Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II

C >> Charlotte Mary Yonge >> Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II

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Collecting others of his scattered followers, Hereward kept up his
warfare from his own house at Bourn, continually harassing the Normans,
until at length he took prisoner his old enemy, Ivo Taillebois, and,
as the price of his liberty, required him to make his peace with the
Conqueror. This was good news to William, who highly esteemed his valor
and constancy, and could accuse him of no breach of faith, since he had
made no engagements to him. Hereward was therefore received as a subject
of King William, retained his own estate, and died there at a good old
age, respected by both Saxons and Normans.

There is, indeed, an old Norman-French poem, that declares it was for
the love of a noble Saxon lady, named Alftrude, that Hereward ceased to
struggle with the victors. According to this story, Alftrude, an heiress
of great wealth, was so charmed by the report of Hereward's fame, that
she offered him her hand, and persuaded him to make peace with William.
It is further said, that one afternoon, as he lay asleep under a tree,
a band of armed men, among whom were several Bretons, surrounded and
murdered him, though not till he had slain fifteen of them.

But this story is not likely to be true, since we know that Hereward
was already married, and the testimony of more than one ancient English
chronicler declares that he spent his latter years in peace and honor.
He was the only one of the Saxon chieftains who thus closed his days in
his native home--the only one who had not sought to preserve his own
possessions at the expense of his country, and who had broken no oaths
nor engagements. His exploits are told in old ballads and half-romantic
histories, and it is not safe to believe them implicitly, but his
existence and his gallant resistance are certain.

Many years after, the remains of a wooden fort, the citadel, so to
speak of the Camp of Refuge, still existed in the Isle of Ely, and was
called by the peasantry Hereward's Castle. The treacherous monks of Ely
were well punished by having forty men-at-arms quartered on their Abbey.

Of the captives taken in the camp, many were most cruelly treated, their
eyes put out, and their hands cut off; others were imprisoned, and many
slain. Morkar, who was here taken, spent the rest of his life in
the same captivity as Ulfnoth, Stigand, and many other Saxons of
distinction, with the one gleam of hope when liberated at William's
death, and then the bitter disappointment of renewed seizure and
captivity. If it could be any consolation to them, these Saxons were not
William's only captives. Bishop Odo, of Bayeux, whom William had made
Earl of Kent, after giving a great deal of trouble to his brother the
king, and to Archbishop Lanfranc, by his avarice and violence, heard a
prediction that the next Pope should be named Odo, and set off to try
to bring about its fulfilment in his own person, carrying with him an
immense quantity of ill-gotten treasure, and a large number of troops,
commanded by Hugh the Wolf, Earl of Chester.

However, Odo had reckoned without King William, and he had but just set
sail, when William, setting off from Normandy, met him in the Channel,
took his ships, and making him land in the Isle of Wight, and convoking
an assembly of knights, declared his offences, and asked them what such
a brother deserved.

Between fear of the king and fear of the Bishop, no one ventured to
answer, upon which William sentenced him to imprisonment; and when he
declared that no one but the Pope had a right to judge him, answered, "I
do not try you, the Bishop of Bayeux, but the Earl of Kent," and sent
him closely guarded to Normandy.

Another Norman state-prisoner was Roger Fitzosborn, the son of William's
early friend, who had died soon after the Conquest. Roger's offence was
the bestowing his sister Emma in marriage without the consent of the
king, and in addition, much seditious language was used at the wedding
banquet, where, unhappily, was present Waltheof, Earl of Huntingdon, the
last Saxon noble.

Roger, finding himself in danger, broke out into open rebellion, but was
soon made prisoner. Still the king would have pardoned him for the
sake of his father, whom William seems to have regarded with much more
affection that he be stowed on any one else, and, as a mark of kindness,
sent him a costly robe. The proud and passionate Roger, disdaining the
gift, kindled a fire, and burnt the garment on the dungeon floor; and
William, deeply affronted, swore in return that he should never pass the
threshold of his prison.

Waltheof, who was innocent of all save being present at the unfortunate
feast, might have been spared but for the wickedness of his wife,
Judith, William's niece, who had been married to him when it was her
uncle's policy to conciliate the Saxons. She hated and despised the
Saxon churl given her for a lord, kind, generous, and pious though he
was; and having set her affections on a young Norman, herself became the
accuser of her husband. Waltheof succeeded in disproving the calumnies,
and the best and wisest Normans spoke in his favor; but the spite of Ivo
Taillebois, and the hatred of his wife, prevailed, and he was sentenced
to die.

He was executed at Winchester, where, lest the inhabitants should
attempt a rescue, he was led out, early in the morning, to St. Giles's
hill, outside the walls. He wore the robes of an earl, and gave them to
the priests who attended him, and to the poor people who followed him.
When he came to the spot he knelt down to pray, begging the soldiers to
wait till he had said the Lord's Prayer; but he had only come to "Lead
us not into temptation," when one of them severed his head from his body
with one blow of a sword.

His body was hastily thrown into a hole; but the Saxons, who loved him
greatly, disinterred it in secret, and contrived to carry it all the way
to Croyland, where it was buried with due honors, and we may think of
Hereward le Wake attending the funeral of the son of the stalwart old
Siward Biorn.

As to the perfidious Judith, she reaped the reward of her crimes; she
was not permitted to marry her Norman lover, and he was stripped of all
the wealth she expected as the widow of Waltbeof. This was secured to
her infant daughter, and was so considerable, that at one time William
thought the little Matilda of Huntingdon a fit match for his son Robert;
but Robert despised the Saxon blood, and made this project an excuse for
one of his rebellions. Matilda was, however, a royal bride, since her
hand was given to David I. of Scotland, the representative of the old
race of Cerdic, and a most excellent prince, with whom she was much
happier than she could well have: been with the unstable Robert
Courtheuse.

CAMEO IX.

THE LAST SAXON BISHOP.
(1008-1095.)

_Kings of England_.
1066. William I.
1087. William II.

The last saint of the Anglo-Saxon Church, the Bishop who lived from the
days of Edward the Confessor, to the evil times of the Red King, was
Wulstan of Worcester, a homely old man, of plain English character, and
of great piety. The quiet, even tenor of his life is truly like a "soft
green isle" in the midst of the turbulent storms and tempests of the
Norman Conquest.

Wulstan was born at Long Itchington, a village in Warwickshire, in the
time of Ethelred the Unready. He was the son of the Thane Athelstan, and
was educated in the monasteries of Evesham and Peterborough. When he had
been trained in such learning as these could afford, he came home for
a few years, and entered into the sports and occupations of the noble
youths of the time, without parting with the piety and purity of his
conventual life, and steadily resisting temptation.

His parents were grown old, and having become impoverished, perhaps by
the exactions perpetrated either by the Danes, or to bribe them away,
retired from the world, and entered convents at Worcester. Wulstan,
wishing to devote himself to the Church, sought the service of the
Bishop, who ordained him to the priesthood.

He lived, though a secular priest, with monastic strictness, and in time
obtained permission from the Bishop to become a monk in the convent,
where he continued for twenty-five years, and at length became Prior of
the Convent. The Prior was the person next in office to the Abbot, and
governed the monastery in his absence; and in some religious orders,
where there was no Abbot, the Prior was the superior.

Wulstan's habits in the convent show us what the devotional life of
that time was. Each day he bent the knee at each verse of the seven
Penitential Psalms, and the same at the 119th Psalm at night. He would
lock himself into the church, and pray aloud with tears and cries, and
at night he would often retire into some solitary spot, the graveyard,
or lonely village church, to pray and meditate. His bed was the church
floor, or a narrow board, and stern were his habits of fasting and
mortification; but all the time he was full of activity in the cause of
the poor, and, finishing his devotions early in the morning, gave up the
whole day to attend to the common people, sitting at the church door to
listen to, and redress, as far as in him lay, the grievances that they
brought him--at any rate, to console and advise. The rude, secular
country clergy, at that time, it may be feared, a corrupt, untaught
race, had in great measure ceased to instruct or exhort their flocks,
and even refund baptism without payment. He did his best to remedy these
abuses, and from all parts of the country children were brought to
the good Prior for baptism. Every Sunday, too, he preached, and the
Worcestershire people flocked from all sides to hear his plain, forcible
language, though he never failed to rebuke them sharply for their most
prevalent sins.

The fame of the holy Prior of Worcester began to spread, and on one
occasion Earl Harold himself came thirty miles out of his way to confess
his sins to him and desire his prayers.

About the year 1062, two Roman Cardinals came to Worcester with Aldred,
who had just been translated from that see to the Archbishopric of
York. They spent the whole of Lent in Wulstan's monastery; and when,
at Easter, they returned to the court of Edward the Confessor, they
recommended him for the Bishop to succeed Aldred; and Aldred himself,
Archbishop Stigand, and Harold, all concurred in the same advice. The
people and clergy of Worcester with one voice chose the good Prior
Wulstan; his election was confirmed by the king, and he received the
appointment. He long struggled against it, protesting that he would
rather lose his head than be made a Bishop; but he was persuaded at last
by an old hermit, who rebuked him for his resistance as for a sin. He
received the pastoral staff from King Edward, and was consecrated by his
former Bishop, Aldred.

As a Bishop he was more active than ever, constantly riding from place
to place to visit the different towns and villages; and, as he went,
repeating the Psalms and Litany, his attendant priests making the
responses; while his chamberlain carried a purse, from which every one
who asked alms was sure to be supplied. He never passed a church without
praying in it, and never reached his resting-place for the night without
paying his first visit to the church. Wherever he went, crowds of every
rank poured out to meet him, and he never sent them away without the
full Church service, and a sermon; nay, more--each poor serf might come
to him, pour out his troubles, whether temporal, or whether his heart
had been touched by the good words he had heard. Above all, Wulstan
delighted in giving his blessing in Confirmation, and would go on from
morning till night without food, till all his clergy were worn out,
though he seemed to know no weariness.

His clergy seem to have had much of the sluggishness of the Saxon, and
were often impatient of a temper, both of devotion and energy, so much
beyond them. If one was absent from the night service, the Bishop would
take no notice till it was over; but when all the others were gone back
to bed, he would wake the defaulter, and make him go through the service
with no companion but himself, making the responses. They did not like
him to put them out, as he often did on their journeys, while going
through the Psalms, by dwelling on the "prayer-verses;" and most
especially did they dislike his leading them to church, whatever season
or weather it might be, to chant matins before it was light. Once, at
Marlow, when it was a long way to church, very muddy, and with a cold
rain falling, one of his clergy, in hopes of making him turn back, led
him into the worst part of the swamp, where he sunk up to his knees in
mud, and lost his shoe; but he took no notice until, after the service
was over, he had returned to his lodgings, half dead with cold, and
then, instead of expressing any anger, he only ordered search to be made
for the shoe.

Wulstan took no part in what we should call politics; he thought it his
duty to render his submission to the King whom the people had chosen,
and to strive only to amend the life of the men of the country. He was
in high favor with Harold during his short reign, and was for some time
at court, where the fine Saxon gentlemen learnt to dread the neighborhood
of the old Bishop; for Wulstan considered their luxury as worthy of blame,
and especially attacked their long flowing hair. If any of them placed
their heads within, his reach, he would crop off "the first-fruits of
their curls" with his own little knife, enjoining them to have the rest
cut off; and yet, if Wulstan saw the children of the choir with their
dress disordered, he would smooth it with his own hands, and when told
the condescension did not become a Bishop, made answer, "He that is
greatest among you shall be your servant."

Aldred, Wulstan's former Bishop, now Archbishop of York, was the
anointer of both Harold and William the Conqueror. He kept fair with the
Normans as long as he could, but at last, driven to extremity by the
miseries they inflicted on his unhappy diocese, he went to William
arrayed in his full episcopal robes, solemnly revoked his coronation
blessing, denounced a curse on him and his race, and then, returning to
York, there died of grief.

Eghelwin, Bishop of Durham, gave good advice to Comyn, the Norman Earl,
but it was unheeded, and the townsmen rose in the night and burnt Comyn
to death, with all his followers, as they lay overcome with wine and
sleep in the plundered houses. The rising of the northern counties
followed, and Eghelwin was so far involved in it, that he was obliged to
fly. He took shelter in the Camp of Refuge, was made prisoner when
it was betrayed, and spent the rest of his life in one of William's
prisons.

Our good Wulstan had a happier lot, and spent his time in his own round
of quiet duties in his diocese, binding up the wounds inflicted by the
cruel oppressors, but exhorting the Saxons to bear them patiently, and
see in them the chastisement of their own crimes. "It is the scourge of
God that ye are suffering," he said; and when they replied that they
had never been half so bad as the Normans, he said, "God is using their
wickedness to punish your evil deserts, as the devil, of his own evil
will, yet by God's righteous will, punishes those with whom he suffers.
Do ye, when ye are angry, care what becomes of the staff wherewith ye
strike?"

He had his own share of troubles and anxieties, but he met them in his
trustful spirit, and straight-forward way. At Easter, 1070, a council
was held at Winchester, at which he was summoned to attend. He was one
of the five last Saxon Bishops; Stigand, who held both at once the
primacy and the see of Winchester; his brother, Eghelmar, Bishop of
Elmham; Eghelsie, of Selsey; and the Bishop of Durham, Eghelwin, who was
in the Camp of Refuge.

Two cardinals were present to represent the Pope, and on account of his
simony, Stigand was deposed and imprisoned, while Eghelric and Eghelmar
were also degraded. Yet Wulstan, clear of conscience, and certain of the
validity of his own election, was not affrighted; so far from it, he
boldly called on the King to restore some lands that Aldred of York had
kept back from the see of Worcester.

Thomas, Aldred's successor, claimed them by a pretended jurisdiction
over Worcester, and the decision was put off for a court of the
great men of the realm, which did not take place till several fresh
appointments had been made. Lanfranc, the Italian, Abbot of Bec, had
become Archbishop of Canterbury, and was, of course, interested in
guarding the jurisdiction of the Archiepiscopal see.

Wulstan, in this critical time, was exactly like himself. He fell asleep
while Thomas was arguing, and when time was given him to think of his
answer, he spent it in singing the service of the hour, though his
priests were in terror lest they should be ridiculed for it. "Know you
not," he answered, "that the Lord hath said, 'When ye stand before king
and rulers, take no thought what ye shall speak, for it shall be given
you in that hour what ye shall speak.' Our Lord can give me speech
to-day to defend my right, and overthrow their might." Accordingly, his
honest statement prevailed, and he gained his cause.

There is a beautiful legend that Lanfranc, thinking the simple old
Saxon too rude and ignorant for his office, summoned him to a synod at
Westminster, and there called on him to deliver up his pastoral staff
and ring. Wulstan rose, and said he had known from the first that he was
not worthy of his dignity, and had taken it only at the bidding of his
master, King Edward. To him, therefore, who gave the staff, he would
resign it. Advancing to the Confessor's tomb, he said, "Master, thou
knowest how unwillingly I took this office, forced to it by thee. Behold
a new king--a new law--a new primate; they decree new rights, and
promulgate new statutes. Thee they accuse of error in having so
commanded--me of presumption, in having obeyed. Then, indeed, thou wast
liable to err, being mortal--now, being with God, thou canst not err.
Not to these who require what they did not give, but to thee, who hast
given, I render up my staff. Take this, my master, and deliver it to
whom thou wilt."

He laid it on the tomb, took off his episcopal robes, and sat down
among the monks. The legend goes on to say, that the staff remained
embedded in the stone, and no hand could wrench it away, till Wulstan
himself again took it up, when it yielded without effort. The King and
Archbishop fell down at his feet, and entreated his pardon and blessing.

Such is the story told a century after; and surely we may believe that,
without the miracle, the old man's touching appeal to his dead King, and
his humility, convinced Lanfranc that it had been foul shame to think
of deposing such a man because his learning was not extensive, nor his
manners like those of the courtly Norman. Be that as it may, thenceforth
Lanfranc and Wulstan worked hand in hand, and we find the Archbishop
begging him to undertake the visitation of the diocese of Chester, which
was unsafe for the Norman prelates. One great work accomplished by the
help of Wulstan was, the putting an end to a horrible slave-trade with
Ireland, whither Saxon serfs were sold, not by Normans, but by their own
country people, who had long carried it on before the Conquest. Lanfranc
persuaded William to abolish it, but the rude Saxon slave-merchants
cared nothing for his edicts, until the Bishop of Worcester came to
Bristol, and preached against the traffic, staying a month or two at
a time, every year, till the minds of the people of Bristol were so
altered, that they not only gave up the trade, but acquired such
a horror of it that they tore out the eyes of the last person who
persisted in it.

The favor and esteem with which Wulstan was regarded did not cease, but
he was obliged to spend a life of constraint. The Archbishop made him
keep a band of armed retainers to preserve the peace of the country, and
they were new and strange companions for the old monk; but as he thought
his presence kept them from evil, he did not remain aloof, dining with
them each day in the public hall, and even while they sat long over the
wine, remaining with them, pledging them good-humoredly in a little cup,
which he pretended to taste, and ruminating on the Psalms in the midst
of their noisy mirth.

These were the days of church-building--the days of the circular arch,
round column, and zigzag moulding; of doorways whose round arch, adorned
with border after border of rich or quaint device, almost bewilder us
with the multiplicity of detail; of low square towers, and solid walls;
of that kind of architecture called Norman, but more properly a branch
of the Romanesque of Italy.

Each new Roman Bishop or Abbot thought it his business to renew his
clumsy old Saxon minster, and we have few cathedrals whose present
structure does not date from the days of the Conqueror or his sons.
Walkelyn, Bishop of Winchester, obtained a grant from William of as
much timber from Hempage Wood as could be cut in four days and nights;
whereupon Walkelyn assembled a huge company of workmen, and made such
good use of the time, that when the king passed that way, he cried out,
"Am I bewitched, or have I taken leave of my senses? Had I not a most
delectable wood in this spot?" where now only stumps were to be seen.

Wulstan had always been a church-builder, and he renewed his cathedral
after the Norman fashion; but when it was finished, and the workmen
began to pull down the old one, which had been built by St. Oswald,
he stood watching them in silence, till at last he shed tears. "Poor
creatures that we are," said he, "we destroy the work of the saints, and
think in our pride that we improve upon it. Those blessed men knew not
how to build fine churches, but they knew how to sacrifice themselves to
God, whatever roof might be over them, and to draw their flocks after
them. Now, all we think of is to rear up piles of stones, while we care
not for souls."

Wulstan lived to a great age, survived William and Lanfrane, and
assisted to consecrate Anselm. In the last year of his life he kept each
festival with still greater solemnity than ever, and his feast for the
poor overflowed more than ever before; his stores were exhausted, though
he had collected an unusual quantity, and his clergy begged him to shut
the gates against the crowds still gathering; but he refused, saying
none should go empty away, and some gifts from his rich friends arrived
opportunely to supply the need. The Bishop sat in the midst as feasting
with them, now grown too feeble to wait on them, as he had always done
hitherto.

At Whitsuntide, 1094, he was taken ill, and lingered under a slow fever
till the new year, when he died in peace and joy on the 19th of January.
His greatest friend, Robert, the Bishop of Hereford, a learned man,
understanding all the science of the time, a judge, and a courtly
Lorrainer, yet who loved to spend whole days with the unlettered Saxon,
came to lay him in his grave. He received, as a gift from the convent,
the lambskin cloak that Wulstan used to wear, in spite of the laughter
of the gay prelates arrayed in costly furs, keeping his ground by
saying, that "the furs of cunning animals did not befit a plain man."
He went home to Hereford, and soon after died, having, it is said, been
warned in a vision by St. Wulstan that he must soon prepare to follow
him.

CAMEO X.

THE CONQUEROR.
(1066-1087.)

In speaking of William, the Norman Conqueror, we are speaking of a
really great man; and great men are always hard to understand or deal
with in history, for, as their minds are above common understandings,
their contemporary historians generally enter into their views less than
any one else, and it is only the result that proves their wisdom and
far-sight. Moreover, their temptations and their sins are on a larger
scale than those of other men, and some of the actions that they perform
make a disproportionate impression by the cry that they occasion--the
evil is remembered, not the good that their main policy effected.

William was a high-minded man, of mighty and wide purposes, one of the
very few who understood what it was to be a king. He had the Norman
qualities in their fullest perfection. He was devoutly religious, and in
his private character was irreproachable, being the first Norman Duke
unstained by licence, the first whose sons were all born of his princess
wife. He was devout in his habits, full of alms-deeds; and strong and
resolute as was his will, he kept it so upright and so truly desirous
of the Divine glory and the Church's welfare, that he had no serious
misunderstanding with the clergy, and lived on the most friendly terms
with his great Archbishop, Lanfranc.

He was one of those mighty men who, in personal intercourse, have a
force of nature that not merely renders opposition impossible, but
absolutely masters the will and intention, so that there is not even the
secret contradiction of mind. We have seen this in his dealings with
both his own Normans and the Saxons who came in contact with him. His
presence was so irresistible that men yielded to it unconsciously, but
when absent from him they became themselves again, and in the reaction
they committed treason against the pledges they seemed to have
voluntarily given to him.