The Reign of William Rufus, Vol. 2

THE latter years of the reign of the Red King, Character of the last years of Rufus. 1097–1100. beginning from the departure of Anselm, are far richer in foreign than in domestic events. Even within the isle of Britain we have, as we have already seen, chiefly to deal with the lands which lie beyond the actual English kingdom. Scotland has received a king at the bidding of the over-lord in England. A deep plan has been laid for the better subjugation of the seemingly unconquerable Welsh. A Norwegian king has slain an earl of England in strife on the shore of a Welsh island. But within England itself the greatest event which we have had to record has been the immediate result of that distant strife in the succession to an English earldom. When Robert of Bellême became the most powerful subject in England, it was undoubtedly an event of no small importance both at the moment and in its results. It added perceptibly to the evils even of the reign of 166 unlaw. Still it was not in itself an event on the same scale as the rebellion of Odo or the rebellion of Robert of Mowbray, or as the beginning or the ending of the dealings between Anselm and the King. Little to record at home, and much abroad. And the same character of the time goes on to the end. There is in England itself nothing to record besides the great architectural works of the King, a few ecclesiastical deaths and appointments, and those natural portents and phænomena which are characteristic of the whole time, and which come thicker upon us as we draw nearer to the end. Beyond sea, on the other hand, this time of less than three years is the most stirring time of the whole reign. King of England, over-lord of Scotland, not in form Duke of the Normans, but master of Normandy as his brother never was, the Red King goes on to greater schemes. Rufus seems to have been always puffed up by success, but never cast down by bad luck. His personal failure in Wales was really a marked contrast to the success of Eadgar in Scotland. Temper and schemes of Rufus. But Rufus seems to have had the happy gift of plucking out of all states of things whatever tended to gratify his pride, and of forgetting all that looked the other way. He, or others in his name, had set up a king at Dunfermline. This was enough to make him put out of sight all thought that he had in his own person marched to Snowdon and taken nothing by his march. He felt himself more than ever Monarch of Britain, King of kings within his own island. We can believe that it rankled in his soul that, outside that island, he was less than a king. The lord of Normandy had in any case a formal over-lord in the French King, and William Rufus was lord of Normandy only by an anomalous and temporary title. He held the duchy only as a merchant holds a pledge. We can well understand how such a man would chafe at the thought that he had anywhere even a nominal superior. 167 Such an one as William deemed himself was dishonoured by being, even in the most nominal way, the man of such an one as Philip. His designs on France. And the noblest way of escaping from the acknowledgement of a superior was by himself taking that superior’s place. The Monarch of Britain would be also Monarch of Gaul, of so much at least of Gaul as in any sense admitted the over-lordship of Paris. The lord of Winchester and Rouen would be lord of Paris also. William wished for a war with France, and a war with France could at any moment be had. The eternal question of the Vexin stood always awaiting its solution.

Wars with France and Maine. But a war with France was not the only war which William Rufus had now to wage on the Gaulish mainland. He had to strive against a noble city, a valiant people, ruled by a prince worthy of his city and his people. Besides striving with France and Philip, he had to strive against Maine, he had to strive against Helias. The war with France was doubtless the object with which he crossed the sea; but mischief had long been brewing in the troublesome land to the south of Normandy, and about the time when the French war began, the standing Cenomannian difficulty grew into open war also. William had thus two wars to wage at once. These two wars, with France and with Maine, are told in our narratives as if they were altogether distinct, and had no bearing on one another. Yet the two were going on at the same time at no great distance from one another, and some of the chief actors on one side were flitting to and fro between the two. Beginning of war. 1097–1098. It is hard to say in which region the first actual fighting took place. In both it must have begun in the winter after Anselm had gone on one errand into Burgundy and Eadgar on another into Scotland. William crosses the sea. It was then that King William crossed the sea also, with the object doubtless of making war on France. The Cenomannian war was thrown in 168 as something incidental. The war with Maine has in itself, as a tale, by far the greater charm of the two. But it is needless to say that far higher interests were, or might have been, at stake in the war with France. Of the wide-reaching schemes of William Rufus, and of their remarkable position among those things which might have been but which were not, I have spoken at some length elsewhere.[430] But it is only in its latest stage that the war showed even any likelihood of growing beyond the scale of a border struggle. It was, in profession at least, a war for the Vexin, and it was in the Vexin that it was mainly waged.

Comparison of the two wars. The result of the war was widely different in the two cases. We may sum it up by saying that Maine was subdued and that France was not. Maine was at least held to be subdued. In the first Cenomannian war the capital was taken; the prince was made a prisoner; so much of the land as was really attacked was subdued. In the second war the capital was taken and the prince was driven out. But against France no real advantage at all seems to have been gained. To modern ideas this difference may seem no wonderful result of the difference between the invasion of a county and the invasion of a kingdom. Comparative position of France and Maine. But in the eleventh century the resources of Maine could not have been very greatly inferior to the resources of France. In one sense indeed the resources of Maine were by far the greater of the two, Helias and Philip. inasmuch as Helias reigned at Le Mans and Philip reigned at Paris. But in truth the comparison between a county and a kingdom is not a fair one. The France of those days was not a kingdom; it was simply that small part of a great kingdom which was held to obey—​which under Philip certainly did not obey—​the nominal king of the whole. The king was simply that one among the 169 princes of the kingdom who always claimed, and who sometimes received, the homage of the others. Advantage of the kingly dignity. We must never underrate the vast moral advantage which the king drew from his kingly dignity;[431] but, on the other hand, we must not be thereby led to overrate the material strength of the king’s actual dominion. Supposing that the resources of Maine and of France had been positively equal, if Helias had the advantage over Philip that the one was Helias and that the other was Philip, this advantage was far more than counterbalanced by the fact that Philip was a king while Helias was only a count. That he was a count of doubtful title, always threatened by a neighbour more powerful than himself, was of course a further incidental disadvantage; but the essential difference is inherent in the position of the two princes and their dominions. The king, even though the king was Philip, was a king, and men had scruples about personally attacking one who was at once their own lord on earth and the anointed of the Lord of Heaven. William Rufus doubtless had no such scruples about that or about any matter; but such scruples had been felt by his father; they were to be felt in times to come by Henry of Le Mans and of Anjou, of Normandy and of England.[432] Such scruples would not be felt by Normans withstanding French aggression on their own land; we may remember how a lance from the Côtentin had laid Philip’s father on the ground at Val-ès-dunes.[433] They would not be felt by native Englishmen, to whom Normandy, France, and Maine, were all alike foreign and hostile lands. But we may suspect that there was many a knight in William’s host who, when he went forth to invade the lands of the lord of his lord in an utterly unprovoked quarrel, did 170 not go forth with quite so light a heart as that with which he went forth to win back for his lord a land of which his lord had some shadow of ground for professing that he had been robbed by one of his own men.

Maine then was, in a sense, conquered; France was not conquered in any sense. Le Mans was taken; Paris was hardly threatened. And this, we may believe, was at least partly owing to the fact that Le Mans was only the city of a count, while Paris was the city of a king. Both lands had a champion in whom we may feel a personal interest. Lewis son of Philip. While we follow the steps of an old acquaintance in Count Helias, we gladly watch the beginnings of a new acquaintance, not indeed in King Philip himself, but in his gallant son the Lord Lewis.[434] He has his special biographer, and we only wish that the minute detail in which we can read his actions in dealing with the immediate vassals of the French duchy had been extended to the greater though shorter strife which he had to wage against the sovereign of Normandy and England.

It is not easy to tell the story of these two wars in exact chronological order. Beginning of the war of Maine. January, 1098. The early part of the French war is told without any dates, while we know when the actual fighting began in Maine. This was in the January which followed William’s crossing to the continent, the January of the year in which Earl Hugh was killed in Anglesey. Whether there was any fighting on the French border earlier than that we cannot tell. For a later stage of the French war we have dates, and its dated stage clearly follows the end of the first Cenomannian war. If we go back to the causes of the two struggles, it is equally hard to find the beginning. In both cases there was a standing quarrel, which might 171 have broken out into war at any time. But the French war has a certain right to precedence, inasmuch as it was doubtless rather to attack France than to attack Maine that William Rufus crossed the sea. It may therefore be our best course, first to trace out the earlier undated part of the French war down to the point where there is a clear break in the story. We may then follow the fortunes of Le Mans and Maine, till we reach the later dated part of the French war which followed their first momentary conquest.

§ 1. The Beginnings of the French War.
1097–1098.

King Philip; Of Philip King of the French, the fourth king of the house of Paris, we have often heard already, and from what we have heard we shall hardly expect him to take any leading part either in war or in council. his adulterous marriage with Bertrada of Montfort. He is chiefly memorable for his adulterous marriage with Bertrada of Montfort, the wife of Fulk Rechin of Anjou. He had got rid of his first wife, the daughter of Count Florence of Friesland and step-daughter of that Count Robert of Flanders who bore the Frisian name. He puts away his first wife. The mother of his son Lewis and his daughter Constance was put away by Philip on some plea of kindred, and was shut up in the castle of Montreuil.[435] Some years later 172 Bertrada became her successor. Of her and Fulk we shall hear again in our Cenomannian story; she was in some sort given to Fulk as the price of Cenomannian bondage. But, as Fulk had at least one wife living, the validity of the marriage might have been fairly called in question. Philip and Bertrada; If the scandal of the time may be trusted, Bertrada, wearying of Fulk, and fearing that he might deal by her as he had dealt by others, offered herself to King Philip to supply the place which he had made vacant.[436] She won his heart, so far as he had any, and she seems to have been the only thing that he really cared for. But she who had been a countess at Angers would not be less than queen at Paris, and a ceremony of marriage was gone through. More than one prelate was charged with the uncanonical deed. their alleged marriage by Odo. 1092. The version which most concerns us is that which tells how, when no prelate in France would thus profane the sacraments of the Church, the King looked beyond the border, and found one less scrupulous in the person of the Bishop of Bayeux. The churches of Mantes, it is said, were Odo’s reward for his thus pandering to the misdeeds of his royal neighbour.[437]

173 Scandal occasioned by the marriage. Much scandal and searching of heart followed on the pretended marriage, scandal which spread throughout all France, throughout all Gaul, throughout all Christendom. Opposition of Ivo and Hugh of Lyons. The famous Bishop Ivo of Chartres protested in many letters to the King and others.[438] If a council of the prelates of France, gathered by the King’s authority at Rheims, was inclined to deal gently with the royal sinner, there were higher ecclesiastical powers who were more unbending. Archbishop Hugh of Lyons, Primate of all the Gauls, no subject of Parisian dukes or kings, but a prince of that Imperial Burgundy which knew no king but Cæsar, gathered an assembly which spoke in another voice. The friend of Anselm, the friend of Urban, called together the bishops of the Gauls at Autun, and their voice denounced the offence which the bishops of France alone had been inclined to pass over.[439] Higher powers still spoke at Piacenza and at Clermont. Excommunication of Philip and Bertrada. Philip and Bertrada were excommunicated often and absolved now and then. None would eat at their table; the dogs were said to refuse the morsels which fell from it. Wherever they went, the public exercise of Christian worship stopped, though, by a somewhat inconsistent 174 indulgence, they were allowed to have a low mass said before them in a private chapel.[440] It would seem as though, in spiritual as well as in temporal things, subjects were to suffer from the crimes of kings, while the kings themselves went unscathed. But when Philip and Bertrada left any town, the bells at once struck out. Then, with allusion no doubt to the supposed power of the bells to chase away thunder and pestilence, the King would say to his companion, “Do you hear, my beauty, how they drive us away?”[441] For fifteen years, allowing perhaps for occasional times of reconciliation, the King of the French never wore his crown or his kingly robes or appeared in royal state at any public ceremony.[442]

Sons of Philip and Bertrada. By this second marriage or adultery, which was held to be in no way done away by the death of the lawful Queen in prison,[443] Philip had two sons, Philip and Florus. Bertrada’s schemes against Lewis. Bertrada wished to be the mother of a king, and in after times the lawful heir Lewis was said to have been the object of not a few plots on the part of his step-mother, if even step-mother she is to be called. But at this stage Philip seems to have kept sense enough to see the merits of his son, and to place full trust in him. By the consent 175 of his realm, he made Lewis the immediate ruler and defender of the exposed frontier of the royal dominions. He granted him in fief the towns of Mantes and Pontoise, and the whole French Vexin.[444] Philip invests Lewis with the Vexin. 1092. But Lewis was made more than this. Practically, whether by any formal act or not, Lewis became the ruler of France, so far as France just then had any ruler. Philip, scorned and loathed of all men, with the curses of the Church hurled over and over again against him, withdrew from ruling, fighting, or anything else but his own pleasures, and threw the whole burthen of the government and defence of his kingdom on the shoulders of his young and gallant son.

Question of the Vexin. We are not told at what exact moment the old question of the Vexin was again first stirred. Philip was not likely to stir it, neither was Robert; William Rufus might not care to stir it while he was lord only of part of Normandy, and not of the whole. But when all Normandy became his, the old dispute naturally came up again in his mind. He would not have been William Rufus if he had not sought to win all that his father had held, all that his father had claimed, and among the rest the place where his father found his death-wound. Grounds of offence on the part of Rufus. The special acts of authority exercised by Philip in the Vexin, the grant of the land as his son’s fief, the grant of the churches of Mantes, the churches which were rebuilding out of his father’s dying gifts, to his own rebellious uncle Odo, would be likely to stir him up still more to put forward his old claim. William demands the French Vexin. 1097. At last, after reflecting, we are told, on the wars and the fate of his father in that region, he sent, in the year of the departure of Anselm, solemnly to demand the cession of the whole 176 Vexin, specially naming the towns and fortresses of Pontoise, Chaumont, and Mantes.[445] Of these Mantes and Chaumont were in the strictest sense border fortresses; Pontoise—​the bridge on the Oise, as its name implies—​lies far nearer the heart of the King’s territory; Pontoise in an enemy’s hand would indeed be a standing menace to Paris. The demands of the Red King almost amounted to a demand for the surrender of the independence of the French kingdom.

Edwᵈ. Weller

For the Delegates of the Clarendon Press.

Map illustrating the
FRENCH CAMPAIGN.
A.D. 1098.

The demand is refused. It is needless to say that the demand was refused. Lewis and his counsellors declined to give up the Vexin or any of its fortresses.[446] King William accordingly crossed the sea to assert his rights, and the French campaign possibly began before the end of the year. It is wonderful, when we remember that it is chiefly from our own writers that we get the details of William Rufus’ Norman campaigns, how little they tell us about his French campaigns. Of the war of Maine to which we shall presently come they tell us little enough. Still the name of Maine does appear in their pages, while the name of France at this stage does not. William crosses to Normandy. November 11–30, 1097. We learn indeed that in the November of this year the King crossed into Normandy, but with what object we are not told.[447] What we are told is eminently characteristic of the Red King and his reign. Excesses of the King’s followers. As so often happened, his crossing was delayed by the weather; meanwhile his immediate followers carried out to the full that licence 177 which the King’s immediate followers were wont to allow themselves till Henry and Anselm found sharp means to check them.[448] “His hired in the shires there they lay the most harm did that ever hired or here in frithland should do.”[449] If the army at large is meant, the expression is a strange one. The hired is the King’s household, taking in doubtless household troops in personal attendance on the King, like the old housecarls, but not surely the whole force, national or mercenary. But it was the King’s household whose excesses were specially complained of; and this casual outburst of bitterness is a speaking comment on the general pictures of their misdoings which we have already come across.[450] But it is only of damage done in England by the King’s household that our Chronicler tells us anything. Silence of English writers as to the French war. Of warlike exploits on the other side of the Channel neither he nor any other English writer tells us at this stage a single word.[451]

If from the silence of our own writers we turn to our chief authority on the French side, we shall find a vivid general picture of the war, but hardly any account of particular events. We get indeed one of the most striking of personal contrasts. Though the war which was now waged by Rufus was in every sense a war waged against France, yet it could hardly be called a war personally waged against the nominal ruler of France. It was a war for the Vexin, waged against the lord of the Vexin, and, in its first stages at least, mainly confined to 178 the Vexin. William and Lewis. The struggle between William and Lewis, as it is set forth by the biographer of the French prince, was an unequal one. William had his old weapons at command—​the wealth of England, the traitors whom that wealth could bribe, the mercenaries whom that wealth could hire.[452] He had his own experience in war; he had his veteran troops and their veteran commanders. Chief men on William’s side. Next under the King, comparatively young in years, but first of all in daring as in wickedness, was Robert of Bellême. Then came the King’s brother Henry, and the well-known names of Count William of Evreux, Earl Hugh of Chester, and the old Earl Walter of Buckingham.[453] These were formidable foes for an untried youth like Lewis; the aged warrior who was old on the day of Senlac must have been a strange contrast indeed to the gallant lad on whom the fortune of France now rested. Difficulties of Lewis. Lewis had, we are told, neither men nor money nor allies; he had to pick up all where and how he could. Whenever, often by running to and fro as far as the borders of Berry or Auvergne or Burgundy, he had got together three hundred, or perhaps five hundred, knights, he met King William of England marching against him with ten thousand.[454] Here was little room for pitched 179 battles; Lewis could not risk a meeting with such an enemy in the open field. He had often to retire, sometimes openly to fly.[455] And the different state of the hoards of the two princes showed itself in an effect on their military operations which is characteristic of the time. Fate of the captives on each side. When warriors on the English side—​we must use the language of our French informant—​fell into French hands, the price of their ransom was speedily paid. When French warriors were made prisoners by the forces of Rufus, there was no money to ransom them. They had to languish in bonds with only one hope of deliverance. Those only were set free who were willing to become the men of the King of England and to bind themselves by oath to fight against their own natural lord.[456]

Some then at least of the native subjects of the French crown, who had no conflicting engagements to plead, did not scruple, in the extremities in which they found themselves, to take service on behalf of the invader against their own lord. It is therefore the less wonderful if another class of men, whose interests and whose duties were more doubtful, deemed, when they had to choose between two lords, that Rufus was the lord to be chosen. French traitors. Others again were found of baser mould, who simply took the money of the Red King, and for its sake turned against their own people on behalf of strangers. Among 180 these one is specially marked, one who by his geographical position was called on to be among the foremost champions of France against Norman invasion. This was one of the lords who commanded the fortresses on the Seine, a man whose possessions lay close to the Norman border, Guy of the Rock. Guy of the Rock, the Rock which has taken its name from him and which still is known as La Roche Guyon.[457] The position of his chief stronghold made his adhesion of no small importance. Norman possessions beyond the Epte. The stream of Epte, flowing during a great part of its course through a deep valley, seems designed by nature to part Normandy and France; but, as we have seen, the frontier was ever disputed, and here and there the Norman held small portions of territory on the left bank of the river. One of these Norman holdings on the French side lies by the small village of Gasny, where the boundary, surviving in that of the modern department, is still marked at some distance up the opposite hill. A slight further ascent brings the traveller in sight of one of the noblest bends of the Seine, where the great river, with all its islands, runs immediately below a long line of chalk hills, with their white spurs jutting out in endless fantastic shapes. The windings of the Seine have in fact left at this point little more than a narrow isthmus between itself and its lowlier tributary. Roche Guyon. Just within the French territory at this point, and commanding this important sweep of the great French river, lay the domains of the lord of the Rock. The ridge on which 181 the traveller stands ends in a bluff to the south-east. There, where the hills open for another tributary of the Seine, close by the island of Lavancourt, stood Guy’s now vanished fortress of Vetheuil. But, as we now gaze, by far the most prominent object in the whole curved line of the hill, placed like the imperial seat in the centre of an ancient amphitheatre, rising over the church, the more modern castle, the town, and the airy bridge which modern art has thrown across the river, soar the relics of the fortress which still bears Guy’s name. A spur of the hill is crowned by a small keep, with a round tower attached to a square mass within its compass. But in the days of the Red King, the Guy’s Cliff of the Vexin, now the site of a castle so preeminently visible, was specially known as the site of the stronghold that was invisible. The castle bored in the rock. The lords of the rock had, like the Kenite of old, literally made their nest in the rock itself. The chalk is to this day habitually bored to make houses, churches,[458] any kind of excavation that may be needed. In days before our time this custom had been applied to a more dangerous use; the plundering chiefs of the rock had scooped themselves out a castle in its side. More than one of the chambers remain—​comfortless to our eyes, but perhaps not more comfortless than the chambers within many a tower of timber or masonry—​whence these troglodyte barons looked out to mark the craft upon the Seine, and to exact, by a custom which lingered on till late times, a toll from every passer by. Guy submits to Rufus. Guy of the Rock now submitted to the island king, and his submission supplied a new fetter to pen up the king of the mainland within his havenless realm. At the very entrance of the French territory on this side, Guy’s Rock, Vetheuil, and all that is implied in the 182 possession of Vetheuil and of the Rock, passed from the obedience of the lord of Paris to the obedience of the lord of Winchester and Rouen.

While Guy thus sold to the invader the very entrance-gate of the French kingdom, the Red King found another ally in a far more famous man who held a position of at least equal importance higher up the Seine. Policy of Robert of Meulan. At the head of the nobles who held lands of both kings stood the acknowledged master of all subtle policy, Count Robert of Meulan. We have been so long familiar with his name, whether as the youthful warrior of Senlac or as the experienced counsellor of the Red King, that we may have almost forgotten that the title by which we call him is French, and that he was as great a lord in France as he was in England or in Normandy. We find it hard to think of him as one of those who had thus to choose between two lords, and that he might conceiveably have chosen the cause of Philip—​or rather of Lewis—​against William. We cannot fancy that he took long to decide. He may have argued that William, lord both of Normandy and of England, had two parts in him, while Philip of France had only one. He receives William’s troops. He received the troops of the Red King into his castles, and his adhesion was held to have been of special help to his undertaking. He opened, we are told, a clear path for the English into France.[459] The words sound as if they belonged to the fourteenth, fifteenth, or sixteenth century rather than to the last years of the eleventh. And they are clothed with a strange significance when we remember that the man who now opened a way into France for the combined host of Normandy and England 183 was the same man who, two-and-thirty years before, had opened a way into the very heart of England for the combined host of Normandy and France.[460] But in a geographical point of view the expression is fully justified. Importance of the position of Meulan. In a war between the lord of Rouen and the lord of Paris, no man’s friendship could be more valuable to either side than the friendship of the Count of Meulan. A man weaker in fight and less wary in council than the Achitophel of his day might, if he kept the Seine barred as the lord of Meulan could bar it, have gone far to hold the balance between the contending kings. As at Mantes, as at Rouen, as at Paris itself, the islands so characteristic of the Seine are at Meulan also brought into play for purposes of habitation and defence. Description of Meulan. Meulan indeed is, what neither Paris nor Rouen is, at once a hill-fortress and a river-fortress. At a point of the river lying between Mantes, the seat of the Conqueror’s death-wound, and Poissy, the spot where he went to crave help of his lord before the day of Val-ès-dunes, a hill which the surrounding valleys gird as with a natural fosse rises from the right bank of the river. A group of islands is formed at this spot by the branches of the winding stream, fit places for the landing of the forefathers of the Normans in their pirate days. The spot was seized on for defence. A castle arose on the side of the hill, with a town at its foot sloping swiftly down to the river. There a bridge of some antiquity joins the right bank to a central island, which is joined again to the left bank by another bridge. The island, once strongly fortified, still keeps the significant name of the Fort. The bridge which joins the island to the left bank of the river, where lies the suburb known as Les Mureaux, was, at least in later times, defended by a tower bearing the name of La Sangle. A considerable extent of the outer walls of the 184 castle may be traced, and a specially diligent inquirer may thread his way to a small fragment of the castle itself, and may there mark work of a somewhat later date than the time with which we have to do. It is more easy to trace out a large part of the defences of the Fort, and to mark the churches, surviving and desecrated, one of which, high on the hill side, also belongs, like so many others, to the age next following. As in so many other places, so at Meulan, we cannot lay our hand on anything which we can positively affirm to be the work of its most famous lord. But we can well see that the strength of the spot, a spot which in later times played no small part in the wars of the League, was well understood in the days of our story, and that so important a position was strengthened by all the art of the time. When Count Robert received the forces of Normandy and England on the height and in the island of Meulan, he did indeed open a way for those forces into the heart of France. It was a way which might have been expected to lead them straight to the city which then, as ever, might be deemed to be more than the heart of France, to be France itself.

William’s prospects. Count Robert was doubtless guided, then and always, by policy. Many of his neighbours who found themselves in the like case followed his lead. They could not serve two masters; so they made up their minds to serve the master who was strongest either to reward or to punish, him whose purse was the deeper and whose spirit was the fiercer.[461] Altogether the odds seemed frightfully against the French side. Rufus might indeed have small chances of carrying out his grand scheme of 185 uniting Paris—​perhaps Poitiers and Bourdeaux—​under the same lord as Winchester and Rouen; but things at least looked as if the conquest of the disputed lands was about to advance the Norman frontier most dangerously near to the French capital. Above all, when the Seine was barred both at Roche Guyon and at Meulan, we ask how things stood in the border town which lay between them, the town which was one of the special subjects of William’s demands on Philip. How fared it at Mantes when the stream both above and below was in the hands of the enemy? To this question we get no answer; but we see that, in any case, the King of the French was more closely shut up than ever in the central prison-house of his nominal realm.

Failure of William’s plans. But, small as seemed young Lewis’s means of defence, weakened as he further was by treason among his own or his father’s vassals, the resistance made by the French to the Norman or English invasion was valiant, stubborn, and, we may add, successful. William Rufus was much further from conquering France than Henry the Fifth, or even than Edward the Third, was in after times. With all his wealth, all his forces, he could not conquer the land; he could not even take the fortresses to which he specially laid claim. He could not conquer the Vexin; he could not take either Pontoise or Chaumont. Pontoise and Chaumont not taken. While we hear nothing of Mantes, we know that both these two last-named fortresses successfully withstood his attacks. Of the three fortresses which were the special objects of the war, one, that of Chaumont, became in some sort its centre. Castle of Chaumont. The Chaumont with which we have to deal is still distinguished from other places of the same name as Chaumont-en-Vexin. It stands about five miles east of the Epte, at the point where the frontier stream of Rolf is joined by the smaller stream of the Troesne, and makes a marked turn in its course from nearly due south 186 to south-west. The region is a hilly one, though it contains no heights of any remarkable elevation. The Bald Mount itself, which—​unluckily for the inquirer—​is bald no longer, is a wide-spreading hill crowned with a mound which stands out prominently to the eye on every side. The line of the wall which it supported may still be easily traced, and in a few places it is actually standing. On the steep north-eastern side of the hill the small town of Chaumont nestles at its foot, while the stately church of the later days of French architecture soars above the town as the castle again soars above the church. Of the part played in the war by this stronghold we shall hear a little later.

The height of Chaumont commands a vast prospect on all sides; the eye stretches far away over the friendly land to the south, towards the hills bordering on the Seine; but the special rival of Chaumont, the fortress at the junction of the Epte and Troesne, is shut out from sight by a near range of hills which follow the line of the smaller stream. Where the two rivers join, the Epte, like the greater Seine, divides to form a group of islands at the foot of a low hill on the right, the Norman, bank. The castle of Gisors. Here stands the town and fortress of Gisors, the chief bulwark of Normandy towards the north-eastern corner of the Vexin. Once a dependency of the neighbouring Neauflé, whose mound and square tower form a prominent object in the landscape, Gisors had now become a stronghold indeed. Its first defences. 1096. It had been first fenced in about two years before by Pagan of Gisors, a man of whom we shall hear in the course of the war.[462] Somewhat later William gave orders that 187 the border post should be made into a fortress of the greatest possible strength, and he committed the work to the most skilful engineer at his command. Strengthened by Robert of Bellême. All the craft and subtlety of the Devil of Bellême were employed to make Gisors a stronghold which might shelter the eastern frontier of Normandy against all enemies. As far as one can see, the islands in the Epte and the hill which rises above them near to the right bank of the main river were united in one common plan of defence. The town itself, taking in the islands, was walled, either now or at a later time, and defended with a ditch throughout those parts of its circuit which were neither sheltered by the river nor by the castle hill. In the great defences of this last we see the fruit of the engineering skill of Robert of Bellême, and we better learn what in those days was deemed a specially strong fortress. On all sides save that where town and castle join, the hill is girded by a deep ditch, and on the north, the side which lies away from both town and river, the ditch is doubled, and the chief entrance on this side is defended by an outpost between the two. The ditch fences in a vast walled space, in the middle of which art has improved nature by piling up a vast artificial mound crowned by a shell keep. The earthworks are most likely older than either Robert of Bellême or Pagan of Gisors. The outer wall and the shell keep may well be part of Robert’s design, if they are not actually his work; but the towers which now rise so proudly over Gisors, not only the round tower, precious in local legend, but the vast octagon on one side of the keep which bears the name of the martyr of Canterbury, must all be of later date than our time. A graceful chapel within the keep, where the visitor is told with special emphasis that 188 Saint Thomas once said mass, has thus much to show in favour of the legend that it is clearly a work of Henry the Second’s days. Gisors under Henry the Second. His days were stirring days at Gisors as well as the days of Rufus, and a hundred years of sieges had brought new improvements into the art of fortification. All in short that strikes the eye as the traveller draws near to Gisors, Present appearance of Gisors. the castle towers, no less than the strange and striking outline of one of the stateliest of those churches which boasted no bishop or abbot at their head, belongs to later days than those of the Red King’s campaign of Chaumont. Of the defences of the town below little can now be traced, and that part of the defences of the castle on which the historian looks with the deepest interest is carefully hidden from distant view. The tower of Saint Thomas and its lower fellow both seem to rise from the midst of a wood—​a wood artificially planted, seemingly for the express purpose of robbing Gisors of its characteristic feature, of shutting out from sight the mighty motte and keep which Robert of Bellême made ready at the Red King’s bidding to be the strongest bulwark of the Norman land.

Castle of Trye. Near as Gisors stands to Chaumont, another fortress barred the way between them. The road between the two towns passes through Trye—​distinguished from its neighbour Trye-la-Ville as Trye-Château—which appears in our story along with Chaumont as one of the French fortresses which Gisors was specially meant to keep in check. Yet Trye must have been itself specially meant as an outpost against Gisors. Close by Gisors is one of the points where the Norman frontier overlaps the Epte; so that Trye, lying between two and three miles from Gisors, is yet nearer than Gisors to the actual frontier. Trye does not lie, like Chaumont, hidden behind the hills; it stands boldly in the teeth of the enemy, 189 clearly seen from the hill of Gisors, and barring the main road between Gisors and Chaumont, a road which led over level ground and neither over hill nor swamp. Otherwise the site has not, like Gisors and Chaumont, any marked advantages of ground, nor, at present at least, are any earthworks visible. In our time, though a gate and a tower of later date than our story recall the days of the military importance of Trye, the attractions of the spot are chiefly of other kinds. Primæval and later antiquities. Between Trye and Chaumont a cromlech, known as the Three Stones, calls up the thought of days and men which were as mysterious in the time of Rufus as they are now. More than one fragment of mediæval architecture may be lighted on by the way, and Trye itself stands conspicuous for the singular and beautiful Romanesque work—​again too late for our immediate time—​to be found both in its ecclesiastical and its secular buildings.

Chaumont and Trye may practically be looked on as one piece of defence. Castle of Boury. A third fortress, that of Boury,[463] lay further apart to the south-west, hidden from Gisors, like Chaumont, by another line of hills. All three castles seem to have remained unsubdued through the whole war. The valour of the French resistance is dwelled on with pleasure by our Norman or English guide. Did the monk of Saint Evroul, the young scholar of the Severn side, remember that, after all, his father belonged neither to the land of his birth nor to the land of his adoption, but was in truth a Frenchman from Orleans?[464] National feeling in the French Vexin. The French Vexin was inhabited by a valiant race, in whom, if we are not pressing too far the words of our story, a distinct feeling of French nationality 190 was strong. They were ready to run all risks—​it is not said for their King, but for the defence of their country, for the glory of their nation, for the honour of the French name.[465] Valiant men, mercenaries it would seem—​but who was to pay them?--from all parts of Gaul, or at least of France, pressed to their help, and a brave and successful defence was made. Prisoners on both sides. Prisoners on both sides underwent the two different fates which were already spoken of. The name on the Norman side which is best known to us is that of the fierce Gilbert of Laigle; Gilbert of Laigle. with him we hear of the former lord and fortifier of Gisors.[466] Among the captives on the French side the national historian records one who bore a far loftier name, but one which at that moment was hardly a name of honour. Simon of Montfort. Two of the long line of Simons of the French Montfort are heard of in the course of our story, father and son, father and brother of her who in our authorities appears commonly as the woman from Anjou, but who on the Strong Mount of her fathers may have been deemed a Queen of the French. One Simon is now spoken of as a prisoner; both are found somewhat later fighting stoutly in the cause of France. We have heard that the Red King let none free who would not undertake to fight on his side. Are we to infer that a forefather of our own deliverer had learned the lesson of Harold, that an extorted oath is of no strength?

191 § 2. The First War of Maine.
1098.

Dates of the French war. November, 1097–September, 1098. These events on the French side, of which thus far we have but a vague account, would seem to have happened during the first half of the year with which we are dealing. But all that we can say for certain is that they happened between the November of one year and the September of the next. Of the struggle which was going on at the same time in Maine, the dates are far more clear. War of Maine. January—​August, 1098. It began in January and it was deemed to be over in August. But its immediate occasion arose the year before, and its general causes go much further back. Fully to understand the war of William and Helias, more truly the war of Helias and Robert of Bellême, we must trace out the events of several years. History of Maine. 1089–1098. While we have been following the fates of England, Normandy, Scotland, and Wales, much of high interest has been going on in Maine which had no connexion with the affairs of any part of Britain, and which had but little influence on Norman affairs either. But now that England and Normandy have again a common ruler, the affairs of England, or at least the affairs of her King, have again a close connexion with the affairs of Maine. We have now therefore to take up the tale of that noble city and county from the days when we had to tell of Duke Robert’s campaign before Ballon and Saint Cenery.[467]

Robert suspects the loyalty of Maine. 1089. The submission of Maine to the Norman Duke which then took place lasted only till the next favourable opportunity for asserting the old independence of the city and county. No great time after he had taken 192 possession, Robert began to suspect the loyalty of his Cenomannian subjects. A strange story follows, which connects itself in a way yet stranger with the tale of the royal household of France which we have lately been telling. Robert, it seems, was sick at the moment when he, or some one else for him, thought it needful to take action against impending revolt in Maine. He asks help of Fulk of Anjou. He sent messengers and gifts to Count Fulk of Anjou, the famous Rechin, praying him to come to him.[468] Fulk, it will be remembered, claimed the over-lordship of Maine, and Robert himself had, long before, at the peace of Blanchelande, done a formal homage to Fulk for the county.[469] The Angevin Count was supposed to have influence with the people of Maine, influence which might be enough to hinder them from revolting. That influence Robert now prayed Fulk to use. The Angevin agreed on one condition, namely that the Norman would use his own influence in quite another quarter, for quite another purpose. Fulk asks for Bertrada of Montfort. Fulk wanted a wife. As the story is told us, he is said to have had two living wives already; but that seems not to have been the case.[470] His first wife, the daughter of a lord of Beaugency, died, leaving a daughter. He then married Ermengarde of Bourbon—​a description not to become royal for some ages—​the mother of his son Geoffrey Martel. Her he put away on the usual plea of kindred, and now it was that he appeared as the wooer of that Bertrada of whom we 193 have already spoken of in her later character. The daughter of Simon of Montfort was the niece of Count William of Evreux, through her mother Agnes, Count William’s sister. Bertrada brought up by Heloise. Her mother would seem to have been dead, and she was brought up in her uncle’s house, under the schooling of Countess Heloise.[471] The Count of Anjou, no longer young, driven to strange devices as to his shoes,[472] and burthened with a former wife whose divorce might be called in question, felt that he was hardly likely to win favour as a lover in the eyes either of Bertrada herself or of her guardians. But the Rechin was skilful at a bargain. He would engage to keep Maine in the Duke’s obedience, if the Duke would get him the damsel of Montfort to wife.[473] Robert set off for Evreux in person, and pleaded Fulk’s cause with Count William. The Count of Evreux was duly shocked, and set forth the obvious objections to the marriage. William of Evreux’s bargain about his niece. But he too was open to a bargain; he would get over his scruples if the Duke would restore to him certain lordships to which he asserted a right, and would grant certain others to his nephew William of Breteuil. These lands had been the possession of his uncle Ralph of Wacey, guardian of the Great William in his early days, who it seems was sportively known as Ralph with the Ass’s Head.[474] Let 194 the Duke give him and his nephew back their own, and Bertrada should be, as far as the Count of Evreux was concerned, Countess of Anjou.

Robert consents. The Duke did not venture to answer without the advice of his counsellors. His counsellors. But the combined wisdom of Robert of Bellême, lately a rebel but now again in favour,[475] of the Ætheling Eadgar, and of that monastic William of Arques of whom we have already heard,[476] advised the acceptance of Count William’s terms. The whole county of Maine was of more value than the lordships which the Count of Evreux demanded as the price of his niece.[477] The power and the will of Fulk to do what he promised about Le Mans and Maine seems not to have been doubted. The double bargain was struck, and it was carried out for a season. Count William and his nephew got all that they asked, except that one lordship passed to Gerard of Gournay. Fulk marries Bertrada. Fulk too got what he asked, namely Bertrada, till such time as King Philip took her away. She had time to quarrel with her stepson Geoffrey, and to become the mother of Fulk, afterwards Count of Anjou and King of Jerusalem, and grandfather of the first Angevin King of England. Maine kept quiet for a year. And Count Fulk was able, by whatever means, to keep the Cenomannian city and county in a formal allegiance to the Norman Duke, till such time as the temptations to revolt became too strong to be withstood.

Movements in Maine. Our story however seems to imply that the submission of Maine to Robert was wholly on the surface, and that all this while schemes were going on for shaking off the hated Norman yoke. The present movement took the 195 same form which had been taken by the movement in the Conqueror’s day.[478] The avowed object of Cenomannian patriotism was now, as then, the restoration of the ancient dynasty. The valour and energy of the citizens of Le Mans are constantly spoken of; but we hear nothing this time of the commune. The rule of some prince seems to be assumed on all hands, and for a while all seem to have agreed in seeking that prince in the same quarter in which they had sought a prince already. Hugh son of Azo sent for. 1090. Little indeed of good for Le Mans or Maine had come of the former application to Azo and Gersendis; but their son Hugh had now reached greater years and experience, and the men of Maine again sent into Italy to ask for him to reign over them.[479] Union of Geoffrey and Helias. The application was supported both by Geoffrey of Mayenne, of whom we have so often heard during the last thirty years, and by Helias of La Flèche, who might well have asserted his own claims against those of the distant house of Este.[480]

Helias of La Flèche. Helias now becomes the hero of the Cenomannian tale. He is one of the men of his time of whom we can get the clearest idea. We see him alike in his recorded acts and in his elaborately drawn portrait; and by the light of the two we can hail in him the very noblest type of the age and class to which he belonged. We see in him a no less worthy defender of the freedom of Maine than Harold was of the freedom of England. His character He stands 196 before us with his tall stature, his strong, thin, and well-proportioned frame, his swarthy complexion, his thick hair cropped close after Norman or priestly fashion.[481] Brave and skilful in war, wise and just in his rule in peace, ready and pleasant in speech, gentle to the good and stern to the evil, faithful to his word, and corrupted neither by good nor evil fortune, a man withal of prayer and fasting, the bountiful friend of the Church and the poor, Helias stands forth within the narrow range of a single county of Gaul as one who, on a wider field, might have won for himself a place among the foremost of mankind.[482] With the house of the old Counts of Maine he had a twofold connexion. and descent. The male line of Herbert Wake-dog had come to an end; but in the female line Helias came of it in two descents, while Hugh came in one only. Not only was his mother Paula one of the sisters of the younger Herbert, but his father John of La Flèche was son of a daughter of Wake-dog himself.[483] His castles. To his father’s Angevin fief of La Flèche, among the islands of the Loir, his marriage with Matilda, a grand-niece of Archbishop Gervase of Rheims, known to us better as Bishop of Le Mans,[484] had added a string of castles in the south of Maine. Two of these, Mayet and the one which is specially called the Castle of the Loir, fill a prominent 197 place in our story.[485] Helias was plainly the greatest lord of eastern Maine, the modern department of Sarthe, as Geoffrey of Mayenne was the greatest in western Maine, the modern department which still bears the name of his own fortress.[486] His possible claim on the county. One might have thought that the position of Helias as a great local chief might, when the elders of Maine were called on to choose a prince, have outweighed any slight genealogical precedence on the part of the stranger Hugh. But the great men of the county may not have been disposed to place one of themselves over their own heads. He accepts the succession of Hugh. Anyhow Helias, like his father before him,[487] waived his own claim to the succession. Along with the lord of Mayenne and the great mass of the people of the city and county, he welcomed the Ligurian prince—​such is the geography of our chief guide—​when he came to take possession of the dominion to which the voice of the Cenomannian people had called him a second time.[488]

Negotiations with Hugh. We are to suppose that the negotiations with the house of Este were going on during the year when Count Fulk contrived to keep Maine outwardly quiet. But when the quarrel between William and Robert broke out, when Normandy was divided and dismembered, the Angevin over-lord’s influence gave way. The time for action was clearly come. Revolt of Maine. 1090. Le Mans and all Maine now openly rose against the Norman dominion. Duke Robert’s garrisons were driven out;[489] the Cenomannian 198 land was again free. Invitation to Hugh. But the first act of restored freedom was to invite Hugh of Este, descendant of the ancient counts, to come at once to take possession, and to rule in the palace on the Roman wall which fences in the Cenomannian hill.

Opposition of Bishop Howel. The chief opponent of the movement for independence was, as before, the Bishop. The throne of Saint Julian was still filled by the Breton Howel, the nominee of the Conqueror, and he stood firm in his loyalty to his patron’s eldest son.[490] He withstood the revolt by every means in his power, and scattered interdicts and anathemas against the supporters of the newly-elected Count.[491] Hugh had not yet come, and the opposition of the Bishop was felt to be dangerous. Howel imprisoned by Helias. Helias therefore, whose piety did not lead him to any superstitious reverence for ecclesiastical privileges, dealt with Howel as an enemy, or at least as one whom it was well to keep out of the way for a season. As the Bishop was going through his diocese with a train of clergy, in the discharge of some episcopal duty, Helias seized him, carried him off, and put him in ward at La Flèche.[492] The great 199 grievance seems to have been that Howel was denied the company of his attendant clergy, and was allowed the services only of one unlettered rustic priest. The fear was lest the Bishop and his more learned companions would, in their Latin talk, plot something which their keepers would not understand.[493] This very complaint shows that the Bishop’s imprisonment was not of a very harsh kind. But the cause of the captive prelate was zealously taken up by his clergy. Interdict of Le Mans. Le Mans and its suburbs were put under a practical interdict; divine worship ceased; the bells were silent; the doors of the churches were stopped up with thorns.[494] Great, it is said, was the joy when the Bishop was set free and came back to his city. Liberation of Howel on Hugh’s coming. We are told by a writer in the episcopal interest that Helias set him free in a fit of penitence, in answer to many intercessions from nobles, clergy, and neighbouring bishops. Howel was gracious and forgiving, and let his wrongs be forgotten 200 on the restoration of whatever had been taken from him.[495] All this is possible; but the more definite statement that Howel was kept in ward till Hugh came shows that his captivity was a matter of policy, and that he was set free as soon as it seemed that no object could be gained by prolonging it.

Hugh reaches Le Mans. Meanwhile Hugh was on the road. At the border fortress of La Chartre he was met by the magistrates of Le Mans—​the city seems, as often in Cenomannian history, to act for the whole county—​who swore oaths to him, counting, it is added, their former oaths to Duke Robert for nought.[496] Howel flees to Robert. The Bishop, determined not to acknowledge the revolution, fled to the court of the prince whom he did acknowledge. But he found little help there. Robert’s carelessness as to his loss. The idle and luxurious Robert seemed not to care, he seemed almost to rejoice, that so noble a part of his dominions had fallen away from him.[497] One thing only he would not give up; he would at all hazards cleave to his rights over the Cenomannian bishopric.He cleaves to his rights over the bishopric. Robert bade Howel to go back to Le Mans, but to do nothing which could be taken as an admission of Hugh as temporal lord of the bishopric.[498] Howel went home, and found the new Count, for whatever reason, quartered in the episcopal palace. He had himself to live in the 201 abbey of Saint Vincent, just outside the city. Dispute between Hugh and Howel. A long dispute followed between the Breton Bishop and the Italian Count, and then came a still fiercer dispute between the Bishop and a party in his own Chapter. One or two points are of constitutional interest, and remind us of questions which we have just before heard of in our own land. Howel refuses to acknowledge Hugh as advocatus. The Count called on Howel to acknowledge himself as his feudal superior for the temporalities of the bishopric.[499] He refused and left the city, on which Hugh seized the temporalities of the bishopric. Howel and his Chapter. Worse even than the Count were the Bishop’s clerical enemies, one Hilgot at their head. By a cruel subtlety they had persuaded him to appoint as Dean a mere boy from his own land, Geoffrey by name, of the age of twelve years only—​so it is said. Disputes about the deanery. Now they turned about, found fault with the appointment, and set up an anti-dean of their own.[500] The Bishop crossed over to England for help, and, strange to say, he found a friend in the King.[501] Howel comes to England. But meanwhile all kinds of wrongs were done to 202 his people, even to branding an innocent boy in the face.[502] At last a reconciliation between the Count and the Bishop was brought about, partly because of the turn taken by public feeling. Saint Julian’s, in the absence of its chief pastor, was forsaken, while crowds flocked to keep the feasts of the Church at the Bishop’s monastic retreat. This was at the priory of Solêmes, near Sablé, lying south-west of the city, towards the Angevin border.[503] Return of Howel. June 28, 1090. At last the prelate came back amidst universal joy, and the Count made good all wrongs and losses that he had undergone.[504]

Unpopularity of Hugh. But happier days were to come for the Bishop and the people of Maine. It was not only to Howel and his clergy that the Italian Count had made himself hateful. He had none of the qualities which were needed in the ruler of a high-spirited people in a time of danger. Idle, timid, weak of purpose, he had no power among the men over whom he was set; and he had not, as seems to have been hoped for, brought with him any store of money from the south.[505] His wife, a daughter of Robert Wiscard, a woman of a lofty spirit, was too much for him. He put her away, and was excommunicated by Pope Urban for so doing.[506] Despised of all men, he was thinking of flight.[507] February, 1091. It was now moreover the moment when 203 the Norman power had again become specially dangerous to Maine. Danger of Maine. The sons of the great William, lately at variance, were now reconciled, and the subjugation of Maine was one of the terms of their agreement.[508] Helias saw his opportunity. He set forth the dangers of the land to his cousin. Hugh said that he wished to sell his county and be off.[509] Helias argued that, in that case, he ought to sell it to no one but himself. He set forth his right by birth; he said that it was no easy place that he was seeking. But his just rights and a love for the freedom of the land called him to it, and he trusted that God would help him in his post of danger.[510] A bargain was soon struck. Helias buys the county. For a sum of ten thousand Cenomannian shillings Hugh agreed to abdicate in favour of his cousin. The coronet of Maine passed from the son of Gersendis to the son of Paula. Hugh went back into Italy with his money, and Helias was received without opposition as Count of Maine.[511]

First reign of Helias. 1091–1098. The reign of Helias over Le Mans and Maine lasted for about twenty years, with a break of three years of warfare of which we shall presently have to speak. First came a time of seven or eight years, during which the Cenomannian people might indeed be objects of envy to the people either of Normandy or of England. The new 204 prince, by every account of his actions, showed himself the model of a ruler of those times. His strong and just rule. He did justice and made peace; as far as a prince of those days could do so, he sheltered the weak from the oppressions of the strong.[512] His personal piety was not lessened, nor was his devotion to the Church less zealous, now that the ecclesiastical power was no longer a political enemy. His friendship for Howel. Strong in the friendship of his late gaoler, Bishop Howel could rule his diocese in peace, and could carry on his works of building, both in the city itself and in his neighbouring lordship of Coulaines.[513] Peace of the land. And these happy years were years of peace without as well as within. The rule of Helias was undisputed; Maine saw neither revolt within her own borders nor invasion from any power beyond them. Whatever designs either Robert or William may have cherished against the independence of Maine, those designs did not for the present take the shape of any overt act. Robert seems to have done absolutely nothing; the first signs of impending evil showed themselves soon after William’s acquisition of Normandy; 1096. but there was no open warfare for two years longer.

Translation of Saint Julian. October 17, 1093. In these times of exceptional quiet there is little to record beyond ecclesiastical ceremonies. It was a bright day at Le Mans when Bishop Howel was able to translate the body of the venerated patron of the city to the place of honour in his new building.[514] That was the time when Anselm, already enthroned, was waiting for consecration, and when Malcolm had turned away from Gloucester to plan his last invasion of Northumberland.[515] 205 In these years too Howel must have finished the two stately towers of Saint Julian’s minster, of which we shall before long have a tale to tell. But Le Mans presently saw a greater day than all, as it seemed at least in the eyes of the biographer of her bishops. Visit of Pope Urban to Le Mans. November or December, 1095. After the days of Piacenza and Clermont, Pope Urban honoured the Cenomannian city with his presence. For three days the sovereign Pontiff was the guest of Howel, and we are told that, though it was a year of scarceness, yet the Bishop of Le Mans was able to entertain the Pope and his following right bountifully.[516] Howel, it is said, appeared among his fellow-bishops conspicuous for the gifts of both mind and body. Men rejoiced with him on the happiness of receiving such a guest, and deemed from his health and vigour that he might long enjoy his honours.[517] Sickness of Howel. 1095–1097. Before long he fell sick, and his sickness was unto death, although his end did not come till nearly two years after the preaching at Clermont. The visit of Urban, the death of Howel, led to important events in the history of Maine.

The preaching of the crusade, above all the presence, and doubtless the preaching, of the crusading Pope in his own city, stirred up the same impulse in the heart of Helias which was stirred up in the hearts of so many other men of his day. Helias takes the cross. 1095–1096. Young and strong, devout and valiant, he would go and fight to win back the sepulchre of his Lord from the misbelievers and to deliver his Christian brethren in other lands from their cruel bondage. By the counsel of the Pope, the Count of Maine 206 took the cross, and made ready to go on the armed pilgrimage along with his neighbours, with Robert of Normandy and Stephen of Chartres.[518] Estimate of his action. Our feeling perhaps is that Helias, like Saint Lewis, had a stronger call to stay at home than to go on the crusade. A certain part of mankind, a small part certainly, but that part among which his immediate duty lay, was peaceful and happy under his rule as they were not likely to be under the rule of any other. Could it be right, we might argue, for him to leave a work which none could do but himself, a work which he had taken on his shoulders of his own free will, for another work, however noble, which others could do as well as himself? Let Robert go and win honour abroad instead of dishonour at home. Normandy was in such a case that the coming even of Rufus was a happy change. Let Stephen of Chartres go; he left his royal-hearted Adela behind him. Let King Philip go, if he could go; his son Lewis would rule his realm far better than he. But let Helias stay, and keep for his land and city that well-being which he had given and which another might take away. Sigurd and Eystein. An argument nearly the same as this was actually pressed on the crusading Sigurd by his stay-at-home brother Eystein. While Sigurd was warring far away, Eystein had done a great deal of good to his own people in Norway.[519] But there are moments in the world’s history, moments when all has to be sacrificed to a great cause, when arguments like these, so sound against ordinary warfare, sound above all against the utterly purposeless warfare of those days, cannot be listened to. Argument in favour of the Crusade. If Western Christendom was to arm for a crusade, 207 it was well that that crusade should be headed by the noblest men in Western Christendom. The work would not be done, if it were only left to lower souls. If Godfrey was to march, it was fit that Helias should march beside him. Godfrey went; Helias did not go. He had now a neighbour who made it vain for him to think of leaving his own land in jeopardy, even to carry out his promise to Pope Urban and to go on the holy war.

William in Normandy. August (?), 1096. The bargain between William and Robert had just been struck. The two brothers were together at Rouen. Robert was about to set out for Jerusalem; William had come to take possession of Normandy. It would have been the height of rashness for Helias to join in the enterprise of Robert, unless he could make his county safe during his absence against any aggression on the part of William. Danger to Maine. According to Norman doctrines, Maine was simply a rebellious province. Robert had done nothing to stop the rebellion, but he had never acknowledged either Hugh or Helias as lawful Prince of the Cenomannians. Where Robert had done nothing, William would be likely to act with vigour. The claims which Robert had simply not acknowledged William might be inclined to dispute with the sword. Importance of Norman neutrality. It was therefore of the utmost moment for the Count of Maine to secure the friendship, or at least the neutrality, of the new ruler of Normandy. Helias doubtless knew that, if William bound himself by his knightly promise, that promise would be faithfully kept, and he perhaps hoped that towards one who was bound on a holy errand, an errand during which he would be harmless and powerless as far as Maine and Normandy were concerned, the chivalrous king might be disposed to pledge such a promise. He therefore went to Rouen, and sought interviews with both brothers. Helias and Robert. He first took counsel with the Duke.[520] Helias and William. Robert, we know, could 208 give counsel to others,[521] and he had no temptation at this moment to give unfriendly counsel to Helias. By his advice, the Count of Maine went to the King; He professes himself William’s vassal. he addressed him reverently, and, if his words be rightly reported, acknowledged himself his vassal. So to do was no degradation, and the acknowledgement might turn the King’s heart towards him. He set forth his purpose of going to the crusade; he said that he wished to go as the King’s friend and in his peace.[522] Answer of Rufus; he demands the cession of Maine. Then Rufus burst forth in a characteristic strain. Helias may go whither he thinks good; but let him give up the city and county of Maine; whatever his father held it was William’s will to hold also.[523] Helias answers that he holds his county by lawful inheritance from his forefathers, and that he hopes by God’s help to hand it on to his children. But if the King has a mind to try the question in a peaceful pleading, he is ready to maintain his right before kings, counts, and bishops, and to abide by their judgement.[524] Rufus tells him that he will plead against him with swords and spears and countless arrows.[525] Challenge of Helias. Then Helias spoke his 209 solemn challenge. He had wished to fight against the heathen in the name of the Lord, but he had found the enemies of Christ nearer to his own doors. The county which he held was his by the gift of God;[526] he would not lightly give it up, nor leave his people to the wolves as sheep without a shepherd. Let the King and all his nobles hear. He bore the cross of a pilgrim; that cross he would not lay aside; he would bear it on his shield, on his helmet, on the saddle and bridle of his horse. Under the protection of that sign he would go forth to defend himself against all who might attack him, that all might know that those who were fighting against him were fighting against a warrior of the cross. He trusted in Him who ruled the world and who knew the secrets of his heart, that a day would come when he would be able to discharge his vow according to the letter.[527] Rufus lets Helias go with a defiance. The Red King bade him go whither he would and do what he would; he had no mind to fight against crusaders, but he would have the city which his father had once won.[528] Let Helias get together workmen to repair his broken walls.[529] He would presently visit the citizens of Le Mans, and would show himself before their gates with a hundred thousand pennoned lances.[530] He would send cars drawn by oxen, and laden with arrows and javelins. But before the oxen could reach Le 210 Mans, he would be there with many legions of armed men.[531]

Such was the threatening message which Helias was bidden to receive as the most certain truth and to go back and tell his accomplices—​that is, we may understand, his faithful subjects. Helias makes ready for defence. He went back to his capital, and began to put his dominions into a state fit to withstand an attack. But as yet no attack came; for a year or more neither king nor legions nor oxen were seen before the gates of Le Mans. William delays his attack. 1096–1097. William was busy with many matters, with the dispute with Anselm, with the Welsh war, with the affairs of Scotland. We are told, characteristically enough, that in the midst of all these affairs he forgot Maine altogether. Helias meanwhile remained in actual possession of the county, not attacked or disturbed by Rufus, but in no way acknowledged by him, with the King’s threats hanging over him, and knowing that an attack might come at any moment. At last this armed neutrality came to an end. An event happened which called the King’s mind back to Cenomannian affairs in a manner specially characteristic of Cenomannian history.

Affairs of the bishopric. Again, as so often in our story, the bishopric of Le Mans becomes the centre of the drama and the subject of dispute among the princes of the world. Death of Howel July 29, 1097. In the middle of the summer, shortly before the council of Winchester, Bishop Howel died, seemingly of the same sickness which had come upon him soon after the visit of Pope Urban. Helias, like Hugh, deemed himself, as the reigning Count, to be the temporal lord of 211 the bishopric, and he at once nominated to the vacant see. Helias nominates Geoffrey. His choice was the Dean of Saint Julian’s, that same Geoffrey who had been placed by Howel in the deanery in his childhood, and who, if the dates be right, must still have been wonderfully young for a bishop.[532] The canons choose Hildebert. But the canons of Saint Julian’s stood upon their right of free election, and chose a man of greater name, their Chancellor and Archdeacon, the famous Hildebert.[533] They placed him at once, seemingly against his own will, on the episcopal throne.[534] At first Helias was wroth, and was minded to set aside this direct slight to his authority. Helias accepts the election. But the rights of the Chapter were set before him, and, unlike our own Confessor under less provocation, he yielded, and accepted the election.[535] The Dean, deeming himself sure of the bishopric, had made ready a great feast; but his dainties were spread and eaten to no purpose.[536] Geoffrey Archbishop of Rouen. 1111. His time of promotion was only deferred. Fourteen years later, Geoffrey succeeded William the Good Soul in the archbishopric of Rouen. So 212 his now more successful competitor was not fated always to remain in the second rank of prelacy. Hildebert Bishop of Le Mans. 1097–1126. One of the great scholars of his day, renowned for his writings both in prose and verse, a diligent writer of letters and thereby one of the authorities for our history, a builder, a reformer, an enemy of heresy who could yet deal gently with the heretic,[537] a model in short, we are told, of every episcopal virtue, Hildebert ruled the church of Le Mans for more than twenty-nine years, Archbishop of Tours. 1126–1134. and then for the last nine years of his long life was removed to the metropolitan throne of Tours.[538]

All the elements of the Cenomannian state, prince, clergy, and people, had joined in the elevation of Hildebert. But there was one to whom any free election or nomination by any of the local powers was in its own nature distasteful. Claims of the Norman Dukes over the bishopric. It was perhaps because their claim was very doubtful that the princes of the Norman house clave with such special obstinacy to their rights over the temporalities of the see of Le Mans. The bishopric was the one thing in Maine which even the careless Robert cared about.[539] And to William Rufus, who so deeply cherished his father’s memory, it would seem a crowning indignity that a bishop appointed by his father, a special and loyal friend of his father, should be succeeded by any one, whether the choice of count, chapter, 213 or commune, in whose election he himself had no share. Anger of Rufus at the election of Hildebert. When the King heard of the election of Hildebert, he was very wroth. He forbade his consecration, seemingly under threats of open war.[540] Hildebert was consecrated none the less, and the war which Rufus had hitherto planned in his heart, broke out in action.[541]

William in Normandy. November, 1097. When William crossed the sea in the November following the election of Hildebert, we may believe that the wrong which he held to have been done to him in the matter of that election was in his mind as a secondary cause of action, along with his demand of the Vexin from the King of the French. His designs on Maine. He came for war with France; he was ready for war with Maine also. But we do not hear of any actual military operations till the next year had begun. And, when warfare began, it was at first warfare carried on, just as often happened in Wales and even in Scotland, by the King’s licence indeed, but not by the King himself. Robert of Bellême attacks Maine. The immediate danger lay on the side of the county which was threatened by the constant enemy of Maine and of Helias, Robert of Bellême. From him came the first acts of warfare. It was against him that Helias now found it needful to strengthen his castle of Dangeul.[542] Helias strengthens the castle of Dangeul. Its position. This point lies to the north-east of Ballon, at only a few miles’ distance. The castle stands on a height nearly equal to that of Ballon, though Dangeul does not take the same 214 marked form of a promontory, but rather stands on the edge of a wide expanse of high ground sinking by stages down to the plain below. The fortress has wholly vanished; but its site may be traced within the grounds of the modern château which has taken its place, and which represents, in a figure, the stronghold of Helias. The view which the spot commands shows how well the site was chosen. The eye ranges as far as the height of Sillé-le-Guillaume on one side, as far as the Norman Chaumont on the other. Dangeul stood right in the way of an advance of the arch-enemy, whether from his own home at Bellême or from any of his Norman or Cenomannian fortresses.

Geographical character of the war; waged chiefly with Robert of Bellême. The war of Maine is largely a war between Helias and Robert of Bellême. This gives the war its special geographical character. The immediate possessions of Helias lay in the south-eastern part of the county; the fortresses of the enemy threatened him from the north-east. The capital lay between them. The result is that the seat of war is confined to the eastern part of Maine, the modern department of Sarthe, and that Le Mans itself is its special centre. Of western Maine, the modern department of Mayenne, we hear nothing. There is no news from the old battle-field of Domfront, Ambrières, and Mayenne itself, though of the lord of Mayenne we still continue to hear. There is nothing this time to tell of Sainte-Susanne or of Sillé-le-Guillaume.[543] The war takes up such an area as is natural when the strife is waged mainly for the city of Le Mans, when it is waged between the lord of La Flèche and the lord of Bellême. The enemy advances from Alençon and Mamers; he is checked by the fortification of Dangeul.

Edwᵈ. Weller

For the Delegates of the Clarendon Press.

Map illustrating the
CAMPAIGN OF MAINE
A.D. 1098.

Effects of the occupation of Dangeul. The occupation of this last strong post by Helias was not without effect. He did not indeed win back any of 215 the castles which were held by Robert of Bellême; but the garrison of Dangeul kept the invader in check, and hindered him from carrying his accustomed ravages through the whole country. This move of Helias seems even to have convinced Robert that the conquest of Maine was an undertaking too great for his own unassisted power. Robert of Bellême invites the King. January, 1098. In January he went to the King, and stirred him up to a direct attack on Helias. With a lover of warfare like Robert winter went for nothing; it would be just the time to take the enemy by surprise, while they were not expecting any attack. The King, we are told, was unwilling. It is hard to understand why this should be, unless he was too busily occupied with the war in the Vexin. He was ashamed however—​the chivalrous feeling again comes in—​to shrink from any warlike enterprise which was proposed to him.[544] William and Robert against Helias. The King and the Count of Bellême set forth; but they found the Count of Maine fully their match. He knew how war was to be carried on in his own land against an enemy stronger than himself. Guerrilla warfare of Helias. He planted detachments at every convenient post; he lined the hedges and defences of every kind with men; he guarded the passages of the streams, and the difficult approaches of the woods. Against this kind of skirmishing warfare the mighty Rufus and all his knights were able to do as little as they were able to do against the light-armed Welsh.[545] The King waxed fiercer than ever against the 216 men of Maine and their Count; William leaves Maine. but he withdrew his own personal presence, betaking himself doubtless to the other seat of war.

Robert of Bellême continues the war. Meanwhile Robert of Bellême was left to carry on the struggle with Helias. He was ordered by Rufus to bring together as large a force as he could in his own fortresses, nor did the King forget to supply him with abundance of money for that purpose.[546] On such a bidding as this, Robert of Bellême, Robert the Devil on Cenomannian lips, set to work with a will which fully bore out his surname. He built new fortresses, he strengthened the old ones with deep ditches.[547] He had already occupied nine castles, besides fortified houses, on Cenomannian ground.[548] Castles held by him in Maine. The list is given as Blèves, Perray, Mont-de-la-Nue, Saônes, Saint Remy-du-plain, Lurçon, Allières, Motte de Gauthier-le-Clincamp, and Mamers. All these lie in the north-eastern part of the county, the part immediately threatened from Alençon and Bellême. They occupy nearly the whole of the land between the Cenomannian Orne and the upper course of the Sarthe above Alençon, lying on each side, north and south, of the great forest of Perseigne. The line of the Sarthe from Alençon to Le Mans remained untouched, while Ballon stood as the advanced guard of the capital, and Dangeul was a yet further outpost of Helias, in the very teeth of the invader from Bellême. Perray, alone 217 among the points held by Robert, stands as far south as the lower course of the Orne.

Several of the castles on this list occupied marked sites, and have left considerable traces. Mamers and Blèves were strictly border fortresses, points which Robert had seized just within the Cenomannian border; the others were more advanced points in the heart of the Cenomannian land. Mamers. Mamers, with its streets sloping down to the young Orne, is the only one of the places on our list which is now at all a considerable town. But the only signs of its fortifications which are to be seen are found in the names of its streets, which suggest the former presence of a fort by the river and of a castle on somewhat higher ground. Mamers, due west from Bellême, may well have been Robert’s first conquest, and its occupation may have marked his first advance into the dominions of his neighbour. But he must also, early in his career, have made himself master of Blèves. Blèves. This is a point which has no natural advantages of height, but which, standing in the very north-east corner of Maine, separated from Perche by a small tributary of the Sarthe, is important from its border position and as commanding a bridge. A mound which once stood there has been levelled; a graceful Renaissance house near its site is the present representative of the castle; but parts of the ditches may still be seen; the church, near but not within the enclosure, contains work which may have been looked on by Hildebert and Helias, and ancient masonry still remains at the manorial mill. Blèves lies north of the forest of Perseigne; Allières. at Allières, on its eastern verge, all actual traces of the castle have vanished; but the church again contains some small parts which seem contemporary with our story, and the site of the fortress may well be marked by the modern château on the hill-side commanding a wide view to 218 the south. But more speaking witnesses of this war may be seen at two points lying south of the forest and directly west of Mamers. Saint Remy-du-plain. Saint Remy, distinguished as Saint Remy du Plain from a namesake to the south-east known as Saint Remy du Mont, stands, not indeed in the plain, but on the edge of the high ground. It commands an extensive view, reaching to the point which bounds most of the views in northern Maine, the butte of Chaumont. Saônes. A site of the like kind, but with a less wide prospect, is held by Saônes at a short distance to the south, hard by that unusual feature in these lands, a small lake. Saônes is now a small village, but it was once of importance enough to give its name to the surrounding district of Saosnois or Sonnois. In both these cases the castle-mound rises immediately to the west of the church, the latter at Saint Remy being a late building of more pretension than is usual in the neighbourhood. Each mound has its surrounding ditch, which at Saint Remy is of most striking depth; each has its encircling wall; each has its inner tower, that at Saônes of an irregular four-sided shape, that of Saint Remy octagonal without and round within. Here are two unmistakeable and most striking sites of the fortresses which the invader from Perche rent away from the Cenomannian county. But, with such small remains of walls as are still left, it is hard to say in each case how much may be the work of Robert of Bellême himself. The mounds—​natural hills improved by art—​and their ditches are doubtless far older than his day; the walls must often be far later. Small architectural remains of the eleventh century. There is little architectural detail left to decide such points; we are left to the less certain evidence of masonry. Some of the masonry in the inner building at Saônes certainly has the air of work of the eleventh century. In any case, whatever may be the exact amount of his work among the 219 existing remains, everything bears witness to the impression which Robert’s invasion made on the district and to the reputation which he left behind him. Not far from Saônes, some remains of dykes, of the age or object of which it would be rash to speak with certainty, still keep the name of Robert the Devil.

Nature of the country and of the war. A visit to the scene of this war, a look-out from any of the chief fortified points, brings forcibly home to us the nature of that kind of struggle with which we are dealing. Nothing but an actual sight of Italy and Greece fully brings home to the mind the state of things when each city was a sovereign commonwealth, armed with all the powers of war and peace. Till we take in the fact with our own eyes, we do not thoroughly understand how men felt and acted when they constantly lived with rivals, rivals who might at any moment become enemies, within sight of their own territory. Teaching of the landscapes in Maine. The out-look from any of the Cenomannian heights, the out-look from the home and centre of mischief on the hill of Bellême, brings home to us another state of things with equal force. Had the commune of Le Mans lived on, had other neighbouring cities followed its example, the older Greek, the later Italian, model might have been seen in all its fulness on the soil of northern Gaul. And warfare between Le Mans and Tours, between Le Mans and Alençon, carried on with that mixture of lofty and petty motives which is characteristic of warfare between rival cities, would have been ennobling compared with the state of things which actually was. The castles. For here we see every available point seized on to make what, at least in the hands of Robert of Bellême, was a mere den of robbers.[549] From his own scarped mound at 220 Bellême the destroyer could see far enough into the Cenomannian land to give a keen whet to his appetite for havoc. Within the land which thus lay open to his attack, we see from every height the sites, not of one or two only, but of a whole crowd of strongholds which have passed away. A very few only of these strongholds could ever have been needed for the protection of any town or for the general defence of the country. Their object private war. They were strongholds which had been first raised for the purpose of private war, and which, in the hands of their present master, were turned to the purpose of general oppression. One wonders how, in such a state of things, when almost every village was overshadowed by its robber’s nest, a single husbandman could till his field, or a single merchant carry his wares from town to town. Contrast with England. And we must remember that, unless during the nineteen years of anarchy, this state of things never existed in England. Our forefathers raised their wail over the building of the castles and over the evil deeds which were wrought by those who built them. Comparative rarity of castles in England. But at no time in England, save on the borders which were exposed to the foreign enemies of the kingdom, did castles stand so thick on the ground as they did in the land on which we now look. The eye which has been used to track out the scenes of the Cenomannian war comes back to an English landscape of the same kind, to mark the steep bluff or the isolated mount, which seems designed to be girt with a ditch and crowned with a donjon, and almost to wonder that no ditch or donjon ever was there. And, as we gaze on the land where they crowned every tempting site, we better understand 221 the joy and thankfulness with which men hailed the reign of any prince who put some curb on the pride and power of the knightly disturbers of the peace and gave to smaller men some chance of possessing their own in safety. We can understand how in such a prince this overwhelming merit was held to outweigh not a few vices and crimes in his own person. We can understand how, at the beginning of every period of restored order, a general sweeping away of castles was as it were the symbolic act of its inauguration. State of the Cenomannian castles. And perhaps the thought comes all the more home to the mind, because the Cenomannian castles are, to so great an extent, a memory and not a presence. They are not like those castles by the Rhine which have come to take their place as parts of a picturesque landscape. As a rule, it is not the castles themselves, but the sites where we know that they once stood, which catch the eye as it ranges from Mamers to Sillé, from Ballon to Alençon. But when we see how many spots within that region had been made the sites of these dens of havoc—​when we think how many of them had, in the hands of Robert of Bellême, become dens of havoc more fearful than ever—​we shall better understand how men cherished the names of William the Great and of his youngest son; we shall better understand the work which had now to be done in the Cenomannian land by one nobler than either the son or the father.

Wrong and sacrilege of Robert of Bellême. In the minds of Helias and his contemporaries the occupation of so large a part of their country was yet more keenly embittered by the despite done to holy places and the wrong wrought on men who enjoyed exceptional respect even in the fiercest times. Some of the strongholds of Robert the Devil were planted on lands belonging to the Church, especially to the abbeys of 222 Saint Vincent and La Couture without the walls of Le Mans. The peaceful tenants of these religious houses, accustomed to a milder rule than their neighbours, groaned under the oppressions of their new masters.[550] Stirred up by this wrong and sacrilege, the Count of Maine marched forth to protect his people. Now that the King was gone, he even ventured on something like a pitched battle. Helias defeats Robert at Saônes. He met Robert of Bellême at the head of a superior force near the lake and castle of Saônes, not far, it may be, from the dyke which specially bears the tyrant’s name. The pious Count and his followers, calling on God and Saint Julian, attacked the sacrilegious invaders and put them to flight.[551] Several of the nobles of Normandy were wounded or taken prisoners. Robert of Courcy, a name not new to us,[552] lost his right eye. William of Wacey and several others were taken, and were released on the payment of heavy ransoms.[553] Helias, in short, carried on a defensive warfare in the spirit of a Christian knight. Not so his enemy. Cruelty of Robert. Robert of Bellême carried on a war of aggression in the spirit of a murdering savage. All the worst horrors of war were let loose upon the land. Robert’s treatment of prisoners was not that which the captive Normans met with at the hands of Helias. In the holy season of Lent, when other sinners, we are told, forsook their sins for a while, the son of Mabel only did worse than ever. Three hundred prisoners perished in his dungeons. Large 223 ransoms were offered for their release; but Robert would not forego for money the pleasure of letting them die of cold, hunger, and wretchedness.[554]

April, 1098. The war thus went on till the end of April. On the Wednesday in the last week of that month Helias made an expedition against Robert. Second victory of Helias. April 28, 1098. The exact point of attack is not told us; but doubtless it was some of the fortresses held by the enemy. It was perhaps Perray, the hostile point furthest to the south, perhaps Saônes, the scene of his own former victory over the invaders. The starting-points of the Count’s operations were the two points which he held as outposts of the city against attacks from the north, Ballon and his own immediate dwelling-place at Dangeul. From these castles Helias led forth his forces. The day’s skirmish was successful; the pride of Robert the Devil received another check.[555] But fortune soon turned from the better to the worse cause. Helias taken prisoner near Dangeul. The Count bade the main body of his followers march on to Ballon, while he himself, with seven knights only, was minded to halt at his own castle of Dangeul. As he drew near to the fortress, he saw a few men lurking among the trees and bushes.[556] Trees and bushes are still there in abundance, surrounding the modern house which in a figure represents the castle of Helias. The 224 presence of liers-in-wait so near his own home was threatening. Helias rode against them and scattered them; in so doing he also scattered his own small party. But the few men in the thickets were only the advanced guard of a larger body. The arch-fiend Robert was himself near in ambush. At the lucky moment he sprang forth; his comrades seized the Count, along with his standard-bearer Hervey of the Cenomannian Montfort,[557] and the more part of his small following. The few who escaped made their way to Ballon, to turn the joy of their comrades into sorrow at the news that Count Helias was a prisoner.[558]

Contrast between Robert of Bellême and William Rufus. The noblest man in Gaul was now at the mercy of the vilest. Helias was helpless in the hands of Robert of Bellême. The tale which follows is picturesque in itself, and it is specially valuable as throwing light on the mixed character of the Red King. With all his evil deeds, he was at least not the worst man with whom we have to do. We now see what mere chivalry could do and what it could not do. It could not raise a man 225 to the level of Helias; but it kept him from sinking to the level of Robert of Bellême. Helias surrendered to the King. Helias was far too important a captive to be left to die a lingering death in the dungeons of Robert. He was taken to Rouen, and handed over to the King; and in the King’s hands he at least ran no risk as to life or limb. William Rufus might perhaps not understand a patriot fighting for his city and country. He could perhaps understand a prince fighting for the inheritance of his fathers. He could most fully understand and admire a gallant and honourable knight fighting manfully in any cause, even though his gallantry was directed against himself. William and Helias. In one or other of those characters, Helias extorted a kind of respect from the King who was so bitterly enraged against him. Helias kept at Rouen. The fortune of war had gone against the defender of Maine, but William was not disposed to press his advantage harshly. Helias was kept in the castle of Rouen, a prisoner, but a prisoner whose durance was, by the King’s express order, relieved by honourable treatment.[559]

State of things at Le Mans; the new municipality. One element of the Cenomannian state, and that the highest, was thus lost to it. But at Le Mans the prince 226 was only one element in the state; the ecclesiastical and the civic powers appear alongside of him at every stage. As soon as the Count was in the hands of the enemy, another power, perhaps not the old commune, yet some form of republican or municipal government, at once sprang up. Bishop Hildebert and the Council. Bishop Hildebert appears at the head of a council or assembly of some kind which devised measures daily for the safety of the commonwealth.[560] We must not build too much on the expressions of rhetorical writers who loved to bring in classical allusions; still, considering what Le Mans had been, a momentary burst of the old freedom is no more than we might reasonably look for. If so, the restored commonwealth had, at its first birth, to brave the full might of the younger William, as the former commonwealth had had to brave the full might of the elder. We can only tell the tale as we have it, and we have no means of connecting what was going on in Maine with what was going on at the same time in the Vexin. William’s council at Rouen. Yet one is a little surprised to find William, at this stage of the year, sitting quietly at Rouen, holding a council, and presently sending forth orders for the levying of a great army, as if two wars were not already waging. His speech. In his council of the Norman barons the Red King is made to express himself in a humane and devout strain. Hitherto he had been careless about winning back the heritage of his father; he had been unwilling, for the mere sake of enlarging his dominions, to trouble a peaceful population or to cause the death of human beings.[561] Now however God, who knew his right, had, without any knowledge of his, delivered his 227 enemy into his hands; what should he do further?[562] The writers of these times do indeed allow themselves strange liberties in putting speeches, and sometimes very inappropriate speeches, into the mouths of the actors in their story. But surely to put words like these into the mouth of William Rufus, as something uttered in seriousness, would be going beyond any conceivable licence of this kind. Considering his better authenticated speeches, one is tempted to believe that we have here the memory of some mocking gibe. He, King William, had not laid waste the fields of Maine nor caused men to die of hunger in prison. It was only Robert of Bellême who had done such things. It would be quite in character with Rufus, as with Jehu, to ask, Who slew all these?[563] Nor is such brutal mockery in any way inconsistent with the display of chivalrous generosity whenever any appeal is made personally to himself in his knightly character. A great levy ordered. Anyhow we are told that the barons advised that a summons should go forth bidding the whole force of Normandy to come together for an expedition to win back the land of Maine. They themselves would come, willingly and with all daring, in their own persons.[564]

All this reads strangely in a narrative which, a page or two before, had told us of the warfare around Gisors which, one would think, must have been going on at this very moment. But we read that the messengers went forth, and that the host came together. Not only from 228 Normandy, but from Britanny and Flanders, from Burgundy and France—​not a word as to the treason implied in this last name—​men flocked to the banners of the prince who was so bountiful a paymaster.[565] At some stage of their march, an aged French warrior, a survivor of the wars of King Henry—​one therefore who could remember the ambush of Varaville and the flames of Mortemer, perhaps even the clashing of lances at Val-es-dunes—​Gilo de Soleio by name, beheld the host from the top of a high hill. Numbers of the army. He had seen many and great gatherings of men, but never on this side the Alps—​had he fought then in Apulia or at Dyrrhachion?--had he seen so vast an army. He told the number of the men at fifty thousand.[566] Be the figures trustworthy or not as to this particular army, this is one of several hints which help to show us what passed in those days for an army of unusual numbers.[567]

The army meets at Alençon. June, 1098. The trysting-place of this great host was at Alençon, the border town and fortress of Normandy, where the Sarthe divides the Norman and Cenomannian lands.[568] Once famous as the town whose people had felt so stern a vengeance for their insults to the great William, it was now a stronghold of Normandy against Maine, at all events a stronghold of Robert of Bellême against those who still maintained the cause of the captive Helias. 229 There the army met in June.[569] Rufus, in invading Maine, was repeating an exploit of his father. He entered by the same road, and began by threatening the same fortress. The words of our authorities may lead us to think that he himself tarried at Alençon, while his army, or the bulk of it, marched to Fresnay.[570] The army at Fresnay. Fresnay-le-Vicomte, Fresnay-on-Sarthe, was the first castle in Maine to which the Conqueror had laid siege, and under its walls Robert of Bellême had been girt with the belt of knighthood.[571] At that time Fresnay, along with Beaumont lower down the river, had dared to withstand the invader. Both fortresses stand on heights overlooking the Sarthe; Fresnay, seated on a limestone rock rising sheer from the stream, might seem well able to defy any enemy. The castle and church of Fresnay. Of the ancient part of the castle nothing is left but shattered walls and a stern gateway of a later age. The church, a gem of the art of an age nearly a hundred years later, contains only a small part which can have been standing in the days of Rufus. Beaumont-le-Vicomte. Beaumont is not mentioned in our present story. But its square keep must have already looked down on the Sarthe and its islands, while a mound on each side of the town, one seemingly artificial, one by the river-side only improved by art, may perhaps mark the sites of besieging towers raised by the Conqueror to bring town and castle into subjection.[572] The then lord of Fresnay and Beaumont, 230 the Viscount Hubert, had at a later stage forsaken both his castles on the Sarthe, to defy, and that successfully, the whole might of William the Great from his more inaccessible donjon on the rock of Sainte-Susanne.[573] His successor, the Viscount Ralph, felt no call to run any such risks. The Viscount Ralph asks for a truce. When the army drew near to Fresnay, when no hostilities beyond a little skirmishing had as yet taken place, Ralph went to the King at Alençon and asked for a truce. He pleaded that he was but one member of a body; he could not take on himself the duties of the head of that body; he could not without dishonour be the first man in Maine to yield his castle without fighting. The council of Maine was sitting in the city; he, Ralph, was bound by their resolves; let the King go on to Le Mans and negotiate; as he should find peace or war at Le Mans, he should find peace or war at Fresnay.[574] Rufus grants it. Rufus, always ready to answer any appeal to his personal generosity, praised the proposal of Ralph, and granted him the truce which he asked for.[575] He did the like to others whose lands lay on his line of march. Action of Geoffrey of Mayenne. Among these we hear of Rotrou of the Cenomannian Montfort, and of one whose name has for so many years been sure to meet us the first moment he set 231 foot on Cenomannian soil, the now surely aged Geoffrey of Mayenne.[576]

Estimate of their conduct. The conduct of these lords seems to show lukewarmness, to say the least, in the cause of Cenomannian independence. We are again reminded of the days of the commune, of the unwillingness of the nobles to accept the republican government, of the special treason of Geoffrey himself.[577] We can understand that many of the lords of castles throughout Maine, though they might prefer their own count to the king who came against them, might yet prefer the king to any form of commonwealth. The local historian does not scruple to use strong language on the subject. For we can hardly doubt that Geoffrey, Ralph, Rotrou, and others in the like case, are the persons who are referred to as the faithless men by whose consent Rufus was led to hasten to the city.[578] But the King had another motive to call him thither. Fulk Rechin at Le Mans. By this time there was no longer a commonwealth to be dealt with; Le Mans had again a prince, though no longer her native prince. May 5, 1098. In the very week after Helias was taken prisoner, Fulk of Anjou came to Le Mans, and brought with him his son Geoffrey. He himself came in his character of superior lord,[579] 232 while Geoffrey, to whom Eremburga, the only child of Helias, was betrothed, might pass in some sort for the heir of the county.[580] He is received. The citizens, we are told, received the Angevin count willingly; any master was better than the Norman. Fulk’s son Geoffrey left at Le Mans. Fulk put garrisons in the fortresses of La Mans, with his son in command. He then left the city, seemingly for operations in other parts of Maine.[581]

E. Weller

For the Delegates of the Clarendon Press.

LE MANS

March of Rufus. Against this new enemy William Rufus set out from Alençon. He had to overtake the host which was already at Fresnay. He crossed the Sarthe; he continued his course along its left bank, and stopped for the first time at Rouessée-les-fontaines.[582] This point is no great distance from Alençon, and it is still some way north of Fresnay. The present village of Rouessée contains no signs of any castle or mansion fitted for a king’s reception. Castle of Bourg-le-roi. One suspects that the exact spot meant must be the neighbouring castle of Bourg-le-roi, a castle said to take its name from Rufus himself. Here a ruined round tower, with walls of amazing thickness and girded by a deep ditch, looks down from a small hill on what seems to be the preparation for a large town which has never been built. A small village and church are sheltered within walls of vast compass, pierced by gates of later date than the days of Rufus and Helias. His next stage is distinctly spoken of as an encampment. The King had now joined his army. Rufus at Montbizot That night his camp was pitched at Montbizot, in the 233 peninsula between the Sarthe and the Cenomannian Orne.[583] and Coulaines. On the third day he encamped in the meadows, by the Sarthe, hard by the village of Coulaines.[584] He was still on the left bank of the river, the same bank as the city itself, though the bend which the stream makes immediately under the hill of Le Mans gives the city almost the look of standing on the other side. Wide meadows spread from the village of Coulaines to the foot of the hill; they were now covered by the tents of Rufus. View of Le Mans. Right before the eyes of the army, high on its hill, rose the city which they were come to attack, and it rose so as to bring at once before their leader’s eyes the objects which would specially stir up his wrath. As Le Mans is seen from the meadows of Coulaines, the city and its hill lie almost out of sight to the south-west. The prominent objects are those which stand in the north-east corner of the city and in the adjoining suburb. Highest of all, rising above the city itself, soared the abbey of Saint Vincent without the walls, the house whose tenants had been so cruelly oppressed by Robert of Bellême.[585] Saint Julian’s, on its lower ground, almost closes in the view on the other side. When Rufus drew nigh, the twin towers of Howel rose high in all the freshness of their newly-finished masonry, to remind the King that the chair of the prelate whom his father had appointed was now filled by a successor in whose choice no regard had been paid to his own pleasure. Between the two minsters rose the royal tower, the tower of his father, the fortress which had passed away from him and from his father’s house, held no longer even by a rebellious vassal, as he 234 might deem Helias, but by the invading stranger from Anjou. How deeply one at least of these feelings rankled in the mind of Rufus is shown by his dealings with the immediate neighbourhood of his encampment. The village of Coulaines was an episcopal lordship. Rufus ravages Coulaines. For the churl chivalry taught no mercy; in his wrath against Hildebert, the King burned the church and the whole village, and cruelly laid waste the neighbouring lands.[586]

But however fiercely Rufus might wreak his spite on the unlucky lands and tenants of the bishopric without the walls, the flock of Hildebert within the city was safe for a while. Le Mans was not to pass into the King’s hands just yet, and Ralph of Beaumont and Geoffrey of Mayenne might still keep their bat-like nature for some while longer. Sally from the city. For it is at this stage that the local historian places an exploit of the citizens of Le Mans which reminds us of the way in which our own Godwine was said to have won the special favour of Cnut for himself and his fellow-Englishmen.[587] The men of the city marched forth—​whether under Angevin leadership we are not told—​to attack the King’s camp at Coulaines. Rufus goes away. Rufus, deeming that some treachery was on foot, marched off in the night with his army. In the morning the citizens occupied the camp and found no one there.[588] It is hard to say what we are to make of 235 this story, which has a somewhat mythical sound. But it has at least thus much of truth in it, that Rufus was obliged to break up the siege of Le Mans for a while. Ballon betrayed to Rufus and occupied by Robert of Bellême. The castle of Ballon, of which we have already so often heard, was betrayed to Rufus by its lord Pagan of Mont-Doubleau, and it was held that this strong position, nearly due north of the city, almost put the city itself into the King’s power. Robert of Bellême was put in command at Ballon, with three hundred knights. At his bidding the land was ravaged in every way; the vines were rooted up and the crops were trampled down. But at last the invaders began to feel the effects of the damage they themselves had done. A failure of provisions, especially of oats for the horses, hindered the Red King from keeping on the siege.[589] The siege of Le Mans raised. He went away into Normandy, bidding his men go home and see to their harvests, and come again when the crops were reaped.[590] Nothing is more natural in the case of the native Normans, who would feel in such a case very much as Englishmen felt; but one can hardly believe that William allowed his great mercenary force to be wholly broken up. And again, the question keeps always presenting itself, What was going on in the Vexin? 236 Was there any moment when so eager a warrior, with two wars on his hands at once, left both of them to take care of themselves? Throughout this story the relations between the French and the Cenomannian wars form a never-ceasing puzzle. But we presently come to an incident of the campaign which is the most characteristic in the whole history of William Rufus.

Fulk attacks Ballon. While William was away, Count Fulk, at the head of a mixed host, Angevin and Cenomannian, laid siege to the newly-betrayed castle of Ballon. The attack went on for some days; a message was sent to the King for help. To meet this fresh danger, the nobles of Maine and Anjou pressed in greater numbers to help the Count and his force. Successful sally of the besieged. The defenders of the castle planned a sally. Beggars went out as spies, and brought in news that the besiegers were busy dining at the hour of tierce. The sally was made; the besiegers were surprised in the midst of their meal;[591] a hundred and forty knights and a crowd of foot-soldiers were taken prisoners. The rest took to flight and left a rich spoil of arms, clothes, and furniture as a prey to the Normans. Many of the captives were men of high rank and great possessions. The story almost reads as if Robert of Bellême condemned them to die of hunger; if so, Rufus came before hunger had done its work; cold would no longer be a means of torture. William at Ballon, c. July 20, 1098. It was now not Lent, but the third week in July, when King William with a great force came to Ballon. A cry presently reached him from the prisoners, “Noble King William, set us free.” The chivalrous King, who had 237 no mercy for the peasants of Coulaines, felt his heart stirred towards the captive knights of Anjou. His treatment of the captive knights. He ordered that a meal should be made ready for them along with his own followers, and he set them free on their parole till the meal was ready. Some of his companions suggested to him that, in the crowd and confusion, they might easily escape. Rufus cast aside such a suggestion with scorn. He would never believe that a good knight would break his word; he who should do so would have punishment enough in the scorn of all mankind that would follow him.[592] Illustration of the chivalrous spirit. Here we see the chivalrous character in all its fulness. Justice and mercy go for nothing; the law of God and the law of man go for nothing; the oath of the crowned king, the promise of a prince and a brother, go for nothing; but the class tie of knighthood is sacred; the promise made under its guaranty is sacred. As a good knight, William Rufus is faithful to his own word pledged as such to others; as a good knight, he will not believe that a brother of his order can be other than faithful to his word pledged as such to him.

Fulk goes back to Le Mans. The siege of Ballon was at an end. Fulk, we are told, betook himself to the city, and there stayed in some of the monasteries, waiting to see what would happen.[593] But the defenders of Le Mans, both native and Angevin, had now made up their minds that resistance to the power of Rufus was hopeless; their 238 object was to treat for peace. Negotiations for peace. The captive Helias was allowed a share in the negotiations; he was specially fearful that Fulk might make some agreement by which he himself might be cut off from Maine for ever.[594] Share of Helias. By the King’s leave, Bishop Hildebert and some of the chief men of the city visited Helias, and they agreed on terms which were put into the form of an agreement between Rufus and Fulk. Convention between William and Fulk. August, 1098. It was rather a military convention than a treaty of peace, and it left all the disputed questions unsettled. Nothing was said either as to the general question about the bishopric or as to the particular election of Hildebert. Nor was it at all ruled who was to be looked on as lawful Count of Maine. It was not even agreed that hostilities were to cease. The actual terms are conceived in words which seem to come from Rufus himself. The memory of his father is put prominently forward. Le Mans to be surrendered. Le Mans and all the fortresses which had been held by the late King William were to be surrendered to King William his son. Helias to be set free. Helias and all other prisoners on both sides were to be set free.[595] All sides, we are told, rejoiced at this agreement. To William and his followers it was a great immediate triumph. To the people of Le Mans it was at least immediate deliverance from a wasting struggle. And wary men may have seen that the liberation of Helias was not too dearly bought even by the surrender of his capital. If the valiant Count were set free, free alike from fetters and from promises, he would win back his lost city and dominion before long.

Submission of Le Mans. But for the present all went according to the pleasure of the Red King. Rufus, as his father had twice done, entered Le Mans without bloodshed, amidst at least the outward welcome of its inhabitants. And it may well be that, if Helias was not to be had, they may have 239 looked on William as a more promising master than Fulk. The convention was formally accepted, and it was immediately carried out. The castles occupied by the King’s troops. Robert the son of Hugh of Montfort, that Hugh whom we have already heard of on Senlac and at Dover,[596] was sent at the head of seven hundred chosen knights, full armed in their helmets and coats of mail, to occupy the fortresses of Le Mans.[597] They met with no opposition; the garrisons, native or Angevin, marched out; the Normans took possession. All the strong places of the city—​the ancient palace of the counts on the Roman wall—​the donjon of William the Great, the royal tower, standing so dangerously near to the north wall of Saint Julian’s minster—​the other fortress of the Conqueror, the tower of Mont Barbet on its height, overlooking the city from the side of Saint Vincent’s abbey—​all that the father had either subdued or called into being—​now passed without a blow into the hands of the son. The King’s banner—​what was the ensign wrought upon it?--was hoisted amid shouts of victory on the highest point of the royal tower. King William the Red had achieved the object which in his thoughts came nearest to the nature of a duty. He had brought under his hand all that had ever been under the hand of his father.[598]

240 William’s entry into Le Mans. On the day of the military occupation followed the day of the joyous entry. The Red King entered, doubtless by the northern gate, the gate between Saint Vincent’s abbey and the royal tower. His new subjects welcomed him with shouts and songs, and were received by him to his full peace.[599] His reception by Hildebert. Bishop Hildebert, seemingly now admitted to favour, with his clergy and people, met the King with psalms and processions. They led him by the royal tower, with his own banner floating on its battlements, to the cathedral church, now a vaster and more splendid pile than when the first Conqueror had been led to it with the same pomp.[600] The church of Saint Julian. The twin towers of Howel soared in their freshness; the aisles which we still see, with their abiding Roman masonry, had risen at his bidding; it may well have been by the mighty portal of his rearing that Rufus entered within the hallowed walls. Within, the sight was different in every stone, in every adornment, from that on which we now gaze. The columns and arches of Saint Julian’s nave were still the columns and arches of the basilica which Aldric had raised when Le Mans was a city of the Empire of the pious Lewis.[601] It may be that of those columns we can here and there spell out some faint traces amid the finer masonry and gorgeous foliage of the next age. But of the works to the east, still new when Rufus came, the splendid reconstructions of later times have left us no signs. The choir of Arnold still blazed in all its freshness with the rich decorations which had been added by the skill and bounty of 241 Howel. The first bloom had not passed away from the painted ceiling, from the rich pavement, from the narrow windows glowing with the deep richness of colour which no later age could surpass. Through all these new-born splendours of the holy place the scoffer and blasphemer was solemnly guided to the shrines of Saint Julian and of all the saints of Le Mans. And there were moments when the heart of Rufus was not wholly shut against better thoughts. As at Saint Martin of the Place of Battle, so at Saint Julian in newly-won Le Mans, we may deem that some dash of thankfulness was mingled with his swelling pride, as he felt that he had finished his father’s work.

William leaves Le Mans. The stay of William at Le Mans does not seem to have been long. The government of the city was put into the hands of Count William of Evreux and of Gilbert of Laigle. The royal tower, well provisioned, stocked with arms and with all needful things, was placed under the immediate command of Walter the son of Ansgar of Rouen.[602] General submission of Maine. The nobles of Maine now came in to make their submission and to receive the King’s garrisons into their castles. Among them were Count Geoffrey of Mayenne and the Viscount Ralph of Beaumont. The terms of their engagement were fulfilled. Their castles were to follow the fortune of Le Mans, and Le Mans now was King William’s.[603]

But he who had lately been the lord of them all 242 was waiting for the benefits of the convention to be extended to himself. We are a little surprised when we presently find the King at Rouen, and when we further find that Helias, who had been lately in ward in the castle there, had now to be brought hither from a prison at Bayeux.[604] Meeting of William and Helias. The King and his captive met face to face. The contrast between the outward look of the two men was as striking as the difference in their inward souls. Before the victorious King, short, bulky, ruddy, fierce of countenance, hasty and stammering in speech, stood the captive Count, tall, thin, swarthy, master of eloquent and winning words. Something of bodily neglect marked, perhaps not so much the rigour of his confinement as a captive’s carelessness of wonted niceties. His hair, usually neatly trimmed, was now rough and shaggy.[605] The King seems to have begun the dialogue;[606] “I have you, Sir.” Helias answered with dignity and respect, as a man of fallen fortunes speaking to a superior in rank, and yet not stooping to any unworthy submission. Proposals of Helias. He called on the King, in the name of his might and his renown, to help him. He had once, he said, been a count, lord of a noble county. Fortune had now turned against him, and he had lost all. He asked leave to enter the King’s service, to be allowed to keep his rank and title of count, but pledging himself not to make any claim to the Cenomannian county or city, till by some signal exploit on the King’s behalf he should be deemed worthy to receive them as a grant from the King’s free will. Till then it would be enough for him to have his place in the royal following and to enjoy the royal friendship.

William disposed to accept Helias’ proposal. Such an appeal as this went straight to the better 243 part of William’s nature, and he was at once disposed to agree to the proposal of Helias. But then stepped in the selfish prudence of Robert of Meulan, who measured other men by himself. He is hindered by Robert of Meulan. He was now the King’s chief adviser, and he jealously grudged all influence which might fall to the lot of any one else.[607] The admission of Helias to the King’s friendship and councils would of all things be the least suited for Robert’s purposes. He could not bear that any man, least of all a man of a spirit so much higher than his own, should be so near the throne as Helias threatened to be. The men of Maine, said the Count of Meulan, were a cunning and faithless race. All that the captive Helias sought by his offers was to insinuate himself into the King’s favour, to learn his secrets, that he might be able, when a fitting moment came, to rise up against him with more advantage and join himself to his enemies with greater power. The purpose of Rufus was changed by the malignant counsel of Count Robert. The petition of Helias was refused; it was again made; it was again refused. Defiance of Helias. Then the Count of Maine spoke his defiance. “Willingly, Sir King, would I have served you, if it had been your pleasure; willingly would I have earned favour in your sight. But now, I pray you, blame me not, if I take another course. I cannot bear with patience to see mine inheritance taken from me. All right is denied to me by overwhelming violence; wherefore let no man wonder if I again renew my claim, if I strive with all my might to win back the honour of my fathers.” Rufus was beside himself with wrath at words like these; but it was in words only that his wrath spent itself. He stammered out, “Scoundrel, what 244 can you do? Be off, march, take to flight; Answer of Rufus. I give you leave to do all you can, and, by the face of Lucca, if you ever conquer me, I will not ask you for any grace in return for my favour of to-day.” Even after this outburst, the Count had self-command enough to ask for a safe-conduct, and the King had self-command enough to grant it. Helias set free. Helias was guided safely through the Norman duchy, and made his way, to the delight of his friends, to his own immediate possessions on the borders of Maine and Anjou.[608]

Illustration of the King’s character. Of all the stories of the Red King there is none more characteristic than this. His first impulse is to accept a generous and confiding offer in the spirit in which it was made. For a moment he seems to rise to the level of the man who stood before him. Even when his better impulse is checked by an evil counsellor, he does not sink so low as many would have sunk in the like case. In the wildest wrath of his insulted pride, he does not forget that his word as a good knight is pledged to the man who has defied him. Rufus was bound by all the laws of chivalry to let Helias go this time, whatever he might do if he caught him again. And the laws of chivalry Rufus obeyed in the teeth of temptations of opposite kinds. A meaner tyrant might have sent Helias at once to death or blinding. A calmer or more wary prince, even though not a tyrant, might have argued that it was unsafe for him and his dominions to let the man go free who had uttered such a challenge. He might further have argued that a speech which was so like an open declaration of war at once set aside the conditions of peace. But William Rufus, when once on his point of honour, was not led away from 245 it either by the impulse of vengeance or by the calculations of prudence. His knightly word was pledged that Helias should go free. Free therefore he went, after his defiance had been answered by a counter defiance, each alike emphatically characteristic of the man who uttered it.

§ 3. The End of the French War.
September-December, 1098.

The war of Maine was, or seemed to be, over. And, just at this point we get a chronology clear enough to enable us to fix the connexion of the two works which were going on at once. We have seen William in his Norman capital at a time when we should rather have looked for him on one or other of his Norman frontiers. William on the continent. 1097–1099. But it seems plain that he spent the whole year on the mainland, and that he did not cross to England at any time between the two Christmas feasts which he is specially said to have kept in Normandy. Helias was set free in August, and we are led to believe that Rufus now deemed that the war of Maine was over, or at least that he could afford to despise it in its present stage. Extent of William’s conquests in Maine. We shall presently see that the war of Maine was by no means over, and that William’s Cenomannian conquests hardly reached beyond the capital and the lands north of the capital. He begins, but does not finish. We are inclined to wonder that a warlike prince like Rufus took no further heed to a campaign which was manifestly unfinished, while an active enemy was again at liberty and was still in possession of a strong line of castles. But this is neither the first nor the last time in which we find William the Red much more vigorous in beginning a campaign than in ending it. And in this case he may, with two wars on his 246 hands, have not unreasonably thought that, after so great a conquest as that of the capital of Maine, he could afford to turn his thoughts to the other seat of warfare. In the month after Helias was set free, he made up his mind for a special effort against the stubborn border-land of France.

William sets forth. September 27, 1098. Two days before Michaelmas, William set forth, from what head-quarters we are not told, at the head of a great army. On his way to the seat of war he enjoyed the hospitality of Ralph of Toesny on the hill of Conches. That night there was a sign in the heavens; The sign in the sky. the whole sky blazed and seemed as red as blood. At other times such a portent in the heavens might not have seemed too great to betoken some great victory or defeat on the part of one or other of the contending kings of the West. But, while Christendom was on its march to the eastern land, the heavens could tell of nothing meaner than the ups and downs of the strifes between two continents and two creeds. Its meaning. If the sky was red over Conches and Evreux and the whole western world, it was because at that moment Christians and heathens met in battle in the eastern lands, and by God’s help the Christians had the victory.[609] But William Rufus cared little for signs and wonders, even when he himself was deemed to be the subject of their warning. His heart was not in Palestine, but on the French border; and his present business was a march against the most distant of the three fortresses to which he laid claim. Chaumont and Trie still held out; but their garrisons could not hinder him from carrying a destructive raid into 247 districts far more distant from his head-quarters at Gisors. He marches to Pontoise. He marched to the south-east, burning, plundering, and carrying off prisoners from the whole French territory as far as Pontoise.[610]

The invading King had now reached a point of French soil nearer to Paris than the spot where Count Robert kept the Seine barred at Meulan. At Pontoise, as the name implies, was the bridge spanning the Oise, the tributary which joins its waters with those of the Seine at Conflans—​the Gaulish Confluentes—between Paris and Meulan. Castle and town of Pontoise. Here a precipitous rock rises above the stream, a rock which, strengthened and defended by art in every way, was crowned by the vast circuit of the castle of Pontoise. Here is no town sloping down from the castle to the river. The castle rock rises sheer—​it rose most likely from the water itself, till the Oise, like the Seine at Rouen, was curbed by a quay. In the view from the bridge, the castle, shorn as it is of its towers and of all that can give stateliness to such a building, still lords it over everything. The town of Pontoise seems to crouch by the side of the rock; the great church of Saint Maclou, with its lofty tower of late architecture, is wholly hidden from sight. It is only at some distance beyond the river, in the suburb known as that of Saint Ouen l’Aumône, that we begin to see that the church stands on ground not much lower than the site of the castle. Strong position of the town. We then learn that the town of Pontoise, standing on a height separate from the castle-rock, well walled, and with streets as steep as those of Le Mans or Lincoln, was in itself no contemptible fortress. As usual, there is little or nothing in town or church or castle that we can positively assign to the period of our 248 story. But the main features of the spot must be the same now as they were when the Red King led his plundering host as far as the bridge of the Oise. Pontoise the furthest point of the raid. It is plain that this was the end of his course on this side; it is plain that Pontoise was not added to the list of fortresses which were taken by him or betrayed to him. But we have nothing to explain why he turned back at this point, whether he met with any repulse in an attack on Pontoise or whether he attacked Pontoise at all. We only know that Pontoise marks in one sense the furthest point of the French campaigns of William Rufus. We shall presently find him on another side at a greater distance from his own dominions; but Pontoise marks his nearest approach to the capital of France. Had Pontoise been William’s as well as Meulan, Paris would indeed have been threatened. But this south-eastern journey was clearly, in its effect at least, a mere plundering raid, from which Rufus came back to attempt a more regular attack on the nearer enemy at Chaumont.

Siege of Chaumont. The siege of Chaumont is described to us in greater detail than the march on Pontoise, but we do not, any more than at Pontoise, get a really intelligible account. It is plain that the siege was a considerable enterprise, one to which Rufus led his whole army. It is also plain from the result that its issue must have an important effect on the turn of affairs. But of the siege itself all that we hear is one of those strange stories by which we are sometimes met, stories which must have some meaning, which must be grounded on some fact, and which yet, as they stand, pass all belief. We are told that the defenders of Chaumont were valiant men, strong to defend the battlements of their own castle. But to defend their own castle was all that they could do; their numbers were not enough 249 to enable them either to meet William’s great army in open battle, or even to hinder his plunderers from laying waste the neighbouring lands. But the defence of Chaumont itself was stout, and, as it turned out, successful. The archers of Chaumont shoot the horses only. Yet we are told that the garrison of Chaumont, out of the fear of God and out of tenderness towards men, stood strictly on the defensive, or took the offensive only towards brute beasts. In taking aim at the besiegers, they avoided the persons of the riders, and aimed all their blows at the horses. Seven hundred horses of great price fell under the arrows and darts of the men of Chaumont, and their carcases made a rich feast for the dogs and birds of prey of the Vexin.[611] Chaumont not taken. The virtue of these scrupulous warriors did not go unrewarded. Our story breaks off somewhat suddenly; but we see that at all events Chaumont was not taken.

The war now takes a turn of special interest, which makes us specially regret the very unsatisfactory nature of our materials. The field of our story is suddenly enlarged; but events do not crowd it at all in proportion to its enlargement. Rare notices of southern Gaul. It is but seldom that our tale brings us into any direct dealing with the lands and the princes south of the Loire. We have seen the tongue of oil supplant the Danish tongue in Normandy, and we have seen it appear as a rival to our own speech in our own island. But we have been seldom called on to listen to the accents of the tongue of oc. But at this moment the chief potentate of that tongue suddenly appears on the 250 field of our story, an appearance from which we naturally look for great events. The young lord of the Vexin and heir of France had to meet a new enemy, almost as powerful, and quite as reckless and godless, as the old one. Coming of William of Poitiers. Another William, William of Poitiers and Aquitaine, came to the help of William of Normandy and England.[612] He was in the end to go to the crusade—​to go not exactly in the guise of Godfrey or Helias.[613] But he had not yet set out; and, before he went, he came to strike a blow on behalf of the prince to whom he was said to have sold the reversion of his dominions. Alliance of Normandy and Aquitaine. The mighty dukes of the North and the South might seem to have utterly hemmed in the smaller realm of the king whose men they were or should have been.[614] The final results of their alliance were not memorable, but the coming of the southern duke had the immediate effect of carrying the war into districts little used to the presence of English or even of Norman warriors.

Campaign to the west of Paris. It can hardly fail to have been the march of William of Aquitaine which led to a campaign carried on in the lands west and south-west of Paris, within the triangle which may be drawn between the three points of Mantes, Paris, and Chartres. One side of this triangle is formed by the Seine itself, and here the adhesion of the Count of Meulan must have effectually guarded the seat of war from the north. Somewhat to the west of Meulan, between that fortress and Mantes, the small 251 stream of the Maudre empties itself into the Seine. Valley of the Maudre. The course of this stream and the valley through which it flows formed the chief seat of warfare at this stage, seemingly after the attacks on Chaumont had proved fruitless. Small as the Maudre is, its course makes a clearly marked valley, running nearly north and south. Maule. About the middle of it lies Maule, the fortress of Peter of Maule, the benefactor of the house of Saint Evroul, and therefore high in favour with its historian. Further to the south, where the stream is a mere brook, the valley widens into a plain between hills, and here some of the strongest points are occupied by the strongholds of the French house of Montfort, numbering among them the spot which gave that house its ever-memorable name. Montfort-l’Amaury. Here rose the hill which above all others glories in the name of the Strong Mount, the home of the Simons and the Amalrics. Under the name of Montfort-l’Amaury it still keeps the less illustrious of the two names, one or other of which was always borne by its successive counts. Neauphlé-le-Château. To the north-east of the cradle of their race, on the other side of the Maudre, the Counts of Montfort had planted another stronghold on a height, which, though all traces of a fortress have passed away, still keeps the name of Neauphlé-le-Château, as distinguished from another place of the same name, Neauphlé-le-Vieux. Epernon. Much further to the south-west, on the upper course of the Drouelle, a tributary of the Eure, stood Epernon, another fortress of the house of Montfort, a border fortress of the strictly French territory towards the lands of the Counts of Chartres. The two Williams march against the Montfort castles. On this district now fell the heavy wrath of the two Williams, who led a mighty multitude against Montfort and Epernon and laid waste the whole surrounding land. They had traitors in their service; they came under the guidance of Almaric the Young and 252 of Nivard of Septeuil.[615] This last place lies in the valley of the Vaucouleurs, a stream running almost parallel with the Maudre and joining the Seine at Mantes. Such a position, lying nearly due west from Maule, and at a greater distance north-east from Montfort, marks a dangerous outpost thrown out from the Norman side into the heart of the French territory. Seat of war affected by the coming of William of Poitiers. Of the line of march of the Poitevin duke we have no account; but it must have been his coming which caused the seat of war to be changed from the north-west of the threatened capital of France to the south-west, a region so much better suited for an invader from the south.

No special mention of Lewis. It is somewhat singular that, while we have so striking a general picture of the courage and conduct of the young Lewis during this struggle, we hear nothing of any particular exploit of his, we hear nothing of any help given by him to any of the threatened fortresses. It is their own lords, each for himself, who withstand, and successfully withstand, the attacks of the powers of North and South. Our chief informant—​English, Norman, and French, all at once—​enlarges on the failure of Philip to give any help to his vassals; but we should never learn from him that his place was supplied by his son.[616] The castles resist singly. Every man, it would seem, fought for his own hand. We are told this of a crowd of unnamed lords defending unnamed fortresses. Peter of Maule. But we are not left to guess at the name of the friend of Saint Evroul, Peter of Maule, who, with his sons Ansold and Theobald, successfully 253 defended his fortress in the valley of the Maudre.[617] We must suppose that the forces of the two Williams were scattered and frittered away in a series of desultory attacks against strongholds scattered all over the country. The two Simons of Montfort. But to us at least the main interest of the campaign gathers round the dwellings of the house of Montfort. We should be well pleased to have even such details of a warfare which affected them as we have had of the sieges of Chaumont and as we shall presently have of the siege of Mayet. But we hear only of the result, how the arms of the two Simons, elder and younger, The elder Simon defends Neauphlé. defended all the possessions which looked up to the Strong Mount as their head. The elder guarded the height of Neauphlé, where a curve in the hills, theatre-shape, awakens some faint remembrance of the kingly mount of Laon.[618] The castle of Montfort. But the Mons fortis itself, the hill from whence, in after times, Simon the father went to work the bondage of Toulouse and Simon the son to work the freedom of England, must have been among the strongholds which were saved by the energy of the younger bearer of the name which was to be so fearfully and so gloriously renowned. High on its peninsular hill, still keeping some small traces of elder towers along with one graceful fragment of far later days, the castle of Montfort looks down over church and town, over hills and plains, bidding defiance to foes on every side, but bidding the most direct defiance of all to any 254 foe who should advance by the path which must have been trodden by the Aquitanian duke. For of all the outlooks from the height of Montfort the widest and the most striking is that by which the eye looks out towards those southern lands which came so near to forming a South-Gaulish realm for its own lords. The church. The church stands beneath on a lower point of the steep. The works of later times, which have filled its windows with the painted forms of the basest of the later Valois, have spared one side of the more ancient central tower, preserving to us forms which were looked on, not indeed by the Simons of our own immediate story, but by the Simon of Muret and the Simon of Evesham. A gate at the base of the castle mound, though the actual building must be of later date, still keeps the name of that Hugh Bardolf, himself joined by a tie of affinity to the house of Montfort, of whom we have heard elsewhere as one of the most abiding of the enemies of Normandy.[619] Defence of the younger Simon. Here, while the father defended Neauphlé, the son defended the cradle of their race, and their other outlying possessions. Not a detail is given us; but our historian emphatically tells us that it was by the help of God that the lords of Montfort kept their fortresses safe from the twofold enemy.[620] Interest of the defence. And, though a King of the English marched against them, though doubtless there was no lack of native English warriors in his train, yet we may join in the pious thankfulness of our guide at Saint Evroul. It was not good for English interests in any wide or lasting sense that the sovereign of England should even hold his ancestral Normandy, much less that he should inherit Aquitaine and conquer France. When the lords of Montfort in the eleventh century beat back from their strongholds all the efforts of England and Normandy, of Poitiers and 255 Aquitaine, they were in truth working in the same cause as their glorious descendant in the thirteenth. Unknowingly and indirectly, they were, no less than he, fighting for the freedom and the greatness of what in their eyes seemed hostile England.

The war lingers on. Christmas, 1098. The war seems to have lingered on through another winter, the second of those when King William kept his Christmas feast in Normandy. But no successes are recorded either of William of England or of William of Aquitaine. No successes of the two Williams. The Red King had really done nothing, either alone or in company with his Poitevin ally. The gallant resistance of the men of the French borderland had beaten him back at every point. He was now glad to conclude a truce, A truce agreed to. which the events which followed made practically a peace.[621]

Survey of the French war. Its ill-success. It is not at first easy to understand why so very little came of such great preparations as those which William Rufus made for the French war. The strength of two great states, during the later stages of the war the strength of three great states, was broken by efforts which, even allowing as much as we can for the energy of young Lewis, were mainly those of the nobles and people of a single district. England, Normandy, and Aquitaine, were baffled by the men of the French Vexin. It is true indeed that the war of Maine was far from being really ended, but Rufus seems at this stage to have thought little of the efforts of the man whom he had bidden to do his worst against him. Nor was there anything this year in England, as there was the year before, to draw off the King’s attention from continental affairs. Scotland was quiet under a king of his own naming; Magnus did not really threaten England; the Welsh border 256 might be left to Robert of Bellême or those whom he had left in charge. All that we can do is to record this singular break-down of a great force, without being able fully to explain it. One remark may be made. Illustration of William’s character. Men of the temper of Rufus often get simply weary of undertakings which bring little success, and in which there is nothing to call forth any special point of personal vengeance or personal honour. Rufus claimed the Vexin; but his heart does not seem to have been set on its possession, as it clearly was set on the possession of Le Mans. There was no one on the French border who had stung him personally to the quick as Helias had done. The want of success in the joint undertaking of the two Williams is certainly hard to understand; but we can quite understand how William of England and Normandy might, in sheer disgust, throw up an undertaking in which he did not at once succeed. When he was once more wounded in the most sensitive part, he was, as we shall presently see, all himself again.

§ 4. The Gemót of 1099.

William, master of Le Mans, but hardly to be called master of Maine, and assuredly not master of the Vexin, stayed in Normandy during the winter which followed the double war in those regions. The time of his absence is spoken of as a time of special oppression in England, a time when the exactions of Flambard and his fellows grew worse and worse, on account of the great sums which had to be sent over the sea for the King’s wars.[622] William keeps Christmas in Normandy. 1098–1099. The Christmas feast was again kept in 257 Normandy, in what city or castle we are not told, but such incidental notices as we have seem to point to Rouen as his usual head-quarters when he was in the duchy. He came back to England in time for the Easter feast; the feast implies the assembly; Easter Gemót. April 10, 1099. but we have no account of its doings; there was no longer in England either an Anselm to afford subjects for discussion or an Eadmer to report the debates. Whitsun Gemót in the new hall at Westminster. May 10, 1099. The next festival was of greater importance, if only on account of the place where it was held, a place ever-memorable in the history of England from that day to this. “At Pentecost the King William held his court for the first time in the new building at Westminster.”[623]

Buildings of William Rufus. The architectural works of William Rufus form a marked feature in his reign; but the place which they hold in the national annals is singular. They are set down among the grievances of that unhappy time. They are reckoned among national grievances. Besides the bad weather, which was not the Red King’s 258 fault, and the bad harvests which were deemed to be in some measure his fault, there were the unrighteous taxes and the other forms of unlaw which were directly his fault; Various grievances. lastly there were the great buildings which are set down as not the least among his ways of oppressing the people. Complaints in 1096, We have heard some of the wails which the Chronicler sends up year by year. The year of the purchase of Normandy was a year when the land was pressed down by manifold gelds and by a heavy time of hunger.[624] in 1097. The next year, the year of Anselm’s going, was a year of signs in the heavens, and of ungelds and unweather below.[625] Signs and wonders in 1098. The next year, the year of Maine, the year of the Vexin, the year of Anglesey, had also its physical wonders. In the summer a pool at Finchampstead in Berkshire was said to have welled up blood.[626] At Michaelmas the heaven seemed well-nigh all night as if it were burning.[627] Bad weather of 1098. That was a very grievous year, through manifold ungeld and through mickle rains that all the year never stopped; and—​what came home to those who could look back to the bright days of the Golden Borough—​well-nigh all tilth in the marsh-land died out.[628] The great buildings in London. 1097. Such are the mournful voices to which we listen year by year; but in the central year of the three another grievance is added. “Eke many shires that with work to London belonged were sorely harassed 259 through the wall that they wrought around the Tower, and through the bridge that well nigh all flooded away was, and through the King’s hall-work that man in Westminster wrought, and many men therewith harassed.”[629]

This was the light in which three great works of building on which Englishmen of later days learned to look with national pride were looked on by the men of the time when they were wrought. We hear the cry of the Hebrew in the brick-field toiling to rear up the treasure-cities of the Pharaohs. Earlier parallels. We hear the cry of the Roman plebeian, as the proud Tarquin constrained him to give the sweat of his brow to fence in the seven hills with walls or to burrow beneath the ground to lay the foundations and turn the arches of the great sewer.[630] So it was in the days of the Red King with the Tower of London, the bridge of London, the hall of Westminster. Abuse of the old law. We may believe that, as so often happened, the old law of England was turned to purposes of oppression. The repair of bridges and fortresses was the universal 260 burthen on the Englishman’s eðel, the duty which he owed, not to a personal lord, but to the commonwealth of which he was a member.[631] In one case at least we know that the defences of the local capital were laid by local law upon the people of the whole shire.[632] What was law at Chester would seem from the words of the Chronicler to have been law in London also. There were certain “shires that with work to London belonged.” William Rufus may therefore have been quite within the letter of the ancient law in calling on the people of certain shires to contribute in money or labour to any works which were needed for either the Tower or the bridge of London. But it is clear that this is the kind of law which opens the way to a great amount of oppression in detail, and that the law itself supplies temptations to extort more than the law gives. The bridge and the Tower. The bridge at least was an useful work, and if the men of London thought that the Tower stood by their walls rather to overawe them than to defend them, that was an argument which could not be openly brought forward. Question as to the hall. But it is by no means clear whether the ancient law about bridges and fortresses could be stretched so as to take in works at the King’s palace. Anyhow the burthen laid on the people was frightfully oppressive, and those who felt the burthen bitterly complained. And, if we rightly understand the Chronicler, the grievance of building the bridge was doubled by a flood which swept away the unfinished work, and made it needful to build it over again.[633]

Thus, amid the toils and groans of the people, three mighty works arose, to hand down the name of William Rufus to after ages as a great builder. While Rufus 261 was harrying the land of Maine, a land which but for him might have remained peaceful and happy under a righteous ruler, while he was striving in vain to bring the heights of Chaumont and Montfort under his power, the people of a large part of England were giving their strength and their money to make London put on a new face, to make all things ready for the time when the King should again come to his island kingdom to wear his crown in or hard by its greatest city. Growth of the greatness of London. All these works point, among other things, to the steady growth of the greatness of London. The city had grown fast in importance during the whole century which was now drawing to an end, and at no time faster than during Harold’s nine months of little stillness.[634] Relations of London and Winchester. London had become the city of the King; Winchester was left to be the city of the Old Lady.[635] The attractions of the New Forest drew the Conqueror, specially after the death of Eadgyth, back again to the old West-Saxon capital; but this preference of Winchester as the head-quarters of sport in no way checked the advance of London as the real head of the kingdom. Harsh as may have been the means by which the Red King raised his great buildings, richly as he and they may have earned the curses of his subjects at the time, we can say nothing against either the taste or the policy which led him to the defence and the adornment of the great city and of the palace which lay under its shadow.

The wall round the Tower. Notwithstanding any momentary checks, the works went on and prospered. The great tower of Gundulf—​strange work for the meek follower of Anselm—​was fenced in with a surrounding wall. London Bridge. The river was spanned by its first stone bridge, that long range of 262 narrow arches, itself a thickly-peopled city over the stream, of which the last traces vanished in our own early days. Westminster Hall. But above all there now arose that famous hall of Westminster whose name has come to be another name for the law of England. Strange founder for such a pile might seem the prince whose reign was before all others the reign of unlaw. Its two founders. And yet it was not wholly unfitting that the Prytaneion of England should first arise at the bidding of William the Red, and should take a new form at the bidding of a later king in whose days unlaw was again mighty. Its architecture. The great hall arose at the bidding of Rufus, in the stern and solemn form of the art of his day—​the day, be it remembered, of William of Saint-Calais and the choir of Durham—​with its low massive walls, its two ranges of pillars and arches, far removed, we may be sure, from the graceful forms which had been at Spalato and which were to be again at Oakham, but standing firm in their strength, bearing the full impress of the style whose leading feature is that of simple, changeless, abiding, rest.[636] Recasting by Richard the Second. At the bidding of Richard of Bourdeaux the walls were cased, and pierced with windows of forms unknown in the days of the Red King; his pillars and arches were swept away; the central space and its aisles were thrown into a single body; the timber roof of wondrous span and wondrous workmanship leaped boldly from wall to wall, with a daring which might have pleased the swelling pride of Rufus himself. Thus, at the word of two despotic kings, arose the pile which may claim, no less than its neighbours, Saint Peter’s chapter-house and Saint Stephen’s chapel, to be the chosen home of English freedom. For in England law has ever grown out of unlaw. The despotism of Normans and of Tudors only paved the way for the outbursts of freedom in 263 the thirteenth century and in the seventeenth; a reforming Henry dogged the steps alike of Rufus and of Richard. Legal position of the reign of Rufus. And if from one side the reign of Rufus was a reign of unlaw, from another side it was a reign of overmuch law. It saw the beginning of those legal subtleties, that web woven by the wicked skill of Flambard, which makes the Red King’s day a marked epoch in legal history. His reign bridges the space between the days when we had laws but when we had no lawyers, and the days when lawyers had grown so many and so subtle that the true ends of law were sometimes forgotten among them. History of the hall. If from one side the hall of Westminster has been one of the cradles of English freedom, from another side it has been the special home of that form of unlaw by which men have been sent to a wrongful doom under the outward forms of justice. Of all that is good and bad in the history of the law of England the hall of Rufus is the material embodying. Within no other building reared by the hand of man has so great a share of English history been wrought.

Object of the hall. But it was not directly as the dwelling-place either of law or of its opposite that Rufus first reared his hall. It was built rather as a trophy of his own swelling pride. Personal pride of Rufus. The home of the Confessor, the home of the Conqueror, was not stately enough for the Red King. He would be lodged, at least in that special home of kingship, as better became the idea which he had formed of his own greatness. It was the hall of the king, rather than the hall of the kingdom, the centre and crown of his own house, the place for the display of his own splendour, which Rufus sought to call into being. Legends of the hall. When the work was done, other men deemed that it was as great, perhaps greater, than even so great a king could need. But its founder was not satisfied. Nero, when he had finished his Golden House, allowed that he was at last 264 lodged like a man. Rufus, when he had outdone the works of all that had gone before him, hardly deemed that he was lodged like a man in his palace of Westminster. Alleged sayings of Rufus. The new hall, when it was done, was not half so great as he had meant it to be.[637] Some add a wilder saying, that he would build a house on such a scale that the great hall should be but one of its bed-chambers.[638] But the hall, such as it was, vast in the eyes of other men, small in the eyes of its master, was ready for use by the day of the Pentecostal feast. The Whitsun feast. Then the assembly came together; then the accustomed rites were gone through in the West Minster; then the banquet and the council were held, as was wont, under its shadow, in the accustomed place, but within new walls and under a new roof. Within those walls, beneath that roof, men for the first time saw King William of England, lord, as he deemed, of Scotland, Normandy, and Maine, in all his own greatness and glory, in all the greatness and glory of his new work. One feature in that great gathering might indeed have helped to swell his heart even higher than it had ever before been swollen. The crown was, as usual, placed on his head in the minster and worn in the hall. And on that day at least he must have felt that the crown which was placed on his head was in truth an imperial diadem. William the Red was not indeed rowed on the Thames by vassal kings, like Eadgar the Giver-of-peace. But in the pomps of that 265 day he saw a king march before him as his vassal, a king who had received his crown at his own bidding. The sword borne by the King of Scots. When King William of England wore his cynehelm in church and hall, King Eadgar of Scotland, first of his men in rank and honour, bore the sword of state before his lord.[639] Was that day of pride and pomp merely a day of pride and pomp, or were any of the great affairs of William’s kingdom and empire dealt with in the joint presence of the Monarch of Britain and his kingly vassal? One thing only we know; one act alone of that gathering is recorded. But that act is one which has no small fitness as the one act which we know that the Red King did in his new building.

Deaths of bishops and abbots. The hands of Randolf Flambard must have been just then full of work, and the coffers of King William must have been just then well filled with wealth flowing in from the usual sources. Bishops and abbots had for some time been dying most conveniently for the King and his minister. Walkelin of Winchester. January 3, 1098. Within the first few days of the year of Le Mans and Chaumont died the friend, some said the kinsman, of the Conqueror, the Norman Walkelin, the successor of English Stigand in the see of Winchester.[640] Character and acts of Walkelin. Though he had 266 appeared as an adversary of Anselm,[641] though he had once designed to supplant the monks of the Old Minster by secular canons,[642] though he was said to have lessened the revenues of the monks to increase those of the bishopric,[643] he still left behind him a good name in the monastic annals of his church, both for the austerity of his own life and for the affection which he afterwards learned to show to the brethren.[644] Winchester tradition loved to tell of the pious fraud by which he had cajoled the Conqueror out of the whole timber of a great wood towards the rebuilding of his church.[645] The monks take possession of Walkelin’s church. April 8, 1093. It told how, in the year of the King’s temporary penitence, the monks had, in the presence of well-nigh all the prelacy of England, taken possession of the church of Walkelin’s building, and how they had presently gone on to rase to the ground the church of Æthelwald which had been deemed so stately a pile not much more than a hundred years before.[646] Walkelin joint-regent with Flambard. 1097. It told how, when the King set forth for the French war, the Bishop of Winchester was left as joint-ruler of the realm with the mighty chaplain and Justiciar.[647] 267 And it told the last tale, how, when he had barely entered on his new office, on the very Christmas morning, while the holiest rite of Christian worship was going on, The King’s demand for money. Christmas, 1097–1098. the King’s messenger came to demand two hundred pounds without delay. The Bishop, like Anselm, knew that he could raise no such sum without robbery of the Church and oppression of the poor. He prayed that he might be set free from a world of which he was weary. Two days later his prayer was answered; while the Red King warred at Chaumont and Mayet, Randolf Flambard remained sole ruler of England.[648]

On the death of Bishop Walkelin presently followed the deaths of two other heads of great monastic bodies. Death of Turold of Peterborough, and of Robert of New Minster. One was Turold, the martial abbot of Peterborough, of whom we heard in the days of Hereward;[649] the other was Robert of New Minster, he whose staff had been bought for him by his too dutiful son the Bishop of Norwich.[650] And, a few days before the death of Walkelin, another great abbot passed away who was, in a way in which none of those three was, a link with earlier days. Death of Baldwin of Saint Eadmund’s. December 29, 1097. Abbot Baldwin of Saint Eadmund’s, the skilful leech of King Eadward, if not himself of English birth, had at least received his staff from an English King. His house had been growing in wealth and fame ever since the penitent devotion of Cnut had changed the secular canons of Beadricsworth into the monks of Saint Eadmund’s. We have already heard of Baldwin’s medical skill and of his strivings for the privileges 268 of his church against the East-Anglian bishopric.[651] Acts of Baldwin. Rebuilding of the Church. He won fame also, like other abbots of his day, as the rebuilder of his church, the church which, besides his royal patron, sheltered the relics of the holy abbot Botolf and the valiant ætheling Jurwine.[652] The latest research has added largely to our knowledge of Baldwin and his house, and has brought to light several details which illustrate the reign of the Red King and the characters of some of the chief actors in it. Miracles of Saint Eadmund. Saint Eadmund had long ago begun to work signs and wonders. In King Eadward’s day he had avenged himself on our old friend Osgod Clapa, Osgod Clapa. reverenced at Waltham but not reverenced at Saint Eadmund’s, because he had thrust himself into the holy place with his Danish axe in warlike guise on his shoulder.[653] Bishop Herfast. In the days of the elder William, when the dispute was going on between the abbey and the bishopric, the saint had directly interfered to bring Bishop Herfast to a better mind by a bodily chastisement.[654] He had even appeared, as he had 269 done to the tyrant Swegen,[655] mounted and lance in hand, to smite, and in smiting to reform, a courtier of the Conqueror’s, Randolf by name.[656] But we are more concerned with stories which directly bear on our own history. Robert of Curzon. When Roger Bigod did so much evil in eastern England in the days of the general rebellion, Saint Eadmund did not fail to defend his own lands, and to smite with madness a certain Robert of Curzon to whom the rebel had presumed to grant a manor belonging to the abbey.[657] Completion of the Church. 1094. The King forbids the dedication. We read too how, when the new church was finished, King William, seemingly in the assembly at Hastings, by what caprice is not explained, gave permission for the translation of the martyr, but forbade the dedication of the church.[658] Meanwhile, a rumour, of which we have heard the like more than once, is spread abroad that the body of Saint Eadmund is not really there, and that the 270 precious things which adorned the empty shrine might well be applied to the objects of the King’s warfare. Translation of Saint Eadmund. April 30, 1095. The danger passed away, and, notwithstanding some opposition from Bishop Herbert, a solemn translation, in the presence of Bishop Walkelin of Winchester and of Randolf the chaplain, removed all doubts.[659] Abbot Baldwin survived this triumph two years and a half. His career had been a long and a busy one. In the course of his warfare with the East-Anglian bishops, he had found it needful to visit Rome, and he too, like others, found how great was the strength of gold and silver at the threshold of the Apostles.[660] Baldwin’s relation to the English. He had gone on that journey with English companions, and when he died, during the Christmas feast which followed the departure of Anselm, he was mourned by men of both races.[661]

We cannot, as these stories alone show, go very far in the reign of Rufus without coming across the name of Randolf Flambard, chaplain and Justiciar. We are now about to hear of him in a new character. The churches of the prelates who so opportunely died, remained unfilled; their temporalities passed into the King’s hands; their revenues were to be gathered in, their tenants were to be squeezed as might be needful, by the zealous care of the faithful Randolf. Vacancy of Durham. But one church, of higher dignity than all these, which had stood vacant longer than 271 all these, was at last to have a shepherd. The careful guardian of them all was at last to have his reward. The reward was a great one, but in the course of his long service he had doubtless gathered enough into his private hoard to pay the price even for such a gift. The bishopric granted to Flambard. The hall was built; the Witan were assembled in it; and, as the one recorded act of the assembly, the King gave the bishopric of Durham to Randolf his chaplain, that ere drave all his gemóts over all England.[662] In the new hall of Westminster, the hall of justice, often the hall of injustice, the man who had wrought so much of real injustice, but who had raised the name of justice, in its official meaning, to the high place which it has ever after kept—​the Justiciar Randolf Flambard, the founder of the greatness of his office, the creator of the feudal law of England—​received one of the greatest of the prizes to which men of his class could look forward. The driver of gemóts, the exactor of the moneys of rich and poor, became, not only lord of strong castles and of barons and knights not a few, but also shepherd of souls in a great diocese, abbot of monks in a monastery too young as yet to have wholly lost its first love. Consecration of Flambard. June 5, 1099. The new successor of Saint Cuthberht, Randolf Bishop of Durham, was presently consecrated in Saint Paul’s minster by his metropolitan Archbishop Thomas. But the local patriotism of Durham takes care to put on record that, as his predecessor William of Saint-Calais had made no profession, so neither did he.[663]

Character of the appointment. The appointment of Randolf Flambard to a great 272 bishopric, as it is the last recorded kingly act of Rufus in England, was the crowning act of that abuse of the royal power in ecclesiastical matters, that bringing low of the Church and her ministers, which is so marked a feature of his reign.[664] To place the bishop’s staff in the hands of Randolf Flambard was going a step further than to place it in the hands of Robert Bloet. Flambard’s episcopate. 1099–1128. His works at Durham. Yet Flambard showed himself in some ways, in all temporal ways, as a great prelate. A mighty builder, he joined his efforts with those of his monks to carry on Saint Cuthberht’s abbey on a plan as noble as that on which William of Saint-Calais had begun it, and with greater richness of detail.[665] He strengthened the fortifications of his castle and city; he laid out the green between the castle and the abbey. The castle of Norham. 1121. At the extreme border of what was now the English kingdom, not on the extreme border of his own diocese, he founded the famous castle of Norham. It was built, we are told, as a defence alike against border thieves and against attacks of invading Scots.[666] But this last 273 motive was hardly needed in the days of Eadgar, Alexander, and David. Every temporal right of his church he defended to the uttermost.[667] His personal character. Still eager to be first, pretending with voice and gesture more of wrath than he really felt, we see in the mighty Bishop of Durham essentially the same man as the royal officer who made sad the enthronization day of Anselm.[668] As to his life and conversation strange tales are told. The Bishop is said to have wantonly exposed his monks to temptations most contrary to monastic rule, to have entertained them in the episcopal hall along with guests most unbecoming for an episcopal castle, and to have marked as hypocrites all who refused to join in his unseemly revelries.[669] But the mass of Flambard’s doings as bishop, good or bad, belong to the reign of Henry, to his own second episcopate. 1106?-1128. Our own story will show him, after a short occupation of his see, an exile, an exile after the type of William of Saint-Calais rather than after the type of Anselm. From that exile he came back, as his predecessor 274 came back, to go on with his great work, to rule, with unabated strength of mind and body, to extreme old age, and to die with every sign of penitence.[670]

The appointment of Flambard is the last recorded act of the Red King on English ground. We take leave of him, as far as the affairs of our own country are concerned, in the new hall of Westminster, placing the bishop’s staff in a hand which doubtless grasped it more readily than the hand of Anselm. Later events of the year. 1099. But we have still to see somewhat of him in two other characters, in either of which he was more at home than in that of the civil ruler. We have to look at him as the hunter and as the warrior. From the great ceremony at Westminster he seems to have straightway taken himself to enjoy the sports of the woods in Wiltshire. The prince who ruled on both sides of the channel had come back to his island realm to busy himself both with English affairs and with English pleasures. While thus engaged, his thoughts were once more suddenly called to matters beyond the sea.

§ 5. The Second War of Maine.
April-September 1099.

In the August of the last year William had given Helias of Maine his full leave to do what he could against him, reserving doubtless to himself the like power to do what he could against Helias. Action of Helias. August, 1098-April 1099. In the months which had since passed the Count of Maine had shown that he could do a good deal; but it seemingly was not till he had shown the full range of his powers of doing that the King felt himself called on once more 275 to try his own powers against him. William did not stir himself till the news came that Helias was again in Le Mans, and then he stirred himself indeed. August, 1098. Helias, when he was set free in August, went at once to his own immediate possessions on the border of Maine and Anjou. Helias withdraws to La Flèche. If he was no longer Count of Maine, he was still lord of La Flèche. If he could no longer reign on the Cenomannian height, in the palace on the Roman wall or in the tower before whose rising strength the Roman wall itself had given way, he could at least keep his own native town and castle. He strengthens the castles on the Loir. At La Flèche, and in the whole southern part of the county, Helias still reigned, undisputed and unthreatened. He was still lord of the whole line of fortresses which guarded the course of the Loir, the tributary of the greater stream with which its name is so easily confounded. The castles along that river, reared doubtless to guard the Cenomannian border against attacks from the south, served, now that things had so strangely turned about, to protect the southern districts of Maine against attacks from its own capital. In front of the land to be guarded stood the castles of Mayet and Outillé. Along the Loir itself stood a formidable line of defences; La Chartre guarded one end, La Flèche the other; between them lay La Lude and the fortress which is still specially known as the Castle of the Loir. La Chartre. The stream flows below the hill-fort of La Chartre, once held by Geoffrey of Mayenne,[671] but the name of this castle is not mentioned in our present story. The omission is singular, as La Chartre must always have been a post of special importance, guarding Maine towards the land of Chartres as well as towards the now Angevin land of Tours. It rises, like Bellême and Saint Cenery, on the bluff of a promontory where two mounds with their fosses mark the site of the 276 fortress, and where the rocky sides of the hill are pierced, like the hill of Nottingham, like so many hills along the greater Loire, with the dwelling-places of man. La Flèche. Much lower down the Loir is Helias’ own special home of La Flèche, where all traces of his day have vanished, but where the castle of John and Paula must have stood, on a site most unlike that of La Chartre, on one of the rich and grassy islands which are there formed by the branching of the stream. Château-du-Loir. Château-du-Loir lies between the two, and the river from which it takes its name is a far less prominent feature there than at either La Flèche or La Chartre. The fortress which is specially called the Castle of the Loir stands at a greater distance from its waters than either of the other two. But of the stronghold itself it has more to show than either. The castle stands half-hidden in the midst of the small modern town, and the approaches to it have been carefully defaced and levelled. But the stump of a tower of irregular shape still remains, which may well be a fragment of the stronghold of Helias; the neighbouring church too still keeps under its choir a crypt which must be far older than his day. Still in possession of a considerable part of his dominions, master of a district so strongly guarded, the undisputed lord of La Flèche began to make everything ready for a campaign which might make him once more Count of Le Mans. Preparations of Helias. August 1098-April 1099. From August till April, Helias kept within his own lands—​like a bull in the hiding-places of the woods, says the local writer[672]—​strengthening his own fortresses and making alliances wherever he could. April 10, 1099. The whole line of castles, together with the fortified villages in the neighbourhood, had by Easter-tide been made ready for defence against the attacks of any enemy.[673]

277 Helias now deemed that the time was come for offensive operations against the invaders of Maine. Helias begins operations. He began to attack the posts which were occupied by the King’s forces, and to lay waste the lands in their possession. In this work he was secretly favoured by the people of the country,[674] and before long a large body of his friends and neighbours had openly joined his banner. He marches against Le Mans. June, 1099. In June he set forth at the head of a great force for an enterprise against the city itself.[675] We should like to know what, in such a case, was deemed a great force; but we may suspect that the following of Helias would largely consist of irregular levies, not well fitted, unless with the advantage of very superior numbers, to measure themselves with the picked and tried mercenaries of Rufus. The army marched northwards towards Le Mans. Junction of Sarthe and Huisne. A little to the south-west of the city the Sarthe is joined by the Huisne, the stream which, with its tributaries, waters the whole north-eastern part of Maine. The river is at this point shallow and weedy, with woody banks and small islands in its bed. Two old lines of road lead from the south towards the lower course of the Huisne. One leads towards the bridge of Pontlieue, a bridge 278 which has a history in modern times.[676] The other leads to a ford less than a mile lower down the stream, now known as the ford of Mauny. One of our accounts distinctly makes Helias cross by a ford; the other seems less distinctly to imply that he crossed by a bridge.[677] At any rate he crossed in this quarter, immediately south of Le Mans. Battle at Pontlieue. He challenged the King’s troops in the city to come forth. The challenge was accepted, and a battle followed on the ground between the Huisne and the city. Pontlieue may now pass as a suburb of Le Mans, and not its least busy suburb. In those days the flat ground was doubtless all open; the hospital reared by Henry the Second in the neighbourhood of his native city must have been placed there as in a rural retreat. Victory of Helias; he recovers Le Mans. The fight was stout; the King’s troops fought valiantly; but they were put to flight by the greater numbers of the liberating host. The beaten garrison sought shelter in the city; fliers and pursuers streamed in together; the gates could not be shut; Count Helias was again in Le Mans at the head of a conquering army.[678]

279 Joy of the citizens. The joy of the citizens of Le Mans was indeed great at his coming.[679] Their own lord, their native count, the happiness of whose former reign they remembered in its fair contrast with the Norman dominion, was again amongst his faithful people. The formal welcome which had greeted the coming of Rufus was exchanged for heartfelt delight at the coming of Helias. The castles still held for Rufus. But there was still work to be done. Helias was in Le Mans; but the garrison of Rufus was in Le Mans also. The garrison had not been able to hinder the Count’s followers from entering the city; but the Count’s followers had not been able to hinder the garrison from securing themselves in the fortresses of the city, in the King’s tower and in Mont-Barbet.[680] Comparison with the deliverance of York in 1069. And now the story reads almost word for word like a famous scene in our own history just thirty years before.[681] Helias entered Le Mans as Eadgar and Waltheof entered York. And at Le Mans, 280 as at York, the native deliverers occupied the city while the foreign garrison still held the castles. The Normans at Le Mans betook themselves to the same means of defence as the Normans at York, the familiar means of defence of their nation. Whether he would or not, the joyous entry of Helias was to be celebrated with the same kind of offerings as the crowning and the churching of the Conqueror. Westminster, York, Mantes, had felt the Norman power of destruction; the turn of Le Mans was now come. The Normans set fire to the city. Walter the son of Ansgar set his engineers to work, and, when the evening came, flaming brands and hot cinders were hurled from their engines upon the houses of the city. It was summer; all things were dry; a strong east wind was blowing, and all Le Mans was presently in a blaze.[682] How the great minster, so near to the King’s tower, escaped without damage does not appear. But, as the church stands between the castle and the main part of the city, we may conceive that the fiery bolts launched by the engines from the tower might fly over the roof of its nave without doing harm. In any case, before the end of the day on which Helias entered, a large part of the city and suburbs was burned. The true prince was again in his own city; but he had nothing there to reign over, except smoking ruins commanded by a hostile fortress. Discouragement of the citizens. And we are told that the love of the citizens for their count was somewhat lessened by this mischance of warfare, 281 which was surely no fault of his. We are significantly told that they were less eager to fight for him in the evening than they had been in the morning.[683] Wooden houses indeed could easily be rebuilt; it may even be that that day’s fire cleared the space for those noble domestic buildings of a little later date, some of which the official barbarism of our own day has deigned to spare, and of which those that still remain count among the choicest treasures of Le Mans.[684] But at the moment the effect must have been disheartening, and the change in the feelings of the people is in no way wonderful.

Operation against the castles. At Le Mans, as at York in the like case, the business of the moment was the assault of the castles; but at Le Mans the enterprise of the deliverers was less fortunate than it had been at York. The citizens of Le Mans were not, like the citizens of York, to have the pleasure of breaking down the stronghold of the stranger. Helias himself, after all, was a French prince of the eleventh century, and he would hardly have been so ready as Waltheof was to encourage such a work. He had never, during his earlier reign, thought of playing Timoleôn in that special fashion. But in any case the fortresses were first to be taken. Walter the son of Ansgar seems to have been a more wary captain than William Malet 282 and Gilbert of Ghent. He did not risk a sally, and Helias had not the same opportunity as Waltheof of showing his personal prowess by cutting off Norman heads in the gate.[685] The castles besieged in vain. He was driven to a formal siege of the castle. Amid the ashes of the burned city he planted his engines to play upon the royal tower. Question of the church towers. We may almost suspect, from a story which we shall come to presently, that the new towers of Saint Julian’s were profaned to warlike uses, and were made, as they well might be, to play a part in the attack. But in any case the attack was in vain. The strength of the fortresses, the skill with which their defenders brought engines to answer engines, were too great for all the battering-works of Helias.[686] Robert of Bellême strengthens Ballon. The King’s tower and Mont Barbet both held out, and Robert of Bellême took the further precaution of strengthening the defences of Ballon.[687]

The news sent to the King. But it was not enough for the garrisons to hold out. They served a master beyond the sea; and that master had yet to learn either that they were holding out or that there was any enemy for them to hold out against. We are in this story doubtless dealing with the work of a very few days. The fight by the ford, the entry of Helias, and the fire, all took place on the same day. The siege of the castles would begin at the first moment that any engines could be brought up. Whether Helias had brought them with him, or whether he had to send for 283 them, we are not told. We may be sure that there was no great delay in sending the news to the King; but the messenger did not start till he had something more to tell than that Le Mans, or what was left of it, was in the hands of its own count. A Norman Pheidippidês, Amalchis by name, the special courier of Robert of Bellême, was sent with the news.[688] The news brought to him in the New Forest. He crossed the sea; he hastened to the King’s hunting-seat of Clarendon, and met William and a party of his favourite companions going forth to hunt in the New Forest. The King asked the messenger what the news was. The news was speedily told; Le Mans was taken by treason. But Amalchis could add some words of comfort, how his own lord held Ballon, how the King’s troops in the city, though besieged and attacked by the enemy, still held out in the fortresses, how they were longing for the King to come in person to their help.[689] We can hardly believe that Rufus had heard nothing of the general movements of Helias in southern Maine; but all that had happened since the Count set forth for Pontlieue came to his ears in a single message.

William rides to the coast. At the hearing of such a tale as this William the Red did not tarry. He waited for no counsellors. His words were only, “Let us go beyond the sea and help our friends.” When those around him bade him wait till a force could be made ready, he answered, “I will see who will follow me. Do you think that I shall be left without men? I know well the youth of my lands, they will hasten to 284 come to me, even at the risk of shipwreck.” So saying, without following, without preparation, he loosened his bridle, he put spurs to his horse, he rode straight to the sea-shore at Southampton, and at once trusted himself all alone to an old crazy ship which he found there. He crosses to Touques. The sky was cloudy; the wind was contrary; the blasts tossed up huge waves; the sailors prayed him to wait till the winds and the waves should be more inclined to peace and mercy. “I never heard of a king being drowned,” cried Rufus; “make haste, loose your cables; you will see the elements join to obey me.” He set sail, and the next morning he reached the haven of Touques, God, we are told by the monk of Saint Evroul, being his guide.[690]

The spot where William landed must, especially at the moment of William’s landing, have had a widely different look from that which it bears in our own day. Touques in Rufus’ time. The river from which the town of Touques takes its name, flowing down from Lisieux to its mouth by the modern pleasure-town of Trouville, has had its course shifted by modern improvements; but it has perhaps not greatly changed in width or bulk of stream since the time of our story. Touques lies a few miles inland; but a high tide would easily bring up the small vessels of that day to the point which was once a busy haven, but which now affords at the most a landing-place for barges. The single long street, full of picturesque wooden buildings of later times, and containing a striking disused church of the days of Rufus or his father, now turns away from the stream, as if to show that the days of Touques as a haven have passed away. In those days the inland port, placed in the rich vale of the stream, under the shadow of the hills, those to the right forming the forest-land of Touques, was a frequented spot; and at the moment when the ship came 285 which bore Rufus and his fortunes, it presented a busy scene. Landing of the King. As was usual in the summer-tide, a crowd of persons, both clerical and lay, was gathered at the riverside.[691] When they saw a ship coming from England, they pressed to ask what the news might be. Specially they asked how the King fared. And lo, the King was there as his own messenger to answer them.[692] He returned their greetings in merry mood, and all wondered and were glad.[693] We must remember that Normandy had better reason to be glad at the presence of Rufus than either England or Maine. His ride to Bonneville. The King landed; he sprang on the first beast that he could find, a mare belonging to a priest, and so took the road which led towards the south-east to the castle of Bonneville, on the slope of the hills which overlook and guard the haven. The distance is short, and most of it is uphill, and the speed of the priest’s mare was most likely not equal to the speed of the King’s own horse which had borne him from Clarendon to Southampton. A loyal crowd, clerks and peasants, were thus able to follow him on foot, cheering their sovereign as he rode up the hill-side to the castle.[694]

The castle of Bonneville. The headlong rush by land and sea was now over, and the Red King again found himself in one of the chief strongholds of Normandy. The castle of Bonneville, placed, not on the top of the hill, but on a small spur projecting from its side, was in fact the citadel of 286 Touques. It specially guarded the inland haven; otherwise one might rather have looked for the site of such a fortress on the hills which overlook the sea and guard the actual mouth of the stream. Yet from the towers of Bonneville we look out on a wide and a goodly prospect. Almost at the foot of the hill lies Touques itself. The river stretches away to its mouth at Deauville; on the right the valley is fenced in by the high ground of the forest, on the left by the hill crowned by the castle of Lassay, famous in later times, with the small priory of Saint Arnold, still keeping work of the Conqueror’s day, nestling on the hill-side. But at Bonneville itself no strictly architectural work remains which can have served the Red King as a resting-place after his fierce journey. The existing castle, a shell-keep strengthened by round towers, seems to be in all parts later than the days of Rufus, later than the days of Norman independence. A single gateway only could possibly be placed even within the latter years of the twelfth century. But the site is an ancient one; the castle is girded by a ditch, and the ditch is in some parts further strengthened by an embankment, which seem more likely to have been taken advantage of by the Norman dukes than to be their original work. Early history and legends of Bonneville. Bonneville had been one of the dwelling-places of William the Great, and it is one of the many towns and castles which claim to have been the scene of the oath of Harold.[695] Though the existing buildings are later, the hill itself and its earthworks are there, as when Rufus drew breath among them. He there rested for a moment, after being borne with the swiftest speed of his own age from the sports of the West-Saxon forest to the 287 serious business which pressed on a ruler of Normandy when Le Mans was again held by a hostile power.

William at Bonneville. The castle which Rufus had now reached, the nearest fortress in Normandy to the spot in England from which he had so wildly rushed, now became the starting-point of a campaign which, in its beginning, was not unskilfully planned. At Bonneville the King began to make his preparations for the recovery of Le Mans. His levy. He sent his messengers to and fro, and soon gathered a large force. He marches towards Le Mans. He then began his march southward; he crossed the frontier, and pressed on towards Le Mans, harrying the land as he went.[696] The effect of his coming was immediate. When the news came that the King was on his way, the forces of Helias began to fail him; he no longer dared to go on with the siege of the castles; he no longer dared even to hold the city.[697] Helias flees to Château-du-Loir. He fled from Le Mans, and hastened to the defence of his immediate possessions in the southern part of the county. Here he took up his head-quarters in his own fortress specially known as the Castle of the Loir. Within its walls the Count of Maine again waited for better days, while the hosts of Normandy drew near to his capital.[698]

Flight of the citizens. Meanwhile despair reigned in Le Mans. A crowd of the citizens, with their wives and children and all that 288 they had, followed their prince.[699] When Rufus heard of the flight of Helias, he was still north of Le Mans.William passes through Le Mans. He pressed on to overtake his enemy; he reached the city; but, like Harold on the march to Stamfordbridge, he did not deem it a time to tarry even a single night within its walls. And in the mind of Rufus there was doubtless another motive at work besides either military precaution or even simple military ardour. With him it would be a point of honour to occupy, at the first moment that he could, the ground on which his choice troops had been put to flight by the hasty levies of Helias. His camp beyond the Huisne. He marched through the city, over the battleground of Pontlieue; he crossed the bridge of the Huisne, and pitched his camp on the broad plain[700] to the south of the stream. He had thus passed into what might seem the immediate dominions of his rival, as his rival had passed at the same point to attack the city which he claimed as specially his own.

He harries southern Maine. Helias burns the castles. From his camp on the left back of the Huisne Rufus began a deliberate and fearful harrying of the whole southern part of Maine. But before his troops could reach the strongholds of the enemy, they found the land laid waste before them. Even two castles, those of Outillé and Vaux-en-Belin,[701] were set fire to by the 289 Count’s own partisans. Robert of Montfort—​the Norman Montfort—​pressed on with five hundred knights, put out the fire at Vaux, repaired the fortress, and held it for the King.[702] Helias meanwhile was biding his time in the Castle of the Loir. Helias keeps on the defensive. His force was still strong; but he deemed it no time for any attack on his part. Perhaps he knew Rufus well enough to feel sure that against him the tactics of Fabius were the tactics which were most likely to prevail.

For in this campaign, exactly as in the earlier campaign in Maine and in the campaign in the Vexin, the thing which most strikes us is the way in which it ends, or, more truly, the way in which it comes to no end at all. William besieges Mayet. While Helias held out at Château-du-Loir, William, instead of attacking him, laid siege to Mayet. At this last point, lying some way north of Château-du-Loir, we find the scene of some of the most remarkable anecdotes in our whole story, and it is here that the last serious warfare of the Red King seems to have taken place.[703] The siege was not a long one, and its result was strange and unexpected; but the few days which it took are crowded with incident, and they set William Rufus before us in more than one character. He first appears in a mood which may be thought wholly unexpected; perhaps as touched by devotion himself, at all 290 events as hearkening readily to the devotional scruples of others. The King’s host appeared before Mayet on a Friday, and he gave orders for a general attack on the castle on the next day.[704] Observance of the Truce of God. The sabbath morning dawns; the warriors are vying with one another in girding on their weapons and making ready for the attack.[705] Then a pious scruple, a scruple which seems to have occurred to no man on the day of Senlac, touched the hearts of some of the elders of the host. Certain unrecorded wise men crave of the King that, out of reverence for the Lord’s burial and resurrection, he will spare the besieged both that day and the next, and will grant them a truce till Monday. In other words, they demand the observance of the Truce of God.[706] The King gives glory to God, and gives orders that it shall be as they wish; nothing shall be done against the castle on either Saturday or Sunday; on Monday the attack shall be made.[707]

We now get a glimpse within the walls. The defenders of Mayet, we are told, were men of proved valour and endurance, faithful to their lord and ready to fight for him to the death.[708] It is worth notice that, through the whole story, the Red King’s favourite arms are never heard of within the bounds of Maine. No bribery in Maine. The wealth of England, which carried such weight within Normandy and France, which proved such an unanswerable argument in the mind of King Philip, goes for nothing on the banks of the Sarthe and the Loir. It seems 291 never to enter into any man’s mind that it was worth trying to buy over any man who owned Helias as his lord. So now in the Red King’s camp steel lies idle on the holy days of the older and the newer law; and gold seems to lie idle no less. Preparations of the besieged. But those days were not days of idleness within the bulwarks of Mayet. The gallant defenders of the castle were making ready for the attack. One special means of defence was to place wicker crates along the walls in order to break the force of the stones hurled by the King’s artillery.[709] The castle attacked on Monday. At last Monday came, and the assault began. The deep and wide ditch of the castle was found to be no small hindrance to the besiegers. A wild story is told that the King ordered the ditch to be filled up with horses and mules, the beasts seemingly of draught and burthen.[710] Story of Robert of Bellême. For them, as the villains of the brute world, there was no mercy; the destrier of the knight was, in knightly hearts, entitled to some share of the respect due to his rider. But the tale adds that Robert of Bellême, the man so hateful in Cenomannian memory, improved on the King’s order, and bade the ditch be filled, not only with horses, but with human villains also.[711] Such an order would really be 292 thoroughly in the spirit of chivalry. Illustrations of chivalry. It would have come well from the mouths of those French gentlemen who called at Crecy for the slaughter of the so-called peasants whom they had hired from Genoa.[712] But William the Red had learned beneath the walls of Rochester what the churls of one land at least could do, and he was not likely to carry his knightly ideal quite so far as this. The tale, we may suspect, is a bit of local Cenomannian romance, part of the popular tale of the devil of Mamers. Those who tell it add that the effect of the order was to cause the immediate flight of all the members of the despised class who were within hearing.[713] The besiegers fill the ditch with wood. But the most trustworthy narrative of the siege of Mayet tells us nothing of any of these strange ways of filling up a ditch. There we read only of vast piles of wood which were hurled into it, and of a path raised on piles which the besiegers strove to make level with the palisade of the castle.

The besieged burn the wood. But the devices of the garrison of Mayet were at least equal to the devices of their enemies. They hurled down masses of burning charcoal, and so, by the help of the summer heat, they burned up the piles of wood with which the besiegers were filling up the ditch.[714] All 293 Monday both sides strove with all their might against one another, and the King began to be grieved and angry that all his efforts had availed nothing.[715] Narrow escape of William. While he was thus troubled in mind, a stone was aimed at him from a lofty turret. It missed William himself, but a warrior who stood by him was crushed to pieces by the falling mass.[716] Then there rose a loud shout of mockery from the wall; “Lo, the King now has fresh meat; let it be taken to the kitchen and made ready for his supper.”[717] We might have looked to hear that for such scorn as this the Red King vowed a vengeance like his father’s vengeance at Alençon. But either Rufus and his counsellors were strangely cowed, or else they were glad of any excuse to throw up an enterprise one day of which seems to have been enough to weary them. William’s captains advise a retreat. The lords and high captains of the King’s host impressed on their master’s mind that the defences of Mayet were very strong, that its defenders were very brave, that, sheltered as they were behind their strong walls, they had a great advantage over besiegers encamped in the open air.[718] These sound strange arguments in an age when warfare chiefly consisted in attacking and defending strong places. They sound strangest of all when they 294 are addressed to a king who, so short a time before, had taken it for granted that not only men and walls, but the winds and the waves, would yield to his will. But the reasoning of these prudent warriors is said to have carried conviction to the King’s mind. Rufus saw that the best thing that he could do was to march off while he was still safe. There were other ways besides besieging castles by which more damage could be done to the enemy with less risk to his own followers.[719] The siege raised on Tuesday. Orders were given to march to Lucé with the first light of Tuesday. The host arose early, and went on, making a fearful harrying as they went.The land ravaged. Vines were rooted up, fruit-trees cut down, walls and houses overthrown. The whole of that fertile land was utterly laid waste with fire and sword.[720]

No real success on the King’s part. This seems a somewhat paltry ending for a campaign which began with the King’s breathless rush from the New Forest to Bonneville. Not very much had come of the headlong ride or of the sail in the crazy ship. William Rufus had gained no real success, military or political. He was as far as ever from the real possession of the whole land of Maine. He had rooted up a great many vines and cut down a great many fruit trees; but he had neither won a battle nor taken a fortress. His garrisons at Le Mans and at Ballon had held out; Helias had left Le Mans open to him; at Vaux Robert of Montfort had overcome, not Helias, but the flames. On the other hand, Helias himself was safe, in full command of most of his southern castles; from the only one 295 of them which the King had actually attacked, he had turned away baffled after one day’s fighting. Illustration of Rufus’ character. In all these cases it would seem as if the fiery impulses of Rufus soon spent themselves, as if all depended on the first rush. If that failed, he never had perseverance to go on. In his strangely mingled nature, he could be either a ruler or a captain when the fit to be either took him. He had not steadiness to be either for any long time together. The campaign unfinished. Certain it is that he left all his continental campaigns unfinished; and this one, which was begun with such a special blaze of energy, was left more utterly unfinished than any of the others. And yet perhaps, after all, William Rufus had succeeded in the chief wish of his heart. William satisfied by the recovery of Le Mans. Le Mans was the special prize of his father; its castles were the work of his father. But his father had had no special dealings with Mayet or Château-du-Loir. He might be satisfied to do without such small and distant possessions, he might be satisfied even to undergo defeat before them, as long as the city which his father had twice won, as long as the royal tower which his father had reared, were his beyond dispute.

William’s good treatment of Le Mans. But it is at least to William’s honour that, in his last entry at Le Mans, he showed himself a benefactor to the city which had suffered so much. Rufus had, as we have seen in the case of Robert of Bellême, men about him who were worse than himself. Or rather, putting aside such exceptional sinners as Robert of Bellême, he had men about him who simply did, as a matter of course, according to the fashion of the time, without either rising or sinking to those parts of the character of Rufus which are special to himself. So now the citizens of Le Mans found in the Red King himself a deliverer from the oppressions done by his officers. 296 Those among the inhabitants who had stayed in the city and had not followed their Count in his flight, had suffered every kind of wrong-doing at the hands of the King’s garrisons. He enters the city. The tale, according to the local historian, was too long and sad to tell in full.[721] But matters grew better when the King came himself. William again entered Le Mans in triumph, a triumph won chiefly over vines and apple-trees, certainly not over the garrison of Mayet.[722] He stops the oppressions of his garrison. Anyhow he came in a merciful mood. He checked the excesses of his soldiers; it was owing to his bounty only that the city was saved from utter ruin.[723] But on one class of its inhabitants his hand was harder than on the rest. He drives out the canons. The canons of Saint Julian’s, or so many of them as had agreed to the election of Hildebert, were driven out by the King’s order.[724] He leaves garrisons and returns to England. September, 1099. William then disbanded his army,[725] leaving garrisons in the castles of Le Mans, and doubtless in that of Ballon also. He then left the mainland for the last time, and, after an absence of three months, came back to England about the time of the feast of Michaelmas.[726]

William and Hildebert. But, if William Rufus, on his last visit to Le Mans, 297 saved the inhabitants of the city from ruin, he presently deprived the city itself of one of its chief material ornaments. It was the election of Hildebert which had first stirred up his wrath, and he had picked out the lands of the bishopric, as the lands of a personal enemy, for special havoc.[727] Hildebert reconciled to the King. Yet we read that, at some very early stage of his march, before he had yet crossed the frontier of Normandy and Maine, Hildebert met the King, and was received as a friend, on showing that he had had no hand in bringing about the occupation of the city by Helias.[728] Charges brought against him. But, after William had again entered Le Mans, the charge was once more brought against the Bishop by some of the clergy of Saint Julian’s who had opposed his election from the beginning. It was by Hildebert’s counsel, they said, that Helias had been received, and that the King’s castles had been besieged; nay, the towers of the minster itself, the twin towers of Howel, had been used, as they well might be, for the attack on the royal tower. William bids Hildebert pull down the towers of Saint Julian’s. William hearkened to the enemies of Hildebert, and gave him his choice, either to pull down the towers which were so liable to abuse, or else to follow him at once into England.[729] To the Bishop of Le Mans the sea-voyage itself seemed frightful;[730] and when its dangers were passed, when Hildebert 298 had reached the shores of our island, his enemies, who seem to have crossed also, again began to accuse him to the King.[731] Dialogue between William and Hildebert. A strange dialogue followed between the two. William, in his craft, offered to purchase the destruction of the towers at a price which would have greatly increased the internal splendour of the church. Let the Bishop agree to pull down the towers, and he, King William, will give him a vast mass of gold and silver for the adornment of the new shrine of Saint Julian.[732] But the Bishop had his craft also. He was in the land so famous for gold and silver work, the land where Otto and Theodoric were doubtless still plying their craft. They had no such goldsmiths at Le Mans; let the King keep his precious ingots for works within his own kingdom.[733] Still the destruction of the towers is pressed upon him; all that he can gain, and that with difficulty, is a little delay. Hildebert at last went back to Le Mans, taking with him, not indeed the King’s great ingots, but some lesser ornaments for his church.[734] The burning of the city, the dispersion of his canons, the havoc wrought in his own lands, all weighed him down. He poured forth the full bitterness of his soul in his extant 299 letters. The unrepealed order for the pulling down of the two towers still hung over him. Was it ever carried out? Our author does not say distinctly. We might rather infer from his story that the death of Rufus and the return of Helias saved the Bishop from his difficulties.[735] Yet the appearance of the building itself looks the other way. The southern tower. As the church of Saint Julian now stands, the southern tower of Howel has its existing representative. It is slender, and, if it stood against a building of ordinary height, it would be tall. Its upper part belongs to the late rebuilding of the transepts, but the lowest stage belongs to the latest and richest style of Romanesque, contemporary with the great recasting of the nave. It is no work of Howel or even of Hildebert; but it is the work of one who wished to reproduce, with the richer detail of his own day, the general likeness of what Howel’s tower had been. Appearance on the north side. On the north side this tower has no fellow; the space at the end of the transept which answers to it is occupied by a ruined building of earlier Romanesque, which may well be the stump of the original tower of Howel.[736] Are we to infer that the bidding of Rufus was carried out—​that the towers, or their upper stages, were actually destroyed—​that every later ruler of Le Mans, the devout Helias among them, deemed the northern tower too near to the royal fortress to allow of its rebuilding, but that the rebuilding of the more distant tower on the southern side was begun in the earlier and finished in the later recasting of the church? May we look on the shattered building which joins hard to the northern transept of Saint Julian’s as being truly the remnant of a tower which Howel reared with the good will of William the Great, and which Hildebert, with a heavy heart, pulled down at the bidding of William the Red? If it be so, I know of no 300 spot where architectural evidence speaks more strongly to the mind, where walls and columns and arches bring us more directly into the presence of the men who made and who unmade them. Among all the wonders of Saint Julian’s minster—​beside the nave which is inseparably bound up with so many living pages of our story—​beside the choir which in itself concerns not the historian of Norman kings and Cenomannian counts, but on which we gaze in breathless wonder as one of the noblest of the works of man—​no spot comes more truly home to us than that where we see the small remnants of what once was there and is there no longer. Alongside of the soaring apse to the east, of the wide portal to the west, the northern tower of Howel is indeed conspicuous by its absence.

The second war with Maine is the only event beyond the bounds of England which our own annalists record under this year, except indeed those œcumenical events besides which the affairs of Maine, and even the affairs of England, seem for the moment but as trifles. Robert at Jerusalem. July, 1099. In the same month of July in which William made his way into Le Mans, his brother Robert, in quite another warfare, made his way into Jerusalem.[737] Presently, before he could have heard of his own work, the great preacher of the crusade, Death of Pope Urban. July 29. Pope Urban the Second, passed away.[738] With the affairs of Maine these events have a direct connexion. It was not the fault of Count Helias that he did not obey the teaching of Urban, that he did not enter the Holy City alongside of Robert and Godfrey. Revolt in Anglesey. 1099. But it needs an effort to turn away either from Jerusalem or from Le Mans to record the last counter-revolution in Anglesey. Yet it is not amiss to remember that two lands were at the same moment striving for freedom against the Red King, and that the 301 Briton and the Cenomannian had to hold their own against the same enemy. He who ruled at once at Bellême and at Shrewsbury was terrible to both alike. We may believe that the Britons marked their time while the fierce Earl had his hands full beyond the Channel, to strike another blow to win back their land, and specially to win back the island which had been the scene of the warfare of the last year. Return of Cadwgan and Gruffydd. But it would seem that, in some parts at least of the land, there was little need for blows. The two princes who had fled to Ireland, Cadwgan son of Bleddyn and Gruffydd son of Cynan, now came back. Cadwgan obtained a peaceful settlement in Ceredigion; Recovery of Anglesey and Ceredigion by the Welsh. Gruffydd got possession of Anglesey, perhaps as the price of warfare. A son of Cadwgan, Llywelyn, was presently killed by the men of Brecheiniog, that is doubtless by the followers of Bernard of Newmarch.[739] Another Welsh prince, Howel by name, had to flee to Ireland.[740] We may infer that the central border-land was still firmly held by the conquerors, but that, though the French had constrained the Britons of Anglesey to become Saxons,[741] French and Saxons alike had to yield to the returning Britons both in Anglesey and in Ceredigion. Gruffydd and Cadwgan, names which are by this time familiar to us, are again established in Britain. Both of them play a part in the later history of their own land, and Cadwgan at least will appear again within the range of our own story.

These Welsh matters find no place in the English 302 Chronicles, which find so little space even for the deeds of Helias. Most likely they made no great impression on the mind of Rufus, now that, not Maine indeed, but at least Le Mans, was again his. He came back to England, a conqueror doubtless in his own eyes, about the feast of Saint Michael. Natural phænomenon. The year did not end without one of those natural phenomena in which the reign is so rich. The great tide. November 3, 1099. This time it was the wonderful flood-tide which, in the beginning of November, on a day of new moon, came up the Thames, flooded the land, overwhelmed houses and villages, and swept away men, oxen, and sheep.[742] A month later a new source of revenue began to flow into the Red King’s coffers. Death of Bishop Osmund of Salisbury. December 3, 1099. Bishop Osmund of Salisbury, the founder alike of the elder church and of the abiding ritual of his diocese, died early in December.[743] His temporalities passed, like those of Canterbury and Winchester, into the King’s hands. The Bishop of Durham had doubtless bade farewell to such duties; but the race of exactores, of clerical exactores, had not died out. There were still plenty of men in the Red King’s court who were ready to help in wringing the last penny out of the lands of bishops till they had wrung enough to buy bishoprics for themselves. The end is now drawing nigh; but till the end came, the groans of the Church, of the tenants of the Church, and of the whole people of the land, went up with a voice ever louder and louder.

The last year of the eleventh century had now come. End of the eleventh century. The course of those hundred years had wrought many changes in the world. To our eyes the changes which it had wrought in the isle of Britain seem great and wonderful, and great and wonderful they were. Changes in Britain. 1000–1100. At the beginning of the century Englishmen were struggling for their country and their homes against the invading Dane. The Dane had won the land; he had given us one foreign ruler who became one of ourselves. The days of foreign rule had passed away, only, as the event proved, to pave the way for a foreign rule which was to be far more abiding. A foreign rule which, by adopting national feelings, in some sort deadened them paved the way for a foreign rule which, by seeming for a moment to crush the old life of the nation, really called it up again in new shapes. But the rule of the Norman could 304 not, like the rule of Cnut, itself become national during the life-time of the Conqueror or of his first successor. Internal changes. There was indeed a change between the England of Æthelred and the England of William Rufus. The outward aspect of the land itself must have changed, now that well-nigh every English mound was crowned by its Norman castle, now that well-nigh every English minster was giving way to a successor built after Norman patterns. But, if things had changed, men had changed also. Compare the signatures to a charter of Æthelred and the signatures to a charter of William. The change which had come over the land is marked by the difference between the list of English names among which it may be that some follower of the Norman Lady has crept in, and the list of Norman names among which it may be that some unusually lucky Englishman has contrived to hold his place. Changes in foreign relations. England had thus changed indeed in her internal state; she had changed no less in her relations to other lands. Within her own island she had made what it is no contradiction to speak of as a peaceful conquest made at the sword’s point. Scotland. The elder Eadgar had placed the younger on the Scottish throne as the work of warfare. So far as Eadgar’s work was the political submission of Scotland, its results were but for a moment. So far as it led to the peaceful change of Scotland into a second and separate English kingdom, its results have been indeed abiding. Wales. Towards Wales, amidst much of seeming ill-success, the work of conquest had in truth begun; the Red King had found out the true way to curb those bold spirits which he could not overcome in the field. Fusion of elements in Britain begins. Much indeed had the eleventh century done, in different ways, towards welding the three elements of the isle of Britain into one political whole. Ages had to pass before the work was finished; but it was in the eleventh 305 century, above all, in the reign of Rufus, that it really began. Ireland. Towards the impossible work, forbidden by geography and history, of welding another great island into the same whole, whatever either William may have dreamed—​yet to the Conqueror we may not dare to ascribe mere dreams—​neither had done anything. So far as the two great islands of the Ocean had begun to draw near to one another, it was as yet wholly through the advances which the princes and people of Ireland had made in spiritual things to the Pontiff of the other world, the Patriarch of all the nations beyond the sea.

Britain ceases to be another world. But one great work of the times over which we are casting our eyes was that Britain was now fast ceasing to deserve its ancient name of another world. The earliest and the latest years of the century are each marked by a marriage, by a change of name on the part of the bride, which puts the change before us in a living way. Marriages of Ælfgifu-Emma and Eadgyth-Matilda. A new epoch of intercourse with other lands had begun when, on her marriage with a King of the English of her day, Norman Emma had to become English Ælfgifu. How greatly things had turned the other way was shown when, on her marriage with a King of the English of her day, English Eadgyth had to become Norman Matilda. England becomes part of the Latin world. The land which was to be the realm of Henry and Matilda was, through the chain of events which began with Emma’s marriage, fast changing from the separate world of Æthelred’s day into a part of the larger world of Western Europe, the world of Latinitas, of Latin speech and of learning, the world which, amidst all the struggles of rival Popes and Emperors, still deemed itself the world of Rome. Advance of the Latin world in the eleventh century. And in few ages had that world done more to extend itself than in the age which began with Æthelred and ended with Henry. At the beginning of the century northern Europe was still largely heathen; England was fighting 306 the battle of Christendom against the Danish renegade. Conversion of the North. The Crusade. Now the kingdoms of the North had passed into the Christian fold. The change between the beginning of the century and the end is best marked by saying that before its end the crusades had begun, that the first crusade had been crowned with the greatest of crusading victories. But, in looking at the crusades of the East, the abiding crusade of the West must not be forgotten. The struggle in Spain. Our own Chronicler has not failed to tell us somewhat of the great strife of Christian and Saracen in the south-western peninsula,[745] and if the taking of Toledo was followed by reverses of the Christian arms, it was only by dint of help from Africa. Here is a sign that the tide was turned, and that it was only by such help from beyond the straits, by a new passage of Africa into Europe, that Islam could maintain itself in the once Roman and Gothic land. In the Eastern world, the crusade should not make us forget the causes of the crusade. Decline of the Eastern Empire. At the beginning of the century we saw the Eastern Rome in her full might, the might of Saracenic victories which were already won, of Bulgarian victories which were winning. But now, as the Western Mussulman has to call in help from Africa, so the Eastern Christian has to call in help from Western Europe. Renewed advance. The Christian frontier in Asia has indeed frightfully gone back since the beginning of the century; but it has again begun to advance; Nikaia, Antioch, Jerusalem itself, are restored to the Christian world, and Nikaia is restored, not only to the Christian world but to the obedience of the Eastern Augustus. Sicily. And, by not least memorable change among so many, the great Mediterranean island, the battle-field of Greek and Saracen, has passed away from the rule of either, while remaining the flourishing dwelling-place of both. Sicily has entered 307 within the range of Western Christendom, and Palermo, like Winchester, has entered within the range of Norman dominion. When Æthelred reigned at Winchester and Richard at Rouen, a bishop of Evreux could not have performed the funeral rites of a bishop of Bayeux within the walls and between the havens of the Happy City.

Changes then had been great in east and west and north and south during the century which carries us from Otto the Wonder of the World and Basil the Slayer of the Bulgarians to what at first sight seems the lower level of Henry the Fourth and Alexios Komnênos. Change from Æthelred to William Rufus. And when in our own land the same space carries us from Æthelred to William Rufus, the gap seems wider still. And it was at least not the fault of William Rufus that the changes wrought by the eleventh century were not greater still. Æthelred, the man without rede, was not likely to change the face of the world, unless by passively supplying the means for Swegen and Cnut to change it. But William Rufus had no lack of rede of one kind, though it was perhaps of a kind which better deserved to be called unrede. But it was unrede of a more active kind than the unrede of Æthelred. Schemes of Rufus. William was eager enough to change the face of the world for his own behoof. To win, after a sort, the submission of Scotland and Maine, to plan the conquest of Ireland and France, to negotiate for the purchase of Aquitaine—​here alone are far-reaching plans enough, plans which could not have been carried out without some large result on the history of mankind. That result could never have been the lasting establishment of that Empire of Gaul and Britain of which Rufus seems to have dreamed. But had his continental plans been successful, they might have led, as the marriage of Lewis and Eleanor in the next century might have led, to the formation of a kingdom of France in the modern sense some ages before its time.

308 Contradiction in William’s position. The strange thing is that a man who schemed so much, who filled so great a place in the eyes of his own generation, after all did so little. Almost more strange is the way in which he sees all his great plans utterly shattered, and yet seems to feel no shame, no discouragement, no shock to his belief in his own greatness. He comes back really defeated; he has twice won Le Mans, and that is all; but if he has won Le Mans, he cannot win Mayet. So far from winning Paris, he cannot win Chaumont. So far from reigning on the Garonne, he cannot keep even the frontier of the Loir. His defeats not counted defeats. But what would have been counted defeat in any one else does not seem to have been counted defeat in William Rufus. Beaten at all points but one, he still keeps the air of a conqueror; he still seems to be looked on as a conqueror by others. From the beginning to the end, there is a kind of glamour about the Red King and all that he does. He has a kind of sleight of hand which imposes on men’s minds; like the Athenian orator, when he is thrown in the wrestling-match, he makes those who saw his fall believe that he has never fallen.[746] We might even borrow a word from the piebald jargon of modern diplomacy; we might say that the reign of the Red King was the highest recorded effort of prestige.

The year 1100. And now we have entered on the last year of the reign and of the century. Lack of events in its earlier months. It is a year whose earlier months are, within our own range at least, singularly barren of events, while its latter months are full of matter to record. It is a kind of tribute to the importance of William Rufus that there is at once so much to record the moment he is out of the way. When he is gone, a large part of the world feels relief. But about the lack of events earlier in the year there is something strange and solemn. 309 Contrast with the year 1000. The last year of the eleventh century was not marked by that general feeling of awe and wonder and looking forward to judgement which marked the last year of the tenth century. Vague expectations afloat. But, at least within the range of the Red King’s influence, that year seems to have been marked by that vague kind of feeling of a coming something which some of us have felt before the great events of our own times. Whatever may be the cause, it is certain that, as the news of events which have happened sometimes travels with a speed which ordinary means cannot account for,[747] so the approach of events which have not yet happened is sometimes felt in a way which we can account for as little. Coming events do cast their shadows before them, in a fashion which, whether philosophy can explain it or not, history must accept as a fact. And coming events did preeminently cast their shadows before them in the first half of the year 1100. Portents and prophecies. In that age the feeling which weighed on men’s minds naturally took the form of portent and prophecy, of strange sights seen and strange sounds listened to. There is not the slightest ground for thinking that all these tales are mere inventions after the fact, though they were likely enough to be improved in the telling after the fact. The frightful state of things in the land, unparalleled even in those evil times, joined with the feeling of expectation which always attends any marked note of time, be it a fresh week or a fresh millennium—​all worked together to bring about a looking for something to come, partly perhaps in fear, but far more largely in hope. Things could hardly get worse; they might get better. Men’s minds were charged with expectation; every sight, every sound, became an omen; if some men risked prophecies, if some of their prophecies were fulfilled, it was not wonderful. The first half of 310 the year, blank in events, was rich in auguries; in the second half the auguries had largely become facts. In its first months men were saying with hope, “Non diu dominabuntur effeminati.”[748] Before the twelvemonth was out, they were beginning to say with joy, “Hic rex Henricus destruxit impios regni.”[749]

§ 1. The Last Days of William Rufus.
January—​August, 1100.

The three assemblies of 1099–1100. Christmas at Gloucester. 1099–1000. This year the King, occupied by no warfare beyond his realm, was able to hold all the assemblies of the year at their wonted times and in their wonted places.[750] At Christmas William Rufus wore his crown at Gloucester, the place of his momentary repentance and of his wildest insolence. He had there given the staff to Anselm; he had there sent away Malcolm from his court without a hearing. Easter at Winchester. April 1, 1100. At Easter he wore his crown at Winchester, the city which had first received him after the death of his father, where he had first unlocked his father’s treasures, and had put in bonds those whom his father had set free. Pentecost at Westminster. May 20, 1100. At Whitsuntide he wore his crown at Westminster, and again held the assembly and the banquet in the mighty hall of his own rearing. No record of these assemblies. We have no record of the acts of any of these three assemblies. The two former at least may well have been gatherings which came together more for the display of kingly magnificence than for the transaction of any real business of the realm. All things seemed to be as glorious as ever for the defeated of Mayet and Chaumont. In the death of Urban 311 Rufus saw the removal of an enemy, at least of a hindrance in his way. Death of Urban. He had indeed found that Urban could be won to his will by a bribe. Still he was a Pope, a Pope whom he had himself acknowledged, a Pope whom it might be needful to bribe. Better far was it to come back to the happy days before he had been cajoled by Cardinal Walter, before he had been frightened into naming Anselm, the happy days when he was troubled by no archbishop in the land and no pope out of it. Those days were come again. Anselm was far away; Urban was dead; Paschal he had not acknowledged. The last recorded words of Rufus before the day of Lammas and its morrow were those in which he set forth his fixed purpose to use as he would the freedom which was his once more.[751]

But if we have no record of the three assemblies of the year, if we have no traditional sayings of the King, if we have no record of anything that really happened during these months, we can see that great schemes were planned; great preparations were making, which must have been the matter of deep debates at the Pentecostal assembly. Our own Chroniclers are silent; our tidings come from our familiar teacher at Saint Evroul. Continental schemes of Rufus. Though the Red King kept himself so close in his island kingdom, he was planning greater things than ever beyond the sea. He had Normandy to keep and he had Aquitaine to win. For such objects he had need of both gold and steel, and we cannot doubt that in the assembly held at Whitsuntide within the new hall of Westminster King William demanded no small store of both to enable him to carry out the schemes of his overweening pride.

Robert’s return from the crusade. Normandy was to be kept. Duke Robert, the bold crusader, was coming back from the lands where his name, once so despised in his own duchy, had been 312 crowned with unlooked-for glory. He was coming back by the path by which he had gone, through the Norman lands of southern Italy. His marriage with Sibyl of Conversana. And he was coming with a companion whose presence promised something in the way of amendment alike of his private life and of his public government. He brought with him a wife, Sibyl of Conversana, daughter of Geoffrey lord of Brindisi, and grand-niece of Robert Wiscard. His reception in south Italy. He had been welcomed by his southern countrymen with all honours and with precious gifts; both Rogers, the Duke of Apulia and the young Count of Sicily, to be one day the first and all but the most famous of Sicilian kings, were zealous in showing their regard. Character of the Duchess Sibyl. But from the house of the Count of Conversana he took away the most precious gift of all in a woman who is described as uniting all merits and beauties within and without, and who was certainly far better fitted to rule the duchy of Normandy than he was.[752] His funds for buying back the duchy. His father-in-law and his other friends gave him great gifts in money and precious things towards redeeming his dominions from his brother.[753] 313 But William Rufus had no thought of restoring the pledge; he had Normandy in his grasp, and he had no mind to let it go.

William of Aquitaine; his crusade; But besides this, Aquitaine was to be won. It was indeed to be won in a peaceful sort, as far as the engagements of its sovereign went. Duke William of Poitiers, the ally of William of England in his French campaign, was at last ready for his crusade. Strange warrior of the cross, strange comrade for Godfrey or even for Robert, was he who, after his return from the Sepulchre, spared the life of a holy bishop who rebuked him on the ground that he hated him too much to send him to paradise, who brought together the monastic harem at Niort, and who marched to battle with the form of his adulterous mistress painted on his shield.[754] But now he was setting forth for the holy war. Thirty thousand warriors—​the conventional number everywhere—​from Aquitaine, Gascony, and other lands of southern Gaul, were ready, we are told, to follow in his train.[755] He proposes to pledge his duchy to Rufus. But Duke William, like Duke Robert, lacked money. He sent therefore to the master of the hoard which seemed open to all comers, seeking to pledge his duchy, as Robert had pledged his.[756] We cannot help suspecting that some such arrangement had been made at an earlier time, when the two Williams joined their forces together against France; but, if not made then, it was made now. King William readily agreed to an offer which would practically make him master of the greater part of Gaul. 314 He was lord of Normandy; he held himself to be master of Maine; he was about to become lord of Aquitaine. Preparations for occupation of Aquitaine. Maine and Poitou indeed did not march on each other; but Anjou might be won by some means. Fulk could not hold out against a prince who hemmed him in on either side. Either gold or steel would surely open the way to Angers, as well as to Rouen and to Bourdeaux. Prepared for all chances, William was gathering money, gathering ships, gathering men, for a greater work than fruitless attacks on Mayet and Chaumont, for the great task of enlarging his dominion,--our guide says to the Garonne; he should rather have said to the Pyrenees. Robert was to be kept out of Normandy; to restore to the debtor his pledge was the dull virtue of the merchant or the Jew; such duties touched not the honour of the good knight. No man could perform all his promises, and the restoration of Normandy was a promise of the class which needed not to be performed. Aquitaine was to be peacefully bought; but possibly arms might be needed there also. All who should dare to withstand the extension of William’s dominion to the most southern borders of Gaul were to be brought to obedience at the sword’s point.

His alleged designs on the Empire. I have said “dominion;” but the word in the writer whom I follow is Empire.[757] That name, one not unknown to us in the history of Rufus, may have been dropped at random; but it may have been meant to show that mightier schemes still were at work in the restless brain of the Red King. We may couple the phrase with vague hints dropped elsewhere, which show 315 that, whether Rufus really thought of it or not, men gave him credit for dreams of dominion greater even than the supplanting of Fulk of Angers, of William of Poitiers, and of Philip of Paris all at once. The doctrine that Britain was a land fruitful in tyrants was to be carried out on a greater scale than it had been in the days of Carausius or Maximus or the later Constantine. The father had once been looked for at kingly Aachen;[758] the son, so men believed, hoped to march in the steps of Brennus to imperial Rome.[759] He would outdo the glory of all crusaders, of princes of Antioch and kings of Jerusalem. Geoffrey, Bohemund, his own brother, had knelt as vassals in the New Rome; he would sit as an Emperor in the Old. Then he would have no question about acknowledging or not acknowledging popes; he would make them or refuse to make them as he thought good. The patrimony of Saint Peter might be let to farm, along with the estates of Canterbury and Winchester and Salisbury. Whether such thoughts really passed through the mind of William Rufus we can neither affirm nor deny. That men could believe that they were passing through his mind shows that they believed, and rightly, that he was capable of dreaming, of planning, of attempting, anything.

Portents. But while the preparations were making, the portents were gathering. First came a stroke which reads like a rehearsal of his own end. While Robert was coming back with his Sibyl to found a new and legitimate dynasty in the Norman duchy, a blow fell on one of the children of his earlier wanderings.[760] Death of young Richard. May, 1100. One Richard had already fallen in the haunted shades of the New Forest,[761] and his death opened the path for his younger brother to reign at Winchester and Rouen and Le Mans, 316 and to dream of reigning at Dublin, Paris, Poitiers, and Rome. Another Richard, the natural son of Duke Robert, who must have been enrolled in the service of his uncle, was cut off on the same fatal ground early in May, shortly before the Westminster assembly. The King’s knights were hunting the deer in the forest; one of them drew his bow to bring down a stag; the arrow missed the intended victim, and pierced Richard with a stroke which brought him dead to the ground.[762] Great grief followed his fall; his unwitting slayer, to escape from vengeance, fled and became a monk.[763] Young Richard thus died while his uncle was making ready to keep his father out of the dominions which he was pledged to restore. William, natural son of Robert. His brother William, the other son of Robert’s vagrant days, seems to have followed the fortunes of his father, till, after Tinchebrai, he went to Jerusalem and died fighting in the Holy War.[764]

The death of Richard might be a warning. It might be taken as a sign that some special power of destiny hovered over the spot where the dwellings of man and the houses of God had been swept away to make clearer ground for sports where joy is sought for in the wanton infliction of death and suffering. Still it was no portent out of the ordinary course of nature. But portents of this kind too were not lacking. Wonders and apparitions. The pool of blood in Berkshire welled again;[765] the devil was seen openly in many places, showing himself, it would seem, to Normans 317 only, and talking to them of their countrymen the King and the Bishop of Durham.[766] Strange births, stranger unbirths, were told as the news of the day to a visitor from another land.[767] As the day approaches, a crowd of vivid pictures seems to pass before us. Warlike preparations. June-July, 1100. June and July passed amidst preparations for war, but July saw also one great ecclesiastical ceremony. Abbot Serlo’s minster of Gloucester was now near enough to perfection for its consecration to be sought for. Whether all the lofty pillars of the nave were as yet reared or not, at least that massive eastern limb with its surrounding chapels, which may still be seen through the lace-work of later times, was already finished. Consecration of Gloucester Abbey. July 15, 1100. The rite of its hallowing was done by the diocesan Samson and three other bishops, Gundulf of Rochester, Gerard of Hereford, and Hervey the shepherd of the stormy diocese of Bangor. The zeal of the monks and their visitors was stirred up by the ceremony, and the house of Saint Peter at Gloucester became a special seat of vision and prophecy. Vision and prophecies. One godly brother[768] saw in the dreams of the night the Lord sitting on his throne, with the hosts of heaven and the choirs of the saints around 318 him. A fair and stately virgin stood forth and knelt before the Lord. She prayed him to have pity on his people who were ground down beneath the yoke of King William of England. The dreamer trembled, and understood that the suppliant was the holy Church of Christ, calling on her Lord and Saviour to look down on all that her children bore from the lusts and robberies and other evil deeds of the King and his followers.[769] Serlo, filled with holy zeal, set down the vision in writing, and sent the message of warning to the King.[770]

Abbot Fulchered’s sermon at Gloucester. August 1, 1100. But the visions of the night were not all. A more open voice of prophecy, so men deemed, was not lacking. A few days after the monk’s vision, on the day of Lammas, a crowd of all classes was gathered in Saint Peter’s church at Gloucester to keep the feast of Saint Peter-in-Chains.[771] Fulchered, Abbot of Earl Roger’s house at Shrewsbury, once a monk of Earl Roger’s house at Seez, an eloquent preacher of the divine word, was chosen from a crowd of elders[772] to make his discourse to the people. A near neighbour of the terrible son of his own founder, none could know better than he under what woes the land was groaning. Fulchered mounted the pulpit of the newly-hallowed minster, and the spirit of the old prophets came upon him.[773] In glowing words 319 he set forth the sins and sorrows of the time, how England was given as an heritage to be trodden under foot of the ungodly. Lust, greediness, pride, all were rampant, pride which would, if it were possible, trample under foot the very stars of heaven.[774] The words have the ring of the words of Eadward on his deathbed; but Eadward had to tell of coming sorrow, and of only distant deliverance. Fulchered could tell of a deliverance which was nigh, even at the doors. A sudden change was at hand; the men who had ceased to be men should rule no longer.[775] And then in a strain which seems to carry us on to the days of Naseby and Dunbar, he told how the Lord God was coming to judge the open enemies of his spouse. He told how the Almighty would smite Moab and Edom with the sword of vengeance, and overthrow the mountains of Gilboa with a fearful shaking. “Lo,” he went on, “the bow of wrath from on high is bent against the wicked, and the arrow swift to wound is drawn from the quiver. It shall soon smite, and that suddenly; let every man that is wise amend his ways and avoid its stroke.”[776]

Such is the report of Abbot Fulchered’s sermon, as it is told us by one who no doubt set down with a special interest the words of the first prelate of the minster into which the humble church of his own father had grown.[777] The alleged dream of the King. Other stories tell us how on the night of that same Wednesday a more fearful dream than that of the monk 320 of Gloucester disturbed the slumbers of some one. In the earlier version the seer is a monk from beyond sea; in its later form the terrible warning is vouchsafed to the King himself.[778] The story, as usual, puts on fresh details as it grows; but its essential features are the same in its simplest and in its most elaborate shape. The King, with his proud and swelling air, scorning all around him, enters a church. In one version it is a chapel in a forest; in another it is a minster gorgeously adorned. Its walls were robed with velvet and purple, stuffs wrought by the skill of the Greek, and with tapestry where the deeds of past times lived in stitch-work, like the tale of Brihtnoth at Ely and the newer tale of William at Bayeux.[779] Here were goodly books, here were the shrines of saints, gleaming with gold and gems and ivory, a sight such as the eyes of the master and spoiler of so many churches had never rested on. At a second glance all this bravery passed away; the walls and the altar itself stood bare. At a third glance he saw the form of a man lying bare upon the altar. A cannibal desire came on him; he ate, or strove to eat, of the body that lay before him. His victim endured for a while in patience; then his face, hitherto goodly and gentle as of an angel, became stern beyond words, and he spoke—“Is it not enough that thou hast thus far grieved me with so many wrongs? Wilt thou gnaw my very flesh and bones?” One version gives the words another turn; the stern voice answers simply, “Henceforth thou shalt eat of me no more.” Exhortation of Gundulf. In those accounts which make the King the dreamer, Rufus tells the vision to a bishop—​one tale names Gundulf—​who explains the easy parable. The exhortation follows, to mend his 321 ways, to hold a synod and to restore Anselm. The King, in one account, in a momentary fit of penitence, promises to do so. But his better feelings pass away; in defiance of all warnings, he goes forth to hunt on the fatal ground, the scene of the wrong and sacrilege of his father—​in some of these versions the scene of further wrong and sacrilege of his own.

The details of some of these stories I shall discuss elsewhere. If they prove nothing else, they prove at least the deep impression which the Red King’s life and the Red King’s end made on the men of his own days and of the days which followed them. William at Brockenhurst. August 1, 1100. One thing is certain; on the first day of August, while Fulchered was preaching at Gloucester, King William was in the New Forest, with his head-quarters seemingly at Brockenhurst.[780] His companions. He had with him several men whose names are known to us, as Gilbert of Laigle, once so fierce against William’s cause at Rouen, Gilbert and Roger of Clare, the former of whom had won his forgiveness by his timely revelations on the march to Bamburgh.[781] Henry. Henry, Ætheling and Count, if not one of the party, was not far off; he too had, if not his visions, at least his omens.[782] Walter Tirel. But chief among the company, nearest, it would seem, to the King in sportive intercourse, was one who was perhaps his subject in Normandy by birth, perhaps his subject in England by tenure, but whose chief possessions, as well as his feelings, belonged to another land.[783] This was a baron of France, whom we once 322 before heard of in better company, but whom the fame of the Red King’s boundless liberality had led into his service. His father the Dean of Evreux. In days before the stern laws of Hildebrand were strictly enforced, a churchman of high rank, Fulk, Dean of Evreux, was, seemingly by a lawful marriage, the father of a large family. Walter, one of his sons, bore the personal surname of Tirel, Tyrell, in many spellings, pointing perhaps to his skill in drawing the bow. His lordships and marriage. He became, by whatever means, lord of Poix in Ponthieu, and of Achères by the Seine between Pontoise and Poissy; at the former of these lordships, it would seem, he had once been the host of Anselm.[784] He was not, in the days of the Survey at least, a land-owner of much account in England. A small lordship in Essex, held under Richard of Clare, is the only entry under any name by which he can be conceived to be meant. He had married a wife, Adelaide by name, of the great line of Giffard, who seems to have lived till the latter days of King Henry. He was now a near friend of the Red King’s, a special sharer with him in the sports of the forest, so much so that, when legend came to attribute the laying waste of Hampshire to the younger instead of the elder William, Walter Tirel was charged with having been the adviser of the deed.[785]

Gab of the King and Walter Tirel. On the Wednesday of Fulchered’s sermon, the King and his chosen comrade were talking familiarly. Walter fell into that kind of discourse which is called in the Old-French tongue by the expressive words gaber and gab.[786] He began to talk big, to jeer at the King for the small results of his own big talk. But the matter of 323 the discourse sounds a little strange, if it was really uttered at a moment when such great preparations were making for the defence of Normandy, for the purchase of Aquitaine, perhaps for the conquest of Anjou, to say nothing of schemes greater and further off. Walter jeers at the king. The lord of Poix asked the King why he did nothing; with his vast power, why did he not attack some neighbour? Great as the Red King’s power was, Walter is made to speak of it as a good deal greater than the truth, so much so indeed that we can read the speech only as mockery. William’s alleged subjects and allies. All William’s men were ready at his call, the men of Britanny, of Maine,[787] he adds of Anjou. The Flemings held of him—​we have heard of his dealings with their Count;[788] the Burgundians held him for their king; Eustace of Boulogne would do anything at his bidding.[789] Why did he not make war on somebody? Why did he not go forth and conquer some land or other? The King’s answer; he will keep Christmas at Poitiers. The King answers that he means to lead his host as far as the mountains—​the Alps, we may suppose, are meant. He will thence turn back to the West, and will keep his next Christmas feast at Poitiers.[790] Angry words of Walter. The mocking vein of Walter Tirel now turns to anger; he bursts forth in wrathful words. It would be a great matter indeed to go to the mountains and thence back to Poitiers in time for Christmas. 324 Burgundians and French would indeed deserve to die by the worst of deaths, if they became subjects to the English.[791]

Illustrative value of the story. This talk, put into the mouth of the King and his chosen comrade by a writer of the next generation, is in every way remarkable. The King’s boast that he would keep Christmas at Poitiers is found also in an earlier writer, and it is almost implied in his preparations for taking possession of Aquitaine.[792] The words about French and Burgundians becoming subject to the English might sound more in harmony with the next generation; but we have already seen examples which show that, even so soon after the Norman Conquest of England, the English name was beginning to be applied on continental lips to all the subjects of the English crown. The armies of William Rufus were English in the same sense in which the armies of Justinian were Roman. The threat of a King of England, speaking on English ground, to overrun all the provinces of Gaul is conceived as calling forth a feeling of patriotic anger in the lord of Poix and Achères. Yet, while we might have expected such an one to fight valiantly for Ponthieu or the Vexin against a Norman invader, we might also have expected him to be quite indifferent to the fate of Poitiers, indifferent at all events to its transfer from the Aquitanian to the Norman William. The speech 325 is followed by words which imply that the King’s boast was taken more seriously than it was meant, and which almost suggest a plot on Walter’s part for the King’s destruction.[793] In the crowd of conflicting tales with which we are now dealing, we must not insist on any one as a trustworthy statement of undoubted facts; but the dialogue which is put into the mouths of William Rufus and Walter Tirel is almost as remarkable if we look on it as the invention of the rimer himself as if we deem it to have been, in its substance, really spoken by those into whose mouths it is put.

Last day of William Rufus. August 2, 1100. Of the events of the next day we may say thus much with certainty; “Thereafter on the morrow after Lammas day was the King William in hunting from his own men with an arrow offshot, and then to Winchester brought and in the bishopric buried.”[794] Statement of the Chronicle. These words of our own Chronicler state the fact of the King’s death and its manner; they suggest treason, but they do not directly assert it; they name no one man as the doer. Other versions; Walter Tirel mentioned in most. Nearly all the other writers agree in naming Walter Tirel as the man who drew the bow; but they agree also in making his act chance-medley and not wilful murder. Yet it is clear that there were other tales afloat of which we hear merely the echoes. Ralph of Aix. One tradition attributed the blow, not to Walter Tirel, but to a certain Ralph of Aix.[795] 326 As the tale is commonly told, the details of the King’s death could have been known from no mouth but that of Walter himself; The charge denied by Walter. yet it is certain that Walter himself, long after, when he had nothing to hope or fear one way or the other, denied in the most solemn way that he had any share in the deed or any knowledge of it.[796] The words of the Chronicler, though they suggest treason, do not shut out chance-medley; they leave the actor perfectly open. Estimate of the received tale. There is nothing in the received tale which is in the least unlikely; but it is the kind of tale which, even if untrue, might easily grow up. William may have died by accident by the hand of Walter Tirel or of any other. He may also have died by treason by the hand of Walter Tirel or of any other. In this last case there were many reasons why no inquiries should have been made, many reasons why the received tale should be invented or adopted. It was just such a story as was wanted in such a case. It satisfied curiosity by naming a particular actor, while it named an actor who was out of reach, and did not charge even him with any real guilt. In favour of the same story is the statement, which can hardly be an invention, that Walter Tirel fled after the King’s death. But this was a case in which a man who was innocent even of chance-medley might well flee from the fear of a suspicion of treason. And Walter’s own solemn denial may surely go for as much as any mere suspicion against him. Guesses in such a case are easy; the slayer may have been a friend of Henry, a friend of Anselm, a man goaded to despair by oppression—​all such guesses are likely enough in themselves; there is no evidence for any of them. All that can be said is that the words of the Chronicle certainly seem to point 327 out the actor, whether guilty or only unlucky, as belonging to the King’s immediate following. The statement of the Chronicle the only safe one. “The King William was in hunting from his own men by an arrow offshot.” Beyond that we cannot go with certainty. But the number of men of every class who must have felt that they would be the better, if an arrow or any other means of death could be brought to light on the Red King, must have been great indeed. Wonder that he was not killed sooner. The real wonder is, not that the shaft struck him in the thirteenth year of his reign, but that no hand had stricken him long before.

Accounts of the King’s last day. Of the last day of the Red King, Thursday, the second day of August, we have two somewhat minute pictures which belong to different hours of the day. There is no contradiction between the two; the two may be read as an unbroken story; but we have that slight feeling of distrust which cannot fail to arise when it is clear that he who records the events of the afternoon knew nothing of the events of the morning. The details of such a day would be sure to be remembered; for the same reason they ran a special chance of being coloured and embellished. We shall therefore do well to go through the details of the earlier hours of that memorable day as we find them written, not forgetting the needful cautions, but at the same time not forgetting that the tale has much direct evidence for it and has no direct evidence against it.[797]

Morning of August 2. The King then, even according to those who do not assign the specially fearful vision to himself, passed a restless night, disturbed by dreams which, on this milder showing, were ugly enough. William’s dreams. He dreamed that he was bled—​a process which in those days seems to have passed 328 for a kind of amusement—​and that the blood gushed up towards heaven, so as to shut out the light of day.[798] He woke suddenly with the name of our Lady on his lips; he bade a light to be brought, and bade his chamberlains not to leave him.[799] He remained awake till daybreak. Robert Fitz-hamon tells the monk’s dream. Then, according to this version, came Robert Fitz-hamon, entitled to do so as being in his closest confidence,[800] and told him the dream of the monk from beyond sea. William was moved; but he tried to hide his real feelings under the usual guise of mockery; William’s mocking answer. “He is a monk,” he said with his rude laugh, “he is a monk; monklike he dreams for the sake of money; give him a hundred shillings.”[801] Here we see the boasted liberality which recklessly squandered with one hand what was wrung from the groaning people with the other. His disturbance of mind. Seriously disturbed in mind, William doubted whether he should go hunting that morning; his friends urged him to run no risk, lest the dream should come true. His morning. He therefore, to occupy his restless mind, gave the forenoon to serious business;[802] there was enough of it on hand, if he was planning a march to Rome or even a march to Poitiers. The early dinner 329 of those days presently came; he ate and drank more than usual, hoping thus to stifle and drown the thoughts that pressed upon him.[803] In this attempt he seems to have succeeded; after his meal he went forth on his hunting.

He sets forth to hunt. At this point we take up the thread of the other story. The King, after his meal, has regained his spirits, and, surrounded by his followers and flatterers, he is making ready for the chase. The new arrows. He was putting on his boots—​boots doubtless of no small price—​when a smith drew near, offering him six new catapults, arrows, it would seem, designed, not for the long bow, but for the more deadly arbalest or cross-bow.[804] The King joyfully took them; he praised the work of the craftsman; he kept four for himself, and gave two to Walter Tirel. He gives two of them to Walter Tirel. “Tis right,” he said, “that the sharpest arrows should be given to him who knows how to deal deadly strokes with them.”[805] The two went on talking and jesting; the flatterers of the King joined in admiringly. Abbot Serlo’s letter. Suddenly there came a monk from Gloucester charged with a letter from Abbot Serlo. The letter told the dream of the monk, in which the Holy Church had been seen calling on her Lord for vengeance on the evil deeds of the King of the English. The letter was read to the King[806]—​there was a future king not far off who could read letters for himself. William’s mockery. William burst into his bitter laugh; he turned to his favourite comrade; “Walter, do thou do justice, according 330 to these things which thou hast heard.” “So I will, my lord,” answered Walter.[807] Then the King talks more at length about the Abbot’s letter. “I wonder at my lord Serlo’s fancy for writing all this; I always thought him a good old abbot. ’Tis very simple of him, when I have so much business about, to take the trouble to put the dreams of his snoring monks into writing and to send them to me all this way. His sneers at English regard for omens. Does he think I am like the English, who throw up their journey or their business because of the snoring or the dreams of an old woman?”[808] This speech has a genuine sound; it should be noticed as being the only speech put into the mouth of William Rufus which can be construed as expressing any dislike or scorn for his English subjects as such. Yet the words are rather words of good-humoured raillery than expressive of any deeper feeling. The Red King oppressed and despised all men, except his own immediate following. Practically his oppression and scorn must have fallen most heavily on men of native English birth; but there is no sign that he purposely picked them out as objects of any special persecution.

William and his companions go to the hunt. In the version which records this speech the sneer at the English regard for omens are the Red King’s last recorded words. He now mounted his horse and rode into a wooded part of the forest to seek his sport, the sport of those to whom the sufferings of the wearied, wounded, weeping, beast are a source of joy. Count Henry the King’s brother,[809] William of Breteuil, and other nobles, went forth to the hunt, and 331 were scattered about towards different points. The King and Walter Tirel. The King and the lord of Poix kept together, with a few companions, some say; others say that they two only kept together.[810] The King shot by an arrow. The sun was sinking towards the west when an arrow struck the King; he fell, and his reign and life were ended. This is all that we can say with positive certainty. That the arrow came from the bow of Walter Tirel is a feature common to nearly every account; but all the details differ. Various versions. In one highly picturesque version, not only the King and Walter Tirel,[811] but a company of barons are in a thickly wooded part of the forest near a marsh. The herd of deer comes near; the King gets down from his horse to take better aim; the barons get down also, Walter Tirel among them. Walter places himself near an elder-tree, behind an aspen. A great stag passes by; an arrow badly aimed pierces the King; by whose hand it was sent the teller of the tale knew not; but the archers who were there said that the shaft came from the bow of Walter Tirel. Walter fled at once; the King fell. He thrice cried for the Lord’s body. Alleged devotion of the King at the last moment. But there was none to give it to him; the place was a wilderness far from any church. But a hunter took herbs and flowers and made the King eat, deeming this to be a communion. Such a strange kind of figure of the most solemn act of Christian worship was not unknown.[812] Our author charitably hopes that it might be accepted in the case of the Red King, especially as he had received holy bread—​itself a substitute of the same kind—​the Sunday before.

In this version there is no mention of the warning 332 dreams either of the King or of any other person. The scene in the wood follows at once on the boasting discourse with Walter Tirel. Another version; In another version the King has the frightful dream; he receives, and receives in a good spirit, the warning interpretation of the Bishop.[813] His companions, knights and valets, make ready for the chase; they are mounted on their horses; the bows are ready; the dogs are following; the dogs bark; the horns blow; all is ready that could stir up the soul of the hunter. William unwilling to go to the hunt. The King is unwilling to stir; his companions tempt him, entreat him, jeer at him; it is time to set out; he is afraid. He tells them solemnly that he is sick and sad a hundredfold more than they wot of. The end is come; he will not go to the forest. They think that he is mocking, and at last constrain him to come. The chase is described; the King seems to be alone with one unnamed companion. He is shot by accident by a knight unnamed. The King calls on his comrade to shoot; he is frightened as being too near the King. He shoots; the devil guides the barbed arrow so that it glances from a bough, and pierces the King near the heart. He dies penitent. He has just strength enough to bid the knight to flee for his own life, and to pray to God for him who has lost his life by his own folly, and who has been so great a sinner against God. The knight rides off in bitter grief, wishing a hundred times that he had himself been killed instead of the King.

Tenderness towards Rufus in these two versions. In these versions, both written in the Red King’s own tongue, the details are very remarkable. They seem to come from a kind of wish, like the feeling which strewed flowers on the grave of Nero, to make the end of the oppressor and blasphemer one degree less frightful. Other versions know nothing of this conversion at the last moment. In one of them, the two, the King and Walter, are alone; the King shoots at a stag; he hits 333 the beast, but only with a slight wound. Other versions mention Walter Tirel. The stag flies; the King follows him with his eyes, sheltering them with his hand from the sun’s rays. Walter Tirel meanwhile aims at another stag, misses him, and strikes the King. Rufus utters no word; like Harold, he breaks off the shaft of the arrow; he falls on the ground, and dies. Walter comes up, finds him lifeless, and takes to flight.[814] Or again, the stag comes between his two enemies; Walter shoots; the King at the same moment shifts his place; Walter’s arrow flies over the stag’s back, and pierces the King.[815] In another version the arrow, as we have already heard, glances from a tree;[816] in another the King stumbles and falls upon it.[817] In later but not less graphic accounts the string of the King’s bow breaks; the stag stands still in amazement; the King calls to Walter, “Shoot, you devil,” “Shoot, in the devil’s name; shoot, or it will be the worse for you.” Walter shoots; his arrow, perhaps by a straight course, perhaps by glancing against a tree, strikes the King to the heart.[818]

In all these versions the arrow comes from the bow of a known companion, and in all but one that companion is said to be Walter Tirel. In another form of the story the general outline is the same, but the persons are different. Dunstable version. The vision which in the other version is seen at Gloucester is moved to Dunstable, and is seen there by the prior of that house. The change of place is unlucky, as the 334 priory of Dunstable was not yet founded.[819] The dream with new details. The Prince on his throne, and the fair woman complaining of the deeds of William Rufus, are seen, with some differences of detail, but quite a new element is brought in. A man all black and hairy offers five arrows to the Prince on the throne, who gives them back again to him, saying that on the morrow the wrongs of the suppliant woman shall be avenged by one of them. The Prior has the vision explained to him much as in the other versions of the story, but with the addition that, unless the King repented, the woman—​the Church—​would be avenged by one of the arrows on the morrow. The prior of Dunstable warns the King. The Prior starts from his sleep, and midnight as it was, he sets out at once on a journey to the New Forest, as swift and headlong as the King’s own ride to Southampton the year before. He reaches the place at one in the afternoon, and finds the King going forth to hunt. As soon as William sees him, he says that he knows why he is come, and orders forty marks to be given to him. For, it is added, the King, who destroyed other churches throughout all England, had a love for the church of Dunstable and its prior, and had even built the minster there at his own cost. The Prior says that he has come on much greater and weightier matters; he takes the King aside; he tells him his dream, and warns him on no account to go into the forest, but at once to begin to repent and amend his ways. The Prior has hardly ended his discourse when a man, like the man whom he had seen in his dream, comes and offers the King five arrows, like the arrows of the dream. The King shot by Ralph of Aix. The King gives them—​not to Walter Tirol, who is not mentioned, but to Ralph of Aix, to take with him into the forest. The Prior meanwhile prays him not to go, but in vain. He goes into the wood, and is presently shot with one of 335 those arrows by the hand of Ralph. No details are given, nor is it implied whether the King’s death was an act of murder or of chance-medley.

Impression made at the time by the death of Rufus. These varying tales, whose very variety shows the impression which the event made upon men’s minds, may make us glad to come back to the safe statement of the Chronicler, that the Red King was shot from his own men. The place and circumstances of the death of Rufus were such as could not fail to stamp themselves upon men’s minds. We see the proud and godless King, in the height of his pride and godlessness, with his heart puffed up with wilder plans and more swelling boasts than any of his plans and boasts in former years. He goes forth, in defiance of all warning—​for some kernel of truth there must surely be in so many tales of warning—​to take his pleasure in the place which men had already learned to look on as fatal to his house, the place where his brother had died by a mysterious death, where his nephew had died only a few weeks before his own end. He goes forth, after striving first to quiet his restless soul with business, and then to quench all thoughts and all warnings in the wine-cup. In the midst of his sport, he falls, by what hand no man knows for certain. One writer rejoices to tell us how the oppressor of the Church died on the site of one of the churches which had been uprooted to make way for his pleasures.[820] Others rejoice to tell how the King whose life and reign had been that of a wild beast, perished 336 like a beast among the beasts.[821] Its abiding memory. And the impression was not only at the time; it has been abiding. The death of William Rufus is one of those events in English history which are familiar to every memory and come readily to every mouth. His death lives in the thoughts of not a few who have no clear knowledge of his life. The arrow in the New Forest is well known to many who know nothing of the real position of the Red King’s reign in English history. The name of Walter Tirel springs readily to the lips of many on whose ears the names of Randolf Flambard and Robert of Bellême, of Helias of Maine and Malcolm of Scotland, nay the name of Anselm himself, would fall like unwonted sounds. Local traditions. No keener local remembrance can be found than that which binds together the name of Rufus and the name of the New Forest. At the scenes of the great events of his reign, at Rochester and Bamburgh and Le Mans, local memory has passed away, and the presence of the Red King has to be called up by book-learning only. In a word, in popular remembrance William Rufus lives, not in his life but in his death. Nor is this wonderful. Impressive character of the death of Rufus. In the widest survey of his reign, we can only say that his death was the fitting ending of his life; in a life full of striking incident, it is not amazing that the last and 337 most striking incident of all should be the best remembered. Rufus and Charles the First. Of all the endings of kings in our long history, the two most impressive are surely the two that are most opposite. There is the death of the king who fell suddenly in the height of his power, by an unknown hand in the thickest depths of the forest; and there is the death of the king who, fallen from his power, was brought forth to die by the stroke of the headsman, before the windows of his own palace, in the sight of his people and of the sun. The striking nature of the tale is worthy of its long remembrance; but one could almost wish that the name of the supposed actor in the death of Rufus had never attached itself to the story. The words of the Chronicle. The dark words of the Chronicle are in truth more impressive than the tale, true or false, of Walter Tirel. Rufus was shot in his hunting from his own men. That is enough; his day was over. End and character of Rufus. A life was ended, stained with deeds which, in our history at least, stand out without fellow before or after, but a life in which we may here and there see signs of great powers wasted, even of momentary feelings which might have been trained into something nobler. As it is, the career of William the Red is one of which the kindest words that we can say are that he always kept his word when it was plighted in a certain form, and that he was less cruel in his own person than many men of his time, than some better men than himself. Judgement on the reign of Rufus. But, however we judge of the man, there is but one judgement to be passed on the reign. The arrow, by whomsoever shot, set England free from oppression such as she never felt before or after at the hand of a single man.

Alleged final penitence of Rufus. One tale of the death of Rufus, it will be remembered, charitably describes him as seeking at the last for the mercy of the God whom he had so often defied. Others 338 paint him as stubborn to the end, and put the name of the fiend in his mouth as his last words. The other version prevails. The latter version is the one which left its abiding remembrance; it is the one which all men accepted at the time as the true picture of the oppressor whose yoke was broken at that memorable Lammas-tide. Accounts of William’s burial. But the versions which try to assert a repentance for William Rufus at the last moment try also to claim for him a solemn and honourable burial amid the tears of mourning friends. One story goes so far as to place at the head of the assembly the late Bishop of the diocese, Walkelin of Winchester, whose body was already resting in the Old Minster, while the revenues of his see were in the hands of the King. This version gives us a vivid picture of the scene which followed the King’s death.[822] A company of barons gather round the corpse. There were the sons of Richard of Bienfaite, pointedly distinguished, the one as Earl, the other only as Lord.[823] There were Gilbert of Laigle and Robert Fitz-hamon, names familiar to us, and William of Montfichet, a name afterwards well known, but which is not enrolled in Domesday. These lords weep and rend their hair; they beat themselves and wish they were dead; they could never have such another lord. Gilbert of Laigle at last bids them turn from vainly lamenting the lord who could not come back to them to paying the last honours to what was left of him. The huntsmen make a bier; they strew it with flowers and fern; they lay it on two palfreys; they place the corpse on the bier and cover it with the new mantles of Robert Fitz-hamon and William of Montfichet. Then they bear him to the minster of Saint Swithhun, where bishops, 339 abbots, clerks, and monks, a goodly company, are come together. Bishop Walkelin, strange to say, watches by the body of the King till the morning. Then it is buried with such worship, such saying of masses, as no man had ever heard before, such as no man would hear again till the day of doom.

The genuine story. Such is the tale of those who would soften down the story; but the version which bears on it the stamp of truth gives us quite another picture. The King, forsaken by his nobles and companions, lay dead in the forest, as little cared for as his father had been when he lay dead in his chamber at Saint Gervase. Those who had been his comrades in sport hastened hither and thither to their own homes, to guard them against troubles that might arise, now that the land had no longer a ruler. Only a few churls of the neighbourhood, men of the race at whom Rufus had sneered for heeding omens and warnings, were, now that omens and warnings had proved too true, ready to do the last corporal work of mercy to the oppressor. They laid the bleeding body on a rustic wain; they covered it as they could, with coarse cloths, and then took it, dripping blood as it went, to the gates of Winchester. He who had so dearly loved the sports of the woods was himself borne from the woods to the city, like a savage boar pierced through by the hunting-spear.[824] And now took place one of the most wonderful scenes that our history records.[825] Popular canonizations. That history records not a few cases of popular canonization; neither pope nor king could hinder Earl Waltheof and Earl Simon from working signs and wonders on behalf of the 340 folk for whom they had died.[826] Popular excommunication of Rufus. But nowhere else do we read of a popular excommunication. William Rufus, as I have more than once remarked, had never been openly cut off from the communion of the Church. He had died indeed unshriven and unabsolved, but so had many a better man in the endless struggles of those rough days. There was no formal ground for refusing to his corpse or to his soul the rites, the prayers, the offerings, which were the portion of the meanest of the faithful. But a common thought came on the minds of all men that for William Rufus those charitable rites could be of none avail. His foul life, his awful death, was taken as a sign that he was smitten by a higher judgement than that of Popes and Councils. A crowd of all orders, ranks, and sexes, brought together by wonder or pity—​we will not deem that they came in scorn or triumph—​met the humble funeral procession, and followed the royal corpse to the Old Minster. He is buried in the Old Minster without religious rites. The dead man had been a king; the consecrating oil had been poured on his head; his body was therefore allowed to pass within the hallowed walls, and was laid with all speed in a grave beneath the central tower. But in those rites, at once sad and cheerful, which accompany the burial of the lowliest of baptized men, the lord of England and Normandy had no share. No bell was rung; no mass was said; no offerings were made for the soul which was deemed to have passed beyond the reach even of eternal mercy. No man took from the hoard which Rufus had filled by wrong to win the prayers of the poor for him by almsgiving. Men deemed that for him prayer was too late; no scattering abroad of the treasure by the hands of others could atone for the wrong by which the treasure had first been brought together. Many looked on; but few mourned. None wept for him but the mercenaries who received his pay, 341 and the baser partners of his foul vices. They would gladly have torn his slayer in pieces, but he was already far away out of their reach. Thus unwept, unprayed for, a byeword, an astonishment, and a hissing, the Red King lay beneath the pavement of the minster of St. Swithhun. Fall of the tower. 1107. A few years later the tower under which he lay crumbled and fell. Men said that it fell because so foul a corpse lay beneath it.[827]

Portents at William’s death. But as portents had gone before the fall of the Red King, so portents did not wait for the crumbling of Walkelin’s tower to startle men in strange ways with the news that he had fallen. That news, so say the legends of the time, was known in strange ways in far-off places, long before the tidings could have been brought by the utmost speed of man; sooner, it would seem, than the moment when the arrow hit its designed or unwitting mark. Dream of Abbot Hugh of Clugny. July 31, 1100. Already on the last day of July, the holy abbot Hugh of Clugny was able to tell Anselm that he had seen in a dream the King of the English brought before the throne of God, accused, judged, and condemned to eternal damnation.[828] Vision of Anselm’s doorkeeper. August 1. The next day, the night of the kalends of August, a bright youth stood before Anselm’s door-keeper at Lyons, as he strove to sleep, and asked if he wished to hear the news. The news was that the strife between King William and Archbishop Anselm was over.[829] News brought to Anselm’s clerk. August 2. The next day, the day of the King’s death, one of the Archbishop’s clerks was at the matin service, singing with his 342 eyes shut. He felt a small paper put into his hand and a voice bade him read. He looked up; the bearer of the paper was gone; but he read the words, “King William is dead.”[830] Within our own island the news was said to have been spread abroad in yet stranger ways. Vision of Count William of Mortain. August 2. At the same hour when King William went forth to hunt in the New Forest, his cousin Count William of Mortain went forth for his sport also in some of his hunting-grounds in Cornwall. He too found himself by chance alone, apart from any of his comrades. No archer from Poix crossed his path, but a sight far more fearful. A huge goat, shaggy and black, met him, bearing on his back a king—​how was his kingship marked?--black and naked, and wounded in the midst of his breast. The Count adjured the beast in the holiest name to say what all this meant.[831] The power of speech was not lacking to the monster. “I bear,” he answered, “your king, rather your tyrant, William the Red, to his doom. For I am the evil spirit, I am the avenger of the wickedness with which he raged against the Church of Christ, and I brought about his death, at the bidding of the blessed Alban, protomartyr of England, who made his moan to the Lord, because this man sinned beyond measure in the island which he had been the first to hallow.”[832] From what mint this wild tale 343 comes it is needless to add. The house of Saint Alban was only one of thirteen abbeys which the King had kept vacant to receive their revenues.[833] But the other twelve were less rich in that special growth both of legend and of genuine history which adorns the house of the protomartyr.

§ 2. The First Days of Henry.
August 2--November 11, 1100.

Vacancy of the throne. The throne was again vacant; and now came the question which Englishmen knew so well whenever the throne was vacant, Whom should they choose to fill it? Claims of Robert by the treaty of 1091. There was indeed an instrument in being, dated nine years before, by which it had been agreed that, if either Robert or William died without lawful issue, the survivor should succeed to the dominions of his brother.[834] Such claims little regarded. But Englishmen had never allowed their most precious birthright to be thus lightly signed away beforehand. And many men of Norman birth must by this time have put on the feelings of Englishmen on this point as on many others. With the great mass of both races there could have been no doubt at all as to the right man to place upon the vacant throne. Choice confined to the house of the Conqueror. By this time, we may be sure, all thought had passed away of choosing outside the line of the Conqueror; and if such 344 a thought had come into the head of any man, there was no candidate who could have been brought forward. No thought of either Eadgar. The elder Eadgar was far away on his crusade, and no one was likely to think of sending to Scotland to offer the crown to his nephew. His nieces were near at hand; but the thought of a female ruler did not come into men’s minds till the next generation. Within the house of the Conqueror there were two claimants. Choice between Robert and Henry. Robert had whatever right the treaty could give him, a better right undoubtedly than any which he could put forward as the eldest son of his father. But a paper claim of this kind went for little when the man who asserted it was far away, and when, had he been at hand, everything except the letter of the treaty was against him. It went for naught when there, on the very spot, was the man whom every sign marked out for kingship. Claims of Henry; the only son of a king. There among them was the only man—​unless indeed they had gone to Norway to seek for the younger Harold—​who was the son of a crowned King of the English. There was the one man of the reigning house who, born on English soil of the Norman stock, could be looked on as a countryman by Normans and English alike. His personal merits. There was the man who, while his brothers had, in different ways, so deeply misgoverned on their several sides of the sea, had shown, by his wise rule of a small dominion, how far better suited he was than either of them to be entrusted with the rule of a mighty kingdom. The Count of the Côtentin, Henry the Ætheling, Henry the Clerk, was the man whose name spoke alike to English and to Norman hearts. To the Normans he was the son of their conquering Duke, the descendant of the dukes that had been before him, the man who had made one spot of Norman ground prosperous while anarchy tore the rest in pieces. To the English he was their own Ætheling, the one son of their king, their countryman, as they 345 fondly deemed, speaking the tongue of Ælfred, sent to renew the law of Eadward. With such a candidate at their doors, the bit of diplomatic parchment was torn to the winds. No time was to be lost; the land could not go without a king. Speedy election of Henry. The work was done speedily and decisively. The record which tells how the late king died in the midst of his unright, without shrift, without atonement, goes on to say, “On the Thursday was he slain and on the morrow was he buried; and, after that he buried was, the Witan that nigh at hand were his brother Henry to king chose.”[835]

Story of Henry on the day of William’s death. On the day of the Red King’s fall Count Henry was hunting in the New Forest, but not in the same immediate part of it as his brother. The tale ran that the string of his bow broke, that he went to the house of a churl to get wherewithal to mend it. While the bowstring is mending, an old woman of the house asks one of the Count’s companions who his master was. He answers that he is Henry, brother of the king of the land. She tells them that she knows by augury that the King’s brother shall soon be king himself, and bids them remember her words.[836] Henry turns again to his sport, but, as he draws near to the wood, men meet him, one, 346 two, three, then nine and ten, telling him of the King’s death.[837] Henry hastes to Winchester. In this account, he goes in grief to the place where the corpse lay;[838] a more likely version carries him straight to the hoard at Winchester, where, as lawful heir of the kingdom, he demands the keys at the hands of the guard.[839] The tale reminds us of Cæsar and Metellus.[840] William of Breteuil maintains the claim of Robert. Popular feeling for Henry. William of Breteuil withstands the demand. He pleads the elder birth of Robert and the homage which both Henry and himself had done to him. Robert had waged wars far off for the love of God; he was now on his way to take his crown and kingdom in peace.[841] A fierce strife arose; a crowd swiftly gathered, and it was soon seen on which side the feelings of the people lay. Men pressed together from all quarters to swell the company of him who in their eyes was the lawful heir claiming his right. The voice of England—​so much of England as had heard the news—​rose high against the stranger who dared to withstand the English Ætheling, the son of a crowned king born in the land. Thus, four-and-thirty years after the great battle, Englishmen still looked on the son of William Fitz-Osbern, nay on the 347 son of William the Great born to a duke in Normandy, as outlandish men. But the son of William the Great, born to a king in their own land, they claimed as their own countryman. Strengthened by the favour of the people, the Ætheling put his hand on his sword’s hilt; he would endure no vain excuses to keep him out of the inheritance of his father.[842] A stop seems to have been put to this open strife, perhaps by night, perhaps by the coming of the lowly funeral pomp of the fallen king on the Friday morning. Formal meeting for the election. August 3. The unhallowed ceremony over, the Witan came together in a more regular assembly for the formal choice of a king.

The place of their meeting, whether in the minster or in the king’s palace, is not recorded.[843] Division of the assembly; Wherever it was, other voices were now to be heard besides those of the Englishmen of Winchester and the coasts thereof. These called with one voice for their own Ætheling; but the voices of the Norman lords were by no means of one accord. English and Norman supporters of Henry; Some of the immediate companions of the late king had hastened at once on his fall to pledge themselves to the cause of Henry. supporters of Robert. But in the assembly which now came together a strong party, Normans we may be sure to a man, supported the cause of Robert. There are few assemblies of which we would more gladly hear the details than of this, in which the claims of two candidates for the crown were debated, not without 348 fierce strife, but at least without bloodshed. Comparison with the assembly after the death of Cnut. 1035. We are reminded of the assembly which, sixty-five years before, peaceably decided between the claims of Harthacnut and the first Harold.[844] But then the question was settled by a division of the kingdom; now such a thought is not breathed. The Conqueror had made England a realm one and indivisible; it was doubtful to which of his sons it was to pass, but, to whichever it passed, it was to pass whole. The divided kingdom now impossible. Unluckily, when debates concerned the kingdom only, without touching any ecclesiastical question, no Eadmer or William Fitz-Stephen was found to report them. We know only the result. Henry chosen; Henry was chosen, and he largely owed his election to one special friend. influence of Henry Earl of Warwick. This was his namesake Henry, Earl of Warwick, the younger son of the old Roger of Beaumont and brother of the more famous Count of Meulan, soon to be Earl of Leicester. Earl Henry and his wife Margaret of Mortagne bear a good character among the writers of their time, and they seem to have been designed for a more peaceful age than that in which their lot was cast. Chiefly by the influence of Henry of Warwick, Henry of Coutances and Domfront was chosen to the English crown. The work was almost as speedy as the burial of Eadward, the election and the crowning of Harold. Quite as speedy it could not be, when the Gemót of election was held at Winchester, while the precedents of three reigns made it seem matter of necessity that the unction and coronation should be done at Westminster. Before the sun set on the day after the death of Rufus, England had again, not indeed a full king, but an undisputed king-elect.

The hoard opened to the king-elect. Against a king-elect the gates of the hoard could no longer be shut. Not five thousand pounds only, but the whole treasure of the kingdom was now 349 Henry’s. His first act was to stop one of the many sources by which the hoard was filled. One of them was found in the revenues of the vacant bishopric of the city in which they were met. Henry, still only chosen and not crowned, took on him to do one act of royal authority which all men would hail as a sign that the new reign was not to be as the last. He grants the bishopric of Winchester to William Giffard. As the uncrowned Ætheling Eadgar had confirmed the election of Abbot Brand by the monks of Peterborough,[845] so the uncrowned Ætheling Henry bestowed the staff of the see of Winchester on the late king’s Chancellor, William Giffard, doubtless a kinsman of the aged Earl of Buckingham. In his appointment we may perhaps see a wish on the part of a king who was emphatically the choice of the English people to conciliate at once the Norman nobles and the royal officials.[846] But seven years were to pass before the bishop-elect appointed by the king-elect became a full bishop by the rite of consecration. Consecrated 1107; died 1129. And what we should hardly have looked for in a minister of the Red King, some of those years were years of confessorship and exile endured by the new prelate on behalf of an ecclesiastical principle.[847]

But Henry, Ætheling and Count, was not long to remain a mere king-elect. The interregnum ended on 350 the fourth day. Need for hastening the coronation. It was not a time to tarry; it was needful that the land should have a full king at the first moment that the rite of his hallowing could be gone through. It was known that Robert was on his way back from Apulia, and Henry and his counsellors feared lest, if the Duke should show himself in England or even in Normandy before the crown was safe on the new king’s brow, the Norman nobles in England might repent of an election in which it is clear that they had not very heartily agreed.[848] From Winchester therefore Henry went to London with all speed, in company with Count Robert of Meulan, who kept under the new reign the same post of specially trusted counsellor which he had held during the reign of Rufus.[849] Henry crowned at Westminster. August 5, 1100. On the Sunday after that memorable Thursday, Count Henry was admitted to the kingly office in the West Minster. As the Primate was far away, the rite of consecration was performed by the highest suffragan of his province, Maurice Bishop of London.[850] Form of his oath. The form of Henry’s coronation oath seems, like the oaths of his father and his brother,[851] to have had a special reference to the circumstances of the time. It is the oath of a reformer, of a king who has to bring back right after a season of wrong. As the memory of Rufus had been branded in his burial as the memory of no other king ever was, so it was branded no less in the coronation rites of his successor. He swears to undo the evils of his brother’s reign. The new 351 king swore, as usual, to hold the best law that on any king’s day before him stood; but he swore further to God and to all folk to put aside the unright that in his brother’s time was.[852] These weighty promises made, Bishop Maurice of London hallowed Henry to king, and, according to the great law of his father, all men in this land bowed to him and sware oaths and became his men.[853] The work was now done; the diplomatic meshes of nine years before had been broken asunder by the strong will of the English people. England had again a king born on her own soil, a king of her own rearing, her own choosing, King of the English in a truer sense than those who went either before him or after him for some generations. Joy at Henry’s accession. Great was the gladness as the news spread through the length and breadth of the land. The long hopes of the English, the dark sayings of the Britons, were fulfilled in the coming of the king sworn before all things to undo the wrongs of the evil time. The good state was brought back; the golden age had come again; the days of unlaw had passed away; the Lion of Justice reigned.[854]

352 He puts forth his Charter. Before the Sunday of his consecration had passed, King Henry had put the solemn promises which he had made before the altar into the shape of a legal document. That very day he set forth in writing that famous charter which formed the groundwork of the yet more famous charter of John.[855] Its provisions. I have commented on its main provisions elsewhere, and I have tried to show how it at once establishes the new doctrines as to the tenure of land, and promises to reform the abuses to which they had already led.[856] I will now go through its main provisions in order. First, Henry, King of the English, does his faithful people to wit that he has been crowned king by the common counsel of the barons of the whole realm of England.[857] He had found the realm ground down with unrighteous exactions. The Church to be free; For the fear of God and for the love which he has to his people, he first of all makes the Church of God free. He will not sell the Church nor put her to farm.[858] ecclesiastical vacancies. When an archbishop, 353 bishop, or abbot, dies, he will take nothing during the vacancy from the demesne of his church or from its tenants. And he will put away the evil customs with which the realm of England was oppressed, which evil customs he goes on to set down in order.

Reliefs. Secondly, he touches the question of reliefs. The heir of lands held in chief of the crown shall no longer, as was done in his brother’s time, be constrained to redeem his land at an arbitrary price; he shall relieve it by a just and lawful relief.[859] And as the King does by his tenants-in-chief, he calls on his tenants-in-chief to do in their turn by their under-tenants.

Marriage. Thirdly, he comes to the abuse of the lord’s rights in the matter of marriage.[860] He will take nothing for licence of marriage, nor will he meddle with the right of his tenants to dispose of their daughters or other kinswomen, unless the proposed bridegroom should be the King’s enemy. The rights of the childless widow are also secured.

Wardship. The fourth clause touches the case of the widow with children. The mother herself or some fitting kinsman shall have the wardship.[861] And as the King does by his barons, so shall they do in the case of the daughters and widows of their men.

The coinage. Fifthly, the coinage is to be brought back to the state in which it was in the days of King Eadward, and justice is denounced against false moneyers and other retailers of false coin.[862] Sharp justice it was, as we know from the annals of Henry’s reign.

354 Debts and suits. Sixthly, The King forgives all debts owing to his brother, and stops all suits set on foot by him. This is not the first time in which it is presumed that claims made by the crown must be unjust. Henry excepts debts arising out of the ordinary farming of the crown lands; he excepts also anything that any man had agreed to pay for the inheritances or other property of others.[863] Does this refer to property confiscated and sold by the King? Payments which had been made in relief for a man’s own inheritance are specially forgiven.[864]

Wills. Seventhly, he confirms the free right of bequest of personal property. If a man, through warfare or sickness, dies intestate, his wife, children, kinsfolk, and lawful men, are to dispose of his money as they may think best for his soul.[865]

Amercements. The eighth provision goes back a step further than the others. It cancels the practice of both Williams, and goes back in the most marked way to earlier times. If one of the King’s barons or other men incurred forfeiture, he should not bind himself to be at the King’s mercy, as had been done in the time of his father and brother; he should be fined a fixed amount according to custom, as was done in the days of the kings before his father.[866]

Murders. Ninthly, the King forgives all murders up to the day of his coronation. That is to say, he forgives all payments due from the hundreds according to the special 355 law made by his father for the protection of his foreign followers.[867] For the future the payment shall be according to the law of King Eadward.[868]

The forests. Tenthly comes the one illiberal provision in the document. “By the common consent of my barons, I have kept the forests in my own hands, as my father held them.”[869] Here, where the King’s personal pleasure was concerned, we hear nothing of the law of King Eadward or of the practice of yet earlier kings.

Privilege of the knights. The eleventh clause is a remarkable one. It does not speak, like the others, of reforming abuses or of going back to the practice of some earlier time. The King, of his own free will, bestows a certain privilege on one class of his subjects. Knights who held their lands by military service are to be free, as far as their demesne lands are concerned, from all gelds and other burthens. This the King grants to them as his own gift. In return for so great a boon, he calls on them to stand ready with horses and arms for his service and the defence of his kingdom.[870] This boon seems meant for a class whom it was very important for Henry to attach to his interest, the men namely of both races who were of knightly rank but not higher. Many of them were his tenants-in-chief; those who held only of other lords were still his men by virtue of the law of Salisbury. It was his 356 policy to strengthen both classes in opposition to the great nobles whom he knew to be disaffected to him. Effect of the provision. It may not be too much to see in this clause of Henry’s charter an important stage in the developement of an idea which is peculiar to England, the idea of the gentleman who has no pretensions to be a nobleman. Growth of the country gentry. The knights of Henry’s charter are the representatives of the thegns of Domesday, the forerunners of the country gentlemen of later times. Holding a place between the great barons and the mass of the people, and again between the greatest and the smallest of the king’s tenants-in-chief—​largely Norman by descent, but also largely English—​they were well suited to become the leaders of the people, as they worthily showed themselves in our early parliaments. Their existence and importance, as a class separate from the great barons, did much to establish that distinctive and happy feature of English political life, which spread freedom over the whole land, instead of shutting it up within a few favoured towns. The existence of the knight, as something separate from the baron, secured, not only his own freedom, but the freedom of land-owners smaller than himself. It helped to hinder the growth of the hard and fast line which in France divided the gentilhomme from the roturier. Policy of Henry towards the second order. It was part of the policy of Henry to raise particular men of this second rank, while he broke the power of the great barons of the Conquest. This clause shows that it was also his policy to strengthen and to win to his side this class as a class.

The King’s Peace. Of the other three clauses of the charter, the first two are general, the last is temporary. The twelfth clause establishes firm peace through the whole kingdom. The thirteenth expresses that mixture of old things and new which marks the time. The Law of Eadward. Henry lays down the great 357 basis of all later English jurisprudence; “I restore to you the law of King Eadward, with those amendments which my father made with the consent of his barons.”[871] The law of Henry was to be the old law of England, traditionally called by the name of the king to whose days men looked back as to the golden age, The Conqueror’s amendments. but modified by the changes, or rather additions, which were brought in by the few genuine statutes of the Conqueror.[872] Here, as throughout, Henry sets forth his full purpose to reign as an English king, and he carefully puts forward the nature of his kingship as a strict continuation of the kingship of Eadward and of the kings before Eadward. The alleged Laws of Henry. We have seen that the collection which goes by the name of the Laws of Henry is no real code of Henry’s issuing.[873] But it breathes the spirit of this clause and of the other clauses of the charter. It shows how English, in theory at least, the government of Henry was meant to be.

Amnesty. The fifteenth and last clause is a kind of amnesty for any irregularity which might have happened during the short interregnum. Two days and parts of two other days had passed after the peace of King William—​if we may so speak of the days of unlaw—​had come to an end, and before the peace of King Henry had begun. If any man had during that time taken anything which belonged to the King or to any one else, he might restore it without any fine; if he kept it after the proclamation, he was to be heavily fined.[874]

Such was the famous charter of Henry, the document 358 to which Stephen Langton appealed as the birthright of English freemen.[875] Witnesses to the charter. It was witnessed on the day of the crowning by the bishop who had officiated, Maurice of London, by Gundulf Bishop (of Rochester), William Bishop-elect (of Winchester), Henry Earl (of Warwick), Simon Earl (of Northampton), Walter Giffard, Robert of Montfort, Roger Bigod, and Henry of Port.[876] Such names look forward and backward. There is already a Bigod, forefather of the Earl who would neither go nor hang.[877] There is a Simon, and if the likeness of names is merely accidental, the tradition is carried back in another way when we remember that Earl Simon of Northampton was the son-in-law of Waltheof.[878] The fewness of the names may perhaps show that the coronation of Henry, celebrated as it was amidst a burst of popular joy, was but scantily attended by the great men of the realm. The whole thing was almost as sudden as the death of Eadward and the election of Harold, and it did not, like those events, happen while the Witan were actually in session. The summons, or even the news, could have gone through a very small part only of the kingdom. One would be glad to know how men heard in distant shires, in Henry’s own Yorkshire for 359 instance, not only that the oppressor was gone, but that the new king was crowned, pledged by his oath and his seal to give his land a new time of peace and righteousness.

The new King had taken upon himself to undo the evils of his brother’s reign, to bring back the days of Eadward, to reign as an English king. One step towards the restoration of the good state was to fill the churches which his brother had sacrilegiously kept vacant. Appointments to abbeys. The see of Winchester he had filled already; he now began to fill the thirteen abbeys which Rufus had held in his hands on the day of his death. Several were filled before the year was out; two at least were filled on the very day of his coronation. Saint Eadmund’s and Ely. These were the abbey of Saint Eadmund, void by the death of its abbot Baldwin, and that of Ely, which had stood void for seven years since the death of the aged abbot Simeon.[879] The staff of Saint Eadmund was now placed in the hand of Robert, a young monk of Bec, who is described as a son, seemingly a natural son, of Earl Hugh of Chester.[880] That of Ely 360 was given to Richard, another monk of Bec, son of Richard of Clare.[881] In these appointments and in some others we again see the need in which Henry stood of pleasing the great nobles, even at the cost of sinning against ecclesiastical rule. In the case of the appointment to Saint Eadmund’s we are distinctly told that the King’s nomination was made against the will of the monks, and a little later Anselm thought it his duty to remove both Robert and Richard from their offices. Two other prelates, appointed before any long time had passed, are of greater personal fame. Herlwin Abbot of Glastonbury. 1100–1120. The name of Herlwin of Caen, who now received the staff of Glastonbury, lives in local memory as a great builder.[882] Faricius Abbot of Abingdon. 1100–1117. And the Italian Faricius, now placed in the vacant stall of Abingdon, figures among the most renowned abbots of his house, famous amongst his other merits for his skill in the healing art. Oddly enough, his skill in this way kept him back from higher honour. Had Faricius been less cunning in leechcraft, he might have been Archbishop of Canterbury.[883]

But to undo the evils of the days of unlaw and to 361 reign as an English king, something more was needed than to put men of Norman, or even Italian, birth in possession of English abbeys. Towards carrying out the former of these objects, Henry had a criminal to punish and a sufferer to restore. Towards carrying out the second, he had a wife to marry. These three events pretty well filled up the rest of the year. Anselm and Flambard. Henry had two bishops to deal with, who needed to be dealt with in two very different ways. They were between them the living representatives of the late rule of unright. The one was the embodiment of what its agents did, the other was the embodiment of what its victims underwent. The King had promised to put away the unrighteousnesses of his brother and of Randolf Flambard; he began by putting away their surviving author. Flambard imprisoned in the Tower. By the advice of those about him, the Bishop of Durham, the dregs of wickedness, as he is called in the vigorous words of one of our writers, was sent as a prisoner to the Tower of London.[884] This was most likely not the first case, but it is the first recorded case, in which the great fortress of the Conqueror was used as a state-prison for great and notable offenders. Randolf Flambard heads the long list of its unwilling inmates, few of whom better deserved their place there than he did. We hear nothing of any claim of ecclesiastical privilege on behalf of the man who had brought God’s Church low. Flambard was not allowed the advantage 362 of any of the legal subtleties which his predecessor in his see had known how to play off so skilfully, and which, one would think, he could have played off more skilfully still. We do not even hear whether the Bishop of Durham was summoned before any court of any kind. The accounts read rather as if his imprisonment was simply a stretch of the royal power in answer to a popular demand. The Tower may even have been the best place for Flambard’s safety, as it was the best place for the safety of Jeffreys, as understood by Jeffreys himself.[885] The words which say that the act was done by the advice of those about the King are also worthy of notice. The King’s inner council. The King’s inner council must certainly have contained the two Beaumont brothers, the subtle Count of Meulan and the upright Earl of Warwick. It contained Roger the Bigod, more honoured in his descendants than in himself. It contained too some of Henry’s old friends from his Norman fief, Richard of Redvers and Earl Hugh of Chester. We are told that as soon as the news of the death of Rufus was known in Normandy, several of the great men who were there, specially the Earls of Chester and Shrewsbury, hastened to England to acknowledge Henry.[886] We do not find Robert of Bellême among Henry’s inner counsellors; we do find Hugh of Avranches. And to the list we may also most likely add the bishop-elect of Winchester, William Giffard, a tried court official, though 363 one who afterwards showed that he could suffer for a principle. Roger, afterwards Bishop of Salisbury. And a man who was to be more famous than all of them, the patriarch of the long line of English Justiciars and Judges, the poor clerk who was to be presently the all-powerful Bishop Roger of Salisbury, may have already given his voice among men who were as yet so far above him in worldly place.

We are told that the imprisonment of the Bishop of Durham was one of two acts which the new King did in order that nothing might be wanting to the universal joy at his accession.[887] The other was the recall of the Archbishop of Canterbury. We have seen that, in legendary belief at least, the death of Rufus was very speedily made known, if not to Anselm himself, at least to his friends.[888] The news of the King’s death brought to Anselm. The news was presently brought to him in a more ordinary way by two monks, one of Bec, one of Canterbury. His head-quarters were now at Lyons, but he was at the moment staying at a monastery called God’s House.[889] There the messengers met him, and told him that King William was dead. Anselm was overwhelmed at the tidings, and burst forth into the bitterest weeping. Those who stood by wondered; but he told them with a voice broken with sobs that, by the truth which a servant of God ought not to transgress, he would far rather have died himself than that William should die as he had died.[890]

He is invited to come back by his own monks, Anselm now went back to Lyons, where another monk of Canterbury met him, bringing with him a formal letter from the convent of the metropolitan church, praying 364 him, now that the tyrant was dead, to come back without delay to comfort his children.[891] He took counsel with his friend Archbishop Hugh, and by his advice began his return to England, to the great grief, we are told, of the whole city of Lyons and all the lands thereabouts.[892] and by the King. He had not reached Clugny when he was met by a still more important bearer of tidings. A messenger came in the name of the new King of the English and his lords, bearing a royal letter, calling on Anselm to come back, and even blaming his delay in not coming sooner.[893] Importance of Henry’s letter. We have its text, every word of which deserves to be studied, as showing how popular the constitution of England still was in theory, and what was the kind of language which had to be used by one who was called on to play the part of a popular king. Henry, in setting forth his right to the crown, uses more popular language than is to be found in the charter itself. Its popular language. There he spoke of the choice of the barons; in the letter to Anselm he tells the Archbishop that his brother King William is dead, and that he is chosen king by the will of God and by the clergy and people of England.[894] He excuses his hasty coronation in the Archbishop’s absence on the ground of the urgency of the time. He would more gladly have received the blessing at his crowning from him than from any one else; but the necessity of the moment forbade; enemies had arisen against him 365 and against the people whom he had to rule; his barons therefore and his whole people had thought that the coronation could not be delayed. He had therefore, against his will, received the rite from Anselm’s vicars, and he trusted that Anselm himself would not be displeased.[895] Himself and the whole people of England, all whose souls were entrusted to Anselm’s care, prayed him to come back with all speed to give them the benefit of his counsel.[896] He committed himself and the whole people of England to the counsel of Anselm and of those who ought to consult with Anselm for the common good.[897] He would have sent messengers with money of his own for Anselm’s use; only since the death of his brother the whole world is so stirred against the kingdom of England that he could not send any one with any safety.[898] Anselm is earnestly prayed not to pass through Normandy, but to sail from Whitsand and land at Dover. There some of the King’s barons shall be ready to meet him with money which will enable him to pay anything that he may have borrowed.[899] The letter ends in a pious and imploring strain; “Hasten then, father, to come, lest our mother the church of Canterbury, so long tossed 366 and desolate for your sake, should any longer suffer the loss of souls.” Signatures to the letter. The signatures to the letter should be noticed. It is said to be signed by other bishops and barons as well, but the actual names are Gerard Bishop of Hereford, William Bishop-elect of Winchester, William of Warelwast, of whom we have heard so often, Henry Earl of Warwick, in some sort a milder king-maker, Robert Fitz-hamon, and his brother Hamon the dapifer.[900] It is worth notice that the Achitophel of Meulan does not set his name either to this letter or to the charter. Was it to give as national a character as might be to both documents that Robert, as yet only a French count and not an English earl, abstained from putting his name to them? One can fancy no other reason for its absence from the earlier document. By the time the letter to Anselm was sent, the Count of Meulan’s presence may well have been needed in Normandy.

Dangers of the King and kingdom. The dangers which, according to King Henry’s letter, beset the kingdom of England may have been somewhat exaggerated in his picture of them; but they were perfectly real. And no description of them could be better than that which the King gave when he spoke of them specially as dangers which beset the King and the people whom he had to rule. Intrigues of the Norman nobles with Duke Robert. It was most truly the King and the people of England who were threatened by the intrigues of the great Norman nobles with the restored ruler of Normandy—​if ruler he may be called. The effects of the Red King’s death were exactly opposite in Normandy and in England. Renewed anarchy in Normandy on William’s death. In England his reign of unright was at once changed for a rule as strong and more righteous. In Normandy, which had seen the better side of him, where he had brought back peace of some kind after the anarchy of Robert’s first reign, anarchy came 367 back again the moment the news of his death came. Within a week the forces of Evreux and Conches were again in motion, this time indeed not in order to attack one another, but for a joint raid against the lands of the Norman Beaumont, the possessions of the Count of Meulan. The Count, we are told, had abused his influence with Rufus to do both of them some wrongs, which, while Rufus lived, they were unable to avenge.[901] They now took the law into their own hands; so did everybody else. Normandy again became the same confused field of battle, with every man’s hand against every other man, which it had been before William the Red at least did it the service of putting one tyrant in the room of many.[902]

Return of Robert to Normandy. September, 1100. To this disturbed land Duke Robert came back in the month of September, bringing with him his wise and beautiful Duchess from Conversana. They went to Saint Michael in-Peril-of-the-Sea to give thanks for their safe return,[903] and Robert was held to have again taken possession of his duchy. The English Chronicler says that he was received blithely;[904] it was certainly not the interest of those whom a ruler like Henry would have checked in their evil ways to make any opposition to his fresh acknowledgement. His renewed no-government. As soon as Robert was again in his native land, all the energy and conduct which 368 he had shown in the East once more forsook him. The old idleness, the old wastefulness, came back again. He had already squandered all the money which he had received from his father-in-law; luckily the death of Rufus relieved him from the necessity of repaying the sum for which the duchy had been temporarily pledged. It had not been alienated for ever, and Henry had no claim to it during Robert’s life. Henry keeps his own fief. Robert therefore had no difficulty in taking possession—​such possession as he could take—​of all Normandy, except the districts which formed the fief which Rufus had granted to Henry. There, in the lands of Coutances, Avranches, and Bayeux, King Henry’s men still kept the land for him, and withstood all Robert’s attempts to dislodge them.[905] War between Henry and Robert. A border warfare thus began between the brothers almost from the first moment of the reign of Henry, the second reign of Robert. And it would seem that, though there was no open outbreak till the next year, the turbulent Norman nobles in England were, from the very beginning, Intrigues of the Normans in England with Robert. making Robert the centre of their intrigues against a prince whose rule was eminently inconvenient for them.[906] The Lion of Justice was exactly the kind of ruler for whom they did not wish; Robert, who would put no check upon them, was far more to their tastes. Could they only put him on the throne, they might have their own way in all things in England as well as in Normandy. The same schemes which disturbed the second year of the reign of Rufus disturbed the reign of Henry from the very beginning. It was in the midst of all these disorders, directly after Robert’s return, that Henry’s letter was sent to Anselm. 369 It was therefore not without reason that the King warned the Archbishop not to come back through Normandy, but to make his way to Whitsand. Return of Anselm. September 23, 1100. To Whitsand Anselm accordingly came, and crossed safely to Dover a few days before Michaelmas.[907] The whole land from which he had been now nearly three years absent received him with a burst of universal joy.[908]

Connexion of Anselm with Norman history. The chief points in the primacy of Anselm had all along had a singular connexion, by way of coincidence at least, with the changes of things in the Norman duchy. It was when William was making ready for his second Norman expedition that Anselm had first drawn on himself the Red King’s anger by the alleged smallness of his gift towards its cost.[909] It was just before the King set out that the Primate had given him his most memorable rebuke.[910] The return of William was at once followed by the interview at Gillingham[911] and the great assembly at Rockingham. The collection of money for the final occupation of the duchy did not directly lead to the second dispute;[912] but the connexion of time is still marked. Rufus comes back from Normandy to find fault with Anselm’s contingent of troops for the Welsh war;[913] and he does not go again to the mainland for the French 370 and Cenomannian wars till after he has driven Anselm from England. Now that the Red King is dead, everybody seems to come back to his old place. Robert comes back to Rouen; Anselm to Canterbury. And along with them, a third actor in our story, whom, like them, Rufus had dispossessed, came back also. Before the year was out, Maine was again free; Helias had won back city and castle without slash or blow.

Helias returns to Le Mans. As soon as the news of his enemy’s fall reached the Count of Maine in some of those southern possessions from which he had never been driven, he at once gathered a force and marched to Le Mans. But no force was needed; the loyal city received its banished prince with all joy.[914] The King’s garrison holds out in the royal tower. But possession of the city did not give Helias possession of the royal tower; that was still held by the garrison which had been placed in it by the Red King. One of their commanders was a man whom we know already, Walter of Rouen, the son of Ansgar.[915] The castle was well provided with arms and provisions, and all that was needed for defence. Helias calls in Fulk of Anjou. Helias, before undertaking a siege, sought the alliance and help of Fulk of Anjou, whom he acknowledged as over-lord of Maine.[916] Siege of the tower; The two counts sat down before the castle of the Conqueror; but no strictly warlike operations followed. courtesies between besieged and besiegers. Besieged and besiegers seem to have been on the most friendly terms. They sometimes exchanged threats, but more commonly jokes. It was agreed between 371 the two parties that Count Helias should, whenever he chose, put on a white tunic, and should, by the name of the White Bachelor, be received within the tower.[917] Such was the chivalrous confidence shown on both sides that the Count of Maine went in and out as he chose, and much that was sportive and little that was hostile went on between the two parties. Conference between Walter and Helias. At last Walter and his colleague Haimeric[918] opened their minds to Helias. They were in exactly the opposite case to the Confessor when he told the churl that he would hurt him if he could.[919] They explained to their supposed enemy that they could hurt him if they would, but that they had no mind to do so. The ground and the defences of the castle gave them the stronger position. They were not afraid of his artillery, and they could shower down stones and arrows upon him at pleasure.[920] But they had no mind to fight against one for whom they had a deep regard, especially as they did not know for whom they were fighting. The garrison know not whose men they are. They had been the men of the late King William; they did not now know whether they were the men of King Henry of England or of Duke Robert of Normandy. They proposed a truce, during which they might send messengers to both their possible lords; when they got answers, they might settle what to do.[921] A truce is made; they apply to Robert, The messenger came to Robert, and asked him whether he wished to keep the 372 royal tower of Le Mans or not. If he wished to keep it, he must send a strong force to rescue it from its Angevin and Cenomannian besiegers. The Duke, tired, we are told, with his long journeyings and more anxious for the repose of his bed than for the labours of war,[922] is made to give two somewhat contradictory reasons for leaving matters alone. On the one hand, he was satisfied with the duchy of Normandy; on the other hand, the nobles of England were inviting him to come and take the crown of that kingdom. He told them that they had better make an honourable peace with the besiegers. and to Henry. The messenger, without going back to Le Mans, crossed to England, and told King Henry exactly how matters stood. Henry was too busy at the moment to meddle in affairs beyond the sea.[923] He rewarded the messenger, he sent his thanks to the garrison, and left them to their own discretion. When the answer came, a message was sent to the White Bachelor, asking him to visit the tower. The day was now come when he might rejoice in the possession of that for which he had long wished. If he had any money in his hoard, he might now make a fine bargain. He asked what they meant. They told him that he had not conquered them, that they were quite able to withstand him, but that they had no lord to serve and were quite willing to give up the castle to him. They knew his worth and valour; they chose him of their own free will, and made him that day truly Count of Maine.[924] Surrender of the castle. They gave up the 373 castle and all that was in it; Helias of course treated them with all honour, and gave them a strong guard to shelter them from any attacks on the part of the citizens whose houses they had burned the year before.[925]

Last reign of Helias. 1100–1110. Thus, after all struggles, Helias of La Flèche was at last undisputed lord of the Cenomannian city and county. He reigned, in all honour and seemingly in perfect friendship with Bishop Hildebert,[926] for ten years longer. His friendship for Henry. He was the firm friend, and in some sort the vassal, of King Henry of England, and did him good service at Bayeux and at Tinchebrai.[927] Under his second reign Maine seems to have been peaceful; but there must have been some wars and fightings on its borders, as we find Rotrou Count of Perche a prisoner in the Conqueror’s tower.[928] His second marriage. 1109. The year before his death Helias married a second wife, Agnes, the daughter of Duke William of 374 Aquitaine and widow of Alfonso King of Gallicia.[929] But his only child was Eremberga, the daughter of his first wife Matilda of Château du Loir. Helias, as he was the worthiest, was also the last, of the counts who held Maine as a separate sovereignty, and who had for some generations filled no small place in their own quarter of the world. Later fortune of Maine. Maine became the heritage of his daughter, and passed to her husband the younger Fulk, Count of Anjou and King of Jerusalem,[930] and to her son Geoffrey Plantagenet. Thus Maine became an appendage to Anjou, to Normandy, to England. Descent of the Angevin kings from Helias. And every sovereign of England, from the first Angevin king onwards, could boast that he had in his veins, besides the blood of William and Cerdic, the blood, less famous it may be, but assuredly not less worthy, of Helias of Le Mans.

Meeting of Anselm and Henry; beginning of fresh difficulties. Changes in Anselm. Anselm landed in England after Helias had been received at Le Mans, but before he had won back the royal tower. The King and the Primate soon met, and difficulties at once arose between them. The truth is that Anselm had come back, in some things, another man. Or rather the man was the same; his gentleness, his firmness, his perfect single-mindedness, had not changed a whit. But he had learned doctrines at Rome and at Bari which had never been revealed to him at Bec or at Canterbury. Comparison of the dispute between Anselm The tale of Anselm’s dispute with Henry, his second banishment, his second return, goes beyond the prescribed limits of our story, and I have pointed 375 out its leading features elsewhere.[931] and Rufus and the dispute between Anselm and Henry. There is hardly anything in which the difference between William Rufus and Henry the First stands out more strongly. But we are here concerned only with the very earliest stage of the dispute, if indeed it is to be called a stage of the dispute at all. Henry and Anselm met at Salisbury. The King received the Archbishop with joy; he again excused himself by the necessities of the time for having received the royal unction from another prelate. Anselm fully admitted his excuses.[932] There was less agreement between them on the next point which the King started. Henry calls on Anselm to do homage. Henry called on Anselm to do homage to him after the manner of his predecessors, and, in the language of the time, to receive again the archbishopric at his hands.[933]

Phrase of receiving the archbishopric. This last phrase has, I think, sometimes been misunderstood. It has nothing in common with the fresh commissions which the bishops of Edward the Sixth’s day took out after the death of Henry the Eighth. It has nothing whatever to do with the spiritual office; in this phrase, as in so many others, by the “archbishopric” is to be understood simply the temporalities of the see. These were at this moment in the King’s hands through their seizure in the days of Rufus. Since then a new reign had begun; England had a new king; her inhabitants had a new lord; for the archbishop, like any other subject, to become the man of the new king was simply according to the law of Salisbury. For him to receive back his lands was his right; for him to receive them as a fief was no more than he had already done at the hands of the Red King. Anselm had then done 376 without scruple all that he was now asked to do. Effect of the new teaching on Anselm’s mind. But since then the decrees of Piacenza and Clermont, above all the decrees of Bari and Rome, where he had been himself present, had been put forth. And by those decrees the ancient customs of England were condemned, and the censures of the Church were denounced against all who should conform to them. Anselm deemed it his duty, in all single-mindedness, to obey the bidding of Rome rather than the law of England. We may regret, but we can neither wonder nor blame. Anselm, after all, was not an Englishman; he could not help looking at things with œcumenical rather than with insular eyes. He fairly told the king’s counsellors how matters stood; he was bound by the new decrees. If Henry would accept them, there might be perfect peace between them.[934] If not, he himself could be of no use in England; he would have to refuse to communicate with any to whom the King might give bishoprics or abbeys in the ancient fashion; he could not stay in England on the terms of disobeying the Pope. He asked of those to whom he spoke that the King would consider the matter, and tell him his decision, that he might know which way to turn himself.[935]

Difficulties of Henry. Henry was now, at the very beginning of his reign, in a great strait. He was naturally unwilling to give up one of the chief flowers of his crown, one which had been handed down from all the kings before him.[936] To 377 give up the investiture of the churches and the homage of their prelates would be to give up the half of his kingdom. On the other hand, he felt that it would not do to quarrel with the Archbishop at the very moment of his return to England, or to allow him to leave England while he himself was not yet firm on his throne. He feared—​doing Anselm, we may be sure, utter injustice—​that, if Anselm left England, he might go to Robert, and take up his cause. It would be perfectly easy, as he knew very well, to persuade Robert to accept the new decrees. And on those terms, Anselm might, so the words run, make Robert King of England[937]—​that is, he might bestow on him a consecration more regular than that which Henry had himself received from the Bishop of London. A truce made till Easter; the Pope to be asked to allow the homage. It was therefore agreed on both sides to make a truce or adjournment of all questions till the next Easter. Meanwhile both King and Archbishop should send messengers to the Pope, to pray him so to change his decrees as to allow the ancient customs of the kingdom to stand.[938] No personal scruple on Anselm’s part. We here see, on the one hand, that Anselm still had no kind of scruple of his own about the homage and investiture; it was with him simply a question of obedience to a superior. Let Paschal withdraw the decrees of Urban, and Anselm was perfectly ready to do by Henry as earlier archbishops had done by earlier kings. Effects of the reign of Rufus. On the other hand, we see how the temporal power had been weakened 378 and the spiritual power strengthened through the late King’s abuse of the temporal power. Rufus had given the foreign dominion a moral advantage, of which Henry now felt the sting. Men had come to look on the King as the embodiment of wrong, and on the Pope as the only surviving embodiment of right. Abasement of the kingly power. The King of the English was driven to ask the Bishop of Rome to allow the ancient laws of England to be obeyed. True this was while the King’s hold on his crown was still weak; when his position was more assured, he took a higher tone; but it marks the change which had happened that an English king, and such a king as Henry, should be driven so to abase himself even for a moment.

The truce agreed to; provisional restoration of the Archbishop’s temporalities. By the terms of the truce, things were to remain as they were for the present. Anselm was to be restored to his temporalities without homage or other conditions; but, if Paschal could not be brought to yield on the matter of the decrees, they were to pass to the King again.[939] Anselm looked on all this as useless; he knew the temper of the papal court better than the King and his friends did. But he agreed for the sake of peace; he wished to avoid the slightest suspicion of any wish to disturb the King in the possession of his kingdom.[940] The truce was therefore agreed to; the messengers were sent, and Anselm, when the court broke up, went once more in peace to his metropolitan city or to some other of his many houses.

But, besides settling the affairs of his Church and 379 realm, Henry had other more distinctly domestic and personal duties to discharge. Reformation of the court. He had to reform the household which he had inherited from his brother; he had also—​so we are told that the bishops and others strongly pressed upon him—​to reform his own life.[941] Personal character of Henry. The vices of Henry were at least not the vices of Rufus; inclination as well as duty led him to cleanse the court of its foulest abuses, to make a clean sweep of the works of darkness.[942] But it was only in a wholly abnormal state of things that Henry the First could have been hailed as a moral reformer. Henry’s mistresses and children. His private life was very unlike the life of his father. Unmarried, like both of his brothers till the recent marriage of Robert, he was already the father of several children by mothers of various nations. Robert Earl of Gloucester. Of his eldest and most famous son, Robert, afterwards the renowned Earl of Gloucester, the mother is unknown; but she appears to have been French.[943] Henry son of Nest. The British Nest, of whom we have often heard, the daughter of Rhys ap Tewdwr, had, before her marriage with Gerald of Windsor, borne a son to Henry who bore his own name.[944] Matilda Countess of Perche. Two of his mistresses bore the characteristic English name of Eadgyth. One was the mother of Matilda Countess of Perche, who died in the White Ship;[945] the other, who afterwards, like Nest, obtained an honourable marriage with the younger Robert of Ouilly, Robert son of Eadgyth. was the mother of a Robert who plays 380 a part in the civil wars forty years later.[946] Henry’s daughter by Isabel of Meulan. His birth therefore most likely came long after the times of which we are speaking, as did the birth of the daughter whom Henry is said to have had by a woman of a Norman house of the loftiest rank, Isabel, daughter of his chief counsellor, Robert Count of Meulan and Earl of Leicester.[947] Richard son of Ansfrida. The list of Henry’s natural children is not yet exhausted—​we have no account of the mother of the valiant Juliana; but the birth of one who is second in personal fame to Earl Robert of Gloucester had already taken place, and it is connected with a characteristic story which is worth telling. Story of his mother and her husband Anskill. A wealthy man of Berkshire, Anskill by name, was one of the chief tenants of the church of Abingdon. As far as his name is concerned, he might be Norman; he might be English or rather Danish. His enemies brought a charge against him to the Red King, who caused him to be kept in so sharp a prison that before long he died of his hardships.[948] He left a widow, whose name is given as Ansfrida, and a son named William. The King then seized on the manor of Sparsholt, which Anskill had held of the abbey, and gave it—​or perhaps only its wardship—​to one of his officers named Toustain, without reserving any service to the Church.[949] By this grant both 381 the young William and the church of Abingdon were wronged. For the wardship of its tenant would even, by Flambard’s own law, go to the abbey. The widow, by what instinct we are not told, betook herself to Henry to ask his intercession with his brother the King. Young William did not get back his land, which was recovered for the abbey at a later time. Henry’s son Richard. But his mother presently gave him a half-brother, Richard, who afterwards distinguished himself in the French wars, and died in the White Ship.[950] The interest of Henry, if it did not get back Sparsholt for its lawful tenant, was enough to secure for his new mistress the safe possession of her dower, and to provide for her legitimate son by an advantageous marriage.[951] Ansfrida 382 herself was in the end buried in the minster of Abingdon with honours of which Saint Hugh would hardly have approved, and her lawful son did not fail to give gifts to the place of his mother’s burial.[952]

Henry is exhorted to marry. Henry then, if he was fully entitled to reform the worst abuses of his brother’s household, stood in some need of reformation himself. His counsellors exhorted him to mend matters by giving himself a wife and his kingdom a queen. He had not far to look for one when policy and inclination led him the same way. He seeks for Eadgyth daughter of Malcolm. Notwithstanding all his irregularities, we are told that he had long loved Eadgyth or Matilda, the daughter of Malcolm, and it is further implied that his love was returned on her part.[953] It is not clear where she was at this moment, but seemingly no longer with her aunt Christina in her monastic shelter at Romsey.[954] She was now about twenty years old, some say of remarkable beauty, at all events of a pleasing face, and mistress of an amount of learning which must have equalled or exceeded that of her clerkly lover.[955] She had no great 383 worldly possessions;[956] Policy of the marriage. but she came of a stock which made a marriage with her the most politic choice which the King could make at the moment. Eadgyth looked on as English. Eadgyth had lived so long in England that men seem to have forgotten that she was the daughter of Malcolm, and to have remembered only that she was the daughter of Margaret. As such she was held to be of the right kingly kin of England,[957] marked out as the most fitting bride for a king whose purpose was to reign as an Englishman. True she came of the blood of Cerdic only by the spindle-side, and by the spindle-side Henry came of the blood of Cerdic himself.[958] Henry’s descent from Ælfred. But no one was likely to remember that a daughter of Ælfred was a remote ancestress of Henry’s mother, while everybody remembered that Eadgyth was the daughter of Margaret, the daughter of Eadward, the son of Eadmund, the son of Æthelred, the son of Eadgar. It was for the English King to take an English Lady, and to hand on the English crown to kings born in the land and sprung of the true blood of its ancient princes.

So thought the people; so thought the King; so 384 seemingly thought the daughter of Malcolm herself. Objections made to the marriage. But not a few mouths were opened to denounce the marriage as contrary to the laws of the Church. Eadgyth, they alleged, was a consecrated virgin, and a marriage with her would be sacrilege. Eadgyth said to have taken the veil. She had, they said, taken the veil at Romsey, when she was dwelling there with her aunt Christina.[959] She appealed to the Archbishop, to whom all looked to decide the matter.[960] She told her story, as we have already heard it, and called on Anselm to judge her cause in his wisdom. Anselm holds an assembly to settle the question. The Archbishop called together at Lambeth—​the manor of his friend the Bishop of Rochester—​an assembly of bishops, abbots, nobles, and religious men, before whom he laid the matter, and the evidence bearing on it.[961] There was the evidence of the maiden herself; there was the evidence of two archdeacons, William of Canterbury and Humbald of Salisbury, whom Anselm had sent to the monastery, and who, after inquiries among the sisters, reported that there was no ground to think that Eadgyth had ever been a veiled nun.[962] The Archbishop then left the assembly, and the rest, who are spoken of as the Church of England gathered into one place,[963] debated the question in his absence. Much stress was laid on the case of those women who, in the first days of the Conquest, had sought shelter in the cloister from 385 shame and violence, but who had not taken religion upon themselves.[964] Eadgyth declared free to marry. The late Archbishop had declared them free to marry, and the judgement of the assembly was that the same rule applied to the case of the daughter of Malcolm.[965] Anselm came back, and the debate and the decision were reported to him. He declared that he assented to the judgement, strengthened as it was by the great authority of Lanfranc.[966] Then Eadgyth herself was brought in, and heard with a pleased countenance all that had passed.[967] She then offered to confirm all that she had said by any form of oath that might be thought good. She did not fear that any one would disbelieve her; but she wished that no occasion should be left for any one to blaspheme.[968] Anselm told her that no oath was needed; if any man out of the evil treasure of his heart should bring forth evil things, he would not be able to withstand the amount and strength of the evidence by which her case was proved.[969] He gave her his blessing,[970] and she went forth, we may say, Lady-elect of the English.

Other versions of the story. In another version, also contemporary but not resting on the same high authority, things are made to take 386 another turn. The King bids Anselm perform the marriage rite between himself and the nameless daughter of Malcolm, called in this version David.[971] Anselm made to object. Anselm refuses on the ground that, having worn the veil of a nun, she belonged to a heavenly, not to an earthly bridegroom. The King says that he has sworn to her father to marry her, and that he cannot break his oath, unless it can be shown by a canonical judgement that the marriage is unlawful.[972] Anselm is therefore bidden to summon the Archbishop of York, and the rest of the bishops, abbots, and other ecclesiastical persons of all England, to come together and examine the matter.[973] Story of Rufus and the Abbess. The Abbess is brought before them, and she tells the story of the Red King’s visit to her flowers.[974] The King bids Anselm call on the synod for its judgement. Decision in favour of the marriage. The assembled fathers debate; canons are read, and it is judged that the maiden is free to marry, chiefly on the ground that, if she was veiled, it was while she was under age and without her father’s consent.[975] Anselm’s scruples and warning. The King asks Anselm whether he objects to this decision; Anselm says that he has no fault to find with it. Henry then asks Anselm to marry them at 387 once. Anselm pleads that, though the judgement is right, yet, as the maiden had somehow or other worn the veil, it were better that she should not marry; there were others, daughters of kings and counts, one of whom the King might marry instead. Henry still insists; Anselm performs the ceremony; but with a warning that England would not rejoice in the offspring of the marriage.[976] The fate of the White Ship and the wars of Stephen and Matilda are quoted as a proof of Anselm’s prophetic power.

The tone of this story is quite unlike that of the more trustworthy version; yet there is perhaps no actual contradiction between them. But the foreign writer stumbles greatly in his names and pedigrees, and writes by the light of forty years later. Later fables. We may see in his version the beginnings of the wild stories of later times, where Eadgyth is pictured as forced into the marriage against her will, and even as devoting her future offspring to the fiend.[977]

Marriage of Henry and Eadgyth. November 11, 1100. She takes the name of Matilda. A few days later, on the feast of Saint Martin, the marriage was celebrated by Anselm, and Matilda, as we must now call her, was hallowed to Queen.[978] It is only 388 a guess that this was the time of her change of name. One hardly sees its motive; it was Henry’s policy at this moment to be as English as possible, and the name of his bride was one of the few English names which the Normans now and then adopted. Could it be Henry’s abiding reverence for his mother which made him wish to place another Matilda on his throne? Be this as it may be, the new Queen bears no other name. The wedding and coronation. All the great men of the kingdom and a crowd of folk of lower degree came together to her wedding and crowning. At the door of the West Minster, as the multitude thronged towards the King and his bride, the Archbishop stood on high and harangued the people. Anselm’s speech. He told them how the whole matter had been settled, and on what grounds. And he once again called on any one who had aught else to say against the marriage to stand forth and say it.[979] The only answer was a general shout of assent to the judgement and the marriage.[980] The rite was done. Objections not wholly silenced. But there were still some who blamed Anselm for the course that he had taken;[981] and years afterwards the validity of Matilda’s marriage, and the consequent legitimacy of her children, was called in question by those whose political objects it suited to do so.[982]

It is somewhat singular that Matilda practically stepped into the place of the Lady whose name she had forsaken. There had been no queen constantly living in England since the elder Eadgyth. The elder Matilda had been but little in England; William Rufus had been pre-eminently the “bachelor king.” 389 Novelty of a queen. It must have been a wonderful change when the riot and foul excess of the Red King’s court gave way to a household presided over by a devout and virtuous woman. Regular life of the King and Queen. For a time at least Henry as well as his wife lived a sober and regular life. As a generation back the strict conduct of Henry’s father had called forth the jeers of the profligate scoffers of his day, so now the profligate scoffers of another generation jeered at the decorous court of Henry and Matilda, “Godric and Godgifu.” and mocked the English King and his English Lady by the characteristic English names of Godric and Godgifu.[983] 1100–1118. The married life of Matilda reached over eighteen years only; Children of the marriage. William; of her two children, both born early in her wedlock, she did not live to see her son, the Ætheling William, cut off in the White Ship; she did live to see her daughter of her own name raised to a place which had never before been filled by a daughter of England,the Empress Matilda. sitting as a crowned Augusta in the seat of Livia and Placidia.[984] After a while Henry seems to have fallen back into his old courses; Later life of Henry and Matilda. some at least of his natural children must have been born after his marriage; and the same kind of language which was used about his first marriage was used about his second.[985] The Queen, for whatever reason, ceased to follow the endless wanderings of the court; and lived in all royal pomp at 390 Westminster.[986] Her character. Her piety rivalled that of her mother; it was shown in all the usual forms of the time; and her brother David, not an undevout prince, went so near to a scoff as to ask his sister whether King Henry would care to kiss the lips which had kissed the ulcers of the lepers.[987] Her boundless liberality to the poor, to clerks, scholars, and strangers of every kind, was perhaps not the less amiable for a manifest touch of vanity.[988] We read that the means for her lavish bounty in this way had to be found by harsh exactions from her tenants; but, here as ever, the blame is laid upon the reeves rather than on their mistress.[989] “Good Queen Mold.” The memory of “good 391 Queen Mold” was long cherished, and we can hardly doubt that her presence by Henry’s side did much to help the fusion of Normans and English in her husband’s kingdom.

Two ecclesiastical events wind up the last year of the eleventh century. Guy of Vienne comes as Legate. One of them showed that there were limits to Anselm’s submission to the see of Rome. Guy Archbishop of Vienne came into England, professing to be papal Legate throughout all Britain. Legates had been seen in England before, but not with such a commission as superseded the authority of an acknowledged Primate. Earlier Legates. They had come both under Eadward and under William the Great; but they came in the doubtful days of Stigand, and the last time they came to set Stigand finally aside.[990] One Legate had come under William the Red; but it was to bring the pallium to Anselm.[991] Guy’s pretensions not acknowledged. But now all men were amazed at a foreign prelate claiming to exercise powers which had hitherto been held to belong to none but the Patriarch of the island world.[992] Legates waxed mightier before Henry’s reign was out;[993] this time Guy went back as he came. We get no details; but we read that no one acknowledged him as Legate, and that he was not able to discharge any legatine function.[994]

Death of Archbishop Thomas. November 18, 1100. The other event was the death of Archbishop Thomas of York, after an episcopate of thirty years. He died a few days after the King’s marriage, leaving a good name 392 behind him as the honoured rebuilder of his church and legislator of its chapter.[995] This was the first prelacy which had fallen vacant since Henry’s accession. To deal with the vacant see after his brother’s fashion would have been in the teeth of all the new King’s promises. He therefore soon gave the church of York another shepherd. But his choice fell on a man of a character widely different from either Thomas or Anselm. The new archbishop was Gerard Bishop of Hereford, of whom we have already heard a good deal, and heard some things that are passing strange.[996] The see of York given to Gerard of Hereford. Archbishop 1100–1108. He held the throne of the northern metropolis for eight years, and, when he died, he had some difficulty in finding a resting-place in his own minster.[997]

§ 3. The Invasion of Robert.
January-August, 1101.

Likeness of the years 1088 and 1101. The first year of the twelfth century was a stirring time for England, though it was not crowded with great and striking events like the last year of the eleventh. It reads like an earlier chapter of our story coming over again. We have now again to tell well nigh the same tale which we told at the beginning of the reign of Rufus. Again we have a Norman rebellion on English soil; again we have a Norman invasion; again the 393 English people cleave steadily to the king whom they have chosen; again the Primate and the bishops in general take the side which was at once the side of the King and of the people. Action of the Bishop of Durham, And, as if to make the likeness square in the smallest details, a bishop set free from bonds is the foremost stirrer up of mischief, and again three sons of Earl Roger are the most active leaders of the revolt. of the sons of Earl Roger. The part of Bishop Odo of Bayeux in the former rebellion is in the present played to some extent by Bishop Randolf of Durham; the part of Robert of Bellême is played again in more than all its fulness by Robert of Bellême himself. Plots to give the crown to Duke Robert. There is again a party eager to place the Duke of the Normans on the throne of England; but this time that party is balanced by another which in the other tale does not appear till later, A party in Normandy for Henry. a party eager to place the King of the English in the ducal chair of Normandy.

Character of Robert and Eadgar. Robert, like his chosen companion Eadgar, could play an active and honourable part anywhere save in his own country. Both alike show to far greater advantage in Palestine and in Scotland than in Normandy or in England. The seeming inconsistency is not hard to understand. Neither of them perhaps lacked mere capacity—​Robert certainly did not. And Robert most certainly did not lack generous feeling. But both lacked that moral strength without which mere feeling and mere capacity can do very little. Such men can act well and vigorously now and then, by fits and starts, when some special motive is brought to bear upon them. They can act better on behalf of others than they can on behalf of themselves, because, when they act for others, a special motive is brought to bear upon them. Their own cause they may, if they like, neglect or betray—​forgetting that, when a prince betrays his own cause, he commonly betrays the cause of many 394 others; but it is a point of honour not to betray or to neglect the cause of another which is entrusted to them. Thus it was that both Robert and Eadgar, who could do nothing for themselves, could do a good deal for others, whether as counsellors, as negotiators, or as military commanders. Robert as crusader. The crusade had brought out all Robert’s best qualities; but we have seen that, even on the crusade, he had yielded to any great and sudden temptation. Amidst so many noble and valiant comrades, he could not shrink from the siege or the battle; and, once brought up to the siege or the battle, he showed himself, not only a daring soldier, but a skilful captain. But at Laodikeia he had been the same man that he was at Rouen. His relapse on his return to Normandy. Now that he was again at Rouen, Antioch and Jerusalem passed away; it was all Laodikeia with him. The dream of winning the English crown floated before his eyes, and at last stirred him up to action. His renewed misgovernment. Otherwise he sank into his old listlessness, his old lavishness, his old vices and follies of every kind. It may be an overdrawn picture which paints him as lying in bed till noon, and neglecting to attend mass, because he had no clothes to go in; the base persons of both sexes who surrounded him had carried them all off. Some odd chance that happened once must have been spoken of as a habit.[998] But there is no ground for doubting the general description of Robert’s misgovernment or rather no-government, both before he went to the crusade and after he came back from it.

Parties in England and Normandy. It may at first sight seem a paradox that there should be at the same moment a party in Normandy anxious to hand over the duchy to Henry and a party 395 in England anxious to hand over the kingdom to Robert. But quiet men in Normandy, who wished their country to enjoy some peace, would naturally wish to place it under the rule of Henry, while the kind of men who, at the accession of Rufus, had wished to bring Robert into England would equally wish to bring him now. Henry’s strict rule distasteful to the Norman nobles. They had perhaps already found out that where Henry reigned none might misdo with other, and to misdo with other was to a large part of the Norman nobles the very business of life.

Their plots against him. The greater part of those nobles were now beginning to plot against the King. The estates which most of them held in Normandy gave them special opportunities for so doing, by giving them excuses for going to and fro between England and Normandy. Robert of Bellême and his brothers. Of this they were not slow to take advantage. The three sons of Earl Roger of Shrewsbury, Robert of Bellême and his brothers Arnulf and Roger, were busy in this work; Robert of Pontefract. Ivo of Grantmesnil. so was Robert the son of Ilbert of Lacy, beginning to be known as Robert of Pontefract; so was Ivo of Grantmesnil, son of the deceased Sheriff of Leicestershire, himself best known as the rope-dancer of Antioch. Earl Walter. And we are somewhat surprised to find on the same list, now at the very end of his long life, the aged Walter Giffard, lord of Longueville and Earl of Buckingham. All these were in secret communication with the Duke.[999] But none of them, Robert of Bellême least of all, was inclined to serve the Duke or any other lord for naught. Duke Robert’s grants to Robert of Bellême. Duke Robert distributed castles and lands among them, and promised to give them greater gifts still when he should be king of England.[1000] To Robert of Bellême he granted the forest of Gouffers, 396 and the castle of Argentan of whose siege we heard seven years before;[1001] he further confirmed him in a claim very dear to the house of Bellême, by granting him the ducal right of advowson over the bishopric of Seez.[1002] He gives back Gisors to Pagan. And, strangest of all, the Duke gave back the fortress of Gisors, the bulwark of his duchy, to its former holder Theobald or Pagan, because he had once hospitably entertained him.[1003] Did not Robert of Bellême ask that, if his own master-piece of engineering was to pass out of the hands of the prince, it should pass into no hands but his own? Thus Duke Robert’s way of making ready for the conquest of England was to squander the resources of Normandy. Every inch of his territory, every stone of his fortresses, stood ready to be granted away, almost to any one who would take the trouble to ask for them.

Christmas Gemót at Westminster. 1100–1101. Things were thus brewing through the winter without any open outbreak. At Christmas King Henry wore his crown at Westminster.[1004] That was a better place than Gloucester for watching movements beyond the sea. And soon after the feast and assembly the cause of Robert was strengthened by an unexpected helper, whose coming seems to have put a new life into his supporters. Escape of the Bishop of Durham. The Bishop of Durham, Randolf Flambard, suddenly showed himself in his native land of 397 Normandy. We saw him but lately shut up, to the joy of all men, in the Conqueror’s Tower. His keeper, William of Mandeville, may have been negligent; at all events his captivity was easy.[1005] The King clearly did not mean it to be harsh, as he allowed him two shillings a day for his keep. Flambard, with all his sins, was a pleasant and liberal companion, and he kept many friends, even in his fall.[1006] He was allowed the company of those friends; with them he made merry in his prison, and gave costly banquets to them and to his keepers.[1007] At last the means of escape were given to him; a rope was brought hidden in a vessel of water or wine. The Bishop made a feast for his keepers, and plied them well with the wine. When they were snoring in their drunken sleep, Flambard tied his rope to the small column which divided one of the double windows usual in the architecture of his day.[1008] Even at such a moment, he did not forget that he was now a bishop; 398 he took his pastoral staff with him, and began to let himself down by the rope. But he had forgotten another, and at that moment a more useful, part of the episcopal dress. He left his gloves behind; so his hands suffered sadly in his descent. Moreover the Bishop was a bulky man and his rope was too short; so he fell with a heavy fall, and lay groaning and half dead.[1009] But his friends and followers were at the foot of the Tower ready to help him. How they came there it is not easy to see, unless there was treason in the fortress; they should surely have been kept out by the wall with which Rufus, at such cost to his people, had surrounded his father’s Tower.[1010] So however the tale is told. The Bishop’s faithful helpers had got good horses ready and his treasure all safe. They set sail for Normandy; Flambard went in one ship, his witch mother with the treasure in another. Adventures of his mother. This second vessel was seized by pirates and the treasure carried off; the old woman and the crew reached Normandy despoiled and sad.[1011] His reception by Duke Robert; he stirs him up against Henry. Flambard made his way to the court of Duke Robert, became his chief counsellor, and worked hard to stir him up by every means to an invasion of England.[1012]

399 Easter Gemót. April 21, 1101. Meanwhile King Henry held the Easter feast at Winchester. The questions between the King and Anselm adjourned. The only recorded business of the meeting is that, as the messengers who had been sent to the Pope had not come back, the matters in dispute between the King and the Archbishop were adjourned till their return.[1013] But meanwhile most of the chief men of Norman birth in England were, of their mickle untruth, the Chronicler says, plotting with the Duke against the King.[1014] Growth of the conspiracy. Any excuse was enough for treason; if Henry refused to make lavish grants after the manner of his brother, the refusal made another traitor.[1015] Instead of a list of the conspirators, we get a list of the few who remained faithful. The few faithful. These were the two Beaumont brothers, Roger Bigod, Henry’s old friend Richard of Redvers, and the lord of Gloucester and Glamorgan, Robert Fitz-Hamon.[1016] To these we ought surely to add old Earl Hugh; but he was drawing near to the end of his days. The rest sent secret messages to Robert, and mocked openly at Godric and Godgifu. It would seem however that there was as yet no open rebellion on English ground.

Whitsun Gemót. June 9, 1101. Popular character of the assembly. The King next kept the Whitsun feast; the place is not mentioned, but it was doubtless Westminster; and the malecontents do not seem to have followed the old tactics of refusing to appear in the assembly. This Pentecostal gathering is spoken of as a vast assemblage both of the nobles and of the people in general.[1017] In an 400 assembly held close to London the popular element would, as in the days of Stephen, be better able to make itself felt than at Winchester and Gloucester. Advice of Robert of Meulan. And it was on the popular element that the King relied. We are told that his subtle counsellor from Meulan taught him that, at such a moment as this, he must be lavish of promises, even to the length of promising London or York, if they should be asked for.[1018] He must promise now, and, when peace comes again, he may take all back again.[1019] In the assembly, King and nobles met with mutual suspicions. Mediation of Anselm. The common voice of all ranks put Anselm forward as the mediator between the nation and its sovereign. It was indeed his constitutional place, a place which in the late reign Anselm had never been able to fill, but in which he was now called on to act, and in which he acted honourably and vigorously. Renewed promise of good laws. A second promise of good laws was the result.[1020] Parties were now 401 divided very much as they had been at the beginning of the reign of Rufus. Anselm played the part of Lanfranc; The Church and the people for Henry. the bishops were all loyal; the English people clave unswervingly to the king of their own choice, the king born on their own soil, the king who could speak to the hearts of Englishmen in the English tongue. They, we are emphatically told, knew nothing of the rights of any other prince.[1021] They were for the English king, son of a king; they had no part or lot in the foreign duke, son of a duke. And it is implied that, not only the English by descent, but that men of all classes and all races, except the few great men who had a vested interest in anarchy, were with one consent steady in their loyalty to the King and ready to fight for him against any invader. England united against Norman invasion. There was again an united nation, a nation perhaps more united than it had been five-and-thirty years before, ready to withstand the new, the last attempt, at a Norman conquest of England. If a few earls and great lords played a game of yet more active treason than had been played by Eadwine and Morkere, they were not able, as Eadwine and Morkere had been able, to keep back any part of the force of England from joining the national standard.

Importance of the campaign of 1101. The campaign which now followed, if campaign is the right word when armies merely look at one another without fighting, marks an important stage in the process which it was the work of Henry’s reign finally to carry out, Fusion of Normans and English under Henry. Last opposition of Normans and English. the fusion of Normans and English in England. The siege of Rochester was the last time when 402 Normans and Englishmen, by those names, met in arms as enemies on English ground. Now, at Pevensey and at Portsmouth, we for the last time hear of Englishmen on English ground spoken of in such a way as to imply that there were other dwellers in England who were not English. In the first year of Henry such language was still true; to go no further, the chief counsellor of the King was the man who had been the first to break down the English barricade on Senlac. Long before the last year of Henry, the men who had fought on Senlac on either side had passed away; the sons and grandsons of the conquerors had put on the nationality of the conquered. Warfare of 1102. The struggle which did not come to blows this year did come to blows in the next; the fighting which was found not to be needed against Robert of Normandy was found to be needed against Robert of Bellême. Peace of King Henry. 1102–1135. Then for thirty-three years there was peace in the island, though there was often war on the mainland. Englishmen believed that the old score was wiped out when they won Normandy for an English king; and the belief, if partly a delusion, was not wholly so. English feeling about Tinchebrai. 1106. On English ground the distinction of races died out during the long peace of Henry; when the anarchy came, men tore one another in pieces on other pretences. But now Englishmen still go forth to withstand a Norman invasion, Englishmen marked off by the English name, not only from men of other lands, but also, though for the last time, from men who were not English within the English kingdom itself.

Meanwhile the exhortations of the Bishop of Durham had had their effect on the sluggish mind of the Norman Duke. Robert’s fleet. July, 1101. In the course of July the fleet which was to win England for Robert was ready at Tréport.[1022] The 403 ducal navy bore the force that was designed for the new conquest, horsemen, archers, and foot-soldiers of other kinds. King Henry meanwhile brought together the hosts of England. Henry’s levy. As of old, the fyrd flocked together from all parts, pressing on with a good will to the defence of England and her King. Henry now, like his brother thirteen years before, had on his side the two great moral powers, the people and the Church. Anselm and his contingent. There was no need this time to throw scorn on the men who came as the military contingent of the see of Canterbury. With them Anselm came in person,[1023] not surely to wield weapons with his own hands; but doubtless to bring about peace, if so he could, and, failing that, to exhort his flock to the last and most terrible of duties, to fight without flinching in a righteous war, when peace has become hopeless. It was not Anselm’s first sight of warfare; but he might now learn the difference between Duke Roger’s war of aggression against Capua, and the war which the English people were ready to wage for their native land and their native king.[1024] The English at Pevensey. The King and the Primate, the national force ready to act at their bidding, the stranger nobles ready to betray them to the 404 invader, gathered once more on the old battle-ground of Pevensey.[1025] There two invading Norman fleets had already shown themselves, with widely different results from their invasions. William Count of Mortain. The third was looked for on the same spot, perhaps all the more because of the very doubtful faith of the new lord of Pevensey, Count William of Mortain. For that same reason it was all the more needful to secure such a post against the invaders. At Pevensey then, under the ancient walls and the new donjon, the army came together, waiting for the coming of the hostile fleet. But Henry took means to check them on their voyage. The English fleet sent out. He sent forth his ships to watch the coasts, to watch the enemy and to hinder them from landing.[1026] But here we are met with a somewhat strange fact. Some of the crews desert to Robert. This is not the first time that we have found Englishmen at sea less faithful than Englishmen on land. Tostig found allies among the sailors who were sent to meet him;[1027] so now did Robert. Some of the crews threw aside their allegiance, joined the invaders, and guided them to land. Alleged agency of Flambard. This piece of treason is attributed to the craft and subtlety of the Bishop of Durham, perhaps only, as in the case of Eadric, from the general belief that, whatever mischief was done, he must have been the doer of it.[1028]

405 Coming of Robert and his fleet. This time the landing-place was not Pevensey, but it was a kindred spot. One writer contrasts Robert’s invasion with that of his father. William made his way into the land by his own strength, Robert only by the help of traitors.[1029] Comparison with his former attempt. But it might have been only fair to contrast Robert’s former attempt, when he sent others to land at Pevensey, but made no attempt to land anywhere himself, and this present attempt, when he came in his own person and actually landed on English ground. And the first and the third invasion have one point of likeness as distinguished from the second. The second invasion, that in the days of Rufus, was beaten back, because the attempt was made on Pevensey when Pevensey was well defended. Comparison of Harold and Henry. But as the Conqueror was able to land at Pevensey because Harold was far away in Yorkshire, so, because Henry was carefully guarding Pevensey, Robert was able to land elsewhere. The traitors guided his fleet along the narrow seas which had seen the Saxon landings which came next after those which made Anderida a wilderness. As the father had made his way to England almost in the wake of Ælle and Cissa, so the son made his way into England more nearly in the wake of Cerdic and Cynric. Robert lands at Portchester. July 20, 1101. The Norman fleet sailed up the haven of Portsmouth, and the Duke and his army landed as safely beneath the Roman walls of Portchester as his father and his army had landed beneath the Roman walls of Pevensey. Portchester castle and church. Those walls at least were there; the massive keep most likely was not yet; the priory of Austin canons, whose church, little altered, still abides within the castle walls, 406 was the work of Henry himself.[1030] Robert marches to besiege Winchester. From Portchester the invader naturally marched towards Winchester; there was the royal seat; there was the royal hoard. He pitched his camp in a fit place for a siege;[1031] He declines to attack the city because of the Queen. but, in one of his fits of generosity, he refused, on a purely personal ground, to attack the city. His godchild and sister-in-law Queen Matilda was already lying there in child-bed of her first child, either the Ætheling or the future Empress. Was the West-Saxon capital her morning-gift also, as it had been with Emma and the elder Eadgyth? When Robert heard of the Queen’s case, he turned away, saying that it would be the deed of a villain to assault the city at such a time.[1032]

Estimate of his conduct. In this story we see the better side of Robert, that spirit of true personal kindliness, which, like his dealings with his brother Henry at the siege of Saint Michael’s Mount, calls forth a personal liking for him in spite of all his follies and vices. But one and the same fallacy runs through all these stories of passing personal 407 generosity. War cannot be carried on without causing much distress to many people, to besieged garrisons suffering from thirst, to women in child-bed, and others. Therefore war should never be undertaken, except for some public object so great and righteous as to outweigh the distress caused to individuals. Therefore too he who is carrying on a war on what he believes to be adequate grounds, should not turn aside from any operation which will promote the cause which he has in hand, merely on account of the distress which it may cause to individuals. We can hardly fancy that Robert himself would have turned away from the siege of Jerusalem or Antioch out of thought for any single person, even a brother or sister. He would have felt such an act to be treason to the common cause of Christendom. At Saint Michael’s Mount and at Winchester he had no cause to betray; he was simply fighting for his own interests, which he might, if he chose, forbear to assert. The morality of his age, perhaps the military morality of any age, fails to see that what this proves is that he should not have been attacking Winchester or the Mount at all. Unless war is so high a duty as to outweigh all personal considerations, it is a crime.

Personal character of the chivalrous feeling. Again, in all these stories we see how the chivalrous spirit thinks of those only whose rank or kindred or some other personal cause brings their distress directly home to its thoughts. Others on the Mount were thirsty besides Henry; Winchester must have contained other women in child-bed besides Matilda. But Robert thinks only of those who are personally connected with himself. Of course that abstract way of looking at the matter which strict morality dictates is quite foreign to the notions of the eleventh century or of many later centuries, and must therefore not be pressed too far. And undoubtedly the personal kindliness which is always 408 shown by Duke Robert is quite enough to put him on another moral level from a monster like Robert of Bellême. It is also enough to put him on another level from William Rufus, whose generosity is simply a form of pride. Yet, after all, the Red King’s abiding duty and reverence towards his father, alive and dead, comes nearer to a moral principle than Robert’s momentary outbursts of kindly feeling.

Robert’s march from Winchester. From Winchester Robert is said to have turned towards London, under the belief that Henry was there.[1033] This is somewhat strange, as one would think that the sea-faring men who had guided him to Portchester must both themselves have known, and would take care to let him know, that the King was at Pevensey. But nothing would be more natural than that Robert should march on London while the King was known to be elsewhere. And the point where, in the only account which attempts any geographical detail, the armies are said to have met, suggests a march of Robert towards London, and a march of Henry from Pevensey designed to meet him on the road before he should reach London. The armies meet near Alton. Robert was by the wood of Alton when news was brought to him that his brother’s force was near, on the other side of the wood.[1034] This seems a likely point for the armies to 409 meet, when the one was going north-east from Portchester and the other going north-west from Pevensey. Wherever the spot was, the two hosts met face to face and made ready for battle. But, either then or earlier, many of the Norman barons in Henry’s army openly forsook the King’s cause and went over to the invaders. Desertion of the Earls of Shrewsbury and Surrey. Two of the traitors are mentioned by name. Robert of Bellême, who was a little time before plotting in Normandy in his character of lord of Montgomery, must now have been again in England to work this open treason in his character of Earl of Shrewsbury. The other was the King’s cousin, the Earl of Surrey, the younger William of Warren, who is spoken of as a bitter personal enemy of the King.[1035] William of Warren’s enmity to the King. Henry had, even in his charter of liberties, kept the forests in his own hands; for, besides his wars, his studies, and his love-intrigues, he found time for an indulgence in hunting, which even surpassed, it would seem, the measure of his fellows. His jests on the King’s love of hunting. This drew on him the mockery of Earl William, who jeered at his deer-slaying exploits, and bestowed on him the nickname of Hartsfoot.[1036] To mockery he now added treason, 410 and Henry did not forget either. Doubtful truth of other nobles. While these great lords forsook the King, other Norman nobles still clave to him outwardly, but only with a feigned heart. His trust was in the small band of faithful Normans, in the Primate and the bishops, and above all in the English people. Death of Earl Hugh. July 26, 1101. One of his oldest Norman friends was gone; Earl Hugh had ended his long and turbulent life as a three-days’-old monk in the house of Saint Werburh, the house which was the joint work of himself and Anselm.[1037]

Meanwhile every motive of religion, loyalty, and patriotism, was brought to bear on the minds of the royal army. While some among the barons were openly falling off, while the good faith of others was doubtful, the King put his whole trust in Anselm only. The Primate was set to exhort, publicly and privately, all whose defection was feared.[1038] Anselm’s energy on the King’s side. And exhort he did, and with good success, hindering at least any further open revolt. Robert himself was alarmed at the threat of excommunication which Anselm held over him.[1039] In the belief of Anselm’s biographer, the King at this moment owed his crown to the Archbishop.[1040] Henry’s promises to Anselm. It is added that, in this 411 moment of danger, Henry promised, not only to let Anselm exercise his full jurisdiction undisturbed, but also to obey in his own person all the decrees and orders of the Apostolic See.[1041] The former part of the promise Henry cannot be fairly charged with breaking; the latter engagement, if it was ever made at all, must surely have been made under some qualification, or else it must be referred to the same class of promises as the suggested grants of London and York. Still there can be no doubt that Anselm served the King well and loyally, and that his help went far to keep many wavering souls in their allegiance. Zeal of the English. But the mass of the English army hardly needed exhortation to keep them in their duty. They would perhaps be more deeply stirred by the voice of the King himself than even by that of the Primate. Never yet since the day of Senlac had Englishmen harnessed for the battle heard a crowned king call on them in their native tongue. Exhortation of the King. But now we see Henry marshalling his ranks in the old tactics, and speaking to his Englishmen as Brihtnoth or Harold might have spoken. The lifeless Latin catches some spark or echo from the song of Maldon, when King Henry rides round the wedge of warriors, and bids them meet the charge of the Norman knights by standing firm in the array of the ancient shield-wall. No wonder that their hearts were stirred; no wonder that they shouted loud for the battle, and told their King with one voice that they were ready for the work, and feared not a Norman in the invading host.[1042]

412 Negotiations between Henry and Robert. But the merits of the Norman lance and the English battle-axe were not again to be put to the trial on English ground. Harold and William had tried negotiation before the final appeal to arms; how much more then should the brothers Henry and Robert? Message of Henry. The King of the English first sent a herald to the invader to ask why he had dared to enter his kingdom in arms. Robert’s answer. Robert sent word back again that it was the kingdom of his father which he had entered, and that he demanded it as his due by the right of elder birth.[1043] His claim of elder birth. In English ears this appeal to the new-fangled notions of other lands must have sounded meaningless. To whom could a crown be due but to him to whom the folk of his land had given it? What was Robert and his elder birth to them? He, the stranger-born, might, for aught they knew, be the eldest son of Duke William of Normandy; but King Henry, the countryman of his people, was the only son of King William of England. Other messages followed; wise men on both sides sought to bring about a reconciliation between the brothers; others sought war rather than peace.[1044] Personal meeting of the brothers. We read on the one hand that, after many messages had gone to and fro, the King found that he could trust no negotiator but himself.[1045] Yet we hear also of Henry being represented by Robert Fitz-hamon, who was surely faithful, while the representatives of Robert are somewhat strangely said to have been two of Henry’s own rebels, the Earl of Shrewsbury and the lord of Cornwall.[1046] However 413 this may be, those on both sides who shrank from a war of brothers brought about a personal interview between the rival princes. Nothing could be more to the advantage of the calm genius of Henry. Robert, able to negotiate for others, was sure not to be able to negotiate for himself. The hosts of Normandy and England stood marshalled in all their pride of war, while the King and the Duke went forth alone into the plain between them. They agree on terms. The brothers talked together; after a while they embraced and kissed.[1047] Terms of agreement had been come to which were to save the blood of the subjects of both.

The treaty of 1101. Robert gives up all claim to England; Henry gives up his Norman possessions. By the treaty now sworn to Robert gave up all claim to the kingdom of England. Henry, on his part, gave up to Robert his county of Coutances, and all that he possessed within the borders of Normandy. One continental possession alone, a small and isolated one, he kept. He might give up the lands which he had once bought of Robert and which he had afterwards received in fief of William. He keeps Domfront. But he could not give up the town and castle of Domfront, whose people had of their own free will chosen him as their lord, and had received his oath never to give them over to any other lord. Domfront therefore, the border post of Normandy and Maine, once the solitary possession of the wanderer, now remained the solitary continental possession of the island king.[1048] Henry and Helias neighbours. Thus, in his small dominion on the mainland, Henry had in a neighbour his friend and ally Count Helias, a neighbourhood which had some influence on the events of a few years later. Yearly payment to Robert. Stipulation as to the succession. Besides the territorial cessions, the Duke was to receive a yearly payment of three thousand pounds from his brother. The vain provision was again inserted that, if either brother died without lawful issue 414 in the lifetime of the other, the survivor should succeed to his dominions. Such a provision might seem even vainer than ever, now that both brothers were lately married to young and fruitful wives. Dying out of the legitimate male line of both brothers. Yet it is strange to look forward, and to see how each brother outlived his son, and how short a time the younger brother outlived the elder. Neither Robert nor Henry could have dreamed that the succession of both would pass to the son of their sister at Chartres. Natural sons of Henry. Anyhow the arrangement shut out those who afterwards showed themselves to be, in personal qualities, the most worthy to reign. These were the natural sons of Henry. Earl Robert. Robert, the son of the unknown French mother, came to fill no small place in history as the renowned Earl of Gloucester; Richard. and the short life of Richard, the son of the Berkshire widow, showed him as a gallant soldier and something more. Thus the relations and the succession of the two states of Normandy and England were settled. But a personal matter still remained between the princes. Henry released from his homage to Robert. At some earlier time, most likely when he first received the Côtentin, Henry had become the man of Robert. But now Henry was a king; Robert was to remain only a duke. It was not becoming for a crowned and anointed king to be the man of a mere duke. Henry was therefore released from all personal obligations of homage towards his brother. Each prince to restore the partisans of the other. Lastly, a provision borrowed from the elder treaty was inserted, seemingly only for form’s sake. Each prince bound himself to restore the lands and honours of all men who had suffered forfeiture for supporting the cause of the other. The treaty sworn to. The treaty thus agreed to was, like the elder one, confirmed by the oaths of twelve of the chief men on each side.[1049] Robert and his army go back. Michaelmas, 1101. Part of the Duke’s army at once left England; part stayed till he himself went back at Michaelmas. 415 He tarried till then as his brother’s guest, treated with all honour, and enriched with many gifts. Mischief done by the Norman army. But it is recorded that the part of his army which stayed with him did much harm in the land.[1050]