come over their leader. He had
been insensibly softened and civilized by his intercourse with the good
Archbishop Franco; and finding, perhaps, that it was not quite so easy
as he had expected to conquer the whole kingdom of France, he declared
himself willing to follow the example which he had once despised, and to
become a vassal of the French crown for the duchy of Neustria.
Charles, greatly rejoiced to find himself thus able to put a stop to
the dreadful devastations of the Northmen, readily agreed to the terms
proposed by Rollo, appointing the village of St. Clair-sur-Epte, on
the borders of Neustria, as the place of meeting for the purpose of
receiving his homage and oath of fealty. It was a strange meeting which
there took place between the degenerate and almost imbecile descendant
of the great Charles, with his array of courtly followers and his
splendor and luxury, and the gigantic warrior of the North, the founder
of a line of kings, in all the vigor of the uncivilized native of a cold
climate, and the unbending pride of a conqueror, surrounded by his tall
warriors, over whom his chieftainship had hitherto depended only on
their own consent, gained by his acknowledged superiority in wisdom in
council and prowess in battle.
The greatest difficulty to be overcome in this conference, was the
repugnance felt by the proud Northman to perform the customary act of
homage before any living man, especially one whom he held so cheap as
Charles the Simple. He consented, indeed, to swear allegiance, and
declare himself the “King’s man,” with his hands clasped between those
of Charles; but the remaining part of the ceremony, the kneeling to
kiss the foot of his liege lord, he absolutely refused, and was with
difficulty persuaded to permit one of his followers to perform it in his
name. The proxy, as proud as his master, instead of kneeling, took the
King’s foot in his hand, and lifted it to his mouth, while he stood
upright, thus overturning both monarch and throne, amid the rude
laughter of his companions, while the miserable Charles and his
courtiers felt such a dread of these new vassals that they did not dare
to resent the insult.
On his return to Rouen, Rollo was baptized, and, on leaving the
cathedral, celebrated his conversion by large grants to the different
churches and convents in his new duchy, making a fresh gift on each of
the days during which he wore the white robes of the newly baptized.
All of his warriors who chose to follow his example, and embrace the
Christian faith, received from him grants of land, to be held of him on
the same terms as those by which he held the dukedom from the King;
and the country, thus peopled by the Northmen, gradually assumed the
appellation of Normandy.
Applying themselves with all the ardor of their temper to their new way
of life, the Northmen quickly adopted the manners, language, and habits
which were recommended to them as connected with the holy faith which
they had just embraced, but without losing their own bold and vigorous
spirit. Soon the gallant and accomplished Norman knight could scarcely
have been recognized as the savage sea-robber, once too ferocious and
turbulent even for his own wild country in the far North, while, at the
same time, he bore as little resemblance to the cruel and voluptuous
French noble, at once violent and indolent. The new war-cry of _Dieu
aide_ was as triumphant as that of _Thor Hulfe_ had been of old, and the
Red Cross led to as many victories as the Raven standard.
It is said that the word “Exchequer” is derived from the court of
justice established by Rollo, so called from the word “_Schicken_”
signifying, in his native tongue, to send, because from it judges were
sent to try causes throughout the dukedom. It is also said that the
appeal from them to the Duke himself, made in these terms, “J’appelle a
Rou,” is the origin of the cry “_Haro_” by which, for centuries after
his descendants had passed away from Normandy, the injured always called
for justice. This was for many centuries believed in Normandy, but in
fact the word _Haro_ is only the same as our own “hurrah,” the beginning
of a shout. There is no doubt, however, that the keen, unsophisticated
vigor of Rollo, directed by his new religion, did great good in
Normandy, and that his justice was sharp, his discipline impartial,
so that of him is told the famous old story bestowed upon other just
princes, that a gold bracelet was left for three years untouched upon a
tree in a forest.
He had been married, as part of the treaty, to Gisèle, daughter of King
Charles the Simple, but he was an old grizzly warrior, and neither cared
for the other. A wife whom he had long before taken from Vermandois had
borne him a son, named William, to whom he left his dukedom in 932.
All this history of Rolf, or Rollo, is, however, very doubtful; and
nothing can be considered as absolutely established but that Neustria,
or Normandy, was by him and his Northmen settled under a grant from the
Frank king, Charles the Simple, and the French duke, Robert, Count of
Paris.
CAMEO II. WILLIAM LONGSWORD AND RICHARD THE FEARLESS. (932-996.)
_Kings of England_.
927. Athelstan.
940. Edmund I.
947. Edwy.
959. Edward.
959. Ethelred II.
_Kings of France_.
936. Louis IV.
954. Lothaire III.
986. Louis V.
987 Hugh Capet.
_Emperors of Germany_.
936. Otho I.
973. Otho II.
983. Otho III.
The Norman character was strongly marked. Their whole nature was strong
and keen, full of energy, and with none of the sluggish dulness that was
always growing over the faculties of the Frank and Saxon; and even to
this day the same energy prevails among their descendants, a certain
portion of the English nobility, and the population of Normandy and of
Yorkshire.
There was a deep sense of religion, always showing itself in action,
though not always consistently, and therewith a grand sense of honor
and generosity, coupled, however, with a curious shrewd astuteness. The
high-minded Norman was the flower of chivalry and honor, the low-minded
Norman the most successful of villains--and there has often been a
curious compound of both elements in the character of some of the most
distinguished Normans whom history has to show.
Old Rollo caused his only son to be highly educated, and William of the
Long Sword grew up a prince to be proud of. His height was majestic, his
features beautiful, his complexion as pure and delicate as a maiden’s,
his strength gigantic, his prowess with all the weapons on foot and on
horseback unrivalled, and his wit and capacity of the brightest and most
powerful. Born since his father’s arrival in France, the tales of Thor
and Odin, the old giants, and the future Valhalla, wore things of the
dark old past to him, and he threw himself with his whole heart into
the new faith. So intensely devout was he, so fond of prayer and of the
rites of the Church, that Rollo called him fitter for a cloister than
a dukedom; but the choice was not open to him, an only son, with the
welfare of the Normans dependent on him; and while living in the world,
his saintly aspirations did not preserve him from a self-indulgent
life at home, or from unjust dealing abroad. But he had many fits of
devotion. Once when hunting on the banks of the Seine, he came on the
ruins of the Abbey of Jumièges; which had, many years before, been
destroyed by Hasting. Two old monks, who still survived, came forth to
meet him, told him their history, and invited him to partake of some of
their best fare. It was coarse barley bread, and the young duke, turning
from it in disgust, carelessly bestowed a rich alms upon them, and
eagerly pursued his sport. He had not ridden far before he roused a huge
wild boar, and, in the encounter with it, he broke his sword, was thrown
from his horse, and so severely injured, that his servants, on coming
up, found him stretched insensible upon the ground. Believing this
accident to be the just punishment of Heaven for his contempt for the
old brethren, William, as soon as he recovered his senses, desired to be
carried to Jumièges, and there humbly confessed his sinful feelings, and
entreated their pardon.
His first care, when his health was re-established, was for the
restoration of Jumièges, which he built with great splendor, and often
visited. His chief desire was to enter the abbey as a brother of the
order, but his wish was opposed by the excellent Abbot Martin, who
pointed out to him that he ought not to desert the station to which he
had been called by Heaven, nor quit the government till his son was old
enough to take the charge upon himself, and at the same time encouraged
him by the example of many a saint, whose heavenward road had lain
through the toils and cares of a secular life.
William yielded to the arguments of the good father, but his heart was
still in the peaceful abbey, and he practised in secret the devotions
and austerities of the cloister to the utmost of his power, longing
earnestly for the time when he might lay aside the weary load of cares
of war and of government, and retire to that holy brotherhood.
In Normandy, his strict, keen justice made him greatly honored
and loved, but the French greatly hated and abhorred him, and his
transactions with them were sometimes cunning, sometimes violent. He
had much of the old Northman about him, and had not entered into the
Church’s teachings of the sanctity of marriage. Like his father, he had
had a half-acknowledged wife, Espriota, who was the mother of his only
child, Richard, but he put her away in order to ally himself with one of
the great French families, and he had his child brought up at Bayeux,
among Norse-speaking nobles, as if he would rather see him a Norseman
than a, French prince.
The bold and devout but inconsistent William was the dread of all his
neighbors, and especially of Arnulf, Count of Flanders. William was in
alliance with Herluin, Count of Montreuil, against Arnulf; when, in
942, he was invited to a conference on a small island in the Somme, and
there, having contrived to separate him from his followers, at a given
signal one of the Flemings struck him down with an oar, and a number of
daggers were instantly plunged into his breast.
The Flemings made their escape in safety, leaving the bleeding corpse
upon the island, where the Normans, who had seen the murder, without
being able to prevent or revenge it, reverently took it up, and brought
it back to Rouen. Beneath the robes of state they found it dressed in
a hair-cloth shirt, and round the neck was a chain sustaining a golden
key, which was rightly judged to belong to the chest where he kept his
choicest treasure; but few would have guessed what was the treasure so
valued by the knightly duke of the martial name, and doubtless there
were many looks of wonder among the Norman barons, when the chest was
opened, and disclosed, instead of gold and jewels, the gown and hood,
the sandals and rosary, of a brother of the Benedictine order.
He was buried beside his father, in the cathedral of Rouen, amid the
universal lamentations of his vassals; and his greatest friend and
counsellor, Bernard the Dane, Count of Harcourt, fetched from Bayeux his
only child, Richard, only eight years old, to be solemnly invested with
the ducal sword and mantle, and to receive the homage of the Normans.
[Footnote: This is the Norman legend. The French Chronicles point to
Norman treachery.] The bitter hatred of the French to the Normans could
not but break out in the minority.
To the surprise of the Normans, Louis IV., king of France, suddenly
arrived at Rouen, to claim, as he said, the homage of his young vassal.
On the following day, Richard did not, as usual, appear beyond the walls
of the castle, and there were rumors that he was detained there by order
of the king. Assembling in great numbers, the Rouennais came before the
castle, shouting loudly for “Richard! Richard! our little Duke!” nor
could they be pacified till Louis appeared at the window, lifting young
Richard in his arms, and made them a speech upon the gratitude and
admiration which he pretended to feel for Duke William, to whom he said
he owed his restoration to the throne of his fathers, and whose son
he promised to regard as his own child.
On leaving Rouen, Louis claimed the right of taking Richard with him,
as the guardian of all crown vassals in their minority; and Bernard de
Harcourt, finding it impossible to resist, only stipulated that the
young Duke should never be separated from his Norman esquire, Osmond de
Centeville, who on his side promised to keep a careful watch over him.
Richard was accordingly conducted to Montleon, and made the companion of
the two young princes, Lothaire and Carloman, and for some time no more
was heard respecting him in Normandy. At last arrived a message from
Osmond de Centeville, sent in secret with considerable difficulty,
telling the Normans to pray that their young duke might be delivered out
of the hands of his enemies, for that he was convinced that evil was
intended, since he was closely watched; and one day when he had gone
down to the river to bathe, the queen had threatened him with cruel
punishments if he again left the place. Bernard immediately ordered a
three days’ fast, during which prayers for the safety of the little
duke were offered in every church in Normandy, and further tidings were
anxiously awaited.
In the meantime the faithful squire was devising a plan of escape. He
caused the young Richard to feign illness, and thus obtained a slight
relaxation of the vigilance with which his movements, were watched,
which enabled him to carry to the duke’s apartments a great bundle of
hay. At nightfall he rolled Richard up in the midst of it, and laying it
across his shoulders, he crossed the castle court to the stable, as if
he was going to feed his horse, and as soon as it was dark he mounted,
placing the boy before him, and galloped off to a castle on the borders
of Normandy, where the rescued prince was greeted with the greatest joy.
The escape of his ward was followed by an open declaration of war on the
part of Louis IV., upon which the Count de Harcourt sent to Denmark to
ask succor from King Harald Blue-tooth, who, mindful of Duke William’s
kindness, himself led a numerous force to Normandy. Bernard, pretending
to consider this as a piratical invasion, sent to ask Louis to assist
him in expelling the heathens. Louis entered Normandy, and came in
sight of the Danish host on the banks of the river Dives, where Harald
summoned him to leave the dukedom to its rightful owner. Louis desired
a conference, and a tent was pitched between the armies, where the two
kings met.
Bernard advised the King of France not to bring Herluin de Montreuil to
this meeting, since the Normans considered him as the occasion of their
duke’s death; but the French replied that no Dane should hinder their
king from taking with him whomsoever he pleased. While the two kings
were in the tent, Herluin, seeing a knight from the Cotentin, with whom
he was acquainted, went up to him and inquired after his health.
The Danes asked who he was, and the knight replied, “Count Herluin, who
caused Duke William’s death;” whereupon the wild Danes rushed upon him,
and killed him with their battle-axes.
A general conflict ensued; the French were put to flight, and by the
time the kings came out of the tent, the battle was decided. Louis
mounted his horse in order to rejoin his troops, but the animal ran with
him into the midst of the enemy, where Harald caught his bridle, made
him prisoner, and delivered him to four knights to keep. While, however,
they were engaged in plundering, he made his escape, and had ridden four
leagues when he met a soldier of Rouen, whom he bribed to hide him in an
island in the Seine, until he could find a fit opportunity of quitting
Normandy. Harald and Bernard, however, by making strict inquiries,
discovered that the soldier knew where he was, and seizing the man’s
wife and children, threatened to put them to death if he did not put the
king into their hands. Louis was accordingly delivered to them, but they
shortly after released him on receiving his two sons as hostages.
The younger of the two princes died shortly after his arrival in
Normandy; and anxiety for Lothaire, the remaining son, induced his
father to come to terms with the Normans; and, at St. Clair-sur-Epte,
Louis swore to leave Richard in undisturbed possession of his lands, and
to extend the limits of the duchy as far as the banks of the Epte, after
which the young duke paid him homage, and restored his son to him.
Richard then returned to Rouen, which he had not visited since he had
been carried to the French court, and was greeted with great joy by the
citizens, who were much delighted by his appearance, the height of his
figure, and the beauty of his countenance. The King of Denmark was also
received by them with great enthusiasm, who, after spending some time at
Rouen, returned home.
At the age of fourteen, Richard was betrothed to Emma, daughter of Hugh
the White, Count of Paris, a nobleman whose increasing power had long
been a subject of jealousy both to the court of Flanders and to the
King of France. On hearing of the intended connection between these two
mighty vassals, they united their forces to prevent it, and called in
the aid of Otho, Emperor of Germany, and Conrad, King of Burgundy.
While Louis and Conrad attacked the Count, Otho and Arnulf entered
Normandy, and laid siege to Rouen, but on the way thither were attacked
by an ambuscade under the command of the young Richard himself, who now
for the first time bore arms, and greatly signalized himself, putting
the Germans to flight, and killing the Emperor’s nephew with his own
hand.
Otho still advanced and invested Rouen. Wishing to know what resources
the city contained, he sent to ask Richard’s permission to enter it, in
order to pay his devotions at the shrine of St. Ouen. His request was
granted, and in passing through the streets he perceived that the city
was so well defended that he could not hope to take it. On his return to
the camp, he told his council that he intended to make his peace with
the Duke of Normandy, by delivering up to him the Count of Flanders, the
author of the expedition. His council, however, persuaded him that this
would be a disgraceful action; and Arnulf, receiving some hint of his
proposal, in the middle of the night quitted the camp with all his men,
and returned to Flanders. The noise of his departure awoke the Germans,
who, imagining themselves to be attacked by the besieged, armed
themselves in haste, and there was great confusion till morning, when,
perceiving The departure of the Flemings, they set fire to their camp,
and took the road to Germany. The Normans, sallying out of the town,
harassed the rear, killed a number of them, and took many prisoners, and
a great quantity of baggage.
In 954, Louis was killed by a fall from his horse, and was succeeded
by his son Lothaire, who inherited all his dislike to the Normans, and
especially hated the young duke, the companion of his boyhood, whose
fame had so far exceeded his own, both in feats of arms and skill in
government, and who, though only twenty-three, had been chosen by the
wise and great Count of Paris as the guardian of his children, and the
model on which his sons were to form themselves.
Twice did Lothaire, in conjunction with Count Thibaut de Chartres, a
young nobleman who envied the fame of Richard, attempt to assassinate
him at a conference; and the former, despairing of ridding himself of
him by treachery, assembled an army of fifty thousand men, entered
Normandy, and besieged Rouen. Here Richard, in a sudden night-attack on
his camp, dispersed his forces, and took a great number of prisoners,
all of whom he released without a ransom. Then, pursuing his advantage,
he entered the county of Chartres, but he was obliged to return to his
duchy, to defend it against a powerful league of all the neighboring
princes, formed by the king.
Fearing to be crushed by so mighty a force, he sent to ask succor from
his old friend, the king of Denmark, who, though too aged and infirm to
come himself to Normandy, equipped a numerous fleet, and sent his best
warriors to Richard.
The ravages which they committed compelled the king to send the Bishop
of Chartres to sue for peace, but he would not venture into the camp
without an escort from the duke, lest, as he said, “the Danish wolves
should devour him on the way.”
On his arrival, he implored Richard to have compassion on the French,
who suffered dreadful miseries from the Danes; and the duke, always
desirous of peace, willingly engaged to treat with the king, and
withdrew his forces into Normandy, to the great disappointment of the
Danes, who had expected to dethrone Lothaire, and to place the gallant
Richard on his throne. They were much surprised at the moderation of the
demands which he, a conqueror, made to the humiliated Lothaire, only
desiring to be left in quiet possession of his inheritance, and that
a pardon should be granted for all injuries committed on either side
during the war.
Lothaire gladly agreed to these terms, and the remainder of Richard’s
life was spent in peace. Such of the latter’s subjects as had been
trained to arms in the constant wars during his minority, found
employment in combats with the Greeks and Saracens in Italy, where the
twelve sons of a Norman knight, named Tancred de Hauteville, laid the
foundation of the kingdoms of the Two Sicilies. Their place was supplied
by the Danish allies, who, full of admiration for the Fearless
Duke, were desirous of embracing his religion, and living under his
government. Thibaut de Chartres came to Normandy to implore his pardon,
and was received with such kindness that he was overcome with shame at
his former conduct.
Richard was a stern but honorable man, and the courage and ability which
he displayed throughout these wars made a great impression on his Danish
allies, who were induced, in great numbers, to adopt the religion of the
Fearless Duke, and to live under his government.
How the truly great man takes his revenge, was indeed shown by Richard
the Fearless, the last time he took any part in the affairs of the
nation. It was when Hugh Capet, Count of Paris, once his ward, had been
raised to the throne of France by the authority of the Pope, and having
received the homage of every crown vassal excepting Arnulf of Flanders,
proceeded to ravage his county and seize his towns. Arnulf, completely
reduced, saw no hope for himself except in throwing himself on the mercy
of Duke Richard, the very man whose father he had murdered, and whom
he had pursued with the most unrelenting hatred from his earliest
childhood. Richard had but to allow royal justice to take its course,
and he would have been fully avenged; but he who daily knelt before the
altar of the Church of Fescamp, had learnt far other lessons. He went
to Hugh Capet, and so pleaded with him, that he not only obtained the
pardon of Arnulf, but the restoration of the whole of his county, and
of both his cities. Thus, without doubt, would the saintly William
Longsword have desired to be revenged by his only son.
Richard Sans Peur lived nine years after this, spending his time,
for the most part, in the Abbey of Fescamp, in devotion and works of
charity, and leaving the government to his eldest son, Richard the Good.
He is thus described by a Norman chronicler who knew him well in his old
age: “He was tall and well-proportioned, his countenance was noble, his
beard was long, and his head covered with white hair. He was a pious
benefactor to the monks, supplied the wants of the clergy, despised the
proud, loved the humble, aided the poor, the widow and the orphan, and
delighted in ransoming prisoners.”
He caused a stone coffin to be made for himself in his lifetime, and
placed in the Church of Fescamp, where, every Friday, he filled it with
wheat, which was afterwards distributed among the poor. In this Abbey he
died in 996, desiring to be buried outside the church, close beneath the
eaves, “where,” said he, “the droppings of water from the roof may fall
on me, and wear away the stains of earthly corruption.”
His daughter Emma is often mentioned in English history as the wife of
Ethelred the Unready, and afterward of Knut. She has often been much
blamed for this second marriage with the enemy of her country, but it
should be remembered how nearly the Northmen and Danes were connected,
and that Knut was the grandson of her father’s ally, Harald Blue-tooth.
The great event of Richard’s time was the above-mentioned recognition
of Hugh Capet as King of France. The Caroline race were Franks, chiefly
German in blood, and had never fully amalgamated with the race called
French, a mixture of Roman and Gallic, with only an upper stratum of the
true Frank. When the Counts of Paris obtained the throne, and the line
of Charlemagne retired into the little German county of Lotharingia, or
Lorraine, then France became really France, and a nation with a national
sovereign. Still it was a very small domain. Provence was part of the
German Empire, so was Burgundy; Anjou, Normandy, and Brittany were
almost independent, though owning a sort of allegiance to the king who
reigned at Paris.
CAMEO III. YOUTH OF THE CONQUEROR. (1036-1066.)
_Kings of England_.
1016. Knut.
1036. Harold I.
1039. Harthaknut.
1041. Edward the
Confessor.
_Kings of France_.
1031. Henry IV.
1039. Philip I.
_Emperors of Germany_.
1021. Conrad II.
1039. Henry III.
1055. Henry IV.
Richard, called the Good, son of Richard Sans Peur, does not seem to
have been in all respects equal to his father, nor did much that is
worthy of note occur in his time.
He died in 1026, leaving two sons, Richard and Robert, both violent and
turbulent young men, the younger of whom was called, from his fiery
temper, Robert the Devil. After a fierce dispute respecting Robert’s
appanage, the two brothers were suddenly reconciled, and, immediately
afterward, Richard died, not without suspicion, on the part of the
French, that he had been poisoned by his brother.
The Normans gave little heed to the calumny, and, in fact, the open,
generous temper of Robert was by no means likely to belong to a secret
murderer. The splendor of his court, and munificence of his gifts,
acquired for him the name of Robert the Magnificent, and the following,
among other instances, is recorded of his liberality:
When attending mass at the Abbey of Cerizy, his own foundation, he
one day remarked a stranger knight, when asked for his alms at the
offertory, reply sadly, that he had nothing to give. He beckoned to
a squire, and sent him to present the poor stranger with a purse
containing a hundred pounds, which the knight immediately offered on the
altar. After the mass was over, the sacristan came to ask him if he knew
bow large the sum was, or if he had given it by mistake, to which he
replied, that he had offered it wittingly, since it was for no other
end that the Duke had sent it to him. His answer was reported by the
sacristan to the Duke, who instantly sent the high-minded stranger a
second purse, containing the same sum for his own use.
Robert founded nine monasteries, and made large gifts to all the
churches in his duchy, entreating the prayers of the clergy and of the
poor, for the pardon of the sins of his youth; but his conscience was
ill at ease, and in the sixth year of his dukedom he resolved to go on
pilgrimage to the Holy Land, a journey which was then even more perilous
than in subsequent years, when the Crusades had, in some degree, secured
the safety of the pilgrims, and he seems to have been fully persuaded
that he should never return alive.
His chief care was for the welfare of his son, William, a boy of seven
years old, whose situation was the more precarious, because there was
a stain on his birth, his mother being the daughter of a tanner of
Falaise, so that it was more than probable that his right to the
succession would be disputed by the numerous descendants of Richard Sans
Peur. Robert did his best to secure his safety by calling together
the vassals to do homage to him, and placing him under the especial
protection of Henry I. of France, at whose court at Paris he left him.
Robert then set out on his pilgrimage, with a few companions, all
wearing the coarse garb of pilgrims, with staves in their hands, and
their feet bare. As they were passing the gates of a small town in
Franche Comté, Robert walking last, an insolent warder, tired of holding
the gate open, struck him such a blow on the shoulders with a halbert
that he reeled under it, but so changed was his once violent temper,
that, seeing his friends about to revenge the insult, he called out,
“Let him alone; pilgrims ought to suffer for the love of God. I love his
blow better than my city of Rouen.”
The next time Robert was heard of, was in humble guise, with staff
and wallet, when he received the blessing of the Pope at Rome; but
afterward, when he entered Constantinople, he appeared in all his wonted
magnificence. He rode to the palace of the Greek Emperor on a mule, shod
with golden shoes, so slightly fastened on as to be shaken off amongst
the crowds who surrounded him.
He travelled onward through Asia Minor, though attacked by a fever,
which obliged him to be carried in a litter by Moorish slaves--as he
himself expressed it to a Norman pilgrim whom he met returning, “to be
carried by devils to Paradise.” Safely arriving at Jerusalem, he there
paid the entrance-money for a multitude of poor pilgrims, whom he found
shut out because they were unable to pay the large toll demanded by the
Saracens; and after performing the accustomed devotions at the different
consecrated spots in the Holy City, he set out on his return to
Normandy. His health was already impaired by the fatigues of the
journey, and he died at the city of Nicaea, in the year 1035. There, in
the now profaned sanctuary, where was held the first general Council of
the Church, rests, in his nameless and forgotten grave, the last of the
high-spirited and devout Dukes of Normandy.
From the time of the departure of Duke Robert, dangers crowded round the
ducal throne of his child; nor were they, as in the stormy minority of
Richard Sans Peur, perils chiefly from enemies without, met by a band of
vassals, strong in attachment to their lord. The foes who threatened the
young William were of his own family, and his own subjects, and there
was none of that generous temper, even amongst his chief supporters,
which, in the case of his great-grandfather, had made the scenes of war
and bloodshed in which he was brought up, a school not of valor alone,
but of the higher virtues of chivalry.
The Norman barons, greatly altered from what they had been in the days
when the justice of Rollo prevailed, lived shut up in their strong
castles, making war on each other, like independent princes plundering
the poor, and committing horrible cruelties, entirely unrestrained by
the guardians of the Duke. These, indeed, seemed to be the especial mark
for the attacks of the traitors, for his tutor and seneschal were both
murdered; the latter, Osborn, Count de Breteuil, while sleeping in the
same room with him. Osborn left a son, William, called from his name
Fils, or Fitz Osborn, who grew up with the young Duke, and became his
chief companion and friend.
It is wonderful that William himself should have escaped death, when so
completely unprotected; but he was preserved through all these dangers
for the task which was prepared for him; and at a very early age, his
numerous troubles had formed his character in the mould fittest for
him, who was to be the scourge of England, and yet the founder of its
greatness.
He was not sixteen when he first showed of what temper he was. His
great-uncle, the Count d’Arques, had set up a claim to the duchy,
and was besieged in his castle at Arques by Walter Gifford, Count de
Longueville, when the King of France succeeded in sending him such
considerable reinforcements and supplies, that Longueville sent
information that he should be obliged to raise the siege. The tidings
reached the Duke, at his hunting-lodge of Valognes. He stood for a few
moments in deep thought, and then called for his horse, only saying to
his knights these few words, “_Qui m’aime, me suive!_” “Let him who
loves me, follow me!” and rode off at full speed. He distanced all his
followers, rode all night, only stopping to take a fresh horse, and
in the evening of the next day arrived quite alone at the camp before
Arques, swearing never to leave it till the castle was in his hands.
The siege was continued with vigor, and, in a short time, it was
surrendered, the Count taking refuge in France.
From this time William took the direction of affairs into his own hands,
and, by his firmness and ability, succeeded in restraining the excesses
of his lawless vassals, though their turbulence, and the severity of
his own silent and haughty disposition, made their submission very
unwilling. When he was about twenty, a dangerous conspiracy was formed
against him by his cousin, Guy of Burgundy, and a number of his chief
vassals, who intended to seize him at his hunting-lodge at Valognes, put
him to death, and raise Guy to the dukedom.
The conspirators met at Bayeux, the day before their intended treachery,
and, whilst dining there, called in to amuse them a half-witted man
named Gillos, and the plot was, inadvertently, mentioned in his
presence. The duke, when passing through the town, had shown the
poor man some kindness, and no sooner did he understand the intended
treachery, than he left the hall, and set off for Valognes, where he
arrived just before midnight, and, finding all gone to rest, began to
batter the door with a stick, shouting for the Duke. At first, William
could not believe the story, but Gillos seemed so much in earnest, that
he deemed it advisable to go and see what had given rise to the report,
and, muffling himself in a cloak, ran down stairs, himself saddled his
horse, and rode toward Bayeux. Before he had gone far, he heard the
trampling of horses and clanking of weapons, and, concealing himself
among the trees, saw that the poor fool’s information was perfectly
correct, for the whole band of traitors passed by exactly as they had
been described. Upon this, he changed his course, and turned toward the
coast in the direction of Falaise, his birthplace, and the town most
devoted to his interests. The dawn of morning found him with his horse
so weary that it could hardly stand, at the entrance of a small village,
still at a considerable distance from Falaise, and ignorant of the road.
At that moment a gentleman came out of the principal house, and the
instant he beheld the young horseman, travel-stained and covered with
dust as he was, he exclaimed, “St. Mary, my Lord, what can have brought
you here in such a condition?”
“Who are you, who know me so well?” asked William, in reply.
“By my faith,” was the answer, “I am called Hubert de Ryes. I hold this
village of you under the Count de Bessin. Tell me, boldly, what you
need; I will help you as I would help myself.”
Accordingly, Hubert de Byes took him into his house, gave him some
refreshment, and provided him with a fresh horse, sending his three
sons with him as guides, whilst he himself remained to misdirect the
pursuers, William safely arrived at Falaise, and, in memory of his
escape, is said to have caused his path to be traced out by a raised
bank of earth, part of which is still in existence.
Rallying his faithful subjects around him at Falaise, and obtaining aid
from the king, William met the rebels at Val des Demes. One of them came
over to his side before the battle, and, having previously sworn that
the Duke should be the first man whom he would strike, he began by
giving his armor a slight blow with the point of his lance, considering
it necessary thus to fulfil his rash oath to the letter. The rebels were
totally defeated, and either submitted to William’s mercy, or went to
join their countrymen, who were engaged in the conquest of Sicily.
This was the last attempt made by the Normans to resist their Duke,
whose authority was now fully established; but it was not long before
a war broke out with his powerful neighbor Geoffrey, Count of Anjou,
which, however, would scarcely deserve mention, but for the curious
terms in which a challenge was sent by the Duke to the Count, who had
come to raise the siege of Domfront.
“Tell the Count of Anjou,” said he to William Fitz Osborn and Roger
Montgomery, his messengers, “that if he attempts to carry victuals into
Domfront, he will find me before the gates, mounted on a bay horse, and
with a red shield. And that he may know me the better, I shall have at
the point of my lance a streamer of taffety, to wipe his face withal.”
In the battle which followed, a few days after, William fulfilled his
threat, by overthrowing the Count, who escaped with difficulty, with the
loss of part of an ear, and was soon after obliged to conclude a peace.
William married Matilda, daughter of the Count of Flanders, and of a
sister of Duke Robert the Magnificent; and having omitted to ask the
dispensation from the Pope, which was required on the marriage of such
near relations, his uncle, the Archbishop of Rouen, laid them both under
sentence of excommunication. William sought for an advocate to send to
Rome to plead for their absolution, and his choice fell upon Lanfranc, a
native of Lombardy, who had been bred as a lawyer, and was possessed of
great learning and talent, but had chosen to embrace the monastic life,
and had selected the Norman abbey of Bee as the place of his profession,
because the monks there were very poor, and very strict in the
observance of their rule. Lanfranc, at the Duke’s desire, travelled to
Rome, and there succeeded in obtaining the confirmation of the marriage,
and the absolution of the bride and bridegroom, on condition of their
each founding an abbey, and jointly building a hospital for the blind.
In accordance with this command, Matilda built the beautiful Abbaye aux
Dames at Caen, where her eldest daughter, Cecile, afterward took the
veil, and William founded, at the same place, the Abbey of St. Stephen,
of which Lanfranc was the first abbot. But fair as were the proportions
of that exquisite building, noble as were its clustered columns, and
rich as were the zigzag mouldings of its deep arches, its foundation was
insecure, for it was on iniquity. It stood on ground violently taken
from a number of poor people; and where could the blessing of Heaven
have been?
Twenty-three years afterward a grave was dug in the noble choir of St.
Stephen’s Church, and William’s corpse was carried through the porch,
followed by a long train of nobles, knights, and clergy, but by not one
of his numerous children. The requiem was chanted, and orations were
made in praise of the Duke of Normandy, the King and Conqueror of
England, the founder of abbeys, the builder of churches, when suddenly
the cry of “Ha Ro!”--the Norman appeal for justice--was heard, and a man
in mean garments stood forth, and spoke thus: “Clerks and Bishops, this
ground is mine. Here was my father’s hearth. The man whom you praise
wrested it from me to build this church. I sold it not. I made no grant
of it. It is my right, and I claim it. In the name of Rollo, the founder
of his family, and of our laws, I forbid you to lay the body of the
spoiler therein, or to cover it with my earth.”
The Bishops were obliged to promise satisfaction to the man, and to pay
him on the spot sixty pence as the price of the Conqueror’s grave. But,
even then, his bones were not permitted to rest in peace. In the course
of the civil wars of France, his tomb was twice broken open by the
Huguenots, the first time rifled of the royal ornaments in which he
had been arrayed, and the second, the spoilers, disappointed of their
expected prize, cast out the mouldering bones, and dispersed them.
CAMEO IV. EARL GODWIN. (1012-1052.)
_Kings of England_.
1013. Swein.
1014. Knut.
1015. Ethelred the Unready (restored).
1016. Edmund Ironside.
1018. Knut.
1036. Harold I.
1039. Harthaknut.
1041. Edward the Confessor.
The Danish conquest of England, although the power of the kings of that
nation continued but a short time, made great changes in the condition
of the country. The customs and laws that had hitherto been observed
only in the lands granted by Alfred to the Danes, spread into almost all
the kingdom, and the civilization which the great king had striven so
hard to introduce was well-nigh swept away.
England might be considered to be in three divisions--the West Saxon,
subject to the laws of Alfred; the Mercian, which had a law of its own;
and the East Anglian and Northern portion, where the population was
chiefly Danish, and which was therefore more under the immediate power
of the Danish kings. Under them, London became the royal residence,
instead of Winchester, and several words in our language still attest
their influence upon our customs. Of these is the word Hustings, for a
place of public assembly; and the title of Earl, for which the English
language afforded no feminine, till it borrowed the word Countess from
the French, reminds us that the Northern Jarls were only governors
during the king’s pleasure, and that their dignity conferred no rank on
their families.
Under the Danish kings, the other divisions of England fell under the
rule of three great Earls. The Danish Northumbria was ruled by the great
Northman Siward Bjorn; Mercia was governed by the house of Leofric, an
old noble family connected with the ancient line of Mercian kings.
There were many of this family named Leofric, and it is probably of
the one living at this time that the curious old tradition of Coventry
belongs, which related how his wife, the Lady Godiva, rode through the
town with no covering but her abundant hair, to obtain from him the
remission of the townspeople from his oppressive exactions--a story of
which the memory is kept up at Coventry by a holiday, and the procession
of the Lady Godiva.
Wessex had become the portion of Godwin, son of Ulfnoth, and
great-nephew to the traitor, Edric Streona, the murderer of Edmund
Ironside. There is a story, probably a mere fiction, that this family
was of mean origin, that Ulfnoth was a herdsman of the south of
Warwickshire, and that Godwin first rose to distinction in the following
manner: Ulf, a Danish Jarl, who had married a sister of Knut, was
separated from the army after one of the battles with Edmund Ironside,
and after wandering all night, met in the morning with a youth driving a
herd of cattle. He asked his name, and the reply was, “I am Godwin, the
son of Ulfnoth; and you, I think, are a Dane.”
Ulf confessed that he was, and begged the young man to show him the way
to the Severn, where he expected to find the fleet.
“The Dane would be a fool who trusted to a Saxon,” answered Godwin; and
when Ulf continued his entreaties, he explained that the way was not
long, but that the serfs were all in arms against the Danes, and would
kill both him and any one whom they found guiding him. Ulf offered the
young herdsman a golden ring for his reward. He looked at it a moment,
then said, “I will take nothing from you, but I will be your guide,” and
led him home to his father’s cottage, where he was hidden through the
whole day. At night, when he prepared to set forth, Ulfnoth told him
that Godwin would not be able to return, since the peasants would kill
him for having protected a Dane, and therefore begged that the Jarl
would keep him among his own people, and present him to the King.
Ulf promised, and this, it is said, was the foundation of Godwin’s
greatness; but there is great reason to doubt the tale, and it is far
more probable that the family was anciently noble. Godwin married Gyda,
the sister of Ulf, and thus was brought into near connection with Knut;
but Ulf, his patron and brother-in-law, soon after was killed in one of
those outbursts of violence and cruelty to which Knut seemed to return
whenever he went back to his own savage North.
Knut had been defeated by the Swedes at Helge, and was at Roskild,
when he was playing at chess in the evening with Ulf, and, making an
oversight, lost a knight. He took the piece back again, changed his
move, and desired his opponent to go on playing; but the Jarl, choosing
to play chess on equal terms or not at all, threw down the board, and
went away.
“Run away, Ulf the Fearful!” said Knut.
Ulf turned back, and answered, “Thou wouldst have run further at Helge
river! Thou didst not call me Ulf the Fearful when I came to thy help
while the Swedes were beating thee like a dog.”
Knut brooded on the offence all night, and in the morning sent his page
to kill the Jarl. The page found him at his prayers in church, and
therefore refrained; but Knut sent another of his followers, who slew
him as he knelt.
Godwin had, before this, gained too much favor to be likely to fall with
his brother-in-law. He was with the king on an expedition against the
Wends, and on the night before an intended battle, made a sudden attack
without Knut’s knowledge, and completely routed them. His talents were
so much appreciated, that he received the great Earldom of Wessex, the
portion of England least under the power of the Danes, and where the
old line of Alfred was most loved and regretted, since it was their
hereditary kingdom.
For this reason Godwin was desirous to maintain the Danes in England
after Knut’s death, and to keep the scattered royal line at a distance.
Harthaknut, whom the will of his father had called to the succession,
was absent in Denmark, and Godwin caused his brother, Harold Harefoot,
to be crowned in haste, though the Archbishop would not sanction the
usurpation, placed the crown and sceptre on the altar, and forbade the
bishops to give him their blessing.
Alfred and Edward, the two sons of Ethelred the Unready, had in the
meantime been brought up under the protection of their uncle, Richard
the Good, of Normandy, dwelling for the most part in those beautiful
Abbeys of Fescamp and Jumièges, which had been endowed by the piety of
the Dukes, and where they grew up in godliness and virtue, with gentle
manners and civilized tastes, far unlike to those which prevailed in
their native land. Robert the Magnificent was a great friend to them,
and his death on his pilgrimage made their abode in Normandy far less
peaceful and secure.
Soon after the coronation of Harold Harefoot, they received a letter
purporting to come from their mother, Emma, widow of Knut, inviting them
to assert their claim to their father’s throne. Edward, with a band
of Normans, met his mother at Winchester, but he could not keep his
followers from plundering the country; and finding little hope of
success, gave up the attempt, and returned to Normandy. Alfred landed at
Sandwich, in Kent, and was so well received by the Archbishop and
people, that Godwin, becoming alarmed, had recourse to treachery,
pretended to own him as king, and conducted him to Guilford. Thither
King Harold sent his Danes, who seized the prince’s followers, after
Godwin’s men had dispersed them through the town and stupefied them with
drink. Every tenth man was killed, the rest were sold for slaves, and
Alfred himself was carried to Ely, where his eyes were torn out, and he
died of the injury. His mother, Emma, fled to Bruges, and this makes it
probable that either she never sent the letter at all, or was only the
innocent instrument of Godwin’s desire to rid himself of the royal
family; but her son Edward believed her to have been knowingly concerned
in this horrible transaction, and never regarded her as guiltless of his
brother’s death. It is possible that Godwin may also have been free from
treachery, and have meant well by the prince.
Her other son, Harthaknut, left Denmark to join her at Bruges, intending
in the spring to drive Harold from the throne; but death was beforehand
with him. Harold died in 1040, and Harthaknut had only to come to
England to take possession of the crown. Both these young men were, at
heart, savage Danes; and the first deed of Harthaknut, on his arrival,
was to satisfy his vengeance for the usurpation of his throne and the
murder of Alfred, by causing Harold’s corpse to be taken from its grave,
the head cut off, and the body thrown into a marsh. He threatened to
punish Godwin, but the Earl averted his wrath by the present of one of
the long serpent-like keels prized by the Danes, the prow gilded, and
the crew of eighty men, each fully equipped, and with a gold bracelet on
the left arm.
Harthaknut was pacified by this gift, and contented himself with sending
for his surviving half-brother Edward from Normandy, and treating him as
became the Atheling. The wild, half-heathen court of Harthaknut was a
strange and bewildering change for the gentle Edward, whose habits and
tastes were only suited to the convent where he had spent his early
days, and who found in the rough affection of his Danish brother his
only protection from the fierce spirits around. His grief and dismay
were great when, after he had spent a few months in England, he heard
that Harthaknut, at the wedding-feast of the daughter of the Dane,
Osgood Clapa, from whom Clapham is named, had died suddenly, immediately
after an excessive draught of wine.
Edward found himself left without protection in the hands of the fierce
men who had murdered his brother. He was forty years old, and of an
inactive, timid disposition, which unfitted him for taking any bold
measures in this emergency; his affections were in the convents of
Normandy, and with the young son of his friend, Duke Robert, and he
earnestly entreated Godwin to allow him to return in safety thither.
The Earl, however, saw that neither Saxons nor Danes would submit to the
authority of one who was not of royal blood, and that the best hope
of preserving the power he had acquired in the latter reigns, was by
setting up a weak king, and governing in his name. He therefore replied
by tendering his submission to Edward, and promising to support him on
the throne, on condition that he would marry Edith, his daughter, so
fair, so gentle, and pious a lady, that it was a saying, “Even as the
rose springs from the thorn, so springs Edith from Godwin.” She was very
learned, and Ingulf, who afterward was the secretary of the Conqueror,
and Abbot of Croyland, loved to remember how, when he was a boy come
from his convent-school to visit his father at the court, the Lady Edith
would send for him, examine him in his studies, and end by causing her
maiden to count out three or four coins into his hand, and sending him
to the royal larder for refreshment.
Edward was thus placed upon the throne, and every act performed of his
own free will showed his gentleness and desire for his people’s good. At
the request of Edith, he abolished the Danegeld, or money raised first
to bribe the Danes, and then as their tribute; indeed, it was said
that he had seen a vision of an evil spirit dancing on the gold thus
collected. He made new laws in hopes of preventing crime, and set so
strict an example of attention to every rule of the Church, and giving
alms so largely, that he gained the love of his people, and fixed his
memory in their hearts so strongly, that he was revered as a Saint, and
the title of Confessor was given to him, though it properly only applies
to one who has suffered everything short of martyrdom, for the sake of
the Christian faith.
The times were too rude and violent for a king of so soft a mould:
crimes were committed which he had no power to restrain, and,
weak-handed and bewildered, he seems to have acted in great matters much
as he did in the following adventure: He was lying on his bed, when a
person came into the apartment, and, thinking him asleep, stole some
money out of a chest. The King let this pass; but when the thief
returned for a second handful, he quietly said, “Sirrah, you had better
take care, for if Hugolin, my chamberlain, catches you, he will give you
a sound beating.” Hugolin soon came in, and was much concerned at the
loss. “Never mind,” said the King; “the poor man wants it more than we
do.”
The sons of Godwin were growing up rude, high-spirited young men, who
presumed on their connection with the King to hold him cheap, and laugh
at him to his face. Sweyn, the eldest, was the worst, and at last caused
himself to be banished from the realm by the crime of carrying off the
Abbess from the Convent of Leominster. He then spent the life of
a pirate, in the course of which he visited the coast, and, while
pretending to attempt to be reconciled to his family, treacherously
murdered his cousin Biorn. After six years he repented, went barefoot on
pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and died while returning. The other brothers
were stained with no such enormities, but they were dreaded and disliked
by the King, who naturally turned to the friends of his youth, the
Normans.
Norman dresses and customs were introduced, the King’s own handwriting
was in the foreign character, and he expressed his assent to the laws by
appending to them an impression of his seal, after the fashion of the
kings of France. He likewise invited many of his old friends from
Normandy, gave some of them lands in England, where they built
fortified castles, and bestowed the bishopries and abbeys upon Norman
ecclesiastics. Great discontent arose upon this, and Godwin and his
sons took advantage of them to gain popularity, by strenuously opposing
everything Norman, and maintaining, as they said, the old English
customs.
Eustace als Gernons (the Whiskered), Count de Mantes, who had married
the King’s sister, came to visit Edward. At Dover a squabble took place
between his followers and the townspeople, in which several persons
on both sides were killed. Edward ordered Godwin to chastise the
townspeople, but, instead of this, the Earl collected an army, and
marched upon the King himself. They would have made him prisoner but for
Leofric of Mercia, and Siward, Earl of Northumbria, who both came to his
rescue, and drove Godwin and his family into exile.
Edward now felt himself truly King of England, and was able to enjoy a
short visit from the Duke of Normandy, who came to see him, and probably
then first conceived the hope of obtaining the crown of the ill-governed
and divided country that seemed ready to fall a prey to the first
vigorous enemy.
Earl Godwin was not long in assembling his friends, and making a descent
on the coast. All Kent and London rose in his favor, and Edward was
obliged to permit his return, and be reconciled to him.
Very shortly after his return, he was struck with a fit of apoplexy,
while feasting with the King at Easter. He was borne from the table by
his two eldest surviving sons, Harold and Tostig, and died five days
after, in the year 1052. The Norman chroniclers give the following
account of his death: One of the cup-bearers, while serving the King,
happened to make a false step, but saved himself from falling by the
foot, at which Godwin observed, “See how one brother helps another!”
“Yes,” said the king, “so would my brother have helped me, had he
lived.”
“I know you suspect me of his death,” replied Godwin, “but may God, who
is true and just, cause this morsel of bread to choke me, if I am guilty
of his murder.”
Scarcely had he spoken the words before he fell back, struck by the hand
of Heaven, and never uttered another word. Much doubt has been cast upon
this story, since it comes to us through Normans, who were great enemies
of his house. There is, however, nothing incredible in it; and other
instances have been known of persons who thus defied and brought upon
themselves the judgment of Heaven, in the full course of their crimes.
There is a propensity in these days to exalt the character of Godwin,
as if he had been an honest supporter of the old English habits against
foreign innovations. It is an entirely mistaken view, since Godwin
climbed into power by the favor of the enemies and destroyers of his
country, murdered the prince of the ancient line, and throughout the
reign of the lawful successor disturbed his peace, and attempts at
civilization, by factious opposition. Norman customs would have done
far less harm to England than the Danish invaders among whom Godwin had
contentedly spent the best years of his life. He seems throughout to
have listened only to his own ambition, and to have scrupled at nothing
that could promote his interest. Eloquence, and attention to the humors
of the nation, won for him wealth and power that rendered him formidable
to the King, and he built up a great name and fortune for himself, but
brief and fleeting was the inheritance that he bequeathed to his sons.
In fourteen years from his death only one of his brave band of sons
survived, and he was a miserable captive, who spent his whole existence
in the dungeons of his chief enemy. It seemed as if nothing that Godwin
had acquired could be enduring, for the very lands he left behind him no
longer exist, his chief estate on the coast of Kent was swallowed by the
sea, and now forms the dangerous shoal called the Goodwin Sands.
“Wise men also die and perish together, as well as the ignorant and
foolish, and leave their riches for other.
“And yet they think their houses shall continue forever; and that their
dwelling-places shall endure from one generation to another, and call
the lands _after their own names_.”
Far more enduring have been the memorials left by the meek Edward the
Confessor, though he had no son to carry on his name. He had vowed,
during his exile, to go on pilgrimage to Rome, but the Witenagemot
refused to consent to his leaving England, and he sent the Archbishop
of York to ask the advice of the Pope, Leo IX., who recommended him to
perform some work of piety at home.
This was the foundation of the Church of St. Peter’s, in the open
country, at the west end of London, and therefore called Westminster. It
was built with all the skill of Norman architects, and occupied several
years. Edward’s last illness prevented him from being present at its
consecration, and he was represented there by his wife, but he soon
found his rest there. It was dedicated on the Holy Innocents’ day, 1065,
and he was buried there on the 5th of January following. His memory
seemed to give an additional sacredness to the spot in the eyes of the
loving English, and the pavement round his tomb was worn away by their
knees.
CAMEO V. THE TWO HAROLDS. (1060-1066.)
_Kings of England_.
1041. Edward the
Confessor.
1066. Harold.
_Kings of France_.
1059. Philippe I.
_Emperors of Germany_.
1055. Heinrich IV.
The death of Godwin did not at first seem likely to diminish the power
of his family. Harold, his eldest surviving son, was highly endowed with
mental powers and personal beauty and prowess, and was much preferred
by Edward the Confessor to the old Earl himself. He obtained all his
father’s lands, and, shortly after, distinguished himself in a war with
the Welsh, showing, however, that vainglory was his characteristic; for
he set up mounds of stones along the course of his march, bearing the
inscription, “Here Harold conquered.”
The earls who had hitherto balanced the power of the Godwin family,
were, about this time, removed by death. Leofric, of Mercia, and his son
Algar, died within a few years of each other; and Algar’s sons, Edwin
and Morkar, were as yet young and timid. Old Earl Siward Biorn fought
his last battle when he assisted Malcolm Canmore in overthrowing the
murderous usurper, Macbeth, in Scotland. In the battle, Siward’s
eldest-son, of the same name as himself, was killed. The father only
asked if his death-wound was in front, and when he heard it was, “I
heartily rejoice,” said he; “no other death is worthy of my son.”
He himself was obliged, much against his will, to die in peace. “I am
ashamed,” he said, “after so many battles, to die like a cow; case me
in my armor, gird on my sword, put on my helmet, give me my shield and
battle-axe, lift me to my feet, that I may die like a man!”
The fierce old Earl’s younger son, Waltheof, was a mere child, and the
earldom of Northumbria was therefore given to Tostig, the son of Godwin,
but he so misgoverned it that he was, by command of the King, sent into
exile by his brother Harold, whom he thenceforth regarded with the
utmost hatred.
Harold stood so high in favor, both with King and people, that his views
began to take a still loftier flight, especially after the death of
Edward the Stranger, the only grown-up person excepting the King who
inherited the blood of Alfred. The stranger had indeed left an infant
son, but his rights were entirely overlooked. The King wished to leave
his crown to his cousin William, Duke of Normandy; and Harold, trusting
to the general hatred of the Norman race, hoped to secure it for
himself, much in the same way as Hugh Capet had lately dethroned the
line of Charles le Magne in France.
Edward the Confessor, desirous of a affording William some means of
curbing Harold’s ambition, sent to him as hostages Ulfnoth and Hako,
a son and grandson of Godwin. Harold, however, contrived to extort
permission to go to Rouen, and request their liberation, and set out
from Bosham, in Sussex. A storm wrecked him in Ponthieu; he was taken
captive by the count of that district, who gave him up to William in
exchange for a considerable manor, and thus, though he entered Rouen
in state, he found himself, instead of the ambassador of the King of
England, in effect the prisoner of the Duke of Normandy.
He was treated with great courtesy, accompanied William on an expedition
against the Duke of Brittany, and gave great help to the Normans by
his personal strength, when some of them were in danger, in crossing a
river, and, apparently, was in high honor; but William was determined
not to miss the advantage chance had thrown in his way; and when Harold,
alter spending some months at Rouen, proposed to return, he, in the
first place, insisted on drawing up a treaty of alliance and friendship
with his good friend the Earl of Wessex, to be sworn to on both sides.
Very distasteful must this promise of friendship have been to Harold,
since the first article required him to assist the Duke with all his
power in obtaining the crown of England upon Edward’s death; but he
found it impossible to resist, and declared himself perfectly willing to
engage himself as required.
An oath taken on the relics of the Saints was, at that time, considered
as more binding than one taken on the Holy Scriptures; and William
commanded that the most honored of these remains should be collected
from various churches and placed in a chest, covered with cloth of gold
on which a copy of the Gospels was laid. Harold, laying his hand on the
book, swore to observe the treaty faithfully; and when he had so done,
William removed the cloth and showed him the relics, at the sight of
which he turned pale and trembled--a sure sign, as was thought by the
Normans who stood round, that his conscience would not allow him to
break an oath which was believed to have thus acquired double force and
sanctity. Yet Harold soon proved that no oaths can bind a man who will
not be bound by his simple word.
A few months after his return from Normandy, he was standing by the
bedside of the dying Edward the Confessor, importuning his last moments
with entreaties to him to declare his successor.
“Ye know, full well,” said the poor old King, “that I have bequeathed my
kingdom to the Duke of Normandy; nay, some be here who have sworn oaths
to him.”
Harold pressed him for some other answer, and he replied, “Take it,
Harold, if such be thy will, but the gift will be thy ruin. Against the
Duke and his barons no might of thine will avail thee.”
“Fear not for me,” replied Harold, joyfully; “I fear neither Norman, nor
aught else.”
“May it fall to the most worthy!” was the faint answer of Edward. His
thoughts began to wander, and he uttered many passages of Scripture
speaking of desolation and destruction, which were afterward regarded by
his subjects as the last prophecies of their saintly king. He died two
days afterward, and, on the feast of Epiphany, 1066, Harold assumed the
crown. The coronation was solemnized by Alfred, Archbishop of York; but
whether the absence of the Primate Stigand was occasioned by his dislike
to the usurpation, or by the sentence of excommunication under which he
had been laid by the Pope, is not known. Be that as it may, there was
little joy to welcome the accession of Harold; the people were full of
melancholy forebodings, excited by the predictions of King Edward,
as well as by the appearance of a comet, then supposed to denote the
approach of misfortune; the great earls, Edwin and Morkar, were his
enemies, the nobles envied him, and stood aloof, significantly relating
a story of his boyhood, when he is said to have met with a severe fall
in a foolish attempt to fly from the top of a tower with wings of his
own contrivance. There is a Spanish proverb which, in truth, suited
Harold well: “The ant found wings for her destruction.” The bitterest of
all his enemies was his own brother, Tostig, who, having been banished
partly by his means, on account of his misgovernment of Northumbria, was
living in Flanders, whence, the instant he heard of Harold’s coronation,
he hastened with the tidings to Normandy; and not thinking William’s
preparations speedy enough to satisfy the impatience of his hatred, he
went to Norway, where he found a willing ally in Harald Hardrada, the
last sea-king.
A curious story is told of the childhood of this Harald Hardrada, who
was the half-brother of the kingly St. Olaf, being the son of the
haughty Aasta and the peaceful Sigurd Syr. When Harald was about three
years old, St. Olaf was on a visit to his mother, and calling to his
little brothers, took the two eldest, Guttorm and Halfdan, one on each
knee, and looked at them, with a fierce countenance, at which both the
little boys were frightened, and ran away to hide themselves. He then
took Harald on his knee, and put on the same fierce look at him, but the
child looked boldly up in his face in return. As a further trial of
his courage, the king pulled his hair, upon which the little fellow
undauntedly pulled the king’s whiskers, and Olaf said, “Thou wilt be
revengeful, some day, my friend.”
The next day, Olaf found his little brothers at play; the two eldest
building little barns and enclosing cornfields, and Harald lying by the
side of a pool of water, in which he was floating small chips of wood.
“What are these?” asked the king.
“My ships of war,” said little Harald.
“Ha! my friend,” said the King, “the time may come when thou wilt
command ships.”
He then called the other two, and asked Guttorm what he would like best
to have.
“Corn land,” said he.
“And how great wouldst thou like thy corn land to be?”
“I would have the whole ness (peninsula) that goes out into the lake
sown with corn every summer.”
“And what wouldst thou like best?” he asked of Halfdan.
“Cows,” said the boy.
“How many wouldst thou like to have?”
“So many, that when they went to the lake to drink, they should stand as
tight round the lake as they could stand.”
“That would be a great house-keeping!” said the king; “and now, Harald,
what wouldst thou have?” “Followers.”
“And how many of them?”
“Oh, so many as would eat up all Halfdan’s cows at a single meal!”
Olaf laughed, and said, “Here, mother, thou art bringing up a king.”
In fact, Guttorm and Halfdan followed the quiet life of their father,
but Harald was of far different temper. When Olaf returned from his
exile in Russia, young Harald, who was scarcely fifteen, joined him with
all the followers he could muster, and insisted on taking part in the
battle of Stiklestad.
Olaf told him he was too young; but Harald boldly answered, “I am not
so weak but I can handle the sword; and as to that, I have a notion
of tying the sword to my hand;” and then the brave boy sung out some
verses, composed on the spur of the moment, according to a talent often
found among the Northmen, and highly valued:
“Our army’s wing, where I shall stand,
I will hold good with heart and hand;
My mother’s eye shall joy to see,
A batter’d, blood-stain’d shield from me.
The brave young skald should gaily go
Into the fray, change blow for blow;
Cheer on his men, gain inch by inch,
And from the spear-point never flinch.”
Olaf saw plainly that his high-spirited mother had infused her own
temper into her youngest son as entirely as into himself, and yielded
his consent that Harald should take part in the battle. It was a
mournful beginning for a young warrior. Harald beheld the fall of his
noble brother, and was himself severely wounded. He was led from the
field by a faithful bonder, who hid him in his house; but the spirit of
the young minstrel warrior was undaunted, and, during his recovery, he
sung thus:
“My wounds were bleeding as I rode,
And down the hill the bonders strode,
Killing the wounded with the sword,
The followers of their rightful lord.
From wood to wood I crept along,
Unnoticed by the bonder throng;
‘Who knows,’ I thought, ‘a day may come,
My name may yet be great at home.’”
As soon as his wounds were healed, Harald took refuge in Russia, and
thence travelled to Constantinople, where he became one of the renowned
guards of the Greek Emperor, composed of hired Northmen and Saxons, and
called Vaeringer, or Varangians, from the word _Wehr_, a defence. He
went from Constantinople to the Holy Land, bathed in the Jordan, paid
his devotions at Jerusalem, and killed the robbers on the way. Strange
stories were told of his adventures at Constantinople, of the Empress
Zoe having fallen in love with him, and of his refusal to return her
affection; upon which she raised an accusation against him, that he had
misapplied the pay of the Vaeringers, and threw him into prison,
whence, as the story related, he was freed by a lady, who was
commissioned to rescue him by St. Olaf, his brother, who appeared to
her in a dream. She brought him a rope ladder, and he escaped to his
ship, broke through the chains that guarded the harbor, and sailed
northward through the Black Sea, composing on his voyage sixteen songs
in honor of Elisif, the Russian king’s daughter, whom he married on his
arrival at Novogorod. He obtained with her great riches, which he added
to the treasures he had brought from Constantinople.
St. Olaf’s son, Magnus, was reigning in Norway, and Harald Hardrada
designed to obtain from him a portion of the kingdom, to winch, by the
old Norwegian law, every descendant of Harald Harfagre had an equal
claim. Harald united with his cousin Swend, who had been dispossessed
of an earldom by Magnus, and they advanced together; but Harald was
inclined, if possible, rather to decide the matter by a treaty, than
by force of arms; while Swend, on the other hand, wished for war and
revenge.
One evening, as the two allies were sitting together, Swend asked Harald
what he valued most of all his property.
“My banner, Land-Waster,” answered Harald.
“And wherefore?”
“It has always been said that this banner carries victory with it, and
so I have ever found it.”
“I will believe in that when thou hast borne it in three battles with
thy nephew Magnus, and won them all.”
“I know my kindred with king Magnus,” answered Harald, “without thy
recalling it; and though we are now in arms against him, our meeting may
be of another sort.”
They came to high words, Swend reproaching his ally with breaking his
agreement. Harald distrusted his intentions, and, at night, did not, as
usual, sleep in a tent on the deck of his ship, but left a billet of
wood in his place. At midnight a man rowed silently up to the side of
the ship, crept up to the tent, and struck so violent a blow with his
axe, that it remained sticking in the wood, while the murderer retired
to his boat, and rowed away in the dark.
Harald, convinced of this treachery, deserted Swend, and went to join
Magnus, who met him in a friendly manner, and invited him, with sixty of
his men, to a banquet.
After the feast, Magnus went round the table, distributing gifts of
robes and weapons to the sixty men; but when he came to Harald, he held
up two sticks, and asked which of them he would choose. Harald took the
nearest, and Magnus declared that therewith he gave up to him half his
power and land in Norway, making him of equal right with himself, and
only reserving the first seat when they should be together at any time.
Harald sent for all the treasure he had brought home, declaring that
they would likewise divide their riches; and the gold was weighed out,
and placed in two equal heaps, each on an ox-hide. But Magnus had no
riches to contribute, for he said that the turmoils in the country had
so impoverished him, that all the gold he possessed was the ring on
his finger, which his father, St. Olaf, had given him at their last
parting. Even this, Harald said, smiling, perhaps belonged rightfully
to him, since it was, at first, the property of his father, Sigurd Syr.
However, the two kings parted amicably, and reigned together without
disagreements of any consequence, for the remembrance of St. Olaf seemed
always to be a link between his son and brother. Magnus, the more gentle
of the two, died just as his uncle had led him to enter on a war of
ambition with Swend, King of Denmark.
Norwegian traditions relate that he dreamt that his father, St. Olaf,
appeared to him, saying, “Wilt thou choose, my son, to follow me, or to
become a long-lived and powerful king, at the cost of a crime that can
never be expiated?”
“Do thou choose for me, father,” he answered.
“Then follow me,” replied the spirit.
Magnus awoke, told the dream, sickened, and died, leaving the whole of
Norway to Harald Hardrada, and declaring that it would be just not to
molest Swend in his possession of Denmark.
Harald reigned prosperously, until, in an evil hour, he received Tostig,
the son of Godwin, and listened to his invitation to come and invade
England, and revenge him on his brother Harold. He fitted out a great
armament, sailed up the Humber, plundered and burnt Scarborough,
defeated the young earls of Mercia and Northumberland, and summoned York
to surrender.
The citizens, dreading an assault, promised to yield the next day; and,
accordingly, early in the morning, Hardrada, Tostig and a small band of
followers, set out from their camp at Stamford Bridge, on the banks of
the Ouse, to receive the keys. The day was bright and warm, though late
in September, and the Northmen had left behind them their shirts of
mail, and only bore sword, shield, and helmet; even Harald himself had
left behind his hawberk Emma, and only wore a blue robe embroidered with
gold, and a rich helmet.
As they were approaching the city, they suddenly beheld a cloud of dust,
and beneath it the glitter of armor, glancing, as the Norwegians said,
like sparkling ice. As they came nearer, they could distinguish the red
dragon standard of Wessex, proving that there was the king whom they
had supposed to be far away on the south coast, watching to prevent the
landing of William of Normandy.
Though taken by surprise, outnumbered, and half-armed, Hardrada did not
lose courage. He sent messengers to summon the rest of his men, and
planting in the midst his banner, Land-Waster, ranged his troops round
it in a circle, with the ends of their spears resting on the ground, and
the points turned outward.
Twenty horsemen, in full armor, advanced from the Saxon army, and one of
them, riding close up to the circle, called out, “Where is Earl Tostig,
the son of Godwin?”
“He is here!” replied Tostig.
“Thy brother salutes thee, offers thee peace, his friendship, and the
Earldom of Northumbria; nay, rather than not be friends with thee, he
would give thee the third of his kingdom.”
“If he had held this language a year ago,” replied Tostig, who knew the
speaker but too well, “he would have saved the lives of many men. But
what will he offer my noble ally, King Harold Sigurdson?”
“Seven feet of English earth,” answered the horseman, proudly scanning
the gigantic figure of the Sea-King, “or maybe a little more.”
“Then,” said Tostig, “King Harold, my brother, may prepare for battle.
Never shall it be said that the son of Godwin forsook the son of
Sigurd.” It must have been a strange look that passed between those two
brothers, thus on the verge of a deadly strife, each surrounded with
dangers that could scarcely be averted, and but of late actuated with
bitter hate, but, at the decisive moment, that hatred giving way, and
their hearts yearning to each other, with the memories of long-past
days, yet both too proud to show how they were mutually touched, too far
pledged to their separate parties to follow the impulse that would have
drawn them once together in love. It was too late; the battle must be
fought--the brothers’ deeds had decided their lot.
The Saxon horseman rode off, and the Norwegian King asked, who was the
man who had been speaking so well.
“It was King Harold Godwinson,” said Tostig.
“Why did I not learn this sooner?” said Hardrada. “He should never have
had to boast of the slaughter of our men.”
“It may have been imprudent,” said Tostig, “but he was willing to grant
me peace and a great dominion. If one of us must die, I had rather he
should slay me, than I slay him.”
So spoke Tostig, who had, of late, been rushing from country to country
to stir up foes against his brother. Surely he would have given worlds
to check the ruin he had wrought, though his sense of honor would not
allow him to forsake his ally.
“He is but a little man, but he sits firmly in his stirrups,” returned
Harald Hardrada; and then, to cheer his men in their desperate case, he
chanted aloud one of his impromptu war-songs:
“Advance, advance,
The helmets glance;
But blue swords play
In our array.
“Advance, advance,
No hawberks glance--
But hearts are here
That know no fear.”
“These verses sound but ill,” said the Sea-King, interrupting himself;
“we will make some better;” and, careful of his verses as a Skald in his
last battle, as well as in his first, he sung:
“In battle morn we seek no lee,
With skulking head and bending knee,
Behind the hollow shield;
With eye and hand we guard the head,
Courage and promptness stand instead,
Of hawberk, on this field.”
It was his death-song. Early in the battle his throat was pierced by an
arrow; and learning his death, Harold Godwinson sent once more to offer
Tostig pardon, and leave to the Northmen to return home; but they
refused quarter, and Tostig would not forsake them. The other Northmen
from the ships joined them, and the fight raged with more fury than
ever in the “death-ring,” as the Skalds termed it, round the banner
Land-Waster. Tostig fell there, and only a few fled to their ships,
protected by a brave Norseman, who stood alone to guard Stamford bridge,
then only consisting of a few planks, till an Englishman crept under,
thrust up his spear, and slew him from below.
However, Harold’s condition was too critical to allow of his wasting
his strength on a defeated foe; he allowed Hardrada’s son to return
unmolested to Norway with his fleet and the remains of his army, and he
gave great offence to his men by not sharing the plunder of the camp
with them.
So died the last of the Sea-Kings, by the last Anglo-Saxon victory.
CAMEO VI. THE NORMAN INVASION. (1066.)
The Duke of Normandy seems to have considered himself secure of the fair
realm of England, by the well-known choice of Edward the Confessor, and
was reckoning on the prospects of ruling there, where the language and
habits of his race were already making great progress.
On a winter day, however, early in 1066, as William, cross-bow in hand,
was hunting in the forests near Rouen, a horseman galloped up to him and
gave him, in a low voice, the information that his cousin, King Edward
of England, was dead, and that Earl Harold of Kent had been crowned in
his stead.
With fierce rage were these tidings given, for the bearer of them was
no other than Tostig, who attempted to bring the Normans against his
brother, before seeking the aid of Harald Hardrada in the north.
No less was the ire of the Norman Duke excited, but he was of too stern
and reserved a nature to allow his wrath to break out at once into
words. Sport, however, was at an end for him; he threw down his
cross-bow, and walked out of the forest, his fine but hard features
bearing so dark and gloomy an expression, that no one dared to ask what
had disturbed him.
Without a word, he entered the castle, and there strode up and down the
hall, his hands playing with the fastenings of his cloak, until suddenly
throwing himself on a bench, he drew his mantle over his face, turned it
to the wall, and became lost in deep musings.
His knights stood round, silent and perplexed, till a voice was heard
humming a tune at a little distance, and the person entered who, more
than any other, shared the counsels of Duke William, namely, William
Fitzosborn, Count de Breteuil, son of that Osborn the seneschal who had
been murdered in the Duke’s chamber.
The two Williams were of the same age, had been brought up together,
and Fitzosborn now enjoyed the office of seneschal, and was on a more
intimate footing with his lord than any other was admitted to by the
dark and reserved prince. All the knights gathered round him to ask what
ailed the Duke.
“Ah!” said he, “you will soon hear news that will not please you;” and
as William, roused by his voice, sat up on the bench, he continued:
“Sir, why hide what troubles you? It is rumored in the town that the
King of England is dead, and that Harold has broken his faith, and
seized the realm.”
“You are right,” replied the Duke. “I am grieved at the death of King
Edward, and at the wrong Harold has done me.”
Fitzosborn answered with such counsels as his master would best be
pleased to hear. “Sir, no one should grieve over what cannot be undone,
far less over what may be mended. There is no cure for King Edward’s
death, but there is a remedy for Harold’s evil deeds. You have warlike
vassals; he has an unjust cause. What needs there, save a good heart?
for what is well begun, is half done.”
William’s wishes lay in the direction his friend pointed out, but he was
wary, and weighed his means before undertaking the expedition against so
powerful and wealthy a state as England. His resources seemed as nothing
in comparison with those of England; his dukedom was but a petty state,
himself a mere vassal; and though he had reason to hope that the English
were disaffected toward Harold, yet, on the other hand, he was not
confident of the support of his own vassals--wild, turbulent men, only
kept in cheek by his iron rule, without much personal attachment to one
so unbending and harsh, and likely to be unwilling to assist in his
personal aggrandizement.
He paused and calculated, waiting so long that Tostig, in his
impatience, went to Norway, and tried to find a prompter for Harold.
Messages in the meantime passed between Normandy and England without
effect. William claimed the performance of the oaths at Rouen, and
Harold denied any obligation to him, offering to be his ally if he would
renounce the throne, but otherwise defying him as an enemy.
Having at length decided, William summoned his vassals to meet at
Lillebonne, and requested their aid in asserting his right to the
English Crown.
When he left them to deliberate, all with one consent agreed that they
would have nothing to do with foreign expeditions. What should they
gain? The Duke had no right to ask their feudal service for aught but
guarding their own frontier. Fitzosborn should he the spokesman, and
explain the result of their parliament.
In came the Duke, and Fitzosborn, standing forth, spoke thus: “Never, my
lord, were men so zealous as those you see here. They will serve you as
truly beyond sea as in Normandy. Push forward, and spare them not. He
who has hitherto furnished one man-at-arms, will equip two; he who has
led twenty knights, will bring forty. I myself offer you sixty ships
well filled with fighting men.”
Fitzosborn was stopped by a general outcry of indignation and dissent,
and the assembly tumultuously dispersed; but not one of the vassals was
allowed to quit Lillebonne till after a private conference with William,
and determined as they might be when altogether, yet not a count or
baron of them all could withstand the Duke when alone with him; and it
ended in their separately engaging to do just as Fitzosborn had promised
for them; and going home to build ships from their woods, choose out the
most stalwart villains on their estates to be equipped as men-at-arms
and archers, to cause their armorers to head the cloth-yard shafts,
repair the hawberks of linked chains of steel, and the high-pointed
helmets, as yet without visors, and the face only guarded by a
projection over the nose. Every one had some hope of advantage to be
gained in England; barons expected additional fiefs, peasants intended
to become nobles, and throughout the spring preparations went on
merrily; the Duchess Matilda taking part in them, by causing a vessel to
be built for the Duke himself, on the figure-head of which was carved a
likeness of their youngest son William, blowing an ivory horn.
William, in the meantime, sought for allies in every quarter, beginning
with writing to beg the sanction of the Pope, Alexander II., as Harold’s
perjury might be considered an ecclesiastical offence.
The Saxons were then in no favor at Rome; they had refused to accept
a Norman Primate appointed by Edward; and Stigand, their chosen
Archbishop, was at present suspended by the Court of Rome, for having
obtained his office by simony: the whole Anglo-Saxon Church was reported
to be in a very bad and corrupt state, and besides, Rome had never
enjoyed the power and influence there that the Normans had permitted
her. Lanfranc, Abbot, of St. Stephens, at Caen, and one of the persons
most highly esteemed by William, was an Italian of great repute at Rome,
and thus everything conspired to make the Pope willing to favor the
attempt upon England.
He therefore returned him a Bull (a letter so called from the golden
bull, or bulla, appended to it), appointing him, as the champion of
the Church, to chastise the impious perjurer Harold, and sent him a
consecrated banner, and a gold ring containing a relic of St. Peter.
Thus sanctioned, William applied to his liege lord Philippe I. of
France, offering to pay homage for England as well as Normandy; but
Philippe, a dull, heavy, indolent man, with no love for his great
vassal, refused him any aid; and William, though he made the application
for form’s sake, was well pleased to have it so.
“If I succeed,” he said, “I shall be under the fewer obligations.”
When he requested aid from Matilda’s brother Baldwin, Count of Flanders,
the answer he received was a query, how much land in England he would
allot as a recompense. He sent, in return, a piece of blank parchment;
but others say, that instead of being an absolute blank, it contained
his signature, and was filled up by Baldwin, with the promise of a
pension of three hundred marks.
Everything was at length in readiness; nine hundred ships, or rather
large open boats, were assembled at the mouth of the Dive; lesser barks
came in continually, and counts, barons, and knights, led in their
trains of horsemen and archers.
All William’s friends were round him, and his two half-brothers, the
sons of Arlette, Robert, Count of Eu, and Odo, the warlike Bishop of
Bayeux. Matilda was to govern in his absence, and his eldest son,
Robert, a boy of thirteen, was brought forward, and received the homage
of the vassals, in order that he might be owned as heir of Normandy, in
case any mishap should befall his father on the expedition.
Nothing delayed the enterprise but adverse winds, and these prevailed so
long that the feudal army had nearly exhausted their forty days’ stock
of provisions; knight and man-at-arms murmured, and the Duke was
continually going to pray in the Church of St. Valery, looking up at the
weathercock every time he came out.
On the eve of St. Michael, the Duke’s anxious face became cheerful, for
a favorable wind had set in, and the word was given to embark. Horses
were led into the ships, the shields hung round the gunwale, and the
warriors crowded in, the Duke, in his own Mora, leading the way, the
Pope’s banner at his mast’s head, and a lantern at the stern to guide
the rest.
By morning, however, he outstripped all the fleet, and the sailor at the
mast-head could see not one; but gradually first one sail, then another,
came in sight, and by the evening of Michaelmas-day, 1066, the whole
nine hundred were bearing, down upon Pevensey.
Those adverse winds had done Willium more favor than he guessed, for
they had delayed him till Harold had been obliged to quit his post of
observation in Sussex, and go to oppose the Northmen at York, and thus
there was no one to interfere with the landing of the Normans, who
disembarked as peacefully at Pevensey as if it had been Rouen itself.
William was almost the first to leap on shore; but as he did so, his
foot slipped, and he fell. Rising, with his hands full of mud, he called
out, “Here have I taken possession of the land which by God’s help I
hope to win!” Catching his humor, one of his knights tore a handful of
thatch from a neighboring cottage, and put it into his hand, saying,
“Sir, I give you seizin of this place, and promise that I shall see you
lord of it before a month is past.”
The troops were landed first, then the horses, and lastly the
carpenters, who set up at once three wooden forts, which had been
brought in the ships prepared to be put together. After dinner, William
ordered all the ships to be burnt, to cut off all hope of return. He
continued for several days at Pevensey, exercising the troops: and
viewing the country. In one of these expeditions, he gave, what was
thought, a remarkable proof of strength; for on a hot day, as they were
mounting a steep hill, Fitzosborn grew faint and exhausted by the weight
of his ponderous iron hawberk. The Duke bade him take it off, and
putting it on over his own, climbed the hill and returned to his camp
wearing both at once.
His landing, though he saw no one, had in reality been watched by a
South-Saxon Thane, who, having counted Ins ships and seen his array,
mounted, and, without resting day or night, rode to York, where, as
Harold was dining, two days after the battle of Stamford Bridge, he
rushed into the hall, crying out, “The Normans are come! they have built
a fort at Pevensey!”
No time was to be lost, and at the dawn Harold and all his army were
marching southward, sending a summons to the thanes and franklins of
each county as he passed, to gather to the defence of the country.
His speed was too great, however, for the great mass of the people to be
able to join him, even if they had been so minded, and they were for
the most part disposed to take no part in the struggle, following the
example of the young Earls of Mercia, Edwin and Morkar, who held aloof,
unwilling alike to join Harold or the Normans.
When Harold reached London, his army was so much lessened by fatigue and
desertion, that his mother, Gytha, and his two youngest brothers, Gyrtha
and Leofwyn, advised him not to risk a battle, but to lay the country
waste before the Normans, and starve them out of England. Harold
answered, with the generous spirit that had been defaced and clouded by
his ambition, “Would you have me ruin my kingdom? By my faith, it were
treason. I will rather try the chances of a battle with such men as I
have, and trust to my own valor and the goodness of my cause.”
“Yet,” said Gyrtha, “if it be so, forbear thyself to fight. Either
willingly or under force, thou art sworn to Duke William. Thine oath
will weigh down thine arm in battle, but we, who are all unpledged,
are free to fight in defence of our realm. Thou wilt aid us if we are
defeated, avenge us if we are slain.”
Harold disregarded this advice, and was resolved to lead the host
himself; he gathered his followers from Kent and Wessex, and marched
southward.
CAMEO VII. THE BATTLE OF HASTINGS. (1066.)
The first night after leaving London, Harold slept at Waltham Abbey, and
had much conference with the Abbot, who was his friend, and appointed
two Monks, named Osgood and Ailric, to attend him closely in the coming
battle.
On the 12th of October, Harold found himself seven miles from the
enemy, and halted his men on Heathfield-hill, near Hastings, the most
advantageous ground he could find.
On the highest point he planted his standard bearing the figure of a
man in armor, and marshalling his Saxons round it, commanded them to
entrench themselves within a rampart and ditch, and to plant within them
a sort of poles, on the upper part of which, nearly the height of a man
from the ground, they interwove a fence of wattled branches, so that
while the front rank might pass under to man the rampart, the rear might
be sheltered from the arrows of the enemy.
These orders given, Harold and Gyrtha rode together to a hill, whence
they beheld the Norman camp, when for a moment Harold was so alarmed
at the number of their tents that he spoke of returning to London and
acting as his mother had advised; but Gyrtha showed him that it was too
late; he could not turn back from the very face of the enemy, without
being supposed to fly, and thus yielding his kingdom at once.
Three Saxons presently came to the brothers who had been seized as spies
by the Normans, and, by order of William, led throughout his camp, and
then sent away to report what they had seen. Their story was that the
Norman soldiers were all Priests, at which Harold laughed, since they
had been deceived by the short-cut locks and smooth chins of the
Normans, such as in England were only worn by ecclesiastics, warriors
always wearing flowing locks and thick moustaches.
Several messages passed between the two camps, William sending offers
of honors and wealth to Harold and Gyrtha if they would cease their
resistance; but when all were rejected, he sent another herald to defy
Harold as a perjured traitor under the ban of the Church;--a declaration
which so startled the Saxons, that it took strong efforts on the part of
the gallant Gyrtha to inspirit them to stand by his brother.
This over, William addressed his soldiers from a little hillock, and
put on his armor, hanging-round his neck, as a witness of Harold’s
falsehood, one of the relics on which the oath had been taken. He
chanced to put on his hawberk with the wrong side before, and seeing
some of his men disconcerted, fancying this a token of ill, he told them
that it boded that his dukedom should be turned to a kingdom.
His horse was a beautiful Spanish barb sent him by the King of Castile;
and so gallantly did he ride, that there was a shout of delight from his
men, and a cry, “Never was such a Knight under Heaven! A fair Count he
is, and a fair king he will be! Shame on him who fails him!”
William held in his hand the Pope’s banner, and called for the
standard-bearer of Normandy; but no one liked to take the charge,
fearful of being hindered from gaining distinction by feats of personal
prowess. Each elder knight of fame begged to be excused, and at last
it was committed to Tunstan the White, a young man probably so called
because he had yet to win an achievement for his spotless shield.
The army was in three troops, each drawn up in the form of a wedge, the
archers forming the point; and the reserve of horse was committed to
Bishop Odo, who rode up and down among the men, a hawberk over his
rochet and a club in his hand.
On went the Normans in the light of the rising sun of the 13th of
October, Taillefer, a minstrel-knight, riding first, playing on his harp
and singing the war-song of Roland the Paladin. At seven o’clock they
were before the Saxon camp, and Fitzosborn and the body under his
command dashed up the hill, under a cloud of arrows, shouting, “Notre
Dame! Dieu aide!” while the Saxons within, crying out, “Holy Rood!” cut
down with their battle-axes all who gained the rampart, and at length
drove them back again.
A second onset was equally unsuccessful, and William, observing that the
wattled fence protected the Saxons from the arrows, ordered the archers
to shoot their arrows no longer point blank, but into the sky, so that
they might fall on the heads of the Saxons. Thus directed, these shafts
harassed the defenders grievously; and Harold himself was pierced in the
left eye, and almost disabled from further exertion in the command.
Yet at noon, the Normans had been baffled at every quarter, and William,
growing desperate, led a party to attack the entrance of the camp. Again
he was repulsed, and driven back on some rough ground, where many horses
fell, and among them his own Spanish charger. A cry arose that the Duke
was slain; the Normans fled, the Saxons broke out of their camp in
pursuit, when William, throwing off his helmet and striking with his
lance, recalled his troops, shouting, “Look at me! I live, and by Gods
grace I will conquer.” All the Saxons who had left the camp were slain,
their short battle-axes being unfit to cope with the heavy swords and
long lances of their enemies; and taught by this success, William caused
some of his troops to feign a flight, draw them beyond the rampart, turn
on them, and cut them down. The manoeuvre was repeated at different parts
of the camp till the rampart was stripped of defenders, and the
Normans forced their way into it, cut down the wattled fence, and gave
admittance to the host of horse and foot who rushed over the outworks.
Yet still the standard floated in the midst of a brave band who--
“Though thick the shafts as snow.
Though charging knights like whirlwinds go,
Though bill-men ply the ghastly blow,
Still fought around their King.”
All who came near that close-serried ring of steadfast Saxon strength
were cut down, and the piles of dead Normans round them were becoming
ramparts, when twenty knights bound themselves by an oath that the
standard should be taken, spurred their horses against the ranks, and by
main force, with the loss of ten of their number, forced an opening. Ere
the ranks could close, William and his whole force were charging into
the gap made for a moment, trampling down the brave men, slaughtering on
all sides, yet still unable to break through to the standard.
“Till utter darkness closed her wing
O’er their thin host and wounded King.”
Man by man the noble Saxons were hewn down as the Normans cut their way
through them, no more able to drive them back than if they had been the
trees of the forest. Gyrtha, the true-hearted and noble, fell under the
sword of a Norman knight, Leofwyn lay near him in his blood, yet still
Harold’s voice was heard cheering on his men, and still his standard
streamed above their heads.
At sunset, that well-known voice was no longer heard, and the setting
sun beheld Tunstan the White perform the crowning achievement of the
day, uproot the standard banner of Normandy that the morning beams had
seen committed to his charge. Not an earl or thane of Wessex was living;
and heaps of slain lay thick on Heathfield hill, and the valley round a
very lake of blood. Senlac, or Sanglac, was its old name, and sounded
but too appropriate to the French ears of the Conqueror, as, in a moment
of sorrow for the fearful loss of life he beheld, he vowed that here
should stand an Abbey where prayer should be made for pardon for his
sins and for the repose of the souls of the slaughtered. Darkness came
on; but the Saxons, retreating under its cover, were still so undaunted
that the Normans could hardly venture to move about the field except in
considerable parties, and Eustace of Boulogne, while speaking to the
Duke, was felled to the earth by a sudden blow.
In the morning, Gytha, the widow of Godwin, who had lost four children
by the perjury and ambition of one of them, came to entreat permission
to bury. Gyrtha and Leofwyn lay near together at the foot of the banner.
Harold was sought in vain, till Edith of the Swan neck, a lady he had
loved, was brought to help in the melancholy quest.
She declared a defaced and mangled corpse to be that of Harold, and it
was carried, with those of the two brothers, to the Abbey of Waltham,
where it was placed beneath a stone bearing the two sorrowful words,
“Infelix Harold.”
Years passed on, and the people had long become accustomed to the Norman
yoke, when there was much talk among them of a hermit, who dwelt in a
cell not far from the town, in the utmost penitence and humility. He was
seldom seen, his face was deeply scarred, and he had lost his left eye,
and nothing was known of his name or history; but he was deeply revered
for his sanctity, and when Henry Beauclerc once visited Chester, he
sought a private interview with the mysterious penitent.
It is said, that when the hermit lay on his death-bed, he owned himself
to be Harold, son of Godwin, once King of England for seven months. He
had been borne from the bloody hill, between life and death, in the
darkness of the evening, by the two faithful monks, Osgood and Ailric,
and tended in secret till he recovered from his wounds.
Since that time he had been living in penitence and contrition, unknown
to and apart from the world, and died at length, trusting that his forty
years’ repentance might be accepted.
If this tale be true, what a warning might not he have bestowed on
the young prince Henry, destined to run a like course of perjury and
ambition, and to feel it turn back upon him in the dreariness of
desolate old age, when “he never smiled again.” Had not the penitent
Harold more peace at the last than the king Henry?
The same story is told of almost every king missed in a lost battle.
Arthur, borne away to die at Avalon, and believed to be among the
fairies; Rodrigo, the last of the Goths, whose steed Orelio and horned
helmet lay on the banks of the river, and whose name was found centuries
after on a rude gravestone, near a hermitage; James IV., whom the Scots
by turns hoped to see return from pilgrimage, and pitied as they looked
at Lord Home’s border tower; the gallant Don Sebastian, the last of the
glorious race of Portuguese Kings, never seen after his shout of “Let
us die!” in the tumult of Alcaçer, yet long looked for by his loving
people--of each in turn the belief has arisen among the subjects who
clung to the hope of seeing the beloved prince, and dwelt on the
doubt whether his corpse was identified. In the cases of Harold and
Rodrigo--generous men tempted into fearful and ruinous crimes--one would
hope the tale was true, and that the time for repentance was vouchsafed
to them; nor are their stories entirely without authority.
Harold had three young children, who wandered about under the care of
their grandmother, Gytha, at one time finding a shelter in the Holms,
those two islets in the British Channel, at another taking refuge in
Ireland, whence they at length escaped to Norway, and the daughter
married one of the Kings of Novgorod, the beginning of the Empire of
Russia. Ulfnoth, the only remaining son of the bold Godwinsons, was the
hostage that Edward the Confessor had placed in the hands of the Duke of
Normandy; he was seized upon once more by William Rufus, and remained in
captivity till his death. The Conqueror kept his vow, and erected the
splendid Battle Abbey on the field that gave him a kingdom. The high
altar stood where Harold’s banner had been planted, and the enclosures
surrounded every spot where the conflict had raged.
They were measured out by the corpses of Normans and Saxons. The
Battle-roll, a list of every Norman who had borne arms there, was lodged
in the keeping of the Abbot, and contains the names of many a good old
English family which has held the same land generation after generation,
English now, though then called the Norman spoiler, but it is to be
feared, that the roll was much tampered with to gratify family vanity.
Battle Abbey was one of the greatest and richest foundations. The Abbot
was a friar, and, according to the unfortunate habit of exempting
monasteries from the Bishop’s jurisdiction, was subject to no government
but the Pope’s; and this led to frequent disputes between the Abbot and
the see of Winchester.
It was overthrown in the Reformation, and is now a mere ruin; but its
beautiful arches still remain to show that, better than any other
conqueror, William knew how to honor a battle-field. There is but one
other Battle Abbey in the world--Batalha in Portugal--which covers the
plain of Aljubarota, where Joao I. won his kingdom from Castile; and as
his wife was a daughter of John of Gaunt, a most noble and high-minded
princess, it is most probable that she suggested the work after the
example of her great ancestor; nay, when the visitor enters the nave,
and is reminded by the architecture of Winchester, it seems as if
Philippa of Lancaster might have both proposed the foundation, and
sent to England for the plan, to the Architect and Bishop, William of
Wykeham.
Nor is Battle Abbey the only remaining monument of Hastings. Matilda’s
own handiwork prepared her thank offering of tapestry, recording her
husband’s victory; and this work, done as it was for a gift to Heaven,
not a vainglorious record, still endures in the very cathedral to which
she gave it, one of the choicest historical witnesses that have come
down to our times. We might be apt to regret that she did not present
her work to Battle Abbey, where it would have been most appropriate;
but as the Puritans would most likely have called it a Popish vestment
savoring of idolatry, we are consoled by thinking it probably owes its
preservation to her having chosen to give it as a hanging on festival
days to the Cathedral at Bayeux, the see of her husband’s half-brother,
Odo, who shared in all the toils and dangers of the expedition, and
whom she has taken especial care to represent for the benefit of the
townspeople of Bayeux; for wherever we find his broad face, large
person, shaven crown, and the chequered red and green suit by which she
expressed his wadded garment, his name is always found in large letters;
and he is evidently in his full glory when we find him, club in hand,
at the beginning of the battle, and these words worked round him: _Odo
Eps._ (episcopus) _baculum tenens, confortat pueros_. He was one of
the bad, warlike Bishops of those irregular times, and brought many
disasters on himself by his turbulence and haughtiness.
Matilda’s tapestry is a long narrow strip, little more than half a
yard in breadth. It begins with Harold’s journey to Normandy, and ends
unfinished in the midst of the battle; and most curious it is. The
drawing is of course rude, and the coloring very droll, the horses being
red and green, or blue, and, invariably, the off-leg of a different
color from the other three, while the ways in which both horses and men
fall at Hastings make the scene very diverting.
Her castles, houses, and more especially Westminster Abbey, are of all
the colors in the rainbow, and much smaller than the persons entering
them, and yet in every figure there is spirit, in every face expression,
and throughout, William, Harold, and Odo, bear countenances which are
not to be mistaken. Harold has moustaches, which none of the Normans
wore. There we find Harold taking his extorted oath; the death of King
Edward, the Saxons gazing with horror at the three-tailed comet; the
ship-building of yellow, green, and red boards, cut out of trees
with most ludicrous foliage; the moon just as it is described; the
disembarkation, where a bare-legged mariner wades out, anchor in hand;
the very comical foraging party; the repast upon landing, where Odo is
saying grace with two fingers raised in benediction, while the meat is
served on shields, and fowls carried round spitted upon arrows. Then
follows the battle, where William is seen raising his helmet by its
nose-guard, and looking exceedingly fierce as he rallies his men; where
horses and men tumble head over heels, and where, finally, Matilda broke
off with a pattern of hawberks traced out, and no heads or legs put
to them. What stayed her hand? Was it her grief at the conduct of her
first-born that took from her all heart to proceed with her memorial,
or was it only the hand of death that closed her toil, her womanly
record of her husband’s achievements?
The border must not be forgotten. It is a narrow edge above and below.
At first it is worked with subjects from Phaedrus’s fables (on having
translated which was rested the fame of Henry’s scholarship), and very
cleverly are they chosen; for, as if in comment on Harold’s visit to
Rouen, we find in near neighborhood the stork with her head in the
wolf’s mouth, and the crow letting fall her cheese into the fox’s jaws.
Matilda did not upbraid the Normans by working the Parliament of
Lillebonne, but she or her designer surely had it in mind when a herd of
frightened beasts was drawn, an ape in front of them making an oration
to what may be a lion, as it is much bigger than the rest; but as
Matilda never saw a lion, the likeness is not remarkable.
Further on are representations of agriculture, sowing, reaping, &c.
Wherever there is a voyage, fishes swim above and below, and in the
battle there is a border plentiful in dead men.
The Bayeux tapestry--the “Toile de St. Jean,” as it is there called,
from the feast-day when the cathedral was hung with it--remained unknown
and forgotten, till it was brought to light by one of the last people
that could have been expected--Napoleon. He was then full of his plan
for invading England, and called general attention to the toile de St.
Jean, to bring to mind the Norman Invasion, and show that England had
once been conquered.
So she had, but he had to deal with the sons of both victors, and of
those who were slain. Now vanquished, Norman and Saxon were one, and by
the great mercy of Heaven upon their offspring, the English, not one
battle has been fought, since Hastings, with a Continental foe upon
English ground.
May that mercy be still vouchsafed us!
CAMEO VIII. THE CAMP OF REFUGE. (1067-1072.)
_King of England_.
1066. William I.
In the fen country of Lincolnshire, there lived, in the reign of Edward
the Confessor, a wealthy Saxon franklin named Leofric, Lord of Bourn.
He was related to the great Earls of Mercia, and his brother Brand was
Abbot of Peterborough, so that he, and his wife Ediva, were persons of
consideration in their own neighborhood. They had a son named Hereward,
and called, for some unknown, reason, Le Wake, a youth of great height
and personal strength, and of so fierce and violent a disposition, that
he disturbed the peace of the neighborhood to such a degree that he was
banished from the realm. His high spirit found fit occupation in the
armies of foreign princes: and pilgrims and minstrels brought home such
reports of his prowess, that the people of Bourn no longer regarded him
as a turbulent young scapegrace, but considered him as their pride and
glory.
After a brilliant career abroad, Hereward married a Flemish lady, and
was settled on her estates when the tidings reached him that his father
was dead, and that his aged mother had been despoiled of her property,
and cruelly treated, by a Norman to whom William the Conqueror
had presented the estate of Bourn. No sooner did he receive this
intelligence, than he set off with his wife, and, arriving in
Lincolnshire, communicated in secret with his old friends at Bourn,
collected a small band, attacked the Norman, drove him away, and
re-instated Ediva in his paternal home.
But this exploit only exposed him to further perils. Normans were in
possession of every castle around; his cousins, the young Earls Edwin
find Morkar, had submitted to the Conqueror; Edwin was betrothed to
Agatha, William’s daughter; and their sister Lucy was married to an
Angevin named Ivo Taillebois bringing him a portion of their lands, in
right of which he called himself Viscount of Spalding. Their submission
had availed them little; they, as well as Waltheof, Earl of Huntingdon
(son of Siward, and husband of the Conqueror’s niece, Judith), were
feeling that a hand of iron was over them, and regretting every day
that he had not made common cause against the enemy before he had
fully established his power. Selfishness, jealousy, and wavering, had
overthrown and ruined the Saxons. Each had sought to secure his own
lands and life, careless of his neighbors. No one had the spirit of
Frithric, Abbot of St. Alban’s, who blocked up the Conqueror’s march
with trunks of trees, and when asked by William why he had injured his
woods for the sake of making an unavailing resistance, replied, “I
did my duty. If every one had done as much, you would not be here.”
According to their own tradition, the men of Kent, coming forward, each
carrying a branch of a tree, so that they advanced unperceived, “a
moving wood,” so encumbered William’s passage that he could not proceed
till he had taken an oath to respect their privileges. London, too,
preserved its rights, owing to the management of a burgess, called
Ansgard, who conducted the treaty with the Normans and would not admit
them into the city till its liberties were secured.
William himself was anxious to be regarded not as a conqueror, but as
reigning by inheritence from the Confessor. For this cause, when Matilda
was crowned, he caused a Norman baron, Marmion of Fontenaye, to ride
into the midst of Westminster Hall, and, throwing down his gauntlet,
defy any man to single combat who denied the rights of William and
Matilda. He himself took the old coronation oath drawn up by St.
Dunstan, and pledged himself to execute justice according to the old
laws of Alfred and Edward.
But William, whatever might be his own good intentions, was pressed by
circumstances. He had lured his Normans across the channel with hopes of
rich plunder in England, and knight and squire, man-at-arms and archer,
were eager for their reward. Norman, Breton, Angevin, clamored for
possession: families of peasants crossed the sea, expecting, in right
of their French tongue, to be gentry at once, and lords of the churl
Saxons; while the Saxons, fully conscious of their own nobility, and
possessors of the soil for five hundred years, derided them in such
rhymes as these:
“William de Coningsby
Came out of Brittany
With his wife Tiffany,
And his maid Manfas,
And his dog Hardigras.”
But the laugh proved to be on the side of the new comers, and the Saxon,
whether Earl, Thane, Franklin, or Ceorl, though he could trace his line
up to Odin, and had held his land since Hengist first won Thanet, must
give place to Hardigras and his master. And though our sympathies are
all with the dispossessed Saxons, and the Normans appear as needy and
rapacious spoilers, there is no cause for us to lament their coming.
Without the Norman aristocracy, and the high spirit of chivalry and
adventure thus infused, England could scarcely have attained her
greatness; for, though many great men had existed among the unmixed
Anglo-Saxon race, they had never been able to rouse the nation from the
heavy, dull, stolid sensuality into which, to this day, an uncultivated
Englishman is liable to fall.
One Norman, the gallant Gilbert Fitz-Richard, deserves to be remembered
as an exception to the grasping temper of his countrymen. He would
accept neither gold nor lands for the services he had rendered at
Hastings. He said he had come in obedience to the summons of his feudal
chief, and not for spoil, and, now his term of service was at an end, he
would go back to his own inheritance, with which he was content, without
the plunder of the widow and orphan.
For it was thus that William first strove to satisfy his followers.
Every rich Saxon widow or heiress who could be found was compelled
to marry a Norman baron or knight; but when there proved to be not a
sufficiency of these unfortunate ladies, he was obliged to find other
pretexts less apparently honorable. Every noble who had fought in the
cause of Harold was declared a traitor, and his lands adjudged to be
forfeited, and this filled the Earldoms of Wessex and Sussex with great
numbers of Normans, who counted their wealth at so many Englishmen
apiece, and made no scruple of putting their own immediate followers
into the manors whence they thrust the ancient owners. As to the great
nobles, they were treated so harshly that they were all longing, if
possible, to throw off the yoke, and make the stand which they should
have made a year ago, when William had won nothing but the single,
hard-fought battle of Hastings.
Some of the Norman adventurers took great state on them, all the more,
probably, because they had been nobodies in their own country. One of
the most haughty of all was the Spalding Viscount, Ivo, whose surname of
Taillebois seems to betray somewhat of his origin in Anjou. He was
noted for his pompous language and insolent bearing; he insisted on his
vassals kneeling on one knee when they addressed him, and he and his
men-at-arms took every opportunity of tormenting the Saxons. He set
his dogs at their flocks, lamed or drowned their cattle, killed their
poultry, and, above all, harassed a few brethren of the Abbey of
Croyland, who inhabited a grange not far from Spalding, to such a
degree, that he obliged them at last to retreat to the Abbey, and then
filled the house with monks from Anjou; and though the Abbot Ingulf was
William’s secretary, he could obtain no redress.
Such a neighbor as this was not likely to allow the re-instated Ediva to
remain at Bourn in peace, and Hereward found that he must continue in
arms, for her protection and his own. He placed his wife, Torfrida, in
a convent, and, collecting his friends around him, kept up a constant
warfare with the Normans, until at length he succeeded in fortifying the
Isle of Ely, and establishing there what he called the Camp of Refuge,
as it gave shelter to any Saxon who had suffered from the violence of
the Normans, or would not adopt the new habits they tried to enforce.
The weak, helpless, and aged, were sheltered by the monastery and its
buildings; the strong, enrolled in Hereward’s gallant band. Some of them
were of higher rank than himself, and in order that he might be on a par
with them, as well as with his Norman enemies, he sought the order of
knighthood from his uncle, Abbot Brand.
The Normans in general were knighted by lay nobles, and though their
prince, William Rufus, received the order from Lanfranc, they would not
acknowledge Hereward as a knight, though they could not help respecting
his truth, honor, and courage; and it was a common saying among them,
that if there had been only four men like him in England, they should
never have gained a footing there. No wonder, when he never hesitated to
fight singly with seven Normans at once, and each of his five
principal followers was a match for three. They were Ibe Winter, his
brother-in-arms; Eghelric, his cousin; Ital; Alfric; and Sexwald.
Many fugitives of high rank did Hereward receive in his Camp of Refuge.
He had nearly been honored by the presence of his hereditary sovereign,
Edgar the Etheling, but the plan failed. He did, however, shelter his
two cousins, Morkar and Edwin. They had suffered much from the insolence
of the Normans, and experienced the futility of the promises in which
they had trusted, until at length they had been driven to join a rising
in the North. It had been quickly suppressed, and the worst of all the
cruelties of the Normans had avenged it, while the two earls, now become
outlaws, fled to the Camp of Refuge. Thence Edwin was sent on a mission
to Scotland, but on the way he was attacked by a party of his enemies
and slain, after a gallant resistance. He was the handsomest man of his
time, and his betrothed, Agatha, was devotedly attached to him; it is
even said that the stern William himself wept when the bloody head of
his daughter’s lover was presented to him. A curious gold ornament
has been of late years found in the field where Edwin was killed, and
antiquaries allow us to imagine that it might have been a love-token
from the Norman princess to the Saxon earl.
Another fugitive in Hereward’s camp was the high-spirited Abbot
Frithric, whose steady opposition to the illegal encroachments of the
Normans had given great offence to William. Once Frithric had combined
with other influential ecclesiastics to require of the Conqueror another
oath to abide by the old English laws, and thus brought on himself an
accusation of rebellion and sentence of banishment. He assembled his
monks, and told them the time was come when, according to the words of
Holy Scripture, they must flee from city to city, bade them, farewell,
and, taking nothing with him but a few books, safely reached the Camp of
Refuge, where he soon after died.
Thorold, the new Norman Abbot of Malmesbury, kept a body of archers in
his pay, and whenever his monks resisted any of his improper measures,
he used to call out, “Here, my men-at-arms!” At length the Conqueror
heard of his proceedings. “I’ll find him his match!” cried William. “I
will send him to Peterborough, ‘where Hereward will give him as much
fighting as he likes.”
To Peterborough, then, Thorold was appointed on the death of Hereward’s
uncle, Abbot Brand, while the poor monks of Malmesbury received for
their new superior a certain Guerin de Lire, who disinterred and threw
away the bones of his Saxon predecessors, and took all the treasure in
the coffers of the convent, in order that he might display his riches in
the eyes of those who had seen him poor.
Yet all the Norman clergy were not such as these, and never should be
forgotten the beautiful answer of Guimond, a monk of St. Leufroi, such
a priest as Fitz-Richard was a knight. William had summoned him to
England, and he came without delay; but when he was told it was for the
purpose of raising him to high dignity, he spoke thus: “Many causes
forbid me to seek dignity and power; I will not mention all. I will only
say that I see not how I could ever properly be the head of men whose
manners and language I do not understand, and whose fathers, brothers,
and friends, have been slain by your sword, disinherited, exiled,
imprisoned, or harshly enslaved by you. Search the Holy Scriptures
whether any law permits that the shepherd should be forced on the flock
by their enemy. Can you divide what you have won by war and bloodshed,
with one who has laid aside his own goods for the sake of Christ? All
priests are forbidden to meddle with rapine, or to take any share of the
prey, even as an offering at the altar; for, as the Scriptures say,
‘He that bringeth an offering of the goods of the poor, is as one
that slayeth the son before the father’s eyes.’ When I remember these
commands of God, I am filled with terror; I look on England as one great
prey, and dread to touch it or its treasures, as I should a red-hot
iron.”
Guimond then returned to Normandy, uninjured by the Conqueror, who,
with all his faults, never took offence at such rebukes; but the
worldly-minded clergy were excessively affronted at his censure of their
rapacity, and raised such a persecution against him that he was obliged
to take refuge in Italy.
As soon as the news arrived at the Camp of Refuge that the warlike
Thorold had been appointed to Peterborough, Hereward and his hand
hastened to the Abbey, and, probably with the consent of the Saxon
monks, carried off all the treasures into the midst of the fens.
Thorold, with one hundred and sixty men-at-arms, soon made his
appearance, was installed as Abbot, and quickly made friends with his
Norman neighbor, Ivo Taillebois.
They agreed to make an expedition against the robber Saxons, and united
their forces, but Thorold appears to have been not quite as willing to
face Hereward as to threaten his monks, and let Ivo advance into the
midst of an extensive wood of alders, while he remained in the rear with
some other Normans of distinction. Ivo sought through the whole wood
without meeting a Saxon, and returning to the spot where he had left
the Abbot, found no one there, for Hereward had quitted the wood on the
opposite side, made a circuit, and falling suddenly on Thorold and his
party, carried them off to the fens, and kept them there till they had
paid a heavy ransom.
In 1072, the fifth year of the Camp of Refuge, it had assumed so
formidable an aspect, that William thought it necessary to take vigorous
measures against it, more especially as there had been lately a
commencement of correspondence with the Danes. The difficulty was to
reach it, for the treacherous ground of the fens afforded no firm
footing for an army; there was not water enough for boats, no station
for archers, no space for a charge of the ponderous knights, amongst the
reedy pools. William decided on constructing a causeway, and employed
workmen to cut trenches to drain off the water, and raise the bank of
stones and turf, under the superintendence of Ivo Taillebois. However,
Hereward was on the alert, harassing them perpetually, breaking on
them sometimes on one side, sometimes on the other, in such strange,
unexpected ways, that at last the viscount came to the conclusion that
he must have magic arts to aid him, and persuaded the king to let him
send for a witch to work against him by counter spells. Accordingly, she
was installed in a wooden tower raised at the end of the part of the
causeway which was completed, and the workmen were beginning to advance
boldly under her protection, when suddenly smoke and flame came driving
upon them. Hereward had set fire to the dry reeds, and, spreading
quickly, the flame cut off their retreat, and the unhappy woman
perished, with many of the Normans.
Again and again were the Norman attacks disconcerted, and all that
they could attempt was a blockade, which lasted many months, and might
probably have been sustained many more by the hardy warriors, if some of
the monks of Ely, growing weary of the privations they endured, had not
gone in secret to the king, and offered to show him a way across the
Marches, on condition that the wealth of the Abbey was secured.
Accordingly, a band of Normans crossed the fens, took the Saxons by
surprise, killed a thousand men, and forced the camp. Hereward and his
five comrades still fought on, crossed bogs where the enemy did not dare
to follow them, and at length escaped into the low lands of Lincoln,
where they met with some Saxon fishermen, who were in the habit of
supplying a Norman station of soldiers. These Saxons willingly received
the warriors into their boats, and hid them under heaps of straw, while
they carried their fish as usual to the Normans. While the Normans were
in full security, Hereward and his men suddenly attacked them, killed
some, put the rest to flight, and seized their horses.
Collecting others of his scattered followers, Hereward kept up his
warfare from his own house at Bourn, continually harassing the Normans,
until at length he took prisoner his old enemy, Ivo Taillebois, and,
as the price of his liberty, required him to make his peace with the
Conqueror. This was good news to William, who highly esteemed his valor
and constancy, and could accuse him of no breach of faith, since he had
made no engagements to him. Hereward was therefore received as a subject
of King William, retained his own estate, and died there at a good old
age, respected by both Saxons and Normans.
There is, indeed, an old Norman-French poem, that declares it was for
the love of a noble Saxon lady, named Alftrude, that Hereward ceased to
struggle with the victors. According to this story, Alftrude, an heiress
of great wealth, was so charmed by the report of Hereward’s fame, that
she offered him her hand, and persuaded him to make peace with William.
It is further said, that one afternoon, as he lay asleep under a tree,
a band of armed men, among whom were several Bretons, surrounded and
murdered him, though not till he had slain fifteen of them.
But this story is not likely to be true, since we know that Hereward
was already married, and the testimony of more than one ancient English
chronicler declares that he spent his latter years in peace and honor.
He was the only one of the Saxon chieftains who thus closed his days in
his native home--the only one who had not sought to preserve his own
possessions at the expense of his country, and who had broken no oaths
nor engagements. His exploits are told in old ballads and half-romantic
histories, and it is not safe to believe them implicitly, but his
existence and his gallant resistance are certain.
Many years after, the remains of a wooden fort, the citadel, so to
speak of the Camp of Refuge, still existed in the Isle of Ely, and was
called by the peasantry Hereward’s Castle. The treacherous monks of Ely
were well punished by having forty men-at-arms quartered on their Abbey.
Of the captives taken in the camp, many were most cruelly treated, their
eyes put out, and their hands cut off; others were imprisoned, and many
slain. Morkar, who was here taken, spent the rest of his life in
the same captivity as Ulfnoth, Stigand, and many other Saxons of
distinction, with the one gleam of hope when liberated at William’s
death, and then the bitter disappointment of renewed seizure and
captivity. If it could be any consolation to them, these Saxons were not
William’s only captives. Bishop Odo, of Bayeux, whom William had made
Earl of Kent, after giving a great deal of trouble to his brother the
king, and to Archbishop Lanfranc, by his avarice and violence, heard a
prediction that the next Pope should be named Odo, and set off to try
to bring about its fulfilment in his own person, carrying with him an
immense quantity of ill-gotten treasure, and a large number of troops,
commanded by Hugh the Wolf, Earl of Chester.
However, Odo had reckoned without King William, and he had but just set
sail, when William, setting off from Normandy, met him in the Channel,
took his ships, and making him land in the Isle of Wight, and convoking
an assembly of knights, declared his offences, and asked them what such
a brother deserved.
Between fear of the king and fear of the Bishop, no one ventured to
answer, upon which William sentenced him to imprisonment; and when he
declared that no one but the Pope had a right to judge him, answered, “I
do not try you, the Bishop of Bayeux, but the Earl of Kent,” and sent
him closely guarded to Normandy.
Another Norman state-prisoner was Roger Fitzosborn, the son of William’s
early friend, who had died soon after the Conquest. Roger’s offence was
the bestowing his sister Emma in marriage without the consent of the
king, and in addition, much seditious language was used at the wedding
banquet, where, unhappily, was present Waltheof, Earl of Huntingdon, the
last Saxon noble.
Roger, finding himself in danger, broke out into open rebellion, but was
soon made prisoner. Still the king would have pardoned him for the
sake of his father, whom William seems to have regarded with much more
affection that he be stowed on any one else, and, as a mark of kindness,
sent him a costly robe. The proud and passionate Roger, disdaining the
gift, kindled a fire, and burnt the garment on the dungeon floor; and
William, deeply affronted, swore in return that he should never pass the
threshold of his prison.
Waltheof, who was innocent of all save being present at the unfortunate
feast, might have been spared but for the wickedness of his wife,
Judith, William’s niece, who had been married to him when it was her
uncle’s policy to conciliate the Saxons. She hated and despised the
Saxon churl given her for a lord, kind, generous, and pious though he
was; and having set her affections on a young Norman, herself became the
accuser of her husband. Waltheof succeeded in disproving the calumnies,
and the best and wisest Normans spoke in his favor; but the spite of Ivo
Taillebois, and the hatred of his wife, prevailed, and he was sentenced
to die.
He was executed at Winchester, where, lest the inhabitants should
attempt a rescue, he was led out, early in the morning, to St. Giles’s
hill, outside the walls. He wore the robes of an earl, and gave them to
the priests who attended him, and to the poor people who followed him.
When he came to the spot he knelt down to pray, begging the soldiers to
wait till he had said the Lord’s Prayer; but he had only come to “Lead
us not into temptation,” when one of them severed his head from his body
with one blow of a sword.
His body was hastily thrown into a hole; but the Saxons, who loved him
greatly, disinterred it in secret, and contrived to carry it all the way
to Croyland, where it was buried with due honors, and we may think of
Hereward le Wake attending the funeral of the son of the stalwart old
Siward Biorn.
As to the perfidious Judith, she reaped the reward of her crimes; she
was not permitted to marry her Norman lover, and he was stripped of all
the wealth she expected as the widow of Waltbeof. This was secured to
her infant daughter, and was so considerable, that at one time William
thought the little Matilda of Huntingdon a fit match for his son Robert;
but Robert despised the Saxon blood, and made this project an excuse for
one of his rebellions. Matilda was, however, a royal bride, since her
hand was given to David I. of Scotland, the representative of the old
race of Cerdic, and a most excellent prince, with whom she was much
happier than she could well have: been with the unstable Robert
Courtheuse.
CAMEO IX. THE LAST SAXON BISHOP. (1008-1095.)
_Kings of England_.
1066. William I.
1087. William II.
The last saint of the Anglo-Saxon Church, the Bishop who lived from the
days of Edward the Confessor, to the evil times of the Red King, was
Wulstan of Worcester, a homely old man, of plain English character, and
of great piety. The quiet, even tenor of his life is truly like a “soft
green isle” in the midst of the turbulent storms and tempests of the
Norman Conquest.
Wulstan was born at Long Itchington, a village in Warwickshire, in the
time of Ethelred the Unready. He was the son of the Thane Athelstan, and
was educated in the monasteries of Evesham and Peterborough. When he had
been trained in such learning as these could afford, he came home for
a few years, and entered into the sports and occupations of the noble
youths of the time, without parting with the piety and purity of his
conventual life, and steadily resisting temptation.
His parents were grown old, and having become impoverished, perhaps by
the exactions perpetrated either by the Danes, or to bribe them away,
retired from the world, and entered convents at Worcester. Wulstan,
wishing to devote himself to the Church, sought the service of the
Bishop, who ordained him to the priesthood.
He lived, though a secular priest, with monastic strictness, and in time
obtained permission from the Bishop to become a monk in the convent,
where he continued for twenty-five years, and at length became Prior of
the Convent. The Prior was the person next in office to the Abbot, and
governed the monastery in his absence; and in some religious orders,
where there was no Abbot, the Prior was the superior.
Wulstan’s habits in the convent show us what the devotional life of
that time was. Each day he bent the knee at each verse of the seven
Penitential Psalms, and the same at the 119th Psalm at night. He would
lock himself into the church, and pray aloud with tears and cries, and
at night he would often retire into some solitary spot, the graveyard,
or lonely village church, to pray and meditate. His bed was the church
floor, or a narrow board, and stern were his habits of fasting and
mortification; but all the time he was full of activity in the cause of
the poor, and, finishing his devotions early in the morning, gave up the
whole day to attend to the common people, sitting at the church door to
listen to, and redress, as far as in him lay, the grievances that they
brought him--at any rate, to console and advise. The rude, secular
country clergy, at that time, it may be feared, a corrupt, untaught
race, had in great measure ceased to instruct or exhort their flocks,
and even refund baptism without payment. He did his best to remedy these
abuses, and from all parts of the country children were brought to
the good Prior for baptism. Every Sunday, too, he preached, and the
Worcestershire people flocked from all sides to hear his plain, forcible
language, though he never failed to rebuke them sharply for their most
prevalent sins.
The fame of the holy Prior of Worcester began to spread, and on one
occasion Earl Harold himself came thirty miles out of his way to confess
his sins to him and desire his prayers.
About the year 1062, two Roman Cardinals came to Worcester with Aldred,
who had just been translated from that see to the Archbishopric of
York. They spent the whole of Lent in Wulstan’s monastery; and when,
at Easter, they returned to the court of Edward the Confessor, they
recommended him for the Bishop to succeed Aldred; and Aldred himself,
Archbishop Stigand, and Harold, all concurred in the same advice. The
people and clergy of Worcester with one voice chose the good Prior
Wulstan; his election was confirmed by the king, and he received the
appointment. He long struggled against it, protesting that he would
rather lose his head than be made a Bishop; but he was persuaded at last
by an old hermit, who rebuked him for his resistance as for a sin. He
received the pastoral staff from King Edward, and was consecrated by his
former Bishop, Aldred.
As a Bishop he was more active than ever, constantly riding from place
to place to visit the different towns and villages; and, as he went,
repeating the Psalms and Litany, his attendant priests making the
responses; while his chamberlain carried a purse, from which every one
who asked alms was sure to be supplied. He never passed a church without
praying in it, and never reached his resting-place for the night without
paying his first visit to the church. Wherever he went, crowds of every
rank poured out to meet him, and he never sent them away without the
full Church service, and a sermon; nay, more--each poor serf might come
to him, pour out his troubles, whether temporal, or whether his heart
had been touched by the good words he had heard. Above all, Wulstan
delighted in giving his blessing in Confirmation, and would go on from
morning till night without food, till all his clergy were worn out,
though he seemed to know no weariness.
His clergy seem to have had much of the sluggishness of the Saxon, and
were often impatient of a temper, both of devotion and energy, so much
beyond them. If one was absent from the night service, the Bishop would
take no notice till it was over; but when all the others were gone back
to bed, he would wake the defaulter, and make him go through the service
with no companion but himself, making the responses. They did not like
him to put them out, as he often did on their journeys, while going
through the Psalms, by dwelling on the “prayer-verses;” and most
especially did they dislike his leading them to church, whatever season
or weather it might be, to chant matins before it was light. Once, at
Marlow, when it was a long way to church, very muddy, and with a cold
rain falling, one of his clergy, in hopes of making him turn back, led
him into the worst part of the swamp, where he sunk up to his knees in
mud, and lost his shoe; but he took no notice until, after the service
was over, he had returned to his lodgings, half dead with cold, and
then, instead of expressing any anger, he only ordered search to be made
for the shoe.
Wulstan took no part in what we should call politics; he thought it his
duty to render his submission to the King whom the people had chosen,
and to strive only to amend the life of the men of the country. He was
in high favor with Harold during his short reign, and was for some time
at court, where the fine Saxon gentlemen learnt to dread the neighborhood
of the old Bishop; for Wulstan considered their luxury as worthy of blame,
and especially attacked their long flowing hair. If any of them placed
their heads within, his reach, he would crop off “the first-fruits of
their curls” with his own little knife, enjoining them to have the rest
cut off; and yet, if Wulstan saw the children of the choir with their
dress disordered, he would smooth it with his own hands, and when told
the condescension did not become a Bishop, made answer, “He that is
greatest among you shall be your servant.”
Aldred, Wulstan’s former Bishop, now Archbishop of York, was the
anointer of both Harold and William the Conqueror. He kept fair with the
Normans as long as he could, but at last, driven to extremity by the
miseries they inflicted on his unhappy diocese, he went to William
arrayed in his full episcopal robes, solemnly revoked his coronation
blessing, denounced a curse on him and his race, and then, returning to
York, there died of grief.
Eghelwin, Bishop of Durham, gave good advice to Comyn, the Norman Earl,
but it was unheeded, and the townsmen rose in the night and burnt Comyn
to death, with all his followers, as they lay overcome with wine and
sleep in the plundered houses. The rising of the northern counties
followed, and Eghelwin was so far involved in it, that he was obliged to
fly. He took shelter in the Camp of Refuge, was made prisoner when
it was betrayed, and spent the rest of his life in one of William’s
prisons.
Our good Wulstan had a happier lot, and spent his time in his own round
of quiet duties in his diocese, binding up the wounds inflicted by the
cruel oppressors, but exhorting the Saxons to bear them patiently, and
see in them the chastisement of their own crimes. “It is the scourge of
God that ye are suffering,” he said; and when they replied that they
had never been half so bad as the Normans, he said, “God is using their
wickedness to punish your evil deserts, as the devil, of his own evil
will, yet by God’s righteous will, punishes those with whom he suffers.
Do ye, when ye are angry, care what becomes of the staff wherewith ye
strike?”
He had his own share of troubles and anxieties, but he met them in his
trustful spirit, and straight-forward way. At Easter, 1070, a council
was held at Winchester, at which he was summoned to attend. He was one
of the five last Saxon Bishops; Stigand, who held both at once the
primacy and the see of Winchester; his brother, Eghelmar, Bishop of
Elmham; Eghelsie, of Selsey; and the Bishop of Durham, Eghelwin, who was
in the Camp of Refuge.
Two cardinals were present to represent the Pope, and on account of his
simony, Stigand was deposed and imprisoned, while Eghelric and Eghelmar
were also degraded. Yet Wulstan, clear of conscience, and certain of the
validity of his own election, was not affrighted; so far from it, he
boldly called on the King to restore some lands that Aldred of York had
kept back from the see of Worcester.
Thomas, Aldred’s successor, claimed them by a pretended jurisdiction
over Worcester, and the decision was put off for a court of the
great men of the realm, which did not take place till several fresh
appointments had been made. Lanfranc, the Italian, Abbot of Bec, had
become Archbishop of Canterbury, and was, of course, interested in
guarding the jurisdiction of the Archiepiscopal see.
Wulstan, in this critical time, was exactly like himself. He fell asleep
while Thomas was arguing, and when time was given him to think of his
answer, he spent it in singing the service of the hour, though his
priests were in terror lest they should be ridiculed for it. “Know you
not,” he answered, “that the Lord hath said, ‘When ye stand before king
and rulers, take no thought what ye shall speak, for it shall be given
you in that hour what ye shall speak.’ Our Lord can give me speech
to-day to defend my right, and overthrow their might.” Accordingly, his
honest statement prevailed, and he gained his cause.
There is a beautiful legend that Lanfranc, thinking the simple old
Saxon too rude and ignorant for his office, summoned him to a synod at
Westminster, and there called on him to deliver up his pastoral staff
and ring. Wulstan rose, and said he had known from the first that he was
not worthy of his dignity, and had taken it only at the bidding of his
master, King Edward. To him, therefore, who gave the staff, he would
resign it. Advancing to the Confessor’s tomb, he said, “Master, thou
knowest how unwillingly I took this office, forced to it by thee. Behold
a new king--a new law--a new primate; they decree new rights, and
promulgate new statutes. Thee they accuse of error in having so
commanded--me of presumption, in having obeyed. Then, indeed, thou wast
liable to err, being mortal--now, being with God, thou canst not err.
Not to these who require what they did not give, but to thee, who hast
given, I render up my staff. Take this, my master, and deliver it to
whom thou wilt.”
He laid it on the tomb, took off his episcopal robes, and sat down
among the monks. The legend goes on to say, that the staff remained
embedded in the stone, and no hand could wrench it away, till Wulstan
himself again took it up, when it yielded without effort. The King and
Archbishop fell down at his feet, and entreated his pardon and blessing.
Such is the story told a century after; and surely we may believe that,
without the miracle, the old man’s touching appeal to his dead King, and
his humility, convinced Lanfranc that it had been foul shame to think
of deposing such a man because his learning was not extensive, nor his
manners like those of the courtly Norman. Be that as it may, thenceforth
Lanfranc and Wulstan worked hand in hand, and we find the Archbishop
begging him to undertake the visitation of the diocese of Chester, which
was unsafe for the Norman prelates. One great work accomplished by the
help of Wulstan was, the putting an end to a horrible slave-trade with
Ireland, whither Saxon serfs were sold, not by Normans, but by their own
country people, who had long carried it on before the Conquest. Lanfranc
persuaded William to abolish it, but the rude Saxon slave-merchants
cared nothing for his edicts, until the Bishop of Worcester came to
Bristol, and preached against the traffic, staying a month or two at
a time, every year, till the minds of the people of Bristol were so
altered, that they not only gave up the trade, but acquired such
a horror of it that they tore out the eyes of the last person who
persisted in it.
The favor and esteem with which Wulstan was regarded did not cease, but
he was obliged to spend a life of constraint. The Archbishop made him
keep a band of armed retainers to preserve the peace of the country, and
they were new and strange companions for the old monk; but as he thought
his presence kept them from evil, he did not remain aloof, dining with
them each day in the public hall, and even while they sat long over the
wine, remaining with them, pledging them good-humoredly in a little cup,
which he pretended to taste, and ruminating on the Psalms in the midst
of their noisy mirth.
These were the days of church-building--the days of the circular arch,
round column, and zigzag moulding; of doorways whose round arch, adorned
with border after border of rich or quaint device, almost bewilder us
with the multiplicity of detail; of low square towers, and solid walls;
of that kind of architecture called Norman, but more properly a branch
of the Romanesque of Italy.
Each new Roman Bishop or Abbot thought it his business to renew his
clumsy old Saxon minster, and we have few cathedrals whose present
structure does not date from the days of the Conqueror or his sons.
Walkelyn, Bishop of Winchester, obtained a grant from William of as
much timber from Hempage Wood as could be cut in four days and nights;
whereupon Walkelyn assembled a huge company of workmen, and made such
good use of the time, that when the king passed that way, he cried out,
“Am I bewitched, or have I taken leave of my senses? Had I not a most
delectable wood in this spot?” where now only stumps were to be seen.
Wulstan had always been a church-builder, and he renewed his cathedral
after the Norman fashion; but when it was finished, and the workmen
began to pull down the old one, which had been built by St. Oswald,
he stood watching them in silence, till at last he shed tears. “Poor
creatures that we are,” said he, “we destroy the work of the saints, and
think in our pride that we improve upon it. Those blessed men knew not
how to build fine churches, but they knew how to sacrifice themselves to
God, whatever roof might be over them, and to draw their flocks after
them. Now, all we think of is to rear up piles of stones, while we care
not for souls.”
Wulstan lived to a great age, survived William and Lanfrane, and
assisted to consecrate Anselm. In the last year of his life he kept each
festival with still greater solemnity than ever, and his feast for the
poor overflowed more than ever before; his stores were exhausted, though
he had collected an unusual quantity, and his clergy begged him to shut
the gates against the crowds still gathering; but he refused, saying
none should go empty away, and some gifts from his rich friends arrived
opportunely to supply the need. The Bishop sat in the midst as feasting
with them, now grown too feeble to wait on them, as he had always done
hitherto.
At Whitsuntide, 1094, he was taken ill, and lingered under a slow fever
till the new year, when he died in peace and joy on the 19th of January.
His greatest friend, Robert, the Bishop of Hereford, a learned man,
understanding all the science of the time, a judge, and a courtly
Lorrainer, yet who loved to spend whole days with the unlettered Saxon,
came to lay him in his grave. He received, as a gift from the convent,
the lambskin cloak that Wulstan used to wear, in spite of the laughter
of the gay prelates arrayed in costly furs, keeping his ground by
saying, that “the furs of cunning animals did not befit a plain man.”
He went home to Hereford, and soon after died, having, it is said, been
warned in a vision by St. Wulstan that he must soon prepare to follow
him.
CAMEO X. THE CONQUEROR. (1066-1087.)
In speaking of William, the Norman Conqueror, we are speaking of a
really great man; and great men are always hard to understand or deal
with in history, for, as their minds are above common understandings,
their contemporary historians generally enter into their views less than
any one else, and it is only the result that proves their wisdom and
far-sight. Moreover, their temptations and their sins are on a larger
scale than those of other men, and some of the actions that they perform
make a disproportionate impression by the cry that they occasion--the
evil is remembered, not the good that their main policy effected.
William was a high-minded man, of mighty and wide purposes, one of the
very few who understood what it was to be a king. He had the Norman
qualities in their fullest perfection. He was devoutly religious, and in
his private character was irreproachable, being the first Norman Duke
unstained by licence, the first whose sons were all born of his princess
wife. He was devout in his habits, full of alms-deeds; and strong and
resolute as was his will, he kept it so upright and so truly desirous
of the Divine glory and the Church’s welfare, that he had no serious
misunderstanding with the clergy, and lived on the most friendly terms
with his great Archbishop, Lanfranc.
He was one of those mighty men who, in personal intercourse, have a
force of nature that not merely renders opposition impossible, but
absolutely masters the will and intention, so that there is not even the
secret contradiction of mind. We have seen this in his dealings with
both his own Normans and the Saxons who came in contact with him. His
presence was so irresistible that men yielded to it unconsciously, but
when absent from him they became themselves again, and in the reaction
they committed treason against the pledges they seemed to have
voluntarily given to him.
He was stern, fiercely stern. His standard and ideal were very high,
such as, perhaps, only the saintly could attain to. The men who
never quarrelled with him were Lanfranc, Edgar Atheling, and William
Fitzosborn. The first was saintly and strong; the second, honest,
upright, and simple; the third was endeared by boyish memories, and
to these, perhaps, may be added Edward the Confessor and good Bishop
Wulstan.
Many others William tried to love and trust--his uncle Odo, his own son,
Earls Edwin and Morkar, Waltheof, the sons of Fitzosborn; but they
all failed, grieved, and disappointed him. None was strong, noble, or
disinterested enough not at one time or other to be a traitor; and,
perhaps, his really honest, open enemy, Hereward le Wake, was the person
whom he most valued and honored after the above mentioned.
And though his affection was hearty, his wrath when he was disappointed
was tremendous. And his disappointments were many, partly because his
standard was in every respect far above that of the men around him, and
partly because his presence so far lifted them to his level, that, when
they fell to their own, he was totally unprepared for the treachery and
deceit such a fall involved.
Then down he came on them with implacable vengeance, he was so very
“stark,” as the old chronicle has it. Battle, devastation, plunder,
lifelong imprisonment, confiscation, requited him who had drawn on
himself the terrible wrath of William of Normandy. There were few soft
places in that mighty heart; it could love, but it could not pity, and
it could not forgive. He was of the true nature to be a Scourge of God.
Hardened and embittered by the selfish treasons that had beset his early
boyhood, and which had forced him into manhood before his time, he came
to England as one called thither by the late king’s designation, and,
therefore, the lawful heir. The Norman law, a confusion of the old Frank
and Roman codes, and of the Norwegian pirate customs, he seems to have
been glad to leave behind. His native Normans must be ruled by it,
but he was an English king by inheritance, and English laws he would
observe; Englishmen should have their national share in the royal favor,
and in their native land.
But the design proved impracticable. The English had been split into
fierce parties long before he came, and the West Saxon, the Mercian
Angle, and Northumbrian Dane hated one another still, and all hated the
Norman alike; and his Norman, French, and Breton importations lost no
love among themselves, and viewed the English natives as conquered
beings, whose spoil was unjustly withheld from them by the Duke King.
Rebellion began: by ones, twos, and threes, the nobles revolted,
and were stamped out by William’s iron heel, suffering his fierce,
unrelenting justice--that highest justice that according to the Latin
proverb becomes, in man’s mind at least, the highest injustice. So
England lay, trampled, bleeding, indignant, and raising a loud cry of
misery; but, in real truth, the sufferers were in the first place the
actual rebels, Saxon and Norman alike; next, those districts which had
risen against his authority, and were barbarously devastated with fire
and sword; and lastly, the places which, by the death or forfeiture of
native lords, or by the enforced marriage of heiresses, fell into the
hands of rapacious Norman adventurers, who treated their serfs with the
brutal violence common in France.
Otherwise, things were left much as they were. The towns had little or
no cause of complaint, and the lesser Saxon gentry, with the Franklins
and the Earls, were unmolested, unless they happened to have vicious
neighbors. The Curfew bell, about which so great a clamor was raised,
was a universal regulation in Europe; it was a call to prayers, an
intimation that it was bedtime, and a means of guarding against fire,
when streets were often nothing but wooden booths thatched. The intense
hatred that its introduction caused was only the true English dislike to
anything like domiciliary interference.
The King has left us an undoubted testimony to the condition of the
country, and the number of Saxons still holding tenures. Nineteen years
after his Conquest, he held a council at Gloucester, the result of which
was a great “numbering of the people”--a general census. To every city
or town, commissioners were sent forth, who collected together the Shire
reeve or Sheriff--the Viscount, as the Normans called him--the thegus,
the parish priests, the reeves, and franklins, who were examined upon
oath of the numbers, names, and holdings of the men of their place, both
as they were in King Edward’s days, and at that time. The lands had to
be de scribed, whether plough lands or pasture, wood or waste; the mills
and fisheries wore recorded, and each farmer’s stock of oxen, cows,
sheep, or swine. The English grumbled at the inquiry, called it tyranny,
and expected worse to come of it, but there was no real cause for
complaint. The primary object of the survey was the land-tax, the
Danegeld, as it was called, because it was first raised to provide
defences against the Danes, and every portion of arable land was
assessed at a fair rate, according to ancient custom, but not that which
lay waste. The entire record, including all England save London and the
four northern counties, was preserved at Winchester, and called the
Winchester Roll, or Domesday Book. It is one of the most interesting
records in existence, showing, as it does, the exceeding antiquity of
our existing divisions of townships, parishes and estates, and even of
the families inhabiting them, of whom a fair proportion, chiefly of the
lesser gentry, can point to evidence that they live on soil that was
tilled by their fathers before the days of the Norman. It is far more
satisfactory than the Battle Roll, which was much tampered with by the
monks to gratify the ancestral vanity of gentlemen who were so persuaded
that their ancestors ought to be found there, that they caused them to
be inserted if they were missing. Of Domesday Book, however, there is no
doubt, as the original copy is still extant in its fair old handwriting,
showing the wonderful work that the French-speaking scribes made with
English names of people and places. Queen Edith, the Confessor’s widow,
who was a large landholder, appears as Eddeve, Adeve, Adiva--by anything
but her true old English name of Eadgyth. But it was much that the
subdued English folk appeared there at all.
The most real grievance that the English had to complain of was the
Forest Laws. The Dukes of Normandy had had many a quarrel in their
Neustrian home with their subjects, on the vexed question of the chase,
their greatest passion; and when William came into England as a victor,
he was determined to rule all his own way in the waste and woodland. All
the forests he took into his own hands, and the saying was that “the
king loved the high deer as if he was their father;” any trespass was
severely punched, and if he slaughter of any kind of game was a more
serious thing than murder itself.
Chief of all, however, in people’s minds, was his appropriation of the
tract of Jettenwald, or the Giant’s Wood, Ytene, in South Hants. A
tempting hunting-ground extended nearly all the way from his royal city
of Winchester, broad, bare chalk down, passing into heathy common, and
forest waste, covered with holly and yew, and with noble oak and beech
in its dells, fit covert for the mighty boar, the high deer, and an
infinity of game beside.
With William’s paternal feelings toward the deer, he thought the cotters
and squatters, the churls and the serfs, on the borders of the wood, or
in little clearings in the midst, mischievous interlopers, and at one
swoop he expelled them all, and kept the Giant’s Wood solely for himself
and his deer, by the still remaining name of the New Forest.
Chroniclers talk of twenty-two mother churches and fifty-two
parishes laid waste, but there is no doubt that this was a monstrous
exaggeration, and that the population could not have been so dense. At
any rate, whatever their numbers, the inhabitants were expelled, the
animals were left unmolested for seven years, and then the Norman king
enjoyed his sports there among his fierce nobility, little recking that
all the English, and many of the Normans, longed that a curse should
there light upon his head, or on that of his proud sons.
CAMEO XI. THE CONQUEROR’S CHILDREN. (1050-1087.)
The wife of William of Normandy was, as has been said, Matilda, daughter
of Baldwin, Count of Flanders. The wife of such a man as William has not
much opportunity of showing her natural character, and we do not know
much of hers. It appears, however, that she was strong-willed and
vindictive, and, very little disposed to accept him. She had set
her affections upon one Brihtric Meau, called Snow, from his fair
complexion, a young English lord who had visited her father’s court on
a mission from Edward the Confessor, but who does not appear to have
equally admired the lady. For seven years Matilda is said to have held
out against William, until one twilight evening, when she was going
home from church, in the streets of Bruges he rode up to her, beat her
severely, and threw her into the gutter!
Wonderful to relate, the high-spirited demoiselle was subdued by this
rough courtship, and gave her hand to her determined cousin without
further resistance; nor do we hear that he ever beat her again. Indeed,
if he did, he was not likely to let their good vassals be aware of it;
and, in very truth, they seem to have been considered as models of peace
and happiness. But it is much to be suspected that her nature remained
proud and vindictive; for no sooner had her husband become master of
England, than she caused the unfortunate Brihtric, who had disdained her
love, to be stripped of all his manors in Gloucestershire, including
Fairford, Tewkesbury, and the rich meadows around, and threw him into
Winchester Castle, where he died; while Domesday Book witnesses to her
revenge, by showing that the lands once his belonged to Queen Matilda.
The indication of character in a woman who had so little opportunity of
independent action, is worth noting, as it serves to mark the spirit
in which her children would be reared, and to explain why the sons
so entirely fell short of all that was greatest and noblest in their
father. The devotion, honor, and generosity, that made the iron of his
composition bright as well as hard, was utterly wanting in them, or
merely appeared in passing inconsistencies, and it is but too likely
that they derived no gentler training from their mother. There were ten
children, four sons and six daughters, but the names of these latter,
are very difficult to distinguish, as Adela, Atheliza, Adelheid, or
Alix, was a sort of feminine of Atheling, a Princess-Royal title,
and was applied to most of the eldest daughters of the French and
German-princes, or, when the senior was dead, or married, to the
surviving eldest.
Cecily, Matilda’s eldest daughter, was, even before her birth, decreed
to be no Adela for whom contending potentates might struggle. She was
to be the atonement for the parents’ hasty, unlicensed marriage, in
addition to their two beautiful abbeys at Caen. When the Abbaye aux
Dames was consecrated, the little girl was led by her father to the foot
of the altar, and there presented as his offering. She was educated with
great care by a very learned though somewhat dissipated priest, took
the veil, and, becoming abbess, ruled her nuns for many years, well
contented and much respected.
The next sister was the Atheliza of the family, but her name was either
Elfgiva or Agatha. She enjoys the distinction of being the only female
portrait in her mother’s tapestry--except a poor woman escaping from a
sacked town. She stands under a gateway, while Harold is riding forth
with her father, in witness, perhaps, of her having been betrothed to
Harold; or perhaps Matilda felt a mother’s yearning to commemorate the
first of her flock who had been laid in the grave, for Elfgiva died a
short time after the contract, which Harold would hardly have fulfilled,
since he had at least one wife already at home.
Her sister, Matilda, promoted to be Adeliza, was betrothed to another
Saxon, the graceful and beautiful Edwin, whom she loved with great
ardor, through all his weak conduct toward her father. After his
untimely end, she was promised to Alfonso I. of Castile, but she
could not endure to give her heart to another; she wept and prayed
continually, but in vain as far as her father was concerned. She was
sent off on her journey, but died on the way; and then it was that the
poor girl’s knees were found to be hardened by her constant kneeling to
implore the pity that assuredly was granted to her.
Constance married Alain Fergeant, a brother of the Duke of Brittany, and
an adventurer in the Norman invasion. He was presented with the Earldom
of Richmond, in Yorkshire; and as his son became afterward Duke of
Brittany, this appanage frequently gave title to younger brothers in the
old Armorican Duchy. That son was not born of Constance; she fell into
a languishing state of health, and died, four years after her marriage.
Report said that her husband’s vassals found her so harsh and rigorous,
that they poisoned her; and considering what her brothers were, it is
not unlikely.
Of the Adela who married that accomplished prince, Stephen, Count de
Blois, there will be more to say; and as to Gundred, the wife of Earl
Warenne, it is a doubtful question whether she was a daughter of William
and Matilda. Her tomb was lately found in Isfield Church, Sussex; but
though it has an inscription praising her virtues, it says nothing of
her royal birth.
The sons of William left far more distinct and undesirable traces of
themselves than their sisters. Robert was probably the eldest of the
whole family, and he was his mother’s favorite, like most eldest sons.
He did not inherit the stately height of the Norman princes, and, from
his short, sturdy form, early acquired the nickname of Courtheuse, by
which he was distinguished among the swarms of other Roberts. Much pains
was bestowed on his instruction, and that of his brothers, Richard and
William, by the excellent Lanfranc, and they all had great abilities;
but there were influences at work among the fierce Norman lads that
rendered the holy training of the good abbot wholly ineffectual. Their
father, conscious of his own defective right to the ducal rank, lost no
opportunity of binding his vassals to swear fealty not only to himself,
but his eldest son; and from Robert’s infancy he had learnt to hold out
his hand, and hear the barons declare themselves his men. When the Duke
set out on his conquest of England, he caused the oath to be renewed to
Robert, and he at the same time showed his love for William, then the
youngest, by having him, with his long red hair floating, carved,
blowing a horn, at the figure-head of the Mora.
Soon after the Conquest, when Matilda had lately been crowned Queen of
England, the fourth son, Henry, was born. He had much more personal
beauty and height than the other brothers, and there was always an idea
floating that the son born when his father was king had a right over
his elder brethren, and thus Henry was always an object of jealousy to
his brothers. Passionately fond of the few books he could obtain, he
was called Beauclerc, or the fine scholar; and whilst as little
restrained by real principle as his brothers, he was able to preserve a
decorum and self-command that kept him in better reputation.
The second brother, Richard, however, had no opportunity of showing his
character. He died in the New Forest, either from a blow on the head
from a branch of a tree, or from a fever caught in the marshes, and is
buried in Winchester Cathedral. Perhaps the doom came on him in innocent
youth, “because there was some good thing in him.”
In 1075, when Robert must have been a man some years over twenty, Henry
a boy of nine, and William probably twelve or fourteen, they all three
accompanied their father into Normandy, and were there in the fortress
of Aquila, or Aigle, so called because there had been an eagle’s nest
in the oak-tree close to the site of the castle. Robert was in a
discontented mood. The numerous occasions on which he had received the
homage of the Normans made him fancy he ought to have the rule in the
duchy; his mother’s favoritism had fostered his ill-feeling, and he was
becoming very jealous of red-haired William, who from his quickness,
daring, and readiness had become his father’s favorite; and though
under restraint in the Conqueror’s presence, was no doubt outrageously
boisterous, insolent, and presuming in his absence; and Henry, the fine
scholar, his companion and following his lead, secretly despised both
his elders.
Robert’s lodging was suddenly invaded by the two wild lads and their
attendants. Finding themselves no better welcomed or amused than rude
boys are wont to be by young men, they betook themselves to an upper
room, the floor of which was formed by ill-laid, gaping planks, which
were the ceiling of that below. Here they began to play at dice; they
soon grew even more intolerably uproarious, and in the coarse of their
quarrelsome, boisterous tricks, overthrew a vessel of dirty water, which
began to drip through the interstices of the planks on their brother and
his friends below--an accident sure to be welcomed by a hoarse laugh
by the rough boys, but appearing to the victims beneath a deliberate
insult. “Are you a man not to avenge this shameful insolence?” cried
Robert’s friends, Alberic and Ivo de Grantmesnil. In a fury of passion,
Robert rushed after the lads with his sword drawn, and King William
was roused from his sleep to hear that Lord Robert was murdering his
brothers.
The passion and violence of the elder son had the natural effect of
making the father take the part of the younger ones, and Robert was
so much incensed, that he rode off with his friends, and, collecting
partisans as he went, attacked Rouen.
He was of course repulsed, and many of his followers were made
prisoners. He held out in the border counties for a little while, but
all his supporters were gained from him by his father, and he at length
came back to court, and appeared reconciled. There, however, he had
nothing to do, and all the licentious and disaffected congregated
round him; he idled away half his time, and revelled the rest, and his
pretensions magnified themselves all the time in his fancy, till at last
he was stimulated to demand of his father the cession of Normandy, as a
right confirmed to him by the French king.
William replied by a lecture on disobedience, citing as examples of
warning all the Absaloms of history; but Robert fiercely answered, that
he had not come to listen to a sermon; he was sick of hearing all this
from his teachers, and he would have his answer touching his claim to
Normandy.
The answer he got was, “It is not my custom to lay aside my clothes till
I go to bed.”
It sent him off in a rage, with all his crew of dissolute followers. He
went first to his uncle in Flanders, then to Germany and Italy, always
penniless from his lavish habits, though his mother often sent him
supplies of money by a trusty messenger, called Samson le Breton.
However, the King found him out, and reproached Matilda angrily; but she
made answer, “If Robert, my son, were buried seven feet under ground,
and I could bring him to life again by my heart’s blood, how gladly
would I give it!” The implacable William commanded Samson to be blinded,
but he escaped to the monastery of St. Everard, and there became a monk.
Returning, Robert presented himself to King Philippe of France, who was
glad to annoy his overgrown vassal by patronizing the rebellious son,
and accordingly placed Robert in the Castle of Gerberoi, where he might
best be a thorn in his father’s side. There William besieged him,
bringing the two younger sons with him, though Henry was but twelve
years old. For three weeks there was sharp fighting; and, finally, a
battle, in which the younger William was wounded, and the elder, cased
in his full armor of chain mail, encountered unknowingly with Robert,
in the like disguising hawberk. The Conqueror’s horse was killed; his
esquire, an Englishman, in bringing him another, was slain; and he
himself received a blow which caused such agony that he could not
repress a shriek of pain. Robert knew his voice, and, struck with
remorse, immediately lifted him up, offered him his own horse, and
assured him of his ignorance of his person; but William, smarting and
indignant, vouchsafed no answer, and while the son returned to his
castle, the father went back to his camp, which he broke up the next
day, and returned to Rouen.
Robert seems to have been a favorite with the lawless Normans, who
writhed under the mighty hand of his father, and on their interference,
backed by that of the French king and the Pope, brought about a
reconciliation in name. The succession of Normandy was again secured to
Robert, but therewith he was laid under a curse by his angry father,
whose face he never saw again.
Other troubles thickened on William. Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, the bold,
rough, jovial half-brother, whom he had trusted and loved, was reported
to be full of mischievous plots. He seems to have been told by diviners
that the next Pope was to be named Odo, and, to secure the fulfilment
of the augury, he was sending bribes to Rome, and at the same time
collecting a great body of troops with whom to fight his way thither.
He was in the Isle of Wight, preparing to carry his forces to Normandy,
when William pounced, on him, and ordered him back again. It is not
clear whether he wished to prevent the scandal to the Church, or whether
he suspected this army of Odo’s of being intended to support Robert
against himself; but, at any rate, he made bitter complaint before the
council of the way he had been treated by son, brother, and peer, and
sentenced Odo to imprisonment. No one would touch the Bishop, and
William was obliged to seize him himself, answering, to Odo’s appeal
to his inviolable orders, “I judge not the Bishop, but my Earl and
Treasurer.”
Another grief befell him in 1083, in the death of Matilda, who, it was
currently believed, pined away with grief at his fury against her
beloved first-born--anger that his affection for her could not mitigate,
though he loved her so tenderly that his great heart almost broke at
her death, and he never was the same man during the four years that he
survived h
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