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I 
 
 THE CONQUEKOK AND HIS 
 COMPANIONS. 
 
THE CONQUEEOE 
 
 AND 
 
 HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 BY 
 
 J. E. PLANCHE, 
 
 SOMERSET HERALD. 
 
 " We find but few historians of all ages who have been diligent enough in their 
 search for truth. It is their common method to take on trust what they dis- 
 tribute to the Public, by which means a falsehood once received from a famed 
 writer becomes traditional to posterity." — Dryden, Character of Pohjhius. 
 
 IN TWO VOLUMES. 
 VOL. L 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 TINSLEY BROTHERS, 8, CATHERINE STREET, LONDON. 
 
 1874. 
 
 [All right* reserved.] 
 
LONDON 
 
 RADBURY, AGNEW, & CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS. 
 
THE MOST NOBLE HARRY GEORGE PAULETT, 
 
 DUKE OF CLEVELAND, K.G., 
 
 THE PRESENT PROPRIETOR OP BATTLE ABBEY, 
 THESE VOLUMES ARE, BY PERMISSION, 
 
 BY HIS GRACE'S MUCH OBLIGED AND VERY FAITHFUL SERVANT, 
 
 J. R. PLANCHE. 
 
 College of Arms 1374 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 I have undertaken a task which would be most 
 agreeable to me but for one important consideration, 
 namely, the difficulty of making the results agreeable 
 to the public. 
 
 The subject is one which must not be treated 
 lightly ; and yet, to be popular, it must be free from 
 the heaviness almost inseparable from the records of 
 archaeological researches and the minutiae of genealo- 
 gical details. While retaining sufficient interest for 
 the antiquary, it must not be " caviare to the general," 
 for whom it is intended. 
 
 At the first congress of the British Archaeological 
 Association, held at Canterbury in 1843, Professor 
 Willis, in the course of his admirable lecture on the 
 cathedral, observed, "I am not addressing a learned 
 assembly." A remark which greatly amused the late 
 
vm PEEFACE. 
 
 Mr. Bucklancl, next to whom I was sitting, and who, 
 repeating the words with a chuckle, pulled out his 
 pocket-book and " made a note of it." 
 
 The remark, however, was perfectly correct, though 
 open to misinterpretation. The majority of the 
 audience was composed of ladies and gentlemen of 
 more or less cultivated tastes residing in the neigh- 
 bourhood, and many of the principal inhabitants of 
 the city with their wives and families, who listened 
 with interest to the eloquent description of their 
 magnificent cathedral, but to whom such technical 
 illustration as the erudite Professor would have in- 
 dulged in at a meeting of the Institute of Architects 
 would have afforded no gratification whatever. 
 
 I know from many years' experience how hard it 
 is to pull up a hobby we are riding the moment its 
 pace is carrying us ahead of the desire or power 
 of an audience to follow us ; and the difficulty is 
 greater in writing than speaking, as you cannot feel 
 the effect you are producing on the reader, nor 
 perceive the first symptoms of his weariness or 
 inattention. 
 
 At the same time the object of these volumes would 
 be completely defeated if I cantered carelessly over 
 ground every foot of which presents some point of 
 
PEEFACE. ix 
 
 interest — some curious illustration of manners and 
 customs — and raises some question of importance 
 affecting the ages, actions, or characters of historical 
 personages whose names are " familiar in our 
 mouths as household words," and from whom so 
 many English families are proud to trace their 
 descent. 
 
 The casual mention of the most important which 
 is to be found in the various histories of England, 
 affords little information respecting them, and a 
 Baronage or Historical Peerage is, by the special 
 nature of the work, limited to the descent of a title 
 and the briefest j>ossible notice of the original pos- 
 sessor. The more detailed biographies to be picked 
 out of the ancient chronicles are, even when trans- 
 lated, not generally accessible to the public, and, 
 being the composition of monks, are too frequently 
 tinctured by the prejudices of the writers in favour of 
 the benefactors or against the orjpressors of their 
 respective establishments. 
 
 Nor can the information of these worthy men be 
 implicitly relied upon. Living out of the world — in 
 nine cases out of ten far removed from the scene of 
 action — they must generally have been dependent on 
 hearsay, and gathered their knowledge of events in 
 
x PEEP ACE. 
 
 Normandy or England from common report in their 
 own neighbourhood or the narrations of the travellers 
 hospitably entertained in their refectories. 
 
 Even these accounts were not invariably recorded 
 at the moment, and we have therefore to make allow- 
 ances for defects of memory, errors of transcription, 
 and inaccuracies from many circumstances too familiar 
 to literary men to require enumeration. 
 
 Every page, nearly, of these volumes will show the 
 necessity of receiving the evidence of the most 
 respectable authorities with the greatest caution ; of 
 testing them by their comparison one with the other, 
 and especially by the light of charters and official 
 and legal records, which are themselves free from 
 suspicion — a character, unfortunately, not enjoyed by 
 all. Even then, where the testimony is not abso- 
 lutely conclusive, we must exercise our judgment 
 independently in our adoption of the statement, and 
 not suffer it to be swayed by the weight of a name or 
 the age of a document. 
 
 Archaeologists are becoming daily more and more 
 impressed with the truth, and need not my referring 
 to it ; but I am addressing the public generally, and 
 not " a learned assembly." And it is but fair to the 
 author of such a work as this that the uninitiated 
 
PEEFACE. xi 
 
 should have some idea of the amount as well as of the 
 character of the labour required of him, if he be 
 honest, before he can throw his narrative into a shape 
 that will be acceptable to them. How far I have 
 succeeded in doing so has yet to be proved. Apart 
 from my own demerits as a writer, I may have 
 miscalculated on the popularity of the subject, — 
 measured, to use a familiar proverb, other people's 
 corn too much by my own bushel. It is a common 
 error, and has misled many before me. If so, it is too 
 late to recede : "I have set my life," or rather my 
 lives, upon a cast, and I must run the hazard of the 
 die. By collecting the numberless scattered notices 
 of the principal companions of the Conqueror, con- 
 necting them chronologically, and arranging them 
 under separate heads, I have endeavoured to make a 
 readable book as well as one of reference for all who 
 take an interest in the origin or actions of our earliest 
 Anglo-Norman nobility, the majority of whom arc 
 scarcely known by name beyond a limited circle of 
 antiquaries, and who, whatever may have been their 
 crimes or their vices — partly attributable to the semi- 
 barbarism of the age they lived in — it must never 
 be forgotten were the progenitors of men to whom 
 England is indebted for the preservation of her 
 
xii PBEFACE. 
 
 liberties — who would never submit to their being 
 trampled under the foot of a Tyrant, and whose 
 unanimous answer was — 
 
 " Nollumus leges Anglice mutari." 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 In anticipation of a question that may naturally 
 arise from the perusal of these volumes, respecting the 
 omission of the names of certain families both noble 
 and gentle, the ancestors of which were clearly con- 
 temporary with the Conquest and traditionally condu- 
 cive to it, I beg the reader's attention to the following 
 brief statement of the reasons which decided me in 
 adopting the plan I have worked upon. 
 
 A reliable list of the principal personages who 
 actually accompanied William Duke of Normandy to 
 England in 1066, and were present in the great battle 5 
 commonly called of Hastings, does not exist. 
 
 The various versions of the Roll of Battle Abbey 
 are admitted on all hands to be not only imperfect, 
 but, what is much worse, interpolated to an extent 
 which it is now impossible for us to ascertain ; and 
 the lists compiled by eminent modern French anti- 
 
xiv INTRODUCTION. 
 
 quaries, though no doubt containing the names of 
 many persons not to be found in the older Eolls, but 
 recently discovered by diligent research in authentic 
 documents abroad, are still far from complete, and 
 open to many objections. 
 
 In professing, therefore, to write about " the Con- 
 queror and his Companions/' it was in the first place 
 imperatively necessary to ascertain who his com- 
 panions really were, and for the above reasons that 
 was in numberless cases impracticable. 
 
 Again, if I decided in favour of any particular list, 
 it was evident on inspection that a third of my book 
 would consist of names alone, and another third of 
 notices, not of the companions themselves, but of their 
 descendants, which was altogether away from my 
 purpose in writing it. 
 
 A third reason was the number. The Eoll of Battle 
 Abbey, formerly suspended in the building, consisted 
 of no less than 645 names. Duchesne's list, derived 
 from a charter formerly in the Abbey, contains 405 
 names. One of the lists printed in Leland's Collec- 
 tanea gives us 498. The other is nothing more than 
 a ludicrous blunder, which I have exposed elsewhere ; 
 and the rhyming catalogue, printed in Brompton's 
 Chronicle, includes 245. Monsieur de Magny's cata- 
 
INTRODUCTION. xv 
 
 logue contains 425, and that compiled by Monsieur 
 Leopold .Delisle, in the church at Dive, 485 ; the 
 principal additions being the names of persons whose 
 families are unknown in this country, and conse- 
 quently possessing no interest for the reader of 
 English History. 
 
 To make a selection from these — to compile, in fact, 
 a list of my own, would have been as presumptuous 
 as invidious. Hundreds who believe their ancestors 
 " came over with the Conqueror/' because their names, 
 or something like them, are to be found in one of 
 these doubtful documents, would naturally have felt 
 offended at my omission of them. 
 
 I saw but one way to justify my title and avoid 
 offence, and that was to limit my notices to those 
 personages who are recorded by contemporary or 
 nearly contemporary writers as having been present 
 in the Norman host at Hastings, or at least con- 
 spicuous in England during the four years immediately 
 following, at the expiration of which period (that is, 
 in 1070) the subjugation of the entire kingdom was 
 virtually accomplished. 
 
 With this object I decided on taking the elaborate 
 account of the invasion and the battle given by Master 
 Wace in his " Roman de Eou" as the foundation of 
 
xvi INTRODUCTION. 
 
 my work, supplementing and illustrating it by the 
 information directly or indirectly afforded me by 
 writers who were actually living at the time of the 
 Conquest, or must have known and conversed with 
 persons who, if not present themselves in the conflict, 
 retained a vivid recollection of the event, or had 
 gathered the reports of it from those who were. 
 
 Wace, born in Jersey at the commencement of the 
 reign of Henry I. (a.d. 1100), some four-and-thirty 
 years after the landing at Pevensey, was taken when 
 young to Caen in Normandy for education, made a 
 prebend of Bayeux by Henry IL, completed his 
 " Koman de Eou " (a metrical history of the Duke of 
 Normandy) in 1160, and died in England subse- 
 quently to 1173. 
 
 The early portions of his " Koman " he copied from 
 Dudo, Dean of St. Quentin, and Guillaume de Jumieges ; 
 but his materials for the history of William the Con- 
 queror, and specially of the invasion of 1066, were 
 drawn from original and independent sources, the 
 verbal descriptions of the veteran survivors of the 
 great battle, their sons or other relatives, and the 
 gossip, if you will, in general circulation, while the 
 details of that momentous event were yet fresh in the 
 recollections of numbers both in England and in Nor- 
 
/ 
 
 INTRODUCTION. xvii 
 
 mandy ; some of whom, as children^ might have been 
 eye-witnesses of the muster at the mouth of the 
 Dive, or the march of the invaders from Hastings to 
 Hetheland. 
 
 The writers contemporary with the Conquest, in 
 addition to those already mentioned, were, 1, Guil- 
 laume de Poitiers, the chaplain of Duke William ; 
 2, the author of a Latin poem on the Battle of 
 Hastings, supposed to have "been Guy, Bishop of 
 Amiens, almoner to the Duchess Matilda ; 3, Orderic 
 Vital, author of the Ecclesiastical History, born at 
 Atcham, near Shrewsbury, in 1075, in which city he 
 was sent to school, when five years old, by his father 
 Odelirius, who was in the service of the powerful 
 Roger de Montgomeri, Earl of Arundel and Shrews- 
 bury. At the age of ten he was transferred to Nor- 
 mandy, and became a monk in the Abbey of Ouche, 
 otherwise St. Evroult. In 1115 he returned to 
 England to collect materials for his history, and in 
 1141 was compelled by age and infirmity to bring his 
 work to a conclusion. Like Wace, he was indebted 
 for some of his information to Guillaumc de Jumiegcs, 
 whose Gesta Normanorum was finished during the life 
 of the Concpieror and dedicated to him ; but the peculiar 
 advantages he enjoyed for the execution of his task 
 
xviii INTRODUCTION. 
 
 will bo frequently commented on in the course of 
 these volumes. 
 
 Kobert du Mont, one of the continuators of the 
 monk of Jumiegcs, and Benoit de Sainte-More, a con- 
 temporary of Waee, may be added to the short list of 
 fairly original writers on the subject immediately 
 under consideration. All the subsequent chroniclers 
 and historians, both foreign and English, are mere 
 copyists of each other in rotation until they arrive at 
 their own times, and are rarely, therefore, of assistance 
 to us in the investigation of those of the Conqueror. 
 
 " Domesday " not having been compiled until nearly 
 the close of William's reign, that invaluable record is 
 only occasionally of service, as many of the com- 
 panions of the Conqueror had died in the interim and 
 are not named in it, or the lands they had received in 
 reward for their assistance had passed into the hands 
 of their descendants — facts which require careful con- 
 sideration when identification is the object. 
 
 The personages distinctly named or apparently indi- 
 cated by Wace amount altogether to one hundred and 
 eighteen, twenty-seven of whom are either progenitors 
 of some of the most illustrious families in England, or 
 have indelibly made their mark in its history for good 
 or for evil. Of these the reader will find notices con- 
 
INTRODUCTION. xix 
 
 fcaining all the information I have been able to scrape 
 together, biographical or genealogical. 
 
 The remainder, less known, and in some cases not 
 identified, and therefore furnishing no materials for 
 memoirs, I have arranged alphabetically in the last 
 chapter of the second volume, accompanied by the 
 .annotations of Monsieur Le Prevost and Mr. Edgar 
 Taylor, the French and English editors of the Eoman 
 de Eou, and such of my own as I have been able to 
 add to them. 
 
 Wace honestly says at the conclusion of what may 
 be called his Eoll, "many other Barons there were 
 whom I have not even mentioned, for I cannot give 
 an account of them all, nor can I describe all their 
 deeds, for I would not be tedious ; neither can I give 
 the names of all the Barons, nor the surnames of all 
 who came from Normandy and Brittany in the com- 
 pany of the Duke." 
 
 Benoit also says briefly that if he had undertaken 
 to enumerate all the chiefs in the Duke's army, three 
 quires of parchment would not have sufficed to con- 
 tain them. 
 
 However it may be regretted that a complete and 
 authentic catalogue has not been handed down to us, 
 we must console ourselves with the reflection, that of 
 
xx INTRODUCTION. 
 
 the host of Norman, Breton, Angevine, Poitevine r 
 Flemish, and other foreign families represented by one 
 or more members in that great expedition, hundreds- 
 would simply contribute to swell the already too long; 
 list of names to which no personal history attaches — 
 no general interest could now be imparted. 
 
 In conclusion let me observe, that having described 
 herein the few works that can be looked upon at all 
 in the light of authorities for the Life and Times of 
 William the Conqueror, I have abstained from encum- 
 bering my pages with unnecessary notes and references. 
 The antiquary will know whence the general informa- 
 tion is derived, and the less critical readers attention 
 is only directed to its source where vouchers for my 
 own assertions and opinions are essentially demanded. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 ♦ 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Preface xii 
 
 Introduction xiii 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 The Conqueror 1 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 The Family of the Conqueror T7 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Odo, Bishop of Bayeux and Eari of Kent — Eobert, Comte de 
 
 Mortain and Earl of Cornwall . . . . . .88 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Eudes de Champagne — Drogo de Brevere — William de "Warren 
 
 — GuydelaVal ... 117 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Eustace II., Count of Boulogne— Walter GifTard— Hugh de 
 
 Montfort . .148 
 
 VOL. i. c 
 
XXII 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 William Fitz Osbern, Earl of Hereford — Eoger de Montgomeri, 
 Earl of Arundel and Shrewsbury — Eobert de Beaumont, 
 Count of Meulent and Earl of Leicester .... 173 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Eaoul de Toeni, or de Conches — Toustain Eitz Eou le Blanc — 
 Hugh, Eoger, and Eaoul de Mortemer — Aimeri, Vicomte de 
 Thouars . . .217 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Richard, Comte d'Evreux— Guillaume, his son — Robert, Comte 
 d'Eu — Geoffrey, son of Eotrou, Comte de Mortagne — Alain 
 Fergent, or le Eoux, Earl of Richmond .... 2-18 
 
THE CONQUEROR AND HIS 
 COMPANIONS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE CONQUEROR. 
 
 Everybody knows that William II. , Duke of Nor- 
 mandy, invaded England, defeated Harold near 
 Hastings, and established himself on the throne of this 
 kingdom. Most persons of ordinary education are 
 cognizant of many other facts connected with his 
 history and that of his Queen Matilda : — the un- 
 authenticated tale of his courtship ; the conspiracies 
 against him both in Normandy and England ; the 
 revolt of his son Robert ; the compilation of Domes- 
 day ; the fatal injury at Mantes ; his death, and the 
 disgraceful scenes which followed it. Hume and 
 Henry, Turner and Lingard, one or all of our national 
 historians are to be found on the shelves of every 
 English gentleman's library. I am not going to fight 
 the battle over again, nor repeat the often told story 
 
 VOL. I. B 
 
2 THE CONQUEKOB AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 of the Conquest and its consequences. It is a personal 
 and domestic, not a general or political, history I am 
 writing, and the great public events of the reign of 
 William the Conqueror will be only alluded to in 
 support or contradiction of statements which are dis- 
 putable, or when newly discovered or hitherto neglected 
 details can add to their interest or contribute to their 
 illustration. 
 
 There are two recently published works which it 
 may be thought have anticipated to a great degree 
 the observations I am about to make respecting the 
 Conqueror : Mr. Cobbe's " History of the Norman 
 Kings of England," * and Mr. Freeman's " History of 
 the Norman Conquest," j Over a portion of the 
 ground of both I shall naturally have to go ; but there 
 are only five chapters of the first which bear slightly 
 upon my subject, and the four massive volumes already 
 issued of the latter, valuable as they must undoubtedly 
 prove to the historical student as an exhaustive collec- 
 tion and minute examination of the principal contem- 
 porary authorities, have nothing in common with my 
 
 * History of the Norman Kings of England, by Thomas Cobbe, 
 Barrister-at-Law. 8vo. Lond. 1869. 
 
 f History of the Norman Conquest, by Edward A. Freeman, M.A. 
 4 vols. 8vo. London, 1870. The same observations may apply to 
 the late Sir F. Palgrave's still earlier " History of Normandy and 
 England," published in. 1884, an unfinished work, as fanciful as it is 
 fascinating. 
 
THE CONQUEROR. 
 
 3 
 
 less pretentious pages beyond the obvious fact of being 
 indebted to the same sources of information. 
 
 While, as I have already remarked, the name and 
 fame of William the Conqueror are familiar to all, 
 our national historians are uncertain of the date 
 of his birth; divided in opinion as to the social 
 position of his mother and her parents ; at issue 
 respecting the name of her father and the period 
 of her marriage ; puzzled by the story of William's 
 courtship of Matilda, which the most incredulous can- 
 not furnish fair evidence of being purely apocryphal ; 
 equally unable to prove or disprove the previous mar- 
 riage of Matilda and the parentage of the mysterious 
 Gundrada ; and totally ignorant of the order of birth 
 of the undoubted children of William, and even of the 
 exact names and number of the female portion of them. 
 Strange as this may appear to many of my readers, such 
 is nevertheless the case, as I found on examination of the 
 materials requisite for the compilation of this memoir. 
 
 William "the Great/' " the Elder," "the Bastard," 
 or "the Conqueror," undoubtedly died in September, 
 1087, and according to a contemporary historian* he 
 was at that period close upon sixty, in which case he 
 must have been born in 1027 or 1028; but by the 
 same historian he is made to assert upon his death-bed 
 
 * Ordericus Vitalis. 
 
 fc 2 
 
THE CONQUEROR, AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 that lie was sixty-four, which would place the date of 
 his birth in 1023 or 1024, and there are not wanting 
 authorities to corroborate his own — if it be his own — 
 statement, as I shall show to all whom it may concern 
 in the following chapter, it being undesirable to enter 
 into dry discussions of dates in the body of the memoir. 
 
 His father was Robert I., Duke of Normandy, 
 styled by some " the Magnificent/' from his liberalities 
 and love of splendour; "the Jerusalemite/' in conse- 
 quence of his pilgrimage ; and by others less courte- 
 ously " the Devil/' though wherefore or at what period 
 has not been satisfactorily ascertained. From a pas- 
 sage in "L'Estoire de Seint iEdward le Rei," it would 
 appear there was a tradition in the family of Rollo, of 
 one of his descendants (Richard I. ?) having beaten 
 and bound his Satanic majesty, 
 
 c< E Due Richard de'apres li yint, 
 Ivi li diaLle ateint e tint 
 E lo venquit e le lia." 
 
 Robert was the second son of Richard II., Duke of 
 Normandy, by his wife Judith, daughter of Conan le 
 Tort (the Crooked), Count of Rennes, and sister of the 
 half blood to Geoffrey, Duke of Brittany; and it was 
 during the lifetime of his father, and while Robert was 
 only Count of the Hiemois, and it may be in his non- 
 age, that he first saw Herleve, Harlett, or Arlot (for it 
 
THE CONQUEROR. 
 
 ■"> 
 
 is written iu all manner of ways), daughter of a burgess 
 of Falaise, an accident the results of which were the 
 subjugation of England and the succession of a line of 
 kings unsurpassed for valour and power by the greatest 
 sovereigns in Europe. 
 
 "The trade of Herleve's father," says the most 
 recent writer on the subject, " seems to be agreed on at 
 ■all ] lands. He was a burgess of Falaise, and a tanner."* 
 
 Why particularly a tanner, I am at a loss to dis- 
 cover. By the Norman chroniclers he is called in 
 Latin Pelletarius and Pelleciarius,^ and in French 
 Pelletier and Parmentier, never by any authority 
 Tanneur or Coriarius. Pelletier signifies a farrier, 
 skinner, or felhnonger, and Parmeniier a tailor.J 
 Now the insult offered to William at Alengon, where a 
 skin was hung out and beaten to the cry of " La Pel, 
 la Pel al Parmentier," in allusion to his maternal 
 •origin, is more applicable to the trade of a dealer in 
 furs or leather than to a tanner. The vendor of furs 
 must have been of some importance in those days, 
 
 * Freeman: History of the Norman Conquest, vol. ii. p. 611. 
 
 t Guill. de Jumieges, "Parentes matris ejus, pelliciarii existiterant," 
 -whence the modern word pelisse, from the French pelice, pelisson. 
 
 X Permentarius seu Parmcntarius ex Paramentarius qui vestcs 
 jporat, id est ornat nostris olim ] > armentier qui hodie, tuilleur d 'habits. 
 Ducange in voce. 11 Parmentier, or taylor," Cotgrave. 
 
 One MS. reads " Pantonnier," which is simply an abusive epithet, 
 .signifying " a lewd, stubborn, saucy knave." Ibid. 
 
6 THE CONQUEROR AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 when garments lined or trimmed with fur were worn 
 by both sexes and all classes ; from the princely 
 ermine, the sumptuous sable, the vair and minie-vair 
 of the nobility to the humble budge or lambskin of the 
 citizen or artizan. Leather must also have been in 
 great demand, for not only were leathern jackets and 
 leggings worn by workmen, but archers and the common 
 soldiery were equipped with leathern Jaques ; that is r 
 coats made of what is called "jacked leather," and the 
 Anglo-Saxons w T e find wearing helmets made of the 
 same material. The furrier, skinner, or leather-seller 
 would then, as in the present day, not only sell the 
 materials but the robes, mantles, or vestments, the 
 jaques, or coats of which they were made, or with 
 which they were lined and ornamented, and " Par- 
 mentier " (tailor) would be considered probably in the 
 eleventh century a more contemptuous allusion to the 
 maternal descent of the chivalrous young duke than 
 " Pelletier," furrier, or skinner. It is true that at 
 Falaise there were in former times many tanneries, 
 of which only three of importance remained in 1830 
 (Galeron, " Histoire de Falaise," p. 121) ; but Ave 
 learn from Wace that in the eleventh century it 
 was equally well known as the abode of furriers or 
 skinners : " U peletiers aveit asez " [Roman de liou, 
 1. 9462), and it by no means follows that the father ot 
 
THE CONQUEROR. 7 
 
 Herleve should of necessity have been of the former 
 "unsavory calling." There is no reason that a tanner 
 should be less respectable than a furrier,* and the dis- 
 tinction may be thought by some of little consequence, 
 particularly as in the eleventh century the trades 
 might have been combined ; but it would be interest- 
 ing to ascertain the origin of the English designation, 
 which is certainly not justified by either the French or 
 the Latin versions of the story. 
 
 And who were the parents of Herleve, whatever may 
 have been their occupation ? Here, again, we meet with 
 nothing but contradictions : Fact and Fiction, like the 
 old powers of light and darkness, struggling for mastery. 
 That her father was a burgess of Falaise in some way 
 of trade is incontestable. Sir Francis Palgrave (Hist, ot 
 Norm.), upon the authority of Alberic de Troisfontaines, 
 says he was a brewer as well as a tanner, a combina- 
 tion of crafts prohibited in England. But what was his 
 name ? By one he is called Fulbert and Robert ; by 
 another Richard, with the sobriquet or descriptive ap- 
 pellation of Saburjvjr, which has yet to be explained ; 
 
 * All authorities do not agree as to the " obloquy " attached to the 
 leather trade insisted on by Sir F. Palgrave. " The tanners, the fur- 
 riers, the goldsmiths, and the jewellers' arts, so far as they relate to 
 dress, will appear to have been practised with great success by tho 
 Normans, and so far as we can judge from record, with as much 
 rumour as profit." — Strutt : Dress and Habits of the People of England, 
 vol. i. part 3, cap. 1. 
 
8 THE CONQUEROR AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 while a third names him indifferently " Herbert or 
 Verperay."* Her mother, as the wife of Richard, is 
 named Helen, and represented as a descendant of the 
 royal Anglo-Saxon family ; while, as the wife of 
 Robert, she is said to be one Dodo or Duxia, who 
 came with her husband from the neighbourhood of 
 Li^ge and settled at Falaise. 
 
 The narrator of this last version also tells us that 
 Count Robert saw the daughter of his provost or bailiff 
 dancing, and fell in love with her, but that the daughter 
 of the tanner was substituted for her. Another 
 story is that it was Herleve herself whom he first saw 
 dancing ; and the third version is that Robert, returning 
 from hunting, saw Herleve washing linen in the brook 
 which runs through the dell below the castle ; while 
 the tradition popular in the place itself is that he 
 observed her so occupied from a window of the 
 castle, which is still pointed out to the tourist, as well 
 as the very apartment in which William was born, 
 though it is doubtful if any portion whatever of the 
 original structure is in existence, or that he could 
 possibly have discerned her from it in any case. 
 Whether any grains of truth will ever be picked out of 
 this bushel of fable I will not presume to say. 
 
 * Ducarel : Ant. Ang.-Noiin. Galeron, Ilistoire de Falaise (1830), 
 p. 81, has " La Eille de Vertprey." 
 
THE CONQUEROR. 9 
 
 There is nothing improbable in either of the former 
 stories, but as they differ one from another, no 
 dependence can be placed on any one of them. 
 Count Robert, a young, gay, voluptuous prince, would 
 not be many days in Falaise without knowing by sight 
 every girl with any pretension to beauty in his little 
 capital. He is just as likely to have seen Herlevc at 
 mass or in the market, in the streets of Falaise, or in 
 the shop of her father, probably his own furrier, for 
 according to certain local documents it would seem 
 that William was born in a house belomnno; to his 
 grandfather in the old market-place of that town, 
 and that he was baptized in .the parish church 
 dedicated to the Holy Trinity.* This fact is curiously 
 corroborative of the story told by Wace in the 
 " Roman de Rou " of the infamous William Talvas, 
 Seigneur of Belesme, who being one clay in the streets 
 of Falaise, was accosted by a burgess, and laughingly 
 invited to enter a house (not the castle, observe), in 
 which the infant William was being nursed, and look 
 upon the child of his liege lord, Talvas being a 
 feudatory of the Count. That he did so, and cursed 
 the babe, adding prophetically, " for by thee and by 
 thy descendants great mischief will be worked to me 
 
 * Langevin: Recherchcs Ilistoriques but Falaise, 1814. Tho site 
 oil which the present building stands is described in old documents as 
 " Le manoir du Due auillaume." Galeron, Ilistoire de Falaise, p. 93. 
 
10 
 
 THE CONQUEROB AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 and mine." The grandfather's house being in the 
 market-place strengthens my belief in his calling, as a 
 dealer in furs and skins would be likely to have his 
 shop there ; while, if simply a tanner, he would more 
 probably have resided on the banks of the brook in 
 the dell, where the tanneries are at present. All we 
 can tolerably rely on is, that Robert, while only Count 
 of the Hiemois, became enamoured of the daughter of 
 a burgess of Falaise, that he made her his mistress, 
 and had by her two children : William, who succeeded 
 him, and Adelaide, or Adeliza, who eventually married 
 Enguerrand, Count of Fonthieu, and has been an awful 
 stumbling-block in the paths of the genealogists {vide 
 p. 121). 
 
 Herleve is said to have been extremely beautiful, 
 and was not yielded to the young Count by her 
 father without considerable reluctance. The proposal, 
 made to him by " a discreet ambassador,'' was received 
 with the greatest indignation ; but on consulting, we are 
 told, his brother, who was a holy hermit in the 
 neighbouring forest of Govert or Gouffern, a man 
 of great sanctity,* and who expressed his opinion 
 
 * " Ne fust un suen frero, un seint hom 
 Qui ont do grand relligion. 
 Qu'en Govert ont son armitage." 
 
 Benoit de Sainte-More. 
 — Nouvelle Histoire de Normandie, par M. le Baron de la Frenay. 
 
/ 
 
 THE CONQUEROR. 11 
 
 that nothing could be refused to their liege lord (an 
 acknowledgment of the tc droit de seigneur" savouring 
 more of policy than piety), his scruples were over- 
 come, and Herleve was surrendered to the Count, by 
 whom, we are told, she was treated with all affection 
 and respect as his wife, according to the old Danish 
 custom which still lingered in Normandy, whereby 
 such connections were not regarded in the disreputable 
 light they are at the present day. According to 
 Benoit, the girl was exceedingly proud of her position, 
 insisted on riding to the castle on a palfrey, and 
 refused to enter it by a wicket. " Since the Duke has 
 sent for me, why are his doors closed against me ? 
 Throw open the gates, beaux amis ! " And her com- 
 mands were immediately obeyed. 
 
 Upon Robert's succession to the dukedom on the 
 death of his elder brother Richard, in 1027, the father 
 of Herleve was appointed his chamberlain, having 
 therefore the care of the robes which he had probably 
 made. Her brother W alter was also attached in some 
 capacity to his person. Their residence in the mar- 
 ket-place, we may presume, was now exchanged for 
 an official one, either at Falaise or Rouen, and Her- 
 leve and her children were no doubt installed in the 
 ducal apartments. The gossip of the day informs us 
 that William, immediately on being born, was placed 
 
12 THE CONQUEROR AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 on the straw or rushes with which, according' to the 
 custom of that period, the chamber was strewn, and 
 clasped a quantity of it so firmly in his arms, that, 
 coupled with the story that Herleve had dreamed — she 
 saw a tree arise from her body, the branches of which 
 spread out till they overshadowed all Normandy — the 
 nurse was induced to exclaim, " What a great lord wilt 
 thou be ! Much wilt thou conquer and obtain. 
 Quickly hast thou filled thy hands and thine arms with 
 the first stuff thou couldst lay hold of." " The Duke," 
 adds the same chronicler, " loved the child as much as 
 if he had been born in wedlock, and caused him to be 
 as richly and as nobly cared for." * 
 
 A stronger proof of his affection was soon to be 
 displayed. After Duke Robert had ruled Normandy 
 some seven or eight years, he called together at 
 Fecamp the chief persons in his dominions, an- 
 nounced to them his intention to make a pilgrimage to 
 Jerusalem, and his desire to settle the succession 
 previously to undertaking a perilous journey from 
 which he might never return. His auditors, amongst 
 v whom was his uncle Robert, Archbishop of Rouen and 
 Count of Evreux, who had himself pretensions to 
 that succession, strongly opposed his proposition. To 
 leave Normandy under such circumstances would be 
 
 * Benoit de Sainte-More ; Roger de Hoveden. 
 
I 
 
 THE CONQUEROR. 13 
 
 ruin to it. The Duke was conjured to remain at home 
 and protect the duchy from the inroads of the Bretons 
 and Burgundians.* Robert, however, was not to be 
 dissuaded from his purpose. " Seigneurs/' he said, 
 1 4 you speak truly. I have no direct heir, but I have 
 a little boy, who, if it please you, shall be your 
 Duke, acting under the advice of the King of France, 
 who will be his protector. He is little, but he will 
 grow. I acknowledge him my son. Receive him and 
 you will do well. It may please God that I shall 
 return. If not, he will have been brought up amongst 
 you. He will do honour to his culture, and, if you 
 will promise to love and loyally serve him, I will leave 
 him in my place. " 
 
 As there were no short-hand writers in those da} r s, 
 no " interviewers," nor any of those means of obtain- 
 ing and transmitting to the public verbatim reports of 
 the speeches or conversations of important personages, 
 we must take with a considerable quantity of salt the 
 orations placed in their mouths by even contemporary 
 chroniclers. Suffice it to say, therefore, that the boy 
 was sent- for, and, whether heartily or not, the whole 
 assemblage took the oath of allegiance and did 
 
 * If this be true, neither Guy Count of Burgundy nor Alain Count 
 of Brittany could surely have been present, as asserted by some 
 writers. 
 
U THE CONQUEROR AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 homage to the youthful William, then between seven 
 and eight years of age. 
 
 Duke Robert lost no time in setting out on his 
 pilgrimage, conducting on the way his son to Paris, 
 where he caused him to do homage to the King for 
 the Duch}< of Normandy, and received personal assur- 
 ance of the royal protection. 
 
 We hear nothing of Herleve after the birth of 
 William until she appears as the lawful wife of a Nor- 
 man knight named Herluin de Conteville,* of whom 
 little is known beyond the fact that he was a widower, 
 father of a son named Ralph, on whom William is said 
 to have bestowed large domains, besides heaping 
 honours and possessions on Herluin, both in Nor- 
 mandy and England, though no one know T s what or 
 where. He held the honour of Sainte Marie Eglise, 
 a portion of the Comte of Mortain, but whether the 
 gift of the Conqueror to him, or a family possession, 
 does not appear. He had a castle there, and founded 
 in its neighbourhood the Abbey of Grestain, in wdiich 
 he and his wife were buried. There is tolerably suffi- 
 cient evidence that, as I have already stated, Herleve 
 had by Duke Robert a daughter, named Adeliza, or 
 
 * Pere Anselm, vol. ii. p. 470, has the following astounding mar- 
 ginal note : — " D'autres le nomment Gilbert de Crepon " ! There 
 may be " more in this than meets the eye" at present. 
 
/ 
 
 THE CONQUEROR. 15 
 
 Adelaide, of whom I shall have much to say anon ; 
 but the date of Herleve's marriage to Herluin is un- 
 certain, William of Malmesbury stating it to have taken 
 place before the death of Robert, while the monk of 
 Jumieges, a contemporary, asserts the contrary. My 
 own opinion is that the contemporary chronicler is 
 in this instance wrong. He either knew nothing, or 
 suppressed his knowledge of Robert's lawful marriage 
 with Estrith, sister of Canute the Great, and widow of 
 Ulf, a distinguished Dane, who was murdered by order 
 of his brother-in-law in 1025. Robert is said to have 
 ill used and repudiated her, at what exact period is 
 unknown ; but he had no issue by her, which might 
 possibly be one cause of his displeasure. It seems to 
 me most probable that the marriage of Herleve and 
 Herluin was consequent on that of Duke Robert with 
 Estrith, and shortly after the birth of Adeliza, her 
 second child, who at the period of the pilgrimage 
 could not have been more than six, William being 
 only between seven and eight. 
 
 At the time, therefore, of the Council of Fecamp, 
 Herleve would be with her husband, which may 
 account for her not being; mentioned by any historian 
 in connection with that event, or associated in any 
 way with the care or education of her son. Gilbert, 
 Comte d'Eu, was appointed his guardian, and Alain, 
 
16 THE CONQUEROR AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 Count of Brittany, governor of Normandy during the 
 Duke's absence ; the latter act being a politic one, as 
 Alain could not with honour harass a province com- 
 mitted to his charge. 
 
 Duke Eobert died on his return from Jerusalem at 
 Nikaia in Bithynia, poisoned, as it is reported, by 
 Raoul, surnamed Mouin, and no sooner did the intelli- 
 gence reach Normandy than the young heir to the 
 duchy was subjected to all imaginable dangers and 
 distresses. 
 
 Thurkild or Thorold, as he was indifferently called, 
 Lord of Neufmarche-en-Lions, to whose special care 
 his person and education were confided, and Gilbert 
 Comte d'Eu, his guardian, were murdered by assassins 
 hired by Eaoul de Gace, son of Archbishop Robert.* 
 Osbern de Crepon, son of Herfast, his Dapifer (steward 
 of the household), was slain by William de Mont- 
 gomeri at Vaudreuil, while sleeping in the very 
 chamber of his young sovereign ; and Alain Count of 
 Brittany poisoned in 1040, while besieging the 
 castle of Montgomeri, whose lord, Roger, the first 
 we know of that name, and father of the above 
 William, had been already banished Normandy. The 
 guilt of this deed was thrown upon Alain's own 
 subjects by the Normans, and bandied back by them 
 
 * See vol. ii. p. 33. 
 
THE CONQUEROR. 
 
 17 
 
 to their accusers. Duke William himself was long 
 afterwards charged with the crime, which, considering 
 he was at that time a mere child, was a slander un- 
 worthy refutation, but no doubt engendered by the 
 ill-fame of his subsequent treacheries. " Often by 
 night," William is reported to have said, " I was 
 secretly taken from the chamber of my palace by my 
 uncle Walter, through fear of my own relations, and 
 conducted to the dwellings and retreats of the poor, 
 that I might escape from discovery by the traitors 
 who sought my death." 
 
 This uncle Walter was the brother of his mother, 
 Herleve, who, as well as her father, Fulbert — if such 
 was his name — was taken into the service of Duke 
 Robert as soon as he succeeded to the duchy ; but we 
 hear no more of Fulbert the chamberlain, nor of 
 Walter, save that he subscribed the foundation-charter 
 of the Abbey of Fontenay, and had a daughter named 
 Matilda married to Raoul Taisson 2nd. (Vide vol. ii. 
 p. 105.) 
 
 It would be extremely interesting if we could ascer- 
 tain the amount of authority Orderic Vital possessed 
 for the long account he makes the Conqueror give of 
 himself on his death-bed, and from which I have made 
 the above quotation. Prone as our ancient chroniclers 
 are to compose orations for the illustrious personages 
 
 VOL. I, C 
 
18 
 
 THE CONQUEROR AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 whose deeds they record, I cannot wholly discredit 
 this " last dying speech and confession " of William the 
 Conqueror. It is just possible that the King might 
 have said " words to that effect," as Orderic phrases it, 
 and that some one in attendance blessed with a good 
 memory may have subsequently written clown or 
 repeated them with tolerable fidelity to Orderic him- 
 self. At all events, there is nothing in the discourse 
 that is not fairly borne out by contemporary evidence, 
 and, if not veritably an autobiography, has such strong 
 claims on our consideration, that I at first determined 
 to print a translation of it " in extenso ;" but the narra- 
 tive is interlaced with so many long-winded passages of 
 self-accusation, professions of penitence, pious ejacula- 
 tions, and recitals of what he had done for the Church, 
 that I felt it would be wearisome to the general reader, 
 and therefore I have only cited such portions of it as 
 may throw light upon the incidents of his childhood, 
 or tend to the verification of dates. 
 
 The lawful protectors and faithful servants of the 
 young Duke having been slaughtered or poisoned, his 
 authority was set at nought by his turbulent vassals. 
 " The feuds against him were many, and his friends 
 few. Most were ill inclined towards him : . even those 
 whom his father loved, he found haughty and evil- 
 disposed. The barons warred upon each other. The 
 
/ 
 
 THE CONQUEROR. 
 
 19 
 
 strong oppressed the weak, and he could not prevent 
 it, for he lacked the power to do justice to all. So 
 they burned and pillaged the villages, and robbed the 
 villagers, injuring them in many ways." * Roger de 
 Toeni, a collateral descendant of the line of Eollo, 
 refused all allegiance to the illegitimate grandson of 
 the Furrier of Falaise, and commenced ravaging the 
 lands around him, especially those of Humphrey de 
 Vielles. The spoiler was, however, defeated in a 
 sanguinary combat by Roger cle Beaumont, son of 
 Humphrey, and paid for his aggression with his own 
 life and those of two of his sons, Halbert and Elinance.~|* 
 A guardian being still needed for the young Duke, 
 a council was summoned, and with William's consent 
 Raoul de Gace\ the murderer of his former guardian, 
 Count Gilbert, was, strange to say, selected to succeed 
 his victim as tutor to the boy, and commander-in-chief 
 of his army. It is fairly presumable that policy alone 
 could have dictated this choice, as in the case of Alain 
 of Brittany it appears "a practical appeal to the 
 honour of a possible rival," J Raoul being a nephew of 
 Richard II., and consequently having claims on the 
 succession. 
 
 It is not my intention, as I have already stated, to 
 recapitulate in these pages all the well-known events 
 
 * Orel. Vit. 1- Ibid. 
 
 X Freeman : Norman Conquest. 
 
20 
 
 THE CONQUEROR AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 of this period, which properly belong to the general 
 histories of Normandy and England. It is to the per- 
 sonal acts of the Conqueror I confine myself in this 
 chapter; but in the lives of his companions I shall 
 frequently have to mention many important incidents 
 of his reign in which he was not individually con- 
 cerned. 
 
 We learn from William of Malmesbury that the 
 young Duke was knighted by his liege lord and pro- 
 tector, Henry, King of France, at the earliest period 
 prescribed by the laws of chivalry, which, according 
 to the Council of Constance wherein they are men- 
 tioned, appears in the eleventh century to have been 
 the age of twelve — the education for knighthood com- 
 mencing at seven, and princes being allowed to 
 dispense with the probationary stages of page and 
 squire. 
 
 Orderic makes him say, "At the time my father 
 went into voluntary exile, intrusting to me the Duchy 
 of Normandy, I was a mere youth of eight years of 
 age, and from that day to this I have always borne the 
 weight of arms," which accords with the above calcula- 
 tion ; and as there is no record of his having visited 
 King Henry within ten years after doing homage to him 
 on the occasion he alluded to, it seems probable that he 
 received the " accolade " on his first appearance in the 
 
/ 
 
 THE CONQUEEOE. 21 
 
 field, when, in conjunction with that monarch, he 
 summoned his own Castle of Tillieres to surrender, to 
 preserve peace with Henry, who represented it as a 
 standing menace to France. William would have been 
 at that time about twelve years old. 
 
 Shortly after this, Turstain, surnamed Goz, who 
 commanded in the Hiemois, raised the standard of 
 rebellion, and had the audacity to garrison the Castle 
 of Falaise itself against the Duke. William, incensed 
 by the personal insult of making his native town the 
 head-quarters of a revolt against him, assembled his 
 forces, and under the guidance of his guardian, Raoul 
 de Gace, laid siege to the place. A breach was soon 
 made in the outer walls ; but night coming on pre- 
 vented the assault, and before morning Turstain, fore- 
 seeing his inability to defend the castle, sought a 
 parley, and was allowed life and liberty on condition 
 of perpetual exile. 
 
 As William advanced in age and stature, says Waco, 
 he waxed strong, for he was prudent and took care to 
 protect himself on all sides, and began to display 
 qualities which increased his popularity with his sub- 
 jects, who felt he was born to rule. The first day he 
 put on armour and vaulted on his destrier (war-horse) 
 without the assistance of the stirrup, was one of 
 rejoicing throughout his dominions. His proficiency 
 
22 THE CONQUEROK AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 in all military exercises, the soundness of his judgment, 
 his love of justice and his devotion to the Church, are 
 loudly vaunted by his principal panegyrist, Guillaume 
 de Poitiers ; but could not reconcile the proud descen- 
 dants of Rollo to the sway of a base-born boy, whose 
 grandfather had been a tradesman. Guy of Burgundy, 
 son of his aunt Judith, who had been brought up with 
 him from infancy, who had received knighthood at his 
 hands, and to whom he had given Vernon and Brionne, 
 conspired against him with the Viscounts of the Bessin 
 and the Cotentin, offering to share the duchy with 
 them if they would assist him to depose his cousin, 
 whose gifts of a portion of the duchy he evidently 
 considered bribes to induce him to forego his claim to 
 the whole as grandson of Duke Richard II. 
 
 The plot was deeply laid, and the Duke's escape 
 almost miraculous. He was passionately fond of 
 hunting, and had been sojourning for some days at 
 Valognes, partly for that pleasure and partly for 
 business. One night, after a good day's sport, when 
 he had dismissed his companions and betaken himself 
 to rest, he was roused " in the season of his first sleep" 
 by his court-fool or jester, Galet or Galot, who, beat- 
 ing the walls with a staff* he wore slung about his 
 
 * " TJn pel," most probably the staff of his office, a baton with a 
 fool's head, called a bauble. 
 
THE CONQUEKOR. 2$ 
 
 neck, shouted, " Open ! open ! open ! ye are dead men 
 else : where art thou, William ? Wherefore dost thou 
 sleep ? Up ! up ! If thou art found here thou wilt die ! 
 Thine enemies are arming around thee ! If they find 
 thee here thou wilt never leave the Cotentin, or live 
 till the morning!" William arose hastily, and in 
 nothing but his shirt and drawers, with a capa (short 
 hood and cloak) thrown over his shoulders — not 
 stopping even to look for his spurs — leaped on his horse 
 and rode for his life all night, unattended, as it would 
 seem, by friend or servant, fording the river Vire, 
 by favour of an ebbing tide, and landing safely near 
 the church of St. Clement, in the province of Bayeux ; 
 but the city itself was in the hands of his enemies, and 
 he was therefore compelled to avoid it. After a brief 
 halt in the church, and a fervent prayer to God for 
 help in his extremity, he resumed his flight, taking a 
 road between Bayeux and the sea, and just before sun- 
 rise reached Rie, where he found the lord of the place, 
 one Hubert, standing at the gate of his own hostel or 
 castle, " scenting the morning air." He was about to 
 pass him when Hubert, recognising his Sovereign in 
 such disorder and with his horse in a foam, exclaimed, 
 "How is it, fair sir, you travel thus?" "Hubert," 
 said the Duke, " dare I trust you?" "Of a truth,? 
 answered Hubert, " most assuredly ! Speak ! and 
 
24 THE CONQTJEKOK AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 speak boldly !" " I will have no secrets from you 
 then," said William ; " my enemies pursue me, with 
 intent to take my life. I know they have sworn to< 
 slay me ! " Thereupon the loyal vassal prayed the 
 Duke to alight and enter his castle, while he procured 
 him a good fresh horse ; then calling three of his sons T 
 "Mount! mount!" he cried; " behold your lord! 
 Leave him not till you have lodged him safely in 
 Falaise." Then giving them minute instructions as to 
 the road they should take, and warning them to avoid 
 all towns, he bade them God-speed ; and after their 
 departure remained upon his bridge (drawbridge) 
 awaiting the arrival of the Duke's pursuers. " He 
 looked out over valley and over hill," says the old 
 Norman poet, "and listened anxiously," but not for long. 
 The conspirators came galloping up, and seeing Hubert 
 they halted, and taking him apart inquired eagerly 
 if he had seen the Bastard pass, and conjured him to 
 tell them which road he had taken. " He passed but 
 now," answered Hubert ; " you may soon overtake 
 him ; but stay, I will go with you and be your 
 guide, for I should like to strike the first blow at 
 him, and be assured I will if we come up with him." 
 Leading them of course by a totally different route, 
 and by round-about ways, he gave time to William 
 to cross the ford of Folpendant and reach Falaise 
 
I 
 
 9 
 
 THE CONQUEROR. 25 
 
 — in a sad plight it is true, but, as Wace observes 
 naively, " what mattered that so that he was 
 safe?" 
 
 There was great alarm the next day, for no one 
 knew what had become of the Duke. The road from 
 Valognes was covered with his fugitive followers, who 
 believed him to have been murdered, or to have 
 perished in his attempt to cross the Vire, and men 
 cursed heartily one Grimoult du Plessis, whom they 
 rightly suspected of being the principal traitor, for 
 having foully made away with his lord. 
 
 William, scarcely knowing whom he could trust, 
 and not feeling himself strong enough to attack the 
 rebellious Viscounts, who now openly espoused the 
 : cause of Guy of Burgundy and commenced seizing the 
 revenues of the duchy wherever they could lay hands 
 on them, resolved to appeal to the King of France, 
 who had promised his father to protect him, and solicit 
 his assistance to put down the rebellion. He found 
 the King at Poissy. Henry's conduct towards his 
 young liegeman had latterly been anything but friendly. 
 On this occasion, however, either from a qualm of con- 
 science or more probably from a desire to prevent the 
 aggrandisement of the house of Burgundy, he responded 
 favourably and promptly to the appeal, and at the head 
 of a strong force — principally cavalry — marched into 
 
26 THE CONQUEROK AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 Normandy and formed a junction with the army of the 
 Duke at Val-es-Dunes between Caen and Argence, in 
 the neighbourhood of which the enemy had taken up 
 their position (a.d. 1047). 
 
 Previous to the commencement of the action 
 King Henry observed a body of horse drawn up 
 by themselves at some distance from the rebel 
 forces, and asked the Duke, " Who are they with 
 lances and gonfanons and in rich harness that stand 
 aloof from either powers ? Know you anything of 
 their intentions ? To which side will they hold when 
 the battle begins?" "Sire," answered William, "I 
 believe to my side, for their leader is Raoul Tesson, 
 who has no cause of quarrel or anger with me." 
 
 And so it proved. Raoul Taisson was seigneur de 
 Cingueleiz, and one of the most powerful barons in the 
 country. Although William had given him no cause 
 of offence, he had by some influence been drawn into 
 the conspiracy, and had sworn to smite the Duke 
 wherever he met with him. He had brought with him 
 to the field upwards of one hundred and twenty knights, 
 but at the sight of William he felt some compunction, 
 and delayed joining the rebel forces. The Viscounts 
 made him great promises, but his own knights besought 
 him not to make war upon his liege lord. They repre- 
 sented to him that he could not deny that he was the 
 
THE CONQUEROR. 27 
 
 Duke's "man." That he had clone homage to him 
 before his father and his barons, and that disloyalty to 
 him would render him unworthy of fief and barony. 
 Their remonstrances decided the hesitating Raoul. 
 "You say well, sirs," he answered, "and so shall 
 it be." Then commanding them to stand fast where 
 they were, he spurred across the plain alone, shouting 
 his war-cry, " Tnr aie " or " Turie," for there is 
 a curious controversy about it (though, considering 
 he was Lord of T/^r?/-en-Cingueleiz, there need be 
 none), and riding up to the Duke laughingly, struck 
 him slightly with his glove, saying, " What I swore 
 to do I have done ; I have now acquitted myself 
 of my oath to smite you wherever I found you, and 
 from this time forth I will do you no other wrong or 
 felony." William briefly thanked him, and Raoul rode 
 back to his people. Now this is a very early mention 
 of gloves, which do not appear on the hands of either 
 the civil or military personages in illuminations of the 
 11 tli century, or in the Bayeux Tapestry. We know, 
 however, that during the reign of Ethelred (a.d. 979- 
 1016) five pairs of gloves were presented to him by a 
 society of German merchants for the protection of their 
 trade, which is a proof of their great rarity. I have 
 seen two instances of females being represented with a 
 glove or rather muffler on one hand, having a thumb 
 
28 
 
 THE CONQUEROR AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 but no fingers, like the earliest mail gauntlets, which 
 in the 12th century were simply the extremities of the 
 sleeves of the hauberk, out of which the hand could be 
 slipped through an oval opening at the palm. The 
 Norman hauberk, however, at the date of the Battle of 
 Val-es-Dunes, had no such terminations — the sleeves 
 being loose and not reaching even to the wrists, some- 
 times barely to the elbow. The hands of the warriors 
 in the Bayeux Tapestry (a work of some twenty or 
 thirty years later) are all bare, even when they carry 
 hawks, and the Norman poet has in more than one 
 instance introduced the fashions of his own time in his 
 graphic descriptions. I do not throw any doubt upon 
 the incident, but simply question the instrument, as 
 such statements are too often inconsiderately quoted as 
 proofs of the existence of a fashion or article of attire 
 at a period much earlier than there is any authority 
 for placing it. Some nineteen years later we hear 
 again of gloves, those of Conan Duke of Brittany 
 having been poisoned most conveniently for the Con- 
 queror, when he was preparing for the descent upon 
 England. 
 
 Their use at that period may from their rarity have 
 been limited to princely and noble personages, but the 
 absence of them in the Bayeux Tapestry is too 
 remarkable to be passed without notice. 
 
THE CONQUEROR. 
 
 29 
 
 Pardon, therefore, kind reader, this digression. We 
 will return to the battle. 
 
 The fight commenced. On one side the shout arose 
 of " Montjoie ! " the war-cry of the French, and " Dex 
 aie ! " (God aid), which was that of Normandy, an- 
 swered by Renouf de Bricasard with " Saint Sever ! 
 Sire Saint Sever ! " and by Hamon-aux-Dents with 
 " Saint Amant! Sire Saint Amant!" William, for 
 the first time in hand-to-hand combat, made desperate 
 efforts to reach the perjured Viscounts, who were 
 pointed out to him, but he does not appear to have been 
 able to close with them. Encountering, however, one 
 of Renouf s vassals named Hard^, a native of Bayeux, 
 and renowned for his prowess, he drove his sword 
 into his throat, where it was unprotected by armour, 
 and Harde fell from his horse dead. 
 
 King Henry fought bravely, but had not fared so 
 well. Twice, if not thrice, he had been unhorsed and 
 in great peril. The first time by a nameless knight of 
 the Cotentin — a circumstance long commemorated in 
 a popular rhyme : — 
 
 " From Cotentin came the lance 
 Which unhorsed the King of France," 
 
 and a second time by Hamon-aux-Dents, Lord of 
 Thorigny, Maissi, and Creulli ; but both paid with 
 
30 THE CONQUEROR AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 their lives for the honour of the deed. The unknown 
 knight being unhorsed in turn by one of the king's 
 followers, and trampled to death by the heavy horses 
 of the French cavalry, and Hamon-with-the-Teeth in 
 like manner mortally wounded and carried off dead on 
 his shield to Esquai, where they buried him in front of 
 the church.* 
 
 Raoul Taisson had remained aloof and stationary till 
 after the first shock of the contending armies, then, 
 at the head of his company, dashed into the melee on 
 William's side, and fought gallantly against the rebels. 
 "I know not how to recount his high deeds," says the 
 chronicler, " nor how many he overthrew that day." 
 
 A panic seized the Viscount of the Bessin, and 
 throwing away his lance and shield, he fled for his life 
 " with outstretched neck," as Wace graphically de- 
 scribes it, followed by the most faint-hearted of his 
 people. Neel de Saint-Sauveur, Viscount of the Coten- 
 tin, called for his valour and high bearing " Noble 
 Chef de Faucon," still bravely contended against in- 
 creasing odds ; but at length, exhausted by his exer- 
 tions, and seeing the struggle hopeless, reluctantly 
 and regretfully quitted the field, and the rout became 
 
 * Rom. de Rou. The " Chronique de Normandie" gives to Ghiil- 
 lesen, the uncle of Hamon, the honour of having first unhorsed the 
 King 
 
/ 
 
 THE CONQTJEKOE. 
 
 31 
 
 general. Such numbers were driven into the river 
 Orne, where they were either drowned or killed by 
 their pursuers, that the mills of Borbillion are said to 
 have been stopped by the dead bodies. 
 
 Wace, whom I have followed almost verbatim in 
 this account of the Duke's first general action, says 
 nothing of the part taken therein by the principal 
 mover of the rebellion, Guy of Burgundy, nor by 
 the arch-traitor Grimoult du Plessis, only that the 
 former fled to Brionne, hotly pursued by William, 
 where in his castle he sustained a siege for three 
 years. He was eventually forced to surrender all the 
 lands the Duke had given him in Normandy, and 
 subsequently retired to his native country, while 
 Grimoult was seized and imprisoned at Rouen, where 
 he confessed his felonious attempt on the Duke's 
 life at Valognes, accusing as an accomplice a knight 
 named Salle, the son of Huon. Salle challenged 
 Grimoult to a trial by battle, and a day was 
 appointed for the combat ; but in the morning Gri- 
 moult was found dead in his dungeon, and was buried 
 in his fetters. 
 
 The victory of Val-es-Dunes greatly increased the 
 power and popularity of the Duke of Normandy, now 
 of full age and approved valour and ability. He had 
 very shortly an opportunity of returning the obliga- 
 
32 
 
 THE CONQUEROR AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 tions he was under to the French king for the ready 
 and important assistance he had rendered to him in 
 the suppression of that serious rebellion. 
 
 A war had broken out between King Henry and 
 Geoffrey Martel, Count of Anjou, and William marched 
 with a powerful force to the aid of his suzeraine. So 
 daring, we are told, was his conduct, and so brilliant 
 the feats of arms which distinguished him in this ex- 
 pedition, though they are not particularized, that he 
 was highly lauded by the king, who nevertheless cau- 
 tioned him against the extreme rashness with which he 
 exposed his valuable life. 
 
 The Count of Anjou revenged himself by marching 
 into Normandy and occupying and garrisoning Alen- 
 £on, one of the Duke's border fortresses. William in 
 turn entered the state of Maine, of which Geoffrey was 
 now virtually the sovereign, in the capacity of guardian 
 of its Count Hugh, who was a minor, and besieged 
 Domfront. But treason still lurked about the Norman 
 prince. Intelligence was conveyed to the Angevine 
 commander in Domfront, by some Norman noble un- 
 named, that William had left the main body of his 
 army on a foraging expedition, attended by only fifty 
 men-at-arms, and the direction he had taken. Three 
 hundred horse and seven hundred foot were imme- 
 diately despatched to intercept and capture him. There 
 
THE CONQUEROR. 
 
 33 
 
 can be no doubt that the numbers are greatly exagge- 
 rated, but it may be perfectly true that William, with 
 his fifty followers, put to flight a formidable force, pur- 
 suing them to the very gates of the town, and taking 
 one prisoner with his own hand. 
 
 William of Poitiers, the contemporary biographer and 
 enthusiastic panegyrist of a the Conqueror," who had 
 thus early begun to deserve that title, tells also a story 
 connected with this siege of Domfront, which is pro- 
 bable enough, and too characteristic of the manners of 
 the age to be omitted, were it only " ben trovato." 
 
 Tidings having been brought to the Duke that the 
 Count of Anjou was on his march with a considerable 
 force to raise the siege, he despatched Roger de Mont- 
 gomeri and William, son of that Osbern the Dapifer 
 who was murdered at Vaudreuil, with, according to 
 Wace's version, a third knight named William, the son 
 of Thierry, to meet Geoffrey and demand an explana- 
 tion of his conduct. The Count informed them that 
 it was his intention to be before Domfront the next 
 morning, where he would meet the Duke, and, that Wil- 
 liam might recognize him, he would be on a white 
 horse and bear a gilded shield. The envoys answered 
 that he need not give himself the trouble to travel so 
 far. William would meet him on the road in the 
 morning, armed and mounted in such wise as they 
 
 VOL. I. D 
 
34 THE CONQUEROR AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 described to him. William kept his word ; but the 
 Count appears to have thought better of it, and had 
 retreated before daybreak, to the great disappointment 
 of the Normans. 
 
 It is singular that this story should have been 
 quoted some years ago to prove that heraldic in- 
 signia were known and borne in the eleventh century, 
 when the evidence it affords us is exactly to the con- 
 trary. Had such personal distinctions existed at that 
 period, " the Normans," as Mr. Freeman has justly 
 observed, " could hardly have needed to be told what 
 kind of shield Geoffrey would carry." 
 
 Leaving a sufficient force before Domfront, William 
 marched suddenly by night upon Alengon, Eis own 
 disloyal town, which had opened its gates to his 
 enemy. The hostile garrison here insulted the Duke 
 by hanging out skins or furs, and shouting " La Pel ! 
 La Pel al parmentier ! ' ' which, as I have already ob- 
 served, was twitting him with his maternal descent 
 from a tailor. 
 
 Stung to the quick, the grandson of the tailor swore 
 " by the splendour of God," — his habitual oath, — that 
 the limbs of men who had so mocked him should be 
 lopped like the branches of a tree ; and he kept his 
 cruel oath. He took the town by assault, and two- 
 and-thirty of the defenders had their hands and feet 
 
THE CONQUEKOR. 
 
 3,5 
 
 vcut off, and cast over the castle walls, as a terrible 
 warning to those who still held the castle. It was 
 .not in vain. The garrison surrendered, on condition 
 that their lives and limbs should be spared. Hurry- 
 ing back to Domfront, whither the tidings of the fate 
 of Alengon had preceded him, he received the almost 
 immediate submission of that fortress, the garrison 
 only stipulating for the retention of their weapons as 
 well as their limbs. Domfront became a border for- 
 tress of Normandy, in addition to Alengon on the 
 -southern frontier of the duchy ; and William, after 
 inarching triumphantly through Maine, and fortifying 
 the Castle of Ambrieres, returned, covered with laurels, 
 to Rouen. 
 
 Flushed with conquest, and feeling secure for the 
 first time of his paternal dominions, the Duke of 
 NTormandy, at the urgent request of his councillors, 
 looked about him for a wife, and appears as early as 
 1049 to have made overtures for the hand of Matilda, 
 -daughter of Baldwin, Count of Flanders ; for at the 
 Council of Rheims, held on the 1st of October in that 
 .year, the marriage was prohibited. The whole story 
 of Matilda's early life, of her indignant rejection and 
 subsequent acceptance of the hand of William of 
 Normandy, because, forsooth, she thought he must be 
 a man of great courage and high daring who could 
 
 D 2 
 
36 THE CONQUEEOE AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 venture to come and beat her in her father's own 
 palace,* is so involved in mystery that a volume might 
 be written on this subject alone. Is there any truth 
 whatever in the popular story of her brutal treatment 
 by William ? Which of the versions, if any, is to be 
 trusted ; and if there be the least foundation for it, 
 when did the outrage, unpardonable under any cir- 
 cumstances, take place ? Matilda, it is evident by her 
 resentment of another's refusal of herself, and her 
 vindictive conduct towards the culprit when she had 
 become Queen of England, was not of a forgiving 
 nature. Could such a woman ever have lived upon 
 such terms of affection as we are told she did with a 
 husband, who, regardless of her sex and her rank, had 
 publicly insulted and assaulted her, as not even, in that 
 still barbarous age, the lowest ruffian in his senses 
 would have done ? What was her offence ? She, the 
 grand-daughter of a king of France, legitimately 
 descended on both sides from the greatest sovereigns 
 in Europe, had naturally objected to become the wife 
 of the base-born grandson of a tradesman of Falaise. 
 Supposing this part of the story to be true, which has 
 at least probability in its favour, can it be believed 
 that when William, some time after his offer had been 
 courteously declined by Count Baldwin, learned by 
 
 * Badouin d'Ayennes. 
 
THE CONQUEEOE. 37 
 
 report the reason Matilda had given for her refusal, 
 that even allowing for the violence of his temper and 
 the ferocity of his nature as evidenced by his savage 
 punishment of those who had insulted him at Alengon, 
 would have travelled from Normandy to Lille in 
 Flanders, forced his way into the chamber of the 
 Count's daughter, dragged her about it by her hair, 
 and, dashing her on the floor, spurned and trampled 
 upon her as she lay at his feet? — or, according to 
 another account, intercepted her on her way home 
 from church at Bruges, and brutally beat her and 
 wounded her with his spurs ? The spurs of that day, 
 be it remembered, were not rowelled, but made with 
 one spear-shaped point, which might have inflicted on 
 a female a mortal wound ! As indeed he is stated, with 
 «qual truth, to have done on a later occasion, when 
 irritated at being detained by Matilda after he had 
 mounted his horse, he struck at her with his heel so 
 that the spur ran into her breast and she died ! — some 
 seventeen years before she did die. 
 
 Another story of her death having been caused by 
 his cruelty towards her, will be told in its proper 
 place. Here I have only to repeat that such a " court- 
 ship,'' despite the slanderous old proverb — 
 
 " A woman, a spaniel, and a walnut-tree, 
 The more you beat them the bettor they be," 
 
38 THE CONQUEEOK AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 could never have been forgiven by such a woman as 
 Matilda of Flanders. Prudence, however, might have- 
 counselled the submission both of father and daughter- 
 under some circumstances ; and I shall return to this 
 subject in my investigation of another mystery connected 
 with this highly eulogized lady, observing only that the- 
 consent ofj both father and daughter must have been- 
 obtained in 1049, or the papal inhibition would have- 
 been unnecessary. 
 
 In 1051 "William visited England, accompanied by 
 an imposing retinue, and was received with great 
 honour and affection by King Edward the Confessor. 
 It was at this period some promise was apparently- 
 given to the Duke of Normandy respecting the suc- 
 cession to the English throne, though the precise fact 
 has never been successfully established. 
 
 William returned to Normandy only to find his rights 
 again disputed and his rule defied by members of his 
 own family. After suppressing a revolt by William^ 
 surnamed Busac, the son of the half-brother of his 
 grandfather, Duke Richard " the Good/' and banishing- 
 him from Normandy, a serious conspiracy and most 
 alarming coalition demanded the exercise of all his 
 courage and ability. Secretly instigated by his uncle,. 
 Malger, Archbishop of Rouen, and openly abetted by 
 Henry, King of France, alternately the friend and foe 
 
/ 
 
 THE CONQUEROR. 39 
 
 of his valorous vassal ; William of Arques, Count of 
 Talou, brother of the primate, raised the standard of 
 rebellion against his nephew and liege lord in 1053, 
 claiming the duchy as the legitimate son of Richard II. 
 The Duke was again at Valognes when this new out- 
 break was reported to him. With his usual prompti- 
 tude he immediately took horse, and outstripping his 
 small escort reached Arques with only six followers. 
 Fortunately, however, he encountered in its neighbour- 
 hood a force comprising three hundred knights, who 
 had marched of their own accord from Rouen on receipt 
 of the tidings. William, undismayed by their report 
 of the strength of the enemy, exclaimed " They will fly 
 at my sight ! " and perceiving, as he spoke, the Count 
 returning to the castle from some expedition at the 
 head of a considerable body of troops, he at once set 
 spurs to his horse, and galloping up the hill with his 
 few hundred followers charged the rebels so furiously 
 that they speedily gave way and fled for safety into 
 the fortress, pursued to the very gates by the Duke, 
 who but for the rapidity with which they were closed 
 against him would have entered with the runaways 
 and crushed the revolt at a blow. 
 
 My narrative being limited to an account of the 
 personal sayings and doings (" les Gestes et Faictes," 
 as the old chroniclers call them) of the Conqueror, I 
 
40 THE CONQUEKOK AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 leave the subsequent siege and surrender of Arques, the 
 banishment of the Count of Talou, and temporary 
 pacification of the duchy to the historians of Normandy. 
 The gallant exploit above recorded is the only one I 
 have found related of the Duke in connection with this 
 rebellion. 
 
 During the brief lull that succeeded this storm, the 
 marriage of William and Matilda appears to have 
 taken place, whether in defiance of the pontifical 
 inhibition or after its removal is not quite clear ; neither 
 are the grounds on which it was issued, though 
 generally understood to have been nearness of kin. It 
 is remarkable, however, that Pope Leo IX., who pro- 
 hibited the marriage, was at this moment a captive in 
 the power of the Normans at Benevento, and his 
 authority might have been set at nought or a dispen- 
 sation extorted from him. At all events, Count Bald- 
 win conducted his daughter to Eu in Normandy, where 
 the long-delayed and forbidden marriage was celebrated, 
 and the fair Duchess of Normandy thence proceeded 
 with her husband to Rouen, where they were received 
 with every demonstration of joy. 
 
 The treacherous and dissolute Archbishop Malger, 
 in an extraordinary fit of virtuous indignation, excom- 
 municated the newly married pair for having dared to 
 disobey the commands of the Church. It does not 
 
I 
 
 THE C0NQT7ER0K. 
 
 41 
 
 appear, however, to have much affected the illustrious 
 culprits. Nevertheless, Duke William did not forget 
 it when two years later he was called upon to pro- 
 nounce sentence on his unworthy uncle, found guilty 
 in solemn council at Lisieux of all kinds of crimes and 
 offences, including, of course, the study and practice 
 of the black art. He deposed him from his see, and 
 banished him to the Channel Islands, "where," says 
 Wace, "he led the life that best pleased him." Magic 
 or witchcraft formed generally one of the " counts in 
 the indictment " of any criminal in that age of ignor- 
 ance and gross superstition, and he was accused of 
 having " a private devil " on his establishment (" un 
 deable prive "), whom many had heard speak, but 
 no one had ever seen. This familiar spirit was named 
 " Toret," or " Toiret," which Monsieur Pluquet says 
 is the diminutive of Thor, or Thur, the Scandinavian 
 deity ; while Sir Francis Palgrave contends it is pure 
 high Dutch, and simply signifies Folly. (Query : If the 
 cards called Torot, and used by the gipsies in the 
 fourteenth and fifteenth centuries to tell fortunes with, 
 derived their appellation from the same root, whichever 
 it may be ?) 
 
 Whether or not the ex-primate was indebted to this 
 invisible friend for the information he communicated 
 to his boatmen when sailing, during his exile, off the 
 
J'2 
 
 THE CONQUEROR AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 French coast, is not recorded ; but he warned them to 
 be careful, as he knew for certain that one of the per- 
 sons on board would die that day, though he could 
 not say which, nor from what cause. They listened 
 to him, but thought no more about it. It was summer, 
 the day was hot, and Malger was seated near the 
 rudder, without his drawers or hose. They were just 
 entering some port, when, suddenly rising or changing 
 his position, his feet became entangled in his clothes, 
 and he fell overboard, head foremost. His body was 
 found, after some search, between two rocks, and 
 carried to Cherbourg, where he was buried. 
 
 To return, however, to the Conqueror. But a few 
 months of domestic peace were allowed him. A new 
 and formidable league was entered into against him by 
 his old enemy, the Count of Anjou, and his old friend, 
 the jealous and capricious King of France. The Duke 
 of Normandy was his vassal, but was becoming so 
 powerful that he might one day be his master, or, at 
 least, an independent sovereign and dangerous neigh- 
 bour. In 1054 the hostile army entered the duchy in 
 two divisions. The left, under the command of the 
 King himself, marching by Mantes, to attack Evreux 
 and Rouen ; the right, by Aumale, to Mortemer, a 
 spot now celebrated as the scene of one of the fiercest 
 conflicts of the eleventh century, terminating in the 
 
/ 
 
 THE CONQUEROR. 43 
 
 complete defeat and destruction of this portion of the 
 invading army, so many prisoners being taken that 
 there was not a prison in all Normandy which was not 
 full of Frenchmen. The principal details of the 
 battle of Mortemer will be found in subsequent 
 chapters, devoted to some who were leaders in the 
 victorious army. William was encamped meanwhile 
 on one bank of the Seine, watching the French King, 
 who had taken up a position on the other. The joyful 
 tidings were quickly communicated to him, and, after 
 thanking God " with clasped hands and tears in his 
 eyes," he determined to send to King Henry the 
 news of the battle himself, but in so mysterious a 
 manner that it should increase his dismay and dis- 
 tress. 
 
 The device appears to us now as absurdly childish, 
 but it seems to have produced the desired effect. A 
 messenger, Ealph de Toeni (as Orderic makes William 
 himself tell us), the grandson of that Roger who was 
 one of the first to refuse allegiance to William in his 
 childhood, was intrusted with its execution. 
 
 In the dead of the night he approached the royal 
 quarters, and climbing a tree, or, according to others, 
 mounting some eminence, overhanging the King's tent,, 
 he shouted, " Frenchmen ! Frenchmen ! arise, arise ! 
 Prepare for flight — ye sleep too long ! Away, 
 
44 THE CONQUEROR AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 and bury your friends who have been slain at 
 Mortem er ! " 
 
 The King, who heard this cry, was greatly alarmed 
 and astonished. No attempt appears to have been 
 made to capture the audacious bearer of this terrible 
 intelligence, but an inquiry was made throughout the 
 camp to ascertain whether any one had heard a 
 rumour of such a disaster having befallen the other 
 division of the army. While the King was in consul- 
 tation with his officers, fugitives from the field of 
 battle arrived and confirmed the fatal news. The 
 French, panic struck, decamped with all speed, setting 
 fire to their tents and huts, and with the King made 
 the best of their way homeward. The Duke, always 
 careful to preserve an appearance of respect for his feu- 
 dal obligations, declined to pursue him, saying, "Let him 
 go; he has had quite enough to trouble and cross him/ 7 
 
 True, for the time he had, but not sufficient to make 
 him wiser for the future. He had made a truce with 
 William, and pledged himself not to interfere again in 
 any quarrel between the Duke and his implacable 
 ^enemy, Geoffrey Martel; nevertheless, he declared 
 that he would sooner perjure himself than not have 
 his revenge for the battle of Mortemer. In the follow- 
 ing August, while the corn was yet standing, he burst 
 once more into Normandy, ravaging the Hiemois and 
 
/ 
 
 THE CONQUEROR. 45 
 
 overrunning the wliole country of the Bessin as far as 
 the sea, burning the towns and villages, and plunder- 
 ing the inhabitants without mercy. 
 
 The news of this sudden and unprovoked inroad 
 reached the Duke at Falaise, and grieved him 
 sorely. He called to arms all the forces in his 
 dominions, even the countrymen (" villeins," as they 
 are termed in the language of that day), and who 
 responded to the call loyally with pikes and clubs 
 and any weapons they could arm themselves with. 
 It was, in fact, a levee en masse to repel an in- 
 vader. But the policy of the Duke was not to give 
 battle to the enemy on their first entrance into 
 his dominions, but to bide his time, and fall on them 
 when least expected on their return. He contented 
 himself with strengthening and garrisoning all his 
 castles and fortified places, and waited patiently till, 
 laden with plunder and flushed with the success of 
 their unopposed march through one half of the country, 
 they at length faced about, and were preparing to cross 
 the river Dive to carry fire and sword into the other 
 half. Duke William, who had received most accurate 
 information of every step the marauders had taken or 
 intended to take, led his forces through the valley of 
 Bavent, unperceived by the enemy, and as soon as his 
 feudal lord, the King and the vanguard of his army had 
 
45 
 
 THE CONQUEROR AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 crossed the river at Varaville, rushed upon the rear-guard 
 and the long* train of baggage-waggons which were slowly 
 following the main body. " Then," says Wace, ''be- 
 gan a fierce melee — many blows of spears and swords. 
 The knights charged with their lances, the archers 
 shot with their bows, and the 1 villeins ' laid about 
 them with their iron-shod staves, driving the French 
 along the causeway, which was long and in bad repair, 
 and they being encumbered by their plunder, and con- 
 sequently impeded in their progress, broke their ranks 
 and were thrown into utter confusion. The great press 
 was at the bridge, which, being old, gave way under 
 the weight of the crowd and the force of a remarkably 
 high tide, and fell in with all that were upon it. In 
 every direction armour was to be seen floating and 
 men plunging and sinking, none but good swimmers 
 having a chance of life. Cries of despair arose from 
 the numbers who by the fall of the bridge were left 
 without means of escape. They rushed along the 
 bank of the river, seeking for fords and flinging away 
 their arms and booty, cursing themselves for having 
 taken it, the Normans pursuing and sparing none, till 
 all who had not crossed the bridge were drowned, 
 slain, or made prisoners. From the height of Baste- 
 bourg the King looked down on Varaville and Cabourg. 
 He saw the marshes and the valleys which lay 
 
/ 
 
 THE CONQUEEOE. 
 
 47 
 
 stretched out before him, the swollen river, and the 
 broken bridge. He marked the struggles of his 
 soldiers, the numbers seized and bound or struggling 
 in the water. He could help or save none. He was 
 speechless with sorrow and indignation ; his limbs 
 trembled, his face burned with rage. With a heavy 
 heart he returned to France, and never again bore 
 shield or spear" — "whether as penance or not," adds 
 the poet, "I do not know." Henry was, in fact, 
 advanced in age at this time, and died two years after 
 his return to Paris. 
 
 Mr. Freeman remarks that Wace is the only author 
 who mentions a bridge, Benoit de Sainte-More and 
 others only speaking of a ford. He therefore considers 
 that Wace is in error, and describes the locality as it 
 was in his time. It may be so, but I cannot hold that 
 the argument is conclusive without some evidence to 
 show that there was no old wooden bridge existing at the 
 date of the battle of Varaville. The breaking of the 
 bridge appears to me like a piece of local information, 
 and the unusual rising of the tide which he relies 
 upon would assist in its destruction as well as render 
 the fords impassable. The Prebend of Bayeux is more 
 to be trusted on such a point than any other 
 chronicler. 
 
 About this time, also, that arch-disturber of every 
 
48 THE CONQUEEOK AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 neighbour's peace, Geoffrey Martel, of whose intrigues 
 we hear so much, and of his personal prowess so little, 
 passed away, and Duke William was relieved from 
 the ceaseless machinations and maraudings of two 
 powerful enemies. 
 
 William's acquisition of the county of Maine, partly 
 by bequest and partly by force of arms, curiously as it 
 illustrates his crafty policy more fully developed in his 
 subsequent conquest of England, is another portion of 
 the history of Normandy, the details of which belong 
 to the annalist rather than the biographer. I shall 
 only refer hereafter to two circumstances in connection 
 with it, one of which affects the Conqueror's family, and 
 the other some of his followers. 
 
 We have now arrived at the date of Harold's ap- 
 pearance in Normandy'; and here again, beyond the 
 well-known facts of his being driven on the coast of 
 Ponthieu, imprisoned by its Count Wido (Guy), and re- 
 leased at the instance of the Duke of the Normans, of 
 his oath on the relics, and his promise to marry one of 
 William's daughters, all of which have been told over 
 and over in every history of England, we are left on 
 several points in utter ignorance, both as to motives 
 and circumstances, which might have had a most 
 important influence on the events recorded. 
 
 Three different versions of Harold's voyage are 
 
THE OONQUEBOE. 
 
 given, having no agreement with each other beyond 
 the fact of his having sailed from Bosham in Sussex, 
 and by accident or mistake landed in the dominions of 
 Count Wido. That curious relic, the Bayeux Tapestry, 
 which minutely represents his embarkation, supports, 
 I think, the statement of William of Malmesbury, that 
 Harold was simply bent on a sporting expedition, and 
 had no mission to Normandy or any intention of 
 visiting its duke, but was driven by contrary winds on 
 the coast of Ponthieu, where, according to the bar- 
 barous custom, not specially of that country, but of 
 the whole coast from Brittany to Flanders, called " the 
 law of Langan," he was seized and imprisoned for the 
 sake of ransom. Not only on this point, but on nearly 
 all the principal circumstances connected with Harold's 
 sojourn in Normandy, such contradictory statements 
 are confidently made by the only writers who could 
 possibly have known anything of the facts, that we in 
 the nineteenth century can really place no reliance on 
 the details with which any one of them has furnished 
 us; and the nature of this work forbids a critical 
 examination, which could only result in the expression 
 of an individual opinion as to probabilities, and neither 
 conclusively settle a single question in debate nor have 
 any interest for the general reader. The expedition 
 to Brittany, in which Harold accompanied Duke 
 
 VOL. I. E 
 
50 
 
 THE CONQUEROR AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 William, does not appear to have been signalised by 
 any personal exploit. The time and place wherein 
 the Duke gave arms to Harold, and Harold is asserted 
 to have taken an oath of some description to him, are 
 variously recorded, and we have nothing certain in the 
 way of stirring incident till we arrive at the memorable 
 year 1066 and the invasion of England. 
 
 Wace graphically describes the effect produced on 
 William by the tidings of the death of King Edward 
 the Confessor, and the assumption of the crown by 
 Harold. The Duke was hunting in the park of Quevily, 
 near Rouen. He had his bow in his hand, which he 
 had just bent, when "a sergeant" (man-at-arms), who 
 had come from England, approached him and imparted 
 to him privately the news. He immediately quitted 
 the park in great anger, impatiently untying and tying 
 repeatedly the laces or cords of his mantle. He spoke 
 to no man, and no man ventured to speak to him. 
 Crossing the Seine in a boat, he entered his palace and 
 sat down moodily on a bench in the hall, covering his 
 face with his cloak and leaning his head against a 
 column, restlessly turning himself from one side to the 
 other. His attendants wondered what ailed him, 
 ^ind inquired anxiously of his seneschal, William of 
 Breteuil, who entered the hall "humming a tune," 
 — a trait of character which curiously reminds us of 
 
THE CONQUEROR. 
 
 51 
 
 the whistling of an eminent personage at a critical 
 moment of the late siege of Paris, — if lie could explain 
 the cause of their master's emotion. The Duke looking 
 up, " the bold son of Osbern " told him that it was use- 
 less to attempt concealing the news he had heard, for 
 it had already spread throughout the city, and was 
 known to every man in Rouen ; that instead of 
 mourning he should up and be doing, cross the sea 
 •and dethrone the usurper. 
 
 We may pretty well be assured that the Duke had 
 come to that determination in his own mind already, 
 and required no prompting from any one. 
 
 After a select council, which was attended by the chief 
 men in the duchy, including William's half-brothers 
 Odo and Robert and Eudo al Chapel who had married 
 the Duke's half-sister Muriel, a general one was called 
 at Lillebonne. The Duke laid his case before them, and 
 notwithstanding the hesitation of some and the actual 
 dissent of others, the personal influence of the prince 
 prevailed, and the promise of each baron to provide a 
 certain number of ships and soldiers was, there and 
 then, entered in a book. Of these barons and their 
 contingents, their deeds and their fate, I have to speak 
 separately, and in lieu of a repetition of the 'often- 
 told tales of the muster at the mouth of the Dive, 
 the landing at Pevensey, and the decisive battle 
 
 E 2 
 
52 
 
 THE CONQUEROE AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 of Hastings, I shall select from the general account 
 such incidents only as are strictly connected with the 
 person of the Conqueror, to whom this chapter is 
 dedicated. 
 
 In the " Mora," the splendid ship said to have been 
 presented to him by his duchess, favoured by a south 
 wind, for which he had waited long and anxiously, first 
 beside the Dive and secondly at St. Valery, piloted by 
 Stephen the son of Airard, the Duke of Normandy led 
 his enormous fleet — enormous taking it even at the 
 lowest calculation, which, according to Wace, who 
 says he heard it from his father, was nearly seven 
 hundred sail — from the confluence of the Somme to 
 the coast of Sussex, and on the morning of Thursday, 
 28th of September, cast anchor, and the whole army 
 immediately disembarked in good order and without 
 the slightest opposition. 
 
 Old and well-worn as the story is, I must not omit 
 it. William, in descending from his ship, missed his 
 footing and fell full length upon the sand. Anticipating 
 the effect of such an evil omen on his superstitious 
 followers, he exclaimed, " By the splendour of God, I 
 have taken seisin of England ! — I hold its earth in my 
 hands ! " Hearing which a soldier pulled a piece of 
 thatch from a cottage on the beach, and offered it to 
 the Duke as seisin not only of the land, but of all it 
 
THE CONQUEROR. 
 
 53 
 
 contained. " I accept it," said William, " and may 
 God be with me ! " 
 
 Wace tells us that two vessels foundered, it might 
 be from overlading. In one of them was lost a clerk, 
 who was supposed to possess the gift of prophecy, and 
 had declared that William's voyage would be pros- 
 perous, and that Harold would yield to him without a 
 blow. "A poor prophet was he," observed the Duke, 
 when he heard of his being drowned, " who could not 
 foretell the time and cause of his own death. Weak 
 would be the man who believed in the predictions of 
 such an astrologer." 
 
 On the morning of Saturday, the 14th of October, 
 the Duke, having heard mass and received the Com- 
 munion, advanced with his whole army from Hastings 
 to Telham Hill, whence they could observe the English 
 forces encamped on the rising ground, called by 
 Orderic, Senlac* 
 
 * Notwithstanding the protest of Mr. M. A. Lower, I have kept 
 the name given by Orderic to the site of the present village of Battle, 
 as it must have been so called in his time ; and the tradition recorded 
 by William of Neuburgh, that " on the spot where the greatest 
 slaughter was made there exuded after every gentle shower real, and 
 ■as it were recent, blood — as though the voice of so much Christian 
 gore shed by the hands of Christian brethren still cried to the Lord 
 from the ground that had drunk it in," certainly favours the deriva- 
 tion of the word from Sanguelac, the origin of the tradition being 
 evidently the redness of the chalybeate springs in that locality, which 
 still retains in the various forms of " Saint lake," " Saint lache," 
 41 The lake," and " Battle lake," some memory of the name given to 
 it by the Normans. 
 
51 THE CONQUEROR AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 At Telham, or Hetheland, as it was then called, 
 another well-known incident occurred. In putting on 
 his hauberk William, or his armour-bearer, mistook 
 the back of it for the front. As in the case of his fall 
 on the sands, he quickly and cleverly represented the 
 omen as one of happy import, and laughingly re- 
 assured his alarmed attendants by declaring it to be a 
 sign that from a duke he should be turned into a king. 
 Mounting a noble Spanish war-horse, which Walter 
 Giffard, Lord of Longueville, had brought to him as a 
 present from a king who highly esteemed him, William 
 rode to the head of his forces, and learning from an? 
 officer, who had been sent to reconnoitre the enemy, 
 that Harold's standard was planted on the summit of 
 the hill facing him, vowed that, if God gave him the 
 victory, he would build a monastery to His honour on 
 the spot where that standard was now waving. A 
 monk of Marmoutier, who heard him, requested the 
 monastery should be dedicated to St. Martin of Tours,, 
 and William signified his assent thereto. 
 
 I have previously stated that I would not fight the 
 battle of Hastings over again. There is scarcely any 
 conflict recorded in English history the general fea- 
 tures of which are so familiar to all of us, and nothing 
 specially new in the details has been discovered by 
 recent writers. The ground has been gone over, lite- 
 
THE CONQUEROR. 
 
 rally as well as figuratively, foot by foot, by the local 
 historian, Mr. Mark Anthony Lower, and by the latest 
 narrator of the Norman Conquest, Mr. Edward Free- 
 man, both of whom have laboured assiduously and 
 successfully in the work of identification of places, and 
 minute topographical description of the principal posi- 
 tions occupied by the rival hosts. My business is 
 solely with the personal exploits performed on them, 
 and I shall therefore have to refer frequently to the 
 battle in my separate notices of the most celebrated 
 leaders of the invading army, restricting myself in this 
 chapter to those of the Conqueror only. In the 
 Bayeux Tapestry we behold him armed in his hauberk, 
 which was not the coat of chain mail of the thirteenth 
 century, but the geringlied byrnie of the eleventh and 
 twelfth, consisting of iron rings, not linked together 
 and forming a garment of themselves, but sewn or 
 strongly fastened flat upon a tunic of leather or of 
 quilted linen, buckram, canvas, or some strong mate- 
 rial descending to the mid-leg, and which, being open 
 in the skirts both before and behind for convenience in 
 riding, gave it the appearance of a jacket with short 
 breeches attached to it, if, indeed, such was not 
 actually the case in some instances. The sleeves were 
 loose, and reached only just below the elbow. The 
 legs were defended simply by bands of leather bound 
 
56 THE CONQTJEBOR AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 round the hose crosswise. The helmet was sharply 
 conical, with a back-piece to protect the neck, and 
 a single bar in front defending the nose. William 
 is depicted in the Tapestry lifting his helmet by 
 this nasal, in order to reassure his soldiers, a report 
 of his being killed having caused them to waver 
 at a critical moment of the combat. " Behold me," 
 he exclaimed ; t: I live, and by God's grace I will 
 conquer." * 
 
 Armed with lance and mace, or rather war-club, the 
 latter slung, as we find in another instance, at his 
 saddle-bow, bearing his long, kite-shaped shield, and 
 bestriding his noble Spanish steed, the Duke of the 
 Normans no doubt deserved the eulogy of Haimon, 
 Viscount of Thouars, who declared a warrior so well 
 armed had never been seen under heaven, and that 
 the noble Count would be a noble king. 
 
 Thus armed and equipped, and with the relics round 
 his neck on which Harold is reported to have sworn, 
 William sought the Saxon king as eagerly as at Val- 
 es-Dunes he had sought the rebel viscounts, Renouf 
 and Neel, and similarly in vain. He was intercepted 
 
 * Benoit says — 
 
 " Son chef desarma en la battaille 
 E del heaume et de la ventaille." 
 By ventaille {avant-taille) lie must mean the nasal, as there appears no 
 other protection for the face until some time after the Conquest, when 
 a great variety of ventailles were introduced. 
 
THE CONQUEEOB. 57 
 
 by Harold's brother Gurth, who, casting a javelin at 
 him, killed his horse. The rider fell with it, but, un- 
 wounded himself, was on his feet in an instant, and 
 rushing at Gurth, felled him with one blow of his 
 terrible club. 
 
 He then summoned a knight of Maine to dismount 
 and give him his horse. The knight disloyally refused 
 to assist his sovereign. The Duke, incensed at his 
 conduct, unseated him by force, and mounting the 
 horse returned to the charge. This second horse was 
 also killed under him by a Saxon, who is described by 
 .a writer, supposed to be Guy, Bishop of Amiens, as 
 4C filius Hellocis " (the son of Hello or Helloc ?), and 
 who shared the same fate as Gurth. Count Eustace 
 of Boulogne then offered his horse to the Duke, and 
 again he plunged into the thickest of the fight. A 
 blow from a Saxon axe beat in his helmet and nearly 
 unhorsed him ; a spear-thrust he parried, and slew the 
 assailant. 
 
 These are the particular deeds recorded of him, and 
 we may fairly give him credit for many others, with- 
 out believing the astounding assertion of the supposed 
 Guy of Amiens, that William killed during that day 
 two thousand Saxons with his own hand ! 
 
 On the spot where Harold had fallen — his brain 
 pierced through the eye by a chance arrow — where 
 
58 
 
 THE CONQUEEOE AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 the standards of "the Dragon" and "the Fighting- 
 Man " had been so gallantly defended — under the 
 branches it may be of "the ancient apple-tree " which 
 gave the first name to the battle — a space was cleared 
 of the thickly-heaped dead, the standard of the Nor- 
 mans planted, and the tent of the Conqueror pitched 
 for the night. There, after he had thanked God for 
 giving him the victory, food and wine were brought 
 to him. He was divested of his armour, and his shield 
 and helmet, battered by many blows, were shown to- 
 the surrounding soldiers, who with shouts compared 
 him to all the paladins of Charlemagne ; and there 
 William, despite the remonstrances of Walter GifTard, 
 feasted and slept amidst the piles of the dead and the 
 groans of the dying ! A butcher supping in his reek- 
 ing slaughter-house might equally excite our disgust, 
 but his hands would at least be unstained with the 
 blood of his fellow-creatures. 
 
 It is not my intention to follow the Conqueror 
 step by step through his devastating progress towards 
 London, nor does it accord with the plan of this work 
 to enter into the details of the general political events 
 of the reign of the first Norman King of England. I 
 pass over, for the present, his coronation, with its 
 attendant tumult and firing of houses by his savage 
 soldiery, his visit to Normandy in 1067, and that of 
 
/ 
 
 THE CONQUEROR. 
 
 59 
 
 Matilda to England the following year. Of the various 
 revolts and conspiracies against him I shall have to 
 speak in my sketches of the principal actors in them. 
 I shall also have occasion to refer in them to other of 
 his expeditions to Normandy and his campaigns in the 
 north of England, where he "made a wilderness, and 
 called it peace," a quotation I admit worn thread-hare, 
 but never more applicable than to the subjugator of 
 England. 
 
 I hasten at once to the period when the star of 
 William began to pale, when victory no longer waited 
 on his standard, and domestic discords added to the 
 bitterness of defeat. 
 
 His eldest son, Robert, whom he had formerly asso- 
 ciated with his mother in the government of Normandy, 
 and subsequently named as his successor to that duchy, 
 was excited to rebellion by the state of poverty and 
 dependence in which he was kept by his suspicious 
 and avaricious father. He claimed immediate posses- 
 sion of Normandy and Maine, and a share of the realm 
 of England. 
 
 To the King's remonstrances and lectures, he 
 answered petulantly, that he did not come to hear 
 sermons, of which he had heard enough from the tutors 
 who taught him grammar; and on William's peremp- 
 tory refusal to grant his requests retired in dudgeon, 
 
«0 THE CONQUEROR AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 and shortly afterwards, incensed by an ill-timed frolic 
 of his younger brothers, William and Henry, who threw 
 some water upon him from an upper story of a house 
 in which they were playing at dice, he broke out into 
 open rebellion, and with a small band of adherents, 
 made an unsuccessful attempt to seize the Castle of 
 Rouen. 
 
 Matilda's secret support of this disobedient son, to 
 whom she sent large supplies of money and jewels, 
 ■caused serious quarrels between her and her husband. 
 This rash, ungovernable young man, whose personal 
 appearance was far from prepossessing — as he is de- 
 scribed by contemporary writers as heavy-faced, cor- 
 pulent, and with legs so short and devoid of symmetry 
 that his father gave him the name of Gambaron, in 
 other words, Court-heuse — was his mother's favourite. 
 She is reported to have declared that were he dead 
 and buried, she would gladly give her own life to re- 
 suscitate him. 
 
 Robert, supported by Philip, King of France, was 
 besieged in the Castle of Gerberoi by William in 
 person, and in a sally, the Conqueror received from 
 his own son the first wound he had ever met with in 
 all the battles he had fought. Of this personal en- 
 counter there are as many different versions as there 
 are narrators. The most popular is, that Robert was 
 
THE CONQUEROR. 61 
 
 unconscious of the person lie had wounded and unhorsed 
 until the King's voice revealed the startling fact, when 
 he immediately dismounted, and expressing his contri- 
 tion and imploring pardon for his unintentional crime, 
 placed him on his own horse and led him safely from 
 the field. One writer says William's fury was so great 
 that he heaped curses on his son's head, which no 
 entreaties could ever induce him to revoke. Another, 
 in flat contradiction , asserts that he was so touched by 
 the respect and remorse of Eobert that he forgave him 
 on the spot, and thenceforth held him in great esteem. 
 
 That some sort of family reconciliation did take 
 place appears evident from a charter granted in 1082 
 by "William and his Queen to the Church of the Holy 
 Trinity at Caen, to which are affixed the signatures of 
 the three sons — Robert, William, and Henry. This 
 charter is also remarkable for the fact that, amongst 
 the lands granted to the church is Nailsworth in 
 Gloucestershire, which was part of the manor of 
 Michinhampton, previously held by Brihtric Meaw, 
 whom Matilda had so unjustly deprived of all his estates 
 in revenge for his having slighted her early affection. 
 "Hell hath no fury like a woman foiled," says an old 
 dramatist, and this still mysterious story might be 
 adduced in support of the assertion. I shall have to 
 recur to it hereafter. 
 
62 THE CONQUEBOK AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 On the 2nd of November, 1083, Queen Matilda 
 died, after a lingering illness, at Caen, in Normandy, 
 and was buried in the church of her own foundation. 
 A story was circulated in the reign of her son, 
 Henry I., concerning the immediate cause of her de- 
 cease, which may be classed with that of her w T ooing 
 by William. Matilda is reported to have discovered 
 an intrigue between her husband and the daughter of 
 a priest, and in her jealousy had the girl ham-strung, 
 which so exasperated William that he beat her, or 
 caused her to be beaten to death with a horse's 
 bridle.* 
 
 Four years afterwards William himself followed her 
 to the grave. Is it necessary to recapitulate the oft- 
 repeated story of the coarse jest of Philip, King of 
 France, on the increasing corpulence of the Conqueror, 
 of William's furious retort, of his burning of Mantes, 
 the stumbling of his steed on the hot embers and con- 
 sequent fatal injury of the rider ? 
 
 He was borne on a litter to Rouen. But the noise of 
 the city was too great for him, and by his own directions 
 he was conveyed to the Priory attached to the Church 
 of St. Gervaise, standing on a hill to the west of the 
 town. There, attended by Gilbert Maminot, Bishop 
 of Lisieux, Guntred, Abbot of Jumieges, and others 
 
 * William of Malmesbury, Book III. 
 
THE CONQUEROR. 
 
 63 
 
 well skilled in medicine, he lingered some six or seven 
 weeks, and then conscience-stricken on the approach 
 of death, he is said to have uttered that remarkable 
 " discourse" which I have alluded to, and quoted from 
 in the early part of the chapter, wherein he con- 
 fesses himself to have been the barbarous murderer oi 
 many thousands, both old and young, and tremblingly 
 recounts, as a set-off, that he has erected and endowed 
 seventeen convents of monks and six of nuns during 
 his government of Normandy. 
 
 He had already given that duchy to his eldest son 
 Robert, a grant which he seems to have regretted, but 
 could not amend. " I know for certain," he observed, 
 " that the country which is subject to his dominion will 
 be truly wretched. He is a proud and r 4\\y prodigal, 
 and will have long to suffer severe misfortune " — a 
 singular proof of "the great esteem" in which the 
 King held his son after the affair at Gerberoi! "I 
 appoint no one my heir to the Crown of England," he 
 continued, "for I did not attain that high honour by 
 hereditary right, but I wrested it from the perjured 
 King Harold, in a desperate battle, with much effusion 
 of human blood, and it was by the slaughter and 
 banishment of his adherents that I subjugated England 
 to my rule." He expressed, however, a hope that his 
 son William, who from his earliest years had been 
 
64 
 
 THE CONQUEKOK AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 always attached to him, would succeed to the throne, 
 and enjoy a prosperous reign. 
 
 " And what do you give me, my father ?" exclaimed 
 Henry, his youngest surviving son. " Five thousand 
 pounds of silver from my treasury," replied the King. 
 "But what shall I do with this money, having no 
 corner of the earth which I can call my own ?" rejoined 
 the young Prince. " My son," said the dying Monarch, 
 "be contented with your lot, and trust in the Lord. 
 Suffer patiently your elder brothers to precede you. 
 Robert will have Normandy, and William England ; 
 but you will in turn succeed to all the dominions which 
 belong to me, and you will surpass your brothers in 
 wealth and power." This prophetic declaration throws 
 a little doubt upon the authenticity of this otherwise 
 most interesting narrative. Orderic out-lived King 
 Henry I. ; and the seventh book, in which the above 
 discourse appears, was written after that monarch's 
 death, when the prediction had been fulfilled or might 
 be safely invented. Nevertheless, words are put into 
 William's mouth which deserve consideration, and those 
 whom it may concern are referred to the following 
 chapter. On Thursday, 9th of September, at sunrise, the 
 King, awaking from a tranquil sleep, heard the sound of 
 the great bell of the Cathedral of Rouen, and inquiring 
 the cause, was told by the attendants that it was tolling 
 
THE COXQUEEOR. 
 
 65 
 
 for primes in tlie Church of St. Mary. Then the King, 
 lifting up his hands, said, " I commend myself to Mary, 
 the Holy Mother of God, my heavenly Mistress, that 
 by her blessed intercession I may be reconciled to her 
 well-beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ," and instantly 
 expired. 
 
 Although prepared for the event, the suddenness of 
 its occurrence startled and astonished his attendants, 
 who, says the chronicler, " became as men who had 
 lost their wits." Notwithstanding, the wealthier of 
 them had wit enough to mount their horses and depart 
 in haste to secure their property, while the servants, 
 observing that their masters had disappeared, laid 
 hands on the arms, the plate, the robes, the linen, and 
 all the royal furniture, and made off with their 
 plunder, leaving the corpse of the Conqueror almost 
 naked on the floor. " from the hour of primes to that 
 of tierce." 
 
 Later in'the day the Archbishop of Rouen, attended 
 by the clergy and the monks, went in procession to St. 
 Gervaise, and after the customary prayer for the dead, 
 ordered the body to be conveyed to Caen for sepulture 
 in the Abbey of St. Stephen, which William had 
 founded ; but not one of his relations or retinue was 
 present to take charge of the corpse. At length a 
 knight named Herluin, undertook the office for the 
 
 VOL. I. F 
 
66 THE CONQUEROR AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 love of God and the honour of his country. He caused 
 the body to be embalmed at his own expense, and then 
 carried in a hearse to the port, where it was placed on 
 board a vessel in the Seine, and brought by water and 
 land to Caen. But the misadventures of the remains 
 of the once great and dreaded Conqueror were not to 
 end here. An alarming fire broke out in the city as 
 the funeral procession was on its way to the abbey, and 
 mourners, clergy, and laity rushed to look after the 
 safety of their own houses and assist in extinguishing 
 the flames, leaving only a few monks to accompany the 
 hearse to the gates of St. Stephen's. When the 
 company had reassembled, mass was said, and Gilbert, 
 Bishop of Evreux, ascending the pulpit, pronounced a 
 long panegyric on the deceased sovereign, extolling 
 his valour, justice, and piety, the severity with which 
 he punished robbers and oppressors, and the protection 
 he afforded to the defenceless poor, upon which a man 
 named Ascelin, the son of Arthur, stepped forward and 
 in aloud voice said: " The ground whereon you stand 
 was the courtyard of my father's house, which that man 
 for whom you are bidden to pray, when he was yet 
 but Duke of Normandy, took forcible possession of, and 
 in defiance of all justice by an exercise of tyrannical 
 power he founded this abbey. I therefore lay claim 
 to this land and demand its restitution, and in God's 
 
j 
 
 THE CONQUEROR. 
 
 07 
 
 name forbid the body of the spoiler being covered with 
 earth which is my property and buried in my inheri- 
 tance." 
 
 This awkward commentary on the character of the 
 rigid administrator of justice, the chastiser of 
 robbers, and the protector of the defenceless poor, 
 caused considerable confusion and consternation in the 
 assembly, more particularly when the testimony of 
 the neighbours of Ascelin proved in support of his 
 claim. 
 
 He was conferred with in private. Sixty shillings 
 were paid to him on the spot, and a proportionable 
 price agreed upon for the purchase of the rest of the 
 property. William of Malmesbury says that Prince 
 Henry was present, and paid "the brawler" a hundred 
 pounds of silver to quiet his audacious demands. 
 
 Yet another mishap ! — on lowering the corpse into 
 the stone coffin which had already been placed in the 
 grave, they were obliged to use some force, as the 
 masons had made it too short. The consequence was, 
 that the king being very corpulent, the bowels burst, 
 and an intolerable stench, which the clouds of incense 
 failed to subdue, caused a precipitate retreat of the 
 mourners, and brought the funeral ceremonies to an 
 abrupt conclusion. How this could occur with a body 
 which had been embalmed I do not understand. The 
 
 F 2 
 
G8 THE COXQUEEOE AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 process must have been very hastily and unskilfully 
 performed, or, what is more likely, omitted altogether. 
 
 This miserable close of the history of a mighty 
 monarch has been moralized upon sufficiently. Never 
 more efficiently than by his contemporary Orderic 
 Vital. I leave the Conqueror in his grave, undazzled 
 by his brilliant achievements in the field — admitting 
 the astuteness of his policy, and regretting that in the 
 whole of his life I have been unable to discover the least 
 trait of magnanimity, the least indication of one truly 
 humane or generous feeling. That he was not cruel for 
 cruelty's sake is about the praise which may be 
 accorded to the burglar who would find no particular 
 pleasure in picking a lock if he could get nothing by 
 it, but would not hesitate to commit murder if it 
 were necessary for the security of his booty. Can an 
 instance be cited of his having considered the interest 
 of any one but himself, or refraining from any gratifi- 
 cation that would entail loss or injury to others? 
 u He loved the tall deer as though he were their 
 father,'' and for the paternal pleasure of hunting and 
 slaying them, he ruthlessly laid waste the lands and 
 utterly ruined thousands upon thousands of the hapless 
 people to whom he should have been a father, putting 
 out the eyes of those who killed hart or hind within 
 his forests ! Courteous and debonnair to those who 
 
 • 
 
THE CONQUEROE. 60 
 
 implicitly obeyed his behests or were instrumental to 
 his far-sighted policy, he was "stark " to all who opposed 
 him. Like Sheridan's Sir Anthony, he was com- 
 pliance itself when he was not thwarted. No one 
 more easily led — when he had his own way. 
 
 The favours conferred by him on his own family 
 failed in nearly every instance to secure their affection 
 or fidelity, and such remarkable ingratitude can only 
 be accounted for by the distrust the recipients of his 
 bounty entertained of the motives of their benefactor. 
 To the same cause may fairly be attributed the other- 
 wise inexplicable tergiversations of his feudal lord, 
 Henry, King of France, one day his generous protector, 
 and the next his bitter enemy. 
 
 His liberalities to his followers were cheaply be- 
 stowed at the expense of others, and not only 
 unavoidable rewards for important services rendered, 
 but excellent securities for their future good behaviour, 
 as he could seize at his pleasure the broad lands they 
 held of him, every acre of which he caused to be 
 measured and valued, the number and condition of every 
 human being, and the live stock upon their lands 
 ascertained and recorded, so that not a rood of land 
 nor a living soul, nor a pig, could escape his clutches, 
 if, upon any pretence whatever, he thought fit to take 
 possession of them. To this masterpiece of policy we 
 
70 THE CONQTJEKOli AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 are indebted for the great survey of England, known 
 as Domesday Book, the worth of which to the student 
 of English history is not lessened by the cause of its 
 compilation. 
 
 His rigid administration of justice appears like 
 a grim satire on the supreme contempt of it he 
 exhibited in his own conduct. Indignation at the 
 slightest infringement of the monopoly of murder, 
 robbery, and wrong doing vested in his own person. 
 Even the reputation for conjugal fidelity so eagerly 
 claimed for him by his apologists, rests upon a very 
 fragile foundation, and as we learn from William of 
 Malmesbury, was circumstantially denied in his time. 
 The same writer, while he considers it folly — good, 
 easy man, — to believe such stories about " so great a 
 king," unwittingly deprives the boasted continence ot 
 the Conqueror of any claim to rank amongst " his 
 other virtues," whatever they may have been, by in- 
 forming us that even in his youth he was so in- 
 sensible to the allurements of beauty, that the gossip 
 of the day attributed his indifference to a defect of 
 Nature, and not to a sense of morality. " Love ! his 
 affections did not that way tend." Notwithstanding all 
 the sentimental descriptions of his conjugal affection, I 
 question whether he ever loved any one in the world 
 but himself. With a will of iron he possessed a 
 
/ 
 
 THE CONQUEROR. 71 
 
 heart of stone, and the damning proof that he had not 
 been able to secure the attachment of a single fellow- 
 creature of any class is patent by the fact of his body 
 being ignominiously stripped and utterly deserted the 
 moment he was no longer to be feared. 
 
 But is there any real foundation for the stereo- 
 typed assertion of that connubial fidelity and felicity 
 which has been so greatly vaunted by modern writers ; 
 that uxorious devotion which is claimed for him as 
 the " One virtue," which must be allowed to him 
 " linked with a thousand crimes," of which it is ad- 
 mitted he was guilty ? 
 
 The wife, whose loss he is said to have deplored so 
 deeply, though crowned in England, was immediately 
 sent back to Normandy, and from that clay to the 
 hour of her death was never again allowed to set 
 foot in her doating husband's kingdom. With the 
 exception of his hasty and brief visits to Normandy, 
 rendered imperative by political events, the affectionate 
 and faithful husband saw nothing of the beloved part- 
 ner of his bosom for sixteen years! The Queen of 
 England was compelled to be merely the vice-regent 
 of the Duchy of Normandy. The latter portion of 
 their married life was notoriously one constant scene 
 of altercation, occasioned by Matilda's surreptitious 
 support of her favourite son, Robert Court-heuse, 
 
72 THE CONQUEROR AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 against the father, who disliked and despised him, 
 and the presence of William at her death-bed was 
 purely accidental, as he happened to be at that mo- 
 ment in Normandy. The hypocrite, who had shed 
 crocodile tears over the head of the conveniently 
 murdered Edwin, has forfeited all claim to be con- 
 sidered a sincere mourner under any circumstances, 
 unless they unfavourably affected his individual in- 
 terests, and therefore the recorded long lamentation 
 for the loss of his wife, if unfeigned, must be estimated 
 according to the political importance he attached to 
 her existence at that period. 
 
 Where is the slightest evidence of his affection? 
 And now as regards his fidelity. There is certainly 
 no conclusive evidence that William Peverel was the 
 natural son of William of Normandy by the daughter 
 of Ingleric, as stated in the reign of Elizabeth, not 
 only by Robert Glover, Somerset Herald, but " the 
 learned Camden," who was a conscientious historian as 
 well as a herald. 
 
 I perfectly agree with Mr. Freeman that " the un- 
 corroborated assertions of a herald are not materials 
 for history." I will go further, and contend that the 
 uncorroborated assertions of any writer are not to be 
 implicitly relied on, and though Mr. Freeman is not 
 bound to believe the herald, his uncorroborated asser- 
 
THE CONQUEROR. 73 
 
 tion to the contrary is of no greater value, — much less, 
 indeed, when the characters of Glover and Camden 
 are taken into consideration, who were the last men in 
 the world to invent such a story, and had beyond doubt 
 what they considered sufficient authority for their state- 
 ments. That they did not cite it, is to be deplored ; but 
 such omissions were too common in those clays ; and 
 the absence of any possible motive for their fabricating 
 such a story must relieve them at least of the re- 
 sponsibility. 
 
 That scandals were in general circulation respecting 
 the Conqueror as early as the thirteenth century is 
 acknowledged by William of Malmesbury ; and if we 
 are to discredit the statement of Glover and Camden as 
 regards Peverel, and the report of Matilda's jealousy of 
 the daughter of another priest recorded by Malmes- 
 bury, what answer is to be made to Pcre Anselm and 
 other writers who set down a natural daughter of King 
 William as the wife of Hugh du Chateau-sur-Loir? 
 Who was really the father of Thomas Archbishop of 
 York, who, in 1081, in presence of King William^ of 
 Matilda his Queen, and their sons Robert and William, 
 Archbishop Lanfranc, and other important personages, 
 signed himself " Regis films' '? (Olivarius Vredius, Gen. 
 Com. Fland. Prob. Tab. 3.) He and his brother 
 Sampson, afterwards Bishop of Worcester, were two 
 
74 THE CONQUEBOK AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 young clerks sent by Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, to 
 Liege, for their education. Thomas, a simple canon 
 of Bayeux at the time of the Conquest, was, on the 
 first opportunity, placed on the archiepiscopal throne 
 of York ! Brompton vaguely calls him the son of a 
 priest ; and we learn from an obituary appended to the 
 "Liber Vita* Dunelmensis," in the possession of the 
 Dean and Chapter of Durham, a MS. of uncertain 
 date, that the names of his parents were Osbert and 
 Muriel ;* but the Archbishop calls himself " son of the 
 King" to the King's face? Has Vredius or his 
 printer made a blunder ? Did Thomas actually declare 
 himself u Regis Alius ?" 
 
 A marvellous example of the successfulness of suc- 
 cess, the long series of victories and advantages ob- 
 tained by him threw a glory round his name as a king, 
 in the blaze of which his crimes as a man were alto- 
 gether overlooked, or but dimly discernible, by later 
 historians ; while his bounties to the Church, which he 
 eagerly enumerated on his miserable death-bed, his 
 enrichment and foundation of abbeys and convents, 
 and the distribution of the enormous wealth he had 
 wrung from his English subjects amongst the churches 
 throughout his dominions, secured for him the few 
 
 * " Liber Yitse Dunehn.," ed. Surtees Soc, pp. 139-40. Vide also the 
 notice of William Peyerel, yol. ii., in which I have more fully discussed 
 the subject. 
 
THE CONQUEEOE. 75 
 
 words of praise with which the old clerical chroniclers 
 qualify their honest condemnation of his general con- 
 duct. In the present age we can only look upon them 
 as the bribes which the superstition of those days, 
 assiduously fostered by the priesthood, who reaped the 
 benefit of them, induced the most atrocious criminals 
 to believe would avert the anger of Heaven. 
 
 I must again observe, this is a personal and not a 
 political history. I have dealt with the man, and not 
 with the monarch, and if my estimate of his character 
 be considered unfair, I can only appeal to the facts on 
 which it is founded, his own confessions as reported 
 by Orderic, and the testimony of chroniclers of his own 
 age, who wrote while his sons Rufus and Henry were 
 still on the throne, and who, much as they are to be 
 commended for their frankness, could scarcely fail 
 being influenced by considerations of the existing 
 circumstances and the possible danger of stronger 
 denunciation. 
 
 In future chapters further proof will be given in- 
 cidentally of the cruelty, treachery, and rapacity of 
 "this grasping and suspicious tyrant, hated alike by 
 both nations, and harassed by enemies from his hearth 
 to his utmost frontier," * who, while justifying, by per- 
 mission of an inscrutable Providence, the epithet of 
 
 * Cobbe : History of the Norman Kings of England. 
 
76 THE CONQUEROR AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 Conqueror, in its familiar acceptation, singularly 
 throughout his career, from the moment he clutched 
 the rushes in his infant grasp to the day he seized the 
 crown of England, proved still more clearly his claim 
 to the title " Conquaestor " in its stricter sense of 
 " Acquirer." * 
 
 * Vide Ducange in voce. The word was so understood in Nor- 
 mandy. Certain parishes on the left bank of the Ept, annexed by 
 Hugh de Gournay to his domains, in the 12th century, were distin- 
 guished as " Les Conquets Hue de Gournay." — De la Mairie. Re- 
 cherches Hist. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE FAMILY OF THE CONQUEPvOFv. 
 
 I introduce here the few observations I have to make 
 on the uncertain and disputed points in the history of 
 William the Conqueror, his queen and family, to which 
 I alluded at the commencement of the former chapter, 
 in lieu of placing them as an appendix at the end of 
 the volume, as they principally turn on questions of 
 date, and those who care to discuss them would 
 naturally desire to do so before passing to other 
 subjects. The less curious reader can " skip and go 
 on." 
 
 The first and most important date open to contro- 
 versy is that of the birth of William — most important 
 because it affects all the rest. 
 
 The latest investigators place it in 1027 or 1028, 
 and one (Mons. Deville) endeavours to fix it exactly to 
 the month of June or of July in the former year. 
 
 Were it a question of only a few weeks or a few 
 months I should not have thought it necessary to 
 
78 THE CONQUEROR AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 moot it here ; but it is one of years, and of much more 
 consequence than it appears at first sight. 
 
 The calculations of the upholders of the dates 
 1027-28 are founded on : — 
 
 1. The contract of marriage of Duke Richard II. 
 and Judith, the parents of Robert, said to be dated in 
 1008. According to this date, Robert being their 
 second son, would hardly have been born before 1010, 
 and could be only seventeen or eighteen at the birth 
 of William, and consequently his passion for Herleve 
 was that of a boy of sixteen or seventeen at the 
 utmost. 
 
 2. A charter granted by Robert previous to his 
 departure on pilgrimage to Jerusalem dated in the 
 ides of January, 1035, and as it is agreed on all hands 
 that William was between seven and eight years old 
 when his father left Normandy, that would place his 
 birth in 1027-28. 
 
 3. The cartulary recently discovered at Falaise re- 
 cording William's birth and baptism there in 1027. 
 
 4. The statement of Guillaume de Jumieges that 
 William was not quite sixty at his death in 1087. 
 
 A sort of collateral substantiation of the date of the 
 pilgrimage I find also in the story told by the author 
 of the " Gesta Consulum Andegavensium," of the 
 meeting of Duke Robert with Fulk Nera, Count 
 
I 
 
 THE FAMILY OF THE CONQUEROE. 79 
 
 of Anjou, at Constantinople in 1035, and their travel- 
 ling thence to the Holy Land together, escorted by 
 some merchants of Antioch, who had offered to be 
 their guides. Robert becoming fatigued was carried 
 in a litter by four Moors. A Norman pilgrim return- 
 ing from Jerusalem, meeting his sovereign with this 
 equipage, asked if he had any message to send to his 
 friends. " Tell them," said the Duke, " that thou 
 sawest me borne to Paradise by four devils." But it 
 is to be observed that Fulk was also a pilgrim to the 
 Holy Land in 1028, and that the compiler of " L' Art 
 de Verifier les Dates" remarks that the work I have 
 quoted " ne m^rite pas beaucoup de creance." 
 
 On the other hand we have also to consider the 
 statement of William himself, who, according to 
 Orderic, declared on his death-bed that he was 
 sixty-four, which would make him born in 1023 ; that 
 he was eight years old when his father went into what 
 he calls voluntary exile, and that he had ruled the 
 duchy fifty-six years, thus placing the death of Robert 
 in 1031. That date is supported by the perfectly in- 
 dependent testimony of the Saxon Chronicle, which 
 becomes more trustworthy in the eleventh century, 
 wherein we read, " A 1031. . . . and Robert, Earl of 
 Normandy, went to Jerusalem and there died, and 
 William, ivho was afterwards kingpin England, sue- 
 
80 THE CONQUEROR AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 ceeded to Normandy, though he was but a child." 
 The words I have printed in italics, however, detract 
 from the value of the evidence, as they must have 
 been written at least thirty-five years after the event, 
 and perhaps much later. 
 
 The Peterborough and Canterbury chronicles follow 
 the Saxon, and Roger of Wendover and Matthew of 
 Westminster are merely copyists of the earlier writers. 
 
 I have seen too many errors in the dates of charters 
 and other MSS., arising from clerical or typographical 
 carelessness, to pin my faith upon any copy, printed 
 or other, even when the original document is un- 
 doubtedly genuine, and therefore hesitate to accept 
 the date accorded to the contract of marriage of 
 Richard and Judith, particularly as there are several 
 obvious inaccuracies in the copy printed in Martene 
 (Thesaurus Novus Anecdotorum, vol. i.). 
 
 Judith was the only child of Conan le Tort, Count 
 of Eennes, by his second wife Ermengarde, daughter 
 of Geoffrey Grisegonelle, married according to the 
 " Chroniques de Mont St. Michel " in 9 70. Conan was 
 slain at the battle of Conquereux in 992. Now, if 
 these dates can be at all relied on, what age was 
 Judith likely to be in 1008, if not married till then ? 
 At what period of the two-and-twenty years of her 
 parents' married life was she born 1 If in the ordinary 
 
THE FAMILY OF THE CONQUEROR. 
 
 81 
 
 •course of nature, she must have been five- or six-and- 
 thirty in 1008 ! 
 
 Judith died in 1017, the mother of five children : 
 Richard, Robert, Guillaume, Alix (also called Judith), 
 -and Eleanore ; and if only married in 1008 her eldest 
 son Richard could scarcely have been born before 
 1009, and Robert, as already remarked, 1010. Whether 
 Guillaume or Alix was their third child is uncertain, 
 but before 1025 Alix was the wife of Renaucl, son of 
 Otto-Guillaume, Count of Burgundy, who, having fallen 
 into the power of Hugues, Bishop of Auxerre and 
 Count of Chalons, was strictly confined in prison by 
 that prelate. Richard IT., Duke of Normandy, there- 
 upon sent his sons, Richard and Robert, with an army 
 to relieve their brother-in-law, and Count Hugues was 
 compelled to present himself with a saddle on his back 
 (the usual custom at that period) and crave mercy at 
 the hands of the sons of the Duke of Normandy. 
 
 Now, doubting that young warriors were mere boys 
 of fifteen and sixteen years of age in 1025 (Richard, 
 the eldest, dying in 1027, and leaving a natural son 
 named Nicholas, who was Abbot of St. Ouen in 1042), 
 I cannot bring myself to believe in the "extreme 
 youth" of Robert, as pointed out by Mons. Deville, 
 and without presuming to fix an exact date, believe 
 that both Richard and Robert were nearly of full age 
 
 VOL. I. G 
 
82 THE CONQUEROR AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 i 
 
 at the death of their father, whether that event occurred 
 in 1026 or 1027. 
 
 Leaving, therefore, the precise period of the birth of 
 William the Conqueror still undecided, the weight of 
 evidence inclining rather to 1027, let us hasten to the 
 consideration of the equally vexed question concerning 
 the number and ages of his family, consisting un- 
 doubtedly of four sons, and presumably of five or 
 six daughters.* 
 
 Notwithstanding the various and conflicting dates 
 suggested for the marriage of William and Matilda, 
 ranging from 1047 to 1053, I think we may consider 
 it sufficiently proved that it was solemnized at the 
 close of 1053 or beginning of 1054, and that Robert, 
 their first child, was born in the course of the latter 
 year. 
 
 Their second child I take to have been Adeliza, 
 eldest daughter, born apparently in 1055, being seven 
 years old in 1062, when betrothed to Harold, and dead 
 before 1066, as her decease was the undeniable answer 
 of the Saxon king to one of William's charges of 
 broken faith. 
 
 Cecilia must have been the third child, as she was 
 clearly born in 1056, dedicated to the service of God 
 by her father and mother at the consecration of the 
 
 * Freeman : Nor. Con., vol. v. p. 468, note 4. 
 
THE FAMILY OF THE CONQUEBOB. 
 
 83 
 
 Church of the Holy Trinity, Caen, 18th June, 1066, 
 was elected abbess on the death of Matilda, the first 
 abbess, in 1112, and died on the 30th of July, 1125, 
 in the seventieth year of her age. 
 
 The fourth child appears to have been Richard, 
 born 1057-58, who, with his younger brother, William 
 (fifth child), born 1060, witnessed the consecration 
 of the Church of the Holy Trinity at Caen in 1066. 
 
 Richard was killed in the New Forest by accident 
 during the reign of his father in England ; and his 
 brother William, surnamed Rufus, who succeeded the 
 Conqueror as King of England, met his death, as is 
 well known, a. d. 1100, in the same forest, doomed 
 apparently to be fatal to the progeny of the heartless 
 despot who had sacrificed to his passion for the chase 
 the homes and hearths of thousands of his unfortunate 
 subjects. 
 
 The sixth child I take to be Constance, born in 1061, 
 married to Alain, Duke of Brittany, in 1086, and who 
 died, poisoned by her own servants, according to some 
 writers, on the 13th of August, 1094, at the early age 
 of thirty-three. 
 
 Mrs. Green, notwithstanding she places her birth 
 4 c most likely about 1057," subsequently tells us, upon 
 the authority of no less than four chronicles, that she 
 died in 1094 " when she had scarcely attained her thirty- 
 
 G 2 
 
81 THE CONQUEROR AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 third year." If the latter statement is to be depended 
 upon, she must have been born in 1061,- and the pro- 
 babilities are all in favour of that date. Miss Strick- 
 land, by a curious inadvertency, makes Constance die 
 some years before her mother, " after seven years' 
 unfruitful marriage." The marriage having taken 
 place three years after her mother's death ! 
 
 The seventh child I believe to have been Adela, born 
 circa 1062, married, at Chartres in 1080, to Stephen, 
 Count of Blois and Chartres, and deceased in 1137, 
 in the seventy-fourth year of her age. 
 
 Agatha, believed by Mrs. Green to be also Matilda, 
 whose name appears in Domesday, the eighth and 
 last child born in Normandy, circa 1064, was promised 
 to Edwin, the Saxon Earl of Chester, in 1067, when 
 only three years old, and after his death contracted 
 to Alfonso I., King of Castile and Galicia. She 
 died on her journey to Spain, having, as the story 
 goes, prayed she might not live to be married, and by 
 unceasing genuflections caused a horny substance to 
 form on her knees. 
 
 More incredible is the sentimental account of 
 " blighted hopes " and "crushed affections " indulged 
 in by Mrs. Green, as the child was but three years old 
 when she first saw the " fair-haired Saxon," seven 
 when her " lover " was murdered, and scarcely fifteen 
 
THE FAMILY OF THE CONQUEEOE. 
 
 85 
 
 when she was contracted to Alfonso ; for she must 
 have been dead in 1080, as in that year the Castilian 
 monarch married the daughter of the Duke of Bur- 
 gundy. 
 
 This is of course according to my calculation, which 
 I by no means presume to be irrefutable, and also 
 applies solely to Agatha, leaving it to others to 
 identify her with Matilda " filial regis/' whose cham- 
 berlain (Geoffrey) held lands in Hampshire of the King 
 for service rendered to his said daughter. That 
 there was a Matilda, daughter of King William, is 
 undeniable, not only from the entry in Domesday, but 
 from her being named with her sisters Adelaide and 
 Constance in an encyclical letter to the nuns of the 
 Holy Trinity at Caen in 1112. But as the survey was 
 only begun in 1085, and completed in 1086, it will be 
 difficult, I think, to prove that Agatha, who must have 
 been dead in 1080, was the same daughter as Matilda, 
 supposed to be living five or six years later. 
 
 Henry, afterwards King Henry I., the youngest of 
 the whole family, was the only child born in England, 
 and the date of his birth is generally acknowledged to 
 be 10G8, his mother having come over from Nor- 
 mandy for her coronation in that year. Now let us 
 see when it would be possible that a tenth child, if not 
 a twin, could have been born to William by his 
 
86 
 
 THE CONQUEEOE AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 duchess, and of sufficient age to have a chamberlain 
 appointed to her before 1085. 
 
 1. Robert, born 1054. 
 
 2. Adeliza, born 1055 ; dead before 1066. 
 
 3. Cecilia, born 1056. 
 
 4. Richard, born 1057-58. 
 
 5. William, born 1060. 
 
 6. Constance, born 1061. 
 
 7. Adela, born 1062. 
 
 8. Agatha, born 1064 ; dead before 1080. 
 
 9. Henry, born 1068. 
 
 The ingenious theory that Matilda was no other 
 than the mysterious Gundrada, the former name being 
 simply a translation of the latter, is negatived by the 
 fact that Gundrada died wife of William de Warren 
 in 1085, while the survey was in the course of com- 
 pilation. That one daughter should have been named 
 after her mother is most natural. That the King had 
 a daughter so named, and that she was apparently 
 living in 1085, must be conceded ; but that she was 
 the same person as Agatha " the inexorable logic of 
 facts " positively contradicts. There is just the possi- 
 bility of its being Constance, who survived her mother, 
 and was married to Alain, Duke of Brittany, as before 
 stated, in 1086. She is said to have been tho 
 favourite daughter and companion of Queen Matilda, 
 
i 
 
 THE FAMILY OF THE CONQUEROR. 
 
 ST 
 
 and for nearly six years the only princess at Court. 
 At the period of her mother's death she would have 
 teen twenty-three, and previous to her marriage 
 would no doubt have had a chamberlain and other 
 officers appointed for her service. That she was ever 
 called Matilda there is no evidence yet discovered ; 
 but there is no daughter of Matilda's more likely to 
 have been so. But then we have to get over the 
 awkward fact of Matilda and Constance being 
 separately named in the encyclical letter of 1112.* 
 
 Matilda is consequently, as Mr. Freeman truly 
 describes her, " without a history." The vexed ques- 
 tion of Gundrada will be discussed in the chapter 
 comprising the biography of her husband, William, 
 Earl of Warren and Surrey, and in connection with it 
 the presumed widowhood of Matilda of Flanders, and 
 her passion for Brihtric Meaw. 
 
 I gladly pass to the companions of the Conqueror. 
 
 * " Matildem Anglorum reginam, nostri coenobii fondatricem, Ade- 
 lideni, Mathildem Constantiam, filias ejus." 
 
 Also in the Rouleau des Morts of the same Abbey we read : — 
 ' ' Orate pro nostris Mathilde Regina et Willielmo ejus filio atque pro 
 Jiliabus ejus Adelide, Mathilde> Constancia." — Recherches sur le 
 Domesday, p. 234. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 ODO, BISHOP OF BAYEUX AND EAEL OF KENT. 
 
 ROBERT, COMTE DE MORTAIN AND EARL OF CORNWALL. 
 
 ODO, BISHOP OF BAYEUX. 
 
 First amongst the companions of the Conqueror 
 must be ranked his two brothers of the half blood, the- 
 well-known Odo,, Bishop of Bayeux and Earl of Kent, 
 and the less notorious Robert, Count of Mortain in 
 Normandy, and Earl of Cornwall in England. 
 
 Both were some years younger than William, his* 
 mother, Herleve, having married Herluin de Con- 
 teville, by whom she had, besides the above sons, 
 two daughters, one named Emma, wife of Richard, 
 Viscount of the Avranchin, and mother by him of 
 Hugh, Earl of Chester, and the other named Muriel, 
 who became the wife of Eudo de Capello, or al 
 Chapel. A sister also of Muriel married the Lord of 
 Ferte Mace, whose son William is called in a charter, 
 nephew of Bishop Odo. Who was her mother? 
 
 Of Odo's infancy we have no record ; but whether 
 the eldest of Herleve' s children by her husband 
 Herluin or not, he could scarcely have been of age in 
 
ODO, BISHOP OF B AYE TJX. S9 
 
 1049, when his predecessor, Bishop Hugh, died while 
 attending the council at Rheims in the October of 
 that year. 
 
 Mr. Freeman says, " a son of Herluin and Herleva 
 could not be born before 1036," assuming it to be a 
 proved fact that the marriage of Herleve did not take 
 place until after the death of Duke Robert. 
 
 I have ventured, however, to dispute that asser- 
 tion (vide p. 15, ante), and given my reasons for agree- 
 ing with William of Malmesbury, and consequently 
 place the birth of Odo some six years earlier, which 
 would make him nineteen at his consecration in 1049, 
 young enough, in all conscience, for a bishop, and in 
 sufficient accordance with the statement of Orderic 
 Vital, who tells us that Odo's relationship to Duke 
 William procured for him the bishopric while he was 
 very young, and that he was actively employed during 
 the fifty (strictly forty-eight) years he held it, which 
 may fairly be reconciled with the date of his death in 
 1097 * 
 
 At the time of the Conquest, therefore, I consider 
 him to have been six-and-thirty, Duke William him- 
 self being, according to one calculation, in the fortieth 
 or at the most the forty-third year of his age. 
 
 * Orderic says in the month of February, 1096, which would be 
 1097 ; the year in the Julian calendar not terminatmg till the 25th of 
 March. 
 
DO 
 
 THE CONQTJEEOE AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 We have seen Odo called to council by William on 
 the receipt of the news of Harold's assumption of the 
 Crown of England, and we hear of his promise to pro- 
 vide one hundred vessels towards the formation of the 
 fleet,* and subsequently fighting with great bravery at 
 Hastings. 
 
 Mounted on a white horse, and wearing over a white 
 albe a coat of mail, " wide in the body, but with tight 
 sleeves," he rode wherever the battle raged most 
 fiercely, and, wielding a baston, charged with his 
 knights wherever aid was needed, and did signal 
 service that day. (fioman de Boil) 
 
 In the Bayeux Tapestry he is depicted in accordance 
 with the above description. Both he and the Duke 
 are armed with " bastons," which are nothing less 
 than formidable rugged clubs, and over the head of 
 the bishop are the words, a Hic Odo Eps baculum 
 tenens confortat pueros," illustrating a critical period 
 of the battle when the varlets who had the care of the 
 harness took fright and began to abandon it. Odo, 
 
 * " Ab Odone, episcopo deBaios, C. naves." — Taylor's List. Wace 
 says only forty : 
 
 " De son frere l'Evesque Odun 
 Eecut quarante nes par dun." 
 He admits, however, he is not certain how many ships each baron 
 gave. The MS. from which Taylor printed his List is presumed to 
 have been written temp. Henry I., and therefore earlier in point of 
 date than the Eoman de Eou, which was commenced in the following 
 reign, and completed in 1160. 
 
ODO, BISHOP OF BAYEUX. 91 
 
 " the good priest," as Wace calls him, observed the 
 disorder, and galloping up, exclaimed, "Stand fast! 
 stand fast ! move not a foot ! Fear nothing, for please 
 God we shall conquer yet! " very probably enforcing 
 his exhortation with the " argumentum baculinum," 
 of which he was so powerful a master. 
 
 As far as the bishop is concerned we may believe 
 that his fighting with a bludgeon in lieu of a sword or 
 a lance was in evasion of the edict of the council of 
 Rheims, a.d. 1049, prohibiting the bearing of arms 
 by the clergy ; but the war-club was a not unusual 
 weapon at that period, and seems to have been the 
 precursor of the iron mace of the Middle Ages. 
 
 Odo was one of the first, if not the first, of William's 
 companions who received the reward of his services in 
 the gift of broad lands, high honours, and official 
 power. Dugdale thus sums up his possessions in Eng- 
 land : — " In Kent he had no less than an hundred and 
 oighty-four lordships, or the greater part of them ; in 
 Essex thirty-nine, in Oxfordshire thirty-two, in Here- 
 fordshire twenty-three, in Buckinghamshire thirty, in 
 Worcestershire two, in Bedfordshire eight, in North- 
 amptonshire twelve, in Nottinghamshire five, in 
 Norfolk twenty-two, in Warwickshire six, and in 
 Lincolnshire seventy-six." In all four hundred and 
 thirty-nine. 
 
92 THE CONQUEROR AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 He had also the custody of the castle of Dover, 
 " the lock and key of the kingdom of England," as it 
 is called by Matthew Paris ; and the whole county of 
 Kent, of which he was created earl, was committed to his 
 charge. As a Count Palatine he possessed power over 
 all other earls and magnates in the land. As Justice of 
 England he was the principal person under the King 
 for the administration of the laws throughout the 
 nation, and in conjunction with William Fitz Osbern 
 exercised chief superintendency of all the military 
 forces of the kingdom as well in the field as in 
 garrison. On the King's visit to Normandy after his 
 coronation, the custody of the realm was intrusted to 
 Odo in conjunction with the said William Fitz 
 Osbern, with authority to erect castles at their discre- 
 tion in all parts of the kingdom. 
 
 This sudden accession of extraordinary power and 
 immense wealth had an evil influence over an ambi- 
 tious and rapacious nature. Believing no man durst 
 oppose him, he took forcible possession of several lord- 
 ships belonging to the archbishopric of Canterbury, 
 upon which Lanfranc, who had been advanced to that 
 See by King William in the fifth year of his reign, to 
 the great mortification of Odo, who had coveted the 
 primacy, complained to his sovereign, by whose com- 
 mand a council was summoned at Pinenden in Kent, 
 
ODO, BISHOP OF BAYEUX. 93 
 
 composed of all persons in the comity most conversant 
 with the ancient customs and usages therein, and 
 Geoffrey, Bishop of Coutances, was appointed judge in. 
 the place of the King. After much dispute, the deci- 
 sion was given in favour of the Archbishop, and 
 sentence pronounced that he should enjoy the lands 
 belonging to his church as freely as the King himself 
 enjoyed his own demesne lands. 
 
 This first and humiliating check to the power and 
 arrogance of the great Earl-bishop appears to have 
 rankled in his bosom, and gradually loosened the ties 
 of consanguinity, personal regard, and feudal obligation 
 by which he is reported to have been attached to his 
 sovereign to such a degree that "he could not be 
 severed from him, not even in the camp, being con- 
 stant and faithful always to him." No outbreak, 
 however, immediately occurred between the kinsmen. 
 Odo knew William too well openly to dispute his will, 
 independently of the fact that in this case it was in 
 accordance with the solemn and impartial voice of 
 justice. 
 
 He continued, therefore, in power and favour for 
 some years ; marching with his late judge and brother 
 prelate, Geoffrey of Coutances, against the rebellious 
 Earls of Hereford and Norfolk in 1074, and four years 
 
 * Gesta Will. Ducis Norm. p. 209, etc. 
 
94 THE CONQUEROR AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 afterwards leading an army into Northumberland 
 to suppress an insurrection there, and avenge the 
 murder of Walcher, Bishop of Durham, at Gates- 
 head, near Newcastle-on-Tyne. In this expedition 
 he is accused of much cruelty, and of having sacri- 
 legiously despoiled the Cathedral of Durham of many 
 valuables, amongst which is specified a rare crosier of 
 sapphire. 
 
 In the mean while he was contemplating a great and 
 audacious act, encouraged by the predictions of some 
 pretended soothsayers at Rome, who professed to have 
 discovered that after the death of Gregory VII. an 
 Odo would succeed to the Tiara. Inflated by this 
 prophecy, w T hich he interpreted as alluding to him, he 
 purchased a palace in Rome, and furnished it sump- 
 tuously, at the same time propitiating the senators by 
 lavish gifts, and tempting by promises of ample reward 
 many choice soldiers to accompany him to Italy; 
 amongst them no less a personage than Hugh, Earl of 
 Chester, one of the most important and powerful of 
 the Anglo-Norman nobility. 
 
 King William, who was at that time in Normandy, 
 receiving intimation of these proceedings, and foresee- 
 ing the serious consequences to himself should his 
 ambitious half-brother succeed in occupying the Chair 
 of St. Peter, returned with all speed to England, and 
 
ODO, BISHOP OF BAYEUX. 
 
 93 
 
 confronted Odo in the Isle of Wight at the very 
 moment he was setting forth on his journey, attended 
 by a magnificent retinue. 
 
 Addressing the nobles in his own suite, he repre- 
 sented to them how, in consequence of the disturbed 
 state of Normandy, he intrusted the government of 
 England to this Odo during his absence, and that while 
 occupied in suppressing the insurrections in the duchy, 
 his brother had grievously oppressed his people in 
 England, robbed the churches of their land, revenues, 
 and ornaments, and seduced those soldiers who should 
 have been employed to defend the kingdom from the 
 Danes and the Irish to enter his service and cross the 
 Alps in his company. At the conclusion of his accusa- 
 tion he commanded the men-at-arms to arrest the 
 traitor ; but no one daring to lay hands on a bishop, 
 William himself seized him, and to Odo's remonstrance 
 that he was a clerk and a minister of God, and was 
 not amenable for his acts to any one but the Pope, 
 replied with his usual readiness, " I do not condemn a 
 clerk or bishop, but I arrest an earl I have myself 
 created, and to whom, as my Vicegerent, I intrusted 
 the government of my realm, it being my will that 
 he should render an account of the stewardship I com- 
 mitted to him." * 
 
 * Ordericus Yitalis, lib. vii. cap. viii. 
 
36 THE CONQUEKOK AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 Other writers * give Lanfranc the credit of suggest- 
 ing to William this ingenious distinction. Be it as it 
 may, the ambitious prelate was arrested and conveyed 
 to Rouen, where he was imprisoned during the 
 remainder of William's life, who only on his death-bed 
 reluctantly consented to his release, predicting the evil 
 consequences of his restoration to liberty. 
 
 Odo is said to have been present at the funeral of 
 the Conqueror, but I think it scarcely probable. He 
 was, however, shortly afterwards restored to his earl- 
 dom by his nephew, William Eufus, and speedily 
 justified the opinion his dying brother had entertained 
 of him. Irritated at finding himself shorn of some of 
 the vast power he had formerly possessed, William de 
 St. Carilief, Bishop of Durham, being made Chief 
 Justiciary, and all the affairs of the kingdom no longer 
 conducted according to his will, he commenced con- 
 spiring against Eufus in favour of Robert, whom he 
 had confirmed in the government of Normandy, and 
 asserted that the kingdom of England would be much 
 better ruled by the latter, who would now atone for 
 the follies of his youth by diligence and activity ; that 
 William Rufus was effeminately brought up, cruel in 
 disposition, and a coward at heart, regardless of all 
 vows, divine or human, and that the honours which his 
 
 * Matthew Paris : Boger of Wendoyer. 
 
ODO, BISHOP OF BAYEUX. 97 
 
 countrymen had acquired by many toils were now in 
 danger of being lost. By these and similar representa- 
 tions he contrived to gain over to his views Roo-er de 
 Montgomery, Earl of Shrewsbury, Robert de Mowbray, 
 and other powerful persons, including the Bishop of 
 Coutances and, strange to say, the new justiciary 
 himself. 
 
 Odo now broke out into open rebellion, and ravaged 
 the royal possessions in Kent and the lands of Arch- 
 bishop Lanfranc, whom he -specially hated, and accused 
 of having instigated his arrest and imprisonment by King 
 William the elder. Collecting great booty, he stored 
 it in his castle at Rochester, while his adherents 
 plundered Bath and Berkeley, and laid waste the 
 county of Worcester. From Rochester he marched to 
 Pevensey, then held by his brother, Count of Mortain,* 
 whither he was followed by the King, who had hastily 
 raised considerable forces, principally of the native 
 English, to whom he had promised remission of taxes 
 and freedom of the chase in return for their assistance, 
 and having taken Tunbridge Castle from Gilbert Fitz 
 Richard, who had joined the rebels, now laid strict 
 siege to Pevensey. At the end of six weeks Odo's 
 
 * Ordcric says that Odo's brother, Robert Earl of Mortain, held 
 rcvensey against the King, lib. x. cap. iv. Florence of Worcester 
 speaks of it as Robert's own castle, sub anno 1088. 
 
 vol. i. a 
 
98 THE CONQUEROR AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 provisions began to fail, and foreseeing the certainty of 
 surrender, he offered the King to give up not only 
 Pevensey, but also Rochester Castle, and to quit the 
 realm, with a promise upon oath never to return to it 
 without William's permission. The King accepted 
 these terms, and sent Odo under strong guard, with a 
 body of troops, to Rochester, to take possession of the 
 castle, which he was to render to them. Upon their 
 arrival and demanding entrance in the name of the 
 King, with consent of the Bishop, who had resigned it 
 to him, the garrison, judging from the appearance of 
 Odo, whom they could see from the walls, that he was 
 acting under restraint, opened the gates suddenly, and 
 instead of admitting the royal troops, sallied out upon 
 them, made them all prisoners, and brought them, 
 together with the Bishop, into the castle. 
 
 Rufus, enraged at this intelligence, marched with all 
 the forces he could muster upon Rochester, which, not 
 being in a condition to endure a long siege, was 
 speedily surrendered, and Odo found himself again a 
 prisoner. Deprived of his earldom and stripped of all 
 his ill-got treasure, he left England, according to his 
 oath at Pevensey, and repaired to Normandy, where 
 he was well received by Duke Robert, whose cause he 
 had so strenuously supported, and who now intrusted 
 him with the sole government of the province, which, 
 
I 
 
 ODO, BISnOP OF BAYEUX. 93 
 
 through the Duke's slothful ease, was in a state of 
 dissolution. Crimes of the most horrible and de- 
 testable description were committed with perfect im- 
 punity. Fire, robbery, and homicide were matters of 
 daily occurrence. " The depopulated country and 
 crowds of widows and infirm persons lamenting the 
 calamities brought upon them, are witnesses to this 
 day," says Orderic, " of the truth of my statements." 
 " The good priest," as Wace amusingly calls him, 
 though he assumed all the power of the Duke, does 
 not appear to have exercised it in the repression of 
 these abominable disorders and the punishment of the 
 greatest criminals, in the list of whom it is painful to 
 record such names as William Comte d'Evreux, 
 Richard de Courci, Robert de Mowbray, and even 
 Prince Henry himself, who had been invested by the 
 Duke, his brother, with the Comte' of the Cotentin, 
 and who as soon as certain intelligence reached him of 
 the surrender of Rochester, crossed the sea to Eng- 
 land, and demanded of King William the investiture 
 of his mother's domains. Having obtained his request, 
 he returned in the autumn of the same year to Nor- 
 mandy, accompanied by Robert de Belesmc, son of 
 Roger de Montgomeri, who had been pardoned by 
 the King for his complicity in the rebellion of Odo. 
 The Duke, in the mean while, had heard a report 
 
 " ii 2 
 
100 
 
 THE CONQUEROR AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 that his brother Henry and Robert de Belesme had 
 not only made their peace with Rufus, but had also 
 bound themselves by oaths to the Duke's disadvan- 
 tage. Taking counsel, therefore, with Odo, whose 
 advice we are told " he followed in some things, 
 making light of it in others," he issued orders for 
 their arrest, and at the moment of their landing, un- 
 suspicious of any danger, they were seized and 
 fettered and committed to the custody of Odo, who 
 imprisoned Henry at Bayeux and Robert de Belesme 
 at Neuilly. 
 
 The Earl of Shrewsbury, hearing of his son's cap- 
 tivity, hastened over to Normandy, having obtained the 
 King's licence, and put all his castles in a state of 
 defence against the Duke. 
 
 Odo, still full of wrath at the defeat and humiliation 
 he had suffered in England, " like a dragon struck to 
 earth and vomiting flames," in lieu of endeavouring to 
 appease dissensions, exerted himself in fomenting any 
 commotions in the duchy which might by some means 
 or other cause trouble and vexation to the King, who 
 had impoverished and expelled him. Hastening to the 
 Duke at Rouen, he exhorted him to take up arms and 
 march against certain malcontents who had set his 
 authority at naught ; and especially the Earl of 
 Shrewsbury, the head of that family of Talvas, the 
 
ODO, BISHOP OF BAYEUX. 101 
 
 extirpation of the whole of which he urged could 
 alone ensure peace to the nation. 
 
 I will spare the reader the infliction of the long 
 speech Orderic puts in the mouth of " the Turbulent 
 Bishop," and which, if it have any foundation in 
 truth, is only remarkable for the impudence with which 
 this graceless, treacherous, and unscrupulous prelate 
 could descant on the vices of others, and preach 
 justice, gentleness, magnanimity, consideration of the 
 poor and defenceless, observation of the laws of God, 
 and reliance on the protection of the Almighty. 
 
 His address was however received, we are assured, 
 with cordial approbation by all who heard it. The 
 Duke assembled his forces and marched to Nantes, 
 where he was joined by Geoffrey de Mayenne, Robert 
 dc Nevers, surnamed the Burgundian, Elias de Beau- 
 gencie, and many others, with their contingents. 
 
 The Norman troops were commanded by Bishop 
 Odo, once more bestriding a war-horse, and wielding, 
 no doubt, the iron-shod club as formerly at Senlac, and 
 with him were William Comte d'Evreux, one of the 
 principal despoilers of the duchy, Ralph dc Conches, 
 and his nephew William de Breteuil. 
 
 The Castle of Ballon, held by one Pagan de Mont- 
 doubleau, was the first point of attack, and offered 
 considerable resistance ; but, after many losses on 
 
102 
 
 THE CONQUEROR AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 both sides, tlie garrison came to terms with the Duke, 
 and the united forces of Normandy and Maine laid 
 siege to the Castle of St. Ceneri, in which the family 
 of the captive Robert de Belesme had taken refuge. 
 
 The Earl of Shrewsbury had intrusted, this rock- 
 throned fastness, washed on three sides by the wind- 
 ings of the Sarthe, to the keeping of a gallant knight 
 named Robert Quarrel, and manfully he discharged his 
 trust ; but provisions failing, famine achieved what 
 the force of arms had vainly attempted. The garrison 
 surrendered at discretion ; and, exasperated by the de- 
 termined resistance he had met with, the Duke cruellv 
 deprived the valiant Quarrel of sight, and caused many 
 of the defenders to be barbarously mutilated. 
 
 Terrified at the fate of Robert Quarrel and his 
 comrades, the governors of Alen^on, Belesme, and 
 other fortresses belonging to Earl Roger consulted 
 together on the propriety of surrendering immediately 
 upon the Duke's approach, when suddenly, to the 
 surprise of all, the weak and fickle Prince terminated 
 the campaign, disbanded his army, and, accepting an 
 offer of peace made to him by the Earl, restored 
 Robert de Belesme to liberty. 
 
 That Odo was no party to this unexpected pacifica- 
 tion may fairly be concluded, and from the absence of 
 any mention of him in the many turmoils and conflicts 
 
I 
 
 ODO, BISHOP OF BAYEUX. 103 
 
 which the unhappy Duchy of Normandy was subjected 
 to during the following six or seven years, it would 
 appear as if he had retired disgusted to his bishopric 
 of Bayeux, and renounced interfering in the govern- 
 ment of the country. 
 
 The temporary reconciliation of the brothers William 
 and Robert, in 1091, must have been gall and worm- 
 wood to him. 
 
 In 1003 he is said by Orderic to have celebrated 
 the " execrable marriage " of Philip I. King of 
 France with Bertrade Countess of Anjou, which no 
 French bishop would consent to do, and for which 
 service he was rewarded by the adulterous King with 
 the gift of all the churches in the city of Mantes ; and 
 in November 1095 we hear of his being present at the 
 Council of Clermont with Gilbert of Evreux and 
 Serlo of Seez, and also at the Synod assembled at 
 Rouen by Archbishop William Bonne-ame the following 
 February. 
 
 In the month of September, 109G, Robert Court- 
 heuse having mortgaged his Duchy of Normandy to his 
 brother William Rufus for ten thousand silver marks 
 (estimated by M. le Provost at six thousand six hun- 
 dred and sixty-six livres cVargcnt), set forth and joined 
 the great body of Crusaders, moved by the eloquence 
 of Pope Urban, and still more by that of the cele- 
 
104 THE CONQUEROR AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 brated Pierre d'Aclieri or PErmite (son of Reginald 
 l'Ermite, a family name which was the origin of a 
 mistaken notion that Peter the Hermit was a monk 
 and an anchorite), was pouring from all parts of Chris- 
 tendom towards the Holy Land, bent upon wresting 
 Jerusalem and the Sepulchre of our Lord from the 
 power of the Infidels. 
 
 Odo accompanied his nephew to Rome, whence 
 he appears to have passed into Sicily, and there at 
 Palermo, in the month of February, 1097, according 
 to our present calculation, he was for the last time 
 arrested by a mightier conqueror than William, that 
 " fell sergeant Death," and was buried by Gilbert 
 Bishop of Evreux, for from his own Cathedral of 
 Bayeux, in the Church of Santa Maria in that city, 
 being some sixty-seven years old ; according to which 
 calculation he must have been born in 1029 or 1030, 
 as I have previously stated. 
 
 Roger Count of Sicily caused a splendid tomb to be 
 built over him, and Orderic, who gives us this informa- 
 tion, sums up his character with the usual allowance 
 made by our reverend chroniclers for the greatest 
 criminals, who considered immunity could be pur- 
 chased both here and hereafter by gifts to the clergy. 
 "He added to the honours and ornaments of his 
 cathedral, respected the clergy, and, depriving num- 
 
I 
 
 ODO, BISHOP OF B AYE UX. 
 
 105 
 
 bers of their property, was liberal of what he took 
 from others ; " " what he iniqifltously amassed was 
 freely bestowed on churches and the poor." The 
 worthy monk of St. Evroult forgot that he had told us 
 earlier in his history "that the monasteries of the 
 saints made great complaints of the injuries they 
 received at the hands of Odo, who with violence and 
 injustice robbed them of the funds with which the 
 English had piously endowed them in ancient times." 
 Equally oblivious was he of the sacrilegious spoliation 
 of the Cathedral of Durham, and the abstraction of the 
 rare crosier of sapphire. 
 
 Ambitious, arrogant, rapacious, turbulent, tyran- 
 nical, ungrateful and licentious, this bold bad man 
 appears to have been destitute of every virtue. 
 Modern writers have compared him to Wolsey, 
 whom he resembled only in his ostentation and pas- 
 sion for splendour, and that pride of patronage 
 which led him to send young scholars to Liege and 
 other cities to study philosophy ; for there is nothing 
 to show that he had any love or reverence for learning 
 or learned men.- AVolsey, with all his faults, was a 
 man of much greater intellect and infinitely higher 
 character. He never disgraced his order by such 
 shameless immorality as Odo was accused of by his 
 brother, King AVilliam, and of which one proof at least 
 
106 THE CONQTJEKOR AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 existed in the person of an illegitimate son, named 
 John, who was living in the reign of Henry I., and 
 was himself much esteemed in the court of that 
 monarch for his eloquence and ingenuity. And this 
 profligate prelate was actually one of the subscribers 
 to the decree of the Synod of Rouen in 1072, confirm- 
 ing those of a former one at Lisieux, a.d. 1055, 
 whereby incontinence in the clergy was solemnly con- 
 demned, and rendered punishable by deprivation and 
 loss of revenue. 
 
 If posterity is indebted to Odo for anything, it is 
 probably for the origin of that curious and valuable 
 record of the Norman invasion, in which he played so 
 prominent a part, known as the Bayeux Tapestry, and 
 popularly believed to have been the work of Queen 
 Matilda and her handmaidens. This is not the place 
 for me to enter into the controversy which has for 
 many years caused a vast amount of ink-shed and 
 a useless display of utterly irrelevant learning. At 
 the Congress of the British Archaeological Association 
 at Hastings, in I860, I read a paper in which I 
 summed up the various opinions, arguments, and 
 speculations which had been published on the subject 
 during the last hundred years, and expressed my 
 gratitude to Monsieur F. Pluquet for wading through 
 that mass of misapplied erudition and illogical deduc- 
 
ROBERT, COMTE DE MORTAIN. 107 
 
 tion, and so quietly and concisely disposing of it.* I 
 share his confidence in the antiquity of the tapestry, 
 which has every internal evidence of being contempo- 
 raneous with the principal persons represented in it; 
 though neither the work of the first nor the second 
 Matilda, but executed by order of Odo himself, who,- as 
 Bishop of Bayeux, alone had the power to deposit and 
 display the representation of a subject from profane 
 history in a sacred edifice. 
 
 Thanks to photography we have been enabled to 
 inspect at the Albert Hall a facsimile of this inter- 
 esting relic of the eleventh century, and contemplate 
 the rude but authentic representations of the Con- 
 queror and some of his companions. In addition to 
 those of Odo which it contains, impressions of his seal 
 are in existence, exhibiting him on one side in his epis- 
 copal character, and on the reverse as Earl of Kent, 
 bestriding his destrier, and wielding the sword which 
 he was prohibited from bearing as a Churchman. 
 
 I now pass to his brother, 
 
 ROBERT, COMTE DE MORTAIN AND EARL OF 
 CORNWALL, 
 
 the exact date of whose birth is as much a question 
 
 * Mr. Ereeman, who has done me the honour to quote my paper, 
 has laid to my charge an oversight of M. Pluquet, respecting Ereculf 
 Bishop of Lisieux, which I certainly ought to have corrected, but am 
 otherwise not responsible for. 
 
108 THE COXQUEROE AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 as that of Odo, who, if his age at the time of his death 
 be correctly stated, must have been the elder of the 
 two ; but, whether or not, there was probably not 
 more than a year or so's difference between them. 
 Our first knowledge of him is obained from the fact 
 of his being made Comte de Mortain in the Cotentin 
 (not to be confounded with Mortagne in La Manche), 
 by his uterine brother, Duke William, on the banish- 
 ment of William the Warling, son of Malger, and 
 grandson of Duke Richard the First, on suspicion of 
 treason — for it really amounted to nothing more — the 
 wily tyrant availing himself of an opportunity to 
 advance, under a pretence of justice, another of his 
 mother's family. This was just previous to Duke 
 William's visit to England in 1051, and Robert, I 
 conclude, might at that period have been nearly of full 
 age, being born, as I take it, circa 1031. 
 
 In 1054, on the invasion of Normandy by Henry, 
 King of France, we find him joining the army of 
 William, with his knights and retainers; but he was 
 not in the battle of Mortemer, beino* in the Duke's 
 division, and consequently had no opportunity of dis- 
 tinguishing himself. 
 
 We next hear of him at the council called by 
 William on receiving the tidings of Harold's assump- 
 tion of the crown of England, and subsequently at the 
 
I 
 
 ROBERT, COMTE DE MORTAIN. 109 
 
 great meeting at Lillebonne, when lie promised to 
 contribute to the invading fleet no less than one 
 hundred and twenty vessels, according to the curious 
 Latin record published by Taylor ; * an enormous 
 number, but the size has to be taken into considera- 
 tion, and the list may be held to include boats of every 
 description. 
 
 In the great battle of Senlac, Wace tells us he never 
 went far from the Duke, and commanded the chivalry 
 of the Cotentin, but he is not conspicuously delineated 
 in that portion of the Bayeux Tapestry. His share of 
 the spoil is said to have been the greatest. He was 
 created Earl of Cornwall, in which county alone he 
 possessed two hundred and forty-eight manors at the 
 time of the compilation of Domesday ; fifty-four in 
 Sussex, besides the borough of Pevensey ; seventy-five 
 in Devonshire, forty-nine in Dorsetshire, twenty-nine 
 in Buckinghamshire, thirteen in Hertfordshire, ten in 
 Suffolk, ninety-nine in Northumberland, one hundred 
 and ninety-six in Yorkshire, and twenty-four in other 
 counties, amounting altogether to seven hundred and 
 ninety-seven, with two castles in his county of Corn- 
 wall, one at Dunhever and the other at Tremeton. 
 
 In 10G9, the Earl of Cornwall and Bobert Comte 
 d'Eu were left by King William in Lindsey to watch 
 
 * A Roberto do Mortolcio, c. et xx. 
 
110 THE CONQUEROR AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 the Danes who had landed at the mouth of the Humber 
 and invested York, but alarmed at the approach of 
 the Royal forces retreated to the opposite shore, and 
 took shelter in the fens. Availing themselves of the 
 opportunity afforded them by a festival at which the 
 disaffected inhabitants had invited the invaders to be 
 present, the two Earls fell upon them unexpectedly, 
 and pursued them with great slaughter to their very 
 ships. We hear little of him from that period till we 
 find him beside the death-bed of the elder William, 
 supplicating for the pardon and release of his brother 
 Oclo, which the King, with great reluctance, at length 
 conceded to the urgent and incessant entreaties of the 
 Earl and his friends. " My brother Odo," said the 
 dying monarch, " is a man not to be trusted — ambitious, 
 given to fleshly desires, and of enormous cruelty. 
 There is no doubt that if he is released he will disturb 
 the whole country, and be the ruin of thousands." 
 The petitioners pledging themselves for the Bishop's 
 reformation, the King yielded from mere weariness, 
 observing, "It is against my own judgment that I per- 
 mit my brother to be liberated, for be assured that he 
 will cause the death or the grievous injury of many 
 persons." 
 
 He was too true a prophet. His son Rufus had 
 scarcely ascended the throne when the pestilent priest 
 
 4 
 
ROBERT, COMTE DE MORTAIN. 
 
 Ill 
 
 commenced, as Ave have seen, to sow dissensions 
 amongst his subjects, and succeeded in involving the 
 generous brother, to whom he was indebted for his 
 freedom, in a conspiracy to depose the nephew who 
 had restored him the possessions he had deservedly 
 forfeited. Imposing on the duller nature, and working 
 on the affection of Robert, he beguiled him into a rash 
 attempt to hold his Castle of Pevensey against the 
 King, which failing might have cost the Earl his life or 
 liberty, and the confiscation of all his estates. The 
 Red King, however, made a judicious distinction 
 between his uncles, banishing for ever the arch-traitor 
 Odo, and accepting the submission of Robert, allowed 
 him to return to his allegiance. This event occurred 
 in 1088, and after that time his name disappears from 
 the pages of our historians. 
 
 Brooke, in his Catalogue of Nobility, says, without 
 citing any earlier writers, "This Robert was slain in 
 Northumberland in the year 1087." Vincent, in his 
 " Discoverie," points out the error of the date, but is 
 silent respecting the account of the death, which he 
 certainly would not have been if he could have con- 
 tradicted it. Dugdale was equally ignorant on the 
 subject. " When he departed this world, I do not find," 
 he tell us ; " but if he lived after King William Rufus 
 so fatally lost his life by the glance of an arrow in New 
 
112 THE CONQUEROK AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 Forest from the bow of Walter Tyrrell, then was it," 
 he continues, " unto him that this strange apparition 
 happened, which I shall here speak of ; " and then he 
 relates the story told by Matthew Paris, how that, at 
 the very hour the King was killed, the Earl of Corn- 
 wall, being hunting in a wood at some distance, and 
 left alone by his attendants, was met by a huge black 
 goat bearing Rufus all black and naked with a wound 
 in his breast. The Earl adjured the goat by the Holy 
 Trinity to tell him whom it was he carried, and was 
 answered, "I am carrying your King to judgment. 
 Yea, that tyrant William Rufus, for I am an evil spirit, 
 and the revenger of his malice which he bore to the 
 Church of God, and it was I that did cause his slaughter, 
 the proto-martyr of England, St. Alban, commanding 
 me so-to-do, who complained to God of him for his 
 grievous oppressions in this Lsle of Britain which he 
 first hallowed — all which the Earl related soon after 
 to his followers." What a pity the goat did not 
 reveal the name of the individual he had caused to 
 do the slaughter ! 
 
 This absurd story, one of the many circulated at the 
 time of the King's death, and tolerably well proving 
 a guilty foreknowledge, is only quoted here as bearing 
 on the question of the decease of Robert Earl of Corn- 
 wall, for the narrator does not distinguish the Earl by 
 
/ 
 
 EOBEET, COMTE DE MORTAIN. 113 
 
 his baptismal name, and therefore leaves it uncertain 
 whether he is alluding to Eobert or to his son William, 
 who had undoubtedly succeeded to the earldom of 
 Mortam and Cornwall before 1103, as in that year he 
 had left England for Normandy, and was in open 
 rebellion against Henry L, whom he hated from child- 
 hood, and by whom he was consequently deprived of 
 his titles and estates for treason. 
 
 In the absence at present of any reliable information 
 I am inclined to believe that Robert's death preceded 
 that of his brother Odo, as the monk of Malmesbury 
 tells us that, " not content withjfche two earldoms of 
 Mortain in Normandy and Cornwall in England, his 
 son William demanded from King Henry the earldom 
 of Kent which his uncle Odo had held, and petulantly 
 declared that he would not put on his robe or mantle 
 till the inheritance he derived from his uncle should be 
 restored to him," a terrible threat, which must have 
 alarmed the King amazingly. 
 
 Without presuming to fix on an exact date, I consider 
 then that Robert Earl of Cornwall died between the 
 years 1089 and 1097 ; and if there be any foundation 
 whatever for Brooke's statement, that he was slain in 
 Northumberland, it is possible that he was there with 
 his nephew King William on the occasion of Robert 
 de Mowbray's rebellion in 1095. It is not the less 
 
 VOL. I. I 
 
114 THE CONQTJEKOR AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 remarkable, however, that the death of so important 
 and wealthy a personage should have occurred without 
 its being recorded by a single historian. 
 
 Robert Earl of Cornwall had taken to wife pre- 
 viously to the Conquest, but at what period we are 
 ignorant, Matilda, daughter of Roger de Montgomery 
 Earl of Shrewsbury, and by her left one son, William, 
 of whom I have just spoken, and three daughters — 
 Agnes, first offered in marriage to William de Grent- 
 mesnil, but afterwards the wife of Andre de Vitry ; 
 Denise, married in 1078 to Guy, 3rd Sire de La Val, of 
 whom more hereafter ; and Emma, w T ife of William 
 Count of Toulouse. 
 
 Of the three sons of Herleve, William, Odo, and 
 Robert, the latter alone appears to have possessed some 
 kindly feeling. He is described by William of Malmes- 
 bury as a man of a heavy, sluggish disposition, but no 
 foul crimes are laid to his charge. He had evidently 
 the courage of his race, and his conduct as a commander 
 is unassociated w 7 ith any act of cruelty. Scandal has 
 not been busy with his name as a husband. No dis- 
 cords are known to have disturbed his domestic felicity. 
 With the exception of the one occasion when ensnared 
 by the artful representations of Odo, he had joined in the 
 rebellion against Rufus, no trace is seen of his having 
 been involved in any of the revolts and conspiracies 
 
ROBERT, COMTE DE MORTAIN. 
 
 115 
 
 which were continually convulsing both Normandy and 
 England, and his fidelity to the elder William was 
 never for an instant shaken. We have seen him beside 
 the death-bed of that William, pleading urgently for 
 the pardon of their worthless brother, and pledging 
 himself generously but rashly to his reformation ; and 
 the distinction made by the second William between 
 his two uncles upon their surrender at Pevensey, shows 
 that he believed in the contrition of Robert, and 
 thoroughly estimated the amount of dependence he 
 could place upon the word or oath of the faithless, 
 treacherous, turbulent Oclo. 
 
 He was a great benefactor to the Abbey of Grestain 
 in Normandy, which had been founded by his father, 
 Herluin de Conteville, and his appropriation of the 
 possessions which belonged to the Priory of St. Petroc 
 at Bodmin, in Cornwall, founded by King Ethelstan, 
 appears to be justified by the fact that they had been 
 taken from the Priory, and were illegally enjoyed by 
 canons secular. By a charter to the monks of St. 
 Michael in Peril of the Sea, on the coast of Normandy, 
 giving to them and their successors in pure alms for 
 ever the monastery of St. Michael on the Mount in 
 Cornwall, and which must have been executed before 
 1083, as the name of Queen Matilda occurs amongst 
 the witnesses, we learn that the standard of that saint 
 
 2 
 
116 THE CONQTJEEOK AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 had been carried before him in battle, and may fairly 
 conclude that it was in the decisive one at Senlac. 
 This charter appears to have been subsequently con- 
 firmed by him in 1085 at Pevensey * 
 
 Meagre as are the materials which we are enabled 
 at present to scrape together for a memoir of Robert 
 Earl of Cornwall, his character stands out in honorable 
 distinction from those of his brothers, neither surrounded 
 by the " guilty glory " of the King, nor blackened by 
 the baseness of the Bishop. 
 
 * Mr. Freeman appears to have mistaken this date for the original 
 one of the Charter, and consequently demurs to its authenticity ; but it 
 is clear from the names of the witnesses that it must have been executed 
 in Normandy, and the note appended to it in the Monasticon refers 
 merely to a confirmation some years afterwards, — " Eirmata atque 
 roboratur est hsec carta anno millesimo octagesimo quinto apud 
 Peyensel," in Robert's own castle. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 EUDES DE CHAMPAGNE. WILLIAM DE WARREN. 
 
 DROGO DE BREVERE. GUY DE LA VAL. 
 
 Next to the brothers of the Conqueror I have 
 selected for notice four of his companions allied to 
 him by marriage, firstly, because an account of them 
 forms a portion of his family history, and secondly, 
 because recent researches enable us to rectify some 
 serious errors which have been repeated for centuries 
 by French as well as English writers, until they 
 have become as it were stereotyped in our national 
 annals. 
 
 Amongst the principal personages in the host at 
 Hastings, Master Wace mentions, 
 
 " Cil ki ert Sire d'Aubermare," 
 
 without any indication of who the Lord of Aumale or 
 Albemarle was at that period. 
 
 Monsieur Auguste le Prevost has a confused note 
 on this passage, and was unacquainted with the facts 
 which the industry of the late Mr. Stapleton has 
 fortunately furnished us with. 
 
118 THE CONQUEROK AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 EUDES, OR ODO DE CHAMPAGNE 
 
 was the son of Etienne II. , Comte de Champagne 
 and Brie, by Adele, supposed to have been a daughter 
 of Richard IL, Duke of Normandy, but by which 
 of his wives or mistresses has not been ascertained. 
 Now if such were the fact, Odo was the nephew of 
 Duke Robert, the father of the Conqueror, and con- 
 sequently first cousin of the latter and of his sister 
 Adelaide or Adeliza, as far as blood was concerned. 
 A marriage with her, therefore, would have been 
 within the prohibited degrees so rigidly construed by 
 the Church of Rome. William of Jumie^ges, who styles 
 him Count of Champagne, says he was nearly allied to 
 King William by consanguinity, being grandson of 
 Maud, daughter to Richard I., Duke of Normandy, 
 wife of Odo, Earl of Blois and Chartres. This asser- 
 tion is still more unfortunate, for Maud died childless, 
 and Etienne, the father of our Odo, was the son of the 
 Count of Blois' second wife Ermengarde, daughter of 
 Robert I., Count of Auvergne, whom he married in 
 1020. I therefore deny the maternal descent of Odo 
 from any near relation of William, Duke of Normandy, 
 of whom he has been set down as a kinsman on the 
 above authority only. 
 
 Dugdale, who appears to have been perfectly be- 
 
ODO DE CHAMPAGNE. 119 
 
 wildered respecting him, has printed in his Monasticon 
 two accounts, one from the Book of Meaux, an abbey 
 in Holderness, and the other from the Register of 
 Fountains Abbey, which is nearly verbatim, but in one 
 or two instances more explicit. 
 
 The story as told in them is as follows : — Odo 
 having killed a magnate of his own country, took 
 refuge in the dominions of his kinsman, William, 
 Duke of Normandy, who gave him, through the inter- 
 cession of the Archbishop of Rouen, his sister for wife, 
 and subsequently bestowed upon him the island 
 (according to the Book of Meaux), the county (accord- 
 ing to the Register of Fountains), of Holderness. To 
 the same Archbishop, not named, he is said to have 
 been indebted for the grant of the county " comitatum" 
 (the Register of Fountains reads " civitatem ") of 
 Albemarle on condition that he should attend the 
 primate in any expedition with ten knights, and bear 
 his standard before him. 
 
 The author of " L'Art de Verifier les Dates," and 
 Pere Anselm, follow this account, but specify the 
 Archbishop as Jean de Bayeux, who entertained a 
 great friendship for Odo, and, with the consent of the 
 Chapter, bestowed upon him the lands of Aumale on 
 the above-named condition. 
 
 Now let us see what light the crucial test of dates 
 
120 THE CONQTJEKOR AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 flings upon these statements. Etienne, the father of 
 Odo, could not have been born earlier than 1021, and 
 would have been about sixteen or seventeen when he 
 succeeded his father in 1037 as Comte de Champagne 
 and Brie. Allowing that he married before he was of 
 full age, say 1040, Odo must have been a mere child 
 at his death in 1047-8, when he was immediately dis- 
 possessed of his inheritance by his uncle, Thibaut III., 
 legally, it would appear, according to the law at that 
 period, which, if the heir to the lordship was not of 
 sufficient age to receive investiture by the ceremony 
 of girding with the sword, authorized the nearest in 
 blood of full age to claim the succession. Sharp 
 practice, it may be said, but still the law, and one, it 
 may be worth remarking, which would justify the 
 rebellions against William in the first years of his. 
 rule had he even been legitimate. 
 
 At what time Odo took refuge in the Court of 
 William, Duke of Normandy, is not stated, but ho 
 must have been a most precocious young swash- 
 buckler if he killed " a magnate of his own country " 
 before he entered his teens, and the loss of his estates 
 would have been quite sufficient to have caused him at 
 a later period to seek his fortune elsewhere, without 
 having killed anyone fairly or foully. 
 
 At the time of the invasion of England Odo would 
 
/ 
 
 ODO DE CHAMPAGNE. 121 
 
 have been about five-and-twenty, and what more likely 
 than, having nothing to lose and everything to gain, 
 he should eagerly have volunteered his services to 
 William? But if we are to believe that Odo was 
 indebted to Jean de Bayeux for the hand of his wife 
 and the lands of Aumale, how could he be the " Sire 
 d'Aubemare " who fought at Senlac in 1066, when the 
 said Jean de Bayeux was not elevated to the primacy 
 till after the death of Archbishop Mauritius in 1067? 
 
 The labours of Mr. Stapleton before alluded to, and 
 those of the authors of " Recherches sur le Domesday," 
 enable us to solve the riddle in the most satisfactory 
 manner. The old Norman Chroniclers state clearly 
 enough that Odo de Champagne was the husband of 
 the Conqueror's sister, though differing as to the fact 
 of her being of the whole or the half blood, but not 
 one of them had the kindness to inform us, if they knew, 
 that the lady had been twice previously married, and 
 had left issue by each husband. 
 
 The facts of the case, which have been elicited from 
 the records of the Church of St. Martin d'Auchi 
 (de Alceio), commonly called of Aumale, from its 
 vicinity to the town of that name, are as follows : — 
 In or about the year 1000 a castle was built on the 
 river Eu, now known as the Bresle, at the point where 
 it divides the provinces of Normandy and Picardy, by 
 
122 THE CONQUEROR AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 a certain Guerinfroi (Guerinfrides), who also, in 1027, 
 founded in its neighbourhood the Abbey of St. Martin 
 d'Auchi. This Guerinfroi, who was Sire d'Aumale 
 (not Count, as he has been incorrectly called), had an 
 only daughter named Berta, who became the wife of 
 Hugh II., Comte de Ponthieu, and mother by him of 
 Enguerrand, or Ingleram, Sire d'Aumale in right of his 
 mother, who married Adelaide, sister of the Con- 
 queror, and was killed in an ambush at St. Aubin, 
 near Arques, in 1053, leaving an only daughter, 
 named Adelaide after her mother, and having settled 
 on his wife the lands of Aumale in dower. The 
 widow of Enguerrand, being still young, married 
 secondly, and in the first year of her widowhood, 
 Lambert, Count of Lens, in Artois, and brother of 
 Eustace II., Count of Boulogne, and had by him a 
 daughter, named Judith, whose hand was given by her 
 uncle, William the Conqueror, to Waltheof, Earl of 
 Northumberland. Count Lambert could scarcely have 
 seen the birth of his child, for he was killed at Lille 
 the following year, in a battle between Baldwin, Count 
 of Flanders, and the Emperor Henry III. A widow 
 for the second time, and still in the prime of life, she 
 married, thirdly, Odo of Champagne, by whom she 
 was the mother of Stephen, who, on the death of 
 his elder sister Adelaide, became the first Comte 
 
ODO DE CHAMPAGNE. 123 
 
 d'Aurnale, or Earl of Albemarle, the Seigneurie hav- 
 ing been made a Comte by King William, but upon 
 what occasion and at what time we have no evidence. 
 
 The name of Adeliza with the title of " Comitissa de 
 Albemarle" occurs in Domesday, but not that of Odo, 
 which first appears in connection with English trans- 
 actions in 1088 (1st of William Rufus), when Count 
 Odo and his son Stephen gave the manor and church 
 of Hornsea, in the wapentake of Holderness, to the 
 Abbey of St. Mary of York. 
 
 This latter fact also leads to the correction of 
 Orderic Vital' s assertion, that King William granted 
 the earldom of Holderness to Odo of Champagne at 
 the same time that he distributed cities and counties 
 with great honours and domains among other lords 
 who had assisted him in the Conquest, viz., in 1070. In 
 the first place, Holderness was not an earldom ; and in 
 the second, as late as the completion of Domesday, 
 a.d. 1086, the whole district so named was still part 
 of the honour of Drogo de Brevere, a Fleming who had 
 fought for William at Senlac, and received the greater 
 part of the territory of Holderness amongst other 
 portions of the spoil. 
 
 The gift of the lands (Dugdale says, of the city) of 
 Aumale to Odo by the Archbishop of Rouen has also 
 to be explained, for as Jean de Bayeux, if it were he, 
 
124 THE CONQUEROR AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 as stated by the author of "L'Art de Verifier les 
 Dates," was not advanced to the primacy before 106 7 y 
 such donation could not have been made previous to 
 the invasion of England, at which period, and as late 
 as 1086, the city and Castle of Aumale, with such 
 lands as had not been given to the church of Auchi, 
 were in possession of Adeliza, as Lady or Countess of 
 Aumale, the wife, or if she were deceased, the step- 
 daughter of that very Odo. 
 
 It depends therefore eutirely upon the date of Odo's 
 marriage, whether it was he who, in 1066, was the 
 " Sire d'Aubemare " (in right of his wife) alluded to 
 by the rhyming chronicler as a combatant in the great 
 battle. The evidence brought to light by the industry 
 of Mr. Stapleton, and published by him in the 23rd vol. 
 of the Archaeologia, supplemented by his letter to the 
 late Sir Charles G. Young, Garter-King- of- Arms, and 
 communicated by the latter to the " Collectanea 
 Topographica et Genealogica," vol. vi. p. 265, and 
 also set forth by Mr. Stapleton in his notes 
 on the Norman rolls of the Exchequer, has been 
 epitomized by the authors of " Recherches sur le 
 Domesday," published in 1842, and it is singular, 
 therefore, that the information of the triple marriage of 
 the Countess of Ponthieu should have escaped the 
 vigilance of Mr. Freeman, who has been led by Mr. 
 
ODO DE CHAMPAGNE. 125 
 
 Stapleton into the serious error which his later 
 discoveries allowed him to correct, of making Odo the 
 husband of the younger Adelaide, who at the time the 
 record was written had succeeded, as daughter and 
 sole heir of Count Enguerrand, to the " Suzerainete" 
 of Aumale. 
 
 Whether the expatriated Count of Champagne 
 fleshed his maiden sword at Senlac or not, he ap- 
 pears to have made no mark either for good or for 
 evil in the annals of this country till, misled by am- 
 bition, he was induced to join in the conspiracy the 
 collapse of which has given him an unenviable reputa- 
 tion in them. 
 
 History is quite silent about him until after the 
 death of the Conqueror, when we are told that Odo 
 found himself embarrassed by his position as a feu- 
 datory of William Rufus in England and of Robert 
 Court-heuse in Normandy. He owed allegiance to 
 each ; but how could he serve two masters who were 
 at war with one another ? He decided in favour of 
 Rufus, and received an English garrison in his Castle 
 of Aumale, which, in conjunction with his son Stephen, 
 he enlarged and strengthened, at the expense of the 
 royal treasury, on the invasion of Normandy by the 
 Red King in 1090. 
 
 Five years afterwards, however, he joined in a 
 
126 THE CONQUEROR AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 conspiracy with Robert cle Mowbray, William d'Eu, 
 and other disaffected nobles, to depose Rufus and 
 place his own son Stephen d'Aumale upon the 
 throne. 
 
 The conspiracy failing in consequence of timely 
 warning having been given to the King, Odo and his 
 son were both arrested, the former thrown into a 
 prison, from which he never emerged alive, and the 
 latter condemned to have his eyes put out ; but the 
 piteous prayers of his wife and family, to say nothing 
 of the payment of a considerable sum of money, ob- 
 tained a remission of his sentence and restoration to 
 liberty. How long Odo lingered in his dungeon is 
 unknown. The exact date of his death is as uncer- 
 tain as nearly every other part of his history, but 
 it is presumed to have taken place in 1108. 
 
 Dugdale says, " the lordships whereof he was pos- 
 sessed, as appears by the Conqueror s Survey, were 
 only these," and he then enumerates certain manors, 
 which, in "the Conqueror's Survey," are distinctly set 
 down as held by Adeliza, Countess of Albemarle, Odo's 
 name, as I have previously stated, not occurring in a 
 single instance throughout the work ; but Holder- 
 ness, he adds, " was not given him till after that Sur- 
 vey." There he is right, as we shall find in the fol- 
 lowing notice of 
 
/ 
 
 DROGO DE BREVERE. 127 
 
 DROGO DE BREYERE, 
 
 an undoubted companion of the Conqueror, whose 
 name does not appear in the roll of Battle Abbey, 
 but who is presumed to have been an ancestor 
 of the De Brewers or Briweres, so powerful in 
 the thirteenth century. According to the Book of 
 Meaux and the Register of Fountains Abbey, which 
 I have already quoted, this Drogo was a Fleming of 
 approved valour, who came over to England with 
 William, and received for his services the Isle of 
 Holderness, on which he built the strong Castle of 
 Skipsey, and other considerable estates in various 
 counties, amongst them Bytham in Lincolnshire. By 
 the same authorities he is said to have married a kins- 
 woman of the King, — how related to him, or how 
 named, is not stated, nor whether her hand had been 
 bestowed upon him as part of the guerdon he had 
 merited. Whoever she was, Drogo killed her — whether 
 by accident or with malice prepense, does not appear 
 in the indictment. His subsequent conduct, however, 
 was that of a guilty man. He hastened to the King 
 and pretended that he was desirous to take his wife to 
 Flanders; but, not having sufficient money at com- 
 mand for the purpose, craved assistance from his royal 
 connection. The King, not doubting his story, gave or 
 
12S THE CONQTJEEOE AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 lent to him the sum requested, with which Drogo wisely 
 made the best of his way to the coast, and took ship 
 for the Low Countries. The King on learning the 
 truth sent orders for his arrest, but too late. Drogo 
 was beyond his reach. He lost no time, however, in 
 seizing his estates, some of which he appears to have 
 bestowed on Odo of Champagne, who, according to 
 the same writers, is said to have complained that the 
 soil of Holderness was sterile and would grow nothing 
 but oats ; and his wife having presented him with a 
 son, named Stephen, he prayed the Conqueror to give 
 him some land on which he could grow wheat, that he 
 might feed his (William's) nephew ; whereupon the 
 King gave him Bytham, another forfeited manor of 
 Drogo's, and other places. 
 
 Now, if the story about Drogo be true, the slaying 
 of his wife and flight to Flanders must have taken 
 place late in 1086, for up to August in that year he 
 was in possession of all his estates, and shortly after- 
 wards William quitted England never to see it more. 
 Drogo's personal interview with him must, therefore, 
 have been during the few months that elapsed between 
 the completion of the survey and the King's sailing for 
 Normandy ; either at the time of his holding his last 
 great Wit an at Salisbury (1st August), to which all 
 the principal landholders in the kingdom were sum- 
 
DKOGO BEEYEEE. 
 
 129 
 
 moned, or while he was subsequently residing in the 
 Isle of Wight, waiting the collection of the money 
 extorted from all against whom he could bring any 
 charge, whether by right or otherwise — that final 
 robbery of his English subjects, with the booty of 
 which he departed, amid " curses not loud but deep," 
 to die deserted, dishonoured, and despoiled in his 
 native land. 
 
 The grant of Holderness to Odo has just the 
 same narrow chance of having been made in Eng- 
 land at that period, and the additional one of Bytham 
 a few months later in Normandy, which shows how 
 little reliance can be placed on the story that the 
 complaint respecting the soil of Holderness was made 
 to the King at Odo's request by " the same Arch- 
 bishop " to whose good offices he had been indebted 
 for the hand of his wife and the city or county of 
 Aumale. Jean de Bayeux died 1079, seven years at 
 least before the grant of Holderness to Odo. Bytham, 
 originally held of the King by Drogo, was probably 
 given to Odo at the same time or shortly afterwards, 
 and was one of the many manors in England with 
 which his son Stephen endowed the monastery of 
 Aumale, he being the first who described himself as 
 u Albemarlensis Comes," his father never assuming 
 that title, but invariably granting or witnessing 
 
 VOL. I. j>- 
 
130 THE CONQUEEOE AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 charters as <: Odo de Campania," or " Odonis Comitis 
 de Campania." 
 
 Of bis step-daughter, the younger Adelaide or 
 Adeliza, Countess of Aumale, we know nothing beyond 
 her confirmation of the grants of her mother and father 
 to the Abbey of St. Martin d'Auchi (or Aumale). 
 She must, however, have died unmarried or without 
 issue, when her rights and title devolved solely upon 
 her half-brother Stephen. 
 
 It is most remarkable, considering the position and 
 connections of Adeliza, sister of the Conqueror and 
 Countess of Ponthieu, that the discovery of her triple 
 marriage should have been left to reward the diligence 
 of an English antiquary of the nineteenth century. 
 Every previous account of her and her issue, being, 
 from the ignorance of that simple fact, full of errors 
 and contradictions. The date of her death is still un- 
 known ; but she was living in 1080, when she wit- 
 nessed a charter of her aunt Adeliza, sister of Duke 
 Eobert II., and died before 1085, her daughter the 
 younger Countess Adeliza having then presumably 
 succeeded to the suzerainty of Aumale, and being 
 the tenant in Domesday. 
 
 A name more familiar to us generally than either of 
 the two preceding is that of the companion I have 
 next to notice. 
 
WILLIAM DE WARREN. 
 
 131 
 
 WILLIAM DE WARREN, 
 " De Garenes i vint Willeme " 
 
 is all we learn from Wace about his appearance at 
 Hastings, except that his helmet fitted him admirably, 
 
 " Mult li sist bien et chief li helme 
 
 for the mention of which interesting circumstance I 
 suspect the gallant knight is more indebted to rhyme 
 than to record — to the art of poetry rather than to 
 the skill of his armourer. Fortunately we have made 
 his acquaintance some time previous to the Conquest, 
 and there are circumstances of much more importance 
 and interest connected with him than the well-fitting 
 of his helmet. His parentage has been variously 
 represented, and that of his wife the subject of the 
 keenest controversy. 
 
 To begin with the beginning. Without bewildering 
 the reader with the conflicting accounts of the early 
 contemporary chroniclers, and the unsatisfactory con- 
 clusions of more recent writers, I will at once refer to 
 the earliest mention of William de Warren in history 
 that I am aware of, which occurs in Orderic Vital's 
 -account of the battle of Mortemer and its results in 
 1054. " Duke William," he tells us, "being enraged 
 by the shelter and safe conduct granted by Roger de 
 
 K 2 
 
132 THE CONQUEEOE AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 Mortemer, who commanded the Norman forces on that 
 occasion, to the Comte de Montdidier, who had fought 
 on the side of the French and taken refuge in the 
 Castle of Mortemer, banished Roger from Normandy and 
 confiscated all his possessions ; " but being afterwards, 
 reconciled to him he restored them to him, with the 
 exception of the Castle of Mortemer, which the Duke 
 gave to William de Warren, " one of his loyal young^ 
 vassals/' whom Orderic makes the Conqueror describe- 
 as a cousin or kinsman of De Mortemer, acknowledging- 
 no consanguinity to himself. 
 
 The probabilities are that he was the son of a Ralph 
 de Warren, a benefactor to the abbey of La Trinite du 
 Mont about the middle of the 11th century, who, a& 
 well as Roger de Mortemer, Nicholas de Basqueville,. 
 Walter de St. Martin, and many others, were the issue- 
 of some of the numerous nieces of the Duchess Gonnor 
 ("Nepotes plures predicta Gunnora"), who have been 
 inaccurately set down as kinsmen instead of distant 
 connections of her great-grandson the Conqueror. 
 
 William de Warren, to whom the Duke of 
 Normandy gave the Castle of Mortemer, was a 
 young man, we are told, at that period, and would, 
 therefore, scarcely have attained the prime of life in 
 1066. He is named amongst the principal persons 
 summoned to attend the Council at Lillebonne, when 
 
WILLIAM DE WAEEEN. 
 
 133 
 
 the invasion of England was decided upon, and was 
 no doubt present in the great battle, for his services 
 in which he received as his share of the spoil some 
 three hundred manors, nearly half that number being 
 in the county of Norfolk. 
 
 In 10G7, on the King's departure for Normandy, 
 William de Warren was joined with Hugh de Grent- 
 inesnil, Hugh de Montfort, and other valiant men in 
 the government of England, under the superior juris- 
 diction of the Earl-bishop Odo and William Fitz 
 Osbern. 
 
 In 1074, on the breaking out of the rebellion of 
 Roger, Earl of Hereford, and Ralph, Earl of Norfolk, 
 we find him. associated with Richard de Bienfaite as 
 Chief Justiciaries of England, and summoning the 
 rebels to appear before the King's High Court ; and on 
 their refusal, William de Warren with Robert, son of 
 William Malet, marched against Earl Ralph, and 
 routing the rebels at Fagadune, pursued them to 
 Norwich, taking many prisoners, whom, according to 
 the barbarous practice of the age, they mutilated by 
 chopping off the right foot — an unmistakable proof 
 that the sufferers had taken a step in the wrong 
 direction. 
 
 Of his personal prowess no special anecdote has 
 •been preserved, and it is as the husband of the mys- 
 
134 THE CONQTJEEOK AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 terious Gundred, or Gundrada, tliat his name has 
 descended to the present clay with any special interest 
 attached to it. 
 
 Whether the hand of this lady was bestowed upon 
 him previously to his services at Senlac, or as a part 
 of his reward for them, does not appear, and our 
 ignorance of the date of their marriage has been the 
 principal obstacle in the way of those who have so 
 hotly disputed her relationship to William the Con- 
 queror, for could we even arrive at an approximate 
 date it might enable us to calculate her probable age 
 at that period, and whether she was born before or 
 after 1053, on which fact depends the whole question. 
 
 That they were married before 1078 is certain, as 
 in that year they founded the Priory of Lewes m 
 Sussex, and we have the charters of King William, 
 which he granted to that establishment for the 
 health of the souls of his lord and ancestor, King 
 Edward, of his father Count Robert, of his own soul 
 and that of his wife, Queen Matilda, and of all their 
 children and successors, and for the souls of William 
 de Warren and his wife Gundrada, his (Williams) 
 daughter and their heirs. 
 
 The words " my daughter " — " filiae mese " — would 
 be decisive of her being the acknowledged child of the- 
 King; but independently of their being scarcely 
 
/ 
 
 WILLIAM DE WARREN. 135 
 
 legible, it is contended that they are in a different and 
 later hand ; and there is this to be observed, which 
 I do not remember having seen noticed, that the King 
 has just previously used the expression " our children 
 and successors" (filiorum atque successorum nostro- 
 rum") y so that his particularising Gundrada as " my 
 daughter " would imply that she was not by his wife 
 Matilda. 
 
 Exactly in opposition to this is the declaration of 
 William de Warren himself, in whose charter to the 
 priory, granted after the death of Gundred in child- 
 birth (6 kalends of June, 1085), he states his donations 
 to be for the salvation of the souls, amongst others, of 
 his lady Queen Matilda, mother of his wife ("matris 
 uxoris mese "), excluding in turn King William from 
 any share in her parentage. Was she then the sister 
 of Gherbod the Fleming, Earl of Chester, as Orderic 
 Vital distinctly describes her, without the slightest 
 allusion to her parents ? And, if so, was Queen Matilda 
 the mother of both by a previous marriage, which has 
 been utterly ignored by contemporary writers, and 
 never yet established by recent investigators? Mr. 
 Freeman accepts that interpretation, and I can ad- 
 vance no argument in dispute of it. It is much more 
 likely, as he observes, that a stepfather should call 
 the daughter of his wife his daughter, than that a hus- 
 
13G THE CONQUEEOK AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 band should speak of the mother of his wife in any- 
 thing but a strictly literal sense. 
 
 Then how are we to account for the universal 
 silence of the chroniclers, native and foreign, on 
 the subject? Mr. Freeman quotes the instance of 
 their apparent ignorance of the marriage of Robert 
 the Devil with the widow of Ulf ; but this is a much 
 more important case. We have the unequivocal 
 declaration of William de Warren, that Queen Matilda 
 was the mother of his wife, and unless that charter is 
 spurious, of which there is not the slightest suspicion, 
 the evidence to that extent is conclusive. 
 
 But we have not yet done with riddles. Amongst 
 the benefactors of Bermondsey, I find one Richard 
 Guett, recorded as brother of the Countess of Warren, 
 and the donor of the manor of Cowyke to the monks 
 of that abbey, 11th of Rufus, a.d. 1098. 
 
 Gundred at that period had been dead thirteen 
 years ; but that she is the person alluded to there 
 can be no doubt, as she is styled only " Comitissae 
 Warenne ; " whereas Isabelle de Vermandois, wife of 
 her son, the second William, was Countess of Warren 
 and Surrey. 
 
 Then who w T as this Richard Guett ? Was he an- 
 other child of Matilda of Flanders, a brother or half- 
 brother of Gherbod and Gundred, or a brother-in-law, 
 
WILLIAM DE WARREN. 137 
 
 for the old writers pay little attention to these nice 
 distinctions, as we have seen in the case of Odo of 
 Champagne ? Had Matilda of Flanders as many hus- 
 bands as Adelaide, Countess of Ponthieu, and, like 
 her, issue by each ? What was the real cause of the 
 inhibition of her marriage with William, Duke of Nor- 
 mandy, — its delay for six years ? What truth is there 
 in the story of her unre turned affection for the Anglo- 
 Saxon Brihtric Meaw, and of her vindictive conduct 
 to him after she became Queen of England ? I have 
 hesitated to believe in the popular tradition that Duke 
 William grossly assaulted the daughter of Baldwin in 
 the street or in her own chamber, not that I have any 
 doubt about his being capable of such an outrage, but 
 because he was too politic to commit it, and she was 
 not the woman to have forgiven it, assuming that the 
 offence was the simple refusal of his hand on the 
 ground of his illegitimacy. It is obvious, however, that 
 the early life of Matilda is involved in mystery, and it is 
 highly probable that a clearer insight into it would 
 enable us to account for much which we now reject 
 <as legend, or fail to reconcile with acknowledged facts. 
 If there be any foundation for the story of William's 
 brutality, the outburst of ungovernable fury might 
 have been due to a much greater provocation 
 than has been assigned for it. Brihtric, the son 
 
13S THE CONQUEROK AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 of Algar or Alfar, surnamed Meaw (Snow), from 
 the extreme fairness of his complexion, an Anglo- 
 Saxon Thegn, possessor of large domains in England,, 
 had been sent on an embassy from King Edward 
 the Confessor to the Count of Flanders. Matilda, 
 we are told, fell desperately in love with him r 
 and offered herself to him in marriage ! Either 
 disgusted by her forwardness, or preferring another,, 
 he declined the flattering proposal. " Hell hath no 
 fury like a woman foiled," and she kept her wrath 
 warm till she was in a position to ruin the man she 
 had so passionately loved. She had no sooner be- 
 come the Queen of England than she induced William 
 to confiscate, on some pretence, all Brihtric's estates, 
 and obtained the greater proportion for herself. 
 The unfortunate Thegn was arrested at his house at 
 Hanley, in Worcestershire, on the very day Saint AVulf- 
 stan had consecrated a chapel of his building, dragged 
 to Winchester, and died in a dungeon ! The truth of 
 this story is supported by the impartial evidence of 
 Domesday, in which Hanley and the principal manors, 
 held by Brihtric in the time of King Edward are- 
 recorded as the possessions of Queen Matilda, and the 
 remainder passed to Fitz Hamon. 
 
 After her hand had been rejected by the noble 
 Saxon, it is presumed she became the wife of a Fleming, 
 
WILLIAM DE WARREN. 
 
 named Gherbod, who appears to have held the 
 hereditary office of Advocate of the Abbey of Saint 
 Bertin, in St. Omers, and by whom she had at 
 least two children, viz., Gherbod, to whom AVilliam 
 gave the earldom of Chester, and Gundred, "the 
 sister of Gherbod," and wife of William de Warren. 
 W 7 as this a clandestine or an informal marriage, 
 which, as it has never been acknowledged by any 
 chronicler, contemporary or other, might have been 
 unknown to the Duke of Normandy, when he pro- 
 posed to one whom he believed to be the maiden 
 daughter of the Count of Flanders, and the corporal 
 chastisement inflicted, however unworthy of a man, 
 passed over, sub silentio, for prudential reasons, by 
 the parties who had been guilty of a disgraceful 
 suppression of facts 1 The subsequent marriage under 
 such circumstances will awaken no surprise in any 
 one who has studied the character of William. 
 Utterly unscrupulous, destitute of every generous, 
 noble, or delicate feeling, every action of his life 
 was dictated by policy alone. An alliance with the 
 Count of Flanders might be considered by the crafty 
 schemer sufficiently advantageous to warrant his 
 overlooking any objectionable antecedents in the 
 conduct of a granddaughter of a king of France, his 
 first discovery of which had provoked his savage 
 
340 THE CONQUEROR AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 nature into a momentary ebullition of fury. Her 
 •being the mother of two children was a point in her 
 favour with a man whose sole motive for marrying 
 was the perpetuation of a dynasty, and the fair pros- 
 pect of legitimate issue, in whose veins the blood of 
 the Capets should enrich that of the Furrier of Falaise, 
 would overcome any hesitation at espousing the widow 
 of an Advocate of St. Bertin. On the other hand, 
 Count Baldwin would be too happy to embrace the 
 opportunity of reinstating his daughter in a position 
 befitting her birth, and, as well as the lady herself, 
 gladly condone past insults for future advantages and 
 the hope of smothering, in the splendour of a ducal 
 wedding, the awkward whispers of scandal. 
 
 I have said thus much simply to show the view 
 that may be taken of these mysterious circumstances, 
 in opposition to the rose-coloured representations of 
 some modern historians, who, upon no stronger evi- 
 dence, elevate the Conqueror into a model husband, 
 -and describe Matilda as the perfection of womankind. 
 To return to Gundred : her mother, Matilda, the third 
 •child of parents who were married in 1027, could not 
 well have been born before 1030, and would therefore 
 be some three years younger than the Conqueror. 
 
 In 1047, the time named as that of the Duke's first 
 proposal, she would have been seventeen, and at that 
 
WILLIAM DE WAKKEN. 141 
 
 age either passionately in love with Brihtric, or already 
 the youthful bride of the Advocate of St. Bertin. 
 
 In either case her rejection of William — and in the 
 latter the Papal inhibition — is perfectly understandable. 
 Assuming the marriage, she could scarcely have been 
 the mother of the younger Gherbod and his sister 
 Gundred before 1050; and the Countess of Warren, 
 who died in childbed in 1085, would, according to 
 this calculation, have then been in her thirty-fifth 
 year. These dates are fairly presumable, and are 
 uncontradicted by any circumstances that I am 
 aware of. 
 
 No date has ever been assigned to the marriage of 
 Gundred, but it is probable that it took place sub- 
 sequent to the invasion, and about the same time that 
 the earldom of Chester was bestowed on her brother 
 Gherbod, with whom she may have come to England 
 in the train of their mother, Matilda, on her visit in 
 1068, for there is not the slightest trace of Gherbod's 
 presence at Hastings ; and the magnificent gift of the 
 County Palatine of Chester to a foreigner unknown 
 to fame must have been owing to private family in- 
 fluence, as no service of any description is recorded 
 for which it could be considered a merited reward. 
 
 In the foundation charter to Lewes, William de 
 Warren himself tells us that he set out with his wife, 
 
142 THE CONQUEROR, AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 Gundred, on a journey to Rome, but was unable to 
 pass the German frontier in consequence of the war 
 raging between the Emperor and the Pope. They 
 therefore visited the Abbey of Cluni, where they were 
 most hospitably entertained by the Prior and the 
 community in the absence of Hugh, the Abbot. No 
 date is mentioned, but the circumstances to which he 
 alludes enable us to arrive at an approximate one. 
 
 The quarrel between Gregory VII. and the Emperor 
 Henry IV. commenced in 1076, when, in the Council 
 of Rome, in answer to Henry's deposition of the Pope 
 in the Council of Worms, 23rd of January in that 
 year, sentence of excommunication was passed upon 
 the contumacious Kaiser, and his subjects absolved 
 from their oath of fidelity ; and in the following year, 
 Henry, accompanied by his wife and infant son, Conrad, 
 presented himself as a penitent before the walls of the 
 Castle of Canossa, in Lombardy, where the Pontiff 
 was then residing ; and after remaining for three days, 
 with naked feet and without food, in token of his con- 
 trition, was admitted, on the fourth, to the presence of 
 the triumphant Pontiff, in consequence of the mediation 
 of his cousin, the Countess Matilda, the Count of Savoy, 
 and the Abbot of Cluni, who were at that period at 
 Canossa with his Holiness. 
 
 This latter event occurred on the 26th of January, 
 
/ 
 
 WILLIAM DE WAREEN. 
 
 143 
 
 1077, and we therefore know that Abbot Hugh was 
 then in Lombardy. How long he was absent from 
 Cluni on that occasion I cannot say, but we may fairly 
 conjecture that William and Gundred were the guests 
 of the Prior towards the close of the year 1076, or in 
 the early part of 1077, in which latter year, they 
 having long before resolved to found some religious 
 house for the welfare of their souls, determined that, in 
 gratitude for their reception at the Abbey of Cluni, it 
 should rather be of the Cluniac order than any other. 
 Having obtained the licence of King William, Abbot 
 Hugh, at their request, sent over four of his monks, 
 the principal of whom, named Lanzo, became the first 
 Prior of St. Pancras at Lewes, which was founded and 
 endowed by the Earl accordingly. 
 
 The Countess died, as before stated, in 1085, and 
 was buried in the chapter-house at Lewes. 
 
 On the breaking out of Bishop Odo's rebellion, in 
 the first year of the reign of Rufus, William, Earl of 
 Warren, stood fast by the King, and served him most 
 loyally both in the field and the council-chamber, for 
 which good service he was created Earl of Surrey. 
 
 He enjoyed his new dignity but for a brief period, 
 dying in 1089, 8 kalends of July (where, or of what 
 disorder, is not stated), and was buried near his wife in 
 the chapter-house of Lewes. 
 
144 THE CONQUEROR AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 The discovery of their coffins a few years ago raised 
 the controversy respecting the parentage of Gundred, 
 which can scarcely even now be considered absolutely 
 decided. 
 
 As in the case of Adelaide, Countess of Ponthieu, 
 some charter or trustworthy document may yet be 
 discovered which will clear up, by a simple fact, the 
 mystery surrounding the early life of the Queen of the 
 Conqueror, and not only enable us correctly to affiliate 
 Gherbod and Gundred, but also to identify the hitherto 
 unnoticed claimant to the honour of being one of their 
 nearest relations, Richard Guett, the benefactor of 
 Bermondsey, "brother of the Countess of Warren." 
 
 From the register of Ely, in the Bodleian Library, 
 Dugdale quotes the following tale of wonder : — " It is 
 reported that this Earl William did violently detain 
 certain lands from the monks of Ely, for which, being 
 after admonished by the Abbot, and not making resti- 
 tution, he died miserably; and though his death 
 happened very far off the Isle of Ely, the same night 
 he died, the Abbot, lying quietly in his bed, and medi- 
 tating on heavenly things, heard the soul of the Earl 
 in its carriage away by the Devil, cry out loudly and 
 with a known and distinct voice, 4 Lord have mercy 
 upon me! Lord have mercy upon me!' and moreover 
 that the next day the Abbot acquainted all the monks 
 
GUY DE LA VAL. 145 
 
 in Chapter therewith ; and, likewise, that about four 
 days after there came a messenger to them from the 
 wife of the Earl with one hundred shillings for the 
 good of his soul, who told them that he died the very 
 hour the Abbot heard that outcry ; but that neither 
 the Abbot nor any of the monks would receive it, not 
 thinking it safe for them to take the money of a 
 damned person." 
 
 "If the first part of this story," adds honest old 
 Norroy, "as the Abbot's hearing that noise, be no 
 truer than the last, viz., that his lady sent them one 
 hundred shillings, I shall deem it to be a mere fiction 
 in regard the lady was certainly dead about three 
 years before." 
 
 What appears more incredible to me is that there 
 was not one monk to be found in the convent who 
 would pocket the money " for the good of the soul " 
 of the departed delinquent, who had " died miserably," 
 — a statement which, taken in conjunction with the pre- 
 ternatural communication of the event to the holy 
 Abbot, conveys to my mind an ugly idea of a guilty 
 foreknowledge of it. 
 
 GUY DE LA YAL. 
 
 I shall conclude this chapter with a notice of a 
 companion and connection of the Conqueror, about 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 L 
 
146 THE CONQUEROR AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 whom there is no mystery, and consequently I fear 
 little interest. 
 
 Laval, or Laval Guion, is a town of some import- 
 ance in the south of the province of Maine. At the 
 time of the Conquest the Seigneur cle la Val was 
 Guy II., who, in 1066, when considerably stricken in 
 years, confirmed certain grants made to the Abbey 
 of Marmoutier by a son named Jean, who at the age 
 of three-and-twenty had assumed the monastic habit 
 in that establishment. Hamon, his second son, was at 
 that date the father of Guy, afterwards the third of 
 that name, called the Young and the Bald, and both of 
 them joined the forces raised by William Duke of 
 Normandy for the invasion of England. 
 
 Hamon received for his services several lands, 
 which were inherited by his descendants down to the 
 reign of John, and his son Guy was rewarded by the 
 Conqueror, in 1078, with the hand of his niece Denise, 
 daughter of Robert, Earl of Mortain and Corn- 
 wall. 
 
 Hamon succeeded his father, Guy II., in the lordship 
 of Laval, the year after the Conquest, and died in 
 1080, when his son Guy became Sire de la Val, and 
 subsequently losing his wife Denise, remarried with a 
 lady named C^cile, supposed to have been a kins- 
 woman of the Counts of Mayenne. He died in 1095, 
 
/ 
 
 GUY DE LA VAL. 147 
 
 and was buried at Marmoutier beside his first 
 wife. 
 
 The fact that neither the name of Drogo de Brevere 
 or De la Val, father or son, is to be found on the Roll 
 of Battle Abbey is tolerable evidence of the depend- 
 ence to be placed upon it. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 EUSTACE II., COUNT OF BOULOGNE. 
 WALTER G IFF A ED. 
 HUGH DE MONTFOET. 
 
 My object in selecting the above three companions 
 of the Conqueror for the subject of this chapter is to 
 vindicate them from an accusation brought against 
 them by an anonymous writer, who, though he may 
 have been contemporaneous, I consider very unworthy 
 the trust that has recently been placed in him. I 
 shall, however, reserve my defence for the close of 
 each memoir, after I have made my readers better 
 acquainted with the personages themselves. 
 
 First, therefore, respecting 
 
 EUSTACE II., COUNT OF BOULOGNE. 
 
 He was the son of Eustace I. and Mahaut, daughter 
 of Lambert the Bearded, Count of Lou vain, and suc- 
 ceeded his father in or about 1047, being distinguished 
 from him, who was called " a l'oeil " (" with the eye ") 
 
/ 
 
 EUSTACE, COUNT OF BOULOGNE. 149 
 
 by the sobriquet of " aux Grenons," or " Als Gernons" 
 (" with the whiskers "), the origin of the modern 
 name of Algernon. 
 
 In 1050 he married Goda, daughter of Ethelred II., 
 King of England, and widow of Gauthier, Count of 
 Mantes, and in the following year, in the month of 
 September, crossed the Channel from Wissant to 
 Dover, on a visit to his brother-in-law, King Edward 
 the Confessor, who was then at Gloucester. Returning 
 via Canterbury and Dover, one of his attendants killed 
 an inhabitant of the latter place, who had refused him 
 a lodging, and was himself slain by a townsman, who 
 avenged the deed. 
 
 The brawl soon swelled into a tumult. The English 
 flew to arms, and attacked the Count and his followers, 
 who fought for their lives, and, fearfully outnumbered, 
 were at length compelled to flee for them. Roger of 
 Wendover says this incident occurred on his first land- 
 ing at Dover, and that the Count and his followers in 
 their wrath slew a great number of men and women, 
 and trod the children under their horses' feet. William 
 of Malmesbury, who lays the scene at Canterbury, says 
 tii at Eustace, on hearing of the murder of his servant, 
 proceeded with all his retinue to avenge it, and killed 
 the perpetrator of the crime and eighteen others ; that 
 the citizens, flying to arms, he lost twenty-one of his 
 
150 THE CONQUEROR AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 people, and had multitudes wounded (Roger of Wen- 
 dover says lie lost eighty men), himself and one 
 companion with difficulty making their escape in the 
 confusion. King Edward, on hearing from Eustace 
 his account of the circumstances, sent for Earl Godwin, 
 and ordered him to march with sufficient forces into 
 Kent and punish the offenders. The Saxon Earl, 
 jealous of the favour constantly shown to the Normans 
 by King Edward, remonstrated, and subsequently 
 taking up arms, demanded that the Count and his 
 followers should be delivered up to him for trial, the 
 affair resulting, after much altercation, in the banish- 
 ment of Godwin and his family. 
 
 Much obloquy has been heaped upon Eustace for 
 his conduct upon this occasion ; but large allowance 
 must be made for the bias of the English against the 
 Normans, and save and except the main facts of the 
 affray, the versions of it are too conflicting to enable 
 us at the present day to come to any definite conclu- 
 sion on the subject. 
 
 Returned to his dominions, Count Eustace, in 1053, 
 gave an asylum to William Count of Talou and his 
 family, who had been expelled from Normandy by 
 Duke William, and in 1054 he succeeded his brother 
 Lambert, the second husband of the Duke's sister, in 
 the lordship of Lens, according to the same law which 
 
EUSTACE, COUNT OF BOULOGNE. 
 
 151 
 
 gave the county of Champagne to Thibaut, Count of 
 Blois and Chartres, to the exclusion of Odo, the 
 only child of Lambert being an infant in her 
 cradle. 
 
 About the same period the Countess Goda died, 
 whether without issue by Eustace is not satisfactorily 
 settled, and in 105G, after escorting Pope Victor II. 
 to Rome from the Council of Cologne, he returned 
 through Lower Lorraine, and paid a visit to its Duke, 
 Geoffrey the Bearded, at Bouillon, where he saw and 
 was captivated by the charms of the Duke's daughter, 
 Ida, and received her hand in marriage, with the 
 castle of Bouillon for her dowry. 
 
 The nuptials were celebrated at Cambrai in Decem- 
 ber, 1057, and the second of their three sous was the 
 Famous " Godfrey of Bouillon," King of Jerusalem, 
 born in 10G0. 
 
 In 10GG, Count Eustace was one of the French 
 nobles who joined the army of the Conqueror, and of 
 whose presence in the great conflict there can be no 
 doubt, He is not only expressly named by William 
 of Poitiers, and the author of the Latin poem of the 
 battle of Hastings, but his conduct in the fight is par- 
 ticularly described, and he is also personally depicted 
 in the Bayeux Tapestry, the almost obliterated name 
 of " Eustatius" over the figure having been detected 
 
152 THE CONQUEROR AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 by that accurate and excellent artist, the late Mr. 
 Stothard. 
 
 Wace simply mentions a " Wiestace d' Abe vile," in 
 which Monsieur le Provost and Mr. Taylor hesitate to 
 recognize the Count of Boulogne, in presence of the 
 fact that both the Counts of Ponthieu and the Counts 
 of Boulogne were occasionally called " of Abbeville." 
 
 Without, however, contesting this point, there is 
 evidence enough that Eustace II. fought at Senlac, 
 where at some period of the action he was grievously 
 wounded. He is said to have advised William at a 
 critical moment to retreat, and not rush upon certain 
 death, counsel which the Conqueror was the last man 
 to listen to. The stratagem of the feigned flight is 
 also said to have been suggested by him, and on the 
 Duke's second horse beim>* killed under him, he dis- 
 mounted and offered him his own. As darkness fell 
 upon the fatal field, the headlong pursuit of the Nor- 
 mans led to a disaster which might have turned the 
 scale in favour of the English. Unacquainted with the 
 ground, a considerable body of the Norman cavalry, 
 galloping down the north side of the hill of Senlac, 
 suddenly found themselves floundering in a morass, 
 and the flying foe, perceiving their hapless condition, 
 turned upon them and slew the greater number. 
 
 The Norman panegyrist of the Conqueror tells us 
 
/ 
 
 EUSTACE, COUNT OF BOULOGNE. 153 
 
 that Count Eustace, imagining that the English had 
 been strongly reinforced, rode back with fifty knights 
 to William, and again advised him to retreat, when 
 at the moment he was speaking he was struck by some 
 one between the shoulder-blades with such violence 
 that the blood gushed from his mouth and nostrils, and 
 he was borne from the field in a dying state. How 
 and by whom such a blow — a blow which Orderic 
 says was heard — could be struck at that moment upon 
 that spot, even in the darkness, without the dealer of 
 it being detected, I am at a loss to imagine. The 
 enemy had been driven from that portion of the 
 ground, and Eustace, with fifty knights at his back, 
 was speaking confidentially to the Duke, who was 
 certainly not without his own officers and attendants. 
 They were both on horseback too, and so heavy a blow 
 between the shoulder-blades could only have been 
 dealt with a mace by a mounted man, or by one on 
 foot with the long-handled axe of a Saxon soldier, and 
 in neither case without observation, as the assailant 
 must have been close to him, and could not have 
 escaped instant death. Remember, it was on the sum- 
 mit of the hill, in the open air, with the sky for a 
 background, and the darkness must have been 
 Egyptian if the erect form of a man could escape the 
 observation of so many surrounding friends and 
 
154 
 
 THE CONQUEROE AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 followers. If there be any truth in the story, the 
 incident occurred at an earlier period, during the con- 
 fusion of the fight, in the midst of the melee, and not 
 at the time stated by the writer. 
 
 I have dwelt upon this point because it will be found 
 of importance hereafter. 
 
 That Count Eustace was rewarded for his services, 
 whatever they may have been, for they are not par- 
 ticularized, by large grants of land in England there 
 can be little doubt, but he speedily forfeited them by 
 his attempt, in 10G7, to seize Dover Castle, at the 
 instigation of the disaffected men of Kent, during 
 William's absence in Normandy; and though many 
 manors were probably restored to him on his subse- 
 quent reconciliation with the Conqueror, they cannot 
 at present be distinguished from those which were 
 added to them at a later period, or might have been 
 acquired by his son, Eustace III., who is the tenant 
 recorded in Domesday, and at the time of its compila- 
 tion was about twenty-seven. The attempt on Dover 
 failed, through the loyalty of the royal garrison and 
 the personal hostility to Eustace entertained by the 
 townsmen from the recollection of the fatal affray in 
 1051. A vigorous sally on the besiegers compelled 
 them to retreat, and a report that Bishop Odo was 
 advancing with a large force, created a panic that sent 
 
EUSTACE, COUNT OE BOULOGNE. 155 
 
 them flying in confusion back to their ships, which few of 
 them reached in safety, many being slain, and more taken 
 prisoners, amongst whom William of Poitiers mentions 
 a young nephew of Eustace, of whose name or subse- 
 quent fate we have no information. 
 
 Eustace himself contrived to escape to his own 
 country, but on the King's return to England in 10G8, 
 the Count of Boulogne was outlawed, and his honours 
 and lands in this country forfeited. By what means he 
 regained the favour and friendship of the Conqueror is 
 unknown. William seems never to have thoroughly 
 trusted him, as he took hostages for his good behaviour 
 before the expedition to Hastings, and now, after this 
 overt act of treason, the avowed object of which was 
 to deprive him of his hardly won crown, forgiveness 
 was out of the question, except from motives of that 
 crafty policy which was throughout his life the sole 
 guide of the Conqueror's conduct. What those motives 
 were on this occasion must be left to conjecture, but 
 Eustace was a dangerous neighbour, and owed fealty 
 to Philip L, King of France, as well as to William I, 
 King of England. It was at the instigation of the 
 former over-lord that he had broken with the latter 
 and allied himself with the Kentish insurgents, and 
 William may have thought no price too clear to secure 
 at least his neutrality in prospect of a war with France. 
 
156 
 
 THE CONQUEROR AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 In 1071 he espoused the cause of Richilde and her 
 son, Baldwin, Count of Flanders, and in the February of 
 that year defeated their competitor, Robert the Frison, 
 at Montcassel, and, pursuing him to St. Omer, took him 
 prisoner. On regaining his liberty some few months 
 afterwards, Robert in his turn defeated Eustace, and 
 took him prisoner at the battle of Broqueroie. 
 
 Godfrey, the brother of Eustace, Chancellor of 
 France and Bishop of Paris, ransomed him, and Ro- 
 bert, to obtain his alliance, ceded to him the Forest of 
 Bethlo and the Castle of Sperli. 
 
 Various dates have been given of his death. One 
 writer placing it in 10G5, in which case he could not 
 have fought at Senlac. The " Art de Verifier les 
 Dates," which denies this and also the date of 1080, 
 given by another author, prolongs his existence to 
 * 1093 ; but no authority is quoted, and the probability 
 is in favour of 1080, as the late Sir Henry Ellis cites a 
 charter in which Ida, the second wife of this Eustace, 
 is described as a widow in 1081. The point is of 
 great importance, because if he did not die till 1093, 
 he must have been the Count Eustace of Boulogne 
 who was implicated in the rebellion against Rufus in 
 1088 (as stated by the compilers of the great work 
 above mentioned), and also the Count Eustace of 
 Domesday, which I think it is perfectly clear he was not. 
 
EUSTACE, COUNT OF BOULOGNE. 157 
 
 The author of " Carmen de Bello," said to have 
 been Guy, Bishop of Amiens, recounts with great 
 gusto a barbarous outrage committed by Eustace and 
 three other knights — namely, Walter Giffard, Hugh 
 de Montfort, and some one he calls "the heir of 
 Ponthieu " [" Pontivi nobilis ha3res"], on the still 
 breathing but mortally-wounded Harold, who, pierced 
 through the right eye by a falling arrow, had sunk 
 in agony at the foot of his standard. One knight 
 thrust his lance through the shield of the dying King, 
 and stabbed him in the breast ; another assailant 
 finished the work by striking off his head with his 
 sword : but even this vengeance was not enough ; a 
 third pierced the dead body and scattered about the 
 entrails ; the fourth coming, it would seem, too late 
 for any more efficient share in the deed, cut off the 
 king's leg as he lay dead ! 
 
 Mr. Freeman, while reprobating in a proper spirit 
 this " inglorious exploit," accepts it as a matter of 
 fact, though it is not alluded to by any other contem- 
 porary, and is partially contradicted by their accounts 
 of the death of Harold. 
 
 I place no faith in it whatever. William of Poitiers 
 is silent altogether on the subject; Orderic simply 
 says, " Harold was slain in the first onset." From 
 Wace we receive the earliest account of the fall of the 
 
158 THE CONQUEROR AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 arrow, of Harold's attempting to extract it, and break- 
 ing the shaft ; of his leaning for support, in his agony, 
 on his shield, and being attacked by two knights, one 
 of whom struck him down by a blow on the head, and 
 the other, as he attempted to regain his footing, 
 severely wounded him in the thigh, which was cut to 
 the bone ; but he honestly adds that by whose arm 
 he was slain he knew not, and never heard. The 
 Bayeux Tapestry corroborates this account. Harold 
 is first depicted with the fatal arrow in his eye, 
 and then prostrate in front of a knight who, as he 
 is attempting to rise (the action is unmistakable) is 
 dealing him a blow on the thigh with his long Norman 
 sword. 
 
 William of Malmesbury says that Harold fell from 
 having his brain pierced with an arrow from a distance, 
 and that one of the soldiers with a sword gashed his 
 thigh as he lay prostrate, for which shameful and cow- 
 ardly action he was branded with ignominy by William 
 and dismissed the service. 
 
 Who was this nameless soldier ? Certainly not one 
 of the noble and distinguished warriors on whom the 
 Latin libeller has flung his wretched calumnies. Who 
 was the heir of Ponthieu he speaks of? Mr. Freeman 
 says : " Nor are we amazed to find the son of Guy of 
 Ponthieu foremost in showing despite to the man who 
 
/ 
 
 EUSTACE, COUNT OF BOULOGNE. 159 
 
 had once been his father's prisoner." Why? — what 
 had Harold done to injure Guy of Ponthieu ? He 
 was the injured, not the offender! Guy I., Count 
 of Ponthieu, who arrested Harold when thrown upon 
 his coast in 1062, had succeeded his brother Enguer- 
 rand II., who was slain before Arques in 1053, and 
 died circa 1100, leaving by his wife Ada, who died 
 before him, an only child, Agnes, married to Robert de 
 Belesine. He is said to have had a son named Ivo, 
 whom he had associated with himself in the govern- 
 ment, but the boy as well as his mother preceded him 
 to the grave, and the heir of Ponthieu in 1066 was, if 
 not this young Ivo — in which case I give the Bishop 
 joy of his great nephew — no other than the Bishop 
 himself! As regards the person who is the especial 
 subject of this memoir, the " cowardly " Eustace 
 Count of Boulogne — his share in the brutality, what- 
 ever it was, can only be brought home to him by some 
 more credible witness than a romancer, who tells us 
 that Duke William slew two thousand English at the 
 battle of Hastings with his own hand ! I have already 
 expressed my doubts about the period of the battle 
 when Eustace received the terrible blow in the back, 
 which caused the blood to burst from his mouth and 
 nostrils and, according to Orderic, to be " borne from 
 the field in a dying state." 
 
160 THE CONQUEROR AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 If this incident occurred in the heat and confusion 
 of the fight — and otherwise it appears impossible — 
 Eustace was not present at the fall of Harold. Under 
 any circumstances, if he were, and had been guilty of 
 one of the dastardly acts the Bishop celebrates, 
 the detestation, deserved or not, which the English 
 seem to have held him in, would have caused them to 
 spread the scandal far and wide. When it is proved 
 to me that an heir to the County of Ponthieu was in 
 the battle, I will reconsider the evidence against the 
 Count of Boulogne. 
 
 WALTER GIFFARD. 
 
 Here we have the name of an illustrious Norman, 
 the progenitor of a race from which the noblest families 
 in England are proud to trace their descent ; and, 
 strange to say, beyond this fact little or nothing is 
 known about his own family which can be supported 
 by credible authority. Even the origin of the name 
 of Giffard, Gilford, or GhTart, as it is indifferently 
 spelt, has yet to be definitively settled. 
 
 The story that has been so often told about it, viz., 
 that it signified a free-handed or liberal giver, is with- 
 out any substantial foundation, and is, I believe, one of 
 the many which have been so detrimental to the study 
 of genealogy and heraldry, by misleading the inquirer 
 
WALTER GIFFAED. 161 
 
 or checking research altogether. It is upon the 
 authority of William of Jumieges that this Walter 
 Giffart, the companion of the Conqueror, the first we 
 know of that name, has been set down as a son of 
 Osborn cle Bolbec by his wife, indifferently called 
 Avelina and Duvelina, sister of Gonnor, wife of 
 Richard, Duke of Normandy. Granting this to be 
 true, as we have no documentary evidence to contra- 
 dict it, the appellation of Giffart or Gifford, appears 
 to be one of those sobriquets founded on personal 
 peculiarities so commonly applied to distinguish 
 certain members of a family previous to the general 
 establishment of hereditary surnames. 
 
 Instances of the practice are familiar to the veriest 
 schoolboy, and in the preceding memoir I have men- 
 tioned Lambert the Bearded, Eustace with the Eye, and 
 Eustace with the Whiskers. Hence the complimen- 
 tary suggestion of " Free-Giver," which I should be 
 happy to leave undisputed could it be borne out by 
 etymology. The family, however, was Norman, not 
 Saxon ; and it is in the Norman-French, or Low-Latin 
 of the eleventh century, that we must look for its deri- 
 vation. The word occurs in both those dialects. In 
 Roquefort's Dictionnaire do la Langue Romane, " Gif- 
 farde " is rendered " Joufloue, qui a des grosses joues — 
 servante de cuisine" the word being derived from 
 
 VOL. r. M 
 
162 
 
 THE CONQUEROR AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 (jiffe " the cheek," giffle also signifying in the same 
 language " mi soufflet," or blow on the cheek. An 
 old French poet, Gautier de Coisiny, complains that 
 women of every class paint themselves, even the torche- 
 pot, " scullion," and the Giffhrde, 11 kitchen maid or 
 cook." So in the new " Dictionnaire Franco-Normand," 
 by M. George LKtivier, we have " GifTair, rire comme 
 un jouflou." And, to my great satisfaction, I find that 
 this esteemed philologist has come to the same con- 
 clusion as myself, for under that word he has " GifTe, 
 Giffle, Joue. Telle est Porigine de Fillustre famille 
 Normande de GifTard, nom r^pandu tres au-dela de 
 cette Province (Jersey, of which Mons. Metivier is a 
 native) et de nos lies." Vide also Ducange, sub voce 
 " Giffardus," who has a similar interpretation, " An- 
 cilla coquina." It is almost impossible to resist the 
 conviction that Giffard, in the language of that day, 
 signified a person with large cheeks, and was in con- 
 sequence applied to a cook, who is popularly repre- 
 sented as fat and rubicund. 
 
 I beg to apologise to those of my readers who may 
 not take any interest in such disquisitions, and hasten 
 to the sayings and doings of Walter Giffard, with 
 whom the name, whatever it meant, could not have 
 originated, as an Osborne and a Berenger GifTard 
 were his contemporaries, proving that the sobriquet 
 
WALTER GIFFAKD. 
 
 163 
 
 of an individual had become the appellation of a 
 family. 
 
 We first hear of him in 1035, as a companion of 
 Hugh de Gournay in the abortive attempt of Edward 
 son of King Ethelred to recover the crown of Eng- 
 land (vide vol. ii. p. 113), and next in 1053, when 
 he was left by Duke William in command ol the 
 forces blockading the Castle of Arques, and at that 
 period was Lord of Longueville, and already past the 
 prime of life, judging by his account of himself only 
 thirteen years afterwards. In the following year Wace 
 informs us he was intrusted by the Duke with the 
 defence of the district of Caux, in which Longueville is 
 situate, on the occasion of the invasion of Normandy by 
 Henry, King of France. Subsequently he appears to 
 have made a pilgrimage to St. Iago de Compostella, 
 in Spain, or may perhaps have been sent there by 
 the Duke on some mission to Alfonso King of Galicia, 
 to whom William afterwards affianced his daughter 
 Agatha, after the breaking off of the match with the 
 Saxon Prince Edwin. All we learn from Wace is 
 that in the great battle William's first horse had been 
 brought to him by Giffard from Spain, " the gift of 
 a king who had a great friendship for him." 
 
 The Lord of Longueville accompanied his sovereign 
 to England, having furnished his fleet, according to 
 
 M 2 
 
164 THE CONQTJEROK AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 the List published by Taylor, with thirty vessels and a 
 hundred men. 
 
 Previous to the battle, Eaoul de Conches, the here- 
 ditary standard-bearer of Normandy, having prayed 
 quittance of service on that day, that he might fight 
 with greater freedom in the field, the Duke called to 
 him Walter GifTard, and desired him to bear his gon- 
 fanon, who also requested to be excused the honour 
 on the plea of being too old and too feeble. " For 
 the mercy of God, sire," said the old knight, "look 
 upon my white and bald head ; my strength is im- 
 paired, and I am short of breath," and in answer to 
 the Duke's passionate reproaches, urged that he had 
 a large contingent of men-at-arms in the field, whom 
 he was bound to lead into action, and at the head of 
 them he was ready to die in his sovereign's cause. 
 Whereupon the Duke excused him, and assured him 
 that he loved him more than ever, and that if he 
 survived that day it should be the better for him 
 (Walter) as long as he lived. 
 
 We hear of no special exploit performed by him 
 during the battle, Benoit de St.-More merely saying 
 that he was struck down in the melee, and rescued 
 apparently by William himself. At its close, however, 
 after Harold had been mortally wounded, this brave 
 old Lord of Longueville, with his bald head and his 
 
WALTER GIFFAED. 
 
 163 
 
 white locks, is accused of assisting to mutilate the 
 body of the heroic King ! 
 
 It would be an indignity to the noble veteran to 
 defend him against so infamous a charge, and fortu- 
 nately there is no need to do so, for it is unsupported 
 by any evidence, and the accuser stands convicted of 
 falsehood and exaggeration sufficient to deprive him of 
 any character for honesty whatever. 
 
 When the fight was over, and the victorious Duke 
 had ordered a space on the top of the hill to be cleared 
 of the dead and dying, that his tent might be pitched 
 there, and signified his intention to sup and sleep on 
 the spot, Walter Giffard galloped up to him. " Sire," 
 he said, " what are you about ? You are surely not 
 fitly placed here among the dead. Many an English- 
 man lies bleeding and mingled with the slain, but yet 
 living, and though wounded, only waiting to rise at 
 night and escape in the darkness. They would delight 
 to take their revenge, and would sell their lives 
 dearly, no one caring who killed him afterwards, so 
 he but slew a Norman first, for they say we have done 
 them great wrong. You should lodge elsewhere,, 
 guarded by one or two thousand men whom you can 
 best trust. Let a careful watch be set this night, for 
 we know not what snares may be laid for us. You 
 have made a noble day of it, but I like to see the end 
 
166 
 
 THE CONQUEROR AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 of tlie work." The Duke, however, adhered to his 
 original determination. (Roman de Ecu) 
 
 There can be no doubt, I think, that this Walter 
 Giffard who fought at Hastings was the person to 
 whom William the Conqueror, in 1070, gave the earl- 
 dom of Buckingham ; for, old as he is said by Wace 
 to have represented himself at that period, he lived 
 nineteen years afterwards, and was one of the Com- 
 missioners intrusted by William to superintend the 
 compilation of the great survey of England, and I 
 can find no reason whatever for the ordinary assertion 
 that his son, the second Walter, was the first earl. 
 
 There is evidence that in 1079 he founded the 
 priory of St. Michel de Bolbec, and he is reported to 
 have died about 1084, which we may fairly understand 
 to be 1085, the year in which Domesday was begun 
 and completed. 
 
 The wife of this Walter was Ermengarde, a daughter 
 of Gerrard Flaitel, by whom he had a son, the second 
 Walter, Earl of Buckingham, who died in 1102, and 
 with whom he has been confounded. He had also a 
 second son named William, who was Chancellor to 
 William Rufus, made Bishop of Winchester by Henry I., 
 1107, and died in 1128, and a daughter, named Rohais 
 or Rohesia, wife of Richard Fitz Gilbert, from whom 
 descended the great house of Clare. 
 
HUGH DE MONTFORT. 167 
 
 HUGH DE MONTFOET, 
 
 second of that name, and son of Hugh " with tlie 
 Beard," Lord of Montfort-sur-Risle, near Brionne, was 
 the companion of the Conqueror at Hastings. His 
 father, with whom he has been often confounded, fell 
 in mortal combat with Walkelin de Ferrers, who 
 received his death-wound at the same time, during the 
 days of anarchy which followed the succession of the 
 boy William to the Duchy of Normandy. 
 
 We hear first of his son Hugh II. as one of the com- 
 manders of the Norman forces at. the famous battle of 
 Mortemer already spoken of, but of which more will be 
 told in the memoir of its lord, and next in the list of 
 those who furnished contingents to the fleet and army 
 of the great expedition, wherein we find him set down 
 as a contributor of fifty ships and sixty knights.* 
 
 In the battle he and the Seigneur de Vieuxpont 
 gallantly rescued William Malet, who had his horse 
 killed under him, and would have been slain himself 
 but for their timely aid. They lost many of their 
 people, but succeeded in protecting Malet, and mount- 
 ing him on a fresh horse. (Bom. de Ron) 
 
 Hugh de Montfort is supposed to be one of the four 
 named by Bishop Guy as the mutilators of the body 
 
 * " Ab Ilugone de Montfort L naves et LX milites." 
 
168 THE CONQUEEOE AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 of Harold at the close of the conflict ; I need only here 
 repeat my utter disbelief in an improbable statement 
 supported by no other contemporary writer. 
 
 For his services he received (before the completion 
 of Domesday) sixteen manors in Essex, fifty-one in 
 Suffolk, nineteen in Norfolk, and twenty-eight in Kent, 
 in addition to a large proportion of Romney Marsh, 
 and was one of the barons intrusted by the Conqueror 
 with the administration of justice throughout England, 
 under Bishop Odo and William Fitz Osbern in 1067 ; 
 and by the Bishop himself, Hugh de Montfort was 
 made Governor of the Castle of Dover, the chief fortress 
 in Odo's own earldom, and the key of the kingdom. 
 His absence on other duties with the Bishop south of 
 the Thames was taken advantage of by the Kentish 
 malcontents, and led to the assault of the castle by 
 the Count of Boulogne, the failure of which lias been 
 already related. 
 
 The monk of J umieges informs us that he was twice 
 married, but names neither of his wives ; one, however,, 
 appears by his account (Lib. vii. ch. 38) to have been 
 a daughter of Richard de Bellofago (Beaufoe), by a 
 daughter of the Count of Ivri, and was therefore niece 
 of John, Archbishop of Rouen, of Hugh, Bishop of 
 Bayeux, and of the wife of Osbern de Crepon. By the 
 first we are told he had two sons, Hugh and Robert, and 
 
I- 
 
 HUGH DE MONTFORT. 169 
 
 by the second, a daughter named Alice, eventually 
 heir to her brothers, both of whom died without issue, 
 and who became the wife of Gilbert de Gant, son of 
 Baldwin VI. Count of Flanders, and consequently 
 nephew of Queen Matilda. 
 
 The date of the death of Hugh II., who became a 
 monk in the Abbey of Bee, is not known, but if the 
 holder in Domesday, he mast of course have been 
 living in 1085, his father having been slain some 
 forty-eight or forty-nine years previously. He might 
 probably, therefore, be a young man at the battle of 
 Mortemer in 1054, between forty and fifty at the time 
 of the Conquest, and under seventy if he survived the 
 accession of Rufus. His second son Robert was 
 Commander-in-Chief of the Norman army in Maine 
 in 1090, and on his joining the Crusaders under 
 Bohemund, in 1107, received a hearty welcome and a 
 high rank in the army in consequence, as Orderic 
 speaks of his being " hereditary Marshal of Nor- 
 mandy." * 
 
 If this be not a mistake, his elder brother must have 
 been dead at the former date. At all events his father, 
 Hugh II., is styled " the Constable " by Orderic in his 
 enumeration of the personages present in the battle of 
 Senlac. 
 
 * " Strator Normanici exercitus hereditario jure." 
 
170 THE CONQUEROR AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 A few words in conclusion respecting the accusation 
 of Guy, Bishop of Amiens. That prelate was almoner 
 to the Duchess Matilda, and accompanied her to this 
 kingdom in 1068. He therefore had special oppor- 
 tunities of picking up the reports of the day ; but he 
 was not like his brother Bishops of Bayeux and Cou- 
 tances, actually present at Senlac, and his poem being 
 composed before his journey to England, must therefore 
 have been written from hearsay only. The continuator of 
 William of Jumieges, who mentions his poem, and calls 
 him "a respectable author," does not back his opinion 
 by adopting the Bishop's account of the death of 
 Harold. Neither does Orderic Vital, who was, never- 
 theless, acquainted with the poem, and says it was an 
 epic in imitation of Virgil and Papinius, describing the 
 battle of Senlac, blaming and accusing Harold, and 
 highly praising and exalting William. A MS. of the 
 12th century, discovered by Dr. Pertz in the Royal 
 Library at Brussels, is supposed, from its general 
 character, to be the poem in question, the initials L. W. 
 in the second line being interpreted to signify " Wido 
 to Lanfranc." Mr. Petrie, who has published this poem 
 in his " Monumenta Historica Britannica," observes 
 that it is not improbable that Guy was the writer, but 
 Sir Thomas Duffus Hardy, in his Descriptive Catalogue 
 of Materials relating to the History of Great Britain 
 
/ 
 
 HUGH DE MONTFOKT. 171 
 
 (vol. i. p. 671), appears less impressed with its authen- 
 ticity. Without, however, raising that question, I have 
 shown the probability that Count Eustace cle Boulogne 
 was put liors de combat before the fall of Harold, 
 that there is no evidence whatever of a noble heir 
 of Ponthieu being present in the battle, even if he 
 were in existence at that period, and that no other 
 historian corroborates the poet's assertion. 
 
 The story appears to me to be a sensational version 
 of the account given by Benoit de St.-More, who says 
 that Harold fell pierced by three lances, and his skull 
 cloven to his ears by a dozen swords — itself an evident 
 exaggeration of the plain fact as related by Henry of 
 Huntingdon, which is, that twenty of the bravest 
 knights pledged their troth to each other that they 
 would cut through the English troops and capture the 
 royal ensign. In this attack the greater part were 
 slain, but the remainder, hewing away with their 
 swords, reached and seized the standard. Meanwhile 
 a shower of arrows fell round King Harold, and he 
 himself was pierced in the eye. A crowd of horsemen 
 now burst in, and the King, already wounded, was 
 slain. Cut down in the furious charge with the 
 gallant few who stood their ground beside him, perhaps 
 even undistinguished by his slayers themselves, who in 
 the hasty and general slaughter could not possibly 
 
172 THE CONQUEROR AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 have found time or opportunity to indulge in such 
 wanton barbarity. The English heavy-armed House- 
 carls fought to the death long after the fall of their 
 King. To have cut off the head of Harold, to 
 have scattered his entrails, the perpetrators must 
 have dismounted, and assuredly had never mounted 
 again. 
 
 Could any combatant in the Norman host have been 
 identified as having inflicted a mortal wound on the 
 heroic King of the English, his name would have been 
 as notorious as that of the Conqueror himself. Honest 
 Master Wace acknowledges that he never heard who 
 slew him, only that he was found dead amongst the 
 dead. Walter Giffard and Hugh de Montfort, or some 
 other Hugh, may have been amongst the twenty who 
 bound themselves to capture the standard ; and even 
 that honour has not been appropriated to any indi- 
 vidual, but their complicity in the disgraceful acts 
 attributed to them is to me incredible. The " lie 
 circumstantial " is always accompanied by the names, 
 and the Bishop of Amiens, if he really did write the 
 song of the battle of Hastings, has not proved an 
 exception to the rule of scandal mongers in general. 
 
/ 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 WILLIAM FITZ OSBERN, EARL OF HEREFORD. 
 ROGER DE MONTGOMERI, EARL OF ARUNDEL AND SHREWS- 
 BURY. 
 
 ROBERT DE BEAUMONT, COUNT OF MEULENT AND EARL 
 OF LEICESTER. 
 
 WILLIAM FITZ OSBEEN. 
 
 Of the three great names at the head of this 
 chapter, that of William Fitz Osbern claims prece- 
 dence as the nearest personal friend of the Conqueror, 
 and the chief officer of his household. Son of that 
 Osbern the son of Herfast, otherwise Osbern de 
 Cr^pon, who was foully murdered in the bed-chamber 
 of his young sovereign by William de Montgomeri, he 
 succeeded him in his office of Dapifer and the 
 favour of the Duke. No particular feat of arms is 
 recorded of him, though he must have fought in some, 
 if not all, of the battles in Normandy during the twenty 
 years or more which immediately preceded the inva- 
 sion of England, from that of Val-es-Dunes in 1047 to 
 that of Varaville in 10G0, and was probably with the 
 Duke in his expeditions against Conan in Brittany 
 and his invasion of Maine in 10G3. We have proof at 
 
174 THE CONQUEROR AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 least of his presence at the siege of Domfront in 1054, 
 when he was sent with Roger de Montgomeri to 
 demand an explanation from Geoffrey Martel of his 
 conduct in marching into Normandy and seizing 
 Alen^on. It is not, however, till the memorable year 
 1066 that he becomes a prominent person in the 
 history of Normandy and of England. He appears to 
 have somewhat resembled his master in character, 
 combining great valour with much readiness of wit and 
 astuteness of policy. We have seen him entering the 
 hall of the Palace at Rouen " humming a tune," and 
 rousing th*e moody Duke from his silent and sullen 
 consideration of the news from England by bidding 
 him bestir himself and take vengeance on Harold, who 
 had been so disloyal to him ; to call together all that 
 he could call, cross the sea, and wrest the crown from 
 the perjured usurper. William followed his advice, as 
 most people do when they have already determined on 
 taking the course suggested, and " Osbern, of the bold 
 heart/' was very likely aware of that fact when he 
 ventured to express his opinion. The call was made 
 first of the Duke's relatives and most confidential 
 friends, and then of the whole baronage of Normandy. 
 It is at this last and large assembly at Lillebonne 
 that the audacity and cunning of Fitz Osbern become 
 strongly apparent. 
 
I 
 
 WILLIAM FITZ OS BERN. 175 
 
 Considerable hesitation, and in some instances 
 direct objection, being displayed to the adoption of the 
 project, and the council breaking up into groups to 
 discuss it, the wily Dapifer flitted about from one in- 
 fluential chief to the other, suggesting the danger of 
 driving their feudal lord to extremities ; that they 
 should rather anticipate his wishes than suffer him to 
 ask their aid in vain, and that it would be much worse 
 for them eventually, should the Duke have to com- 
 plain that his enterprise had failed in consequence of 
 their defection. Puzzled and irresolute they at length 
 requested him to speak to the Duke in the name 
 of the whole body, and say not only that they feared 
 the sea, but also that they were not bound to serve 
 him beyond it. 
 
 Having thus contrived to be elected their spokes- 
 man, he, with the greatest effrontery, assured the Duke 
 that they were unanimous in their determination to 
 support him. That to advance him they would go 
 through fire and water. They would not only cross 
 the sea, but double their service. He who should 
 bring twenty knights would cheerfully bring forty ; he 
 who was bound to serve with thirty would come with 
 sixty, and the baron who had to serve with one 
 hundred men would join him with two hundred. As 
 to himself, he promised to furnish sixty ships laden 
 
176 THE CONQUEEOE AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 with fighting men. The barons were as indignant as 
 astounded at this unwarrantable declaration. Many 
 openly disavowed him ; all was tumult and confusion. 
 "No one could hear another speak; no one could 
 either listen to reason or render it for himself" {Roman 
 de Boil). 
 
 The Duke then withdrawing to one side of the hall, 
 sent for the barons one by one, and assuring them of 
 his love and grace, pledged himself that if they would 
 support him, as Fitz Osbern had stated, by doubling 
 their service on this occasion, that they should not be 
 called on in future for service beyond what was the 
 custom of the land, and such as their ancestors had 
 always rendered to their feudal lord. The Duke's 
 eloquence was successful, and, as before stated (page 
 51), each baron's promise was recorded by scribes 
 ready at hand as soon as it was made. 
 
 In Taylor's List, the number of ships furnished by 
 Fitz Osbern, whose name stands first upon it, agrees 
 with that mentioned by Wace. " Habuit a Willi- 
 elmo Dapifero, filio Osberni LX. naves." No knights 
 are mentioned. 
 
 We next hear of him on English ground. While 
 the Duke of Normandy was haranguing his forces on 
 the morning of the battle, " William Fitz-Osber" rode 
 up and interrupted him, saying, " Sire, we tarry here 
 
/ 
 
 WILLIAM FITZ OSBEKN". 177 
 
 too long, let us all arm ourselves. Allons ! Allons ! " 
 Wace, who recounts this incident, says, Fitz Osbern's 
 horse was " all covered with iron." This is one of the 
 instances in which he has been guilty of an anachron- 
 ism, no such practice existing in the days of the 
 Conqueror (vide the Bayeux Tapestry), but at the 
 time that he composed the Eoman de Rou, the fashion 
 had been imported from the East by the Crusaders, and 
 the horses were often coated with chain from the tail 
 to the nostrils. In the disposition of the army, he was 
 selected by the Duke to be a leader of the wing com- 
 posed of the men of Boulogne and Poix, but we hear 
 of no special incident connected with his name in the 
 course of the battle. 
 
 The reward of his great and long-continued service 
 was promptly bestowed upon him. The earldom of 
 Hereford and the lordship of the Isle of Wight being 
 the principal honours ; the manor of Hanley, in 
 Worcestershire, and several in Gloucestershire and 
 other counties, which, in consequence of his dying 
 before the great survey, cannot now be identified. 
 
 In addition to these substantial benefits, King 
 William, on his return to Normandy in 1067, made 
 him governor of his newly built Castle of Winchester : 
 an office of great responsibility, as Winchester at that 
 period was a city second only in importance to London. 
 
 A'OL. I. X 
 
178 THE CONQUEROR AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 Its palace was the favourite residence of Edward the 
 Confessor and the early Norman kings. It possessed 
 a mint and a treasury, in which the riches and regalia 
 of the sovereign were deposited, and was consequently 
 to be most jealously guarded. The Conqueror also 
 associated him with Bishop Odo, in the vicegerency of 
 the realm during his absence. Fitz Osbern having the 
 chief administration of justice in the north, and Odo in 
 the south of the kingdom. 
 
 On the defeat of Edgar Athelin and his confederates 
 at York by the Conqueror in 1068, William Fitz 
 Osbern was appointed governor of that city, and in 
 the following year was hastily summoned to relieve 
 the cities of Shrewsbury and Exeter, simultaneously 
 attacked by the Welsh and the disaffected men of 
 Cheshire, Devonshire, and Cornwall. He was too late 
 to save Shrewsbury, which the insurgents, under 
 Edric the Wild, had burned and abandoned ; but 
 reaching Exeter at the moment when a sudden sally 
 of the garrison had driven back the besiegers and 
 thrown them into confusion, the Earl, in conjunction 
 with Count Brian of Brittany, fell upon them and put 
 them nearly all to the sword. 
 
 In 1070, he was sent to Normandy by King William 
 in order to assist Queen Matilda, the duchy being at 
 that time in a very disturbed state. About the same 
 
WILLIAM PITZ OSBEEN. 179 
 
 period war broke out in Flanders between Richilde, 
 widow of Count Baldwin VI. — called De Mons, and 
 mother of his eldest son and heir, Ernulph — and 
 Robert, surnamedthe Frison, who claimed the regency 
 during the minority of Ernulph, in conformity with the 
 will of his deceased brother. Matilda, taking the side 
 •of her sister-in-law, sent the Earl of Hereford with 
 what forces she could spare to her aid. The Earl was 
 then a widower, and either from love or ambition, 
 became a suitor for the hand of the still fair Countess 
 of Flanders. 
 
 Richilde, either responding to his affection, or from 
 3, desire to attach the valiant Norman more thoroughly 
 to her interest, married him, and made him titular 
 Count of Flanders. 
 
 He did not long, however, enjoy his dignity, for, on 
 the 22nd of February, 1071, a sanguinary engagement 
 took place at Ravenchoven, near Cassel, between the 
 forces of Robert the Frison and those of the Countess 
 Richilde and her ally, Philip I., King of France, in 
 which both her son, young Count Ernulph, and her 
 husband, the Earl of Hereford, who fought by his side, 
 fell together. 
 
 According to Meier, the death-blow of William 
 Fitz Osbern was dealt by one of his own knights, 
 named Gerbodon, who had previously unhorsod him, 
 
 x 2 
 
160 
 
 THE CONQTJEROB AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 but we are left in doubt as to the motive of the felon. 
 The Earl's body was carried by his men-at-arms to 
 the Abbey of Cormeilles, in Normandy, of which he 
 was the founder in 1060, and buried there " amid 
 much sorrow." His first wife, Adelina or Adeliza, was 
 the daughter of Roger cle Toeni. The date of her 
 death is uncertain, but it probably took place some few 
 years before the Conquest. She was buried at the 
 Abbey of Lire, on the river Eisle, in Normandy, which 
 was also founded by Fitz Osbern as early as 1046 ; 
 perchance on the occasion of his marriage, as- 
 Cormeilles may have been on that of her death. The 
 dates are at least suggestive. 
 
 By Adelina de Toeni he had three sons and two 
 daughters. The eldest son, William, succeeded him 
 as Lord of Breteuil and Pacy, and in all his other 
 possessions in Normandy. The second, Ralph, was 
 shorn a monk, when young, in the Abbey of Cormeilles ; 
 and the third, Roger de Breteuil, had the earldom of 
 Hereford and all the land his father held in England. 
 The eldest daughter, Emma, married Ralph, Earl of 
 Norfolk, of whom much hereafter. The name of the 
 second and that of her husband are at present unknown, 
 but she became the mother of Raynold de Cracci.* A 
 
 * It is clear, therefore, that Dugdale and the other genealogists are 
 in error, -who give to Roger cle Toeni for wife Alicia, a daughter of 
 
/ 
 
 ROGER DE MONTGOMERY 181 
 
 natural daughter of William de Breteuil, named Isabel, 
 married Ascelin Goel, and was the direct ancestress of 
 the Lovels of Tichmarsh. (Vide vol. ii., ch. vii.) 
 
 ROGER DE MONTGOMERL ■ 
 
 " William sat on his war-horse and called out Rogier, 
 whom they name De Montgomeri. 1 1 rely greatly on 
 you. Lead your men thitherward and attack them 
 from that side. William, the son of Osbern, the 
 seneschal, a right good vassal, shall go with you and 
 help in the attack, and you shall have the men of Bou- 
 logne and Poix and all my soldiers ' " (i.e. paid troops — 
 mercenaries). Such are the words Wace puts in the 
 mouth of the Conqueror. And yet, according to 
 'Orderic, Roger de Montgomeri was not present at 
 Hastings, having been left by the Duke in Normandy, 
 governor of the duchy. 
 
 His statement is most explicit. King William 
 ■during his visit to his Norman dominions in 1067, 
 was greatly disquieted by the reports from England of 
 the disaffection of his new subjects, and the advantage 
 taken of it by the Danes. " Leaving the government 
 
 William Fitz Osbern, independently of the fact that in that case she 
 would have been his own grand- daughter. Adela, by Pere Anselm 
 called Helene, the widow of Roger de Toeni, and mother of Adeline 
 or Alicia, wife of Will. Fitz Osbern, married secondly Richard Count 
 ■of Eyreux, vide chapter yiii., p. 249. 
 
1.S2 
 
 THE CONQUEROR AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 of Normandy/' lie proceeds, " to his Queen Matilda, and: 
 his young son Robert, with a council of religious, 
 priests and valiant nobles, to be guardians of the state v 
 he rode, on the night of the 6th of December, to the- 
 mouth of the river Dieppe, below the town of Arques, 
 and setting sail with a south wind in the first watch of 
 the cold night, reached in the morning, after a most 
 prosperous voyage, the harbour on the opposite coast, 
 called Winchester In his present voyage- 
 he was attended by Roger de Montgomeri, who at the 
 time of his former expedition to invade England was 
 left with his wife, governor of Normandy." 
 
 Now when we remember that the father of Orderic 
 was Odelirius of Orleans, one of the followers of this 
 very Roger de Montgomeri when he came into Eng- 
 land, and for his services received a grant of land lying 
 on the banks of the river Meole at the east gate of" 
 Shrewsbury ; that, with the help of his lord, he founded 
 the monastery there of St. Peter and St. Paul, to which 
 he retired in 1110, the Earl himself having died therein 
 fourteen years previously ; that Orcleric, born in 
 1075, was at school at Shrewsbury until he was ten 
 years of age, when he was sent to Normandy, became 
 a monk in the Abbey of St. Evreux, of which Roger 
 de Montgomeri was a patron and benefactor, revisited 
 England in 1115, and was living, at the age of sixty- 
 
/ 
 
 ROGER DE MONTGOMERY 183 
 
 six, in 1141, — it surely follows, that of all the com- 
 panions of the Conqueror he had ever seen or heard 
 of, Roger de Montgomeri, Earl of Shrewsbury, his 
 father's lord and friend, was the one respecting whom 
 he must have possessed the most accurate information. 
 Is it likely, supposing Roger de Montgomeri had com- 
 manded a wing of the invading army, and performed 
 feats of bravery at Senlac, that his servant and pro- 
 tege' who came over with him, and must in that case 
 have been present at Hastings himself, would have 
 been silent on the subject ? Would not his deeds 
 have been the theme of his whole household, and of 
 the very school-fellows of the young Orderic ? Was 
 the Lord of Belesme amongst the noble personages 
 who accompanied King William on his visit to Nor- 
 mandy in 10G7 ? and if not, what was he doing in 
 England during the disturbances in the King's ab- 
 sence ? How was it that a man of his position and 
 prowess was not associated with the other great war- 
 riors appointed to guard the realm and administer 
 justice throughout it ? His name never occurs even 
 incidentally during that period. 
 
 Against this, to me overwhelming evidence, we 
 have to place the statement of William of Poitiers, 
 who, without any allusion to Roger de Montgomeri, 
 simply says that Roger de Beaumont was the person 
 
184 THE CONQUEROR AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 at the liead of the council appointed by the Duke to 
 assist Matilda in the government of Normandy, and 
 that of Wace, who circumstantially describes the 
 actions of Roger cle Montgomeri in the great battle. 
 As the latter authority distinctly contradicts William 
 of Poitiers, by making " old Rogier de Belmont " pre- 
 sent at Senlac, in lieu of remaining in Normandy to 
 counsel Matilda, he is as likely to be wrong in one 
 assertion as the other. William of Poitiers is more 
 to be trusted, but he does not say that Roger de Mont- 
 gomeri was in the battle ; he makes no mention of 
 him whatever, though he gives the names of a dozen 
 of the principal personages present ; nor does he prove 
 that he w r as not amongst the noble and wise men 
 selected by the Duke to compose that council, of which 
 the writer states Roger de Beaumont was the presi- 
 dent. Mr. Freeman, confiding in the archdeacon, sets 
 down the assertion of Orderic as "a plain though 
 very strange confusion between Roger of Montgomeri 
 and Roger of Beaumont." I only suggest that the 
 son of Odelirius is the least likely person to have made 
 that confusion, and that we have no proof of Roger de 
 Montgomery s presence in England previous to 1068. 
 
 The Lord of Belesme, however, is too remarkable a 
 personage in the annals of those times to be omitted, 
 on anything short of conclusive evidence, from an 
 
/ 
 
 KOGER DE MONTGOMEEI. 
 
 185 
 
 account of the companions of the Conqueror, and his 
 family history is full of stirring and romantic inci- 
 dents. 
 
 Orderic has minutely chronicled his marriages, 
 his children, his deeds of valour and piety, his death 
 and burial, and yet such is the mist that hangs over 
 the genealogical history of our ancient nobility, that 
 the father of this great and powerful Earl has only 
 been recently identified. Brooke, in his Catalogue, 
 declared him to be the son of Hugh de Montgomeri 
 and of Sibell, his wife, fifth daughter of Herfastus 
 the Dane, brother of Gunnora, Duchess of Normandy. 
 Vincent triumphantly quotes the monk of Jumieges 
 in contradiction of this assertion, and insists that he 
 was the son of Hugh de Montgomeri by Jocellina, his 
 wife, daughter of Turolf de Pontaudemer, by Weeva, 
 sister of the said Duchess Gunnora, and so he con- 
 tinued to be considered, notwithstanding that many 
 passages in Orderic show this to be a mistake, until 
 the French editors of that historian and the late 
 Mr. Stapleton, in his illustration of the Norman Eolls 
 of the Exchequer, clearly proved that the first Earl of 
 Arundel and Shrewsbury was not the son of a Hugh 
 •de Montgomeri by either lady, but of another Roger 
 •de Montgomeri, living in the time of Richard III. and 
 his brother Robert, Dukes of Normandy, and who in 
 
186 THE CONQTJEEOE AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 an early deed describes himself : " Ego Rogerius, 
 quam dicunt Montgomeri." His son Roger, the sub- 
 ject of this memoir, in the act of foundation for the 
 Abbey of Troarn in the Hiemois, acknowledging and 
 distinguishing his father in the following words : " Ego 
 Rogerius, ex Normannis, Normannus magni autem 
 Rogerii films." 
 
 " The old chronicler, Robert du Mont, had heard," 
 observes Mr. Stapleton, " of the reputed descent from 
 a niece of the Duchess Gunnora, wife of Richard I., 
 Duke of Normandy, but the genealogy given is cer- 
 tainly erroneous in making her, as wife to Hugh de 
 Montgomeri, the immediate progenitrix of Roger, the 
 Viscount of the Oximin or Hiemois." 
 
 To any one unaccustomed to the examination of such 
 subjects, it would appear strange that modern histo- 
 rians and genealogists could have overlooked the ob- 
 vious inference to be drawn from the very circum- 
 stantial account given of the assassination of Osbern 
 the seneschal by Guillaume de Jumieges himself, who, 
 in the second chapter of his seventh book, informs 
 us that Osbern, the son of Herfast, brother of the 
 Duchess Gunnora, had his throat cut by William, son 
 of Roger de Montgomeri, one night while sleeping in 
 the Duke's chamber at Vaudreuil ; that Roger, for his 
 perfidy, was exiled to Paris ; and that five of his sons ? 
 
EOGEE DE MONTGOMERI. 187 
 
 Hugh, Robert, Roger, William, and Gilbert, continued 
 their wicked careers in Normandy. 
 
 Surely no statemant can be much clearer than this 
 that there was a Roger de Montgomeri living during 
 the minority of William II., Duke of Normandy, who 
 had five sons, the third being named after him, and 
 who, it is evident from subsequent passages in the- 
 same and other histories, was the Roger de Mont- 
 gomeri who ultimately became Earl of Shrewsbury. 
 Of these five sons we can trace the destinies.. 
 Hugh, Robert, and William were slain, — the latter by 
 Barno de Glotis, a servant of the Seneschal Osbern, 
 in revenge for the murder of his master. Roger was 
 Viscount of the Hiemois; and Gilbert, his youngest 
 brother, was unintentionally poisoned by his sister- 
 in-law, as I shall hereafter have occasion to men- 
 tion. 
 
 Of the five sons of the first Roger cle Montgomeri, 
 Hugh was apparently the eldest, as at the foot of one 
 of his charters in the time of Duke Robert is " Signum 
 Hugonis filii ejus," and it is therefore highly probable 
 that the father of the first Roger might have been 
 named Hugh, and was the husband of one of the 
 nieces of Gunnora, and the confusion have arisen from 
 that circumstance. 
 
 The story told by the monk of Juniieges, though 
 
188 THE CONQUEROR AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 clear enough as regards the family of Montgomeri, is 
 •obscure in other respects. William de Montgomeri is 
 named as the murderer of Osbern, who, if there be 
 any truth in the statement of Brooke, must have been 
 his near kinsman, and Roger, the father of the criminal, 
 is banished, apparently for the crime ; which would 
 imply that he was " particeps criminis " — the instigator 
 •or accomplice of his son. 
 
 However this may be, it appears to have been the 
 result of a personal quarrel, if not a family feud, for 
 Orderic records that Osbern, the steward of Nor- 
 mandy, and William and Hugh, two sons of Roger de 
 Montgomeri, and many other powerful knights, made 
 war on each other in turn, causing great distress and 
 confusion in the country, which was deprived at that 
 time of its natural protectors, simply mentioning that 
 Osbern was one of the many nobles who fell in those 
 mutual quarrels. 
 
 The genealogy of the Dukes of Normandy from 
 Rollo is in all the collateral portions exceedingly con- 
 fused, and the chronology of the duchy itself beset 
 with difficulties. 
 
 Next to Charlemagne, the Duchess Gonnor, or Gun- 
 nora, appears to have been the favourite starting-point 
 for our Norman genealogists. If there is any insuper- 
 able obstacle in the way of hooking their line on to 
 
/ 
 
 ROGER DE MONTGOMERI. 1S9- 
 
 the Emperor of the West, they eagerly hitch it up, no 
 matter how, to some loose end of the family of that 
 fortunate fair one for whose romantic history we are 
 indebted to the pages of Guillaume de Jumieges. As 
 it is short as well as romantic, and so very old that it 
 may be new to many of my readers, I will venture to 
 tell it in the fewest words possible. 
 
 One of the foresters of Richard I., Duke of Nor- 
 mandy, was blest with a most beautiful wife, of Danish 
 blood it would appear, named Sanfrie, the report of 
 whose charms inspired the Duke with a vehement 
 desire to ascertain the truth of it by personal observa- 
 tion. He therefore ordered a hunting party in the 
 direction of the forester's dwelling, at which he stopped 
 during the day, as a matter of course for rest and re- 
 freshment. The beautiful Sanfrie received her 
 sovereign as was her duty, and the Duke was so 
 captivated that he commanded her husband to resign 
 her to him. As resistance could avail nothing, the 
 woman, who had as much wit as beauty, contrived to 
 substitute her sister for herself, and the Duke, luckily 
 for all parties, was not. only well pleased with the 
 exchange, but piously rejoiced that he had escaped a 
 more flagrant breach of the decalogue. The fair sub- 
 stitute was named Gonnor or Gunnora, and on the 
 death of Richard's first wife became Duchess of 
 
190 THE CONQTJEROK AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 Normandy, and mother of Duke Richard II., called 
 after her Gonnorides. 
 
 Such is the story, and at least there is no doubt about 
 the marriage, which naturally led to the elevation of 
 the other members of the Duchess's family. Besides 
 Sanfrie (the wife of the forester), Gunnora had two 
 sisters, the one named Eva or Weeva, and the other 
 Avelina or Duvelima, and a brother named Herfast ; 
 and to one or other of these lucky Danes the majority 
 of our Norman pedigrees are, as I have stated, hung 
 on by hook or by crook. 
 
 The date of the death of the elder Roger de Mont- 
 gomeri is not yet known, but he was evidently dead in 
 1056, when Roger II. invited Gislebert, Abbot of 
 Chatillon, with his monks, to Froarn, and expelled 
 thence the twelve canons who had been placed there 
 by his father in 1022, and had abandoned them- 
 selves to gluttony, debauchery, carnal pleasures, and 
 worldly occupations. 
 
 We have already heard of William Talvas, the Lord 
 of Belesme, who cursed the Conqueror in his cradle 
 {vide p. 9, ante). Roger de Montgomeri married, in 
 1048, Mabel, the daughter of that William, and niece 
 of Ivo de Belesme, Bishop of Stez from 1035 to 1070. 
 By this match he acquired a large portion of the 
 domains of his father-in-law, and by the advice of 
 
BOGER DE MONTGOMERY 191 
 
 Bishop Ivo, his wife's uncle, transferred the Church of 
 St. Martin of S^ez to Theodoric, Abbot of St. Evroult, 
 and, in conjunction with his wife, earnestly entreated 
 the Bishop to erect a monastery there, which it appears 
 he did. Now this Mabel, the chronicler tells us, was 
 both powerful and politic, shrewd and fluent, but 
 extremely cruel. Still she had a high regard for the 
 excellent Theodoric, and in some things submitted to 
 his admonitions, although in general averse to religious 
 men. 
 
 "This lady/' he subsequently tells us, " maliciously 
 caused many troubles to the monks of St. Evroult, on 
 account of the hatred she bore to the family of Giroie, 
 founders of that abbey ; but as her husband, Roger de 
 Montgomeri, loved and honoured the monks, she did 
 not venture to exhibit any open signs of her vindictive 
 feeling. She therefore made the abbey her frequent 
 resort, attended by numerous bands of armed retainers, 
 under pretence of claiming the hospitality of the 
 brotherhood, but to their great oppression, in conse- 
 quence of their poverty through the barrenness of their 
 land. At one time, when she had taken up her abode 
 at the abbey with a hundred men-at-arms, and was 
 remonstrated with by Abbot Theodoric on the sinful 
 absurdity of coming with such a splendid retinue to 
 the dwelling of poor anchorites, she exclaimed, in 
 
192 THE CONQTJEEOK AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 great wrath, £ When I come again my followers shall 
 be still more numerous ! ' The abbot replied, 1 Trust 
 me, unless you repent of this iniquity, you will suffer 
 what will be very painful to you.' And so it happened, 
 for the very night following she was attacked by a dis- 
 order which caused her great suffering. Upon this 
 she gave instant orders for being carried forth from 
 the abbey, and flying in a state of alarm from the 
 territory of St. Evroult, passed by the dwelling of a 
 certain farmer named Roger Suissar, whose newly- 
 born child she stopped for a few moments to suckle, 
 with a hope of obtaining relief. It caused her severe 
 pain at the time, but she reached home, we are told, 
 completely restored to health, the unfortunate infant 
 dying shortly afterwards." 
 
 Of course the honest monk who believes " each 
 strange tale devoutly true " has no suspicion that the 
 abbot took care that his prophecy should be fulfilled, 
 and gave the very inconvenient visitor a dose which 
 would not kill her, but cure her of coming to the abbey. 
 The death of the baby, if it did die, was a coincidence 
 too tempting not to be made the most of. 
 
 In 1063 Arnould d'Eschafour, son of William 
 Giroie, the founder of the Abbey of St. Evroult, 
 against whose family a deadly hatred had been con- 
 tinually cherished by that of Belesme, and who by the 
 
/ 
 
 EOGEE DE MONTGOMERI. 193 
 
 machinations of Mabel liad been banished Normandy, 
 presented himself at the Court of the Duke, and offer- 
 ing him a magnificent mantle, humbly entreated that 
 his inheritance might be restored to him. The Duke, 
 at that moment being in want of brave soldiers for his 
 wars with the Manceaux and the Bretons, with his 
 usual policy accepted the gift, and promised to restore 
 him his estates (the greater proportion of which Mabel 
 had contrived to obtain for her husband), giving him 
 meanwhile free passage through his territories for a 
 limited time. 
 
 Returning from the Court in company with Gilbert 
 de Montgomeri, brother of Roger, he stopped at his 
 Castle of Eschafour, then in the possession of Roger 
 and Mabel, whose attendants pressed him earnestly to 
 partake of some refreshments their lady had ordered 
 them to set before him. He had, however, received 
 from a friend a hint of some treachery, and remember- 
 ing the warning, steadily refused to touch either the 
 meat or the wine. Gilbert, who had ridden there 
 with him, quite unconscious of the foul design, took a 
 cup without dismounting from his horse, and draining 
 its poisoned contents, died three days afterwards at 
 Remalord. Thus, observes Orderic, this perfidious 
 woman, attempting to destroy her husband's rival, 
 caused the death of his only surviving brother, who 
 
 VOL. I. O 
 
194 THE CONQTJEROK AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 was in the flower of his youth, and much distinguished 
 for his chivalrous gallantry. Foiled in this attempt, 
 she shortly afterwards made another, as deadly and 
 unfortunately more successful. By means of entreaties 
 and promises she induced Roger Gulafre, the chamber- 
 lain of Arnould, to become the instrument of her 
 murderous designs. 
 
 Arnould being at Courville, near Chatres, with his 
 relatives, Giroie de Courville and William, surnamed 
 Gouet de Montmirail, the traitor Gulafre took an 
 opportunity of serving to his master and the other two 
 nobles the poisoned beverage he had received from 
 Mabel : Giroie and William cle Montmirail survived the 
 effects of the poison, but Arnould, after languishing 
 for some days, expired on the 1st of January, 1064. 
 After his decease the great family of Giroie gradually 
 fell to decay, and for twenty-six years their lands 
 remained in the possession of that of Montgomeri. 
 
 A truly terrible fate, however, awaited this infamous 
 woman, who, according to the chronicler, had caused 
 many great lords to be disinherited and to beg their 
 bread in foreign lands. Amongst her victims was 
 Hugh de la Roche d'lge\ in the Canton de Belesme, 
 from whom she had wrested his castle on the rock, and 
 had deprived of the inheritance of the lands of his 
 fathers. In the extremity of his distress he undertook 
 
/ 
 
 KOGKER DE MONTGOMERI. 195 
 
 a desperate enterprise. With the assistance of his 
 three brothers, men of undaunted courage, he forced 
 an entry by night into the chamber of the Countess 
 (for such was her rank at that time) at a place called 
 Bures, on the Dive, near Froarn, and severed her head 
 from her body as she lay in bed after having taken a 
 bath. Their vengeance satiated, they lost no time in 
 making good their retreat. Hugh de Montgomeri, her 
 second son, who was in the castle with sixteen men-at- 
 arms, on hearing of his mother's murder, instantly took 
 horse and pursued the assassins, but was unable to 
 overtake them, as they had taken the precaution to 
 break down behind them the bridges over the 
 rivers, which, being flooded and the night dark, 
 presented such obstacles in the way of the pursuers 
 that the four brothers succeeded in crossing the 
 frontiers of Normandy, and took unmolested the 
 road to Apulia. 
 
 Mabel was buried at Froarn on the 5th of December, 
 1082, Durandus being at that time the abbot who 
 disgraced himself by causing a fulsome epitaph, pre- 
 served by Orderic, to be inscribed on the tomb of a 
 detestable murderess. 
 
 I have travelled a little out of the record, as the 
 lawyers say, in order to complete the story of this 
 special representative of the hereditary wickedness of 
 
 o 2 
 
196 THE CONQUEROR AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 the family of Belesme, and must now return to her 
 husband, whom the chronicler appears to acquit of 
 direct complicity in the darker deeds of his wife, 
 and simply observes, that as long as Mabel lived 
 he was, at her instigation, a very troublesome neigh- 
 bour to the inmates of Ouche, she having been 
 always opposed to the family of Giroie. In 1066 we 
 find him at the Council of Lillebonne, and, according 
 to Taylor's List, contributing a noble contingent to 
 the fleet of his sovereign, " A Rogero cle Mongomeri 
 sexaginta naves," the furnishing of which by no means 
 proves that he accompanied them to England. 
 
 Wace is the only writer worth consideration who 
 speaks of him as present in the great conflict, and 
 selected by the Duke to command a wing of the 
 invading army, while Dugdale, quoting the annals of 
 St. Augustin at Canterbury, says he " led the middle 
 part," which Wace as distinctly asserts was led by 
 William himself, composed of all his principal nobles, 
 his personal friends and kinsmen. Neither Robert du 
 Mont, nor William of Jumieges, nor Benoit de St.- 
 More, nor William of Poitiers, nor the author of 
 Carmen de Bello make any mention of Roger de 
 Montgomeri at that period, while Wace, not content 
 with giving him the command of an important division, 
 tells us of his single combat with a gigantic English- 
 
/ 
 
 ROGER BE MONTGOMERY 197 
 
 man, captain of a hundred men, who, with his long 
 •Saxon axe, had hewed down horse and man till the 
 Normans stood aghast at him. Roger de Montgomeri, 
 riding at full speed with his lance couched, and shout- 
 ing " strike, Frenchmen ! " (" Ferrez, Franceiz ") bore 
 the giant to the earth, and revived the courage of his 
 soldiers. Orderic, however, seems never to have 
 heard of this brilliant exploit, nor anyone else that I 
 am aware of. 
 
 In 1068, however, he appears to have been in 
 England, and two years afterwards received from the 
 Conqueror the earldoms of Arundel and Shrewsbury, 
 with the honour of Eye in Suffolk, and various estates 
 in the counties of Cambridge, Warwick, Hampshire, 
 Wiltshire, Gloucestershire, Staffordshire, Hertfordshire, 
 Surrey, and Middlesex, amounting in all to one hundred 
 and fifty-seven manors, besides the cities of Chichester 
 and Shrewsbury, and the Castle of Arundel. 
 
 At the same date (1070), by the death of Ivo, Bishop 
 of Seez, he became, in right of his wife Mabel, Seigneur 
 of Belesme and Count of Alen§on, which, added to his 
 patrimonial lordship of Montgomeri, rendered him 
 comparatively as powerful in Normandy as in England. 
 
 In 1077, the Earl of Shrewsbury accompanied King 
 William in his expedition to recover the province of 
 Maine, which had revolted, and, after its submission, 
 
19S THE CONQUEROR AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 marched with a division of the army to the relief of 
 the Castle of La Fleche, in which its lord, John de la 
 Fleche was besieged by Fulk le Rechin, Count of 
 Anjou. A battle being prevented by the interposition of 
 some Cardinal not named, terms of peace were agreed 
 upon, Roger Earl of Shrewsbury and William Count of 
 Evreux taking a prominent part in the negotiations. 
 This treaty is known as the Peace of Blanchelande or 
 of Bruere, from the locality in which it was concluded. 
 
 After the death of his wicked wife Mabel by the 
 vengeful sword of Hugh de la Roche d'lge, in Decem- 
 ber, 1082, Roger de Montgomeri married Adelaide, 
 daughter of Everard de Puiset, an amiable and virtuous 
 lady, who wrought by her advice and her example a 
 great change for the better in his character, which, 
 naturally good, had been warped by the arts and 
 influence of his former Countess. 
 
 His building of the church at Quatford, near Bridge- 
 north, in Shropshire, was due to one of those so-called 
 u pious frauds," of which we read so many accounts in 
 our mediaeval chronicles, and which in this instance 
 was practised on the Countess Adelaide. 
 
 On the first passage of this excellent lady from 
 Normandy to England there arose so great a storm at 
 sea, that nothing but shipwreck was expected by the 
 mariners. The chaplain of the Countess, being much 
 
/ 
 
 BOGEK DE MONTGOAIEiU. 199 
 
 wearied with long watching, fell asleep, and saw in 
 his dreams a comely matron, who said to him, "If 
 your lady would be preserved from the danger of this 
 dreadful tempest, let her vow to God that she will 
 build a church to the honour of St. Mary Magdalen in 
 the place where she shall first meet the Earl, her hus- 
 band, in England" (he having preceded her thither 
 some short time), " and specially where an hollow oak 
 groweth near a hog- stye." All which, when the priest 
 awoke, he related to the Countess, who forthwith made 
 her vow accordingly, whereupon the tempest ceased, 
 and she and her attendants landed safely in England. 
 Journeying to rejoin her husband, she, after divers 
 days, encountered him near Quatford, in a wood, 
 hunting, at a certain spot where such an oak as " the 
 comely matron " had described then grew — and near 
 a hog-stye, I presume, though it is not mentioned. 
 She lost no time in informing her lord of the chaplain's 
 vision and her consequent vow, and prayed him to 
 fulfil it. The Earl, in gratitude for the preservation 
 of his wife, readily assented. The church in honour 
 of St. Mary Magdalen was built, endowed with ample 
 possessions, and given to the Earl's collegiate chapel 
 in the castle at Bridgenorth — much to the advantage, 
 no doubt, of the reverend chaplain, who may have 
 been one of the clergymen, Godebald or Herbert, by 
 
200 
 
 THE CONQUEEOE AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 whose counsels, Orderic tells us, in addition to 
 those of Odelirius, the Earl was always prosperously 
 guided. 
 
 The Earl, in common with many of the Norman 
 nobility, appears to have been much attached to 
 Robert Court-hcuse, who, with all his faults, was 
 brave, generous, and kindly-hearted. Witness his 
 conduct when besieging his brother Henry in Mont 
 St. Michel, in 1091. The garrison, being in great 
 distress from want of water, Robert forbade his soldiers 
 to prevent detachments issuing from the place to draw 
 water from the wells, and, on being blamed by William 
 Rufus for his consideration, exclaimed, "What, shall 
 we suffer our brother to perish of thirst? who can 
 now give us another should we lose him?" Where 
 shall w T e find such an incident recorded of the heartless 
 tyrant, his father, who ridiculed and hated him ? 
 
 As early as 1081, we find the name of Roger, Earl 
 of Shrewsbury, amongst those who zealously inter- 
 ceded with King William at Rouen in favour of Robert 
 after the battle of Gerberoi, and, after long pleading, 
 succeeded in effecting a reconciliation between them, 
 which, reluctantly consented to by the former, was of 
 very brief duration ; and on the accession of William 
 Rufus he proved still further his affection for Robert, 
 and his opinion of the injustice with which he had 
 
ROGER DE MONTGOMERI. 
 
 201 
 
 been treated by the Conqueror, by joining with 
 the Earls of Kent, Cornwall, and other powerful 
 noblemen in the attempt to place Robert on the 
 throne of England, as the eldest son and rightful heir 
 to the crown; and though not openly taking up arms, 
 secretly favouring the movement, his three eldest sons, 
 Robert, Hugh, and Roger, being amongst the young 
 nobility who held Odo's castle at Rochester against 
 the King. The Earl of Shrewsbury is said to have 
 been gained over by the artful promises of Rufus to 
 submit his right to the crown to be decided by him 
 and others whom the late King had assigned to be his 
 curators ; and after the reduction of Rochester, and the 
 suppression of the rebellion, we find Earl Roger forti- 
 fying his Castles of Belesme and Alen<jon in the cause 
 of the King, and his son Robert a prisoner of that 
 very Duke of Normandy, to place whom on the throne 
 they had so recently risked their lives and properties. 
 
 The accounts of these tergiversations are so con- 
 fused and discordant that, beyond main facts, it is 
 dangerous to state anything, and as to the motives we 
 are completely in the dark ; but the days of Roger de 
 Montgomeri were now briefly to be numbered. He 
 returned to England in 109-4, and having obtained 
 from the Abbey of Cluni, of which he was a bene- 
 factor, the habit of its celebrated abbot, St. Hugh, 
 
202 THE CONQUEROR AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 assumed it, and was shorn a monk in the Abbey of 
 St. Peter and St. Paul at Shrewsbury, with the con- 
 sent, we are assured, of his wife, the Countess Adeliza, 
 and for three clays before his death wholly applied 
 himself to divine conference and devout prayers with 
 the rest of the community, expiring, in the odour of 
 sanctity, Gth kalends of August, in the above year, 
 leaving by his first wife, Mabel, five sons and four 
 daughters : Robert, the eldest son, who succeeded to 
 his mother's large estates in Normandy as Count of 
 Alencon and Seigneur de Belesme ; Hugh, who inhe- 
 rited his father's domains in England, with the earl- 
 doms of Arundel and Shrewsbury ; Roger, surnamed 
 of Poitou, in consequence of his marriage with Almodis 
 Countess of March, who possessed great estates in that 
 province, and also sometimes called Earl of Lancaster 
 for a similar reason ; Philip, who accompanied Duke 
 Robert to the Crusades, and died at Antioch ; and 
 Arnoul, who married Lafracota, daughter of a king of 
 Ireland, and by conquest obtained that part of South 
 Wales now called Pembrokeshire, and, building a 
 castle there, appears to have been sometime entitled 
 Earl of Pembroke, as his brother was of Lancaster. 
 The daughters by Mabel were Emma, Abbess of 
 Almenache ; Maud, wife of Robert, Count of Mortain 
 and Earl of Cornwall ; Mabel, wife of Hugh de 
 
EOBEET DE BEAUMONT. 203 
 
 Chateau-neuf ; and Sibil, who married Robert Fitz 
 Hamon, Lord of Corboil, in Normandy. 
 
 By his second wife he had only a son named 
 Everard, who took holy orders, and was chaplain to 
 King Henry I. 
 
 The Earls of Eglintoun are presumed to be de- 
 scended from this family of Montgomeri, but no 
 proof has ever been made, and though in 1C96 there 
 existed a Comte de Montgomeri in France, an Earl 
 of Montgomery in England, a Montgomery Earl of 
 Eglintoun in Scotland, and a Montgomery Earl of 
 Mount Alexander in Ireland, the link has yet to be 
 found which would legitimately connect these noble 
 families with that of the great Earl of Shrewsbury, 
 who has only transmitted his name to us in that 
 county of North Wales which he won by the sword 
 and called Montgomery. 
 
 EOBEET DE BEAUMONT. 
 
 " Eogier li Veil, cil de Belmont, 
 Assalt Engleis el primier front." — 
 
 Roman de Ron, 1. 13462. 
 
 Thus sings the Prebend of Bayeux in direct contra- 
 diction, as I have already observed, of the Archdeacon 
 of Lisieux, who as distinctly asserts that Roger de 
 
204 THE CONQUEEOR AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 Beaumont was left in Normandy, president of the 
 council appointed by the Duke to assist his Duchess in 
 its government. There is more reason, however, to 
 discredit Wace in this instance than even in the 
 former one, as Orderic corroborates the statement 
 of the Archdeacon that it was Robert, the eldest son 
 of Roger de Beaumont, who was the companion of the 
 Conqueror in 1066, and whom he describes as " a 
 novice in arms." Mr. Taylor, in his translation of the 
 poem, has mentioned also that in the MS. of Wace, in 
 the British Museum, the name is Robert, though the 
 epithet "le Viel" is not appropriate to his then age. 
 Might not " le Viel " be a clerical error for " de 
 Vielles" the name of Roger's father, which is latinized 
 into " de Vitulis ? " Roger de Beaumont would of 
 course have been de Vielles as well as his father. 
 The latinizing of proper names cannot be too much 
 deplored and deprecated. 
 
 Of Roger, Count de Beaumont, it is unanimously 
 recorded that he was the noblest, the wealthiest, 
 and the most valiant seigneur of Normandy, and the 
 greatest and most trusted friend of the Danish family. 
 Son of Humphrey de Vielles, and grandson of Thorold 
 de Pontaudemer, a descendant of the Kings of Den- 
 mark, through Bernard the Dane, a companion of the 
 first Norman Conqueror, Duke Rollo, illustrious as 
 
EOBERT DE BEAUMONT. 205 
 
 was such an origin in the eyes of his countrymen, he 
 considered his alliance with Adelina, Countess of 
 Meulent, sufficiently honourable and important to 
 induce him to adopt the title of her family in pre- 
 ference to that of his own. 
 
 We have already heard of his first great exploit, 
 when, as a young man, in the early years of Duke 
 William, he defeated the turbulent Roger de Toeni, 
 who with his two sons were slain in that sanguinary 
 conflict (vide p. 19, ante). Towards the invading 
 fleet he contributed, according to Taylor's List, sixty 
 vessels, and being at that time advanced in years, 
 and selected to superintend the affairs of the duchy, 
 sent his young son Eobert to win his spurs at 
 Senlac. 
 
 In that memorable battle he is said to have given 
 proofs of courage and intelligence beyond his years, 
 and promise of the high reputation he would event- 
 ually obtain, and which won for him the surname of 
 Prudhomme. " A certain Norman young soldier," 
 writes William of Poitou, " son of Roger de Bellomont, 
 and nephew and heir of Hugh, Count of Meulent, by 
 Adelina, his sister, making his first onset in that fight, 
 did what deserves lasting fame, boldly charging and 
 breaking in upon the enemy with the troops he com- 
 manded in the right wing of the army," 
 
206 THE CONQTJEKOK AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 His services were rewarded by ninety manors in 
 Warwickshire, Leicestershire, Wiltshire, and North- 
 amptonshire. 
 
 In 1080 he, with his brother Henry, afterwards 
 Earl of Warwick, were amongst the barons who 
 exerted themselves to reconcile King William to his 
 son Robert Court-heuse, and in 1081 he subscribed a 
 charter of confirmation in favour of the Abbey of 
 Fecamp. This was the last document he signed in 
 the name of Beaumont, for his mother dying in that 
 year, he thenceforth wrote himself Comte de Meulent, 
 and did homage to Philip I., King of France, for the 
 lands to which he succeeded in that kingdom, and in 
 1082 sat as a Peer of France in a parliament held by 
 the said King at Poissy. 
 
 On the death of the Conqueror, the Comte de Meu- 
 lent and his brother sided with William Rufus ; their 
 father, Roger de Beaumont, leaving also the ducal 
 court and retiring to his estates. The late King had 
 given the Castle of Ivri jointly* to Roger de Beaumont 
 and Robert his son ; but during the absence of the 
 latter in England, Robert Court-heuse, having become 
 Duke of Normandy, exchanged, in 1090, that castle 
 for the Castle of Brionne with Roger de Beaumont, 
 without obtaining the consent of Robert de Meulent. 
 The latter, having a quarrel with the monks of Bee, 
 
/ 
 
 EOBEET DE BEAUMONT. 207 
 
 whose monastery was in the territory of Brionne, was 
 greatly angered by this transaction, and repairing to 
 the Duke at Rouen, boldly demanded of him the 
 restoration of Ivri. The Duke answered that he had 
 given his father the Castle of Brionne for it, which 
 was a fair exchange. The Count replied, " I was no 
 party to that bargain, and repudiate it ; but what your 
 father gave to my father that will I have, or by Saint 
 Nicaise I will make you repent your conduct to me." 
 The Duke, highly incensed, had him immediately 
 arrested and imprisoned, and seizing the Castle of 
 Brionne, gave it into the keeping of Robert, son of 
 Baldwin de Meules. Roger de Beaumont, on receipt 
 of these tidings, sought the Duke, and with the skill 
 of an old courtier contrived to pacify his resentment, 
 and obtain the release of his son and the restoration 
 of Brionne ; but Robert cle Meules, who was in charge 
 of it, refused to surrender it, and the Count de Meu- 
 lent was obliged to resort to force. Siege was laid to 
 the castle in regular form, and the garrison stoutly 
 holding out, Gilbert du Pin, commanding the belea- 
 guering forces, caused arrows, with their steel heads 
 made red-hot in a furnace, to be shot over the battle- 
 ments, and which, falling on the roofs of the buildings 
 within the walls, set them on fire. The conflagration 
 spreading, the place became no longer tenable, and 
 
208 THE CONQUEROR AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 Brionne remained from that period in the hands of the 
 Counts of Meulent. 
 
 The monks of Bee now found it necessary to patch 
 up their quarrels with the Count, who behaved gene- 
 rously on the occasion, confirming their privileges and 
 those also of the Abbey of Preaux, of Jumieges, and 
 St. Vaudrille, remitting certain imports due to him 
 from the wine-growers of Mantes. I mention these 
 circumstances, which have no interest for the general 
 reader, only to notice a singular condition the Count 
 attached to the franchise, namely, that the masters of 
 all boats passing the Castles of Meulent and Mantes 
 should play on the flageolet as they shot the bridges ! 
 
 On the departure of Robert Court-heuse for the 
 Crusades, William Rufus, to whom he had confided 
 the government of Normandy, as a pledge for the 
 repayment of the money the King had lent to him for 
 the expenses of his expedition, considered it a good 
 opportunity to recover from France the province of 
 the Vexin. The Count of Meulent found himself 
 awkwardly situated between the two contending 
 parties. He owed fealty to both sovereigns : to the 
 King of France for the Comte of Meulent, and to the 
 King of England for his large estates, both in that 
 country and Normandy. He decided in favour of the 
 latter, received into his castle the , forces of the Red 
 
EOBEET DE BEAUMONT. 
 
 209 
 
 King, and so opened for him an entrance into France. 
 The war ended without advantage to either side, and 
 was followed by another between Rufus and Helie de 
 la Fleche, Comte du Maine. After vainly attempting 
 to reduce the Castle of Dangueul, the King withdrew 
 from the siege, leaving the Count of Meulent to carry 
 on the operations. On the 28th April, 1098, Helie 
 was drawn into an ambush by Count Robert, and, after 
 a desperate defence, made prisoner, and conducted by 
 him to the King, who was at Rouen, and who con- 
 signed his captive immediately to a dungeon in the 
 great tower of that city. 
 
 The incidents and results of this campaign are not 
 sufficiently connected with the personal history of 
 Robert de Meulent to require notice here. He was 
 one of the royal hunting party in the New Forest 
 on the 2nd of August, 1100, when William Rufus 
 received his mysterious death-wound, and hastened 
 on the instant with Prince Henry to Winchester, in 
 order to secure the royal treasure, as well as the suc- 
 cession to the throne of England. 
 
 Under the reign of the new King he retained the 
 favour and influence he had enjoyed daring those of 
 the two Williams, and commanded the English army, 
 which achieved the conquest of Normandy by Henry I. 
 in 1106, who acknowledged himself indebted for it to 
 
 VOL. l r 
 
210 THE CONQUEROR AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 the advice and valour of the Earl of Leicester, to 
 which dignity Robert de Meulent had been advanced 
 by him at some period not distinctly ascertained, but 
 most probably in the first year of his reign. 
 
 Orderic Vital gives the following account of the 
 mode by which he obtained the earldom : — " The 
 town of Leicester had four masters — the King, the 
 Bishop of Lincoln, Earl Simon" (Simon de St. Liz, 
 Earl of Huntingdon), "and Ivo, the son of Hugh" 
 (de Grentmesnil). The latter had been heavily fined for 
 turbulent conduct, and was in disgrace at Court. He 
 was also galled by being nicknamed " the Rope-dancer," 
 having been one of those who had been let down by 
 ropes from the walls of Antioch. He therefore had 
 resolved to rejoin the Crusade, and made an agreement 
 with the Count of Meulent to the following effect : — 
 The Count was to procure his reconciliation with the 
 King, and to advance him five hundred silver marks 
 for the expenses of his expedition, having the whole of 
 Ivo's domains pledged to him as a security for fifteen 
 years. In consideration of this, the Count was to give 
 the daughter of his brother Henry, Earl of Warwick, in 
 marriage to Ivo's son, who was yet in his infancy, 
 and to restore him his father's inheritance. This 
 contract was confirmed by oath, and ratified by the 
 King, but Ivo died on his road to the Holy Land, 
 
/ 
 
 ROBERT DE BEAUMONT. 211 
 
 and Robert de Meulent, by royal favour and liis own 
 address, contrived to get the whole of Leicester into 
 his own hands, and being in consequence created an 
 English earl, his wealth and power surpassed those 
 of any other peer of the realm, and he was exalted 
 above nearly all his family."* 
 
 This great warrior and able man is said to have 
 died of sorrow and mortification, caused by the infi- 
 delity of his second wife Elizabeth, otherwise Isabella, 
 daughter of Hugh the Great, Comte de Vermandois 
 and of Chaumont in the Vexin. 
 
 He had married — the date at present unknown — 
 Godechilde de Conches, daughter of Roger de Toeni, 
 Seigneur de Conches, but had separated from her before 
 1096, as in that year she, who could not then have 
 been seventeen, became the wife of Baldwin, son of 
 Eustace de Boulogne, who was King of Jerusalem 
 after the decease of his brother Godfrey. Robert de 
 Meulent, then being between fifty and sixty, and 
 without issue, sought the hand of Elizabeth de Ver- 
 mandois, who was in the bloom of youth, and was 
 accepted by the lady; but Ivo, Bishop of Chatres, 
 forbade the marriage on the ground of consanguinity, 
 the Count of Vermandois and the Count of Meulent 
 being both great-grandsons of Gautier II., surnamed 
 
 * Book xi. c. 2. 
 
 r 2 
 
212 THE CONQUEROB AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 " Le Blanc," Count of the Vexin. A dispensation 
 was obtained, however, from the Pope, on condition 
 that Count Hugh should take the Cross, and the 
 marriage was celebrated on the eve of his departure 
 for the Holy Land, the same year in which Robert's 
 first wife married Baldwin de Boulogne. 
 
 The issue of Robert de Meulent by his second 
 wife was a daughter named Emma, born, according 
 to Orderic, in 1102 ; two sons (twins), baptised 
 Waleran and Robert, born in 1104 ; a third son, known 
 as Hugh the Poor, afterwards Earl of Bedford, and 
 three other daughters, Adeline, Amicia, and Albreda, 
 all of whom must have been born after 1104, when 
 their father, then Earl of Leicester, was well stricken 
 in years. Orderic, indeed, says he had five daughters, 
 the fifth being named Isabel, after her mother. 
 
 All these children being born in wedlock, were of 
 course in the eyes of the law legitimate, but William 
 de Warren, Earl of Warren and Surrey, second of that 
 name, son of the mysterious Gundrecl, had supplanted 
 the Earl of Leicester for some years in the affections 
 of his wife, and her ultimate desertion of him for his 
 young rival affected his mind, and hurried him to the 
 grave, June 5, 1118. 
 
 Henry of Huntingdon, in his "Letter to Walter," 
 gives the following account of his last moments : — 
 
ROBERT DE BEAUMONT. 213 
 
 " I will mention the Earl of Meulent, the most 
 sagacious in political affairs of all who lived between 
 this and Jerusalem. His mind was enlightened, his 
 eloquence persuasive, his shrewdness acute ; he was 
 provident and wily ; his prudence never failed ; his 
 counsels were profound ; his wisdom great. He had 
 extensive and noble possessions, which are commonly 
 called honours, together with towns and castles, villages 
 and farms, woods and waters, which he acquired by 
 the exercise of the talents I have mentioned. His 
 domains lay not only in England but in Normandy 
 and France, so that he was able at his will to promote 
 concord between the sovereigns of those countries, or 
 to set them at variance and provoke them to war. If 
 he took umbrage against any man, his enemy was 
 humbled and crushed, while those he favoured were 
 exalted to honour. Hence his coffers were filled with 
 a prodigious influx of wealth in gold and silver, 
 besides precious gems and costly furniture and apparel. 
 But when he was in the zenith of his power it hap- 
 pened that a certain earl carried off the lady he had 
 espoused, either by some intrigue or by force and 
 stratagem. Thenceforth his mind was disturbed and 
 clouded with grief, nor did he to the time of his death 
 regain composure and happiness. 
 
 " After days abandoned to sorrow, when he was 
 
214 THE CONQUEEOE AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 labouring under an infirmity which was the precursor 
 of death, and the Archbishop (of Rouen) and priests 
 were performing their office for the confessional puri- 
 fication, they required of him that as a penitent he 
 should restore the lands which by force or fraud he 
 had wrung from others, and wash out his sins with 
 tears of repentance, to which he replied, 1 Wretched 
 man that I am ! If I dismember the domains I have 
 acquired, w 7 hat shall I have to leave to my sons ? ' 
 
 " Upon this the ministers of the Lord answered,. 
 1 Your hereditary estates and the lands which you have 
 justly obtained are enough for your sons ; restore the 
 rest, or else you devote your soul to perdition.' 
 
 " The Earl replied, 4 My sons shall have all. I leave 
 it to them to act mercifully, that I may obtain mercy.' " 
 
 Assuming the monastic habit, he then breathed his 
 last, and was buried near his father at Preaux, his 
 heart being sent to the monastery of Brackley in 
 Northamptonshire, which he had founded, and there 
 preserved in salt. 
 
 William of Malmesbury says of him, that his advice 
 was regarded as though the oracle of God had been 
 consulted ; that he was the persuader of peace, the 
 dissuader of strife, and capable of speedily bringing 
 about whatever he desired by the power of his elo- 
 quence ; that he possessed such mighty influence in 
 
ROBERT DE BEAUMONT. 215 
 
 England as to change by his single example the long 
 established modes of dress and diet. Limiting himself 
 on the score of his health to one meal a day, in imitation 
 of Alexius, Emperor of Constantinople, the custom was 
 adopted generally by the nobility. In law, he was 
 the supporter of justice; in war, the insurer of victory ; 
 urging his lord the King to enforce the statutes vigor- 
 ously, he himself not only respecting those existing, 
 but proposing new. Ever loyal to his sovereign, he 
 was the stern avenger of treason in others. 
 
 It is a relief to read such a character of a man in 
 these darkest days of feudalism, imperfect civilization, 
 and demoralizing superstition. 
 
 A word or two respecting his children. 
 
 The twins, Waleran and Robert, were carefully 
 brought up by King Henry I. from the time of their 
 father's death, " for the King loved him much, because 
 in the beginning of his reign he had greatly aided and 
 encouraged him." On their arriving at the proper age 
 they received knighthood at his hands, and Waleran 
 w r as put in possession of all his father's domains in 
 France and Normandy, his brother Robert receiving 
 the earldom of Leicester and the lands and honours in 
 England. Three of their sisters were given in marriage 
 by Waleran: — Adeline to Hugh, 4th Sire de Montfort- 
 sur-Risle, Amicia to Hugh de Chateau-neuf in Thime- 
 
216 THE CONQUEROR AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 rais ; and Albreda (or Aubrey) to William Louvel or 
 Lnpel, son of Ascelin Goel, Lord of Ivri.° 
 
 Isabel became, according to the chromque scan- 
 daleuse of that day, one of the many mistresses of 
 Henry I., and subsequently married Gilbert de Clare, 
 Earl of Pembroke. What became of Emma, the eldest 
 born, we know not. According to Orderic she was 
 betrothed, when only a year old, to Aumari, nephew 
 of William, Count of Evreux, but from some impedi- 
 ment which occurred the marriage never took place. 
 She probably died in infancy, or entered a convent. 
 The author of "L'Art de Verifier les Dates," besides 
 Hugh, Earl of Bedford, already mentioned, gives 
 Eobert, a fourth son, whom he calls Dreux, Sire de 
 Boisemont. 
 
 * Vide vol. ii., p, 223. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 RAOUL DE TOENI, OR DE CONCHES. 
 TOUSTAIN FITZ ROU LE BLANC. 
 HUGH, ROGER, AND RAOUL DE MORTEMER. 
 AIMERI, V1COMTE DE TIIOUARS. 
 
 RAOUL DE TOENI, OR DE CONCHES. 
 " Totius Nonnanice signifer." — 
 
 Gul. Gemdkencis, 
 
 Raoul (Ralph) de Toeni, Seigneur do Conches, 
 second of that name, was the son or grandson (for it is 
 not quite clear which) of that turbulent Roger de 
 Toeni, who was one of the first to dispute the succes- 
 sion of the base-born William to the ducal throne of 
 Normandy, and who, with his two sons Halbert and 
 Elinauce, was slain in a conflict with Roger de Beau- 
 mont. You have heard of him before as the messenger 
 of the Duke to the French King with the disastrous 
 tidings of the battle of Mortemer. 
 
 The honourable office of gonfanonier (standard- 
 bearer) of Normandy was hereditary in their family 
 
218 THE CONQUEROB AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 collateral descendants of its dukes from Mahaluc, 
 uncle of Rolf or Hollo, but on whom it was first con- 
 ferred has not transpired. 
 
 Previous to the battle at Senlac, Wace tells us the 
 Duke ordered the consecrated gonfanon, which the 
 Pope had sent to him, to be brought forth and unfurled. 
 Then taking and raising it, he called to him Raoul de 
 Conches, and said, " Bear my gonfanon, for I would 
 not but do you right. By right and by ancestry your 
 family are gonfanoniers of Normandy, and very good 
 knights have they all been." " Many thanks to you," 
 answered Raoul, " for the recognition of our right, but 
 by my faith the gonfanon shall not be borne by me 
 this day. To-day I claim quittance of that service, 
 for I would serve you in another guise. I will 
 go with you into the battle and fight the English 
 as long as I have life to do so, and be assured that 
 my hand will be worth more than those of twenty 
 such men! " 
 
 There can be no doubt that he was as good as his 
 word, although no especial act of gallantry has been 
 recorded of him, for we find him rewarded by the gift 
 of thirty-seven lordships, nineteen being in Norfolk, 
 and making Flamstead, in Hertfordshire, his principal 
 residence in England. 
 
 Orderic tells us that this Raoul gained great glory 
 
/ 
 
 EAOUL DE TOENI. 219 
 
 in the wars, and was renowned among the first of the 
 Norman nobles for honour and wealth, serving bravely 
 in the armies of King William and Duke Robert, his 
 sen, for nearly sixty years. Of course he must mean 
 alternately, for he was one of the nobles who took part 
 with Robert Court-heuse on his first outbreak, in conse- 
 quence of the insult of his brothers, William and Henry, 
 who threw water on him from a gallery in a house 
 where they were playing at dice. Raoul was banished, 
 and his domains seized by the King, but through the 
 intercession of friends obtained his pardon and the 
 restoration of his estates. 
 
 In 1077, he married Elizabeth, or Isabel, daughter 
 of Simon cle Montfort l'Amauri, whose hand he 
 obtained by the audacious act of carrying off by night 
 Agnes, daughter of Richard, Comte d'Evreux, who was 
 his half-sister, and marrying her to the said Simon. 
 Orderic gives an amusing account of this Isabel and 
 her sister-in-law Ha vise, daughter of William, Comte 
 de Nevers, the wife of her brother William, Comte 
 d'Evreux. The Countess Havise took offence, it 
 appears, at some taunts of the Lady of Conches, and 
 used all her influence with her husband and his barons, 
 to have recourse to arms, in which mischievous attempt 
 she unfortunately succeeded. " Both these ladies," 
 the chronicler tells us, u were great talkers, and spirited 
 
220 THE CONQUEROR AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 as well as handsome ; tliey ruled their husbands, op- 
 pressed their vassals, and inspired terror in various 
 ways : but still their characters were very different. 
 Havise had wit and eloquence, but she was cruel and 
 avaricious ; Isabel, on the contrary, was generous, en- 
 terprising, and lively, so that she was beloved and es- 
 teemed by those immediately about her. She rode in 
 knightly armour when the vassals took the field, and 
 exhibited as much daring amongst belted knights and 
 men-at-arms as Camilla, the renowned virgin of Italy, 
 among the squadrons of Tevenus." 
 
 By turns the people of Evreux and Conches plun- 
 dered and destroyed the property of each other. The 
 Lord of Conches, who was less powerful than the 
 Count of Evreux, sought his sovereign, Robert Court- 
 heuse, and laying before him an account of the losses 
 to which he was exposed by the aggressions of the 
 Count of Evreux, demanded the aid he had a right 
 to expect from his liege lord ; but Robert turned a deaf 
 ear to his prayer, and Raoul in his distress sought a 
 more powerful protector in the King of England, pro- 
 mising him by his envoys the fealty of all his estates in 
 return for his assistance. Rufus was highly pleased at 
 the proposal, and sent orders to Stephen Count of 
 Aumale and Gerrard de Gournay, with others in com- 
 mand of his forces in Normandy, to give every aid to 
 
/ 
 
 ItAOUL DE TOENI. 221 
 
 Eaoul de Toeni, and throw supplies of all kinds into 
 his castles. 
 
 In the month of November, 1090, Count William 
 assembled a large force and laid siege to Conches, his 
 two nephews, Richard de Montfort and William de 
 Breteuil joining him with their respective powers. 
 Richard cle Montfort was slain while taking possession 
 of the Abbey of St. Peter de Chatillon at Conches, 
 and in a subsequent attack William de Breteuil was 
 taken prisoner. This worse than civil war, the wagers 
 of it being all nearly related to each other, lasted three 
 years ; at length the Count of Evreux and his allies, 
 ashamed that, having commenced hostilities on so 
 frivolous a provocation, they had suffered the greatest 
 losses, consented to a truce, and peace was proposed 
 upon the following terms : — William de Breteuil paid 
 three thousand livres for his ransom, and made his 
 cousin Roger, eldest son of Raoul de Toeni, heir to the 
 whole of his fief; the Count of Evreux appointed the 
 same youth, who was his nephew, his successor in the 
 comte. " But," adds the pious writer, " Divine 
 Providence, which is not ruled by the will of man, pro- 
 vided otherwise." The boy was of an excellent dis- 
 position and much beloved by his companions, the 
 vassals, and the neighbours. He had a great regard 
 for the clergy and the monks, to whom he paid due 
 
222 THE CONQUEROR AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 reverence. Rejecting the pomp of dress, in which the 
 nobility too much gloried, his whole demeanour was 
 simple and modest. Upon one occasion, when the 
 knights were amusing themselves in the hall at 
 Conches, playing at various games and talking on 
 various subjects, " as the custom is," the Lady Isabel 
 being present, the conversation took a serious turn, and 
 one of Roger's youthful companions said, " I had a 
 dream lately which much alarmed me. I saw our Lord 
 upon the cross, his whole body livid and writhing with 
 agony. My eyes were riveted upon him in the great- 
 est terror." The listeners gravely remarked that so 
 solemn and fearful a dream seemed to forebode some 
 terrible judgment of God upon him. Baldwin, the son 
 of Eustace, Count of Boulogne, who was of that com- 
 pany, said, " I, too, lately saw in a dream our Lord 
 upon the cross, but in my vision He appeared bright 
 and glorious, and smiled benignantly upon me, stretch- 
 ing forth one hand and making the sign of the cross 
 upon my head." The bystanders all agreed that this 
 vision portended some singular grace and favour. 
 Young Roger de Toeni, upon this, said to his mother, 
 " I know some one not far from here who had recently 
 a similar dream." Her curiosity being excited, she 
 pressed him to say who it was, and what had been 
 seen ; but the boy blushed, and was unwilling to say 
 
HAOtJL DE TOENI. 
 
 223 
 
 more. At lengtli, yielding to the general entreaties of 
 his friends, he said : " A certain person saw in a vision 
 the Lord Jesus, who, laying his hand on his head, 
 blessed him, saying, 'Come quickly to me, beloved, 
 and I will give you the joys of life.' I therefore be- 
 lieve firmly that one whom I know has been called 
 by the Lord, and will not live long." 
 
 The three youths, we are told, experienced different 
 fates, corresponding with what had been foreshadowed 
 to each of them. The first, whose name is not given, 
 was mortally wounded in a hostile inroad, and died 
 without having confessed or received the viaticum. 
 Baldwin, as is well known, took the sign of the Cross, 
 and distinguishing himself in the Holy Wars, was, on 
 the death of his brother Godfrey, elected King of 
 Jerusalem. The youthful heir-presumptive of the Count 
 of Evreux and William de Breteuil took to his bed 
 the same year that he had seen his vision, and depart- 
 ing this life on the 15th of May, was buried amidst 
 general sorrow with his ancestors in the Abbey of 
 St. Peter's at Chatillon, now called of Conches. 
 
 Leaving my readers to decide for themselves the 
 question how much credibility may be attached to this 
 story, the like of which are to be found by scores in 
 the pages of our monkish chronicles, I shall only 
 direct their attention to the interesting view it affords 
 
224 THE CONQUEROR AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 us of the manners and habits of the age in which it 
 was written, the words " as the custom now is " 
 proving that although the anecdote may be mere idle 
 gossip, the picture of domestic life is drawn from 
 personal knowledge and observation. Here we see 
 the high-spirited Lady of Conches, seated on the 
 dais or haat pas, in her own castle hall, the ruins 
 of which were recently and may still be existing, 
 surrounded by her family and their young com- 
 panions, the knights owing service to her lord, the 
 officers of her household, and her handmaidens in 
 attendance on her — all the features of the court of a 
 baron of the eleventh century familiar to the sight of 
 the narrator; the various groups, each with its 
 favourite pastime or topic of conversation, and the 
 peculiar character imparted to the latter by the reli- 
 gious atmosphere of the age. We have here the 
 earliest glimpse of that future King of Jerusalem 
 when, probably, a newly-belted knight and a guest of 
 Raoul de Toeni, he may have seen for the first time 
 the young Countess Godechilde, daughter of his host, 
 who, just separated from her husband, Robert de 
 Meulent, and still under age, was shortly to become 
 his wife, although not destined to share with him the 
 crown of his eastern kingdom. 
 
 Raoul de Toeni, like his grandfather Roger, made a 
 
KAOTJL DE TOENI. 225 
 
 journey into Spain, but with a more peaceful object. 
 The former had hoped to carve out with his sword a 
 dominion for himself, as Rollo had done in Normandy 
 and Robert Guiscard in Sicily; but gained nothing 
 by his enterprise except an empty name — being after- 
 wards distinguished from other members of his family 
 as Roger of Spain. 
 
 His grandson most probably went, like Walter 
 Giffard, to visit the shrine of St. Iago of Compo- 
 stella. 
 
 Previously to setting out on his journey he attended 
 a chapter at the Abbey of St. Evroult, and implored 
 pardon of the abbot and monks for having abetted 
 Arnould d'Eschafour when he burnt the town of 
 Ouche. Laying his gage on the altar, he made many 
 pious vows to be fulfilled on his safe return, and re- 
 commended to their care his physician Goisbert, whom 
 he much loved, and who, as soon as he departed, made 
 his profession as a monk, and kept it for nearly thirty 
 years. Goisbert must, therefore, have been personally 
 known to Orderic — a fact which increases our reliance 
 on any information he communicates to us respecting 
 the family of De Toeni. 
 
 On Raoul's return, he tells us, the Lord of Conches 
 . faithfully redeemed his promises by the gifts of certain 
 lands and privileges to St. Evroult, and that some 
 
 VOIi. I. Q 
 
226 THE CONQUEROR AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 years afterwards lie took Goisbert, the monk, with him 
 to England, and, through his means, added to his 
 former benefactions two farms or manors — one named 
 Caldecot, in Norfolk, and the other Abington in Wor- 
 cestershire ; his wife, Roger and Ralph, his sons, freely 
 joining in the grant, which was also confirmed by 
 King William. 
 
 Ralph II. de Toeni died 24th March 1102, and 
 was buried in the Abbey of Conches, beside his father 
 and his son Roger. His widow Isabel, repenting of 
 the sinful levity in which she had too much indulged 
 in her youth, gave up the world, and took the veil in 
 a convent of nuns at Haute Bruyere (a priory of the 
 order of Fontevrauld, at St. Remi-l'Honore, near 
 Montfort l'Amauri), where she reformed her life and 
 worthily ended it in the favour of the Lord. 
 
 From Robert, a cadet of this house, the family of 
 Stafford is descended, but I have not been able to 
 satisfy myself as to the exact place of Robert and his 
 brother Nigel de Stafford in the pedigree. They were 
 probably younger brothers of the subject of this me- 
 moir, or possibly his uncles. They appear in Domes- 
 day as possessors of considerable property, but whether 
 companions of the Conqueror in 1066 is uncertain. 
 The first Robert de Toeni who assumed the name of 
 Stafford, from the Castle of Stafford, married, it is said, 
 
TOUSTAIN LE BLANC. 227 
 
 Avicia de Clare; but I cannot identify any such 
 person. 
 
 TOUSTAIN FITZ EOU LE BLANC. 
 
 " Turstinus filius Eollonis vexillum Normanorum portavit." — 
 
 Orderic. Vit. 
 
 This brave and renowned knight, to whom the 
 honour of bearing the Duke's gonfanon at Senlac was 
 finally accorded, was the son of Rollo, or Rou, a 
 younger son of Crispin, Baron of Bec-en-Caux, near 
 Fecamp, and maternally descended from the Princes of 
 Monaco. Two of his cousins, William and Gilbert 
 Crispin, were also in the invading army, and it appears 
 probable that his brother, Goisfrid de Bee, or Marescal, 
 was the progenitor of the great family of the Marshals. 
 Nothing particular is recorded of Toustain Fitz Rou, 
 however, previous to his selection by Duke William 
 for the honourable office above mentioned, except that 
 he was born at Bee. 
 
 " He bore the gonfanon/' we are told, " boldly, high 
 aloft in the breeze, and rode beside the Duke, going 
 wherever he went. Whenever the Duke turned, he 
 turned also, and wheresoever he stayed his course, 
 there he stayed also." His kindred, the same writer 
 tells us, still have quittance of all service for their 
 inheritance on that account, and their heirs are entitled 
 
 q 2 
 
228 
 
 THE CONQUEROR AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 to hold their possessions for ever. Monsieur Auguste 
 le Provost adds that a noble house in Upper Normandy, 
 claiming to descend from this Toustain le Blanc, in 
 memory of this office performed at Hastings, took for 
 supporters of their arms two angels, each bearing a 
 banner. 
 
 Apropos of "banner," in default of any more infor- 
 mation respecting the man, let me say a few words 
 concerning the gonfanon which he bore so gallantly 
 "with a good heart," until it was planted in triumph 
 beside " the hoary apple tree." We are expressly 
 informed by Wace that it was " the one which the 
 Pope Alexander had sent " to William, Duke of 
 Normandy. The Latin writers use the word Vexillum, 
 the French render it Gonfanon and Enseign, and the 
 English, Banner and Standard. None of these words 
 convey the least idea of the true shape of this conse- 
 crated ensign, nor of the device embroidered on it, and 
 the indiscriminate use of the terms banner and standard at 
 the present clay can only suggest to the general reader 
 an utterly erroneous one. That which we now call the 
 royal standard is, strictly speaking, a banner. The 
 colours of our infantry regiments are also banners. 
 The earliest of these flags or ensigns appear to be 
 nearly co-eval with the general adoption of armorial 
 bearings, properly so called, viz., towards the end of 
 
/ 
 
 TOUSTAIN LE BLANC. 229 
 
 the twelfth century, and in the thirteenth its form was 
 oblong, but fastened lengthwise to the staff, and 
 embroidered with the full arms of the owner. In the 
 fourteenth century it became perfectly square, the 
 shape it has retained to the present day. 
 
 The standard, properly so called, is a long streamer, 
 tapering towards the end, which is swallow-tailed. In 
 England all standards bore the reel cross of St. George' 
 on a square white field next the staff, the remaining 
 portion being parted longitudinally by the colours of 
 the owner, and embroidered with his badges, crest, 
 and motto, after the adoption of these latter insignia, 
 but never with his armorial coat, which was only dis- 
 played on the banner. 
 
 But neither banner nor standard of this description 
 existed in the days of the Conqueror, the latter term 
 implying in its original sense an ensign of any kind, 
 the staff or pole of which was fixed into a framework 
 of wood upon four wheels, and therefore called a 
 carrocio by the Italians, and of which in England we 
 first hear at the famous " Battle of the Standard," 
 fought at Northallerton, 28th of August, 1138, and 
 so called, it would seem, from the car-standard brought 
 into the field by the English, haply for the first time, 
 formed, we are told, of a mast placed on a car, 
 having at its summit a silver pix containing the host,. 
 
230 THE CONQUEROR AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 and beneath three flags or streamers, said to have been 
 those of St. Peter, St. John of Beverley, and St. Wilfred 
 of Rip on ; but this description leaves us uncertain of 
 the shape, and no dependence can be placed on the 
 representation given us in the " Decern Scriptores," 
 from " Ailred de Bello Standardi," p. 339. 
 
 At all events, such was not the standard borne by 
 Toustain the White, and we must turn to the Bayeux 
 Tapestry for a contemporary pictorial illustration of 
 the Norman gonfanon. 
 
 Therein we find it in two different forms, the most 
 general resembling the later standard, but smaller, and 
 terminating in three instead of two tails. In one 
 instance only does it vary, presenting a semi-circular 
 outline, with an indented border, and within it the 
 figure of a bird, which, it has been conjectured repre- 
 sents the famous Raefan of the Danes. By the side of 
 the knight who bears this ensign is another, bearing a 
 three- tailed gonfanon, displaying only a cross, which 
 may be the consecrated ensign spoken of ; but one 
 almost precisely similar is seen in the hand of a 
 mounted warrior, over whose head in the tapestry Mr. 
 Stothard, as I have already stated, discovered the 
 nearly obliterated name of " Eustatius," fairly pre- 
 sumed to indicate Eustace, Count of Boulogne. 
 
 Moreover, in other portions of the tapestry gonfanons 
 
TOUSTATX LE BLANC. 
 
 231 
 
 are to be seen of precisely the same form, borne by 
 knights and princes, notably in the surrender of Dinan 
 by Conan, Count of Brittany, to Duke William, and in 
 the following subject, where William is giving arms to 
 Harold. 
 
 In point of fact, the Norman gonfanon was a small 
 two or three tailed flag attached to the lance, as we see 
 the still smaller one flutter from below the steel heads 
 of the lances of our light cavalry in the present day, 
 but in the eleventh century its use was limited to 
 leaders of rank. It is to be seen on the seals of our 
 Norman kings and nobles, where they are represented 
 on horseback, clown to the time of Henry I., and was 
 evidently the precursor of the heraldic standard of the 
 middle ages, which preserved the distinctive feature of 
 the bifurcated tail. 
 
 We are, therefore, unable to identify Toustain or the 
 consecrated ensign he carried in the curious " Toile de 
 St. Jean," or "Toilette de la Heine Mathilde," as the 
 tapestry has been indifferently called, and though the 
 Saxon ensign of the dragon is clearly indicated, 
 Harold's own standard, so particularly described as 
 representing an armed man richly embroidered and 
 begemmed, is nowhere to be seen, and whether a 
 pendant figure, like the dragon, or a streaming flag is 
 left undecided. 
 
232 THE CONQUEBOK AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 HUGH DE MOKTEMER. 
 
 Wace, in his description of the great battle, speaks 
 of a " Hue de Mortemer, who, with three other 
 knights, the sires of Auvilier, Onebec, and St. Cler, 
 charged a body of English who had fallen back on a 
 rising ground, and overthrew many/' Monsieur 
 Auguste le Provost, in his note on this passage says 
 authoritatively, but without citing his evidence, that 
 " it was not Hugh de Mortemer who assisted at the 
 battle of Hastings, but his father Raoul, son of Roger 
 Lord of Mortemer sur Eaulne," in which opinion he 
 is followed by Mr. Taylor, in his translation of 
 Wace's account, without further information. In 
 the recently compiled lists of MM. de Magny and 
 Leopold de Lisle he is also called Eaoul ; but upon 
 what evidence ? 
 
 The English translator of Orderic, in a note on 
 the death-bed discourse of William the Conqueror, 
 says, equally without proof, that it was Roger de 
 Mortemer, son of the elder Roger, who fought at 
 Hastings. 
 
 It is quite true that we cannot implicitly rely upon 
 Wace, who has been misled by his informants or 
 betrayed by his memory in many instances, and where 
 
/ 
 
 HUGH DE MOETEMEE. 233 
 
 his statements are improbable or contradicted by direct 
 or circumstantial evidence we may justly consider him 
 mistaken ; but it is a bold thing to deny without very 
 strong reasons that there was no Hugh de Mortemer 
 in the fight at Senlac. 
 
 That Monsieur le Prevost may be justified in stating 
 that it was not Hugh de Mortemer, son of Raoul and 
 grandson of Roger, who was present at the battle I will 
 not dispute, but Wace does not say it was, and there 
 is such wild confusion and glaring contradictions in all 
 the pedigrees I have examined of the Norman 
 Mortemers that I consider it premature to discredit 
 Wace's assertion, while I by no means deny that not 
 only Ralph, but his father, or some other of the name 
 of Roger of that family, may also have been present 
 in the battle, as assumed by the erudite antiquaries 
 whose opinions I have quoted. I propose, therefore, 
 to give the worthy Prebend of Bayeux the benefit of 
 the doubt till better advised, and at the same time 
 state as briefly as possible the result of my own 
 researches into the early history of the Mortemers or 
 Mortimers. 
 
 " The first of the name that I have observed," says 
 Dugdale, " is Roger de Mortimer, by some thought to 
 be the son of William de Warren, by others of Walter 
 de St. Martin, brother of that William." And farther 
 
234 THE CONQUEROR AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 on lie adds that " this Roger de Mortimer was by 
 consanguinity allied to William the Conqueror, his 
 mother being niece to Gunnora, wife to Richard, 
 Duke of Normandy, and great-grandmother to the 
 Conqueror." 
 
 For these statements he relies on Guillaume de 
 Jumieges, the Norman genealogist, to whom we are 
 indebted for so much interesting information of this 
 description, but who is occasionally as incorrect as his 
 contemporaries. As I have already, in my notice of 
 William de Warren, shown the fallacy of this descent 
 of Mortimer, I shall not inflict it a second time on my 
 readers. 
 
 There can be no doubt that Mortemer (latinized, 
 Mortuo-mari), the locality from which the surname of 
 the family was assumed, is situated in that portion of 
 Normandy known as the Pays de Caux, and at the 
 source of the river Eaulne ; that the Castle of Saint 
 Victor-en-Caux was the caput baroniae of the family, 
 and that it was in the possession of a Roger de Mor- 
 temer anterior to the invasion of England, as in 1054, 
 twelve years previous to that event, Count Eudes, or 
 Odo, brother of Henry L, King of France, invaded the 
 territory of Evreux, and William, then Duke of Nor- 
 mandy, sent this Roger de Mortemer, at that time his 
 general, with Robert, Comte d'Eu, Hugh de Montfort, 
 
HUGH DE MORTEMER. 
 
 235 
 
 Hugh de Gournay, William Crispin, and Walter 
 GifFard to oppose him. * 
 
 The French had taken possession of the town of 
 Mortemer, and had passed the night in revelry. The 
 Normans surprised them at daybreak, while the 
 majority were asleep, and set fire to the town. 
 Awakened by the flames in their lodgings, they armed 
 themselves in the greatest confusion. Wace is as 
 usual most graphic in his account. One man, he says, 
 could not mount his horse, not being able to find his 
 bridle ; another could not get out of the house he was 
 in, being unable to find the door. Every issue from 
 the burning town was guarded by the Normans, and 
 the fight was kept up in the midst of the conflagration 
 from morning till three hours past noon. The French 
 were nearly all killed or taken prisoners. One of the 
 few who escaped was Eudes, the King's brother ; but 
 Guy, Count of Ponthieu, was taken prisoner, and his 
 brother Waleran slain. There was no varlet, let him 
 be ever so mean or of ever so low degree, but took 
 some Frenchman prisoner and seized two or three 
 horses with all their harness ; nor was there a prison 
 in all Normandy which was not full of Frenchmen. 
 They were to be seen fleeing around, skulking in the 
 
 * See the long and elaborate controversy in M. de la Maine's "Re- 
 cherches Historiques," 1852, respecting the scene of this battle. 
 
236 THE CONQUEROK AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 woods and bushes, the dead and wounded lying amidst 
 the smouldering ruins, on the dunghills, about the 
 fields, and in the by-paths. 
 
 Ralph III., surnamed "the Great," Comte de Valois 
 and Amiens, by Orderic called De Montdidier, who 
 was on the side of the French, succeeded in making 
 his way out of the town, and took refuge in the Castle 
 of Mortemer, where he was sheltered by its victorious 
 lord, who had formerly sworn fealty to him, and who, 
 after entertaining him for three days, safely conducted 
 him to his own territories. 
 
 For this breach of duty to Duke William, Roger 
 de Mortemer was banished from Normandy and his 
 possessions confiscated, but being afterwards reconciled 
 to the Duke, had them all restored to him, with the 
 exception of the Castle of Mortemer, in which he had 
 harboured William's enemy Count Ralph, and that 
 the Duke gave to Roger s cousin, young William de 
 Warren ; a sufficient answer to those who assert that 
 Roger was his son. 
 
 Orderic, in making the Conqueror allude to the 
 oath of fealty Roger had taken to Count Ralph, does 
 not assign the reason for it, or hint that Roger cle 
 Mortemer was the Count's son-in-law. ■ Here at any 
 rate is some very important light thrown upon the 
 pedigree of Mortemer, as none of the ancient or later 
 
HUGH DE MORTEMER. 237 
 
 genealogists have mentioned the wife of this Roger. 
 Notwithstanding her noble descent, no trace of her is 
 to be found even in the " Art de Verifier les Dates," 
 but her name appears to have been Hadewisa, who 
 possessed of her own inheritance the vill of Mees, at 
 the mouth of the river Bresle, in the diocese of Amiens, 
 and the district called Le Vimieu, and her gifts to the 
 Abbey of St. Victor at this place were confirmed in 
 1192 by Theobald, Bishop of Amiens. Montdidier is 
 in the same diocese, and had been forcibly seized by 
 Count Ralph, who eventually died there September 
 8, 1074. Roger de Mortemer, therefore, it has been 
 reasonably presumed, did homage to the Count for the 
 lands he held of his fief, and which were given to him 
 in franc marriage with his daughter. 
 
 Still, upon the principal question, who were the 
 parents of this Roger de Mortemer, we have no con- 
 clusive evidence ; no fact to start from of an earlier 
 date than 1054, when we find him a leader at the 
 battle fought in his own town, beneath the walls of 
 his own castle. His age at that period can be no 
 more determined at present than his parentage ; but 
 we see he was married, in possession of the family 
 estates, and had attained sufficient military rank and 
 reputation to be intrusted by Duke William with the 
 chief command of a division of his forces. He was 
 
238 THE CONQUEEOK AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 living, as well as his wife, in 1074, when, upon their 
 joint petition, a priory which had been established at 
 St. Victor as a cell to the abbey of St. Ouen was 
 itself erected into an abbey. This was only twenty 
 years after the battle of Mortemer, and unless incapa- 
 citated by illness, there is no reason why he should 
 not have been eight years previously in that of Senlac. 
 At all events he is said to have contributed sixty 
 vessels to the Duke's fleet, and if not himself in the 
 expedition, was doubtlessly represented, either by his 
 son Ralph, or it may be by some other relative named 
 Hugh. 
 
 My reason for the latter suggestion is that Ralph de 
 Mortemer, by his wife Millicent, had two sons, the 
 eldest of whom was named Hugh, and may not have 
 been the first so named in the family, as he certainly 
 was not the last. It is a question, indeed, with some, 
 whether Ralph, if the son of Hadewisa, as there is no 
 reason to doubt, could have been old enough in 1066 
 to bear arms at Hastings. His mother must have 
 been very young in 1054, and her eldest born, in his 
 infancy. I say eldest born, for it is not proved that 
 Ralph was an only child any more than that his father 
 Roger was an only child. 
 
 A Wydo or Guy de Mortimer, and a Bartholomew 
 de Mortimer were living in the latter half of the twelfth 
 
HUGH DE MORTEMER. 239 
 
 century, whose parents must have been contemporary 
 with the first Roger de Mortemer we know of, and the 
 branch of Mortimer of Ricard's Castle has yet to be 
 traced to its offshoot. 
 
 Roger de Mortemer, living in 1074, was dead before 
 the compilation of Domesday, when Ralph de Mortemer 
 was found possessed of one hundred and twenty-three 
 manors, besides several hamlets, and the Castle of 
 Wigmore, built by William Fitz Osbern, Earl of Here- 
 ford, and which became the principal seat of his family. 
 His tenure of these estates in 1086 by no means 
 proves that they were bestowed upon him for his 
 services at Senlac. He might have succeeded to 
 many by inheritance from his father Roger, or some 
 other kinsman, on whom they had been bestowed by 
 the Conqueror, and obtained some with his wife 
 Millicent, whose family has yet to be discovered. It 
 is most provoking to be left thus continually in the 
 dark respecting the families of the wives of these 
 Norman nobles. A knowledge of them would fre- 
 quently be of the greatest importance to English 
 history, by accounting in many instances for the acts 
 of their husbands. Witness, for example, the fact 
 recently discovered respecting Hadewisa, wife of Roger 
 de Mortemer. Her being the daughter of Ralph de 
 Montdidier, Count of Amiens, at once discloses the 
 
240 THE CONQUEROR AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 difficult position in which Roger was placed between 
 his sovereign and his father-in-law, to both of whom 
 he owed fealty, and explains the excuse King William 
 admitted he had for sheltering his Prince's enemy. 
 A similar discovery regarding Millicent might as satis- 
 factorily account for the conduct of her husband 
 Ralph, who is one day in arms against his sovereign 
 and the next for him, without any motive assigned for 
 his tergiversation. Matrimonial alliances and family 
 dissensions have naturally influenced, and will continue 
 to influence, the actions of public men, and history is 
 constantly corrected and illustrated by a disclosure of 
 the secret springs of action which have their rise in 
 private interests and feelings. I therefore say with 
 the French Lieutenant de Police, " Cherchez la 
 femme," and depend upon it, nine times out of ten 
 you will arrive at the truth of the story. 
 
 I have as yet searched in vain to affiliate Millicent 
 de Mortemer. Her family name is not alluded to by 
 Stephen, Comte d'Aumale, who married her daughter 
 Havise, in his confirmation charter to the Church of 
 St. Martin-des-Champs, a Cluniac Priory in one of the 
 suburbs of Paris. He simply informs us that she was 
 then deceased. Vincent and Dugdale make no guess 
 at it, and I shall prudently follow their example. 
 
 Roger cle Mortemer, the eldest, was, I have stated, 
 
HUGH DE MORTEMER. 241 
 
 dead before the compilation of Domesday, as we hear 
 no more of him after 1074, and in 1088 we find Ralph 
 in arms against William Rufus, having joined the 
 movement of Bishop Oclo in favour of Robert Court- 
 heuse, and with the assistance of the Welsh doing much 
 mischief in Worcestershire and on the Welsh borders. 
 Two years afterwards, having been restored to the 
 King's favour, he, with Robert, Comte d'Eu, and 
 Walter Giffard, fortified his castle in Normandy 
 against Court-heuse, and continued apparently true to 
 his English overlord from that period. 
 
 In 1100 (the 1st of Henry I.) he founded the 
 priory of Wigmore, and in the history of the founda- 
 tion of that establishment, printed by Dugdale in his 
 sl Monasticon," Ralph de Mortemer is stated to have died 
 in Normandy on the nones of August that same year. 
 Clearly an error, clerical or other, as in 1104, on 
 King Henry's arrival in Normandy, Ralph de Mortemer 
 is mentioned by Orderic as amongst the many nobles 
 of that duchy who possessed large estates in England, 
 and received him with great honour, making him many 
 costly presents befitting a king. The history itself 
 also not only records his services in the war that 
 followed, but states that King Henry gave him the 
 command of the forces sent against Robert Court-heuse, 
 whom he vanquished and brought captive to the King, 
 
 VOL. I. R 
 
242 THE CONQTJEKOK AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 which, if it means anything, would amount to the 
 assertion that he was the general-in-chief of the royal 
 army at the battle of Tenchebrai in 1106 ; but of this 
 there is no coroborative evidence, and as his name even 
 does not appear amongst the known leaders in that 
 memorable action, I conclude that he was at that time 
 deceased. 
 
 By his wife, the unidentified Millicent, Sir Ralph 
 de Mortemer had two sons : Hugh, who succeeded 
 him, and William, to whom his brother gave Chel- 
 marsh, and who, though represented to have died with- 
 out issue, has been proved by Mr. Stapleton to have 
 been the progenitor of the line of Mortimer of Attle- 
 borough. He had also a daughter named after her 
 grandmother, Hadewisa, Havise, or Avice, wife, as I 
 have previously stated, of Stephen, Comte d'Aumale. 
 From this Hugh de Mortemer descended the many 
 illustrious men of that name, whose blood, eventually 
 mingling with that of the Plantagenets and the Tudors, 
 still flows in the veins of the royal family of England. 
 
 AIMEEI DE THOUAES. 
 
 We have already heard of "Le Visquens cil de 
 Thouars " (Aimeri, Aumari, or Haimon, as he is indif- 
 ferently called), in the first chapter of this volume, as 
 
AIMERI DE THOUAES. 243 
 
 the enthusiastic admirer of the martial appearance of the 
 Conqueror previous to the battle. " Never have I seen 
 a man so fairly armed nor one who rode so gallantly, 
 or bore his arms, or became his hauberk so well ; 
 neither any one who carried his lance so gracefully, or 
 sat his horse and manoeuvred him so nobly. There 
 is no other such knight under Heaven ! A fair Count 
 he is, and a fair King he will be. Let him fight and 
 he shall overcome ; shame be to him who shall fail 
 him ! " 
 
 And assuredly no shame could be cast on " li bon 
 Visquenz de Toarz " on that occasion, who, appointed 
 by William to lead with Alain of Brittany the left wing 
 of the army, principally composed of Poitevins, Bretons, 
 Manceaux, and of course his own following, which was 
 a numerous one, proved himself " no coward that 
 day." 
 
 As neither Monsieur le Prevost nor Mr. Taylor have 
 given us any information respecting the family of this 
 undoubted companion of the Conqueror, I shall en- 
 deavour to supply the deficiency, more particularly as 
 this is one of the Norman families in which a remark- 
 able custom existed to the great confusion of the 
 genealogists. 
 
 Monsieur de Besly, in a letter to his brother antiquary, 
 the learned Andre" du Chesne,' dated 23rd May, 1620, 
 
 r. 2 
 
244 THE CONQTJEEOK AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 says : " Of all the great houses in this country, there 
 are none in my opinion so difficult to give a clear 
 account of as that of the Viscount of Thouars and of 
 the other ' Gentilhommes ' between the river Sevre, 
 which flows to Mortagne, and the Dive, which passes 
 to Moncontour, the more because in these parts they 
 have retained an ancient mode of succession exceed- 
 ingly singular, and of which an example could scarcely 
 be found elsewhere in the kingdom ; for the eldest son 
 in the direct line, if he had male issue only, took all 
 the fiefs and ' biens nobles,' with the obligation of 
 providing for his younger brothers, which was done by 
 dividing the usufruct of the whole estate into nine 
 portions, two of which they afterwards divided equally 
 amongst themselves. But if the eldest son died before 
 his younger brothers, his children succeeded only to 
 his personalities, and all his estates went to the next 
 brother charged with the provision as before to any 
 younger brothers and the children of the elder deceased, 
 by subdivision of the two-ninths of the usufruct equally 
 amongst themselves, as I have already stated. The 
 lands thus passed from brother to brother, and after 
 the decease of the youngest reverted entirely and 
 absolutely to his nephews, the sons of the eldest brother, 
 who became heirs of each other in the regular order of 
 succession. This custom, which was termed 1 Retour/ 
 
AIMEEI DE THOUARS. 245 
 
 was abolished by the Three Estates of the kingdom in 
 1514, in consequence of its severity and the troubles 
 and litigation it engendered. 
 
 " Here, in fact, you have the true cause and origin of 
 the deplorable confusion at present to be seen in 'the 
 genealogies of our nobility in these quarters. For the 
 fief passing from brother to brother, all the younger 
 assumed the full title as though they were lords in 
 actual possession of the territories, in lieu of simple 
 annuitants. Sometimes also these uncles permitted 
 their nephew, the eldest son of their eldest brother, to 
 do homage for the lands and bear the title, saving the 
 right as to the annuity, the reservation of which, 
 nevertheless, was not thereafter expressed in their 
 charters, so that frequently two Viscounts de Thouars 
 are found named in and signing the same charter. 
 Sometimes twelve viscounts are found succeeding each 
 other in less than thirty years, arising from the circum- 
 stance that the elder of several brothers having lived 
 to a very great age, the younger having all become old 
 men, soon followed him to the grave, leaving us in 
 these days uncertain and at a loss to guess which was 
 the father, which the son, which the uncle, and which 
 the nephew ; so that the ordinary calculation could not 
 be relied upon in such a case which allows ninety or 
 a hundred years for three generations." 
 
246 THE CONQUEROR AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 Guided by this curious exposition of manners and 
 customs, as interesting to the jurist as to the genealo- 
 gist, I find that our Aimeri IV., Vicomte de Thouars, 
 was the eldest son of Geoffrey II., Viscount de 
 Thouars, by a lady named Ainor or Aldearde, but 
 in consequence of the strange perplexing rules alluded 
 to does not appear to have directly succeeded to him, 
 though bearing in accordance with them the title of 
 Viscount. He was present when Agnes, Duchess of 
 Guyenne, gave the town of St. Angely to the abbey of 
 that name in 1048. At the time of the invasion he was 
 probably between twenty and thirty, and the husband of 
 Aserengarde, sister of Eaoul de Mauleon, living in 
 1069, by whom he had two sons, Herbert and 
 Geoffrey, and a daughter, Ildegarde, who became the 
 wife of Hugues VI., Sire de Lezingen. 
 
 Aimeri married, secondly, a lady named Ameline, 
 for the health of whose soul, the souls of his father and 
 mother, of his own soul, and those of his sons Herbert 
 and Geoffrey, he gave, in December 1088, the Church 
 of St. John the Evangelist, in the Castle of La Cheze, 
 to the Abbey of St. Florent de Saumur. He also 
 commenced the erection of another church in that 
 castle, in honour of St. Nicholas, and confirmed to it 
 all the gifts he had made to it, with the consent of his 
 wife and children, Thursday, 15th of January, 1092. 
 
/ 
 
 AIMEM DE THOUAES. 247 
 
 He died the following year, and was buried in his 
 new Church of St. Nicholas de la Cheze, leaving by 
 his second wife, according to Pere Anselm, four sons, 
 — Savary, Raoul, Hugues, and another Geoffrey, whom 
 he makes the successor to his grandfather Geoffrey ; 
 but as Savary and Raoul were both witnesses to 
 charters in favour of St. Florent in 1054 and 1068, 
 and as he makes Geoffrey out to be eighty years of 
 age in 1120, and consequently born in 1040, they 
 could not be the sons of Ameline, married between 
 10G9 and 1088. 
 
 I can recommend the whole pedigree as a pleasing 
 puzzle to all whom it may concern. I have extracted 
 as much as concerns me on this occasion, which, little 
 as it is, sheds some light on "li bon Visquenz de 
 Toarz," who was " ne mauvais ne coarz, qui ert apele 
 Eimeris," and who " mult re§u le jor grand pris," and 
 at the same time illustrates the singular custom re- 
 corded by Monsieur Besly. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 RICHARD, COMTE d'eVREUX. 
 GUILLAUME, HIS SON. 
 ROBERT, COMTE D'EU. 
 
 GEOFFREY, SON OF ROTROU, COMTE DE MORTAGNE. 
 ALAIN FERGANT, OR LE ROUX, EARL OF RICHMOND. 
 
 EICHARD, COMTE D'EVREUX, AND GUILLAUME 
 HIS SON. 
 
 Of the group of nobles at the head of this chapter, 
 the first two are mentioned by Wace, and Guillaume 
 de Poitiers speaks only of the son of Count Richard. 
 
 Other writers, however, assert that both Count 
 Richard and his son fought side by side in the 
 battle of Senlac. It is possible they might have done 
 so, as Count Richard died on the 13th of December of 
 the following year, 1067, and there is nothing to prove 
 that he w r as not in the army of invasion. It is re- 
 markable, however, that in Taylor's List it is William, 
 Count of Evreux, who is set down as contributing 
 eighty vessels to the fleet ; and as William was not 
 Count of Evreux in 1066, it is possible that it is one 
 
f 
 
 RICHARD, COMTE D'EYREUX. 249 
 
 of the many mistakes we find in the baptismal names 
 of these early nobles and their wives, and we ought 
 to read "Richard," at least as far as the furnishing so 
 noble a contingent as eighty vessels, which must 
 surely have been the act of the reigning Prince, and 
 not of his son, who might at the same time have had 
 the command of them. Richard, Count of Evreux, 
 was the grandson of Richard I., Duke of Normandy, 
 and succeeded his father, Robert, Count of Evreux and 
 Archbishop of Rouen, in 1037. Beyond the fact that 
 at a date variously stated as 1055, 10G0, and 10GG or 
 10G7, he founded the abbey of St. Sauveur. nothing is 
 stated of his acts and deeds worth recording ; but he is 
 described by the monk of Jumieges as equally a good 
 Christian and a good soldier. 
 
 He was twice married. His first wife was Adela 
 (called by Pere Anselm, Helene), widow of the Roger 
 de Toeni who was slain in 1038, by whom he had 
 William, who succeeded him, and Agnes, third wife of 
 Simon de Montfort, and whose abduction by her half- 
 brother, Ralph de Toeni, I have already mentioned. 
 By his second wife, Godechilde, of whose family we 
 know as little as we do of that of his first, he had only 
 one daughter, named after her mother, who became 
 abbess of St. Sauveur, the abbey founded by her 
 father at Evreux. 
 
250 
 
 THE CONQUEKOE AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 Of William, Count of Evreux, the undoubted com- 
 panion of the Conqueror, much more is recorded, 
 though nothing previous to the invasion, except his 
 being present with his father at the great Council at 
 Lillebonne, wherein that invasion was decided upon. 
 He is reported as having borne himself valiantly in 
 the battle, and received an ample share of the lands 
 in England distributed by the Conqueror in 1070 to 
 the chieftains who had accompanied him in his expedi- 
 tion. He returned to Normandy in 1073, and was 
 one of the mediators in the treaty of Peace of Blanche- 
 lande (vide p. 198, ante). Shortly afterwards, King 
 William, as if to indemnify himself for the property 
 he had bestowed upon him in England, took from him 
 the Castle of Evreux, and placed a royal garrison in 
 it. Nevertheless, he fought on the King's side during 
 the disturbances in Maine, and was taken prisoner 
 at the assault of the Castle of Saint Suzanne, held 
 against the King by Hubert, Vicomte de Maine. In 
 1087, on the death of the Conqueror, he recovered 
 the Castle of Evreux, driving out the royal troops 
 both from there and from the town of Dangu in the 
 Norman Vexin. 
 
 Being without issue, he had adopted his niece Ber- 
 trade, daughter of his brother-in-law, Simon de Mont- 
 fort. In 1089, Fulk le Rechin, or the Quarreller, 
 
/ 
 
 WILLIAM, COMTE D'EVEEUX. 251 
 
 Count of Anjou, captivated by her beauty, determined 
 to repudiate his third wife, Arengarde, daughter of 
 Isambert, Lord of Chalet-dillon, whom he had only 
 married, 21st January, 1087, in order to obtain the 
 hand of the lovely Bertrade. At this moment, the 
 Manceaux making a fresh effort to throw off the yoke 
 of the Normans, Duke Robert Court -heuse entreated 
 the Count of Anjou to assist him in their repression, 
 which he promised to do on condition that the Duke 
 would obtain for him the hand of Bertrade. On 
 Robert's application to the Count of Evreux, he was 
 answered : " Not unless you will restore me Noyon- 
 sur-Andelle. Gassai, Cravant, Ecouchi, and the other 
 lands of Raoul, my paternal uncle, who was facetiously 
 called 'Tete dAne,' on account of his head of hair, 
 and to my nephew, William de Breteuil, Pont Saint 
 Pierre ; for Robert de Gassai, son of Raoul, has made 
 me his sole heir." The Duke accepted the condition, 
 and restored to him the whole of these estates, ex- 
 cept that of Ecoucbi, which was held by Gerrard de 
 Gournay, who was of the same family. The beauti- 
 ful young Bertrade was, therefore, literally sold at 
 that price to the profligate and detestable Count of 
 Anjou, whom she subsequently fled from with the 
 French King, Philip I., — the natural consequence of 
 such an unholy union, and the guilt of which lies on 
 
252 THE CONQUEROR AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 the head of lier uncle. I have already, in my notice 
 of Ralph de Toeni, spoken of the war maintained for 
 three years between him and this William, Count of 
 Evreux, his uterine brother, kindled by the hostility 
 of their respective wives. After their reconciliation 
 the Count of Evreux did good service to Duke Robert 
 against William Rufus, who endeavoured to take from 
 him the city of Rouen ; but afterwards, making his 
 peace with the King on the departure of Court-heuse 
 for the Holy Land, he was appointed, in 1097, one of 
 the leaders of the army sent by Rufus, as Regent of 
 Normandy in his nephew's absence, to wrest the pro- 
 vince of the Vexin from the King of France, and after 
 the reduction of Maine, in the following year, was 
 charged, in conjunction with Gilbert de l'Aigle, with 
 the keeping of the city of Mans. 
 
 Previous to the death of Rufus the Count of Evreux 
 was out of favour with the King, in consequence of 
 some reports to his disadvantage, attributed to the 
 jealousy of Robert de Meulent, but he continued loyal 
 to that monarch up to the day of the fatal hunt in the 
 New Forest. He lost no time afterwards, however, in 
 avenging himself on Robert de Meulent, whose land of 
 Beaumont he overran and ravaged witli unsparing fury. 
 
 In 1104 the new King of England, Henry L, com- 
 ing over to Normandy with a numerous fleet and a 
 
/ 
 
 WILLIAM, COMTE D'EVREUX. 253 
 
 great power, in order to restore something like order 
 into the duchy, which the indolent and dissolute 
 Robert Court-heuse had abandoned to the shameless 
 parasites by whom he was enslaved, Robert, conscious 
 of his misconduct, and alarmed at the attitude of his 
 brother, implored his forgiveness and protection, offer- 
 ing him, as a pledge of his sincerity, the whole Comte" 
 of Evreux, with the feudal services of its Count and all 
 his vassals. 
 
 "The illustrious Count," says Orcleric, "hearing 
 that he was to be transferred like a horse or an ox, 
 and wishing to preserve his integrity and fealty, said 
 publicly to the Princes : i I have served your father 
 faithfully all my days, never having stained my sworn 
 fealty in any matter hitherto. I have also observed 
 it to his heir, and determined to use every effort to 
 continue in that course ; but it being impossible, as I 
 have often heard learned doctors declare, on the faith 
 of Scripture and the Word of God, that a man can 
 serve two masters who are opposed to each other, it is 
 my earnest desire to be subject to one lord only, lest, 
 being liable to a double service, I may satisfy neither. 
 I love both the King and the Duke ; both are the sons 
 of the King, my late lord, and I wish to respect both ; 
 but I will only do homage to one, and him I will faith- 
 fully serve.' " 
 
254 
 
 THE CONQUEROR AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 The chronicler adds that this candid declaration 
 pleased every one. Duke Robert himself placed the 
 hands of the Count between those of the King, and 
 William became Henry's " Man," fighting for him 
 loyally against his former lord, Robert Court-heuse, at 
 the battle of Tenchebrai, a.d. 1106. But the restless 
 and mischief-making spirit of his wife, by whom he 
 was blindly guided, disturbed the good feeling 
 between William and his sovereign, who had begun 
 very highly to appreciate the services of the Count of 
 Evreux. Proud and envious, she involved him in 
 continual quarrels with the most influential nobles 
 about the person of the King, and ultimately induced 
 him to destroy a tower which Henry had caused to be 
 erected in Evreux. 
 
 This act embroiled him with the King, and caused 
 his banishment and the confiscation of his estates. 
 He sought refuge with Fulk V., Count of Anjou, 
 the son of his niece Bertrade, a.d. 1112. Recalled 
 and re-established in his estates after fourteen months' 
 exile, he was a second time banished and again par- 
 doned and restored to his rank and property, and 
 died of apoplexy, 18th April, 1118, without issue. 
 
 I cannot resist quoting from Orderic a ridiculous 
 story connected with the death of this Count, because 
 it is so seriously told by the worthy monk of St. 
 
WILLIAM, COMTE D'EVREUX. 255 
 
 Evroult, and illustrates the curious state of education 
 of the period. 
 
 " About this time," says the writer, " a prodigy 
 was seen in England. A rustic having bought a cow, 
 presumed to be with calf, at Ely, killed and opened it 
 by order of Henry the Breton, bishop of that diocese. 
 Strange to say, instead of a calf, three little pigs 
 were found in it. 
 
 " A certain pilgrim returning from Jerusalem, who 
 chanced to meet the countryman driving the cow home 
 from market, told him, and afterwards repeated to the 
 Bishop and other bystanders, that three great persons 
 in the dominions of King Henry would die that year, 
 and many severe calamities would follow. The pil- 
 grim's prophecy was justified by events which occurred 
 in the time specified. 
 
 " In fact, William, Count of Evreux, died on the 
 fourteenth of the kalends of May (11th April), and 
 was interred at Fontenelles, in the Abbey of St. 
 Wandrille, by the side of his father Richard. Soon 
 afterwards Queen Matilda, whose baptismal name was 
 Edith, died on the kalends (1st) of May, and lies 
 buried in the Church of St. Peter at Westminster ; 
 likewise Robert, Earl of Meulent, expired on the nones 
 (5th) of June, and reposes with his father and brother 
 in the chapters of the monks at Preaux. After the 
 
256 THE CONQUEROR AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 death of these distinguished persons there were great 
 troubles in Normandy." 
 
 It needed no ghost from the grave, nor second- 
 sighted pilgrim to predict that three persons of rank 
 would die in the course of the ensuing twelve months, 
 or that there would be troubles in some parts of the 
 dominions of Henry. 
 
 The production of the three little pigs is by far the 
 most surprising part of the story. Are we much less 
 prone to gulp down preposterous statements in the 
 19th century ? 
 
 One fact, however, is incidentally brought to 
 light in this foolish fiction which is important to the 
 genealogist. The double name of the Queen warns 
 us of the confusion that may arise from our ignorance 
 of such instances in other cases ; one of which may 
 possibly be discovered in the puzzling entry in Domes- 
 day Book respecting the King's daughter " Matilda " 
 (vide p. 84, ante). 
 
 I have given you the character of Isabel, wife of 
 Ralph de Toeni, it is but fair to place before you that 
 of her antagonist, Havise, from the same authority. 
 
 " The Countess/' writes Orcleric, " was distin- 
 guished for her wit and beauty. She was one of the 
 tallest women in all Evreux, and of very noble birth, 
 being the daughter of William, the illustrious Count 
 
/ 
 
 ROBERT, COMTE D'EU. 257 
 
 of Nevers. Disregarding the counsels of lier litis- 
 bands barons, she chose rather to follow her own 
 opinion, and her ambition prompting her to meddle in 
 political affairs, she was easily led to engage in rash 
 enterprises." 
 
 The Countess died in 1114, and was buried at 
 Noyon-sur-Andelles, in the priory which, with her 
 husband, she had founded in 1108, but which was 
 unfinished when Orderic was writing the eleventh 
 book of his "History," viz., 113G. The building was 
 razed to the ground in the reign of Charles IX., who 
 laid the foundations of a magnificent palace there, and 
 since that time the place has been called Charleval. 
 
 ROBERT, COMTE D'EU. 
 
 " E li Quens d'Ou bien i feri."— 
 
 Roman de Ron, 1. 13828. 
 
 The town of Eu, in the province of Caux, situated 
 on the left bank of the river Eu or On, now called the 
 Bresle, about half a league from Tr^port, is as well 
 known to English tourists as to historians, from the 
 memorable events connected with it, and the rank of 
 the individuals who have borne the title of its counts, 
 the first being Geoffrey, natural son of Richard I., 
 Duke of Normandy, created by him Count of Eu and 
 Brionne. The nuptials of William the Conqueror and 
 
 VOL. I. S 
 
258 THE COXQUEEOR AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 Matilda of Flanders were celebrated at Eu, and Count 
 Baldwin, her father, availed himself of the opportunity 
 to obtain from the Duke of Normandy the restoration 
 of Brionne to the sons of Gilbert son of Geoffrey, who 
 had been dispossessed of his domains by his uncle, 
 Richard II. Duke William so far consented that he 
 gave the lordship of Bienfaite and Orbec to Richard, 
 the eldest son, and those of Mole and Sap to his 
 brother Baldwin ; but the county of Eu had been 
 given by Richard II. to his half-brother William, who, 
 by his wife Leceline, daughter of Turketil d'Harcourt, 
 left three sons : Robert, Comte d'Eu, the subject of 
 this memoir, William, surnamed Busac, Count of the 
 Hiemois, and afterwards of Soissons, and Hugh, Bishop 
 of Lisieux. The date of the death of the first William, 
 Comte d'Eu, is not exactly known, but it was previous 
 to 1054, when we find his son Robert one of the 
 commanders of that division of the Norman army 
 which defeated the French at Mortemer. 
 
 In 10G6, he contributed sixty ships to the invading 
 fleet, and fought gallantly (" bien i feri ") at Sen lac, 
 and for these services received large estates in Sussex 
 and other counties in England, with the custody of 
 the Castle of Hastings. 
 
 In 1069, in conjunction with Robert, Comte de 
 Mortain, he surprised the Danes in Lindsey, and 
 
f 
 
 EOBERT, COMTE D'EU. 259 
 
 drove them with great slaughter to their ships {vide 
 ,p. 109, ante). 
 
 After the death of the Conqueror, the Comte d'Eu 
 espoused the cause of Robert Court-heuse, and main- 
 tained it for some time ; but, disgusted by his capri- 
 ciousness, levity, and debauchery, went over, with many 
 •other Norman lords, to the side of William Rufus, allow- 
 ing his castles to be garrisoned by the royal forces. 
 
 In 1077 he attended the funeral of his estimable 
 ibrother, Hugh, Bishop of Lisieux, who, being seized 
 with what he felt was a fatal illness at the village of 
 Pont FEvesque, begged to be carried to Lisieux, that 
 he might breathe his last in the Abbey of St. Peter 
 there, the building of which, begun by his predecessor, 
 Bishop Herbert, he had most liberally completed. 
 Placed on a convenient hand-litter, he was carried 
 from the village, the clergy of the highest rank and 
 the most honourable of the laity bearing their beloved 
 father on their shoulders ; but while they were using 
 their utmost efforts to reach Lisieux, some four leagues 
 distance from Pont FEvesque, it became evident 
 the Bishop's last moments were approaching, and they 
 therefore turned out of the road on to a piece of level 
 turf by its side. There, laid in the bright sunshine, 
 Which " shrouded the dying prelate in its blaze," amid 
 the prayers and tears of his attached friends, " the 
 
 6 2 
 
260 
 
 THE CONQUEROR AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 venerable Hugh, the gem of the priesthood, and the- 
 best of men," calmly expired, 17th of July, 1077. A 
 cross was erected in the field near the road where the 
 Bishop died, which is called to this day {circa 1127) 
 " the Bishop's Cross." * The field has since retained 
 the name of "Le pre* rEvesque." 
 
 The Count's other brother, William de Busac, does 
 not occupy so honourable a place in Norman history. 
 His rebellion against his namesake and sovereign was 
 unjustifiable and ineffectual. Defeated and banished r 
 his honourable reception by Henry, King of France,, 
 and his marriage with the heiress of Reginald, Comte- 
 de Soissons, availed him but little. His name is all 
 but unknown to the readers of English history, and his 
 race dropped en quenoiiitte after two generations. 
 
 Robert I., Comte cVEu, died circa 1090, leaving by 
 Beatrix his wife, one of the many noble ladies of whose 
 family we are left in lamentable ignorance, William, 
 who succeeded him, and who, joining in the rebellion 
 
 * Writing on this, the 2<3th July, 1873, it is impossible for me not- 
 to mention that on this day are consigned to the tomb the earthly 
 remains of one of the most distinguished prelates of modern times, 
 ■who nearly eight hundred years since the death of Bishop Hugh, in 
 the same month and within forty-eight hours of the same day, died 
 "in a field by the road side," by a lamentable accident it is true, but 
 was, nevertheless, perhaps the only other bishop whose eyes have 
 closed in death upon a spot of green turf, golden with a July sun, and 
 whereupon his family proposes to erect a cross in memoriam, such as 
 did the devoted friends of the excellent Bishop of Lisieux. 
 
GEOFFREY, SON OF EOTROU. 261 
 
 against Rufus in 1096, was taken prisoner, and de- 
 prived of sight, as well as horribly mutilated, and a 
 younger son, named Robert. Of his " works of piety," 
 .as Dugdale phrases it, we may record the foundation, 
 between 1057 and 10GG, of the Abbey of Treport, 
 near Eii, by request of his wife, and the advice of 
 Duke William and Maurilliers, Archbishop of Rouen. 
 
 ^GEOFFREY, SON OF EOTROU, SEIGNEUR DE MORTAGNE, 
 COMTE DE PERCHE. 
 
 Guillaume de Poitiers distinctly enumerates " God- 
 fredus Rotronis Moritonise comitus filius " as one of 
 the combatants at Senlac, and " De Meaine il viel 
 'Geffrai" is considered by Monsieur le Prevost a mis- 
 reading for De Mortaigne," Duchesne's MS. reading 
 "Marreigne." There is certainly no reason for be- 
 lieving that Geoffrey de Mayenne, the implacable 
 enemy of William the Conqueror, took any part what- 
 ever in the invasion of England in 10GG ; but I think 
 Wace was misled by some report to believe he did, 
 because the epithet " le viel " would not at all apply 
 to Geoffrey de Mortagne, who was very young at that 
 period, and did not succeed his father, Rotrou I., 
 Vicomte de Chateaudun and Comte de Mortagne, for 
 .at least thirteen years after the Conquest, as the Count 
 Avas certainly living in 1079, at the time of the dedi- 
 
262 THE CONQUEROR AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 cation of the Church of St. Denis de Nogent, the- 
 precise date of his death being unknown. Guillaume 
 de Poitiers so completely identifies his man by describ- 
 ing him as "the son of Rotrou, Count of Mortagne," 
 that whatever the mistake may be in the "Roman 
 de Rou," I am justified in preferring the arch- 
 deacon's authority, particularly as it is supported by 
 the testimony of Orderic, who gives Geoffrey a very- 
 high character. " This Count," he tells us, " wa& 
 magnanimous, handsome, and strong ; he feared God r 
 was a devout friend of the Church, a staunch protector 
 of her clergy and tlie poor. In peace he was gentle- 
 and courteous, and of most obliging manners ; in war- 
 lie was powerful and successful, and became formid- 
 able to the neighbouring princes who were his enemies. 
 The nobility of his own birth and that of his wife- 
 Beatrice rendered him illustrious above all his com- 
 peers, and he had amongst his subjects warlike barons, 
 and brave governors of castles. He gave his daughters, 
 in marriage to men of the rank of counts : Margaret 
 to Henry, Earl of Warwick, and Juliana to Gilbert de- 
 l'Aigle, from whom sprung a noble race of handsome; 
 children. The glory of Count Geoffrey was exalted by 
 such a progeny, and he maintained it by his valour 
 and courage, his wealth, and alliances. Above all„ 
 having the fear of God, he feared no man, but marched 
 
I 
 
 GEOFFEEY, SOX OF EOTROU. 263 
 
 boldly with a lion's port. Laying claim to the strong: 
 Castle of Domfront, which had belonged to his great- 
 grandfather, Warin de Belesme, and other domains as 
 his right, he endeavoured to dispossess his cousin 
 Eobert (de Belesme) of them. He was grieved to 
 harass the unarmed and innocent, but he could not 
 bring the public enemy (for such assuredly was Robert 
 de Belesme) with whom he had a just quarrel to a fair 
 field for deciding it. 
 
 " Towards the close of the year 1100, Geoffrey fell 
 sick unto death, and having called about him the lords 
 of Le Perche and Le Corbonnais, who were vassals te 
 him as Count of Mortagne, he put his affairs in order 
 with great wisdom, praying them to keep his lands and 
 strong places for his only son Rotrou, who had gone 
 in pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Then the brave lord 
 having duly received all the rites of the Church, and 
 assumed the habit of a Cluniac monk, died in his Castle 
 of Nogent-le-Rotrou in October 1100, and was buried 
 in the church of the monastery of St. Dionysius the 
 Areopagite, founded in 1030 by his grandfather 
 Geoffrey I., and which he richly endowed with lands 
 and other possessions." 
 
 At the close of the year his son Rotrou returned in 
 safety from the Holy Land, and took possession of his- 
 estates. On the fifth day after reaching home, being. 
 
•264 THE CONQUEROE AND 1IIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 Sunday, he paid Lis devotions at the Church of St. 
 Denis, at Nogent, where his father had been buried, 
 and made his offering on the altar of St. Denis, with 
 the palms he had brought from Jerusalem, 
 
 By his wife Beatrice, daughter of Hilduiu, fourth 
 •Comte de Montdidier and Ronci, Geoffrey had besides 
 Rotrou, who succeeded him, and the two daughters 
 named above, a third daughter named Mahaut or Ma- 
 thilde, married first to Raymond I., Vicomte de Turenne, 
 .and secondly to Gui de las Tours, in Limousin. 
 
 From his daughter Margaret, Countess of Warwick, 
 descended the celebrated Beauchainps and Nevils, Earls 
 of Warwick, and many other illustrious personages. 
 
 ALAIN LE EOUX, EAEL OF RICHMOND. 
 
 We have here an instance of the confusion existing 
 in ordinary accounts of the companions of the Con- 
 queror, and which renders some such work as this 
 .an absolute necessity ' for the general reader who is 
 desirous of obtaining, without the trouble of research, 
 something like an accurate idea of the persons wdiose 
 names alone he meets with in histories of England. 
 
 Previously to the publication of u Recherches sur le 
 Domesday " in 18-42, the most erroneous and conflict- 
 ing descriptions of the Alain of Brittany who fought 
 
ALAIN LE ROTJX. 
 
 2G<> 
 
 at Hastings existed in the baronages and genealogical 
 peerages the reader must have consulted, and the first 
 popular English work which threw a light upon this 
 particular tissue of blunders was Mrs. Green's " Lives 
 of the Princesses of England," published in 1849. 
 
 As in the case of Count Odo of Champagne, no 
 one before Mr. Stapleton's discoveries surmised that 
 Adelaide, the Conqueror's sister, had three husbands, 
 so in this instance it was unknown to English genea- 
 logists before 1842 that there were two Counts 
 Alain of Bretagne, one of whom married Constance, 
 daughter of the Conqueror, in 108G (vide p. 83, ante), 
 and was consequently the best known. This latter 
 Alain, surnamed Fergant, which in the Breton lan- 
 guage signifies " the less," or " the younger 19 
 (Lobineau gloss), was the son of Hoel V. Comte 
 de Bretagne, by his wife Havise de Bretagne, sister 
 and heiress of Conan II., Comte de Bretagne, and 
 it is questionable on account of age whether he could 
 have been in the battle. 
 
 The other Alain, known as Le Roux,* and who cer- 
 tainly was in the invading army, was the second son of 
 Eudes, Comte de Penthievrc, by Agnes, daughter of 
 Alain Cagnart, Comte de Cornouaille, and great-grand- 
 
 * "LaBebru," or " Le Ruibriz'V. c. Red-faced (Lobineau Gloss). 
 Sir F. Palgraye renders it Rui-Breizad, the British King — a fanciful 
 translation. 
 
2G6 THE CONQUEROR AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 son of Richard II., Duke of Normandy, and therefore, 
 in the charter by which King William conferred upon 
 him the lands of Edwin in Yorkshire, is called by the 
 Conqueror " Nepoti meo," being his nephew according 
 to the custom of Brittany and Normandy. 
 
 Neither of the Alaius are named by Guillaume de 
 Poitiers or Orderic Vital amongst the list of the 
 leaders at Senlac, but according to Wace, " Alain 
 Felgan " (Fergant) joined the Duke at St. Valery, and 
 brought with him many barons from among the 
 Bretons, and previous to the battle he was appointed, 
 in conjunction with Aimeri de Thouars, to lead the 
 wing of the army which was composed of the 
 Poitevins, the Bretons, and the barons of Maine. He 
 subsequently tells us that Alain Fergant, Count of 
 Brittany, had a great company of Bretons, and fought 
 himself like a noble and valiant knight. Gaimar, a 
 Norman or Breton poet, also says — 
 
 " Le quiens Alain de Bretaigne 
 Bien i ferit od sa compaigne." 
 
 and records William's grant to him of the honour of 
 Richmond. He also describes him as his cousin and 
 "gentilhome de grant parage," and it is, therefore, the 
 less singular that Alain le Roux should have been 
 confounded with Alain Fergant, who was also a 
 collateral descendant of the old Dukes of Normandv. 
 
267 
 
 Two brothers of Alain the Red, viz., Alain the 
 Black, who succeeded him in the earldom of Rich- 
 mond, and according to Lobineau an elder brother 
 named Brient, are also reported to have been com- 
 panions of the Conqueror; but their deeds at Senlac 
 are not commemorated. Brient, or Brian of Brittany, 
 figures, however, after the Conquest as assisting, in 
 company with William Fitz Osbern, to suppress the 
 rising in Devonshire {vide p. 178). He is also said 
 to have defeated the two sons of Harold twice in one 
 day with great slaughter, 24th June, 10G9, when with 
 a large force from Ireland they landed at the mouth of 
 the river Tivy. It is probable, therefore, that he was 
 with his brother Alain the Red at Hastings and 
 Senlac. None of these were Comtes de Bretagne as 
 carelessly stated, but Comtes en Bretagne, according 
 to a custom still prevalent on the Continent, and 
 Alain the Red is more correctly designated by Gaimar 
 as " Count Alain of Brittany," not as Wacc has it, 
 " Alain, Count of Brittany." 
 
 This Alain the Red was rewarded for his ser- 
 vices with all the lands of Eorl Edwin, in York- 
 shire, particularly eight lordships, which subse- 
 quently became the county of Richmond, and of 
 which this Alain was the first earl. Altogether his 
 share of the spoil amounted to nearly two hundred 
 
2G8 
 
 THE CONQUEROR AND HIS COMPANIONS. 
 
 manors, one hundred and sixty-six being in Yorkshire 
 alone. He built the Castle of Richmond, from which 
 the county took its name, and which, as Scott sings, 
 " stands fair on the hill," overlooking the river Swale, 
 died unmarried in 1089, was buried in the Abbey of 
 St. Edmunds-Bury, in Suffolk, and was succeeded in 
 his earldom by his next brother, Alain le Noir, who 
 had also fought at Senlac and been richly rewarded 
 with one hundred-and-twenty manors, the greater 
 number being in the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk. 
 
 Dugdale, and after him all the English writers on 
 this subject down to Sir Henry Ellis, have confounded 
 Alain surnamed Fergant with Alain the Red, and given 
 to the son-in-law of the Conqueror the whole of the 
 estates bestowed by him on each. The authors of 
 " Recherches sur le Domesday " have with great care 
 and discrimination separated the various donations ; 
 but in supposing that the husband of Constance was 
 in the battle of Senlac I believe them to be mistaken,, 
 and therefore, although the most interesting of these 
 Breton nobles, I am precluded from including him 
 amongst the companions of the Conqueror. 
 
 END OF VOL. I. 
 
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