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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He was stern, fiercely stern. His standard and ideal were very high,
such as, perhaps, only the saintly could attain to. The men who
never quarrelled with him were Lanfranc, Edgar Atheling, and William
Fitzosborn. The first was saintly and strong; the second, honest,
upright, and simple; the third was endeared by boyish memories, and
to these, perhaps, may be added Edward the Confessor and good Bishop
Wulstan.

Many others William tried to love and trust--his uncle Odo, his own son,
Earls Edwin and Morkar, Waltheof, the sons of Fitzosborn; but they
all failed, grieved, and disappointed him. None was strong, noble, or
disinterested enough not at one time or other to be a traitor; and,
perhaps, his really honest, open enemy, Hereward le Wake, was the person
whom he most valued and honored after the above mentioned.

And though his affection was hearty, his wrath when he was disappointed
was tremendous. And his disappointments were many, partly because his
standard was in every respect far above that of the men around him, and
partly because his presence so far lifted them to his level, that, when
they fell to their own, he was totally unprepared for the treachery and
deceit such a fall involved.

Then down he came on them with implacable vengeance, he was so very
"stark," as the old chronicle has it. Battle, devastation, plunder,
lifelong imprisonment, confiscation, requited him who had drawn on
himself the terrible wrath of William of Normandy. There were few soft
places in that mighty heart; it could love, but it could not pity, and
it could not forgive. He was of the true nature to be a Scourge of God.

Hardened and embittered by the selfish treasons that had beset his early
boyhood, and which had forced him into manhood before his time, he came
to England as one called thither by the late king's designation, and,
therefore, the lawful heir. The Norman law, a confusion of the old Frank
and Roman codes, and of the Norwegian pirate customs, he seems to have
been glad to leave behind. His native Normans must be ruled by it,
but he was an English king by inheritance, and English laws he would
observe; Englishmen should have their national share in the royal favor,
and in their native land.

But the design proved impracticable. The English had been split into
fierce parties long before he came, and the West Saxon, the Mercian
Angle, and Northumbrian Dane hated one another still, and all hated the
Norman alike; and his Norman, French, and Breton importations lost no
love among themselves, and viewed the English natives as conquered
beings, whose spoil was unjustly withheld from them by the Duke King.

Rebellion began: by ones, twos, and threes, the nobles revolted,
and were stamped out by William's iron heel, suffering his fierce,
unrelenting justice--that highest justice that according to the Latin
proverb becomes, in man's mind at least, the highest injustice. So
England lay, trampled, bleeding, indignant, and raising a loud cry of
misery; but, in real truth, the sufferers were in the first place the
actual rebels, Saxon and Norman alike; next, those districts which had
risen against his authority, and were barbarously devastated with fire
and sword; and lastly, the places which, by the death or forfeiture of
native lords, or by the enforced marriage of heiresses, fell into the
hands of rapacious Norman adventurers, who treated their serfs with the
brutal violence common in France.

Otherwise, things were left much as they were. The towns had little or
no cause of complaint, and the lesser Saxon gentry, with the Franklins
and the Earls, were unmolested, unless they happened to have vicious
neighbors. The Curfew bell, about which so great a clamor was raised,
was a universal regulation in Europe; it was a call to prayers, an
intimation that it was bedtime, and a means of guarding against fire,
when streets were often nothing but wooden booths thatched. The intense
hatred that its introduction caused was only the true English dislike to
anything like domiciliary interference.

The King has left us an undoubted testimony to the condition of the
country, and the number of Saxons still holding tenures. Nineteen years
after his Conquest, he held a council at Gloucester, the result of which
was a great "numbering of the people"--a general census. To every city
or town, commissioners were sent forth, who collected together the Shire
reeve or Sheriff--the Viscount, as the Normans called him--the thegus,
the parish priests, the reeves, and franklins, who were examined upon
oath of the numbers, names, and holdings of the men of their place, both
as they were in King Edward's days, and at that time. The lands had to
be de scribed, whether plough lands or pasture, wood or waste; the mills
and fisheries wore recorded, and each farmer's stock of oxen, cows,
sheep, or swine. The English grumbled at the inquiry, called it tyranny,
and expected worse to come of it, but there was no real cause for
complaint. The primary object of the survey was the land-tax, the
Danegeld, as it was called, because it was first raised to provide
defences against the Danes, and every portion of arable land was
assessed at a fair rate, according to ancient custom, but not that which
lay waste. The entire record, including all England save London and the
four northern counties, was preserved at Winchester, and called the
Winchester Roll, or Domesday Book. It is one of the most interesting
records in existence, showing, as it does, the exceeding antiquity of
our existing divisions of townships, parishes and estates, and even of
the families inhabiting them, of whom a fair proportion, chiefly of the
lesser gentry, can point to evidence that they live on soil that was
tilled by their fathers before the days of the Norman. It is far more
satisfactory than the Battle Roll, which was much tampered with by the
monks to gratify the ancestral vanity of gentlemen who were so persuaded
that their ancestors ought to be found there, that they caused them to
be inserted if they were missing. Of Domesday Book, however, there is no
doubt, as the original copy is still extant in its fair old handwriting,
showing the wonderful work that the French-speaking scribes made with
English names of people and places. Queen Edith, the Confessor's widow,
who was a large landholder, appears as Eddeve, Adeve, Adiva--by anything
but her true old English name of Eadgyth. But it was much that the
subdued English folk appeared there at all.

The most real grievance that the English had to complain of was the
Forest Laws. The Dukes of Normandy had had many a quarrel in their
Neustrian home with their subjects, on the vexed question of the chase,
their greatest passion; and when William came into England as a victor,
he was determined to rule all his own way in the waste and woodland. All
the forests he took into his own hands, and the saying was that "the
king loved the high deer as if he was their father;" any trespass was
severely punched, and if he slaughter of any kind of game was a more
serious thing than murder itself.

Chief of all, however, in people's minds, was his appropriation of the
tract of Jettenwald, or the Giant's Wood, Ytene, in South Hants. A
tempting hunting-ground extended nearly all the way from his royal city
of Winchester, broad, bare chalk down, passing into heathy common, and
forest waste, covered with holly and yew, and with noble oak and beech
in its dells, fit covert for the mighty boar, the high deer, and an
infinity of game beside.

With William's paternal feelings toward the deer, he thought the cotters
and squatters, the churls and the serfs, on the borders of the wood, or
in little clearings in the midst, mischievous interlopers, and at one
swoop he expelled them all, and kept the Giant's Wood solely for himself
and his deer, by the still remaining name of the New Forest.

Chroniclers talk of twenty-two mother churches and fifty-two
parishes laid waste, but there is no doubt that this was a monstrous
exaggeration, and that the population could not have been so dense. At
any rate, whatever their numbers, the inhabitants were expelled, the
animals were left unmolested for seven years, and then the Norman king
enjoyed his sports there among his fierce nobility, little recking that
all the English, and many of the Normans, longed that a curse should
there light upon his head, or on that of his proud sons.

CAMEO XI.

THE CONQUEROR'S CHILDREN.
(1050-1087.)

The wife of William of Normandy was, as has been said, Matilda, daughter
of Baldwin, Count of Flanders. The wife of such a man as William has not
much opportunity of showing her natural character, and we do not know
much of hers. It appears, however, that she was strong-willed and
vindictive, and, very little disposed to accept him. She had set
her affections upon one Brihtric Meau, called Snow, from his fair
complexion, a young English lord who had visited her father's court on
a mission from Edward the Confessor, but who does not appear to have
equally admired the lady. For seven years Matilda is said to have held
out against William, until one twilight evening, when she was going
home from church, in the streets of Bruges he rode up to her, beat her
severely, and threw her into the gutter!

Wonderful to relate, the high-spirited demoiselle was subdued by this
rough courtship, and gave her hand to her determined cousin without
further resistance; nor do we hear that he ever beat her again. Indeed,
if he did, he was not likely to let their good vassals be aware of it;
and, in very truth, they seem to have been considered as models of peace
and happiness. But it is much to be suspected that her nature remained
proud and vindictive; for no sooner had her husband become master of
England, than she caused the unfortunate Brihtric, who had disdained her
love, to be stripped of all his manors in Gloucestershire, including
Fairford, Tewkesbury, and the rich meadows around, and threw him into
Winchester Castle, where he died; while Domesday Book witnesses to her
revenge, by showing that the lands once his belonged to Queen Matilda.

The indication of character in a woman who had so little opportunity of
independent action, is worth noting, as it serves to mark the spirit
in which her children would be reared, and to explain why the sons
so entirely fell short of all that was greatest and noblest in their
father. The devotion, honor, and generosity, that made the iron of his
composition bright as well as hard, was utterly wanting in them, or
merely appeared in passing inconsistencies, and it is but too likely
that they derived no gentler training from their mother. There were ten
children, four sons and six daughters, but the names of these latter,
are very difficult to distinguish, as Adela, Atheliza, Adelheid, or
Alix, was a sort of feminine of Atheling, a Princess-Royal title,
and was applied to most of the eldest daughters of the French and
German-princes, or, when the senior was dead, or married, to the
surviving eldest.

Cecily, Matilda's eldest daughter, was, even before her birth, decreed
to be no Adela for whom contending potentates might struggle. She was
to be the atonement for the parents' hasty, unlicensed marriage, in
addition to their two beautiful abbeys at Caen. When the Abbaye aux
Dames was consecrated, the little girl was led by her father to the foot
of the altar, and there presented as his offering. She was educated with
great care by a very learned though somewhat dissipated priest, took
the veil, and, becoming abbess, ruled her nuns for many years, well
contented and much respected.

The next sister was the Atheliza of the family, but her name was either
Elfgiva or Agatha. She enjoys the distinction of being the only female
portrait in her mother's tapestry--except a poor woman escaping from a
sacked town. She stands under a gateway, while Harold is riding forth
with her father, in witness, perhaps, of her having been betrothed to
Harold; or perhaps Matilda felt a mother's yearning to commemorate the
first of her flock who had been laid in the grave, for Elfgiva died a
short time after the contract, which Harold would hardly have fulfilled,
since he had at least one wife already at home.

Her sister, Matilda, promoted to be Adeliza, was betrothed to another
Saxon, the graceful and beautiful Edwin, whom she loved with great
ardor, through all his weak conduct toward her father. After his
untimely end, she was promised to Alfonso I. of Castile, but she
could not endure to give her heart to another; she wept and prayed
continually, but in vain as far as her father was concerned. She was
sent off on her journey, but died on the way; and then it was that the
poor girl's knees were found to be hardened by her constant kneeling to
implore the pity that assuredly was granted to her.

Constance married Alain Fergeant, a brother of the Duke of Brittany, and
an adventurer in the Norman invasion. He was presented with the Earldom
of Richmond, in Yorkshire; and as his son became afterward Duke of
Brittany, this appanage frequently gave title to younger brothers in the
old Armorican Duchy. That son was not born of Constance; she fell into
a languishing state of health, and died, four years after her marriage.
Report said that her husband's vassals found her so harsh and rigorous,
that they poisoned her; and considering what her brothers were, it is
not unlikely.

Of the Adela who married that accomplished prince, Stephen, Count de
Blois, there will be more to say; and as to Gundred, the wife of Earl
Warenne, it is a doubtful question whether she was a daughter of William
and Matilda. Her tomb was lately found in Isfield Church, Sussex; but
though it has an inscription praising her virtues, it says nothing of
her royal birth.

The sons of William left far more distinct and undesirable traces of
themselves than their sisters. Robert was probably the eldest of the
whole family, and he was his mother's favorite, like most eldest sons.
He did not inherit the stately height of the Norman princes, and, from
his short, sturdy form, early acquired the nickname of Courtheuse, by
which he was distinguished among the swarms of other Roberts. Much pains
was bestowed on his instruction, and that of his brothers, Richard and
William, by the excellent Lanfranc, and they all had great abilities;
but there were influences at work among the fierce Norman lads that
rendered the holy training of the good abbot wholly ineffectual. Their
father, conscious of his own defective right to the ducal rank, lost no
opportunity of binding his vassals to swear fealty not only to himself,
but his eldest son; and from Robert's infancy he had learnt to hold out
his hand, and hear the barons declare themselves his men. When the Duke
set out on his conquest of England, he caused the oath to be renewed to
Robert, and he at the same time showed his love for William, then the
youngest, by having him, with his long red hair floating, carved,
blowing a horn, at the figure-head of the Mora.

Soon after the Conquest, when Matilda had lately been crowned Queen of
England, the fourth son, Henry, was born. He had much more personal
beauty and height than the other brothers, and there was always an idea
floating that the son born when his father was king had a right over
his elder brethren, and thus Henry was always an object of jealousy to
his brothers. Passionately fond of the few books he could obtain, he
was called Beauclerc, or the fine scholar; and whilst as little
restrained by real principle as his brothers, he was able to preserve a
decorum and self-command that kept him in better reputation.

The second brother, Richard, however, had no opportunity of showing his
character. He died in the New Forest, either from a blow on the head
from a branch of a tree, or from a fever caught in the marshes, and is
buried in Winchester Cathedral. Perhaps the doom came on him in innocent
youth, "because there was some good thing in him."

In 1075, when Robert must have been a man some years over twenty, Henry
a boy of nine, and William probably twelve or fourteen, they all three
accompanied their father into Normandy, and were there in the fortress
of Aquila, or Aigle, so called because there had been an eagle's nest
in the oak-tree close to the site of the castle. Robert was in a
discontented mood. The numerous occasions on which he had received the
homage of the Normans made him fancy he ought to have the rule in the
duchy; his mother's favoritism had fostered his ill-feeling, and he was
becoming very jealous of red-haired William, who from his quickness,
daring, and readiness had become his father's favorite; and though
under restraint in the Conqueror's presence, was no doubt outrageously
boisterous, insolent, and presuming in his absence; and Henry, the fine
scholar, his companion and following his lead, secretly despised both
his elders.

Robert's lodging was suddenly invaded by the two wild lads and their
attendants. Finding themselves no better welcomed or amused than rude
boys are wont to be by young men, they betook themselves to an upper
room, the floor of which was formed by ill-laid, gaping planks, which
were the ceiling of that below. Here they began to play at dice; they
soon grew even more intolerably uproarious, and in the coarse of their
quarrelsome, boisterous tricks, overthrew a vessel of dirty water, which
began to drip through the interstices of the planks on their brother and
his friends below--an accident sure to be welcomed by a hoarse laugh
by the rough boys, but appearing to the victims beneath a deliberate
insult. "Are you a man not to avenge this shameful insolence?" cried
Robert's friends, Alberic and Ivo de Grantmesnil. In a fury of passion,
Robert rushed after the lads with his sword drawn, and King William
was roused from his sleep to hear that Lord Robert was murdering his
brothers.

The passion and violence of the elder son had the natural effect of
making the father take the part of the younger ones, and Robert was
so much incensed, that he rode off with his friends, and, collecting
partisans as he went, attacked Rouen.

He was of course repulsed, and many of his followers were made
prisoners. He held out in the border counties for a little while, but
all his supporters were gained from him by his father, and he at length
came back to court, and appeared reconciled. There, however, he had
nothing to do, and all the licentious and disaffected congregated
round him; he idled away half his time, and revelled the rest, and his
pretensions magnified themselves all the time in his fancy, till at last
he was stimulated to demand of his father the cession of Normandy, as a
right confirmed to him by the French king.

William replied by a lecture on disobedience, citing as examples of
warning all the Absaloms of history; but Robert fiercely answered, that
he had not come to listen to a sermon; he was sick of hearing all this
from his teachers, and he would have his answer touching his claim to
Normandy.

The answer he got was, "It is not my custom to lay aside my clothes till
I go to bed."

It sent him off in a rage, with all his crew of dissolute followers. He
went first to his uncle in Flanders, then to Germany and Italy, always
penniless from his lavish habits, though his mother often sent him
supplies of money by a trusty messenger, called Samson le Breton.
However, the King found him out, and reproached Matilda angrily; but she
made answer, "If Robert, my son, were buried seven feet under ground,
and I could bring him to life again by my heart's blood, how gladly
would I give it!" The implacable William commanded Samson to be blinded,
but he escaped to the monastery of St. Everard, and there became a monk.

Returning, Robert presented himself to King Philippe of France, who was
glad to annoy his overgrown vassal by patronizing the rebellious son,
and accordingly placed Robert in the Castle of Gerberoi, where he might
best be a thorn in his father's side. There William besieged him,
bringing the two younger sons with him, though Henry was but twelve
years old. For three weeks there was sharp fighting; and, finally, a
battle, in which the younger William was wounded, and the elder, cased
in his full armor of chain mail, encountered unknowingly with Robert,
in the like disguising hawberk. The Conqueror's horse was killed; his
esquire, an Englishman, in bringing him another, was slain; and he
himself received a blow which caused such agony that he could not
repress a shriek of pain. Robert knew his voice, and, struck with
remorse, immediately lifted him up, offered him his own horse, and
assured him of his ignorance of his person; but William, smarting and
indignant, vouchsafed no answer, and while the son returned to his
castle, the father went back to his camp, which he broke up the next
day, and returned to Rouen.

Robert seems to have been a favorite with the lawless Normans, who
writhed under the mighty hand of his father, and on their interference,
backed by that of the French king and the Pope, brought about a
reconciliation in name. The succession of Normandy was again secured to
Robert, but therewith he was laid under a curse by his angry father,
whose face he never saw again.

Other troubles thickened on William. Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, the bold,
rough, jovial half-brother, whom he had trusted and loved, was reported
to be full of mischievous plots. He seems to have been told by diviners
that the next Pope was to be named Odo, and, to secure the fulfilment
of the augury, he was sending bribes to Rome, and at the same time
collecting a great body of troops with whom to fight his way thither.
He was in the Isle of Wight, preparing to carry his forces to Normandy,
when William pounced, on him, and ordered him back again. It is not
clear whether he wished to prevent the scandal to the Church, or whether
he suspected this army of Odo's of being intended to support Robert
against himself; but, at any rate, he made bitter complaint before the
council of the way he had been treated by son, brother, and peer, and
sentenced Odo to imprisonment. No one would touch the Bishop, and
William was obliged to seize him himself, answering, to Odo's appeal
to his inviolable orders, "I judge not the Bishop, but my Earl and
Treasurer."

Another grief befell him in 1083, in the death of Matilda, who, it was
currently believed, pined away with grief at his fury against her
beloved first-born--anger that his affection for her could not mitigate,
though he loved her so tenderly that his great heart almost broke at
her death, and he never was the same man during the four years that he
survived her.

His health began to break; he had grown large and unwieldy, but his
spirit was as fiery as ever, and wherever there was war, there was he.
At last, in 1087, there was an insurrection at Mantes, supported by King
Philippe. William complained, but received no redress. Rude, scornful
jests were reported to him, and the savage part of his nature was
aroused.

Always, hitherto, he had shown great forbearance in abstaining from
direct warfare on his suzerain, much as Philippe had often provoked
him, but his patience was exhausted, and he armed himself for a deadly
vengeance.

His own revolted town of Mantes was the first object of his fury. It was
harvest-time, and the crops and vineyards were mercilessly trodden down.
The inhabitants sallied out, hoping to save their corn; but the ruthless
king made his way into the city, and there caused house, convent, and
church alike to suffer plunder and fire, riding about himself directing
the work of destruction. The air was flame above, the ground was burning
hot beneath. His horse stumbled with pain and fright; and the large,
heavy body of the king fell forward on the high steel front of the
saddle, so as to be painfully and internally injured. He was carried
back to Rouen, but the noise, bustle, and heat of the city were
intolerable to him, and, with the restlessness of a dying man, he caused
himself to be carried to the convent of St. Gervais, on a hill above the
town; but he there found no relief. He felt his time was come, and sent
for his sons, William and Henry.

The mighty man's agony was a terrible one. "No tongue can tell," said
he, "the deeds of wickedness I have wrought during my weary pilgrimage
of toil and care." He tried to weigh against these his good actions, his
churches and convents, his well-chosen bishops, his endeavors to act
uprightly and justly; but finding little comfort in these, he bewailed
his own destiny, and how his very birth had forced him into bloodshed,
and driven him to violence, even in his youth.

The presence of his sons brought back his mind from the thought of his
condition, to that of the disposal of the lands which had become to him
merely a load of thick clay smeared with blood. Normandy, he said, must
be Robert's; but he groaned at the thought of the misery preparing
for his native land. "Wretched," he said, "must be the country under
Robert's rule; but he has received the homage of the barons, and the
grant once made can never be revoked. To England I dare appoint no heir.
Let Him in whose hands are all things, provide according to His will."