William the Conqueror

Contents

IntroductionThe Early Years of WilliamWilliam's First Visit to EnglandThe Reign of William in NormandyHarold's Oat to WilliamThe Negotiations of Duke WilliamWilliam's Invasion of EnglandThe Conquest of EnglandThe Settlement of EnglandThe Revolts against WilliamThe Last Years of William

CHAPTER I--INTRODUCTION

The history of England, like the land and its people, has beenspecially insular, and yet no land has undergone deeper influencesfrom without. No land has owed more than England to the personalaction of men not of native birth. Britain was truly calledanother world, in opposition to the world of the European mainland, the world of Rome. In every age the history of Britain is thehistory of an island, of an island great enough to form a world ofitself. In speaking of Celts or Teutons in Britain, we arespeaking, not simply of Celts and Teutons, but of Celts and Teutonsparted from their kinsfolk on the mainland, and brought under thecommon influences of an island world. The land has seen severalsettlements from outside, but the settlers have always been broughtunder the spell of their insular position. Whenever settlement hasnot meant displacement, the new comers have been assimilated by theexisting people of the land. When it has meant displacement, theyhave still become islanders, marked off from those whom they leftbehind by characteristics which were the direct result ofsettlement in an island world. 

The history of Britain then, and specially the history of England, has been largely a history of elements absorbed and assimilatedfrom without. But each of those elements has done somewhat tomodify the mass into which it was absorbed. The English land andnation are not as they might have been if they had never in latertimes absorbed the Fleming, the French Huguenot, the GermanPalatine. Still less are they as they might have been, if they hadnot in earlier times absorbed the greater elements of the Dane andthe Norman. Both were assimilated; but both modified the characterand destiny of the people into whose substance they were absorbed. The conquerors from Normandy were silently and peacefully lost inthe greater mass of the English people; still we can never be as ifthe Norman had never come among us. We ever bear about us thesigns of his presence. Our colonists have carried those signs withthem into distant lands, to remind men that settlers in America andAustralia came from a land which the Norman once entered as aconqueror. But that those signs of his presence hold the placewhich they do hold in our mixed political being, that, badges ofconquest as they are, no one feels them to be badges of conquest--all this comes of the fact that, if the Norman came as a conqueror, he came as a conqueror of a special, perhaps almost of an uniquekind. The Norman Conquest of England has, in its nature and in itsresults, no exact parallel in history. And that it has no exactparallel in history is largely owing to the character and positionof the man who wrought it. That the history of England for thelast eight hundred years has been what it has been has largely comeof the personal character of a single man. That we are what we areto this day largely comes of the fact that there was a moment whenour national destiny might be said to hang on the will of a singleman, and that that man was William, surnamed at different stages ofhis life and memory, the Bastard, the Conqueror, and the Great. 

With perfect fitness then does William the Norman, William theNorman Conqueror of England, take his place in a series of Englishstatesmen. That so it should be is characteristic of Englishhistory. Our history has been largely wrought for us by men whohave come in from without, sometimes as conquerors, sometimes asthe opposite of conquerors; but in whatever character they came, they had to put on the character of Englishmen, and to make theirwork an English work. From whatever land they came, on whatevermission they came, as statesmen they were English. William, thegreatest of his class, is still but a member of a class. Alongwith him we must reckon a crowd of kings, bishops, and highofficials in many ages of our history. Theodore of Tarsus and Cnutof Denmark, Lanfranc of Pavia and Anselm of Aosta, Randolf Flambardand Roger of Salisbury, Henry of Anjou and Simon of Montfort, areall written on a list of which William is but the foremost. Thelargest number come in William's own generation and in thegenerations just before and after it. But the breed of England'sadopted children and rulers never died out. The name of Williamthe Deliverer stands, if not beside that of his namesake theConqueror, yet surely alongside of the lawgiver from Anjou. And wecount among the later worthies of England not a few men sprung fromother lands, who did and are doing their work among us, and who, asstatesmen at least, must count as English. As we look along thewhole line, even among the conquering kings and their immediateinstruments, their work never takes the shape of the rooting up ofthe earlier institutions of the land. Those institutions aremodified, sometimes silently by the mere growth of events, sometimes formally and of set purpose. Old institutions get newnames; new institutions are set up alongside of them. But the oldones are never swept away; they sometimes die out; they are neverabolished. This comes largely of the absorbing and assimilatingpower of the island world. But it comes no less of personalcharacter and personal circumstances, and pre-eminently of thepersonal character of the Norman Conqueror and of the circumstancesin which he found himself. 

Our special business now is with the personal acts and character ofWilliam, and above all with his acts and character as an Englishstatesman. But the English reign of William followed on hisearlier Norman reign, and its character was largely the result ofhis earlier Norman reign. A man of the highest natural gifts, hehad gone through such a schooling from his childhood upwards asfalls to the lot of few princes. Before he undertook the conquestof England, he had in some sort to work the conquest of Normandy. Of the ordinary work of a sovereign in a warlike age, the defenceof his own land, the annexation of other lands, William had hisfull share. With the land of his overlord he had dealings of themost opposite kinds. He had to call in the help of the French kingto put down rebellion in the Norman duchy, and he had to drive backmore than one invasion of the French king at the head of an unitedNorman people. He added Domfront and Maine to his dominions, andthe conquest of Maine, the work as much of statesmanship as ofwarfare, was the rehearsal of the conquest of England. There, under circumstances strangely like those of England, he learned histrade as conqueror, he learned to practise on a narrower field thesame arts which he afterwards practised on a wider. But after all, William's own duchy was his special school; it was his life in hisown duchy which specially helped to make him what he was. Surrounded by trials and difficulties almost from his cradle, heearly learned the art of enduring trials and overcomingdifficulties; he learned how to deal with men; he learned when tosmite and when to spare; and it is not a little to his honour that, in the long course of such a reign as his, he almost always showedhimself far more ready to spare than to smite. 

Before then we can look at William as an English statesman, we mustfirst look on him in the land in which he learned the art ofstatesmanship. We must see how one who started with all thedisadvantages which are implied in his earlier surname of theBastard came to win and to deserve his later surnames of theConqueror and the Great. 

CHAPTER II--THE EARLY YEARS OF WILLIAM--A. D. 1028-1051

If William's early reign in Normandy was his time of schooling forhis later reign in England, his school was a stern one, and hisschooling began early. His nominal reign began at the age of sevenyears, and his personal influence on events began long before hehad reached the usual years of discretion. And the events of hisminority might well harden him, while they could not corrupt him inthe way in which so many princes have been corrupted. His wholeposition, political and personal, could not fail to have its effectin forming the man. He was Duke of the Normans, sixth insuccession from Rolf, the founder of the Norman state. At the timeof his accession, rather more than a hundred and ten years hadpassed since plunderers, occasionally settlers, from Scandinavia, had changed into acknowledged members of the Western or Karolingiankingdom. The Northmen, changed, name and thing, into NORMANS, werenow in all things members of the Christian and French-speakingworld. But French as the Normans of William's day had become, their relation to the kings and people of France was not a friendlyone. At the time of the settlement of Rolf, the western kingdom ofthe Franks had not yet finally passed to the Duces Francorum atParis; Rolf became the man of the Karolingian king at Laon. Franceand Normandy were two great duchies, each owning a precarioussupremacy in the king of the West-Franks. On the one hand, Normandy had been called into being by a frightful dismemberment ofthe French duchy, from which the original Norman settlement hadbeen cut off. France had lost in Rouen one of her greatest cities, and she was cut off from the sea and from the lower course of herown river. On the other hand, the French and the Norman dukes hadfound their interest in a close alliance; Norman support had donemuch to transfer the crown from Laon to Paris, and to make the DuxFrancorum and the Rex Francorum the same person. It was theadoption of the French speech and manners by the Normans, and theirsteady alliance with the French dukes, which finally determinedthat the ruling element in Gaul should be Romance and not Teutonic, and that, of its Romance elements, it should be French and notAquitanian. If the creation of Normandy had done much to weakenFrance as a duchy, it had done not a little towards the making ofFrance as a kingdom. Laon and its crown, the undefined influencethat went with the crown, the prospect of future advance to thesouth, had been bought by the loss of Rouen and of the mouth of theSeine. 

There was much therefore at the time of William's accession to keepthe French kings and the Norman dukes on friendly terms. The oldalliance had been strengthened by recent good offices. Thereigning king, Henry the First, owed his crown to the help ofWilliam's father Robert. On the other hand, the original ground ofthe alliance, mutual support against the Karolingian king, hadpassed away. A King of the French reigning at Paris was morelikely to remember what the Normans had cost him as duke than whatthey had done for him as king. And the alliance was only analliance of princes. The mutual dislike between the people of thetwo countries was strong. The Normans had learned French ways, butFrench and Normans had not become countrymen. And, as the fame ofNormandy grew, jealousy was doubtless mingled with dislike. William, in short, inherited a very doubtful and dangerous state ofrelations towards the king who was at once his chief neighbour andhis overlord. 

More doubtful and dangerous still were the relations which theyoung duke inherited towards the people of his own duchy and thekinsfolk of his own house. William was not as yet the Great or theConqueror, but he was the Bastard from the beginning. There wasthen no generally received doctrine as to the succession tokingdoms and duchies. Everywhere a single kingly or princely housesupplied, as a rule, candidates for the succession. Everywhere, even where the elective doctrine was strong, a full-grown son wasalways likely to succeed his father. The growth of feudal notionstoo had greatly strengthened the hereditary principle. Still norule had anywhere been laid down for cases where the late princehad not left a full-grown son. The question as to legitimate birthwas equally unsettled. Irregular unions of all kinds, thoughcondemned by the Church, were tolerated in practice, and werenowhere more common than among the Norman dukes. In truth thefeeling of the kingliness of the stock, the doctrine that the kingshould be the son of a king, is better satisfied by the successionof the late king's bastard son than by sending for some distantkinsman, claiming perhaps only through females. Still bastardy, ifit was often convenient to forget it, could always be turnedagainst a man. The succession of a bastard was never likely to bequite undisputed or his reign to be quite undisturbed. 

Now William succeeded to his duchy under the double disadvantage ofbeing at once bastard and minor. He was born at Falaise in 1027 or1028, being the son of Robert, afterwards duke, but then only Countof Hiesmois, by Herleva, commonly called Arletta, the daughter ofFulbert the tanner. There was no pretence of marriage between hisparents; yet his father, when he designed William to succeed him, might have made him legitimate, as some of his predecessors hadbeen made, by a marriage with his mother. In 1028 Robert succeededhis brother Richard in the duchy. In 1034 or 1035 he determined togo on pilgrimage to Jerusalem. He called on his barons to swearallegiance to his bastard of seven years old as his successor incase he never came back. Their wise counsel to stay at home, tolook after his dominions and to raise up lawful heirs, wasunheeded. Robert carried his point. The succession of youngWilliam was accepted by the Norman nobles, and was confirmed by theoverlord Henry King of the French. The arrangement soon tookeffect. Robert died on his way back before the year 1035 was out, and his son began, in name at least, his reign of fifty-two yearsover the Norman duchy. 

The succession of one who was at once bastard and minor couldhappen only when no one else had a distinctly better claim Williamcould never have held his ground for a moment against a brother ofhis father of full age and undoubted legitimacy. But among theliving descendants of former dukes some were themselves of doubtfullegitimacy, some were shut out by their profession as churchmen, some claimed only through females. Robert had indeed two half-brothers, but they were young and their legitimacy was disputed; hehad an uncle, Robert Archbishop of Rouen, who had been legitimatedby the later marriage of his parents. The rival who in the endgave William most trouble was his cousin Guy of Burgundy, son of adaughter of his grandfather Richard the Good. Though William'ssuccession was not liked, no one of these candidates was generallypreferred to him. He therefore succeeded; but the first twelveyears of his reign were spent in the revolts and conspiracies ofunruly nobles, who hated the young duke as the one representativeof law and order, and who were not eager to set any one in hisplace who might be better able to enforce them. 

Nobility, so variously defined in different lands, in Normandy tookin two classes of men. All were noble who had any kindred oraffinity, legitimate or otherwise, with the ducal house. Thenatural children of Richard the Fearless were legitimated by hismarriage with their mother Gunnor, and many of the great houses ofNormandy sprang from her brothers and sisters. The mother ofWilliam received no such exaltation as this. Besides her son, shehad borne to Robert a daughter Adelaide, and, after Robert's death, she married a Norman knight named Herlwin of Conteville. To him, besides a daughter, she bore two sons, Ode and Robert. They roseto high posts in Church and State, and played an important part intheir half-brother's history. Besides men whose nobility was ofthis kind, there were also Norman houses whose privileges wereolder than the amours or marriages of any duke, houses whosegreatness was as old as the settlement of Rolf, as old that is asthe ducal power itself. The great men of both these classes werealike hard to control. A Norman baron of this age was wellemployed when he was merely rebelling against his prince or wagingprivate war against a fellow baron. What specially marks the timeis the frequency of treacherous murders wrought by men of thehighest rank, often on harmless neighbours or unsuspecting guests. But victims were also found among those guardians of the young dukewhose faithful discharge of their duties shows that the Normannobility was not wholly corrupt. One indeed was a foreign prince, Alan Count of the Bretons, a grandson of Richard the Fearlessthrough a daughter. Two others, the seneschal Osbern and GilbertCount of Eu, were irregular kinsmen of the duke. All these weremurdered, the Breton count by poison. Such a childhood as thismade William play the man while he was still a child. The helplessboy had to seek for support of some kind. He got together thechief men of his duchy, and took a new guardian by their advice. But it marks the state of things that the new guardian was one ofthe murderers of those whom he succeeded. This was Ralph of Wacey, son of William's great-uncle, Archbishop Robert. Murderer as hewas, he seems to have discharged his duty faithfully. There aremen who are careless of general moral obligations, but who willstrictly carry out any charge which appeals to personal honour. Anyhow Ralph's guardianship brought with it a certain amount ofcalm. But men, high in the young duke's favour, were stillplotting against him, and they presently began to plot, not onlyagainst their prince but against their country. The disaffectednobles of Normandy sought for a helper against young William in hislord King Henry of Paris. 

The art of diplomacy had never altogether slumbered since muchearlier times. The king who owed his crown to William's father, and who could have no ground of offence against William himself, easily found good pretexts for meddling in Norman affairs. It wasnot unnatural in the King of the French to wish to win back a sea-board which had been given up more than a hundred years before toan alien power, even though that power had, for much more than halfof that time, acted more than a friendly part towards France. Itwas not unnatural that the French people should cherish a strongnational dislike to the Normans and a strong wish that Rouen shouldagain be a French city. But such motives were not openly avowedthen any more than now. The alleged ground was quite different. The counts of Chartres were troublesome neighbours to the duchy, and the castle of Tillieres had been built as a defence againstthem. An advance of the King's dominions had made Tillieres aneighbour of France, and, as a neighbour, it was said to be astanding menace. The King of the French, acting in concert withthe disaffected party in Normandy, was a dangerous enemy, and theyoung Duke and his counsellors determined to give up Tillieres. Now comes the first distinct exercise of William's personal will. We are without exact dates, but the time can be hardly later than1040, when William was from twelve to thirteen years old. At hisspecial request, the defender of Tillieres, Gilbert Crispin, who atfirst held out against French and Normans alike, gave up the castleto Henry. The castle was burned; the King promised not to repairit for four years. Yet he is said to have entered Normandy, tohave laid waste William's native district of Hiesmois, to havesupplied a French garrison to a Norman rebel named Thurstan, whoheld the castle of Falaise against the Duke, and to have ended byrestoring Tillieres as a menace against Normandy. And now the boywhose destiny had made him so early a leader of men had to bear hisfirst arms against the fortress which looked down on his birth-place. Thurstan surrendered and went into banishment. Williamcould set down his own Falaise as the first of a long list of townsand castles which he knew how to win without shedding of blood. 

When we next see William's distinct personal action, he is stillyoung, but no longer a child or even a boy. At nineteen orthereabouts he is a wise and valiant man, and his valour and wisdomare tried to the uttermost. A few years of comparative quiet werechiefly occupied, as a quiet time in those days commonly was, withecclesiastical affairs. One of these specially illustrates thestate of things with which William had to deal. In 1042, when theDuke was about fourteen, Normandy adopted the Truce of God in itslater shape. It no longer attempted to establish universal peace;it satisfied itself with forbidding, under the strongestecclesiastical censures, all private war and violence of any kindon certain days of the week. Legislation of this kind has twosides. It was an immediate gain if peace was really enforced forfour days in the week; but that which was not forbidden on theother three could no longer be denounced as in itself evil. We aretold that in no land was the Truce more strictly observed than inNormandy. But we may be sure that, when William was in the fulnessof his power, the stern weight of the ducal arm was exerted toenforce peace on Mondays and Tuesdays as well as on Thursdays andFridays. 

It was in the year 1047 that William's authority was mostdangerously threatened and that he was first called on to show inall their fulness the powers that were in him. He who was to beconqueror of Maine and conqueror of England was first to beconqueror of his own duchy. The revolt of a large part of thecountry, contrasted with the firm loyalty of another part, throws amost instructive light on the internal state of the duchy. Therewas, as there still is, a line of severance between the districtswhich formed the first grant to Rolf and those which wereafterwards added. In these last a lingering remnant of oldTeutonic life had been called into fresh strength by newsettlements from Scandinavia. At the beginning of the reign ofRichard the Fearless, Rouen, the French-speaking city, isemphatically contrasted with Bayeux, the once Saxon city and land, now the headquarters of the Danish speech. At that stage theDanish party was distinctly a heathen party. We are not toldwhether Danish was still spoken so late as the time of William'syouth. We can hardly believe that the Scandinavian gods still keptany avowed worshippers. But the geographical limits of the revoltexactly fall in with the boundary which had once divided French andDanish speech, Christian and heathen worship. There was a widedifference in feeling on the two sides of the Dive. The olderNorman settlements, now thoroughly French in tongue and manners, stuck faithfully to the Duke; the lands to the west rose againsthim. Rouen and Evreux were firmly loyal to William; Saxon Bayeuxand Danish Coutances were the headquarters of his enemies. 

When the geographical division took this shape, we are surprised atthe candidate for the duchy who was put forward by the rebels. William was a Norman born and bred; his rival was in every sense aFrenchman. This was William's cousin Guy of Burgundy, whoseconnexion with the ducal house was only by the spindle-side. Buthis descent was of uncontested legitimacy, which gave him an excusefor claiming the duchy in opposition to the bastard grandson of thetanner. By William he had been enriched with great possessions, among which was the island fortress of Brionne in the Risle. Thereal object of the revolt was the partition of the duchy. Williamwas to be dispossessed; Guy was to be duke in the lands east ofDive; the great lords of Western Normandy were to be leftindependent. To this end the lords of the Bessin and the Cotentinrevolted, their leader being Neal, Viscount of Saint-Sauveur in theCotentin. We are told that the mass of the people everywherewished well to their duke; in the common sovereign lay their onlychance of protection against their immediate lords. But the lordshad armed force of the land at their bidding. They first tried toslay or seize the Duke himself, who chanced to be in the midst ofthem at Valognes. He escaped; we hear a stirring tale of hisheadlong ride from Valognes to Falaise. Safe among his own people, he planned his course of action. He first sought help of the manwho could give him most help, but who had most wronged him. Hewent into France; he saw King Henry at Poissy, and the King engagedto bring a French force to William's help under his own command. 

This time Henry kept his promise. The dismemberment of Normandymight have been profitable to France by weakening the power whichhad become so special an object of French jealousy; but with a kingthe common interest of princes against rebellious barons camefirst. Henry came with a French army, and fought well for his allyon the field of Val-es-dunes. Now came the Conqueror's firstbattle, a tourney of horsemen on an open table-land just within theland of the rebels between Caen and Mezidon. The young duke foughtwell and manfully; but the Norman writers allow that it was Frenchhelp that gained him the victory. Yet one of the many anecdotes ofthe battle points to a source of strength which was always ready totell for any lord against rebellious vassals. One of the leadersof the revolt, Ralph of Tesson, struck with remorse and stirred bythe prayers of his knights, joined the Duke just before the battle. He had sworn to smite William wherever he found him, and hefulfilled his oath by giving the Duke a harmless blow with hisglove. How far an oath to do an unlawful act is binding is aquestion which came up again at another stage of William's life. 

The victory at Val-es-dunes was decisive, and the French King, whose help had done so much to win it, left William to follow itup. He met with but little resistance except at the stronghold ofBrionne. Guy himself vanishes from Norman history. William hadnow conquered his own duchy, and conquered it by foreign help. Forthe rest of his Norman reign he had often to strive with enemies athome, but he had never to put down such a rebellion again as thatof the lords of western Normandy. That western Normandy, thetruest Normandy, had to yield to the more thoroughly Romanizedlands to the east. The difference between them never again takes apolitical shape. William was now lord of all Normandy, and able toput down all later disturbers of the peace. His real reign nowbegins; from the age of nineteen or twenty, his acts are his own. According to his abiding practice, he showed himself a mercifulconqueror. Through his whole reign he shows a distinctunwillingness to take human life except in fair fighting on thebattle-field. No blood was shed after the victory of Val-es-dunes;one rebel died in bonds; the others underwent no harder punishmentthan payment of fines, giving of hostages, and destruction of theircastles. These castles were not as yet the vast and elaboratestructures which arose in after days. A single strong squaretower, or even a defence of wood on a steep mound surrounded by aditch, was enough to make its owner dangerous. The possession ofthese strongholds made every baron able at once to defy his princeand to make himself a scourge to his neighbours. Every season ofanarchy is marked by the building of castles; every return of orderbrings with it their overthrow as a necessary condition of peace. 

Thus, in his lonely and troubled childhood, William had beenschooled for the rule of men. He had now, in the rule of a smallerdominion, in warfare and conquest on a smaller scale, to beschooled for the conquest and the rule of a greater dominion. William had the gifts of a born ruler, and he was in no waydisposed to abuse them. We know his rule in Normandy only throughthe language of panegyric; but the facts speak for themselves. Hemade Normandy peaceful and flourishing, more peaceful andflourishing perhaps than any other state of the European mainland. He is set before us as in everything a wise and beneficent ruler, the protector of the poor and helpless, the patron of commerce andof all that might profit his dominions. For defensive wars, forwars waged as the faithful man of his overlord, we cannot blamehim. But his main duty lay at home. He still had revolts to putdown, and he put them down. But to put them down was the first ofgood works. He had to keep the peace of the land, to put somecheek on the unruly wills of those turbulent barons on whom only anarm like his could put any cheek. He had, in the language of hisday, to do justice, to visit wrong with sure and speedy punishment, whoever was the wrong-doer. If a ruler did this first of dutieswell, much was easily forgiven him in other ways. But William hadas yet little to be forgiven. Throughout life he steadilypractised some unusual virtues. His strict attention to religionwas always marked. And his religion was not that mere lavishbounty to the Church which was consistent with any amount ofcruelty or license. William's religion really influenced his life, public and private. He set an unusual example of a princelyhousehold governed according to the rules of morality, and he dealtwith ecclesiastical matters in the spirit of a true reformer. Hedid not, like so many princes of his age, make ecclesiasticalpreferments a source of corrupt gain, but promoted good men fromall quarters. His own education is not likely to have receivedmuch attention; it is not clear whether he had mastered the rarerart of writing or the more usual one of reading; but both hispromotion of learned churchmen and the care given to the educationof some of his children show that he at least valued the bestattainments of his time. Had William's whole life been spent inthe duties of a Norman duke, ruling his duchy wisely, defending itmanfully, the world might never have known him for one of itsforemost men, but his life on that narrower field would have beenuseful and honourable almost without a drawback. It was the fataltemptation of princes, the temptation to territorialaggrandizement, which enabled him fully to show the powers thatwere in him, but which at the same time led to his moraldegradation. The defender of his own land became the invader ofother lands, and the invader could not fail often to sink into theoppressor. Each step in his career as Conqueror was a stepdownwards. Maine was a neighbouring land, a land of the samespeech, a land which, if the feelings of the time could haveallowed a willing union, would certainly have lost nothing by anunion with Normandy. England, a land apart, a land of speech, laws, and feelings, utterly unlike those of any part of Gaul, wasin another case. There the Conqueror was driven to be theoppressor. Wrong, as ever, was punished by leading to furtherwrong. 

With the two fields, nearer and more distant, narrower and wider, on which William was to appear as Conqueror he has as yet nothingto do. It is vain to guess at what moment the thought of theEnglish succession may have entered his mind or that of hisadvisers. When William began his real reign after Val-es-dunes, Norman influence was high in England. Edward the Confessor hadspent his youth among his Norman kinsfolk; he loved Norman ways andthe company of Normans and other men of French speech. Strangersfrom the favoured lands held endless posts in Church and State;above all, Robert of Jumieges, first Bishop of London and thenArchbishop of Canterbury, was the King's special favourite andadviser. These men may have suggested the thought of William'ssuccession very early. On the other hand, at this time it was byno means clear that Edward might not leave a son of his own. Hehad been only a few years married, and his alleged vow of chastityis very doubtful. William's claim was of the flimsiest kind. ByEnglish custom the king was chosen out of a single kingly house, and only those who were descended from kings in the male line werecounted as members of that house. William was not descended, evenin the female line, from any English king; his whole kindred withEdward was that Edward's mother Emma, a daughter of Richard theFearless, was William's great-aunt. Such a kindred, to say nothingof William's bastardy, could give no right to the crown accordingto any doctrine of succession that ever was heard of. It could atmost point him out as a candidate for adoption, in case thereigning king should be disposed and allowed to choose hissuccessor. William or his advisers may have begun to weigh thischance very early; but all that is really certain is that Williamwas a friend and favourite of his elder kinsman, and that eventsfinally brought his succession to the English crown within therange of things that might be. 

But, before this, William was to show himself as a warrior beyondthe bounds of his own duchy, and to take seizin, as it were, of hisgreat continental conquest. William's first war out of Normandywas waged in common with King Henry against Geoffrey Martel Countof Anjou, and waged on the side of Maine. William undoubtedly oweda debt of gratitude to his overlord for good help given at Val-es-dunes, and excuses were never lacking for a quarrel between Anjouand Normandy. Both powers asserted rights over the intermediateland of Maine. In 1048 we find William giving help to Henry in awar with Anjou, and we hear wonderful but vague tales of hisexploits. The really instructive part of the story deals with twoborder fortresses on the march of Normandy and Maine. Alencon layon the Norman side of the Sarthe; but it was disloyal to Normandy. Brionne was still holding out for Guy of Burgundy. The town was alordship of the house of Belleme, a house renowned for power andwickedness, and which, as holding great possessions alike ofNormandy and of France, ranked rather with princes than withordinary nobles. The story went that William Talvas, lord ofBelleme, one of the fiercest of his race, had cursed William in hiscradle, as one by whom he and his should be brought to shame. Sucha tale set forth the noblest side of William's character, as theman who did something to put down such enemies of mankind as he whocursed him. The possessions of William Talvas passed through hisdaughter Mabel to Roger of Montgomery, a man who plays a great partin William's history; but it is the disloyalty of the burghers, notof their lord, of which we hear just now. They willingly admittedan Angevin garrison. William in return laid siege to Domfront onthe Varenne, a strong castle which was then an outpost of Maineagainst Normandy. A long skirmishing warfare, in which William wonfor himself a name by deeds of personal prowess, went on during theautumn and winter (1048-49). One tale specially illustrates morethan one point in the feelings of the time. The two princes, William and Geoffrey, give a mutual challenge; each gives the othernotice of the garb and shield that he will wear that he may not bemistaken. The spirit of knight-errantry was coming in, and we seethat William himself in his younger days was touched by it. But wesee also that coat-armour was as yet unknown. Geoffrey and hishost, so the Normans say, shrink from the challenge and decamp inthe night, leaving the way open for a sudden march upon Alencon. The disloyal burghers received the duke with mockery of his birth. They hung out skins, and shouted, "Hides for the Tanner. " Personalinsult is always hard for princes to bear, and the wrath of Williamwas stirred up to a pitch which made him for once depart from hisusual moderation towards conquered enemies. He swore that the menwho had jeered at him should be dealt with like a tree whosebranches are cut off with the pollarding-knife. The town was takenby assault, and William kept his oath. The castle held out; thehands and feet of thirty-two pollarded burghers of Alencon werethrown over its walls, and the threat implied drove the garrison tosurrender on promise of safety for life and limb. The defenders ofDomfront, struck with fear, surrendered also, and kept their armsas well as their lives and limbs. William had thus won back hisown rebellious town, and had enlarged his borders by his firstconquest. He went farther south, and fortified another castle atAmbrieres; but Ambrieres was only a temporary conquest. Domfronthas ever since been counted as part of Normandy. But, asecclesiastical divisions commonly preserve the secular divisions ofan earlier time, Domfront remained down to the great FrenchRevolution in the spiritual jurisdiction of the bishops of Le Mans. 

William had now shown himself in Maine as conqueror, and he wasbefore long to show himself in England, though not yet asconqueror. If our chronology is to be trusted, he had still inthis interval to complete his conquest of his own duchy by securingthe surrender of Brionne; and two other events, bothcharacteristic, one of them memorable, fill up the same time. William now banished a kinsman of his own name, who held the greatcounty of Mortain, Moretoliam or Moretonium, in the diocese ofAvranches, which must be carefully distinguished from Mortagne-en-Perche, Mauritania or Moretonia in the diocese of Seez. This act, of somewhat doubtful justice, is noteworthy on two grounds. First, the accuser of the banished count was one who was then a poorserving-knight of his own, but who became the forefather of a housewhich plays a great part in English history, Robert surnamed theBigod. Secondly, the vacant county was granted by William to hisown half-brother Robert. He had already in 1048 bestowed thebishopric of Bayeux on his other half-brother Odo, who cannot atthat time have been more than twelve years old. He must thereforehave held the see for a good while without consecration, and at notime of his fifty years' holding of it did he show any veryepiscopal merits. This was the last case in William's reign of anold abuse by which the chief church preferments in Normandy hadbeen turned into means of providing for members, often unworthymembers, of the ducal family; and it is the only one for whichWilliam can have been personally responsible. Both his brotherswere thus placed very early in life among the chief men ofNormandy, as they were in later years to be placed among the chiefmen of England. But William's affection for his brothers, amiableas it may have been personally, was assuredly not among thebrighter parts of his character as a sovereign. 

The other chief event of this time also concerns the domestic sideof William's life. The long story of his marriage now begins. Thedate is fixed by one of the decrees of the council of Rheims heldin 1049 by Pope Leo the Ninth, in which Baldwin Count of Flandersis forbidden to give his daughter to William the Norman. Thisimplies that the marriage was already thought of, and further thatit was looked on as uncanonical. The bride whom William sought, Matilda daughter of Baldwin the Fifth, was connected with him bysome tie of kindred or affinity which made a marriage between themunlawful by the rules of the Church. But no genealogist has yetbeen able to find out exactly what the canonical hindrance was. Itis hard to trace the descent of William and Matilda up to anycommon forefather. But the light which the story throws onWilliam's character is the same in any case. Whether he wasseeking a wife or a kingdom, he would have his will, but he couldwait for it. In William's doubtful position, a marriage with thedaughter of the Count of Flanders would be useful to him in manyways; and Matilda won her husband's abiding love and trust. Strange tales are told of William's wooing. Tales are told also ofMatilda's earlier love for the Englishman Brihtric, who is said tohave found favour in her eyes when he came as envoy from England toher father's court. All that is certain is that the marriage hadbeen thought of and had been forbidden before the next importantevent in William's life that we have to record. 

Was William's Flemish marriage in any way connected with his hopesof succession to the English crown? Had there been any availablebride for him in England, it might have been for his interest toseek for her there. But it should be noticed, though no ancientwriter points out the fact, that Matilda was actually descendedfrom Alfred in the female line; so that William's children, thoughnot William himself, had some few drops of English blood in theirveins. William or his advisers, in weighing every chance whichmight help his interests in the direction of England, may havereckoned this piece of rather ancient genealogy among theadvantages of a Flemish alliance. But it is far more certain that, between the forbidding of the marriage and the marriage itself, adirect hope of succession to the English crown had been opened tothe Norman duke. 

CHAPTER III--WILLIAM'S FIRST VISIT TO ENGLAND--A. D. 1051-1052

While William was strengthening himself in Normandy, Normaninfluence in England had risen to its full height. The king wassurrounded by foreign favourites. The only foreign earl was hisnephew Ralph of Mentes, the son of his sister Godgifu. But threechief bishoprics were held by Normans, Robert of Canterbury, William of London, and Ulf of Dorchester. William bears a goodcharacter, and won the esteem of Englishmen; but the unlearned Ulfis emphatically said to have done "nought bishoplike. " Smallerpreferments in Church and State, estates in all parts of thekingdom, were lavishly granted to strangers. They built castles, and otherwise gave offence to English feeling. Archbishop Robert, above all, was ever plotting against Godwine, Earl of the West-Saxons, the head of the national party. At last, in the autumn of1051, the national indignation burst forth. The immediate occasionwas a visit paid to the King by Count Eustace of Boulogne, who hadjust married the widowed Countess Godgifu. The violent dealings ofhis followers towards the burghers of Dover led to resistance ontheir part, and to a long series of marches and negotiations, whichended in the banishment of Godwine and his son, and the parting ofhis daughter Edith, the King's wife, from her husband. FromOctober 1051 to September 1052, the Normans had their own way inEngland. And during that time King Edward received a visitor ofgreater fame than his brother-in-law from Boulogne in the person ofhis cousin from Rouen. 

Of his visit we only read that "William Earl came from beyond seawith mickle company of Frenchmen, and the king him received, and asmany of his comrades as to him seemed good, and let him go again. "Another account adds that William received great gifts from theKing. But William himself in several documents speaks of Edward ashis lord; he must therefore at some time have done to Edward an actof homage, and there is no time but this at which we can conceivesuch an act being done. Now for what was the homage paid? Homagewas often paid on very trifling occasions, and strange conflicts ofallegiance often followed. No such conflict was likely to arise ifthe Duke of the Normans, already the man of the King of the Frenchfor his duchy, became the man of the King of the English on anyother ground. Betwixt England and France there was as yet noenmity or rivalry. England and France became enemies afterwardsbecause the King of the English and the Duke of the Normans wereone person. And this visit, this homage, was the first steptowards making the King of the English and the Duke of the Normansthe same person. The claim William had to the English crown restedmainly on an alleged promise of the succession made by Edward. This claim is not likely to have been a mere shameless falsehood. That Edward did make some promise to William--as that Harold, at alater stage, did take some oath to William--seems fully proved bythe fact that, while such Norman statements as could be denied wereemphatically denied by the English writers, on these two points themost patriotic Englishmen, the strongest partisans of Harold, keepa marked silence. We may be sure therefore that some promise wasmade; for that promise a time must be found, and no time seemspossible except this time of William's visit to Edward. The daterests on no direct authority, but it answers every requirement. Those who spoke of the promise as being made earlier, when Williamand Edward were boys together in Normandy, forgot that Edward wasmany years older than William. The only possible moment earlierthan the visit was when Edward was elected king in 1042. Beforethat time he could hardly have thought of disposing of a kingdomwhich was not his, and at that time he might have looked forward toleaving sons to succeed him. Still less could the promise havebeen made later than the visit. From 1053 to the end of his lifeEdward was under English influences, which led him first to sendfor his nephew Edward from Hungary as his successor, and in the endto make a recommendation in favour of Harold. But in 1051-52Edward, whether under a vow or not, may well have given up the hopeof children; he was surrounded by Norman influences; and, for theonly time in the last twenty-four years of their joint lives, heand William met face to face. The only difficulty is one to whichno contemporary writer makes any reference. If Edward wished todispose of his crown in favour of one of his French-speakingkinsmen, he had a nearer kinsman of whom he might more naturallyhave thought. His own nephew Ralph was living in England andholding an English earldom. He had the advantage over both Williamand his own older brother Walter of Mantes, in not being a reigningprince elsewhere. We can only say that there is evidence thatEdward did think of William, that there is no evidence that he everthought of Ralph. And, except the tie of nearer kindred, everything would suggest William rather than Ralph. The personalcomparison is almost grotesque; and Edward's early associations andthe strongest influences around him, were not vaguely French butspecially Norman. Archbishop Robert would plead for his own nativesovereign only. In short, we may be as nearly sure as we can be ofany fact for which there is no direct authority, that Edward'spromise to William was made at the time of William's visit toEngland, and that William's homage to Edward was done in thecharacter of a destined successor to the English crown. 

William then came to England a mere duke and went back to Normandya king expectant. But the value of his hopes, to the value of thepromise made to him, are quite another matter. Most likely theywere rated on both sides far above their real value. King and dukemay both have believed that they were making a settlement which theEnglish nation was bound to respect. If so, Edward at least wasundeceived within a few months. 

The notion of a king disposing of his crown by his own act belongsto the same range of ideas as the law of strict hereditarysuccession. It implies that kingship is a possession and not anoffice. Neither the heathen nor the Christian English had everadmitted that doctrine; but it was fast growing on the continent. Our forefathers had always combined respect for the kingly housewith some measure of choice among the members of that house. Edward himself was not the lawful heir according to the notions ofa modern lawyer; for he was chosen while the son of his elderbrother was living. Every English king held his crown by the giftof the great assembly of the nation, though the choice of thenation was usually limited to the descendants of former kings, andthough the full-grown son of the late king was seldom opposed. Christianity had strengthened the election principle. The kinglost his old sanctity as the son of Woden; he gained a new sanctityas the Lord's anointed. But kingship thereby became moredistinctly an office, a great post, like a bishopric, to which itsholder had to be lawfully chosen and admitted by solemn rites. Butof that office he could be lawfully deprived, nor could he hand iton to a successor either according to his own will or according toany strict law of succession. The wishes of the late king, likethe wishes of the late bishop, went for something with theelectors. But that was all. All that Edward could really do forhis kinsmen was to promise to make, when the time came, arecommendation to the Witan in his favour. The Witan might thendeal as they thought good with a recommendation so unusual as tochoose to the kingship of England a man who was neither a nativenor a conqueror of England nor the descendant of any English king. 

When the time came, Edward did make a recommendation to the Witan, but it was not in favour of William. The English influences underwhich he was brought during his last fourteen years taught himbetter what the law of England was and what was the duty of anEnglish king. But at the time of William's visit Edward may wellhave believed that he could by his own act settle his crown on hisNorman kinsman as his undoubted successor in case he died without ason. And it may be that Edward was bound by a vow not to leave ason. And if Edward so thought, William naturally thought so yetmore; he would sincerely believe himself to be the lawful heir ofthe crown of England, the sole lawful successor, except in onecontingency which was perhaps impossible and certainly unlikely. 

The memorials of these times, so full on some points, are meagre onothers. Of those writers who mention the bequest or promise nonemention it at any time when it is supposed to have happened; theymention it at some later time when it began to be of practicalimportance. No English writer speaks of William's claim till thetime when he was about practically to assert it; no Norman writerspeaks of it till he tells the tale of Harold's visit and oath toWilliam. We therefore cannot say how far the promise was knowneither in England or on the continent. But it could not be keptaltogether hid, even if either party wished it to be hid. Englishstatesmen must have known of it, and must have guided their policyaccordingly, whether it was generally known in the country or not. William's position, both in his own duchy and among neighbouringprinces, would be greatly improved if he could be looked upon as afuture king. As heir to the crown of England, he may have moreearnestly wooed the descendant of former wearers of the crown; andMatilda and her father may have looked more favourably on a suitorto whom the crown of England was promised. On the other hand, theexistence of such a foreign claimant made it more needful than everfor Englishmen to be ready with an English successor, in the royalhouse or out of it, the moment the reigning king should pass away. 

It was only for a short time that William could have had anyreasonable hope of a peaceful succession. The time of Normaninfluence in England was short. The revolution of September 1052brought Godwine back, and placed the rule of England again inEnglish hands. Many Normans were banished, above all ArchbishopRobert and Bishop Ulf. The death of Godwine the next year placedthe chief power in the hands of his son Harold. This changeundoubtedly made Edward more disposed to the national cause. OfGodwine, the man to whom he owed his crown, he was clearly in awe;to Godwine's sons he was personally attached. We know not howEdward was led to look on his promise to William as void. That hewas so led is quite plain. He sent for his nephew the AEthelingEdward from Hungary, clearly as his intended successor. When theAEtheling died in 1057, leaving a son under age, men seem to havegradually come to look to Harold as the probable successor. Heclearly held a special position above that of an ordinary earl; butthere is no need to suppose any formal act in his favour till thetime of the King's death, January 5, 1066. On his deathbed Edwarddid all that he legally could do on behalf of Harold byrecommending him to the Witan for election as the next king. Thathe then either made a new or renewed an old nomination in favour ofWilliam is a fable which is set aside by the witness of thecontemporary English writers. William's claim rested wholly onthat earlier nomination which could hardly have been made at anyother time than his visit to England. 

We have now to follow William back to Normandy, for the remainingyears of his purely ducal reign. The expectant king had doubtlessthoughts and hopes which he had not had before. But we can guessat them only: they are not recorded. 

CHAPTER IV--THE REIGN OF WILLIAM IN NORMANDY--A. D. 1052-1063

If William came back from England looking forward to a futurecrown, the thought might even then flash across his mind that hewas not likely to win that crown without fighting for it. As yethis business was still to fight for the duchy of Normandy. But hehad now to fight, not to win his duchy, but only to keep it. Forfive years he had to strive both against rebellious subjects andagainst invading enemies, among whom King Henry of Paris is againthe foremost. Whatever motives had led the French king to helpWilliam at Val-es-dunes had now passed away. He had fallen back onhis former state of abiding enmity towards Normandy and her duke. But this short period definitely fixed the position of Normandy andher duke in Gaul and in Europe. At its beginning William is stillthe Bastard of Falaise, who may or may not be able to keep himselfin the ducal chair, his right to which is still disputed. At theend of it, if he is not yet the Conqueror and the Great, he hasshown all the gifts that were needed to win him either name. He isthe greatest vassal of the French crown, a vassal more powerfulthan the overlord whose invasions of his duchy he has had to driveback. 

These invasions of Normandy by the King of the French and hisallies fall into two periods. At first Henry appears in Normandyas the supporter of Normans in open revolt against their duke. Butrevolts are personal and local; there is no rebellion like thatwhich was crushed at Val-es-dunes, spreading over a large part ofthe duchy. In the second period, the invaders have no suchstarting-point. There are still traitors; there are still rebels;but all that they can do is to join the invaders after they haveentered the land. William is still only making his way to theuniversal good will of his duchy: but he is fast making it. 

There is, first of all, an obscure tale of a revolt of an unfixeddate, but which must have happened between 1048 and 1053. Therebel, William Busac of the house of Eu, is said to have defendedthe castle of Eu against the duke and to have gone into banishmentin France. But the year that followed William's visit to Englandsaw the far more memorable revolt of William Count of Arques. Hehad drawn the Duke's suspicions on him, and he had to receive aducal garrison in his great fortress by Dieppe. But the garrisonbetrayed the castle to its own master. Open revolt and havocfollowed, in which Count William was supported by the king and byseveral other princes. Among them was Ingelram Count of Ponthieu, husband of the duke's sister Adelaide. Another enemy was Guy Countof Gascony, afterwards Duke William the Eighth of Aquitaine. Whatquarrel a prince in the furthest corner of Gaul could have with theDuke of the Normans does not appear; but neither Count William norhis allies could withstand the loyal Normans and their prince. Count Ingelram was killed; the other princes withdrew to devisegreater efforts against Normandy. Count William lost his castleand part of his estates, and left the duchy of his free will. TheDuke's politic forbearance at last won him the general good will ofhis subjects. We hear of no more open revolts till that ofWilliam's own son many years after. But the assaults of foreignenemies, helped sometimes by Norman traitors, begin again the nextyear on a greater scale. 

William the ruler and warrior had now a short breathing-space. Hehad doubtless come back from England more bent than ever on hismarriage with Matilda of Flanders. Notwithstanding the decree of aPope and a Council entitled to special respect, the marriage wascelebrated, not very long after William's return to Normandy, inthe year of the revolt of William of Arques. In the course of theyear 1053 Count Baldwin brought his daughter to the Norman frontierat Eu, and there she became the bride of William. We know not whatemboldened William to risk so daring a step at this particulartime, or what led Baldwin to consent to it. If it was suggested bythe imprisonment of Pope Leo by William's countrymen in Italy, inthe hope that a consent to the marriage would be wrung out of thecaptive pontiff, that hope was disappointed. The marriage raisedmuch opposition in Normandy. It was denounced by Archbishop Malgerof Rouen, the brother of the dispossessed Count of Arques. Hischaracter certainly added no weight to his censures; but the sameact in a saint would have been set down as a sign of holy boldness. Presently, whether for his faults or for his merits, Malger wasdeposed in a synod of the Norman Church, and William found him aworthier successor in the learned and holy Maurilius. But agreater man than Malger also opposed the marriage, and thecontroversy thus introduces us to one who fills a place second onlyto that of William himself in the Norman and English history of thetime. 

This was Lanfranc of Pavia, the lawyer, the scholar, the modelmonk, the ecclesiastical statesman, who, as prior of the newlyfounded abbey of Bec, was already one of the innermost counsellorsof the Duke. As duke and king, as prior, abbot, and archbishop, William and Lanfranc ruled side by side, each helping the work ofthe other till the end of their joint lives. Once only, at thistime, was their friendship broken for a moment. Lanfranc spokeagainst the marriage, and ventured to rebuke the Duke himself. William's wrath was kindled; he ordered Lanfranc into banishmentand took a baser revenge by laying waste part of the lands of theabbey. But the quarrel was soon made up. Lanfranc presently leftNormandy, not as a banished man, but as the envoy of its sovereign, commissioned to work for the confirmation of the marriage at thepapal court. He worked, and his work was crowned with success, butnot with speedy success. It was not till six years after themarriage, not till the year 1059, that Lanfranc obtained the wishedfor confirmation, not from Leo, but from his remote successorNicolas the Second. The sin of those who had contracted theunlawful union was purged by various good works, among which thefoundation of the two stately abbeys of Caen was conspicuous. 

This story illustrates many points in the character of William andof his time. His will is not to be thwarted, whether in a matterof marriage or of any other. But he does not hurry matters; hewaits for a favourable opportunity. Something, we know not what, must have made the year 1053 more favourable than the year 1049. We mark also William's relations to the Church. He is at no timedisposed to submit quietly to the bidding of the spiritual power, when it interferes with his rights or even when it crosses hiswill. Yet he is really anxious for ecclesiastical reform; hepromotes men like Maurilius and Lanfranc; perhaps he is notdispleased when the exercise of ecclesiastical discipline, in thecase of Malger, frees him from a troublesome censor. But the worseside of him also comes out. William could forgive rebels, but hecould not bear the personal rebuke even of his friend. Under thisfeeling he punishes a whole body of men for the offence of one. Tolay waste the lands of Bec for the rebuke of Lanfranc was like anordinary prince of the time; it was unlike William, if he had notbeen stirred up by a censure which touched his wife as well ashimself. But above all, the bargain between William and Lanfrancis characteristic of the man and the age. Lanfranc goes to Rome tosupport a marriage which he had censured in Normandy. But there isno formal inconsistency, no forsaking of any principle. Lanfrancholds an uncanonical marriage to be a sin, and he denounces it. Hedoes not withdraw his judgement as to its sinfulness. He simplyuses his influence with a power that can forgive the sin to get itforgiven. 

While William's marriage was debated at Rome, he had to fight hardin Normandy. His warfare and his negotiations ended about the sametime, and the two things may have had their bearing on one another. William had now to undergo a new form of trial. The King of theFrench had never put forth his full strength when he was simplybacking Norman rebels. William had now, in two successiveinvasions, to withstand the whole power of the King, and of as manyof his vassals as the King could bring to his standard. In thefirst invasion, in 1054, the Norman writers speak rhetorically ofwarriors from Burgundy, Auvergne, and Gascony; but it is hard tosee any troops from a greater distance than Bourges. The princeswho followed Henry seem to have been only the nearer vassals of theCrown. Chief among them are Theobald Count of Chartres, of a houseof old hostile to Normandy, and Guy the new Count of Ponthieu, tobe often heard of again. If not Geoffrey of Anjou himself, hissubjects from Tours were also there. Normandy was to be invaded ontwo sides, on both banks of the Seine. The King and his alliessought to wrest from William the western part of Normandy, theolder and the more thoroughly French part. No attack seems to havebeen designed on the Bessin or the Cotentin. William was to beallowed to keep those parts of his duchy, against which he had tofight when the King was his ally at Val-es-dunes. 

The two armies entered Normandy; that which was to act on the leftof the Seine was led by the King, the other by his brother Odo. Against the King William made ready to act himself; easternNormandy was left to its own loyal nobles. But all Normandy wasnow loyal; the men of the Saxon and Danish lands were as ready tofight for their duke against the King as they had been to fightagainst King and Duke together. But William avoided pitchedbattles; indeed pitched battles are rare in the continental warfareof the time. War consists largely in surprises, and still more inthe attack and defence of fortified places. The plan of William'spresent campaign was wholly defensive; provisions and cattle wereto be carried out of the French line of march; the Duke on hisside, the other Norman leaders on the other side, were to watch theenemy and attack them at any favourable moment. The commanderseast of the Seine, Count Robert of Eu, Hugh of Gournay, WilliamCrispin, and Walter Giffard, found their opportunity when theFrench had entered the unfortified town of Mortemer and had giventhemselves up to revelry. Fire and sword did the work. The wholeFrench army was slain, scattered, or taken prisoners. Ode escaped;Guy of Ponthieu was taken. The Duke's success was still easier. The tale runs that the news from Mortemer, suddenly announced tothe King's army in the dead of the night, struck them with panic, and led to a hasty retreat out of the land. 

This campaign is truly Norman; it is wholly unlike the simplewarfare of England. A traitorous Englishman did nothing or helpedthe enemy; a patriotic Englishman gave battle to the enemy thefirst time he had a chance. But no English commander of theeleventh century was likely to lay so subtle a plan as this, and, if he had laid such a plan, he would hardly have found an Englisharmy able to carry it out. Harold, who refused to lay waste a roodof English ground, would hardly have looked quietly on while manyroods of English ground were wasted by the enemy. With all thevalour of the Normans, what before all things distinguished themfrom other nations was their craft. William could indeed fight apitched battle when a pitched battle served his purpose; but hecould control himself, he could control his followers, even to thepoint of enduring to look quietly on the havoc of their own landtill the right moment. He who could do this was indeed practisingfor his calling as Conqueror. And if the details of the story, details specially characteristic, are to be believed, Williamshowed something also of that grim pleasantry which was anothermarked feature in the Norman character. The startling messagewhich struck the French army with panic was deliberately sent withthat end. The messenger sent climbs a tree or a rock, and, with avoice as from another world, bids the French awake; they aresleeping too long; let them go and bury their friends who are lyingdead at Mortemer. These touches bring home to us the character ofthe man and the people with whom our forefathers had presently todeal. William was the greatest of his race, but he was essentiallyof his race; he was Norman to the backbone. 

Of the French army one division had been surprised and cut topieces, the other had left Normandy without striking a blow. Thewar was not yet quite over; the French still kept Tillieres;William accordingly fortified the stronghold of Breteuil as a cheekupon it. And he entrusted the command to a man who will soon bememorable, his personal friend William, son of his old guardianOsbern. King Henry was now glad to conclude a peace on somewhatremarkable terms. William had the king's leave to take what hecould from Count Geoffrey of Anjou. He now annexed Cenomannian--that is just now Angevin--territory at more points than one, butchiefly on the line of his earlier advances to Domfront andAmbrieres. Ambrieres had perhaps been lost; for William now sentGeoffrey a challenge to come on the fortieth day. He came on thefortieth day, and found Ambrieres strongly fortified and occupiedby a Norman garrison. With Geoffrey came the Breton prince Ode, and William or Peter Duke of Aquitaine. They besieged the castle;but Norman accounts add that they all fled on William's approach torelieve it. 

Three years of peace now followed, but in 1058 King Henry, thistime in partnership with Geoffrey of Anjou, ventured anotherinvasion of Normandy. He might say that he had never been fairlybeaten in his former campaign, but that he had been simply cheatedout of the land by Norman wiles. This time he had a secondexperience of Norman wiles and of Norman strength too. King andCount entered the land and ravaged far and wide. William, asbefore, allowed the enemy to waste the land. He watched andfollowed them till he found a favourable moment for attack. Thepeople in general zealously helped the Duke's schemes, but sometraitors of rank were still leagued with the Count of Anjou. WhileWilliam bided his time, the invaders burned Caen. This place, sofamous in Norman history, was not one of the ancient cities of theland. It was now merely growing into importance, and it was as yetundefended by walls or castle. But when the ravagers turnedeastward, William found the opportunity that he had waited for. Asthe French were crossing the ford of Varaville on the Dive, nearthe mouth of that river, he came suddenly on them, and slaughtereda large part of the army under the eyes of the king who had alreadycrossed. The remnant marched out of Normandy. 

Henry now made peace, and restored Tillieres. Not long after, in1060, the King died, leaving his young son Philip, who had beenalready crowned, as his successor, under the guardianship ofWilliam's father-in-law Baldwin. Geoffrey of Anjou and William ofAquitaine also died, and the Angevin power was weakened by thedivision of Geoffrey's dominions between his nephews. William'sposition was greatly strengthened, now that France, under the newregent, had become friendly, while Anjou was no longer able to domischief. William had now nothing to fear from his neighbours, andthe way was soon opened for his great continental conquest. Butwhat effect had these events on William's views on England? Aboutthe time of the second French invasion of Normandy Earl Haroldbecame beyond doubt the first man in England, and for the firsttime a chance of the royal succession was opened to him. In 1057, the year before Varaville, the AEtheling Edward, the King'sselected successor, died soon after his coming to England; in thesame year died the King's nephew Earl Ralph and Leofric Earl of theMercians, the only Englishmen whose influence could at all comparewith that of Harold. Harold's succession now became possible; itbecame even likely, if Edward should die while Edgar the son of theAEtheling was still under age. William had no shadow of excuse forinterfering, but he doubtless was watching the internal affairs ofEngland. Harold was certainly watching the affairs of Gaul. Aboutthis time, most likely in the year 1058, he made a pilgrimage toRome, and on his way back he looked diligently into the state ofthings among the various vassals of the French crown. His exactpurpose is veiled in ambiguous language; but we can hardly doubtthat his object was to contract alliances with the continentalenemies of Normandy. Such views looked to the distant future, asWilliam had as yet been guilty of no unfriendly act towardsEngland. But it was well to come to an understanding with KingHenry, Count Geoffrey, and Duke William of Aquitaine, in case atime should come when their interests and those of England would bethe same. But the deaths of all those princes must have put an endto all hopes of common action between England and any Gaulishpower. The Emperor Henry also, the firm ally of England, was dead. It was now clear that, if England should ever have to withstand aNorman attack, she would have to withstand it wholly by her ownstrength, or with such help as she might find among the kindredpowers of the North. 

William's great continental conquest is drawing nigh; but betweenthe campaign of Varaville and the campaign of Le Mans came thetardy papal confirmation of William's marriage. The Duke andDuchess, now at last man and wife in the eye of the Church, beganto carry out the works of penance which were allotted to them. Theabbeys of Caen, William's Saint Stephen's, Matilda's Holy Trinity, now began to arise. Yet, at this moment of reparation, one or twofacts seem to place William's government of his duchy in a lessfavourable light than usual. The last French invasion was followedby confiscations and banishments among the chief men of Normandy. Roger of Montgomery and his wife Mabel, who certainly was capableof any deed of blood or treachery, are charged with acting as falseaccusers. We see also that, as late as the day of Varaville, therewere Norman traitors. Robert of Escalfoy had taken the Angevinside, and had defended his castle against the Duke. He died in astrange way, after snatching an apple from the hand of his ownwife. His nephew Arnold remained in rebellion three years, and wassimply required to go to the wars in Apulia. It is hard to believethat the Duke had poisoned the apple, if poisoned it was; butfinding treason still at work among his nobles, he may have toohastily listened to charges against men who had done him goodservice, and who were to do him good service again. 

Five years after the combat at Varaville, William really began todeserve, though not as yet to receive, the name of Conqueror. Forhe now did a work second only to the conquest of England. He wonthe city of Le Mans and the whole land of Maine. Between the taleof Maine and the tale of England there is much of direct likeness. Both lands were won against the will of their inhabitants; but bothconquests were made with an elaborate show of legal right. William's earlier conquests in Maine had been won, not from anycount of Maine, but from Geoffrey of Anjou, who had occupied thecountry to the prejudice of two successive counts, Hugh andHerbert. He had further imprisoned the Bishop of Le Mans, Gervaseof the house of Belleme, though the King of the French had at hisrequest granted to the Count of Anjou for life royal rights overthe bishopric of Le Mans. The bishops of Le Mans, who thus, unlikethe bishops of Normandy, held their temporalities of the distantking and not of the local count, held a very independent position. The citizens of Le Mans too had large privileges and a high spiritto defend them; the city was in a marked way the head of thedistrict. Thus it commonly carried with it the action of the wholecountry. In Maine there were three rival powers, the prince, theChurch, and the people. The position of the counts was furtherweakened by the claims to their homage made by the princes oneither side of them in Normandy and Anjou; the position of theBishop, vassal, till Gervase's late act, of the King only, wasreally a higher one. Geoffrey had been received at Le Mans withthe good will of the citizens, and both Bishop and Count soughtshelter with William. Gervase was removed from the strife bypromotion to the highest place in the French kingdom, thearchbishopric of Rheims. The young Count Herbert, driven from hiscounty, commended himself to William. He became his man; he agreedto hold his dominions of him, and to marry one of his daughters. If he died childless, his father-in-law was to take the fief intohis own hands. But to unite the old and new dynasties, Herbert'syoungest sister Margaret was to marry William's eldest son Robert. If female descent went for anything, it is not clear why Herbertpassed by the rights of his two elder sisters, Gersendis, wife ofAzo Marquess of Liguria, and Paula, wife of John of La Fleche onthe borders of Maine and Anjou. And sons both of Gersendis and ofPaula did actually reign at Le Mans, while no child either ofHerbert or of Margaret ever came into being. 

If Herbert ever actually got possession of his country, hispossession of it was short. He died in 1063 before either of thecontemplated marriages had been carried out. William thereforestood towards Maine as he expected to stand with regard to England. The sovereign of each country had made a formal settlement of hisdominions in his favour. It was to be seen whether those who weremost immediately concerned would accept that settlement. Was therule either of Maine or of England to be handed over in this way, like a mere property, without the people who were to be ruledspeaking their minds on the matter? What the people of Englandsaid to this question in 1066 we shall hear presently; what thepeople of Maine said in 1063 we hear now. We know not why they hadsubmitted to the Angevin count; they had now no mind to merge theircountry in the dominions of the Norman duke. The Bishop wasneutral; but the nobles and the citizens of Le Mans were of onemind in refusing William's demand to be received as count by virtueof the agreement with Herbert. They chose rulers for themselves. Passing by Gersendis and Paula and their sons, they sent forHerbert's aunt Biota and her husband Walter Count of Mantes. Strangely enough, Walter, son of Godgifu daughter of AEthelred, wasa possible, though not a likely, candidate for the rule of Englandas well as of Maine. The people of Maine are not likely to havethought of this bit of genealogy. But it was doubtless present tothe minds alike of William and of Harold. 

William thus, for the first but not for the last time, claimed therule of a people who had no mind to have him as their ruler. Yet, morally worthless as were his claims over Maine, in the merelytechnical way of looking at things, he had more to say than mostprinces have who annex the lands of their neighbours. He had aperfectly good right by the terms of the agreement with Herbert. And it might be argued by any who admitted the Norman claim to thehomage of Maine, that on the failure of male heirs the countryreverted to the overlord. Yet female succession was now coming in. Anjou had passed to the sons of Geoffrey's sister; it had notfallen back to the French king. There was thus a twofold answer toWilliam's claim, that Herbert could not grant away even the rightsof his sisters, still less the rights of his people. Still it wascharacteristic of William that he had a case that might beplausibly argued. The people of Maine had fallen back on the oldTeutonic right. They had chosen a prince connected with the oldstock, but who was not the next heir according to any rule ofsuccession. Walter was hardly worthy of such an exceptionalhonour; he showed no more energy in Maine than his brother Ralphhad shown in England. The city was defended by Geoffrey, lord ofMayenne, a valiant man who fills a large place in the localhistory. But no valour or skill could withstand William's plan ofwarfare. He invaded Maine in much the same sort in which he haddefended Normandy. He gave out that he wished to win Maine withoutshedding man's blood. He fought no battles; he did not attack thecity, which he left to be the last spot that should be devoured. He harried the open country, he occupied the smaller posts, tillthe citizens were driven, against Geoffrey's will, to surrender. William entered Le Mans; he was received, we are told, with joy. When men make the best of a bad bargain, they sometimes persuadethemselves that they are really pleased. William, as ever, shed noblood; he harmed none of the men who had become his subjects; butLe Mans was to be bridled; its citizens needed a castle and aNorman garrison to keep them in their new allegiance. Walter andBiota surrendered their claims on Maine and became William's guestsat Falaise. Meanwhile Geoffrey of Mayenne refused to submit, andwithstood the new Count of Maine in his stronghold. William laidsiege to Mayenne, and took it by the favoured Norman argument offire. All Maine was now in the hands of the Conqueror. 

William had now made a greater conquest than any Norman duke hadmade before him. He had won a county and a noble city, and he hadwon them, in the ideas of his own age, with honour. Are we tobelieve that he sullied his conquest by putting his latecompetitors, his present guests, to death by poison? They diedconveniently for him, and they died in his own house. Such a deathwas strange; but strange things do happen. William gradually cameto shrink from no crime for which he could find a technicaldefence; but no advocate could have said anything on behalf of thepoisoning of Walter and Biota. Another member of the house ofMaine, Margaret the betrothed of his son Robert, died about thesame time; and her at least William had every motive to keep alive. One who was more dangerous than Walter, if he suffered anything, only suffered banishment. Of Geoffrey of Mayenne we hear no moretill William had again to fight for the possession of Maine. 

William had thus, in the year 1063, reached the height of his powerand fame as a continental prince. In a conquest on Gaulish soil hehad rehearsed the greater conquest which he was before long to makebeyond sea. Three years, eventful in England, outwardly uneventfulin Normandy, still part us from William's second visit to ourshores. But in the course of these three years one event must havehappened, which, without a blow being struck or a treaty beingsigned, did more for his hopes than any battle or any treaty. Atsome unrecorded time, but at a time which must come within theseyears, Harold Earl of the West-Saxons became the guest and the manof William Duke of the Normans. 

CHAPTER V--HAROLD'S OATH TO WILLIAM--A. D. 1064?

The lord of Normandy and Maine could now stop and reckon hischances of becoming lord of England also. While our authoritiesenable us to put together a fairly full account of both Norman andEnglish events, they throw no light on the way in which men ineither land looked at events in the other. Yet we might give muchto know what William and Harold at this time thought of oneanother. Nothing had as yet happened to make the two great rivalseither national or personal enemies. England and Normandy were atpeace, and the great duke and the great earl had most likely had nopersonal dealings with one another. They were rivals in the sensethat each looked forward to succeed to the English crown wheneverthe reigning king should die. But neither had as yet put forwardhis claim in any shape that the other could look on as any formalwrong to himself. If William and Harold had ever met, it couldhave been only during Harold's journey in Gaul. Whatevernegotiations Harold made during that journey were negotiationsunfriendly to William; still he may, in the course of that journey, have visited Normandy as well as France or Anjou. It is hard toavoid the thought that the tale of Harold's visit to William, ofhis oath to William, arose out of something that happened onHarold's way back from his Roman pilgrimage. To that journey wecan give an approximate date. Of any other journey we have no dateand no certain detail. We can say only that the fact that noEnglish writer makes any mention of any such visit, of any suchoath, is, under the circumstances, the strongest proof that thestory of the visit and the oath has some kind of foundation. Yetif we grant thus much, the story reads on the whole as if ithappened a few years later than the English earl's return fromRome. 

It is therefore most likely that Harold did pay a second visit toGaul, whether a first or a second visit to Normandy, at some timenearer to Edward's death than the year 1058. The English writersare silent; the Norman writers give no date or impossible dates;they connect the visit with a war in Britanny; but that war iswithout a date. We are driven to choose the year which is leastrich in events in the English annals. Harold could not have paid avisit of several months to Normandy either in 1063 or in 1065. Ofthose years the first was the year of Harold's great war in Wales, when he found how the Britons might be overcome by their own arms, when he broke the power of Gruffydd, and granted the Welsh kingdomto princes who became the men of Earl Harold as well as of KingEdward. Harold's visit to Normandy is said to have taken place inthe summer and autumn mouths; but the summer and autumn of 1065were taken up by the building and destruction of Harold's hunting-seat in Wales and by the greater events of the revolt andpacification of Northumberland. But the year 1064 is a blank inthe English annals till the last days of December, and no action ofHarold's in that year is recorded. It is therefore the onlypossible year among those just before Edward's death. Harold'svisit and oath to William may very well have taken place in thatyear; but that is all. 

We know as little for certain as to the circumstances of the visitor the nature of the oath. We can say only that Harold didsomething which enabled William to charge him with perjury andbreach of the duty of a vassal. It is inconceivable in itself, andunlike the formal scrupulousness of William's character, to fancythat he made his appeal to all Christendom without any ground atall. The Norman writers contradict one another so thoroughly inevery detail of the story that we can look on no part of it astrustworthy. Yet such a story can hardly have grown up so near tothe alleged time without some kernel of truth in it. And hereincomes the strong corroborative witness that the English writers, denying every other charge against Harold, pass this one by withoutnotice. We can hardly doubt that Harold swore some oath to Williamwhich he did not keep. More than this it would be rash to sayexcept as an avowed guess. 

As our nearest approach to fixing the date is to take that yearwhich is not impossible, so, to fix the occasion of the visit, wecan only take that one among the Norman versions which is also notimpossible. All the main versions represent Harold as wrecked onthe coast of Ponthieu, as imprisoned, according to the barbarouslaw of wreck, by Count Guy, and as delivered by the intervention ofWilliam. If any part of the story is true, this is. But as to thecircumstances which led to the shipwreck there is no agreement. Harold assuredly was not sent to announce to William a devise ofthe crown in his favour made with the consent of the Witan ofEngland and confirmed by the oaths of Stigand, Godwine, Siward, andLeofric. Stigand became Archbishop in September 1052: Godwinedied at Easter 1053. The devise must therefore have taken place, and Harold's journey must have taken place, within those few mostunlikely months, the very time when Norman influence wasoverthrown. Another version makes Harold go, against the King'swarnings, to bring back his brother Wulfnoth and his nephew Hakon, who had been given as hostages on the return of Godwine, and hadbeen entrusted by the King to the keeping of Duke William. Thisversion is one degree less absurd; but no such hostages are knownto have been given, and if they were, the patriotic party, in thefull swing of triumph, would hardly have allowed them to be sent toNormandy. A third version makes Harold's presence the result ofmere accident. He is sailing to Wales or Flanders, or simplytaking his pleasure in the Channel, when he is cast by a storm onthe coast of Ponthieu. Of these three accounts we may choose thethird as the only one that is possible. It is also one out ofwhich the others may have grown, while it is hard to see how thethird could have arisen out of either of the others. Harold then, we may suppose, fell accidentally into the clutches of Guy, and wasrescued from them, at some cost in ransom and in grants of land, byGuy's overlord Duke William. 

The whole story is eminently characteristic of William. He wouldbe honestly indignant at Guy's base treatment of Harold, and hewould feel it his part as Guy's overlord to redress the wrong. Buthe would also be alive to the advantage of getting his rival intohis power on so honourable a pretext. Simply to establish a claimto gratitude on the part of Harold would be something. But hemight easily do more, and, according to all accounts, he did more. Harold, we are told, as the Duke's friend and guest, returns theobligation under which the Duke has laid him by joining him in oneor more expeditions against the Bretons. The man who had justsmitten the Bret-Welsh of the island might well be asked to fight, and might well be ready to fight, against the Bret-Welsh of themainland. The services of Harold won him high honour; he wasadmitted into the ranks of Norman knighthood, and engaged to marryone of William's daughters. Now, at any time to which we can fixHarold's visit, all William's daughters must have been merechildren. Harold, on the other hand, seems to have been a littleolder than William. Yet there is nothing unlikely in theengagement, and it is the one point in which all the differentversions, contradicting each other on every other point, agreewithout exception. Whatever else Harold promises, he promisesthis, and in some versions he does not promise anything else. 

Here then we surely have the kernel of truth round which a mass offable, varying in different reports, has gathered. On no otherpoint is there any agreement. The place is unfixed; half a dozenNorman towns and castles are made the scene of the oath. The formof the oath is unfixed; in some accounts it is the ordinary oath ofhomage; in others it is an oath of fearful solemnity, taken on theholiest relics. In one well-known account, Harold is even made toswear on hidden relics, not knowing on what he is swearing. Hereis matter for much thought. To hold that one form of oath orpromise is more binding than another upsets all true confidencebetween man and man. The notion of the specially binding nature ofthe oath by relies assumes that, in case of breach of the oath, every holy person to whose relies despite has been done will becomethe personal enemy of the perjurer. But the last story of all isthe most instructive. William's formal, and more than formal, religion abhorred a false oath, in himself or in another man. But, so long as he keeps himself personally clear from the guilt, hedoes not scruple to put another man under special temptation, and, while believing in the power of the holy relics, he does notscruple to abuse them to a purpose of fraud. Surely, if Harold didbreak his oath, the wrath of the saints would fall more justly onWilliam. Whether the tale be true or false, it equally illustratesthe feelings of the time, and assuredly its truth or falsehoodconcerns the character of William far more than that of Harold. 

What it was that Harold swore, whether in this specially solemnfashion or in any other, is left equally uncertain. In any case heengages to marry a daughter of William--as to which daughter thestatements are endless--and in most versions he engages to dosomething more. He becomes the man of William, much as William hadbecome the man of Edward. He promises to give his sister inmarriage to an unnamed Norman baron. Moreover he promises tosecure the kingdom of England for William at Edward's death. Perhaps he is himself to hold the kingdom or part of it underWilliam; in any case William is to be the overlord; in the moreusual story, William is to be himself the immediate king, withHarold as his highest and most favoured subject. Meanwhile Haroldis to act in William's interest, to receive a Norman garrison inDover castle, and to build other castles at other points. But notwo stories agree, and not a few know nothing of anything beyondthe promise of marriage. 

Now if William really required Harold to swear to all these things, it must have been simply in order to have an occasion against him. If Harold really swore to all of them, it must have been simplybecause he felt that he was practically in William's power, withoutany serious intention of keeping the oath. If Harold took any suchoath, he undoubtedly broke it; but we may safely say that any guilton his part lay wholly in taking the oath, not in breaking it. Forhe swore to do what he could not do, and what it would have been acrime to do, if he could. If the King himself could not dispose ofthe crown, still less could the most powerful subject. Haroldcould at most promise William his "vote and interest, " whenever theelection came. But no one can believe that even Harold's influencecould have obtained the crown for William. His influence lay inhis being the embodiment of the national feeling; for him to appearas the supporter of William would have been to lose the crown forhimself without gaining it for William. Others in England and inScandinavia would have been glad of it. And the engagements tosurrender Dover castle and the like were simply engagements on thepart of an English earl to play the traitor against England. IfWilliam really called on Harold to swear to all this, he did so, not with any hope that the oath would be kept, but simply to puthis competitor as far as possible in the wrong. But most likelyHarold swore only to something much simpler. Next to the universalagreement about the marriage comes the very general agreement thatHarold became William's man. In these two statements we haveprobably the whole truth. In those days men took the obligation ofhomage upon themselves very easily. Homage was no degradation, even in the highest; a man often did homage to any one from whom hehad received any great benefit, and Harold had received a verygreat benefit from William. Nor did homage to a new lord implytreason to the old one. Harold, delivered by William from Guy'sdungeon, would be eager to do for William any act of friendship. The homage would be little more than binding himself in thestrongest form so to do. The relation of homage could be made tomean anything or nothing, as might be convenient. The man mightoften understand it in one sense and the lord in another. IfHarold became the man of William, he would look on the act aslittle more than an expression of good will and gratitude towardshis benefactor, his future father-in-law, his commander in theBreton war. He would not look on it as forbidding him to acceptthe English crown if it were offered to him. Harold, the man ofDuke William, might become a king, if he could, just as William, the man of King Philip, might become a king, if he could. Asthings went in those days, both the homage and the promise ofmarriage were capable of being looked on very lightly. 

But it was not in the temper or in the circumstances of William toput any such easy meaning on either promise. The oath might, ifneedful, be construed very strictly, and William was disposed toconstrue it very strictly. Harold had not promised William acrown, which was not his to promise; but he had promised to do thatwhich might be held to forbid him to take a crown which Williamheld to be his own. If the man owed his lord any duty at all, itwas surely his duty not to thwart his lord's wishes in such amatter. If therefore, when the vacancy of the throne came, Haroldtook the crown himself, or even failed to promote William's claimto it, William might argue that he had not rightly discharged theduty of a man to his lord. He could make an appeal to the worldagainst the new king, as a perjured man, who had failed to help hislord in the matter where his lord most needed his help. And, ifthe oath really had been taken on relics of special holiness, hecould further appeal to the religious feelings of the time againstthe man who had done despite to the saints. If he should be drivento claim the crown by arms, he could give the war the character ofa crusade. All this in the end William did, and all this, we maybe sure, he looked forward to doing, when he caused Harold tobecome his man. The mere obligation of homage would, in theskilful hands of William and Lanfranc, be quite enough to work onmen's minds, as William wished to work on them. To Haroldmeanwhile and to those in England who heard the story, theengagement would not seem to carry any of these consequences. Themere homage then, which Harold could hardly refuse, would answerWilliam's purpose nearly as well as any of these fuller obligationswhich Harold would surely have refused. And when a man older thanWilliam engaged to marry William's child-daughter, we must bear inmind the lightness with which such promises were made. Williamcould not seriously expect that this engagement would be kept, ifanything should lead Harold to another marriage. The promise wasmeant simply to add another count to the charges against Haroldwhen the time should come. Yet on this point it is not clear thatthe oath was broken. Harold undoubtedly married Ealdgyth, daughterof AElfgar and widow of Gruffydd, and not any daughter of William. But in one version Harold is made to say that the daughter ofWilliam whom he had engaged to marry was dead. And that one ofWilliam's daughters did die very early there seems little doubt. 

Whatever William did Lanfranc no doubt at least helped to plan. The Norman duke was subtle, but the Italian churchman was subtlerstill. In this long series of schemes and negotiations which ledto the conquest of England, we are dealing with two of the greatestrecorded masters of statecraft. We may call their policy dishonestand immoral, and so it was. But it was hardly more dishonest andimmoral than most of the diplomacy of later times. William'sobject was, without any formal breach of faith on his own part, toentrap Harold into an engagement which might be understood indifferent senses, and which, in the sense which William chose toput upon it, Harold was sure to break. Two men, themselves ofvirtuous life, a rigid churchman and a layman of unusual religiousstrictness, do not scruple to throw temptation in the way of afellow man in the hope that he will yield to that temptation. Theyexact a promise, because the promise is likely to be broken, andbecause its breach would suit their purposes. Through allWilliam's policy a strong regard for formal right as he chose tounderstand formal right, is not only found in company with muchpractical wrong, but is made the direct instrument of carrying outthat wrong. Never was trap more cunningly laid than that in whichWilliam now entangled Harold. Never was greater wrong done withoutthe breach of any formal precept of right. William and Lanfrancbroke no oath themselves, and that was enough for them. But it wasno sin in their eyes to beguile another into engagements which hewould understand in one way and they in another; they even, astheir admirers tell the story, beguile him into engagements at onceunlawful and impossible, because their interests would be promotedby his breach of those engagements. William, in short, under thespiritual guidance of Lanfranc, made Harold swear because hehimself would gain by being able to denounce Harold as perjured. 

The moral question need not be further discussed; but we shouldgreatly like to know how far the fact of Harold's oath, whateverits nature, was known in England? On this point we have notrustworthy authority. The English writers say nothing about thewhole matter; to the Norman writers this point was of no interest. No one mentions this point, except Harold's romantic biographer atthe beginning of the thirteenth century. His statements are of novalue, except as showing how long Harold's memory was cherished. According to him, Harold formally laid the matter before the Witan, and they unanimously voted that the oath--more, in his version, than a mere oath of homage--was not binding. It is not likely thatsuch a vote was ever formally passed, but its terms would onlyexpress what every Englishman would feel. The oath, whatever itsterms, had given William a great advantage; but every Englishmanwould argue both that the oath, whatever its terms, could nothinder the English nation from offering Harold the crown, and thatit could not bind Harold to refuse the crown if it should be sooffered. 

CHAPTER VI--THE NEGOTIATIONS OF DUKE WILLIAM--JANUARY-OCTOBER 1066

If the time that has been suggested was the real time of Harold'soath to William, its fulfilment became a practical question inlittle more than a year. How the year 1065 passed in Normandy wehave no record; in England its later months saw the revolt ofNorthumberland against Harold's brother Tostig, and thereconciliation which Harold made between the revolters and the kingto the damage of his brother's interests. Then came Edward'ssickness, of which he died on January 5, 1066. He had on hisdeathbed recommended Harold to the assembled Witan as his successorin the kingdom. The candidate was at once elected. WhetherWilliam, Edgar, or any other, was spoken of we know not; but as tothe recommendation of Edward and the consequent election of Haroldthe English writers are express. The next day Edward was buried, and Harold was crowned in regular form by Ealdred Archbishop ofYork in Edward's new church at Westminster. Northumberland refusedto acknowledge him; but the malcontents were won over by the comingof the king and his friend Saint Wulfstan Bishop of Worcester. Itwas most likely now, as a seal of this reconciliation, that Haroldmarried Ealdgyth, the sister of the two northern earls Edwin andMorkere, and the widow of the Welsh king Gruffydd. He doubtlesshoped in this way to win the loyalty of the earls and theirfollowers. 

The accession of Harold was perfectly regular according to Englishlaw. In later times endless fables arose; but the Norman writersof the time do not deny the facts of the recommendation, election, and coronation. They slur them over, or, while admitting the merefacts, they represent each act as in some way invalid. No writernear the time asserts a deathbed nomination of William; they speakonly of a nomination at some earlier time. But some Norman writersrepresent Harold as crowned by Stigand Archbishop of Canterbury. This was not, in the ideas of those times, a trifling question. Acoronation was then not a mere pageant; it was the actual admissionto the kingly office. Till his crowning and anointing, theclaimant of the crown was like a bishop-elect before hisconsecration. He had, by birth or election, the sole right tobecome king; it was the coronation that made him king. And as theceremony took the form of an ecclesiastical sacrament, its validitymight seem to depend on the lawful position of the officiatingbishop. In England to perform that ceremony was the right and dutyof the Archbishop of Canterbury; but the canonical position ofStigand was doubtful. He had been appointed on the flight ofRobert; he had received the pallium, the badge of arch-episcopalrank, only from the usurping Benedict the Tenth. It was thereforegood policy in Harold to be crowned by Ealdred, to whose positionthere was no objection. This is the only difference of factbetween the English and Norman versions at this stage. And thedifference is easily explained. At William's coronation the kingwalked to the altar between the two archbishops, but it was Ealdredwho actually performed the ceremony. Harold's coronation doubtlessfollowed the same order. But if Stigand took any part in thatcoronation, it was easy to give out that he took that special parton which the validity of the rite depended. 

Still, if Harold's accession was perfectly lawful, it was none theless strange and unusual. Except the Danish kings chosen undermore or less of compulsion, he was the first king who did notbelong to the West-Saxon kingly house. Such a choice could bejustified only on the ground that that house contained no qualifiedcandidate. Its only known members were the children of theAEtheling Edward, young Edgar and his sisters. Now Edgar wouldcertainly have been passed by in favour of any better qualifiedmember of the kingly house, as his father had been passed by infavour of King Edward. And the same principle would, as thingsstood, justify passing him by in favour of a qualified candidatenot of the kingly house. But Edgar's right to the crown is neverspoken of till a generation or two later, when the doctrines ofhereditary right had gained much greater strength, and when Henrythe Second, great-grandson through his mother of Edgar's sisterMargaret, insisted on his descent from the old kings. Thisdistinction is important, because Harold is often called anusurper, as keeping out Edgar the heir by birth. But those whocalled him an usurper at the time called him so as keeping outWilliam the heir by bequest. William's own election was out of thequestion. He was no more of the English kingly house than Harold;he was a foreigner and an utter stranger. Had Englishmen beenminded to choose a foreigner, they doubtless would have chosenSwegen of Denmark. He had found supporters when Edward was chosen;he was afterwards appealed to to deliver England from William. Hewas no more of the English kingly house than Harold or William; buthe was grandson of a man who had reigned over England, Northumberland might have preferred him to Harold; any part ofEngland would have preferred him to William. In fact any choicethat could have been made must have had something strange about it. Edgar himself, the one surviving male of the old stock, besides hisyouth, was neither born in the land nor the son of a crowned king. Those two qualifications had always been deemed of great moment; anelaborate pedigree went for little; actual royal birth went for agreat deal. There was now no son of a king to choose. Had therebeen even a child who was at once a son of Edward and a sister'sson of Harold, he might have reigned with his uncle as his guardianand counsellor. As it was, there was nothing to do but to choosethe man who, though not of kingly blood, had ruled England well forthirteen years. 

The case thus put seemed plain to every Englishman, at all eventsto every man in Wessex, East-Anglia, and southern Mercia. But itwould not seem so plain in OTHER lands. To the greater part ofWestern Europe William's claim might really seem the better. William himself doubtless thought his own claim the better; hedeluded himself as he deluded others. But we are more concernedwith William as a statesman; and if it be statesmanship to adaptmeans to ends, whatever the ends may be, if it be statesmanship tomake men believe that the worse cause is the better, then no manever showed higher statesmanship than William showed in his greatpleading before all Western Christendom. It is a sign of the timesthat it was a pleading before all Western Christendom. Others hadclaimed crowns; none had taken such pains to convince all mankindthat the claim was a good one. Such an appeal to public opinionmarks on one side a great advance. It was a great step towards theideas of International Law and even of European concert. It showedthat the days of mere force were over, that the days of subtlediplomacy had begun. Possibly the change was not without its darkside; it may be doubted whether a change from force to fraud iswholly a gain. Still it was an appeal from the mere argument ofthe sword to something which at least professed to be right andreason. William does not draw the sword till he has convincedhimself and everybody else that he is drawing it in a just cause. In that age the appeal naturally took a religious shape. Hereinlay its immediate strength; herein lay its weakness as regarded thetimes to come. William appealed to Emperor, kings, princes, Christian men great and small, in every Christian land. He wouldpersuade all; he would ask help of all. But above all he appealedto the head of Christendom, the Bishop of Rome. William in his ownperson could afford to do so; where he reigned, in Normandy or inEngland, there was no fear of Roman encroachments; he was fullyminded to be in all causes and over all persons within hisdominions supreme. While he lived, no Pope ventured to dispute hisright. But by acknowledging the right of the Pope to dispose ofcrowns, or at least to judge as to the right to crowns, he preparedmany days of humiliation for kings in general and specially for hisown successors. One man in Western Europe could see further thanWilliam, perhaps even further than Lanfranc. The chief counsellorof Pope Alexander the Second was the Archdeacon Hildebrand, thefuture Gregory the Seventh. If William outwitted the world, Hildebrand outwitted William. William's appeal to the Pope todecide between two claimants for the English crown strengthenedGregory not a little in his daring claim to dispose of the crownsof Rome, of Italy, and of Germany. Still this recognition of Romanclaims led more directly to the humiliation of William's successorin his own kingdom. Moreover William's successful attempt torepresent his enterprise as a holy war, a crusade before crusadeswere heard of, did much to suggest and to make ready the way forthe real crusades a generation later. It was not till afterWilliam's death that Urban preached the crusade, but it was duringWilliam's life that Gregory planned it. 

The appeal was strangely successful. William convinced, or seemedto convince, all men out of England and Scandinavia that his claimto the English crown was just and holy, and that it was a good workto help him to assert it in arms. He persuaded his own subjects;he certainly did not constrain them. He persuaded some foreignprinces to give him actual help, some to join his muster in person;he persuaded all to help him so far as not to hinder their subjectsfrom joining him as volunteers. And all this was done by sheerpersuasion, by argument good or bad. In adapting of means to ends, in applying to each class of men that kind of argument which bestsuited it, the diplomacy, the statesmanship, of William wasperfect. Again we ask, How far was it the statesmanship ofWilliam, how far of Lanfranc? But a prince need not do everythingwith his own hands and say everything with his own tongue. It wasno small part of the statesmanship of William to find out Lanfranc, to appreciate him and to trust him. And when two subtle brainswere at work, more could be done by the two working in partnershipthan by either working alone. 

By what arguments did the Duke of the Normans and the Prior of Becconvince mankind that the worse cause was the better? We mustalways remember the transitional character of the age. England wasin political matters in advance of other Western lands; that is, itlagged behind other Western lands. It had not gone so far on thedownward course. It kept far more than Gaul or even Germany of theold Teutonic institutions, the substance of which later ages havewon back under new shapes. Many things were understood in Englandwhich are now again understood everywhere, but which were no longerunderstood in France or in the lands held of the French crown. Thepopular election of kings comes foremost. Hugh Capet was anelective king as much as Harold; but the French kings had madetheir crown the most strictly hereditary of all crowns. Theyavoided any interregnum by having their sons crowned in theirlifetime. So with the great fiefs of the crown. The notion ofkingship as an office conferred by the nation, of a duchy or countyas an office held under the king, was still fully alive in England;in Gaul it was forgotten. Kingdom, duchies, counties, had allbecome possessions instead of offices, possessions passing byhereditary succession of some kind. But no rule of hereditarysuccession was universally or generally accepted. To this day thekingdoms of Europe differ as to the question of female succession, and it is but slowly that the doctrine of representation has oustedthe more obvious doctrine of nearness of kin. All these pointswere then utterly unsettled; crowns, save of course that of theEmpire, were to pass by hereditary right; only what was hereditaryright? At such a time claims would be pressed which would haveseemed absurd either earlier or later. To Englishmen, if it seemedstrange to elect one who was not of the stock of Cerdic, it seemedmuch more strange to be called on to accept without election, or toelect as a matter of course, one who was not of the stock of Cerdicand who was a stranger into the bargain. Out of England it wouldnot seem strange when William set forth that Edward, having nodirect heirs, had chosen his near kinsman William as his successor. Put by itself, that statement had a plausible sound. Thetransmission of a crown by bequest belongs to the same range ofideas as its transmission by hereditary right; both assume thecrown to be a property and not an office. Edward's nomination ofHarold, the election of Harold, the fact that William's kindred toEdward lay outside the royal line of England, the fact that therewas, in the person of Edgar, a nearer kinsman within that royalline, could all be slurred over or explained away or even turned toWilliam's profit. Let it be that Edward on his death-bed hadrecommended Harold, and that the Witan had elected Harold. Therecommendation was wrung from a dying man in opposition to anearlier act done when he was able to act freely. The election wasbrought about by force or fraud; if it was free, it was of no forceagainst William's earlier claim of kindred and bequest. As forEdgar, as few people in England thought of him, still fewer out ofEngland would have ever heard of him. It is more strange that thebastardy of William did not tell against him, as it had once toldin his own duchy. But this fact again marks the transitional age. Altogether the tale that a man who was no kinsman of the late kinghad taken to himself the crown which the king had bequeathed to akinsman, might, even without further aggravation, be easily made tosound like a tale of wrong. 

But the case gained tenfold strength when William added that thedoer of the wrong was of all men the one most specially bound notto do it. The usurper was in any case William's man, bound to actin all things for his lord. Perhaps he was more; perhaps he haddirectly sworn to receive William as king. Perhaps he had promisedall this with an oath of special solemnity. It would be easy toenlarge on all these further counts as making up an amount of guiltwhich William not only had the right to chastise, but which hewould be lacking in duty if he failed to chastise. He had topunish the perjurer, to avenge the wrongs of the saints. Surelyall who should help him in so doing would be helping in a righteouswork. 

The answer to all this was obvious. Putting the case at the veryworst, assuming that Harold had sworn all that he is ever said tohave sworn, assuming that he swore it in the most solemn way inwhich he is ever said to have sworn it, William's claim was notthereby made one whit better. Whatever Harold's own guilt mightbe, the people of England had no share in it. Nothing that Haroldhad done could bar their right to choose their king freely. Evenif Harold declined the crown, that would not bind the electors tochoose William. But when the notion of choosing kings had begun tosound strange, all this would go for nothing. There would be noneed even to urge that in any case the wrong done by Harold toWilliam gave William a casus belli against Harold, and thatWilliam, if victorious, might claim the crown of England, as apossession of Harold's, by right of conquest. In fact Williamnever claimed the crown by conquest, as conquest is commonlyunderstood. He always represented himself as the lawful heir, unhappily driven to use force to obtain his rights. The otherpleas were quite enough to satisfy most men out of England andScandinavia. William's work was to claim the crown of which he wasunjustly deprived, and withal to deal out a righteous chastisementon the unrighteous and ungodly man by whom he had been deprived ofit. 

In the hands of diplomatists like William and Lanfranc, all thesearguments, none of which had in itself the slightest strength, wereenough to turn the great mass of continental opinion in William'sfavour. But he could add further arguments specially adapted todifferent classes of minds. He could hold out the prospect ofplunder, the prospect of lands and honours in a land whose wealthwas already proverbial. It might of course be answered that theenterprise against England was hazardous and its success unlikely. But in such matters, men listen rather to their hopes than to theirfears. To the Normans it would be easy, not only to make out acase against Harold, but to rake up old grudges against the Englishnation. Under Harold the son of Cnut, Alfred, a prince half Normanby birth, wholly Norman by education, the brother of the late king, the lawful heir to the crown, had been betrayed and murdered bysomebody. A widespread belief laid the deed to the charge of thefather of the new king. This story might easily be made a groundof national complaint by Normandy against England, and it was easyto infer that Harold had some share in the alleged crime ofGodwine. It was easy to dwell on later events, on the driving ofso many Normans out of England, with Archbishop Robert at theirhead. Nay, not only had the lawful primate been driven out, but anusurper had been set in his place, and this usurping archbishop hadbeen made to bestow a mockery of consecration on the usurping king. The proposed aggression on England was even represented as amissionary work, undertaken for the good of the souls of thebenighted islanders. For, though the English were undoubtedlydevout after their own fashion, there was much in theecclesiastical state of England which displeased strict churchmenbeyond sea, much that William, when he had the power, deemed it hisduty to reform. The insular position of England naturally partedit in many things from the usages and feelings of the mainland, andit was not hard to get up a feeling against the nation as well asagainst its king. All this could not really strengthen William'sclaim; but it made men look more favourably on his enterprise. 

The fact that the Witan were actually in session at Edward's deathhad made it possible to carry out Harold's election and coronationwith extreme speed. The electors had made their choice beforeWilliam had any opportunity of formally laying his claim beforethem. This was really an advantage to him; he could the betterrepresent the election and coronation as invalid. His first stepwas of course to send an embassy to Harold to call on him even nowto fulfil his oath. The accounts of this embassy, of which we haveno English account, differ as much as the different accounts of theoath. Each version of course makes William demand and Haroldrefuse whatever it had made Harold swear. These demands andrefusals range from the resignation of the kingdom to a marriagewith William's daughter. And it is hard to separate this embassyfrom later messages between the rivals. In all William demands, Harold refuses; the arguments on each side are likely to begenuine. Harold is called on to give up the crown to William, tohold it of William, to hold part of the kingdom of William, tosubmit the question to the judgement of the Pope, lastly, if hewill do nothing else, at least to marry William's daughter. Different writers place these demands at different times, immediately after Harold's election or immediately before thebattle. The last challenge to a single combat between Harold andWilliam of course appears only on the eve of the battle. Now noneof these accounts come from contemporary partisans of Harold; everyone is touched by hostile feeling towards him. Thus theconstitutional language that is put into his mouth, almoststartling from its modern sound, has greater value. A King of theEnglish can do nothing without the consent of his Witan. They gavehim the kingdom; without their consent, he cannot resign it ordismember it or agree to hold it of any man; without their consent, he cannot even marry a foreign wife. Or he answers that thedaughter of William whom he promised to marry is dead, and that thesister whom he promised to give to a Norman is dead also. Harolddoes not deny the fact of his oath--whatever its nature; hejustifies its breach because it was taken against is will, andbecause it was in itself of no strength, as binding him to doimpossible things. He does not deny Edward's earlier promise toWilliam; but, as a testament is of no force while the testatorliveth, he argues that it is cancelled by Edward's later nominationof himself. In truth there is hardly any difference between thedisputants as to matters of fact. One side admits at least aplighting of homage on the part of Harold; the other side admitsHarold's nomination and election. The real difference is as to thelegal effect of either. Herein comes William's policy. Thequestion was one of English law and of nothing else, a matter forthe Witan of England and for no other judges. William, byingeniously mixing all kinds of irrelevant issues, contrived toremove the dispute from the region of municipal into that ofinternational law, a law whose chief representative was the Bishopof Rome. By winning the Pope to his side, William could give hisaggression the air of a religious war; but in so doing, heunwittingly undermined the throne that he was seeking and thethrones of all other princes. 

The answers which Harold either made, or which writers of his timethought that he ought to have made, are of the greatest moment inour constitutional history. The King is the doer of everything;but he can do nothing of moment without the consent of his Witan. They can say Yea or Nay to every proposal of the King. Anenergetic and popular king would get no answer but Yea to whateverhe chose to ask. A king who often got the answer of Nay, Nay, wasin great danger of losing his kingdom. The statesmanship ofWilliam knew how to turn this constitutional system, without makingany change in the letter, into a despotism like that ofConstantinople or Cordova. But the letter lived, to come to lightagain on occasion. The Revolution of 1399 was a falling back onthe doctrines of 1066, and the Revolution of 1688 was a fallingback on the doctrines of 1399. The principle at all three periodsis that the power of the King is strictly limited by law, but that, within the limits which the law sets to his power, he actsaccording to his own discretion. King and Witan stand out asdistinct powers, each of which needs the assent of the other to itsacts, and which may always refuse that assent. The political workof the last two hundred years has been to hinder these directcollisions between King and Parliament by the ingeniousconventional device of a body of men who shall be in name theministers of the Crown, but in truth the ministers of one House ofParliament. We do not understand our own political history, stillless can we understand the position and the statesmanship of theConqueror, unless we fully take in what the English constitution inthe eleventh century really was, how very modern-sounding are someof its doctrines, some of its forms. Statesmen of our own daymight do well to study the meagre records of the Gemot of 1047. There is the earliest recorded instance of a debate on a questionof foreign policy. Earl Godwine proposes to give help to Denmark, then at war with Norway. He is outvoted on the motion of EarlLeofric, the man of moderate politics, who appears as leader of theparty of non-intervention. It may be that in some things we havenot always advanced in the space of eight hundred years. 

The negotiations of William with his own subjects, with foreignpowers, and with the Pope, are hard to arrange in order. Severalnegotiations were doubtless going on at the same time. The embassyto Harold would of course come first of all. Till his demand hadbeen made and refused, William could make no appeal elsewhere. Weknow not whether the embassy was sent before or after Harold'sjourney to Northumberland, before or after his marriage withEaldgyth. If Harold was already married, the demand that he shouldmarry William's daughter could have been meant only in mockery. Indeed, the whole embassy was so far meant in mockery that it wassent without any expectation that its demands would be listened to. It was sent to put Harold, from William's point of view, morethoroughly in the wrong, and to strengthen William's case againsthim. It would therefore be sent at the first moment; the onlystatement, from a very poor authority certainly, makes the embassycome on the tenth day after Edward's death. Next after the embassywould come William's appeal to his own subjects, though Lanfrancmight well be pleading at Rome while William was pleading atLillebonne. The Duke first consulted a select company, whopromised their own services, but declined to pledge any one else. It was held that no Norman was bound to follow the Duke in anattempt to win for himself a crown beyond the sea. But voluntaryhelp was soon ready. A meeting of the whole baronage of Normandywas held at Lillebonne. The assembly declined any obligation whichcould be turned into a precedent, and passed no general vote atall. But the barons were won over one by one, and each promisedhelp in men and ships according to his means. 

William had thus, with some difficulty, gained the support of hisown subjects; but when he had once gained it, it was a zealoussupport. And as the flame spread from one part of Europe toanother, the zeal of Normandy would wax keener and keener. Thedealings of William with foreign powers are told us in a confused, piecemeal, and sometimes contradictory way. We hear that embassieswent to the young King Henry of Germany, son of the great Emperor, the friend of England, and also to Swegen of Denmark. The Normanstory runs that both princes promised William their active support. Yet Swegen, the near kinsman of Harold, was a friend of England, and the same writer who puts this promise into his mouth makes himsend troops to help his English cousin. Young Henry or hisadvisers could have no motive for helping William; but subjects ofthe Empire were at least not hindered from joining his banner. Tothe French king William perhaps offered the bait of holding thecrown of England of him; but Philip is said to have discouragedWilliam's enterprise as much as he could. Still he did not hinderFrench subjects from taking a part in it. Of the princes who heldof the French crown, Eustace of Boulogne, who joined the muster inperson, and Guy of Ponthieu, William's own vassal, who sent hisson, seem to have been the only ones who did more than allow thelevying of volunteers in their dominions. A strange tale is toldthat Conan of Britanny took this moment for bringing up his ownforgotten pretensions to the Norman duchy. If William was going towin England, let him give up Normandy to him. He presently, thetale goes, died of a strange form of poisoning, in which it isimplied that William had a hand. This is the story of Walter andBiota over again. It is perhaps enough to say that the Bretonwriters know nothing of the tale. 

But the great negotiation of all was with the Papal court. Wemight have thought that the envoy would be Lanfranc, so wellskilled in Roman ways; but William perhaps needed him as a constantadviser by his own person. Gilbert, Archdeacon of Lisieux, wassent to Pope Alexander. No application could better suit papalinterests than the one that was now made; but there were some moraldifficulties. Not a few of the cardinals, Hildebrand tells ushimself, argued, not without strong language towards Hildebrand, that the Church had nothing to do with such matters, and that itwas sinful to encourage a claim which could not be enforced withoutbloodshed. But with many, with Hildebrand among them, the notionof the Church as a party or a power came before all thoughts of itshigher duties. One side was carefully heard; the other seems notto have been heard at all. We hear of no summons to Harold, andthe King of the English could not have pleaded at the Pope's barwithout acknowledging that his case was at least doubtful. Thejudgement of Alexander or of Hildebrand was given for William. Harold was declared to be an usurper, perhaps declaredexcommunicated. The right to the English crown was declared to bein the Duke of the Normans, and William was solemnly blessed in theenterprise in which he was at once to win his own rights, tochastise the wrong-doer, to reform the spiritual state of themisguided islanders, to teach them fuller obedience to the RomanSee and more regular payment of its temporal dues. William gainedhis immediate point; but his successors on the English throne paidthe penalty. Hildebrand gained his point for ever, or for as longa time as men might be willing to accept the Bishop of Rome as ajudge in any matters. The precedent by which Hildebrand, underanother name, took on him to dispose of a higher crown than that ofEngland was now fully established. 

As an outward sign of papal favour, William received a consecratedbanner and a ring containing a hair of Saint Peter. Here wassomething for men to fight for. The war was now a holy one. Allwho were ready to promote their souls' health by slaughter andplunder might flock to William's standard, to the standard of SaintPeter. Men came from most French-speaking lands, the Normans ofApulia and Sicily being of course not slow to take up the quarrelof their kinsfolk. But, next to his own Normandy, the lands whichsent most help were Flanders, the land of Matilda, and Britanny, where the name of the Saxon might still be hateful. We must neverforget that the host of William, the men who won England, the menwho settled in England, were not an exclusively Norman body. NotNorman, but FRENCH, is the name most commonly opposed to ENGLISH, as the name of the conquering people. Each Norman severally wouldhave scorned that name for himself personally; but it was the onlyname that could mark the whole of which he and his countrymenformed a part. Yet, if the Normans were but a part, they were thegreatest and the noblest part; their presence alone redeemed theenterprise from being a simple enterprise of brigandage. TheNorman Conquest was after all a Norman Conquest; men of other landswere merely helpers. So far as it was not Norman, it was Italian;the subtle wit of Lombard Lanfranc and Tuscan Hildebrand did asmuch to overthrow us as the lance and bow of Normandy. 

CHAPTER VII--WILLIAM'S INVASION OF ENGLAND--AUGUST-DECEMBER 1066

The statesmanship of William had triumphed. The people of Englandhad chosen their king, and a large part of the world had been wonover by the arts of a foreign prince to believe that it was arighteous and holy work to set him on the throne to which theEnglish people had chosen the foremost man among themselves. Nodiplomatic success was ever more thorough. Unluckily we knownothing of the state of feeling in England while William wasplotting and pleading beyond the sea. Nor do we know how much menin England knew of what was going on in other lands, or what theythought when they heard of it. We know only that, after Harold hadwon over Northumberland, he came back and held the Easter Gemot atWestminster. Then in the words of the Chronicler, "it was known tohim that William Bastard, King Edward's kinsman, would come hitherand win this land. " This is all that our own writers tell us aboutWilliam Bastard, between his peaceful visit to England in 1052 andhis warlike visit in 1066. But we know that King Harold did allthat man could do to defeat his purposes, and that he was thereinloyally supported by the great mass of the English nation, we maysafely say by all, save his two brothers-in-law and so many as theycould influence. 

William's doings we know more fully. The military events of thiswonderful year there is no need to tell in detail. But we see thatWilliam's generalship was equal to his statesmanship, and that itwas met by equal generalship on the side of Harold. Moreover, theluck of William is as clear as either his statesmanship or hisgeneralship. When Harold was crowned on the day of the Epiphany, he must have felt sure that he would have to withstand an invasionof England before the year was out. But it could not have comeinto the mind of Harold, William, or Lanfranc, or any other man, that he would have to withstand two invasions of England at thesame moment. 

It was the invasion of Harold of Norway, at the same time as theinvasion of William, which decided the fate of England. The issueof the struggle might have gone against England, had she had tostrive against one enemy only; as it was, it was the attack made bytwo enemies at once which divided her strength, and enabled theNormans to land without resistance. The two invasions came asnearly as possible at the same moment. Harold Hardrada can hardlyhave reached the Yorkshire coast before September; the battle ofFulford was fought on September 20th and that of Stamfordbridge onSeptember 25th. William landed on September 28th, and the battleof Senlac was fought on October 14th. Moreover William's fleet wasready by August 12th; his delay in crossing was owing to hiswaiting for a favourable wind. When William landed, the event ofthe struggle in the North could not have been known in Sussex. Hemight have had to strive, not with Harold of England, but withHarold of Norway as his conqueror. 

At what time of the year Harold Hardrada first planned his invasionof England is quite uncertain. We can say nothing of his doingstill he is actually afloat. And with the three mighty forms ofWilliam and the two Harolds on the scene, there is something atonce grotesque and perplexing in the way in which an Englishtraitor flits about among them. The banished Tostig, deprived ofhis earldom in the autumn of 1065, had then taken refuge inFlanders. He now plays a busy part, the details of which are lostin contradictory accounts. But it is certain that in May 1066 hemade an ineffectual attack on England. And this attack was mostlikely made with the connivance of William. It suited William touse Tostig as an instrument, and to encourage so restless a spiritin annoying the common enemy. It is also certain that Tostig waswith the Norwegian fleet in September, and that he died atStamfordbridge. We know also that he was in Scotland between Mayand September. It is therefore hard to believe that Tostig had sogreat a hand in stirring up Harold Hardrada to his expedition asthe Norwegian story makes out. Most likely Tostig simply joinedthe expedition which Harold Hardrada independently planned. Onething is certain, that, when Harold of England was attacked by twoenemies at once, it was not by two enemies acting in concert. Theinterests of William and of Harold of Norway were as much opposedto one another as either of them was to the interests of Harold ofEngland. 

One great difficulty beset Harold and William alike. Either inNormandy or in England it was easy to get together an army ready tofight a battle; it was not easy to keep a large body of men underarms for any long time without fighting. It was still harder tokeep them at once without fighting and without plundering. WhatWilliam had done in this way in two invasions of Normandy, he wasnow called on to do on a greater scale. His great and motley armywas kept during a great part of August and September, first at theDive, then at Saint Valery, waiting for the wind that was to takeit to England. And it was kept without doing any serious damage tothe lands where they were encamped. In a holy war, this time wasof course largely spent in appeals to the religious feelings of thearmy. Then came the wonderful luck of William, which enabled himto cross at the particular moment when he did cross. A littleearlier or later, he would have found his landing stoutly disputed;as it was, he landed without resistance. Harold of England, notbeing able, in his own words, to be everywhere at once, had donewhat he could. He and his brothers Gyrth and Leofwine undertookthe defence of southern England against the Norman; the earls ofthe North, his brothers-in-law Edwin and Morkere, were to defendtheir own land against the Norwegians. His own preparations werelooked on with wonder. To guard the long line of coast against theinvader, he got together such a force both by sea and land as noking had ever got together before, and he kept it together for alonger time than William did, through four months of inaction, saveperhaps some small encounters by sea. At last, early in September, provisions failed; men were no doubt clamouring to go back for theharvest, and the great host had to be disbanded. Could Williamhave sailed as soon as his fleet was ready, he would have foundsouthern England thoroughly prepared to meet him. Meanwhile thenorthern earls had clearly not kept so good watch as the king. Harold Hardrada harried the Yorkshire coast; he sailed up the Ouse, and landed without resistance. At last the earls met him in armsand were defeated by the Northmen at Fulford near York. Four dayslater York capitulated, and agreed to receive Harold Hardrada asking. Meanwhile the news reached Harold of England; he gottogether his housecarls and such other troops as could be musteredat the moment, and by a march of almost incredible speed he wasable to save the city and all northern England. The fight ofStamfordbridge, the defeat and death of the most famous warrior ofthe North, was the last and greatest success of Harold of England. But his northward march had left southern England utterlyunprotected. Had the south wind delayed a little longer, he might, before the second enemy came, have been again on the South-Saxoncoast. As it was, three days after Stamfordbridge, while Harold ofEngland was still at York, William of Normandy landed withoutopposition at Pevensey. 

Thus wonderfully had an easy path into England been opened forWilliam. The Norwegian invasion had come at the best moment forhis purposes, and the result had been what he must have wished. With one Harold he must fight, and to fight with Harold of Englandwas clearly best for his ends. His work would not have been done, if another had stepped in to chastise the perjurer. Now that hewas in England, it became a trial of generalship between him andHarold. William's policy was to provoke Harold to fight at once. It was perhaps Harold's policy--so at least thought Gyrth--tofollow yet more thoroughly William's own example in the Frenchinvasions. Let him watch and follow the enemy, let him avoid allaction, and even lay waste the land between London and the southcoast, and the strength of the invaders would gradually be wornout. But it might have been hard to enforce such a policy on menwhose hearts were stirred by the invasion, and one part of whom, the King's own thegns and housecarls, were eager to follow up theirvictory over the Northern with a yet mightier victory over theNorman. And Harold spoke as an English king should speak, when heanswered that he would never lay waste a single rood of Englishground, that he would never harm the lands or the goods of the menwho had chosen him to be their king. In the trial of skill betweenthe two commanders, each to some extent carried his point. William's havoc of a large part of Sussex compelled Harold to marchat once to give battle. But Harold was able to give battle at aplace of his own choosing, thoroughly suited for the kind ofwarfare which he had to wage. 

Harold was blamed, as defeated generals are blamed, for being tooeager to fight and not waiting for more troops. But to any one whostudies the ground it is plain that Harold needed, not more troops, but to some extent better troops, and that he would not have gotthose better troops by waiting. From York Harold had marched toLondon, as the meeting-place for southern and eastern England, aswell as for the few who actually followed him from the North andthose who joined him on the march. Edwin and Morkere were biddento follow with the full force of their earldoms. This they tookcare not to do. Harold and his West-Saxons had saved them, butthey would not strike a blow back again. Both now and earlier inthe year they doubtless aimed at a division of the kingdom, such ashad been twice made within fifty years. Either Harold or Williammight reign in Wessex and East-Anglia; Edwin should reign inNorthumberland and Mercia. William, the enemy of Harold but noenemy of theirs, might be satisfied with the part of England whichwas under the immediate rule of Harold and his brothers, and mightallow the house of Leofric to keep at least an under-kingship inthe North. That the brother earls held back from the King's musteris undoubted, and this explanation fits in with their whole conductboth before and after. Harold had thus at his command the pickedmen of part of England only, and he had to supply the place ofthose who were lacking with such forces as he could get. The lackof discipline on the part of these inferior troops lost Harold thebattle. But matters would hardly have been mended by waiting formen who had made up their minds not to come. 

The messages exchanged between King and Duke immediately before thebattle, as well as at an earlier time, have been spoken of already. The challenge to single combat at least comes now. When Haroldrefused every demand, William called on Harold to spare the bloodof his followers, and decide his claims by battle in his ownperson. Such a challenge was in the spirit of Normanjurisprudence, which in doubtful cases looked for the judgement ofGod, not, as the English did, by the ordeal, but by the personalcombat of the two parties. Yet this challenge too was surely givenin the hope that Harold would refuse it, and would thereby puthimself, in Norman eyes, yet more thoroughly in the wrong. For thechallenge was one which Harold could not but refuse. Williamlooked on himself as one who claimed his own from one whowrongfully kept him out of it. He was plaintiff in a suit in whichHarold was defendant; that plaintiff and defendant were bothaccompanied by armies was an accident for which the defendant, whohad refused all peaceful means of settlement, was to blame. ButHarold and his people could not look on the matter as a merequestion between two men. The crown was Harold's by the gift ofthe nation, and he could not sever his own cause from the cause ofthe nation. The crown was his; but it was not his to stake on theissue of a single combat. If Harold were killed, the nation mightgive the crown to whom they thought good; Harold's death could notmake William's claim one jot better. The cause was not personal, but national. The Norman duke had, by a wanton invasion, wronged, not the King only, but every man in England, and every man mightclaim to help in driving him out. Again, in an ordinary wager ofbattle, the judgement can be enforced; here, whether William slewHarold or Harold slew William, there was no means of enforcing thejudgement except by the strength of the two armies. If Haroldfell, the English army were not likely to receive William as king;if William fell, the Norman army was still less likely to goquietly out of England. The challenge was meant as a mere blind;it would raise the spirit of William's followers; it would besomething for his poets and chroniclers to record in his honour;that was all. 

The actual battle, fought on Senlac, on Saint Calixtus' day, wasmore than a trial of skill and courage between two captains and twoarmies. It was, like the old battles of Macedonian and Roman, atrial between two modes of warfare. The English clave to the oldTeutonic tactics. They fought on foot in the close array of theshield-wall. Those who rode to the field dismounted when the fightbegan. They first hurled their javelins, and then took to theweapons of close combat. Among these the Danish axe, brought in byCnut, had nearly displaced the older English broadsword. Such wasthe array of the housecarls and of the thegns who had followedHarold from York or joined him on his march. But the treason ofEdwin and Morkere had made it needful to supply the place of thepicked men of Northumberland with irregular levies, armed almostanyhow. Of their weapons of various kinds the bow was the rarest. The strength of the Normans lay in the arms in which the Englishwere lacking, in horsemen and archers. These last seem to havebeen a force of William's training; we first hear of the Normanbowmen at Varaville. These two ways of fighting were brought eachone to perfection by the leaders on each side. They had not yetbeen tried against one another. At Stamfordbridge Harold haddefeated an enemy whose tactics were the same as his own. Williamhad not fought a pitched battle since Val-es-dunes in his youth. Indeed pitched battles, such as English and Scandinavian warriorswere used to in the wars of Edmund and Cnut, were rare incontinental warfare. That warfare mainly consisted in the attackand defence of strong places, and in skirmishes fought under theirwalls. But William knew how to make use of troops of differentkinds and to adapt them to any emergency. Harold too was a man ofresources; he had gained his Welsh successes by adapting his men tothe enemy's way of fighting. To withstand the charge of the Normanhorsemen, Harold clave to the national tactics, but he chose forthe place of battle a spot where those tactics would have theadvantage. A battle on the low ground would have been favourableto cavalry; Harold therefore occupied and fenced in a hill, thehill of Senlac, the site in after days of the abbey and town ofBattle, and there awaited the Norman attack. The Norman horsemenhad thus to make their way up the hill under the shower of theEnglish javelins, and to meet the axes as soon as they reached thebarricade. And these tactics were thoroughly successful, till theinferior troops were tempted to come down from the hill and chasethe Bretons whom they had driven back. This suggested to Williamthe device of the feigned flight; the English line of defence wasbroken, and the advantage of ground was lost. Thus was the greatbattle lost. And the war too was lost by the deaths of Harold andhis brothers, which left England without leaders, and by theunyielding valour of Harold's immediate following. They were slainto a man, and south-eastern England was left defenceless. 

William, now truly the Conqueror in the vulgar sense, was still farfrom having full possession of his conquest. He had militarypossession of part of one shire only; he had to look for furtherresistance, and he met with not a little. But his combined luckand policy served him well. He could put on the form of fullpossession before he had the reality; he could treat all furtherresistance as rebellion against an established authority; he couldmake resistance desultory and isolated. William had to subdueEngland in detail; he had never again to fight what the EnglishChroniclers call a folk-fight. His policy after his victory wasobvious. Still uncrowned, he was not, even in his own view, king, but he alone had the right to become king. He had thus far beendriven to maintain his rights by force; he was not disposed to useforce any further, if peaceful possession was to be had. Hiscourse was therefore to show himself stern to all who withstoodhim, but to take all who submitted into his protection and favour. He seems however to have looked for a speedier submission thanreally happened. He waited a while in his camp for men to come inand acknowledge him. As none came, he set forth to win by thestrong arm the land which he claimed of right. 

Thus to look for an immediate submission was not unnatural; fullybelieving in the justice of his own cause, William would believe init all the more after the issue of the battle. God, Harold hadsaid, should judge between himself and William, and God had judgedin William's favour. With all his clear-sightedness, he wouldhardly understand how differently things looked in English eyes. Some indeed, specially churchmen, specially foreign churchmen, nowbegan to doubt whether to fight against William was not to fightagainst God. But to the nation at large William was simply asHubba, Swegen, and Cnut in past times. England had before now beenconquered, but never in a single fight. Alfred and Edmund hadfought battle after battle with the Dane, and men had no mind tosubmit to the Norman because he had been once victorious. ButAlfred and Edmund, in alternate defeat and victory, lived to fightagain; their people had not to choose a new king; the King hadmerely to gather a new army. But Harold was slain, and the firstquestion was how to fill his place. The Witan, so many as could begot together, met to choose a king, whose first duty would be tomeet William the Conqueror in arms. The choice was not easy. Harold's sons were young, and not born AEthelings. His brothers, of whom Gyrth at least must have been fit to reign, had fallen withhim. Edwin and Morkere were not at the battle, but they were atthe election. But schemes for winning the crown for the house ofLeofric would find no favour in an assembly held in London. Forlack of any better candidate, the hereditary sentiment prevailed. Young Edgar was chosen. But the bishops, it is said, did notagree; they must have held that God had declared in favour ofWilliam. Edwin and Morkere did agree; but they withdrew to theirearldoms, still perhaps cherishing hopes of a divided kingdom. Edgar, as king-elect, did at least one act of kingship byconfirming the election of an abbot of Peterborough; but of anygeneral preparation for warfare there is not a sign. The localresistance which William met with shows that, with any combinedaction, the case was not hopeless. But with Edgar for king, withthe northern earls withdrawing their forces, with the bishops atleast lukewarm, nothing could be done. The Londoners were eager tofight; so doubtless were others; but there was no leader. So farfrom there being another Harold or Edmund to risk another battle, there was not even a leader to carry out the policy of Fabius andGyrth. 

Meanwhile the Conqueror was advancing, by his own road and afterhis own fashion. We must remember the effect of the mere slaughterof the great battle. William's own army had suffered severely: hedid not leave Hastings till he had received reinforcements fromNormandy. But to England the battle meant the loss of the wholeforce of the south-eastern shires. A large part of England wasleft helpless. William followed much the same course as he hadfollowed in Maine. A legal claimant of the crown, it was hisinterest as soon as possible to become a crowned king, and that inhis kinsman's church at Westminster. But it was not his interestto march straight on London and demand the crown, sword in hand. He saw that, without the support of the northern earls, Edgar couldnot possibly stand, and that submission to himself was only aquestion of time. He therefore chose a roundabout course throughthose south-eastern shires which were wholly without means ofresisting him. He marched from Sussex into Kent, harrying the landas he went, to frighten the people into submission. The men ofRomney had before the battle cut in pieces a party of Normans whohad fallen into their hands, most likely by sea. William took someundescribed vengeance for their slaughter. Dover and its castle, the castle which, in some accounts, Harold had sworn to surrenderto William, yielded without a blow. Here then he was gracious. When some of his unruly followers set fire to the houses of thetown, William made good the losses of their owners. Canterburysubmitted; from thence, by a bold stroke, he sent messengers whoreceived the submission of Winchester. He marched on, ravaging ashe went, to the immediate neighbourhood of London, but keeping everon the right bank of the Thames. But a gallant sally of thecitizens was repulsed by the Normans, and the suburb of Southwarkwas burned. William marched along the river to Wallingford. Herehe crossed, receiving for the first time the active support of anEnglishman of high rank, Wiggod of Wallingford, sheriff ofOxfordshire. He became one of a small class of Englishmen who werereceived to William's fullest favour, and kept at least as high aposition under him as they had held before. William still kept on, marching and harrying, to the north of London, as he had beforedone to the south. The city was to be isolated within a cordon ofwasted lands. His policy succeeded. As no succours came from theNorth, the hearts of those who had chosen them a king failed at theapproach of his rival. At Berkhampstead Edgar himself, withseveral bishops and chief men, came to make their submission. Theyoffered the crown to William, and, after some debate, he acceptedit. But before he came in person, he took means to secure thecity. The beginnings of the fortress were now laid which, in thecourse of William's reign, grew into the mighty Tower of London. 

It may seem strange that when his great object was at last withinhis grasp, William should have made his acceptance of it a matterof debate. He claims the crown as his right; the crown is offeredto him; and yet he doubts about taking it. Ought he, he asks, totake the crown of a kingdom of which he has not as yet fullpossession? At that time the territory of which William had evenmilitary possession could not have stretched much to the north-westof a line drawn from Winchester to Norwich. Outside that line menwere, as William is made to say, still in rebellion. His scrupleswere come over by an orator who was neither Norman nor English, butone of his foreign followers, Haimer Viscount of Thouars. Thedebate was most likely got up at William's bidding, but it was notgot up without a motive. William, ever seeking outward legality, seeking to do things peaceably when they could be done peaceably, seeking for means to put every possible enemy in the wrong, wishedto make his acceptance of the English crown as formally regular asmight be. Strong as he held his claim to be by the gift of Edward, it would be better to be, if not strictly chosen, at leastpeacefully accepted, by the chief men of England. It might someday serve his purpose to say that the crown had been offered tohim, and that he had accepted it only after a debate in which thechief speaker was an impartial stranger. Having gained this pointmore, William set out from Berkhampstead, already, in outward form, King-elect of the English. 

The rite which was to change him from king-elect into full kingtook place in Eadward's church of Westminster on Christmas day, 1066, somewhat more than two months after the great battle, somewhat less than twelve months after the death of Edward and thecoronation of Harold. Nothing that was needed for a lawfulcrowning was lacking. The consent of the people, the oath of theking, the anointing by the hands of a lawful metropolitan, all werethere. Ealdred acted as the actual celebrant, while Stigand tookthe second place in the ceremony. But this outward harmony betweenthe nation and its new king was marred by an unhappy accident. Norman horsemen stationed outside the church mistook the shout withwhich the people accepted the new king for the shout of men whowere doing him damage. But instead of going to his help, theybegan, in true Norman fashion, to set fire to the neighbouringhouses. The havoc and plunder that followed disturbed thesolemnities of the day and were a bad omen for the new reign. Itwas no personal fault of William's; in putting himself in the handsof subjects of such new and doubtful loyalty, he needed men near athand whom he could trust. But then it was his doing that Englandhad to receive a king who needed foreign soldiers to guard him. 

William was now lawful King of the English, so far as outwardceremonies could make him so. But he knew well how far he was fromhaving won real kingly authority over the whole kingdom. Hardly athird part of the land was in his obedience. He had still, as hedoubtless knew, to win his realm with the edge of the sword. Buthe could now go forth to further conquests, not as a foreigninvader, but as the king of the land, putting down rebellion amonghis own subjects. If the men of Northumberland should refuse toreceive him, he could tell them that he was their lawful king, anointed by their own archbishop. It was sound policy to act asking of the whole land, to exercise a semblance of authority wherehe had none in fact. And in truth he was king of the whole land, so far as there was no other king. The unconquered parts of theland were in no mood to submit; but they could not agree on anycommon plan of resistance under any common leader. Some were stillfor Edgar, some for Harold's sons, some for Swegen of Denmark. Edwin and Morkere doubtless were for themselves. If one commonleader could have been found even now, the throne of the foreignking would have been in no small danger. But no such leader came:men stood still, or resisted piecemeal, so the land was conqueredpiecemeal, and that under cover of being brought under theobedience of its lawful king. 

Now that the Norman duke has become an English king, his career asan English statesman strictly begins, and a wonderful career it is. Its main principle was to respect formal legality wherever hecould. All William's purposes were to be carried out, as far aspossible, under cover of strict adherence to the law of the land ofwhich he had become the lawful ruler. He had sworn at his crowningto keep the laws of the land, and to rule his kingdom as well asany king that had gone before him. And assuredly he meant to keephis oath. But a foreign king, at the head of a foreign army, andwho had his foreign followers to reward, could keep that oath onlyin its letter and not in its spirit. But it is wonderful hownearly he came to keep it in the letter. He contrived to do hismost oppressive acts, to deprive Englishmen of their lands andoffices, and to part them out among strangers, under cover ofEnglish law. He could do this. A smaller man would either havefailed to carry out his purposes at all, or he could have carriedthem out only by reckless violence. When we examine theadministration of William more in detail, we shall see that itseffects in the long run were rather to preserve than to destroy ourancient institutions. He knew the strength of legal fictions; bylegal fictions he conquered and he ruled. But every legal fictionis outward homage to the principle of law, an outward protestagainst unlawful violence. That England underwent a NormanConquest did in the end only make her the more truly England. Butthat this could be was because that conquest was wrought by theBastard of Falaise and by none other. 

CHAPTER VIII--THE CONQUEST OF ENGLAND--DECEMBER 1066-MARCH 1070

The coronation of William had its effect in a moment. It made himreally king over part of England; it put him into a new positionwith regard to the rest. As soon as there was a king, men flockedto swear oaths to him and become his men. They came from shireswhere he had no real authority. It was most likely now, ratherthan at Berkhampstead, that Edwin and Morkere at last made up theirminds to acknowledge some king. They became William's men andreceived again their lands and earldoms as his grant. Other chiefmen from the North also submitted and received their lands andhonours again. But Edwin and Morkere were not allowed to go backto their earldoms. William thought it safer to keep them nearhimself, under the guise of honour--Edwin was even promised one ofhis daughters in marriage--but really half as prisoners, half ashostages. Of the two other earls, Waltheof son of Siward, who heldthe shires of Northampton and Huntingdon, and Oswulf who held theearldom of Bernicia or modern Northumberland, we hear nothing atthis moment. As for Waltheof, it is strange if he were not atSenlac; it is strange if he were there and came away alive. But weonly know that he was in William's allegiance a few months later. Oswulf must have held out in some marked way. It was William'spolicy to act as king even where he had no means of carrying outhis kingly orders. He therefore in February 1067 granted theBernician earldom to an Englishman named Copsige, who had acted asTostig's lieutenant. This implies the formal deprivation ofOswulf. But William sent no force with the new earl, who had totake possession as he could. That is to say, of two parties in alocal quarrel, one hoped to strengthen itself by making use ofWilliam's name. And William thought that it would strengthen hisposition to let at least his name be heard in every corner of thekingdom. The rest of the story stands rather aloof from the mainhistory. Copsige got possession of the earldom for a moment. Hewas then killed by Oswulf and his partisans, and Oswulf himself waskilled in the course of the year by a common robber. At Christmas, 1067, William again granted or sold the earldom to another of thelocal chiefs, Gospatric. But he made no attempt to exercise directauthority in those parts till the beginning of the year 1069. 

All this illustrates William's general course. Crowned king overthe land, he would first strengthen himself in that part of thekingdom which he actually held. Of the passive disobedience ofother parts he would take no present notice. In northern andcentral England William could exercise no authority; but thoselands were not in arms against him, nor did they acknowledge anyother king. Their earls, now his earls, were his favouredcourtiers. He could afford to be satisfied with this nominalkingship, till a fit opportunity came to make it real. He couldafford to lend his name to the local enterprise of Copsige. Itwould at least be another count against the men of Bernicia thatthey had killed the earl whom King William gave them. 

Meanwhile William was taking very practical possession in theshires where late events had given him real authority. His policywas to assert his rights in the strongest form, but to show hismildness and good will by refraining from carrying them out to theuttermost. By right of conquest William claimed nothing. He hadcome to take his crown, and he had unluckily met with someopposition in taking it. The crown lands of King Edward passed ofcourse to his successor. As for the lands of other men, inWilliam's theory all was forfeited to the crown. The lawful heirhad been driven to seek his kingdom in arms; no Englishman hadhelped him; many Englishmen had fought against him. All then weredirectly or indirectly traitors. The King might lawfully deal withthe lands of all as his own. But in the greater part of thekingdom it was impossible, in no part was it prudent, to carry outthis doctrine in its fulness. A passage in Domesday, compared witha passage in the English Chronicles, shows that, soon afterWilliam's coronation, the English as a body, within the landsalready conquered, redeemed their lands. They bought them back ata price, and held them as a fresh grant from King William. Somespecial offenders, living and dead, were exempted from this favour. The King took to himself the estates of the house of Godwine, savethose of Edith, the widow of his revered predecessor, whom it washis policy to treat with all honour. The lands too of those whohad died on Senlac were granted back to their heirs only of specialfavour, sometimes under the name of alms. Thus, from the beginningof his reign, William began to make himself richer than any kingthat had been before him in England or than any other Western kingof his day. He could both punish his enemies and reward hisfriends. Much of what he took he kept; much he granted away, mainly to his foreign followers, but sometimes also to Englishmenwho had in any way won his favour. Wiggod of Wallingford was oneof the very few Englishmen who kept and received estates which putthem alongside of the great Norman landowners. The doctrine thatall land was held of the King was now put into a practical shape. All, Englishmen and strangers, not only became William's subjects, but his men and his grantees. Thus he went on during his wholereign. There was no sudden change from the old state of things tothe new. After the general redemption of lands, gradually carriedout as William's power advanced, no general blow was dealt atEnglishmen as such. They were not, like some conquered nations, formally degraded or put under any legal incapacities in their ownland. William simply distinguished between his loyal and hisdisloyal subjects, and used his opportunities for punishing thedisloyal and rewarding the loyal. Such punishments and rewardsnaturally took the shape of confiscations and grants of land. Ifpunishment was commonly the lot of the Englishman, and reward wasthe lot of the stranger, that was only because King William treatedall men as they deserved. Most Englishmen were disloyal; moststrangers were loyal. But disloyal strangers and loyal Englishmenfared according to their deserts. The final result of thisprocess, begun now and steadily carried on, was that, by the end ofWilliam's reign, the foreign king was surrounded by a body offoreign landowners and office-bearers of foreign birth. When, inthe early days of his conquest, he gathered round him the great menof his realm, it was still an English assembly with a sprinkling ofstrangers. By the end of his reign it had changed, step by step, into an assembly of strangers with a sprinkling of Englishmen. 

This revolution, which practically transferred the greater part ofthe soil of England to the hands of strangers, was great indeed. But it must not be mistaken for a sudden blow, for an irregularscramble, for a formal proscription of Englishmen as such. William, according to his character and practice, was able to doall this gradually, according to legal forms, and without drawingany formal distinction between natives and strangers. All land washeld of the King of the English, according to the law of England. It may seem strange how such a process of spoliation, veiled undera legal fiction, could have been carried out without resistance. It was easier because it was gradual and piecemeal. The wholecountry was not touched at once, nor even the whole of any onedistrict. One man lost his land while his neighbour kept his, andhe who kept his land was not likely to join in the possible plotsof the other. And though the land had never seen so great aconfiscation, or one so largely for the behoof of foreigners, yetthere was nothing new in the thing itself. Danes had settled underCnut, and Normans and other Frenchmen under Edward. Confiscationof land was the everyday punishment for various public and privatecrimes. In any change, such as we should call a change ofministry, as at the fall and the return of Godwine, outlawry andforfeiture of lands was the usual doom of the weaker party, amilder doom than the judicial massacres of later ages. Even aconquest of England was nothing new, and William at this stagecontrasted favourably with Cnut, whose early days were marked bythe death of not a few. William, at any rate since his crowning, had shed the blood of no man. Men perhaps thought that thingsmight have been much worse, and that they were not unlikely tomend. Anyhow, weakened, cowed, isolated, the people of theconquered shires submitted humbly to the Conqueror's will. Itneeded a kind of oppression of which William himself was neverguilty to stir them into actual revolt. 

The provocation was not long in coming. Within three months afterhis coronation, William paid a visit to his native duchy. Theruler of two states could not be always in either; he owed it tohis old subjects to show himself among them in his new character;and his absence might pass as a sign of the trust he put in his newsubjects. But the means which he took to secure their obediencebrought out his one weak point. We cannot believe that he reallywished to goad the people into rebellion; yet the choice of hislieutenants might seem almost like it. He was led astray bypartiality for his brother and for his dearest friend. To BishopOde of Bayeux, and to William Fitz-Osbern, the son of his earlyguardian, he gave earldoms, that of Kent to Odo, that of Herefordto William. The Conqueror was determined before all things thathis kingdom should be united and obedient; England should not besplit up like Gaul and Germany; he would have no man in Englandwhose formal homage should carry with it as little of practicalobedience as his own homage to the King of the French. A Normanearl of all Wessex or all Mercia might strive after such aposition. William therefore forsook the old practice of dividingthe whole kingdom into earldoms. In the peaceful central shires hewould himself rule through his sheriffs and other immediateofficers; he would appoint earls only in dangerous border districtswhere they were needed as military commanders. All William's earlswere in fact marquesses, guardians of a march or frontier. Ode hadto keep Kent against attacks from the continent; William Fitz-Osbern had to keep Herefordshire against the Welsh and theindependent English. This last shire had its own local warfare. William's authority did not yet reach over all the shires beyondLondon and Hereford; but Harold had allowed some of Edward's Normanfavourites to keep power there. Hereford then and part of itsshire formed an isolated part of William's dominions, while thelands around remained unsubdued. William Fitz-Osbern had to guardthis dangerous land as earl. But during the King's absence both heand Ode received larger commissions as viceroys over the wholekingdom. Ode guarded the South and William the North and North-East. Norwich, a town dangerous from its easy communication withDenmark, was specially under his care. The nominal earls of therest of the land, Edwin, Morkere, and Waltheof, with Edgar, King ofa moment, Archbishop Stigand, and a number of other chief men, William took with him to Normandy. Nominally his cherished friendsand guests, they went in truth, as one of the English Chroniclerscalls them, as hostages. 

William's stay in Normandy lasted about six months. It was chieflydevoted to rejoicings and religious ceremonies, but partly toNorman legislation. Rich gifts from the spoils of England weregiven to the churches of Normandy; gifts richer still were sent tothe Church of Rome whose favour had wrought so much for William. In exchange for the banner of Saint Peter, Harold's standard of theFighting-man was sent as an offering to the head of all churches. While William was in Normandy, Archbishop Maurilius of Rouen died. The whole duchy named Lanfranc as his successor; but he declinedthe post, and was himself sent to Rome to bring the pallium for thenew archbishop John, a kinsman of the ducal house. Lanfrancdoubtless refused the see of Rouen only because he was designed fora yet greater post in England; the subtlest diplomatist in Europewas not sent to Rome merely to ask for the pallium for ArchbishopJohn. 

Meanwhile William's choice of lieutenants bore its fruit inEngland. They wrought such oppression as William himself neverwrought. The inferior leaders did as they thought good, and thetwo earls restrained them not. The earls meanwhile were in onepoint there faithfully carrying out the policy of their master inthe building of castles; a work, which specially when the work ofOde and William Fitz-Osbern, is always spoken of by the nativewriters with marked horror. The castles were the badges and theinstruments of the Conquest, the special means of holding the landin bondage. Meanwhile tumults broke forth in various parts. Theslaughter of Copsige, William's earl in Northumberland, took placeabout the time of the King's sailing for Normandy. In independentHerefordshire the leading Englishman in those parts, Eadric, whomthe Normans called the Wild, allied himself with the Welsh, harriedthe obedient lands, and threatened the castle of Hereford. Nothingwas done on either side beyond harrying and skirmishes; butEadric's corner of the land remained unsubdued. The men of Kentmade a strange foreign alliance with Eustace of Boulogne, thebrother-in-law of Edward, the man whose deeds had led to the greatmovement of Edward's reign, to the banishment and the return ofGodwine. He had fought against England on Senlac, and was one offour who had dealt the last blow to the wounded Harold. But theoppression of Ode made the Kentishmen glad to seek any help againsthim. Eustace, now William's enemy, came over, and gave help in anunsuccessful attack on Dover castle. Meanwhile in the obedientshires men were making ready for revolt; in the unsubdued landsthey were making ready for more active defence. Many went beyondsea to ask for foreign help, specially in the kindred lands ofDenmark and Northern Germany. Against this threatening movementWilliam's strength lay in the incapacity of his enemies forcombined action. The whole land never rose at once, and Danishhelp did not come at the times or in the shape when it could havedone most good. 

The news of these movements brought William back to England inDecember. He kept the Midwinter feast and assembly at Westminster;there the absent Eustace was, by a characteristic stroke of policy, arraigned as a traitor. He was a foreign prince against whom theDuke of the Normans might have led a Norman army. But he had alsobecome an English landowner, and in that character he wasaccountable to the King and Witan of England. He suffered thetraitor's punishment of confiscation of lands. Afterwards hecontrived to win back William's favour, and he left great Englishpossessions to his second wife and his son. Another stroke ofpolicy was to send an embassy to Denmark, to ward off the hostilepurposes of Swegen, and to choose as ambassador an English prelatewho had been in high favour with both Edward and Harold, AEthelsige, Abbot of Ramsey. It came perhaps of his mission thatSwegen practically did nothing for two years. The envoy's own lifewas a chequered one. He lost William's favour, and sought shelterin Denmark. He again regained William's favour--perhaps by someservice at the Danish court--and died in possession of his abbey. 

It is instructive to see how in this same assembly William bestowedseveral great offices. The earldom of Northumberland was vacant bythe slaughter of two earls, the bishopric of Dorchester by thepeaceful death of its bishop. William had no real authority in anypart of Northumberland, or in more than a small part of the dioceseof Dorchester. But he dealt with both earldom and bishopric as inhis own power. It was now that he granted Northumberland toGospatric. The appointment to the bishopric was the beginning of anew system. Englishmen were now to give way step by step tostrangers in the highest offices and greatest estates of the land. He had already made two Norman earls, but they were to act asmilitary commanders. He now made an English earl, whose earldomwas likely to be either nominal or fatal. The appointment ofRemigius of Fecamp to the see of Dorchester was of more realimportance. It is the beginning of William's ecclesiastical reign, the first step in William's scheme of making the Church hisinstrument in keeping down the conquered. While William lived, noEnglishman was appointed to a bishopric. As bishoprics becamevacant by death, foreigners were nominated, and excuses were oftenfound for hastening a vacancy by deprivation. At the end ofWilliam's reign one English bishop only was left. With abbots, ashaving less temporal power than bishops, the rule was less strict. Foreigners were preferred, but Englishmen were not wholly shut out. And the general process of confiscation and regrant of lands wasvigorously carried out. The Kentish revolt and the generalmovement must have led to many forfeitures and to further grants toloyal men of either nation. As the English Chronicles pithily putsit, "the King gave away every man's land. "

William could soon grant lands in new parts of England. InFebruary 1068 he for the first time went forth to warfare withthose whom he called his subjects, but who had never submitted tohim. In the course of the year a large part of England was in armsagainst him. But there was no concert; the West rose and the Northrose; but the West rose first, and the North did not rise till theWest had been subdued. Western England threw off the purelypassive state which had lasted through the year 1067. Hithertoeach side had left the other alone. But now the men of the Westmade ready for a more direct opposition to the foreign government. If they could not drive William out of what he had already won, they would at least keep him from coming any further. Exeter, thegreatest city of the West, was the natural centre of resistance;the smaller towns, at least of Devonshire and Dorset entered into aleague with the capital. They seem to have aimed, like Italiancities in the like case, at the formation of a civic confederation, which might perhaps find it expedient to acknowledge William as anexternal lord, but which would maintain perfect internalindependence. Still, as Gytha, widow of Godwine, mother of Harold, was within the walls of Exeter, the movement was doubtless also insome sort on behalf of the House of Godwine. In any case, Exeterand the lands and towns in its alliance with Exeter strengthenedthemselves in every way against attack. 

Things were not now as on the day of Senlac, when Englishmen ontheir own soil withstood one who, however he might cloke hisenterprise, was to them simply a foreign invader. But William wasnot yet, as he was in some later struggles, the de facto king ofthe whole land, whom all had acknowledged, and opposition to whomwas in form rebellion. He now held an intermediate position. Hewas still an invader; for Exeter had never submitted to him; butthe crowned King of the English, peacefully ruling over manyshires, was hardly a mere invader; resistance to him would have theair of rebellion in the eyes of many besides William and hisflatterers. And they could not see, what we plainly see, whatWilliam perhaps dimly saw, that it was in the long run better forExeter, or any other part of England, to share, even in conquest, the fate of the whole land, rather than to keep on a precariousindependence to the aggravation of the common bondage. This wefeel throughout; William, with whatever motive, is fighting for theunity of England. We therefore cannot seriously regret hissuccesses. But none the less honour is due to the men whom theduty of the moment bade to withstand him. They could not seethings as we see them by the light of eight hundred years. 

The movement evidently stirred several shires; but it is only ofExeter that we hear any details. William never used force till hehad tried negotiation. He sent messengers demanding that thecitizens should take oaths to him and receive him within theirwalls. The choice lay now between unconditional submission andvaliant resistance. But the chief men of the city chose a middlecourse which could gain nothing. They answered as an Italian citymight have answered a Swabian Emperor. They would not receive theKing within their walls; they would take no oaths to him; but theywould pay him the tribute which they had paid to earlier kings. That is, they would not have him as king, but only as overlord overa commonwealth otherwise independent. William's answer was short;"It is not my custom to take subjects on those conditions. " He setout on his march; his policy was to overcome the rebellious Englishby the arms of the loyal English. He called out the fyrd, themilitia, of all or some of the shires under his obedience. Theyanswered his call; to disobey it would have needed greater couragethan to wield the axe on Senlac. This use of English troops becameWilliam's custom in all his later wars, in England and on themainland; but of course he did not trust to English troops only. The plan of the campaign was that which had won Le Mans and London. The towns of Dorset were frightfully harried on the march to thecapital of the West. Disunion at once broke out; the leading menin Exeter sent to offer unconditional submission and to givehostages. But the commonalty disowned the agreement;notwithstanding the blinding of one of the hostages before thewalls, they defended the city valiantly for eighteen days. It wasonly when the walls began to crumble away beneath William's mining-engines that the men of Exeter at last submitted to his mercy. AndWilliam's mercy could be trusted. No man was harmed in life, limb, or goods. But, to hinder further revolts, a castle was at oncebegun, and the payments made by the city to the King were largelyraised. 

Gytha, when the city yielded, withdrew to the Steep Holm, andthence to Flanders. Her grandsons fled to Ireland; from thence, inthe course of the same year and the next, they twice landed inSomerset and Devonshire. The Irish Danes who followed them couldnot be kept back from plunder. Englishmen as well as Normanswithstood them, and the hopes of the House of Godwine came to anend. 

On the conquest of Exeter followed the submission of the wholeWest. All the land south of the Thames was now in William'sobedience. Gloucestershire seems to have submitted at the sametime; the submission of Worcestershire is without date. A vastconfiscation of lands followed, most likely by slow degrees. Itsmost memorable feature is that nearly all Cornwall was granted toWilliam's brother Robert Count of Mortain. His vast estate grewinto the famous Cornish earldom and duchy of later times. SouthernEngland was now conquered, and, as the North had not stirred duringthe stirring of the West, the whole land was outwardly at peace. William now deemed it safe to bring his wife to share his newgreatness. The Duchess Matilda came over to England, and washallowed to Queen at Westminster by Archbishop Ealdred. We maybelieve that no part of his success gave William truer pleasure. But the presence of the Lady was important in another way. It wasdoubtless by design that she gave birth on English soil to heryoungest son, afterwards the renowned King Henry the First. Healone of William's children was in any sense an Englishman. Bornon English ground, son of a crowned King and his Lady, Englishmenlooked on him as a countryman. And his father saw the wisdom ofencouraging such a feeling. Henry, surnamed in after days theClerk, was brought up with special care; he was trained in manybranches of learning unusual among the princes of his age, amongthem in a thorough knowledge of the tongue of his native land. 

The campaign of Exeter is of all William's English campaigns therichest in political teaching. We see how near the cities ofEngland came for a moment--as we shall presently see a chief cityof northern Gaul--to running the same course as the cities of Italyand Provence. Signs of the same tendency may sometimes besuspected elsewhere, but they are not so clearly revealed. William's later campaigns are of the deepest importance in Englishhistory; they are far richer in recorded personal actors than thesiege of Exeter; but they hardly throw so much light on thecharacter of William and his statesmanship. William is throughoutever ready, but never hasty--always willing to wait when waitingseems the best policy--always ready to accept a nominal successwhen there is a chance of turning it into a real one, but neveraccepting nominal success as a cover for defeat, never losing aninch of ground without at once taking measures to recover it. Bythis means, he has in the former part of 1068 extended his dominionto the Land's End; before the end of the year he extends it to theTees. In the next year he has indeed to win it back again; but hedoes win it back and more also. Early in 1070 he was at last, indeed as well as in name, full King over all England. 

The North was making ready for war while the war in the West wenton, but one part of England did nothing to help the other. In thesummer the movement in the North took shape. The nominal earlsEdwin, Morkere, and Gospatric, with the AEtheling Edgar and others, left William's court to put themselves at the head of the movement. Edwin was specially aggrieved, because the king had promised himone of his daughters in marriage, but had delayed giving her tohim. The English formed alliances with the dependent princes ofWales and Scotland, and stood ready to withstand any attack. William set forth; as he had taken Exeter, he took Warwick, perhapsLeicester. This was enough for Edwin and Morkere. They submitted, and were again received to favour. More valiant spirits withdrewnorthward, ready to defend Durham as the last shelter ofindependence, while Edgar and Gospatric fled to the court ofMalcolm of Scotland. William went on, receiving the submission ofNottingham and York; thence he turned southward, receiving on hisway the submission of Lincoln, Cambridge, and Huntingdon. Again hedeemed it his policy to establish his power in the lands which hehad already won rather than to jeopard matters by at once pressingfarther. In the conquered towns he built castles, and he placedpermanent garrisons in each district by granting estates to hisNorman and other followers. Different towns and districts sufferedin different degrees, according doubtless to the measure ofresistance met with in each. Lincoln and Lincolnshire were on thewhole favourably treated. An unusual number of Englishmen keptlands and offices in city and shire. At Leicester and Northampton, and in their shires, the wide confiscations and great destructionof houses point to a stout resistance. And though Durham was stilluntouched, and though William had assuredly no present purpose ofattacking Scotland, he found it expedient to receive with allfavour a nominal submission brought from the King of Scots by thehands of the Bishop of Durham. 

If William's policy ever seems less prudent than usual, it was atthe beginning of the next year, 1069. The extreme North stillstood out. William had twice commissioned English earls ofNorthumberland to take possession if they could. He now risked thedangerous step of sending a stranger. Robert of Comines wasappointed to the earldom forfeited by the flight of Gospatric. While it was still winter, he went with his force to Durham. Byhelp of the Bishop, he was admitted into the city, but he and hiswhole force were cut off by the people of Durham and itsneighbourhood. Robert's expedition in short led only to a revoltof York, where Edgar was received and siege was laid to the castle. William marched in person with all speed; he relieved the castle;he recovered the city and strengthened it by a second castle on theother side of the river. Still he thought it prudent to take nopresent steps against Durham. Soon after this came the secondattempt of Harold's sons in the West. 

Later in this year William's final warfare for the kingdom began. In August, 1069 the long-promised help from Denmark came. Swegensent his brother Osbeorn and his sons Harold and Cnut, at the headof the whole strength of Denmark and of other Northern lands. Ifthe two enterprises of Harold's sons had been planned in concertwith their Danish kinsmen, the invaders or deliverers from oppositesides had failed to act together. Nor are Swegen's own objectsquite clear. He sought to deliver England from William and hisNormans, but it is not so plain in whose interest he acted. Hewould naturally seek the English crown for himself or for one ofhis sons; the sons of Harold he would rather make earls than kings. But he could feel no interest in the kingship of Edgar. Yet, whenthe Danish fleet entered the Humber, and the whole force of theNorth came to meet it, the English host had the heir of Cerdic atits head. It is now that Waltheof the son of Siward, Earl ofNorthampton and Huntingdon, first stands out as a leading actor. Gospatric too was there; but this time not Edwin and Morkere. Danes and English joined and marched upon York; the city wasoccupied; the castles were taken; the Norman commanders were madeprisoners, but not till they had set fire to the city and burnedthe greater part of it, along with the metropolitan minster. It isamazing to read that, after breaking down the castles, the Englishhost dispersed, and the Danish fleet withdrew into the Humber. 

England was again ruined by lack of concert. The news of thecoming of the Danes led only to isolated movements which were putdown piecemeal. The men of Somerset and Dorset and the men ofDevonshire and Cornwall were put down separately, and the movementin Somerset was largely put down by English troops. The citizensof Exeter, as well as the Norman garrison of the castle, stood asiege on behalf of William. A rising on the Welsh border underEadric led only to the burning of Shrewsbury; a rising inStaffordshire was held by William to call for his own presence. But he first marched into Lindesey, and drove the crews of theDanish ships across into Holderness; there he left two Normanleaders, one of them his brother Robert of Mortain and Cornwall; hethen went westward and subdued Staffordshire, and marched towardsYork by way of Nottingham. A constrained delay by the Aire gavehim an opportunity for negotiation with the Danish leaders. Osbeorn took bribes to forsake the English cause, and Williamreached and entered York without resistance. He restored thecastles and kept his Christmas in the half-burned city. And nowWilliam forsook his usual policy of clemency. The Northern shireshad been too hard to win. To weaken them, he decreed a mercilessharrying of the whole land, the direct effects of which were seenfor many years, and which left its mark on English history forages. Till the growth of modern industry reversed the relativeposition of Northern and Southern England, the old Northumbriankingdom never fully recovered from the blow dealt by William, andremained the most backward part of the land. Herein comes one ofthe most remarkable results of William's coming. His greatest workwas to make England a kingdom which no man henceforth thought ofdividing. But the circumstances of his conquest of NorthernEngland ruled that for several centuries the unity of Englandshould take the form of a distinct preponderance of SouthernEngland over Northern. William's reign strengthened every tendencythat way, chiefly by the fearful blow now dealt to the physicalstrength and well-being of the Northern shires. From one sideindeed the Norman Conquest was truly a Saxon conquest. The King ofLondon and Winchester became more fully than ever king over thewhole land. 

The Conqueror had now only to gather in what was still left toconquer. But, as military exploits, none are more memorable thanthe winter marches which put William into full possession ofEngland. The lands beyond Tees still held out; in January 1070 heset forth to subdue them. The Earls Waltheof and Gospatric madetheir submission, Waltheof in person, Gospatric by proxy. Williamrestored both of them to their earldoms, and received Waltheof tohis highest favour, giving him his niece Judith in marriage. Buthe systematically wasted the land, as he had wasted Yorkshire. Hethen returned to York, and thence set forth to subdue the last cityand shire that held out. A fearful march led him to the oneremaining fragment of free England, the unconquered land ofChester. We know not how Chester fell; but the land was not wonwithout fighting, and a frightful harrying was the punishment. Inall this we see a distinct stage of moral downfall in the characterof the Conqueror. Yet it is thoroughly characteristic. All iscalm, deliberate, politic. William will have no more revolts, andhe will at any cost make the land incapable of revolt. Yet, asever, there is no blood shed save in battle. If men died ofhunger, that was not William's doing; nay, charitable people likeAbbot AEthelwig of Evesham might do what they could to help thesufferers. But the lawful king, kept so long out of his kingdom, would, at whatever price, be king over the whole land. And thegreat harrying of the northern shires was the price paid forWilliam's kingship over them. 

At Chester the work was ended which had begun at Pevensey. Lessthan three years and a half, with intervals of peace, had made theNorman invader king over all England. He had won the kingdom; hehad now to keep it. He had for seventeen years to deal withrevolts on both sides of the sea, with revolts both of Englishmenand of his own followers. But in England his power was nevershaken; in England he never knew defeat. His English enemies hehad subdued; the Danes were allowed to remain and in some sort tohelp in his work by plundering during the winter. The King nowmarched to the Salisbury of that day, the deeply fenced hill of OldSarum. The men who had conquered England were reviewed in thegreat plain, and received their rewards. Some among them had byfailures of duty during the winter marches lost their right toreward. Their punishment was to remain under arms forty dayslonger than their comrades. William could trust himself to thevery mutineers whom he had picked out for punishment. He had nowto begin his real reign; and the champion of the Church had beforeall things to reform the evil customs of the benighted islanders, and to give them shepherds of their souls who might guide them inthe right way, CHAPTER IX--THE SETTLEMENT OF ENGLAND--1070-1086

England was now fully conquered, and William could for a moment sitdown quietly to the rule of the kingdom that he had won. The timethat immediately followed is spoken of as a time of comparativequiet, and of less oppression than the times either before orafter. Before and after, warfare, on one side of the sea or theother, was the main business. Hitherto William has been winninghis kingdom in arms. Afterwards he was more constantly called awayto his foreign dominions, and his absence always led to greateroppression in England. Just now he had a moment of repose, when hecould give his mind to the affairs of Church and State in England. Peace indeed was not quite unbroken. Events were tending to thatfamous revolt in the Fenland which is perhaps the best rememberedpart of William's reign. But even this movement was merely local, and did not seriously interfere with William's government. He wasnow striving to settle the land in peace, and to make his rule aslittle grievous to the conquered as might be. The harrying ofNorthumberland showed that he now shrank from no harshness thatwould serve his ends; but from mere purposeless oppression he wasstill free. Nor was he ever inclined to needless change or to thatscorn of the conquered which meaner conquerors have often shown. He clearly wished both to change and to oppress as little as hecould. This is a side of him which has been greatly misunderstood, largely through the book that passes for the History of IngulfAbbot of Crowland. Ingulf was William's English secretary; a realhistory of his writing would be most precious. But the book thatgoes by his name is a forgery not older than the fourteenthcentury, and is in all points contradicted by the genuine documentsof the time. Thus the forger makes William try to abolish theEnglish language and order the use of French in legal writings. This is pure fiction. The truth is that, from the time ofWilliam's coming, English goes out of use in legal writings, butonly gradually, and not in favour of French. Ever since the comingof Augustine, English and Latin had been alternative tongues; afterthe coming of William English becomes less usual, and in the courseof the twelfth century it goes out of use in favour of Latin. There are no French documents till the thirteenth century, and inthat century English begins again. Instead of abolishing theEnglish tongue, William took care that his English-born son shouldlearn it, and he even began to learn it himself. A king of thosedays held it for his duty to hear and redress his subjects'complaints; he had to go through the land and see for himself thatthose who acted in his name did right among his people. Thisearlier kings had done; this William wished to do; but he found hisignorance of English a hindrance. Cares of other kinds checked hisEnglish studies, but he may have learned enough to understand themeaning of his own English charters. Nor did William try, as he isoften imagined to have done, to root out the ancient institutionsof England, and to set up in their stead either the existinginstitutions of Normandy or some new institutions of his owndevising. The truth is that with William began a gradual change inthe laws and customs of England, undoubtedly great, but far lessthan is commonly thought. French names have often supplantedEnglish, and have made the amount of change seem greater than itreally was. Still much change did follow on the Norman Conquest, and the Norman Conquest was so completely William's own act thatall that came of it was in some sort his act also. But thesechanges were mainly the gradual results of the state of thingswhich followed William's coming; they were but very slightly theresults of any formal acts of his. With a foreign king andforeigners in all high places, much practical change could not failto follow, even where the letter of the law was unchanged. Stillthe practical change was less than if the letter of the law hadbeen changed as well. English law was administered by foreignjudges; the foreign grantees of William held English land accordingto English law. The Norman had no special position as a Norman; inevery rank except perhaps the very highest and the very lowest, hehad Englishmen to his fellows. All this helped to give the NormanConquest of England its peculiar character, to give it an air ofhaving swept away everything English, while its real work was toturn strangers into Englishmen. And that character was impressedon William's work by William himself. The king claiming by legalright, but driven to assert his right by the sword, was unlike boththe foreign king who comes in by peaceful succession and theforeign king who comes in without even the pretext of law. TheNormans too, if born soldiers, were also born lawyers, and no manwas more deeply impressed with the legal spirit than Williamhimself. He loved neither to change the law nor to transgress thelaw, and he had little need to do either. He knew how to make thelaw his instrument, and, without either changing or transgressingit, to use it to make himself all-powerful. He thoroughly enjoyedthat system of legal fictions and official euphemisms which markshis reign. William himself became in some sort an Englishman, andthose to whom he granted English lands had in some sort to becomeEnglishmen in order to hold them. The Norman stepped into theexact place of the Englishman whose land he held; he took hisrights and his burthens, and disputes about those rights andburthens were judged according to English law by the witness ofEnglishmen. Reigning over two races in one land, William would belord of both alike, able to use either against the other in case ofneed. He would make the most of everything in the feelings andcustoms of either that tended to strengthen his own hands. And, inthe state of things in which men then found themselves, whateverstrengthened William's hands strengthened law and order in hiskingdom. 

There was therefore nothing to lead William to make any largechanges in the letter of the English law. The powers of a King ofthe English, wielded as he knew how to wield them, made him asgreat as he could wish to be. Once granting the original wrong ofhis coming at all and bringing a host of strangers with him, thereis singularly little to blame in the acts of the Conqueror. Ofbloodshed, of wanton interference with law and usage, there iswonderfully little. Englishmen and Normans were held to havesettled down in peace under the equal protection of King William. The two races were drawing together; the process was beginningwhich, a hundred years later, made it impossible, in any rank butthe highest and the lowest, to distinguish Norman from Englishman. Among the smaller landowners and the townsfolk this interminglinghad already begun, while earls and bishops were not yet soexclusively Norman, nor had the free churls of England as yet sunkso low as at a later stage. Still some legislation was needed tosettle the relations of the two races. King William proclaimed the"renewal of the law of King Edward. " This phrase has often beenmisunderstood; it is a common form when peace and good order arerestored after a period of disturbance. The last reign which islooked back to as to a time of good government becomes the standardof good government, and it is agreed between king and people, between contending races or parties, that things shall be as theywere in the days of the model ruler. So we hear in Normandy of therenewal of the law of Rolf, and in England of the renewal of thelaw of Cnut. So at an earlier time Danes and Englishmen agreed inthe renewal of the law of Edgar. So now Normans and Englishmenagreed in the renewal of the law of Edward. There was no codeeither of Edward's or of William's making. William simply boundhimself to rule as Edward had ruled. But in restoring the law ofKing Edward, he added, "with the additions which I have decreed forthe advantage of the people of the English. "

These few words are indeed weighty. The little legislation ofWilliam's reign takes throughout the shape of additions. Nothingold is repealed; a few new enactments are set up by the side of theold ones. And these words describe, not only William's actuallegislation, but the widest general effect of his coming. TheNorman Conquest did little towards any direct abolition of theolder English laws or institutions. But it set up some newinstitutions alongside of old ones; and it brought in not a fewnames, habits, and ways of looking at things, which gradually didtheir work. In England no man has pulled down; many have added andmodified. Our law is still the law of King Edward with theadditions of King William. Some old institutions took new names;some new institutions with new names sprang up by the side of oldones. Sometimes the old has lasted, sometimes the new. We stillhave a king and not a roy; but he gathers round him a parliamentand not a vitenagemot. We have a sheriff and not a viscount; buthis district is more commonly called a county than a shire. Butcounty and shire are French and English for the same thing, and"parliament" is simply French for the "deep speech" which KingWilliam had with his Witan. The National Assembly of England haschanged its name and its constitution more than once; but it hasnever been changed by any sudden revolution, never till later timesby any formal enactment. There was no moment when one kind ofassembly supplanted another. And this has come because ourConqueror was, both by his disposition and his circumstances, ledto act as a preserver and not as a destroyer. 

The greatest recorded acts of William, administrative andlegislative, come in the last days of his reign. But there areseveral enactments of William belonging to various periods of hisreign, and some of them to this first moment of peace. Here wedistinctly see William as an English statesman, as a statesman whoknew how to work a radical change under conservative forms. Oneenactment, perhaps the earliest of all, provided for the safety ofthe strangers who had come with him to subdue and to settle in theland. The murder of a Norman by an Englishman, especially of aNorman intruder by a dispossessed Englishman, was a thing thatdoubtless often happened. William therefore provides for thesafety of those whom he calls "the men whom I brought with me orwho have come after me;" that is, the warriors of Senlac, Exeter, and York. These men are put within his own peace; wrong done tothem is wrong done to the King, his crown and dignity. If themurderer cannot be found, the lord and, failing him, the hundred, must make payment to the King. Of this grew the presentment ofEnglishry, one of the few formal badges of distinction between theconquering and the conquered race. Its practical need could nothave lasted beyond a generation or two, but it went on as a formages after it had lost all meaning. An unknown corpse, unless itcould be proved that the dead man was English, was assumed to bethat of a man who had come with King William, and the fine waslevied. Some other enactments were needed when two nations livedside by side in the same land. As in earlier times, Roman andbarbarian each kept his own law, so now for some purposes theFrenchman--"Francigena"--and the Englishman kept their own law. This is chiefly with regard to the modes of appealing to God'sjudgement in doubtful cases. The English did this by ordeal, theNormans by wager of battle. When a man of one nation appealed aman of the other, the accused chose the mode of trial. If anEnglishman appealed a Frenchman and declined to prove his chargeeither way, the Frenchman might clear himself by oath. But theseprivileges were strictly confined to Frenchmen who had come withWilliam and after him. Frenchmen who had in Edward's time settledin England as the land of their own choice, reckoned as Englishmen. Other enactments, fresh enactments of older laws, touched bothraces. The slave trade was rife in its worst form; men were soldout of the land, chiefly to the Danes of Ireland. Earlier kingshad denounced the crime, and earlier bishops had preached againstit. William denounced it again under the penalty of forfeiture ofall lands and goods, and Saint Wulfstan, the Bishop of Worcester, persuaded the chief offenders, Englishmen of Bristol, to give uptheir darling sin for a season. Yet in the next reign Anselm andhis synod had once more to denounce the crime under spiritualpenalties, when they had no longer the strong arm of William toenforce them. 

Another law bears more than all the personal impress of William. In it he at once, on one side, forestalls the most humane theoriesof modern times, and on the other sins most directly against them. His remarkable unwillingness to put any man to death, except amongthe chances of the battle-field, was to some extent the feeling ofhis age. With him the feeling takes the shape of a formal law. Heforbids the infliction of death for any crime whatever. But thosewho may on this score be disposed to claim the Conqueror as asympathizer will be shocked at the next enactment. Those crimeswhich kings less merciful than William would have punished withdeath are to be punished with loss of eyes or other foul and cruelmutilations. Punishments of this kind now seem more revolting thandeath, though possibly, now as then, the sufferer himself mightthink otherwise. But in those days to substitute mutilation fordeath, in the case of crimes which were held to deserve death, wasuniversally deemed an act of mercy. Grave men shrank from sendingtheir fellow-creatures out of the world, perhaps without time forrepentance; but physical sympathy with physical suffering hadlittle place in their minds. In the next century a feeling againstbodily mutilation gradually comes in; but as yet the mildest andmost thoughtful men, Anselm himself, make no protest against itwhen it is believed to be really deserved. There is no sign of anygeneral complaint on this score. The English Chronicler applaudsthe strict police of which mutilation formed a part, and in onecase he deliberately holds it to be the fitting punishment of theoffence. In fact, when penal settlements were unknown and legalprisons were few and loathsome, there was something to be said fora punishment which disabled the criminal from repeating hisoffence. In William's jurisprudence mutilation became the ordinarysentence of the murderer, the robber, the ravisher, sometimes alsoof English revolters against William's power. We must in shortbalance his mercy against the mercy of Kirk and Jeffreys. 

The ground on which the English Chronicler does raise his wail onbehalf of his countrymen is the special jurisprudence of theforests and the extortions of money with which he charges theConqueror. In both these points the royal hand became far heavierunder the Norman rule. In both William's character grew darker ashe grew older. He is charged with unlawful exactions of money, inhis character alike of sovereign and of landlord. We read of hissharp practice in dealing with the profits of the royal demesnes. He would turn out the tenant to whom he had just let the land, ifanother offered a higher rent. But with regard to taxation, wemust remember that William's exactions, however heavy at the time, were a step in the direction of regular government. In those daysall taxation was disliked. Direct taking of the subject's money bythe King was deemed an extraordinary resource to be justified onlyby some extraordinary emergency, to buy off the Danes or to hiresoldiers against them. Men long after still dreamed that the Kingcould "live of his own, " that he could pay all expenses of hiscourt and government out of the rents and services due to him as alandowner, without asking his people for anything in the characterof sovereign. Demands of money on behalf of the King now becameboth heavier and more frequent. And another change which had longbeen gradually working now came to a head. When, centuries later, the King was bidden to "live of his own, " men had forgotten thatthe land of the King had once been the land of the nation. In allTeutonic communities, great and small, just as in the citycommunities of Greece and Italy, the community itself was a chieflandowner. The nation had its folkland, its ager publicus, theproperty of no one man but of the whole state. Out of this, by thecommon consent, portions might be cut off and booked--granted by awritten document--to particular men as their own bookland. TheKing might have his private estate, to be dealt with at his ownpleasure, but of the folkland, the land of the nation, he was onlythe chief administrator, bound to act by the advice of his Witan. But in this case more than in others, the advice of the Witan couldnot fail to become formal; the folkland, ever growing throughconfiscations, ever lessening through grants, gradually came to belooked on as the land of the King, to be dealt with as he thoughtgood. We must not look for any change formally enacted; but inEdward's day the notion of folkland, as the possession of thenation and not of the King, could have been only a survival, and inWilliam's day even the survival passed away. The land which waspractically the land of King Edward became, as a matter of course, Terra Regis, the land of King William. That land was now enlargedby greater confiscations and lessened by greater grants than ever. For a moment, every lay estate had been part of the land ofWilliam. And far more than had been the land of the nationremained the land of the King, to be dealt with as he thought good. 

In the tenure of land William seems to have made no formal change. But the circumstances of his reign gave increased strength tocertain tendencies which had been long afloat. And out of them, inthe next reign, the malignant genius of Randolf Flambard devised asystematic code of oppression. Yet even in his work there islittle of formal change. There are no laws of William Rufus. Theso called feudal incidents, the claims of marriage, wardship, andthe like, on the part of the lord, the ancient heriot developedinto the later relief, all these things were in the germ underWilliam, as they had been in the germ long before him. In thehands of Randolf Flambard they stiffen into established custom;their legal acknowledgement comes from the charter of Henry theFirst which promises to reform their abuses. Thus the Conquerorclearly claimed the right to interfere with the marriages of hisnobles, at any rate to forbid a marriage to which he objected ongrounds of policy. Under Randolf Flambard this became a regularclaim, which of course was made a means of extorting money. UnderHenry the claim is regulated and modified, but by being regulatedand modified, it is legally established. 

The ordinary administration of the kingdom went on under William, greatly modified by the circumstances of his reign, but hardly atall changed in outward form. Like the kings that were before him, he "wore his crown" at the three great feasts, at Easter atWinchester, at Pentecost at Westminster, at Christmas atGloucester. Like the kings that were before him, he gatheredtogether the great men of the realm, and when need was, the smallmen also. Nothing seems to have been changed in the constitutionor the powers of the assembly; but its spirit must have beenutterly changed. The innermost circle, earls, bishops, greatofficers of state and household, gradually changed from a body ofEnglishmen with a few strangers among them into a body of strangersamong whom two or three Englishmen still kept their places. Theresult of their "deep speech" with William was not likely to beother than an assent to William's will. The ordinary freeman didnot lose his abstract right to come and shout "Yea, yea, " to anyaddition that King William made to the law of King Edward. Butthere would be nothing to tempt him to come, unless King Williamthought fit to bid him. But once at least William did gathertogether, if not every freeman, at least all freeholders of thesmallest account. On one point the Conqueror had fully made up hismind; on one point he was to be a benefactor to his kingdom throughall succeeding ages. The realm of England was to be one andindivisible. No ruler or subject in the kingdom of England shouldagain dream that that kingdom could be split asunder. When heoffered Harold the underkingship of the realm or of some part ofit, he did so doubtless only in the full conviction that the offerwould be refused. No such offer should be heard of again. Thereshould be no such division as had been between Cnut and Edmund, between Harthacnut and the first Harold, such as Edwin and Morkerehad dreamed of in later times. Nor should the kingdom be splitasunder in that subtler way which William of all men bestunderstood, the way in which the Frankish kingdoms, East and West, had split asunder. He would have no dukes or earls who mightbecome kings in all but name, each in his own duchy or earldom. Noman in his realm should be to him as he was to his overlord atParis. No man in his realm should plead duty towards an immediatelord as an excuse for breach of duty towards the lord of thatimmediate lord. Hence William's policy with regard to earldoms. There was to be nothing like the great governments which had beenheld by Godwine, Leofric, and Siward; an Earl of the West-Saxons orthe Northumbrians was too like a Duke of the Normans to be enduredby one who was Duke of the Normans himself. The earl, even of theking's appointment, still represented the separate being of thedistrict over which he was set. He was the king's representativerather than merely his officer; if he was a magistrate and not aprince, he often sat in the seat of former princes, and mighteasily grow into a prince. And at last, at the very end of hisreign, as the finishing of his work, he took the final step thatmade England for ever one. In 1086 every land-owner in Englandswore to be faithful to King William within and without England andto defend him against his enemies. The subject's duty to the Kingwas to any duty which the vassal might owe to any inferior lord. When the King was the embodiment of national unity and orderlygovernment, this was the greatest of all steps in the direction ofboth. Never did William or any other man act more distinctly as anEnglish statesman, never did any one act tell more directly towardsthe later making of England, than this memorable act of theConqueror. Here indeed is an addition which William made to thelaw of Edward for the truest good of the English folk. And yet noenactment has ever been more thoroughly misunderstood. Lawyerafter lawyer has set down in his book that, at the assembly ofSalisbury in 1086, William introduced "the feudal system. " If thewords "feudal system" have any meaning, the object of the law nowmade was to hinder any "feudal system" from coming into England. William would be king of a kingdom, head of a commonwealth, personal lord of every man in his realm, not merely, like a King ofthe French, external lord of princes whose subjects owed him noallegiance. This greatest monument of the Conqueror'sstatesmanship was carried into effect in a special assembly of theEnglish nation gathered on the first day of August 1086 on thegreat plain of Salisbury. Now, perhaps for the first time, we geta distinct foreshadowing of Lords and Commons. The Witan, thegreat men of the realm, and "the landsitting men, " the whole bodyof landowners, are now distinguished. The point is that Williamrequired the personal presence of every man whose personalallegiance he thought worth having. Every man in the mixedassembly, mixed indeed in race and speech, the King's own men andthe men of other lords, took the oath and became the man of KingWilliam. On that day England became for ever a kingdom one andindivisible, which since that day no man has dreamed of partingasunder. 

The great assembly of 1086 will come again among the events ofWilliam's later reign; it comes here as the last act of thatgeneral settlement which began in 1070. That settlement, besidesits secular side, has also an ecclesiastical side of a somewhatdifferent character. In both William's coming brought the islandkingdom into a closer connexion with the continent; and brought alarge displacement of Englishmen and a large promotion ofstrangers. But on the ecclesiastical side, though the changes wereless violent, there was a more marked beginning of a new state ofthings. The religious missionary was more inclined to innovatethan the military conqueror. Here William not only added butchanged; on one point he even proclaimed that the existing law ofEngland was bad. Certainly the religious state of England waslikely to displease churchmen from the mainland. The EnglishChurch, so directly the child of the Roman, was, for that veryreason, less dependent on her parent. She was a free colony, not aconquered province. The English Church too was most distinctlynational; no land came so near to that ideal state of things inwhich the Church is the nation on its religious side. Papalauthority therefore was weaker in England than elsewhere, and aless careful line was drawn between spiritual and temporal thingsand jurisdictions. Two friendly powers could take liberties witheach other. The national assemblies dealt with ecclesiastical aswell as with temporal matters; one indeed among our ancient lawsblames any assembly that did otherwise. Bishop and earl sattogether in the local Gemot, to deal with many matters which, according to continental ideas, should have been dealt with inseparate courts. And, by what in continental eyes seemed a strangelaxity of discipline, priests, bishops, members of capitularbodies, were often married. The English diocesan arrangements wereunlike continental models. In Gaul, by a tradition of Roman date, the bishop was bishop of the city. His diocese was marked by theextent of the civil jurisdiction of the city. His home, his headchurch, his bishopstool in the head church, were all in the city. In Teutonic England the bishop was commonly bishop, not of a citybut of a tribe or district; his style was that of a tribe; hishome, his head church, his bishopstool, might be anywhere withinthe territory of that tribe. Still, on the greatest point of all, matters in England were thoroughly to William's liking; nowhere didthe King stand forth more distinctly as the Supreme Governor of theChurch. In England, as in Normandy, the right of the sovereign tothe investiture of ecclesiastical benefices was ancient andundisputed. What Edward had freely done, William went on freelydoing, and Hildebrand himself never ventured on a word ofremonstrance against a power which he deemed so wrongful in thehands of his own sovereign. William had but to stand on the rightsof his predecessors. When Gregory asked for homage for the crownwhich he had in some sort given, William answered indeed as anEnglish king. What the kings before him had done for or paid tothe Roman see, that would he do and pay; but this no king beforehim had ever done, nor would he be the first to do it. But whileWilliam thus maintained the rights of his crown, he was willing andeager to do all that seemed needful for ecclesiastical reform. Andthe general result of his reform was to weaken the insularindependence of England, to make her Church more like the otherChurches of the West, and to increase the power of the RomanBishop. 

William had now a fellow-worker in his taste. The subtle spiritwhich had helped to win his kingdom was now at his side to help himto rule it. Within a few months after the taking of ChesterLanfranc sat on the throne of Augustine. As soon as the actualConquest was over, William began to give his mind to ecclesiasticalmatters. It might look like sacrilege when he caused all themonasteries of England to be harried. But no harm was done to themonks or to their possessions. The holy houses were searched forthe hoards which the rich men of England, fearing the new king, hadlaid up in the monastic treasuries. William looked on these hoardsas part of the forfeited goods of rebels, and carried them offduring the Lent of 1070. This done, he sat steadily down to thereform of the English Church. 

He had three papal legates to guide him, one of whom, Ermenfrid, Bishop of Sitten, had come in on a like errand in the time ofEdward. It was a kind of solemn confirmation of the Conquest, when, at the assembly held at Winchester in 1070, the King's crownwas placed on his head by Ermenfrid. The work of deposing Englishprelates and appointing foreign successors now began. The primacyof York was regularly vacant; Ealdred had died as the Danes sailedup the Humber to assault or to deliver his city. The primacy ofCanterbury was to be made vacant by the deposition of Stigand. Hiscanonical position had always been doubtful; neither Harold norWilliam had been crowned by him; yet William had treated himhitherto with marked courtesy, and he had consecrated at least oneNorman bishop, Remigius of Dorchester. He was now deprived both ofthe archbishopric and of the bishopric of Winchester which he heldwith it, and was kept under restraint for the rest of his life. According to foreign canonical rules the sentence may pass as just;but it marked a stage in the conquest of England when a stout-hearted Englishman was removed from the highest place in theEnglish Church to make way for the innermost counsellor of theConqueror. In the Pentecostal assembly, held at Windsor, Lanfrancwas appointed archbishop; his excuses were overcome by his oldmaster Herlwin of Bec; he came to England, and on August 15, 1070he was consecrated to the primacy. 

Other deprivations and appointments took place in these assemblies. The see of York was given to Thomas, a canon of Bayeux, a man ofhigh character and memorable in the local history of his see. Theabbey of Peterborough was vacant by the death of Brand, who hadreceived the staff from the uncrowned Eadgar. It was only by richgifts that he had turned away the wrath of William from his house. The Fenland was perhaps already stirring, and the Abbot ofPeterborough might have to act as a military commander. In thiscase the prelate appointed, a Norman named Turold, was accordinglymore of a soldier than of a monk. From these assemblies of 1070the series of William's ecclesiastical changes goes on. As theEnglish bishops die or are deprived, strangers take their place. They are commonly Normans, but Walcher, who became Bishop of Durhamin 1071, was one of those natives of Lorraine who had been largelyfavoured in Edward's day. At the time of William's death Wulfstanwas the only Englishman who kept a bishopric. Even his deprivationhad once been thought of. The story takes a legendary shape, butit throws an important light on the relations of Church and Statein England. In an assembly held in the West Minster Wulfstan iscalled on by William and Lanfranc to give up his staff. Herefuses; he will give it back to him who gave it, and places it onthe tomb of his dead master Edward. No of his enemies can move it. The sentence is recalled, and the staff yields to his touch. Edward was not yet a canonized saint; the appeal is simply from theliving and foreign king to the dead and native king. This legend, growing up when Western Europe was torn in pieces by the struggleabout investitures, proves better than the most authentic documentshow the right which Popes denied to Emperors was taken for grantedin the case of an English king. But, while the spoils of England, temporal and spiritual, were thus scattered abroad among men of theconquering race, two men at least among them refused all share inplunder which they deemed unrighteous. One gallant Norman knight, Gulbert of Hugleville, followed William through all his campaigns, but when English estates were offered as his reward, he refused toshare in unrighteous gains, and went back to the lands of hisfathers which he could hold with a good conscience. And one monk, Wimund of Saint-Leutfried, not only refused bishoprics and abbeys, but rebuked the Conqueror for wrong and robbery. And William boreno grudge against his censor, but, when the archbishopric of Rouenbecame vacant, he offered it to the man who had rebuked him. Amongthe worthies of England Gulbert and Wimund can hardly claim aplace, but a place should surely be theirs among the men whomEngland honours. 

The primacy of Lanfranc is one of the most memorable in ourhistory. In the words of the parable put forth by Anselm in thenext reign, the plough of the English Church was for seventeenyears drawn by two oxen of equal strength. By ancient Englishcustom the Archbishop of Canterbury was the King's specialcounsellor, the special representative of his Church and people. Lanfranc cannot be charged with any direct oppression; yet in thehands of a stranger who had his spiritual conquest to make, thetribunitian office of former archbishops was lost in that of chiefminister of the sovereign. In the first action of their jointrule, the interest of king and primate was the same. Lanfrancsought for a more distinct acknowledgement of the superiority ofCanterbury over the rival metropolis of York. And this fell inwith William's schemes for the consolidation of the kingdom. Thepolitical motive is avowed. Northumberland, which had been so hardto subdue and which still lay open to Danish invaders ordeliverers, was still dangerous. An independent Archbishop of Yorkmight consecrate a King of the Northumbrians, native or Danish, whomight grow into a King of the English. The Northern metropolitanhad unwillingly to admit the superiority, and something more, ofthe Southern. The caution of William and his ecclesiasticaladviser reckoned it among possible chances that even Thomas ofBayeux might crown an invading Cnut or Harold in opposition to hisnative sovereign and benefactor. 

For some of his own purposes, William had perhaps chosen hisminister too wisely. The objects of the two colleagues were notalways the same. Lanfranc, sprung from Imperialist Pavia, was nozealot for extravagant papal claims. The caution with which hebore himself during the schism which followed the strife betweenGregory and Henry brought on him more than one papal censure. Yetthe general tendency of his administration was towards the growthof ecclesiastical, and even of papal, claims. William neverdreamed of giving up his ecclesiastical supremacy or of exemptingchurchmen from the ordinary power of the law. But the division ofthe civil and ecclesiastical jurisdiction, the increased frequencyof synods distinct from the general assemblies of the realm--eventhough the acts of those synods needed the royal assent--were stepstowards that exemption of churchmen from the civil power which wasasserted in one memorable saying towards the end of William's ownreign. William could hold his own against Hildebrand himself; yetthe increased intercourse with Rome, the more frequent presence ofRoman Legates, all tended to increase the papal claims and thedeference yielded to them. William refused homage to Gregory; butit is significant that Gregory asked for it. It was a step towardsthe day when a King of England was glad to offer it. The increasedstrictness as to the marriage of the clergy tended the same way. Lanfranc did not at once enforce the full rigour of Hildebrand'sdecrees. Marriage was forbidden for the future; the capitularclergy had to part from their wives; but the vested interest of theparish priest was respected. In another point William directlyhelped to undermine his own authority and the independence of hiskingdom. He exempted his abbey of the Battle from the authority ofthe diocesan bishop. With this began a crowd of such exemptions, which, by weakening local authority, strengthened the power of theRoman see. All these things helped on Hildebrand's great schemewhich made the clergy everywhere members of one distinct andexclusive body, with the Roman Bishop at their head. Whatevertended to part the clergy from other men tended to weaken thethrone of every king. While William reigned with Lanfranc at hisside, these things were not felt; but the seed was sown for thecontroversy between Henry and Thomas and for the humiliation ofJohn. 

Even those changes of Lanfranc's primacy which seem of purelyecclesiastical concern all helped, in some way to increase theintercourse between England and the continent or to break down someinsular peculiarity. And whatever did this increased the power ofRome. Even the decree of 1075 that bishoprics should be removed tothe chief cities of their dioceses helped to make England more likeGaul or Italy. So did the fancy of William's bishops and abbotsfor rebuilding their churches on a greater scale and in the lastdevised continental style. All tended to make England less ofanother world. On the other hand, one insular peculiarity wellserved the purposes of the new primate. Monastic chapters inepiscopal churches were almost unknown out of England. Lanfranc, himself a monk, favoured monks in this matter also. In severalchurches the secular canons were displaced by monks. The corporatespirit of the regulars, and their dependence on Rome, was farstronger than that of the secular clergy. The secular chapterscould be refractory, but the disputes between them and theirbishops were mainly of local importance; they form no such part ofthe general story of ecclesiastical and papal advance as the longtale of the quarrel between the archbishops and the monks of ChristChurch. 

Lanfranc survived William, and placed the crown on the head of hissuccessor. The friendship between king and archbishop remainedunbroken through their joint lives. Lanfranc's acts were William'sacts; what the Primate did must have been approved by the King. How far William's acts were Lanfranc's acts it is less easy to say. But the Archbishop was ever a trusted minister, and a trustedcounsellor, and in the King's frequent absences from England, heoften acted as his lieutenant. We do not find him actually takinga part in warfare, but he duly reports military successes to hissovereign. It was William's combined wisdom and good luck toprovide himself with a counsellor than whom for his immediatepurposes none could be better. A man either of a higher or a lowermoral level than Lanfranc, a saint like Anselm or one of the mereworldly bishops of the time, would not have done his work so well. William needed an ecclesiastical statesman, neither unscrupulousnor over-scrupulous, and he found him in the lawyer of Pavia, thedoctor of Avranches, the monk of Bec, the abbot of Saint Stephen's. If Lanfranc sometimes unwittingly outwitted both his master andhimself, if his policy served the purposes of Rome more than suitedthe purposes of either, that is the common course of human affairs. Great men are apt to forget that systems which they can workthemselves cannot be worked by smaller men. From this errorneither William nor Lanfranc was free. But, from their own pointof view, it was their only error. Their work was to subdueEngland, soul and body; and they subdued it. That work could notbe done without great wrong: but no other two men of that daycould have done it with so little wrong. The shrinking fromneedless and violent change which is so strongly characteristic ofWilliam, and less strongly of Lanfranc also, made their work at thetime easier to be done; in the course of ages it made it easier tobe undone. 

CHAPTER X--THE REVOLTS AGAINST WILLIAM--1070-1086

The years which saw the settlement of England, though not years ofconstant fighting like the two years between the march to Exeterand the fall of Chester, were not years of perfect peace. Williamhad to withstand foes on both sides of the sea, to withstand foesin his own household, to undergo his first defeat, to receive hisfirst wound in personal conflict. Nothing shook his firm holdeither on duchy or kingdom; but in his later years his good luckforsook him. And men did not fail to connect this change in hisfuture with a change in himself, above all with one deed of bloodwhich stands out as utterly unlike all his other recorded acts. 

But the amount of warfare which William had to go through in theselater years was small compared with the great struggles of hisearlier days. There is no tale to tell like the war of Val-es-dunes, like the French invasions of Normandy, like the campaignsthat won England. One event only of the earlier time is repeatedalmost as exactly as an event can be repeated. William had wonMaine once; he had now to win it again, and less thoroughly. AsConqueror his work is done; a single expedition into Wales is theonly campaign of this part of his life that led to any increase ofterritory. 

When William sat down to the settlement of his kingdom after thefall of Chester, he was in the strictest sense full king over allEngland. For the moment the whole land obeyed him; at no latermoment did any large part of the land fail to obey him. Allopposition was now revolt. Men were no longer keeping out aninvader; when they rose, they rose against a power which, howeverwrongfully, was the established government of the land. Two suchmovements took place. One was a real revolt of Englishmen againstforeign rule. The other was a rebellion of William's own earls intheir own interests, in which English feeling went with the King. Both were short sharp struggles which stand out boldly in the tale. More important in the general story, though less striking indetail, are the relations of William to the other powers in andnear the isle of Britain. With the crown of the West-Saxon kings, he had taken up their claims to supremacy over the whole island, and probably beyond it. And even without such claims, borderwarfare with his Welsh and Scottish neighbours could not beavoided. Counting from the completion of the real conquest ofEngland in 1070, there were in William's reign three distinctsources of disturbance. There were revolts within the kingdom ofEngland. There was border warfare in Britain. There were revoltsin William's continental dominions. And we may add actual foreignwarfare or threats of foreign warfare, affecting William, sometimesin his Norman, sometimes in his English character. 

With the affairs of Wales William had little personally to do. Inthis he is unlike those who came immediately before and after him. In the lives of Harold and of William Rufus personal warfareagainst the Welsh forms an important part. William the Greatcommonly left this kind of work to the earls of the frontier, toHugh of Chester, Roger of Shrewsbury, and to his early friendWilliam of Hereford, so long as that fierce warrior's life lasted. These earls were ever at war with the Welsh princes, and theyextended the English kingdom at their cost. Once only did the Kingtake a personal share in the work, when he entered South Wales, in1081. We hear vaguely of his subduing the land and foundingcastles; we see more distinctly that he released many subjects whowere in British bondage, and that he went on a religious pilgrimageto Saint David's. This last journey is in some accounts connectedwith schemes for the conquest of Ireland. And in one mostremarkable passage of the English Chronicle, the writer for oncespeculates as to what might have happened but did not. Had Williamlived two years longer, he would have won Ireland by his wisdomwithout weapons. And if William had won Ireland either by wisdomor by weapons, he would assuredly have known better how to dealwith it than most of those who have come after him. If any mancould have joined together the lands which God has put asunder, surely it was he. This mysterious saying must have a reference tosome definite act or plan of which we have no other record. Andsome slight approach to the process of winning Ireland withoutweapons does appear in the ecclesiastical intercourse betweenEngland and Ireland which now begins. Both the native Irishprinces and the Danes of the east coast begin to treat Lanfranc astheir metropolitan, and to send bishops to him for consecration. The name of the King of the English is never mentioned in theletters which passed between the English primate and the kings andbishops of Ireland. It may be that William was biding his time forsome act of special wisdom; but our speculations cannot go anyfurther than those of the Peterborough Chronicler. 

Revolt within the kingdom and invasion from without both began inthe year in which the Conquest was brought to an end. William'secclesiastical reforms were interrupted by the revolt of theFenland. William's authority had never been fully acknowledged inthat corner of England, while he wore his crown and held hiscouncils elsewhere. But the place where disturbances began, theabbey of Peterborough, was certainly in William's obedience. Thewarfare made memorable by the name of Hereward began in June 1070, and a Scottish harrying of Northern England, the second of fivewhich are laid to the charge of Malcolm, took place in the sameyear, and most likely about the same time. The English movement isconnected alike with the course of the Danish fleet and with theappointment of Turold to the abbey of Peterborough. William hadbribed the Danish commanders to forsake their English allies, andhe allowed them to ravage the coast. A later bribe took them backto Denmark; but not till they had shown themselves in the waters ofEly. The people, largely of Danish descent, flocked to them, thinking, as the Chronicler says, that they would win the wholeland. The movement was doubtless in favour of the kingship ofSwegen. But nothing was done by Danes and English together save toplunder Peterborough abbey. Hereward, said to have been the nephewof Turold's English predecessor, doubtless looked on the holyplace, under a Norman abbot, as part of the enemy's country. 

The name of Hereward has gathered round it such a mass of fiction, old and new, that it is hard to disentangle the few details of hisreal history. His descent and birth-place are uncertain; but hewas assuredly a man of Lincolnshire, and assuredly not the son ofEarl Leofric. For some unknown cause, he had been banished in thedays of Edward or of Harold. He now came back to lead hiscountrymen against William. He was the soul of the movement ofwhich the abbey of Ely became the centre. The isle, then easilydefensible, was the last English ground on which the Conqueror wasdefied by Englishmen fighting for England. The men of the Fenlandwere zealous; the monks of Ely were zealous; helpers came in fromother parts of England. English leaders left their shelter inScotland to share the dangers of their countrymen; even Edwin andMorkere at last plucked up heart to leave William's court and jointhe patriotic movement. Edwin was pursued; he was betrayed bytraitors; he was overtaken and slain, to William's deep grief, weare told. His brother reached the isle, and helped in its defence. William now felt that the revolt called for his own presence andhis full energies. The isle was stoutly attacked and stoutlydefended, till, according to one version, the monks betrayed thestronghold to the King. According to another, Morkere was inducedto surrender by promises of mercy which William failed to fulfil. In any case, before the year 1071 was ended, the isle of Ely was inWilliam's hands. Hereward alone with a few companions made theirway out by sea. William was less merciful than usual; still no manwas put to death. Some were mutilated, some imprisoned; Morkereand other chief men spent the rest of their days in bonds. Thetemper of the Conqueror had now fearfully hardened. Still he couldhonour a valiant enemy; those who resisted to the last fared best. All the legends of Hereward's later days speak of him as admittedto William's peace and favour. One makes him die quietly, anotherkills him at the hands of Norman enemies, but not at William'sbidding or with William's knowledge. Evidence a little bettersuggests that he bore arms for his new sovereign beyond the sea;and an entry in Domesday also suggests that he held lands underCount Robert of Mortain in Warwickshire. It would suit William'spolicy, when he received Hereward to his favour, to make himexchange lands near to the scene of his exploits for lands in adistant shire held under the lordship of the King's brother. 

Meanwhile, most likely in the summer months of 1070, Malcolmravaged Cleveland, Durham, and other districts where there musthave been little left to ravage. Meanwhile the AEtheling Edgar andhis sisters, with other English exiles, sought shelter in Scotland, and were hospitably received. At the same time Gospatric, nowWilliam's earl in Northumberland, retaliated by a harrying ofScottish Cumberland, which provoked Malcolm to greater cruelties. It was said that there was no house in Scotland so poor that it hadnot an English bondman. Presently some of Malcolm's English guestsjoined the defenders of Ely; those of highest birth stayed inScotland, and Malcolm, after much striving, persuaded Margaret thesister of Edgar to become his wife. Her praises are written inScottish history, and the marriage had no small share in theprocess which made the Scottish kings and the lands which formedtheir real kingdom practically English. The sons and grandsons ofMargaret, sprung of the Old-English kingly house, were far moreEnglish within their own realm than the Norman and Angevin kings ofSouthern England. But within the English border men looked atthings with other eyes. Thrice again did Malcolm ravage England;two and twenty years later he was slain in his last visit of havoc. William meanwhile and his earls at least drew to themselves somemeasure of loyalty from the men of Northern England as theguardians of the land against the Scot. 

For the present however Malcolm's invasion was only avenged byGospatric's harrying in Cumberland. The year 1071 called Williamto Ely; in the early part of 1072 his presence was still needed onthe mainland; in August he found leisure for a march againstScotland. He went as an English king, to assert the rights of theEnglish crown, to avenge wrongs done to the English land; and onsuch an errand Englishmen followed him gladly. Eadric, thedefender of Herefordshire, had made his peace with the King, and henow held a place of high honour in his army. But if William metwith any armed resistance on his Scottish expedition, it did notamount to a pitched battle. He passed through Lothian intoScotland; he crossed Forth and drew near to Tay, and there, by theround tower of Abernethy, the King of Scots swore oaths and gavehostages and became the man of the King of the English. Williammight now call himself, like his West-Saxon predecessors, Bretwaldaand Basileus of the isle of Britain. This was the highest point ofhis fortune. Duke of the Normans, King of the English, he wasundisputed lord from the march of Anjou to the narrow sea betweenCaithness and Orkney. 

The exact terms of the treaty between William's royal vassal andhis overlord are unknown. But one of them was clearly the removalof Edgar from Scotland. Before long he was on the continent. William had not yet learned that Edgar was less dangerous inBritain than in any other part of the world, and that he was safestof all in William's own court. Homage done and hostages received, the Lord of all Britain returned to his immediate kingdom. Hismarch is connected with many legendary stories. In real history itis marked by the foundation of the castle of Durham, and by theConqueror's confirmation of the privileges of the palatine bishops. If all the earls of England had been like the earls of Chester, andall the bishops like the bishops of Durham, England would assuredlyhave split up, like Germany, into a loose federation of temporaland spiritual princes. This it was William's special work tohinder; but he doubtless saw that the exceptional privileges of oneor two favoured lordships, standing in marked contrast to the rest, would not really interfere with his great plan of union. AndWilliam would hardly have confirmed the sees of London orWinchester in the privileges which he allowed to the distant see ofDurham. He now also made a grant of earldoms, the object of whichis less clear than that of most of his actions. It is not easy tosay why Gospatric was deprived of his earldom. His former acts ofhostility to William had been covered by his pardon andreappointment in 1069; and since then he had acted as a loyal, ifperhaps an indiscreet, guardian of the land. Two greater earldomsthan his had become vacant by the revolt, the death, theimprisonment, of Edwin and Morkere. But these William had nointention of filling. He would not have in his realm anything sodangerous as an earl of the Mercian's or the Northumbrians in theold sense, whether English or Norman. But the defence of thenorthern frontier needed an earl to rule Northumberland in thelater sense, the land north of the Tyne. And after the fate ofRobert of Comines, William could not as yet put a Norman earl in soperilous a post. But the Englishman whom he chose was open to thesame charges as the deposed Gospatric. For he was Waltheof the sonof Siward, the hero of the storm of York in 1069. Already Earl ofNorthampton and Huntingdon, he was at this time high in the King'spersonal favour, perhaps already the husband of the King's niece. One side of William's policy comes out here. Union was sometimeshelped by division. There were men whom William loved to makegreat, but whom he had no mind to make dangerous. He gave themvast estates, but estates for the most part scattered overdifferent parts of the kingdom. It was only in the border earldomsand in Cornwall that he allowed anything at all near to thelordship of a whole shire to be put in the hands of a single man. One Norman and one Englishman held two earldoms together; but theywere earldoms far apart. Roger of Montgomery held the earldoms ofShrewsbury and Sussex, and Waltheof to his midland earldom ofNorthampton and Huntingdon now added the rule of distantNorthumberland. The men who had fought most stoutly againstWilliam were the men whom he most willingly received to favour. Eadric and Hereward were honoured; Waltheof was honoured morehighly. He ranked along with the greatest Normans; his positionwas perhaps higher than any but the King's born kinsmen. But thewhole tale of Waltheof is a problem that touches the character ofthe king under whom he rose and fell. Lifted up higher than anyother man among the conquered, he was the one man whom William putto death on a political charge. It is hard to see the reasons foreither his rise or his fall. It was doubtless mainly his end whichwon him the abiding reverence of his countrymen. His valour andhis piety are loudly praised. But his valour we know only from hisone personal exploit at York; his piety was consistent with a basemurder. In other matters, he seems amiable, irresolute, and of ascrupulous conscience, and Northumbrian morality perhaps saw nogreat crime in a murder committed under the traditions of aNorthumbrian deadly feud. Long before Waltheof was born, hisgrandfather Earl Ealdred had been killed by a certain Carl. Thesons of Carl had fought by his side at York; but, notwithstandingthis comradeship, the first act of Waltheof's rule inNorthumberland was to send men to slay them beyond the bounds ofhis earldom. A crime that was perhaps admired in Northumberlandand unheard of elsewhere did not lose him either the favour of theKing or the friendship of his neighbour Bishop Walcher, a reformingprelate with whom Waltheof acted in concert. And when he waschosen as the single exception to William's merciful rule, it wasnot for this undoubted crime, but on charges of which, even ifguilty, he might well have been forgiven. 

The sojourn of William on the continent in 1072 carries us out ofEngland and Normandy into the general affairs of Europe. Signs mayhave already showed themselves of what was coming to the south ofNormandy; but the interest of the moment lay in the country ofMatilda. Flanders, long the firm ally of Normandy, was now tochange into a bitter enemy. Count Baldwin died in 1067; hissuccessor of the same name died three years later, and a warfollowed between his widow Richildis, the guardian of his young sonArnulf, and his brother Robert the Frisian. Robert had won fame inthe East; he had received the sovereignty of Friesland--a namewhich takes in Holland and Zealand--and he was now invited todeliver Flanders from the oppressions of Richildis. Meanwhile, Matilda was acting as regent of Normandy, with Earl William ofHereford as her counsellor. Richildis sought help of her son's twooverlords, King Henry of Germany and King Philip of France. Philipcame in person; the German succours were too late. From Normandycame Earl William with a small party of knights. The kings hadbeen asked for armies; to the Earl she offered herself, and he cameto fight for his bride. But early in 1071 Philip, Arnulf, andWilliam, were all overthrown by Robert the Frisian in the battle ofCassel. Arnulf and Earl William were killed; Philip made peacewith Robert, henceforth undisputed Count of Flanders. 

All this brought King William to the continent, while the invasionof Malcolm was still unavenged. No open war followed betweenNormandy and Flanders; but for the rest of their lives Robert andWilliam were enemies, and each helped the enemies of the other. William gave his support to Baldwin brother of the slain Arnulf, who strove to win Flanders from Robert. But the real interest ofthis episode lies in the impression which was made in the landseast of Flanders. In the troubled state of Germany, when Henry theFourth was striving with the Saxons, both sides seem to have lookedto the Conqueror of England with hope and with fear. On thismatter our English and Norman authorities are silent, and thenotices in the contemporary German writers are strangely unlike oneanother. But they show at least that the prince who ruled on bothsides of the sea was largely in men's thoughts. The Saxon enemy ofHenry describes him in his despair as seeking help in Denmark, France, Aquitaine, and also of the King of the English, promisinghim the like help, if he should ever need it. William and Henryhad both to guard against Saxon enmity, but the throne atWinchester stood firmer than the throne at Goslar. But thehistorian of the continental Saxons puts into William's mouth ananswer utterly unsuited to his position. He is made, when inNormandy, to answer that, having won his kingdom by force, he fearsto leave it, lest he might not find his way back again. Far morestriking is the story told three years later by Lambert ofHerzfeld. Henry, when engaged in an Hungarian war, heard that thefamous Archbishop Hanno of Koln had leagued with William Bostar--sois his earliest surname written--King of the English, and that avast army was coming to set the island monarch on the Germanthrone. The host never came; but Henry hastened back to guard hisfrontier against BARBARIANS. By that phrase a Teutonic writer canhardly mean the insular part of William's subjects. 

Now assuredly William never cherished, as his successor probablydid, so wild a dream as that of a kingly crowning at Aachen, to befollowed perhaps by an imperial crowning at Rome. But that suchschemes were looked on as a practical danger against which theactual German King had to guard, at least shows the place which theConqueror of England held in European imagination. 

For the three or four years immediately following the surrender ofEly, William's journeys to and fro between his kingdom and hisduchy were specially frequent. Matilda seems to have always stayedin Normandy; she is never mentioned in England after the year ofher coronation and the birth of her youngest son, and she commonlyacted as regent of the duchy. In the course of 1072 we see Williamin England, in Normandy, again in England, and in Scotland. In1073 he was called beyond sea by a formidable movement. His greatcontinental conquest had risen against him; Le Mans and all Mainewere again independent. City and land chose for them a prince whocame by female descent from the stock of their ancient counts. This was Hugh the son of Azo Marquess of Liguria and of Gersendisthe sister of the last Count Herbert. The Normans were driven outof Le Mans; Azo came to take possession in the name of his son, buthe and the citizens did not long agree. He went back, leaving hiswife and son under the guardianship of Geoffrey of Mayenne. Presently the men of Le Mans threw off princely rule altogether andproclaimed the earliest commune in Northern Gaul. Here then, as atExeter, William had to strive against an armed commonwealth, and, as at Exeter, we specially wish to know what were to be therelations between the capital and the county at large. The mass ofthe people throughout Maine threw themselves zealously into thecause of the commonwealth. But their zeal might not have lastedlong, if, according to the usual run of things in such cases, theyhad simply exchanged the lordship of their hereditary masters forthe corporate lordship of the citizens of Le Mans. To the noblesthe change was naturally distasteful. They had to swear to thecommune, but many of them, Geoffrey for one, had no thought ofkeeping their oaths. Dissensions arose; Hugh went back to Italy;Geoffrey occupied the castle of Le Mans, and the citizens dislodgedhim only by the dangerous help of the other prince who claimed theoverlordship of Maine, Count Fulk of Anjou. 

If Maine was to have a master from outside, the lord of Anjouhardly promised better than the lord of Normandy. But men indespair grasp at anything. The strange thing is that Fulkdisappears now from the story; William steps in instead. And itwas at least as much in his English as in his Norman character thatthe Duke and King won back the revolted land. A place in his armywas held by English warriors, seemingly under the command ofHereward himself. Men who had fought for freedom in their own landnow fought at the bidding of their Conqueror to put down freedom inanother land. They went willingly; the English Chroniclerdescribes the campaign with glee, and breaks into verse--orincorporates a contemporary ballad--at the tale of English victory. Few men of that day would see that the cause of Maine was in truththe cause of England. If York and Exeter could not act in concertwith one another, still less could either act in concert with LeMans. Englishmen serving in Maine would fancy that they wereavenging their own wrongs by laying waste the lands of any man whospoke the French tongue. On William's part, the employment ofEnglishmen, the employment of Hereward, was another stroke ofpolicy. It was more fully following out the system which ledEnglishmen against Exeter, which led Eadric and his comrades intoScotland. For in every English soldier whom William carried intoMaine he won a loyal English subject. To men who had fought underhis banners beyond the sea he would be no longer the Conqueror butthe victorious captain; they would need some very specialoppression at home to make them revolt against the chief whoselaurels they had helped to win. As our own gleeman tells the tale, they did little beyond harrying the helpless land; but incontinental writers we can trace a regular campaign, in which wehear of no battles, but of many sieges. William, as before, subdued the land piecemeal, keeping the city for the last. When hedrew near to Le Mans, its defenders surrendered at his summons, toescape fire and slaughter by speedy submission. The new communewas abolished, but the Conqueror swore to observe all the ancientrights of the city. 

All this time we have heard nothing of Count Fulk. Presently wefind him warring against nobles of Maine who had taken William'spart, and leaguing with the Bretons against William himself. TheKing set forth with his whole force, Norman and English; but peacewas made by the mediation of an unnamed Roman cardinal, abetted, weare told, by the chief Norman nobles. Success against confederatedAnjou and Britanny might be doubtful, with Maine and Englandwavering in their allegiance, and France, Scotland, and Flanders, possible enemies in the distance. The rights of the Count of Anjouover Maine were formally acknowledged, and William's eldest sonRobert did homage to Fulk for the county. Each prince stipulatedfor the safety and favour of all subjects of the other who hadtaken his side. Between Normandy and Anjou there was peace duringthe rest of the days of William; in Maine we shall see yet anotherrevolt, though only a partial one. 

William went back to England in 1073. In 1074 he went to thecontinent for a longer absence. As the time just after the firstcompletion of the Conquest is spoken of as a time when Normans andEnglish were beginning to sit down side by side in peace, so theyears which followed the submission of Ely are spoken of as a timeof special oppression. This fact is not unconnected with theKing's frequent absences from England. Whatever we say ofWilliam's own position, he was a check on smaller oppressors. Things were always worse when the eye of the great master was nolonger watching. William's one weakness was that of puttingovermuch trust in his immediate kinsfolk and friends. Of the twospecial oppressors, William Fitz-Osbern had thrown away his life inFlanders; but Bishop Ode was still at work, till several yearslater his king and brother struck him down with a truly righteousblow. 

The year 1074, not a year of fighting, was pro-eminently a year ofintrigue. William's enemies on the continent strove to turn therepresentative of the West-Saxon kings to help their ends. Edgarflits to and fro between Scotland and Flanders, and the King of theFrench tempts him with the offer of a convenient settlement on themarch of France, Normandy, and Flanders. Edgar sets forth fromScotland, but is driven back by a storm; Malcolm and Margaret thenchange their minds, and bid him make his peace with King William. William gladly accepts his submission; an embassy is sent to bringhim with all worship to the King in Normandy. He abides forseveral years in William's court contented and despised, receivinga daily pension and the profits of estates in England of no greatextent which the King of a moment held by the grant of a rival whocould afford to be magnanimous. 

Edgar's after-life showed that he belonged to that class of menwho, as a rule slothful and listless, can yet on occasion act withenergy, and who act most creditably on behalf of others. ButWilliam had no need to fear him, and he was easily turned into afriend and a dependant. Edgar, first of Englishmen by descent, washardly an Englishman by birth. William had now to deal with theEnglishman who stood next to Edgar in dignity and far above him inpersonal estimation. We have reached the great turning-point inWilliam's reign and character, the black and mysterious tale of thefate of Waltheof. The Earl of Northumberland, Northampton, andHuntingdon, was not the only earl in England of English birth. Theearldom of the East-Angles was held by a born Englishman who wasmore hateful than any stranger. Ralph of Wader was the oneEnglishman who had fought at William's side against England. Heoften passes for a native of Britanny, and he certainly held landsand castles in that country; but he was Breton only by the mother'sside. For Domesday and the Chronicles show that he was the son ofan elder Earl Ralph, who had been staller or master of the horse inEdward's days, and who is expressly said to have been born inNorfolk. The unusual name suggests that the elder Ralph was not ofEnglish descent. He survived the coming of William, and his sonfought on Senlac among the countrymen of his mother. This treasonimplies an unrecorded banishment in the days of Edward or Harold. Already earl in 1069, he had in that year acted vigorously forWilliam against the Danes. But he now conspired against him alongwith Roger, the younger son of William Fitz-Osbern, who hadsucceeded his father in the earldom of Hereford, while his Normanestates had passed to his elder brother William. What grounds ofcomplaint either Ralph or Roger had against William we know not;but that the loyalty of the Earl of Hereford was doubtfulthroughout the year 1074 appears from several letters of rebuke andcounsel sent to him by the Regent Lanfranc. At last the wielder ofboth swords took to his spiritual arms, and pronounced the Earlexcommunicate, till he should submit to the King's mercy and makerestitution to the King and to all men whom he had wronged. Rogerremained stiff-necked under the Primate's censure, and presentlycommitted an act of direct disobedience. The next year, 1075, hegave his sister Emma in marriage to Earl Ralph. This marriage theKing had forbidden, on some unrecorded ground of state policy. Most likely he already suspected both earls, and thought any tiebetween them dangerous. The notice shows William stepping in todo, as an act of policy, what under his successors became a matterof course, done with the sole object of making money. The bride-ale--the name that lurks in the modern shape of bridal--was held atExning in Cambridgeshire; bishops and abbots were guests of theexcommunicated Roger; Waltheof was there, and many Breton comradesof Ralph. In their cups they began to plot how they might drivethe King out of the kingdom. Charges, both true and false, werebrought against William; in a mixed gathering of Normans, English, and Bretons, almost every act of William's life might pass as awrong done to some part of the company, even though some others ofthe company were his accomplices. Above all, the two earls Ralphand Roger made a distinct proposal to their fellow-earl Waltheof. King William should be driven out of the land; one of the threeshould be King; the other two should remain earls, ruling each overa third of the kingdom. Such a scheme might attract earls, but noone else; it would undo William's best and greatest work; it wouldthrow back the growing unity of the kingdom by all the steps thatit had taken during several generations. 

Now what amount of favour did Waltheof give to these schemes?Weighing the accounts, it would seem that, in the excitement of thebride-ale, he consented to the treason, but that he thought betterof it the next morning. He went to Lanfranc, at once regent andghostly father, and confessed to him whatever he had to confess. The Primate assigned his penitent some ecclesiastical penances; theRegent bade the Earl go into Normandy and tell the whole tale tothe King. Waltheof went, with gifts in hand; he told his story andcraved forgiveness. William made light of the matter, and keptWaltheof with him, but seemingly not under restraint, till he cameback to England. 

Meanwhile the other two earls were in open rebellion. Ralph, halfBreton by birth and earl of a Danish land, asked help in Britannyand Denmark. Bretons from Britanny and Bretons settled in Englandflocked to him. King Swegen, now almost at the end of his reignand life, listened to the call of the rebels, and sent a fleetunder the command of his son Cnut, the future saint, together withan earl named Hakon. The revolt in England was soon put down, bothin East and West. The rebel earls met with no support save fromthose who were under their immediate influence. The country actedzealously for the King. Lanfranc could report that Earl Ralph andhis army were fleeing, and that the King's men, French and English, were chasing them. In another letter he could add, with somestrength of language, that the kingdom was cleansed from the filthof the Bretons. At Norwich only the castle was valiantly defendedby the newly married Countess Emma. Roger was taken prisoner;Ralph fled to Britanny; their followers were punished with variousmutilations, save the defenders of Norwich, who were admitted toterms. The Countess joined her husband in Britanny, and in days tocome Ralph did something to redeem so many treasons by dying as anarmed pilgrim in the first crusade. 

The main point of this story is that the revolt met with no Englishsupport whatever. Not only did Bishop Wulfstan march along withhis fierce Norman brethren Ode and Geoffrey; the English peopleeverywhere were against the rebels. For this revolt offered noattraction to English feeling; had the undertaking been lesshopeless, nothing could have been gained by exchanging the rule ofWilliam for that of Ralph or Roger. It might have been differentif the Danes had played their part better. The rebellion broke outwhile William was in Normandy; it was the sailing of the Danishfleet which brought him back to England. But never did enterprisebring less honour on its leaders than this last Danish voyage upthe Humber. All that the holy Cnut did was to plunder the minsterof Saint Peter at York and to sail away. 

His coming however seems to have altogether changed the King'sfeelings with regard to Waltheof. As yet he had not been dealtwith as a prisoner or an enemy. He now came back to England withthe King, and William's first act was to imprison both Waltheof andRoger. The imprisonment of Roger, a rebel taken in arms, was amatter of course. As for Waltheof, whatever he had promised at thebride-ale, he had done no disloyal act; he had had no share in therebellion, and he had told the King all that he knew. But he hadlistened to traitors, and it might be dangerous to leave him atlarge when a Danish fleet, led by his old comrade Cnut, wasactually afloat. Still what followed is strange indeed, speciallystrange with William as its chief doer. 

At the Midwinter Gemot of 1075-1076 Roger and Waltheof were broughtto trial. Ralph was condemned in absence, like Eustace ofBoulogne. Roger was sentenced to forfeiture and imprisonment forlife. Waltheof made his defence; his sentence was deferred; he waskept at Winchester in a straiter imprisonment than before. At thePentecostal Gemot of 1076, held at Westminster, his case was againargued, and he was sentenced to death. On the last day of May thelast English earl was beheaded on the hills above Winchester. 

Such a sentence and execution, strange at any time, is speciallystrange under William. Whatever Waltheof had done, his offence waslighter than that of Roger; yet Waltheof has the heavier and Rogerthe lighter punishment. With Scroggs or Jeffreys on the bench, itmight have been argued that Waltheof's confession to the King didnot, in strictness of law, wipe out the guilt of his originalpromise to the conspirators; but William the Great did not commonlyact after the fashion of Scroggs and Jeffreys. To deprive Waltheofof his earldom might doubtless be prudent; a man who had evenlistened to traitors might be deemed unfit for such a trust. Itmight be wise to keep him safe under the King's eye, like Edwin, Morkere, and Edgar. But why should he be picked out for death, when the far more guilty Roger was allowed to live? Why should hebe chosen as the one victim of a prince who never before or after, in Normandy or in England, doomed any man to die on a politicalcharge? These are questions hard to answer. It is not enough tosay that Waltheof was an Englishman, that it was William's policygradually to get rid of Englishmen in high places, and that thetime was now come to get rid of the last. For such a policyforfeiture, or at most imprisonment, would have been enough. Whileother Englishmen lost lands, honours, at most liberty, Waltheofalone lost his life by a judicial sentence. It is likely enoughthat many Normans hungered for the lands and honours of the oneEnglishman who still held the highest rank in England. Stillforfeiture without death might have satisfied even them. ButWaltheof was not only earl of three shires; he was husband of theKing's near kinswoman. We are told that Judith was the enemy andaccuser of her husband. This may have touched William's one weakpoint. Yet he would hardly have swerved from the practice of hiswhole life to please the bloody caprice of a niece who longed forthe death of her husband. And if Judith longed for Waltheof'sdeath, it was not from a wish to supply his place with another. Legend says that she refused a second husband offered her by theKing; it is certain that she remained a widow. 

Waltheof's death must thus remain a mystery, an isolated deed ofblood unlike anything else in William's life. It seems to havebeen impolitic; it led to no revolt, but it called forth a newburst of English feeling. Waltheof was deemed the martyr of hispeople; he received the same popular canonization as more than oneEnglish patriot. Signs and wonders were wrought at his tomb atCrowland, till displays of miraculous power which were soinconsistent with loyalty and good order were straitly forbidden. The act itself marks a stage in the downward course of William'scharacter. In itself, the harrying of Northumberland, the veryinvasion of England, with all the bloodshed that they caused, mightbe deemed blacker crimes than the unjust death of a single man. But as human nature stands, the less crime needs a worse man to doit. Crime, as ever, led to further crime and was itself thepunishment of crime. In the eyes of William's contemporaries thedeath of Waltheof, the blackest act of William's life, was also itsturning-point. From the day of the martyrdom on Saint Giles' hillthe magic of William's name and William's arms passed away. Unfailing luck no longer waited on him; after Waltheof's death henever, till his last campaign of all, won a battle or took a town. In this change of William's fortunes the men of his own day saw thejudgement of God upon his crime. And in the fact at least theywere undoubtedly right. Henceforth, though William's real powerabides unshaken, the tale of his warfare is chiefly a tale of pettydefeats. The last eleven years of his life would never have wonhim the name of Conqueror. But in the higher walk of policy andlegislation never was his nobler surname more truly deserved. Never did William the Great show himself so truly great as in theselater years. 

The death of Waltheof and the popular judgement on it suggestanother act of William's which cannot have been far from it inpoint of time, and about which men spoke in his own day in the samespirit. If the judgement of God came on William for the beheadingof Waltheof, it came on him also for the making of the New Forest. As to that forest there is a good deal of ancient exaggeration anda good deal of modern misconception. The word forest is oftenmisunderstood. In its older meaning, a meaning which it stillkeeps in some parts, a forest has nothing to do with trees. It isa tract of land put outside the common law and subject to astricter law of its own, and that commonly, probably always, tosecure for the King the freer enjoyment of the pleasure of hunting. Such a forest William made in Hampshire; the impression which itmade on men's minds at the time is shown by its having kept thename of the New Forest for eight hundred years. There is no reasonto think that William laid waste any large tract of speciallyfruitful country, least of all that he laid waste a land thicklyinhabited; for most of the Forest land never can have been such. But it is certain from Domesday and the Chronicle that William didafforest a considerable tract of land in Hampshire; he set it apartfor the purposes of hunting; he fenced it in by special and cruellaws--stopping indeed short of death--for the protection of hispleasures, and in this process some men lost their lands, and weredriven from their homes. Some destruction of houses is hereimplied; some destruction of churches is not unlikely. The popularbelief, which hardly differs from the account of writers one degreelater than Domesday and the Chronicle, simply exaggerates theextent of destruction. There was no such wide-spread laying wasteas is often supposed, because no such wide-spread laying waste wasneeded. But whatever was needed for William's purpose was done;and Domesday gives us the record. And the act surely makes, likethe death of Waltheof, a downward stage in William's character. The harrying of Northumberland was in itself a far greater crime, and involved far more of human wretchedness. But it is notremembered in the same way, because it has left no such abidingmemorial. But here again the lesser crime needed a worse man to doit. The harrying of Northumberland was a crime done with apolitical object; it was the extreme form of military severity; itwas not vulgar robbery done with no higher motive than to securethe fuller enjoyment of a brutal sport. To this level William hadnow sunk. It was in truth now that hunting in England finally tookthe character of a mere sport. Hunting was no new thing; in anearly state of society it is often a necessary thing. The huntingof Alfred is spoken of as a grave matter of business, as part ofhis kingly duty. He had to make war on the wild beasts, as he hadto make war on the Danes. The hunting of William is simply asport, not his duty or his business, but merely his pleasure. Andto this pleasure, the pleasure of inflicting pain and slaughter, hedid not scruple to sacrifice the rights of other men, and to guardhis enjoyment by ruthless laws at which even in that rough age menshuddered. 

For this crime the men of his day saw the punishment in the strangeand frightful deaths of his offspring, two sons and a grandson, onthe scene of his crime. One of these himself he saw, the death ofhis second son Richard, a youth of great promise, whose prolongedlife might have saved England from the rule of William Rufus. Hedied in the Forest, about the year 1081, to the deep grief of hisparents. And Domesday contains a touching entry, how William gaveback his land to a despoiled Englishman as an offering forRichard's soul. 

The forfeiture of three earls, the death of one, threw theirhonours and estates into the King's hands. Another fresh source ofwealth came by the death of the Lady Edith, who had kept her royalrank and her great estates, and who died while the proceedingsagainst Waltheof were going on. It was not now so important forWilliam as it had been in the first years of the Conquest to rewardhis followers; he could now think of the royal hoard in the firstplace. Of the estates which now fell in to the Crown large partswere granted out. The house of Bigod, afterwards so renowned asEarls of Norfolk, owe their rise to their forefather's share in theforfeited lands of Earl Ralph. But William kept the greater partto himself; one lordship in Somerset, part of the lands of theLady, he gave to the church of Saint Peter at Rome. Of the threeearldoms, those of Hereford and East-Anglia were not filled up; thelater earldoms of those lands have no connexion with the earls ofWilliam's day. Waltheof's southern earldoms of Northampton andHuntingdon became the dowry of his daughter Matilda; that ofHuntingdon passed to his descendants the Kings of Scots. ButNorthumberland, close on the Scottish border, still needed an earl;but there is something strange in the choice of Bishop Walcher ofDurham. It is possible that this appointment was a concession toEnglish feeling stirred to wrath at the death of Waltheof. Thedays of English earls were over, and a Norman would have beenlooked on as Waltheof's murderer. The Lotharingian bishop was astranger; but he was not a Norman, and he was no oppressor ofEnglishmen. But he was strangely unfit for the place. Not afighting bishop like Ode and Geoffrey, he was chiefly devoted tospiritual affairs, specially to the revival of the monastic life, which had died out in Northern England since the Danish invasions. But his weak trust in unworthy favourites, English and foreign, ledhim to a fearful and memorable end. The Bishop was on terms ofclose friendship with Ligulf, an Englishman of the highest birthand uncle by marriage to Earl Waltheof. He had kept his estates;but the insolence of his Norman neighbours had caused him to comeand live in the city of Durham near his friend the Bishop. Hisfavour with Walcher roused the envy of some of the Bishop'sfavourites, who presently contrived his death. The Bishoplamented, and rebuked them; but he failed to "do justice, " topunish the offenders sternly and speedily. He was thereforebelieved to be himself guilty of Ligulf's death. One of the moststriking and instructive events of the time followed. On May 14, 1080, a full Gemot of the earldom was held at Gateshead to dealwith the murder of Ligulf. This was one of those rare occasionswhen a strong feeling led every man to the assembly. The localParliament took its ancient shape of an armed crowd, headed by thenoblest Englishmen left in the earldom. There was no vote, nodebate; the shout was "Short rede good rede, slay ye the Bishop. "And to that cry, Walcher himself and his companions, the murderersof Ligulf among them, were slaughtered by the raging multitude whohad gathered to avenge him. 

The riot in which Walcher died was no real revolt against William'sgovernment. Such a local rising against a local wrong might havehappened in the like case under Edward or Harold. No governmentcould leave such a deed unpunished; but William's own ideas ofjustice would have been fully satisfied by the blinding ormutilation of a few ringleaders. But William was in Normandy inthe midst of domestic and political cares. He sent his brother Odeto restore order, and his vengeance was frightful. The land washarried; innocent men were mutilated and put to death; others savedtheir lives by bribes. Earl after earl was set over a land so hardto rule. A certain Alberie was appointed, but he was removed asunfit. The fierce Bishop Geoffrey of Coutances tried his hand andresigned. At the time of William's death the earldom was held byGeoffrey's nephew Robert of Mowbray, a stern and gloomy stranger, but whom Englishmen reckoned among "good men, " when he guarded themarches of England against the Scot. 

After the death of Waltheof William seems to have stayed inNormandy for several years. His ill luck now began. Before theyear 1076 was out, he entered, we know not why, on a Bretoncampaign. But he was driven from Dol by the combined forces ofBritanny and France; Philip was ready to help any enemy of William. The Conqueror had now for the first time suffered defeat in his ownperson. He made peace with both enemies, promising his daughterConstance to Alan of Britanny. But the marriage did not followtill ten years later. The peace with France, as the EnglishChronicle says, "held little while;" Philip could not resist thetemptation of helping William's eldest son Robert when the recklessyoung man rebelled against his father. With most of the qualitiesof an accomplished knight, Robert had few of those which makeeither a wise ruler or an honest man. A brave soldier, even askilful captain, he was no general; ready of speech and free ofhand, he was lavish rather than bountiful. He did not lackgenerous and noble feelings; but of a steady course, even in evil, he was incapable. As a ruler, he was no oppressor in his ownperson; but sloth, carelessness, love of pleasure, incapacity tosay No, failure to do justice, caused more wretchedness than theoppression of those tyrants who hinder the oppressions of others. William would not set such an one over any part of his dominionsbefore his time, and it was his policy to keep his childrendependent on him. While he enriched his brothers, he did not givethe smallest scrap of the spoils of England to his sons. ButRobert deemed that he had a right to something greater than privateestates. The nobles of Normandy had done homage to him asWilliam's successor; he had done homage to Fulk for Maine, as if hewere himself its count. He was now stirred up by evil companionsto demand that, if his father would not give him part of hiskingdom--the spirit of Edwin and Morkere had crossed the sea--hewould at least give him Normandy and Maine. William refused withmany pithy sayings. It was not his manner to take off his clothestill he went to bed. Robert now, with a band of discontented youngnobles, plunged into border warfare against his father. He thenwandered over a large part of Europe, begging and receiving moneyand squandering all that he got. His mother too sent him money, which led to the first quarrel between William and Matilda after somany years of faithful union. William rebuked his wife for helpinghis enemy in breach of his orders: she pleaded the mother's lovefor her first-born. The mother was forgiven, but her messenger, sentenced to loss of eyes, found shelter in a monastery. 

At last in 1079 Philip gave Robert a settled dwelling-place in theborder-fortress of Gerberoi. The strife between father and sonbecame dangerous. William besieged the castle, to undergo beforeits walls his second defeat, to receive his first wound, and thatat the hands of his own son. Pierced in the hand by the lance ofRobert, his horse smitten by an arrow, the Conqueror fell to theground, and was saved only by an Englishman, Tokig, son of Wiggodof Wallingford, who gave his life for his king. It seems an earlysoftening of the tale which says that Robert dismounted and cravedhis father's pardon; it seems a later hardening which says thatWilliam pronounced a curse on his son. William Rufus too, known asyet only as the dutiful son of his father, was wounded in hisdefence. The blow was not only grievous to William's feelings as afather; it was a serious military defeat. The two wounded Williamsand the rest of the besiegers escaped how they might, and the siegeof Gerberoi was raised. 

We next find the wise men of Normandy debating how to make peacebetween father and son. In the course of the year 1080 a peace waspatched up, and a more honourable sphere was found for Robert'senergies in an expedition into Scotland. In the autumn of the yearof Gerberoi Malcolm had made another wasting inroad intoNorthumberland. With the King absent and Northumberland inconfusion through the death of Walcher, this wrong went unavengedtill the autumn of 1080. Robert gained no special glory inScotland; a second quarrel with his father followed, and Robertremained a banished man during the last seven years of William'sreign. 

In this same year 1080 a synod of the Norman Church was held, theTruce of God again renewed which we heard of years ago. The formsof outrage on which the Truce was meant to put a cheek, and whichthe strong hand of William had put down more thoroughly than theTruce would do, had clearly begun again during the confusionscaused by the rebellion of Robert. 

The two next years, 1081-1082, William was in England. His homesorrows were now pressing heavily on him. His eldest son was arebel and an exile; about this time his second son died in the NewForest; according to one version, his daughter, the betrothed ofEdwin, who had never forgotten her English lover, was now promisedto the Spanish King Alfonso, and died--in answer to her ownprayers--before the marriage was celebrated. And now the partnerof William's life was taken from him four years after his onedifference with her. On November 3, 1083, Matilda died after along sickness, to her husband's lasting grief. She was buried inher own church at Caen, and churches in England received gifts fromWilliam on behalf of her soul. 

The mourner had soon again to play the warrior. Nearly the wholeof William's few remaining years were spent in a struggle which inearlier times he would surely have ended in a day. Maine, city andcounty, did not call for a third conquest; but a single baron ofMaine defied William's power, and a single castle of Maine held outagainst him for three years. Hubert, Viscount of Beaumont andFresnay, revolted on some slight quarrel. The siege of his castleof Sainte-Susanne went on from the death of Matilda till the lastyear but one of William's reign. The tale is full of picturesquedetail; but William had little personal share in it. The bestcaptains of Normandy tried their strength in vain against this onedonjon on its rock. William at last made peace with the subjectwho was too strong for him. Hubert came to England and receivedthe King's pardon. Practically the pardon was the other way. 

Thus for the last eleven years of his life William ceased to be theConqueror. Engaged only in small enterprises, he was unsuccessfulin all. One last success was indeed in store for him; but that wasto be purchased with his own life. As he turned away in defeatfrom this castle and that, as he felt the full bitterness ofdomestic sorrow, he may have thought, as others thought for him, that the curse of Waltheof, the curse of the New Forest, was evertracking his steps. If so, his crimes were done in England, andtheir vengeance came in Normandy. In England there was no furtherroom for his mission as Conqueror; he had no longer foes toovercome. He had an act of justice to do, and he did it. He hadhis kingdom to guard, and he guarded it. He had to take the greatstep which should make his kingdom one for ever; and he had, perhaps without fully knowing what he did, to bid the picture ofhis reign be painted for all time as no reign before or after hasbeen painted. 

CHAPTER XI--THE LAST YEARS OF WILLIAM--1081-1087

Of two events of these last years of the Conqueror's reign, eventsof very different degrees of importance, we have already spoken. The Welsh expedition of William was the only recorded fighting onBritish ground, and that lay without the bounds of the kingdom ofEngland. William now made Normandy his chief dwelling-place, buthe was constantly called over to England. The Welsh campaignproves his presence in England in 1081; he was again in England in1082, but he went back to Normandy between the two visits. Thevisit of 1082 was a memorable one; there is no more characteristicact of the Conqueror than the deed which marks it. The cruelty andinsolence of his brother Ode, whom he had trusted so much more thanhe deserved, had passed all bounds. In avenging the death ofWalcher he had done deeds such as William never did himself orallowed any other man to do. And now, beguiled by a soothsayer whosaid that one of his name should be the next Pope, he dreamed ofsucceeding to the throne of Gregory the Seventh. He made all kindsof preparations to secure his succession, and he was at last aboutto set forth for Italy at the head of something like an army. Hisschemes were by no means to the liking of his brother. Williamcame suddenly over from Normandy, and met Ode in the Isle of Wight. There the King got together as many as he could of the great men ofthe realm. Before them he arraigned Ode for all his crimes. Hehad left him as the lieutenant of his kingdom, and he had shownhimself the common oppressor of every class of men in the realm. Last of all, he had beguiled the warriors who were needed for thedefence of England against the Danes and Irish to follow him on hiswild schemes in Italy. How was he to deal with such a brother, William asked of his wise men. 

He had to answer himself; no other man dared to speak. Williamthen gave his judgement. The common enemy of the whole realmshould not be spared because he was the King's brother. He shouldbe seized and put in ward. As none dared to seize him, the Kingseized him with his own hands. And now, for the first time inEngland, we hear words which were often heard again. The bishopstained with blood and sacrilege appealed to the privileges of hisorder. He was a clerk, a bishop; no man might judge him but thePope. William, taught, so men said, by Lanfranc, had his answerready. "I do not seize a clerk or a bishop; I seize my earl whom Iset over my kingdom. " So the Earl of Kent was carried off to aprison in Normandy, and Pope Gregory himself pleaded in vain forthe release of the Bishop of Bayeux. 

The mind of William was just now mainly given to the affairs of hisisland kingdom. In the winter of 1083 he hastened from the death-bed of his wife to the siege of Sainte-Susanne, and thence to theMidwinter Gemot in England. The chief object of the assembly wasthe specially distasteful one of laying on of a tax. In the courseof the next year, six shillings was levied on every hide of land tomeet a pressing need. The powers of the North were againthreatening; the danger, if it was danger, was greater than whenWaltheof smote the Normans in the gate at York. Swegen and hissuccessor Harold were dead. Cnut the Saint reigned in Denmark, theson-in-law of Robert of Flanders. This alliance with William'senemy joined with his remembrance of his own two failures to stirup the Danish king to a yearning for some exploit in England. English exiles were still found to urge him to the enterprise. William's conquest had scattered banished or discontentedEnglishmen over all Europe. Many had made their way to the EasternRome; they had joined the Warangian guard, the surest support ofthe Imperial throne, and at Dyrrhachion, as on Senlac, the axe ofEngland had met the lance of Normandy in battle. Others had fledto the North; they prayed Cnut to avenge the death of his kinsmanHarold and to deliver England from the yoke of men--so an Englishwriter living in Denmark spoke of them--of Roman speech. Thus theGreek at one end of Europe, the Norman at the other, still kept onthe name of Rome. The fleet of Denmark was joined by the fleet ofFlanders; a smaller contingent was promised by the devout andpeaceful Olaf of Norway, who himself felt no call to take a sharein the work of war. 

Against this danger William strengthened himself by the help of thetax that he had just levied. He could hardly have dreamed ofdefending England against Danish invaders by English weapons only. But he thought as little of trusting the work to his own Normans. With the money of England he hired a host of mercenaries, horse andfoot, from France and Britanny, even from Maine where Hubert wasstill defying him at Sainte-Susanne. He gathered this force on themainland, and came back at its head, a force such as England hadnever before seen; men wondered how the land might feed them all. The King's men, French and English, had to feed them, each manaccording to the amount of his land. And now William did whatHarold had refused to do; he laid waste the whole coast that layopen to attack from Denmark and Flanders. But no Danes, noFlemings, came. Disputes arose between Cnut and his brother Olaf, and the great enterprise came to nothing. William kept part of hismercenaries in England, and part he sent to their homes. Cnut wasmurdered in a church by his own subjects, and was canonized asSanctus Canutus by a Pope who could not speak the Scandinavianname. 

Meanwhile, at the Midwinter Gemot of 1085-1086, held in due form atGloucester, William did one of his greatest acts. "The King hadmickle thought and sooth deep speech with his Witan about his land, how it were set and with whilk men. " In that "deep speech, " socalled in our own tongue, lurks a name well known and dear to everyEnglishman. The result of that famous parliament is set forth atlength by the Chronicler. The King sent his men into each shire, men who did indeed set down in their writ how the land was set andof what men. In that writ we have a record in the Roman tongue noless precious than the Chronicles in our own. For that writ becamethe Book of Winchester, the book to which our fathers gave the nameof Domesday, the book of judgement that spared no man. 

The Great Survey was made in the course of the first seven monthsof the year 1086. Commissioners were sent into every shire, whoinquired by the oaths of the men of the hundreds by whom the landhad been held in King Edward's days and what it was worth then, bywhom it was held at the time of the survey and what it was worththen; and lastly, whether its worth could be raised. Nothing wasto be left out. "So sooth narrowly did he let spear it out, thatthere was not a hide or a yard of land, nor further--it is shame totell, and it thought him no shame to do--an ox nor a cow nor aswine was left that was not set in his writ. " This kind ofsearching inquiry, never liked at any time, would be speciallygrievous then. The taking of the survey led to disturbances inmany places, in which not a few lives were lost. While the workwas going on, William went to and fro till he knew thoroughly howthis land was set and of what men. He had now a list of all men, French and English, who held land in his kingdom. And it was notenough to have their names in a writ; he would see them face toface. On the making of the survey followed that great assembly, that great work of legislation, which was the crown of William'slife as a ruler and lawgiver of England. The usual assemblies ofthe year had been held at Winchester and Westminster. Anextraordinary assembly was held in the plain of Salisbury on thefirst day of August. The work of that assembly has been alreadyspoken of. It was now that all the owners of land in the kingdombecame the men of the King; it was now that England became one, with no fear of being again parted asunder. 

The close connexion between the Great Survey and the law and theoath of Salisbury is plain. It was a great matter for the King toget in the gold certainly and, we may add, fairly. William woulddeal with no man otherwise than according to law as he understoodthe law. But he sought for more than this. He would not only knowwhat this land could be made to pay; he would know the state of hiskingdom in every detail; he would know its military strength; hewould know whether his own will, in the long process of taking fromthis man and giving to that, had been really carried out. Domesdayis before all things a record of the great confiscation, a recordof that gradual change by which, in less than twenty years, thegreater part of the land of England had been transferred fromnative to foreign owners. And nothing shows like Domesday in whata formally legal fashion that transfer was carried out. What werethe principles on which it was carried out, we have already seen. All private property in land came only from the grant of KingWilliam. It had all passed into his hands by lawful forfeiture; hemight keep it himself; he might give it back to its old owner orgrant it to a new one. So it was at the general redemption oflands; so it was whenever fresh conquests or fresh revolts threwfresh lands into the King's hands. The principle is so thoroughlytaken for granted, that we are a little startled to find itincidentally set forth in so many words in a case of no specialimportance. A priest named Robert held a single yardland in almsof the King; he became a monk in the monastery of Stow-in-Lindesey, and his yardland became the property of the house. One hardly seeswhy this case should have been picked out for a solemn declarationof the general law. Yet, as "the day on which the English redeemedtheir lands" is spoken of only casually in the case of a particularestate, so the principle that no man could hold lands except by theKing's grant ("Non licet terram alicui habere nisi regis concessu")is brought in only to illustrate the wrongful dealing of Robert andthe monks of Stow in the case of a very small holding indeed. 

All this is a vast system of legal fictions; for William's wholeposition, the whole scheme of his government, rested on a system oflegal fictions. Domesday is full of them; one might almost saythat there is nothing else there. A very attentive study ofDomesday might bring out the fact that William was a foreignconqueror, and that the book itself was a record of the process bywhich he took the lands of the natives who had fought against himto reward the strangers who had fought for him. But nothing ofthis kind appears on the surface of the record. The great facts ofthe Conquest are put out of sight. William is taken for granted, not only as the lawful king, but as the immediate successor ofEdward. The "time of King Edward" and the "time of King William"are the two times that the law knows of. The compilers of therecord are put to some curious shifts to describe the time between"the day when King Edward was alive and dead" and the day "whenKing William came into England. " That coming might have been aspeaceful as the coming of James the First or George the First. Thetwo great battles are more than once referred to, but only casuallyin the mention of particular persons. A very sharp critic mightguess that one of them had something to do with King William'scoming into England; but that is all. Harold appears only as Earl;it is only in two or three places that we hear of a "time ofHarold, " and even of Harold "seizing the kingdom" and "reigning. "These two or three places stand out in such contrast to the generallanguage of the record that we are led to think that the scribemust have copied some earlier record or taken down the words ofsome witness, and must have forgotten to translate them into moreloyal formulae. So in recording who held the land in King Edward'sday and who in King William's, there is nothing to show that in somany cases the holder under Edward had been turned out to make roomfor the holder under William. The former holder is marked by theperfectly colourless word "ancestor" ("antecessor"), a word as yetmeaning, not "forefather, " but "predecessor" of any kind. InDomesday the word is most commonly an euphemism for "dispossessedEnglishman. " It is a still more distinct euphemism where theNorman holder is in more than one place called the "heir" of thedispossessed Englishmen. 

The formulae of Domesday are the most speaking witness to thespirit of outward legality which ruled every act of William. Inthis way they are wonderfully instructive; but from the formulaealone no one could ever make the real facts of William's coming andreign. It is the incidental notices which make us more at home inthe local and personal life of this reign than of any reign beforeor for a long time after. The Commissioners had to report whetherthe King's will had been everywhere carried out, whether every man, great and small, French and English, had what the King meant him tohave, neither more nor less. And they had often to report a stateof things different from what the King had meant to be. Many menhad not all that King William had meant them to have, and manyothers had much more. Normans had taken both from Englishmen andfrom other Normans. Englishmen had taken from Englishmen; some hadtaken from ecclesiastical bodies; some had taken from King Williamhimself; nay King William himself holds lands which he ought togive up to another man. This last entry at least shows thatWilliam was fully ready to do right, according to his notions ofright. So also the King's two brothers are set down among thechief offenders. Of these unlawful holdings of land, marked in thetechnical language of the Survey as invasiones and occupationes, many were doubtless real cases of violent seizure, without excuseeven according to William's reading of the law. But this does notalways follow, even when the language of the Survey would seem toimply it. Words implying violence, per vim and the like, are usedin the legal language of all ages, where no force has been used, merely to mark a possession as illegal. We are startled at findingthe Apostle Paul set down as one of the offenders; but the words"sanctus Paulus invasit" mean no more than that the canons of SaintPaul's church in London held lands to which the Commissioners heldthat they had no good title. It is these cases where one man heldland which another claimed that gave opportunity for those personaldetails, stories, notices of tenures and customs, which makeDomesday the most precious store of knowledge of the time. 

One fruitful and instructive source of dispute comes from the wayin which the lands in this or that district were commonly grantedout. The in-comer, commonly a foreigner, received all the landswhich such and such a man, commonly a dispossessed Englishman, heldin that shire or district. The grantee stepped exactly into theplace of the antecessor; he inherited all his rights and all hisburthens. He inherited therewith any disputes as to the extent ofthe lands of the antecessor or as to the nature of his tenure. Andnew disputes arose in the process of transfer. One common sourceof dispute was when the former owner, besides lands which werestrictly his own, held lands on lease, subject to a reversionaryinterest on the part of the Crown or the Church. The lease orsale--emere is the usual word--of Church lands for three lives toreturn to the Church at the end of the third life was very common. If the antecessor was himself the third life, the grantee, hisheir, had no claim to the land; and in any case he could take inonly with all its existing liabilities. But the grantee often tookpossession of the whole of the land held by the antecessor, as ifit were all alike his own. A crowd of complaints followed from allmanner of injured persons and bodies, great and small, French andEnglish, lay and clerical. The Commissioners seem to have fairlyheard all, and to have fairly reported all for the King to judgeof. It is their care to do right to all men which has given ussuch strange glimpses of the inner life of an age which had nonelike it before or after. 

The general Survey followed by the general homage might seem tomark William's work in England, his work as an English statesman, as done. He could hardly have had time to redress the many casesof wrong which the Survey laid before him; but he was able to wringyet another tax out of the nation according to his new and morecertain register. He then, for the last time, crossed to Normandywith his new hoard. The Chronicler and other writers of the timedwell on the physical portents of these two years, the storms, thefires, the plagues, the sharp hunger, the deaths of famous men onboth sides of the sea. Of the year 1087, the last year of theConqueror, it needs the full strength of our ancient tongue to setforth the signs and wonders. The King had left England safe, peaceful, thoroughly bowed down under the yoke, cursing the rulerwho taxed her and granted away her lands, yet half blessing him forthe "good frith" that he made against the murderer, the robber, andthe ravisher. But the land that he had won was neither to see hisend nor to shelter his dust. One last gleam of success was, afterso many reverses, to crown his arms; but it was success which wasindeed unworthy of the Conqueror who had entered Exeter and Le Mansin peaceful triumph. And the death-blow was now to come to himwho, after so many years of warfare, stooped at last for the firsttime to cruel and petty havoc without an object. 

The border-land of France and Normandy, the French Vexin, the landof which Mantes is the capital, had always been disputed betweenkingdom and duchy. Border wars had been common; just at this timethe inroads of the French commanders at Mantes are said to havebeen specially destructive. William not only demanded redress fromthe King, but called for the surrender of the whole Vexin. Whatfollowed is a familiar story. Philip makes a foolish jest on thebodily state of his great rival, unable just then to carry out histhreats. "The King of the English lies in at Rouen; there will bea great show of candles at his churching. " As at Alencon in hisyouth, so now, William, who could pass by real injuries, was stungto the uttermost by personal mockery. By the splendour of God, when he rose up again, he would light a hundred thousand candles atPhilip's cost. He kept his word at the cost of Philip's subjects. The ballads of the day told how he went forth and gathered thefruits of autumn in the fields and orchards and vineyards of theenemy. But he did more than gather fruits; the candles of hischurching were indeed lighted in the burning streets of Mantes. The picture of William the Great directing in person mere brutalhavoc like this is strange even after the harrying ofNorthumberland and the making of the New Forest. Riding to and froamong the flames, bidding his men with glee to heap on the fuel, gladdened at the sight of burning houses and churches, a false stepof his horse gave him his death-blow. Carried to Rouen, to thepriory of Saint Gervase near the city, he lingered from August 15to September 7, and then the reign and life of the Conqueror cameto an end. Forsaken by his children, his body stripped and wellnigh forgotten, the loyalty of one honest knight, Herlwin ofConteville, bears his body to his grave in his own church at Caen. His very grave is disputed--a dispossessed antecessor claims theground as his own, and the dead body of the Conqueror has to waitwhile its last resting-place is bought with money. Into thatresting-place force alone can thrust his bulky frame, and the ritesof his burial are as wildly cut short as were the rites of hiscrowning. With much striving he had at last won his seven feet ofground; but he was not to keep it for ever. Religious warfarebroke down his tomb and scattered his bones, save one treasuredrelic. Civil revolution swept away the one remaining fragment. And now, while we seek in vain beneath the open sky for the rifledtombs of Harold and of Waltheof, a stone beneath the vault of SaintStephen's still tells us where the bones of William once lay butwhere they lie no longer. 

There is no need to doubt the striking details of the death andburial of the Conqueror. We shrink from giving the same trust tothe long tale of penitence which is put into the mouth of the dyingKing. He may, in that awful hour, have seen the wrong-doing of thelast one-and-twenty years of his life; he hardly threw hisrepentance into the shape of a detailed autobiographicalconfession. But the more authentic sayings and doings of William'sdeath-bed enable us to follow his course as an English statesmanalmost to his last moments. His end was one of devotion, ofprayers and almsgiving, and of opening of the prison to them thatwere bound. All save one of his political prisoners, English andNorman, he willingly set free. Morkere and his companions fromEly, Walfnoth son of Godwine, hostage for Harold's faith, Wulf sonof Harold and Ealdgyth, taken, we can hardly doubt, as a babe whenChester opened its gates to William, were all set free; some indeedwere put in bonds again by the King's successor. But Ode Williamwould not set free; he knew too well how many would suffer if hewere again let loose upon the world. But love of kindred was stillstrong; at last he yielded, sorely against his will, to the prayersand pledges of his other brother. Ode went forth from his prison, again Bishop of Bayeux, soon again to be Earl of Kent, and soon toprove William's foresight by his deeds. 

William's disposal of his dominions on his death-bed carries on hispolitical history almost to his last breath. Robert, the banishedrebel, might seem to have forfeited all claims to the succession. But the doctrine of hereditary right had strengthened during thesixty years of William's life. He is made to say that, though heforesees the wretchedness of any land over which Robert should bethe ruler, still he cannot keep him out of the duchy of Normandywhich is his birthright. Of England he will not dare to dispose;he leaves the decision to God, seemingly to Archbishop Lanfranc asthe vicar of God. He will only say that his wish is for his sonWilliam to succeed him in his kingdom, and he prays Lanfranc tocrown him king, if he deem such a course to be right. Such amessage was a virtual nomination, and William the Red succeeded hisfather in England, but kept his crown only by the help of loyalEnglishmen against Norman rebels. William Rufus, it must beremembered, still under the tutelage of his father and Lanfranc, had not yet shown his bad qualities; he was known as yet only asthe dutiful son who fought for his father against the rebel Robert. By ancient English law, that strong preference which was all thatany man could claim of right belonged beyond doubt to the youngestof William's sons, the English AEtheling Henry. He alone was bornin the land; he alone was the son of a crowned King and his Lady. It is perhaps with a knowledge of what followed that William ismade to bid his youngest son wait while his eldest go before him;that he left him landless, but master of a hoard of silver, thereis no reason to doubt. English feeling, which welcomed Henrythirteen years later, would doubtless have gladly seen hisimmediate accession; but it might have been hard, in dividingWilliam's dominions, to have shut out the second son in favour ofthe third. And in the scheme of events by which conquered Englandwas to rise again, the reign of Rufus, at the moment the darkesttime of all, had its appointed share. 

That England could rise again, that she could rise with a new life, strengthened by her momentary overthrow, was before all thingsowing to the lucky destiny which, if she was to be conquered, gaveher William the Great as her Conqueror. It is as it is in allhuman affairs. William himself could not have done all that hedid, wittingly and unwittingly, unless circumstances had beenfavourable to him; but favourable circumstances would have beenuseless, unless there had been a man like William to take advantageof them. What he did, wittingly or unwittingly, he did by virtueof his special position, the position of a foreign conquerorveiling his conquest under a legal claim. The hour and the manwere alike needed. The man in his own hour wrought a work, partlyconscious, partly unconscious. The more clearly any manunderstands his conscious work, the more sure is that consciouswork to lead to further results of which he dreams not. So it waswith the Conqueror of England. His purpose was to win and to keepthe kingdom of England, and to hand it on to those who should comeafter him more firmly united than it had ever been before. In thiswork his spirit of formal legality, his shrinking from needlesschange, stood him in good stead. He saw that as the kingdom ofEngland could best be won by putting forth a legal claim to it, soit could best be kept by putting on the character of a legal ruler, and reigning as the successor of the old kings seeking the unity ofthe kingdom; he saw, from the example both of England and of otherlands, the dangers which threatened that unity; he saw whatmeasures were needed to preserve it in his own day, measures whichhave preserved it ever since. Here is a work, a conscious work, which entitles the foreign Conqueror to a place among Englishstatesmen, and to a place in their highest rank. Further than thiswe cannot conceive William himself to have looked. All that was tocome of his work in future ages was of necessity hidden from hiseyes, no less than from the eyes of smaller men. He had assuredlyno formal purpose to make England Norman; but still less had he anythought that the final outcome of his work would make England onone side more truly English than if he had never crossed the sea. In his ecclesiastical work he saw the future still less clearly. He designed to reform what he deemed abuses, to bring the EnglishChurch into closer conformity with the other Churches of the West;he assuredly never dreamed that the issue of his reform would bethe strife between Henry and Thomas and the humiliation of John. His error was that of forgetting that he himself could wieldpowers, that he could hold forces in check, which would be toostrong for those who should come after him. At his purposes withregard to the relations of England and Normandy it would be vain toguess. The mere leaving of kingdom and duchy to different sonswould not necessarily imply that he designed a complete or lastingseparation. But assuredly William did not foresee that England, dragged into wars with France as the ally of Normandy, would remainthe lasting rival of France after Normandy had been swallowed up inthe French kingdom. If rivalry between England and France had notcome in this way, it would doubtless have come in some other way;but this is the way in which it did come about. As a result of theunion of Normandy and England under one ruler, it was part ofWilliam's work, but a work of which William had no thought. So itwas with the increased connexion of every kind between England andthe continent of Europe which followed on William's coming. Withone part of Europe indeed the connexion of England was lessened. For three centuries before William's coming, dealings in war andpeace with the Scandinavian kingdoms had made up a large part ofEnglish history. Since the baffled enterprise of the holy Cnut, our dealings with that part of Europe have been of only secondaryaccount. 

But in our view of William as an English statesman, the mainfeature of all is that spirit of formal legality of which we haveso often spoken. Its direct effects, partly designed, partlyundesigned, have affected our whole history to this day. It washis policy to disguise the fact of conquest, to cause all thespoils of conquest to be held, in outward form, according to theancient law of England. The fiction became a fact, and the factgreatly helped in the process of fusion between Normans andEnglish. The conquering race could not keep itself distinct fromthe conquered, and the form which the fusion took was for theconquerors to be lost in the greater mass of the conquered. William founded no new state, no new nation, no new constitution;he simply kept what he found, with such modifications as hisposition made needful. But without any formal change in the natureof English kingship, his position enabled him to clothe the crownwith a practical power such as it had never held before, to makehis rule, in short, a virtual despotism. These two factsdetermined the later course of English history, and they determinedit to the lasting good of the English nation. The conservativeinstincts of William allowed our national life and our nationalinstitutions to live on unbroken through his conquest. But it wasbefore all things the despotism of William, his despotism underlegal forms, which preserved our national institutions to all time. As a less discerning conqueror might have swept our ancient lawsand liberties away, so under a series of native kings those lawsand liberties might have died out, as they died out in so manycontinental lands. But the despotism of the crown called forth thenational spirit in a conscious and antagonistic shape; it calledforth that spirit in men of both races alike, and made Normans andEnglish one people. The old institutions lived on, to be clothedwith a fresh life, to be modified as changed circumstances mightmake needful. The despotism of the Norman kings, the peculiarcharacter of that despotism, enabled the great revolution of thethirteenth century to take the forms, which it took, at onceconservative and progressive. So it was when, more than fourcenturies after William's day, England again saw a despotismcarried on under the forms of law. Henry the Eighth reigned asWilliam had reigned; he did not reign like his brother despots onthe continent; the forms of law and freedom lived on. In theseventeenth century therefore, as in the thirteenth, the formsstood ready to be again clothed with a new life, to supply themeans for another revolution, again at once conservative andprogressive. It has been remarked a thousand times that, whileother nations have been driven to destroy and to rebuild thepolitical fabric, in England we have never had to destroy and torebuild, but have found it enough to repair, to enlarge, and toimprove. This characteristic of English history is mainly owing tothe events of the eleventh century, and owing above all to thepersonal agency of William. As far as mortal man can guide thecourse of things when he is gone, the course of our nationalhistory since William's day has been the result of William'scharacter and of William's acts. Well may we restore to him thesurname that men gave him in his own day. He may worthily take hisplace as William the Great alongside of Alexander, Constantine, andCharles. They may have wrought in some sort a greater work, because they had a wider stage to work it on. But no man everwrought a greater and more abiding work on the stage that fortunegave him than he

"Qui dux Normannis, qui Caesar praefuit Anglis. "

Stranger and conqueror, his deeds won him a right to a place on theroll of English statesmen, and no man that came after him has won aright to a higher place.