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CJWnfcon (preee §ertee
THE NORMAN CONQUEST
E. A. FREEMAN
HENRY FROWDE, M.A.
PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
LONDON, EDINBURGH, AND NEW YORK
Clacwnbon l§nm Stories
A SHORT HISTORY
OF THE
NORMAN CONQUEST
ENGLAND
EDWARD A, FREEMAN, D.C.l« LL.D.
Late Regius Professor of Modern History in the
University of Oxford
$ *fjorb
AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
M DCCC XCVI
[All rights reserved]
OXFORD I PRINTED AT THC CLARENDON! PRESS
P,Y HORACE HART, PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY
*•! i o C -V
CONTENTS.
chap. PAGE
I. INTRODUCTION I
II. THE ENGLISH AND THE NORMANS .... 6
III. THE EARLY DEALINGS BETWEEN ENGLISH AND
NORMANS . . . . . . . .16
IV. THE YOUTH OF DUKE WILLIAM . . . • . 3°
V. HAROLD EARL AND KING 39
VI. THE TWO HAROLDS 55
VII. THE COMING OF DUKE WILLIAM .... 64
VIII. THE GREAT BATTLE 76
IX. HOW DUKE WILLIAM BECAME KING ... 86
X. HOW KING WILLIAM WON THE WHOLE KINGDOM . 93
XI. KING WILLIAM'S LATER WARS 1 08
XII. HOW KING WILLIAM RULED THE LAND . . . Il8
XII. THE TWO WILLIAMS ....... 128
XIV. THE RESULTS OF THE NORMAN CONQUEST . .134
XV. THE LATER HISTORY 148
INTRODUCTION.
I have here told, in the shape of a primer, the same
tale which I have already told in five large volumes. I
have only to say that, though the tale told is the same,
yet the little book is not an abridgement of the large one,
but strictly the same tale told afresh. I shall be well
pleased if I am able some day to tell the same tale on a
third and intermediate scale.
SOMERLEAZE, WELLS,
June 5, 1880.
THE NORMAN CONQUEST
OF ENGLAND.
CHAPTER I.
Introduction.
1. Meaning of the Norman Conquest.— By the Nor-
man Conquest of England we understand that series of
events during the latter part of the eleventh century by
which a Norman Duke was set on the throne of England,
and was enabled to hand down the crown of England to
his descendants.^ The Norman Conquest of England does
in truth mean a great deal more than the mere transfer of
the crown from one prince or one family to another, or
even than the transfer of the crown from a prince born in
the land to a prince who came from beyond sea. It means
a great number of changes of all kinds which have made
the history and state of our land ever since to be very dif-
ferent from what they would have been if the Norman Con-
quest had never happened. For the Norman Duke could
not be set on the throne of England without making many
changes of all kinds in the state of England. But the fact
that a Norman Duke was set on the throne of England is
the central point of the whole story of the Norman Conquest
of England. That story must tell how William Duke of the
Normans became William King of the English. It must also
tell how it came about that the Norman Duke could be made
King of the English ; that is, it must tell something of the
causes which led to the Norman Conquest. It must also tell of
7* B
2 INTRODUCTION.
the changes which came of the way in which the Nor-
man Duke was made King of the English. That is, it must
tell something of the effects which followed on the Norman
Conquest. And, in order to make the causes of the Conquest
rightly understood, it must tell something of the state of
things among both the Normans and the English before the
Norman Conquest of England happened. And, in order
to make the effects of the Conquest rightly understood, it
must go on to tell something of the times for some while
after the Conquest itself, that we may see the way in which
the changes which followed on the Conquest were wrought,
and how they have had an effect on English history ever
since.
2. Meaning of the word Conquest. — We may now
ask a little further what is the meaning of the word conquest,
whether there can be more kinds of conquest than one,
and whether the Norman Conquest of England has any-
thing about it which is either like or unlike any other con-
quest. Now the word conquest strictly means the winning
or getting of anything, whether rightly or not, or whether
by force or not. It might mean, for instance, the win-
ning of land, whether a kingdom or anything smaller, by
strength of war, or it might mean winning it by sentence
of law. And this first meaning of the word has something
specially to do with the Norman Conquest of England,
For when King William was called the Conqueror, it did not
at first mean that he had won the crown of England by
force; for he claimed it as his own by law. But though
he claimed it as his own by law, he had in fact to win it by
force ; we can therefore rightly speak of the Conquest and the
Conqueror in the sense which those words now commonly
bear, that of winning a land and the rule over it by strength
of war. For, though Duke William claimed the crown as
NATURE OF THE CONQUEST. 3
his own by law, he could get it only by coming into our
land with an army and overthrowing and killing our king in
fight; and when he had got the crown and was called King,
he had still to win the land bit by bit, often by hard fighting,
before he had really got the whole kingdom into his hands.
The Norman Conquest of England was therefore a conquest
in the best known meaning of the word ; it was the winning
of the land by strength of war.
3. Different kinds of Conquests. — Now this fact that
Duke William claimed the English crown as his own by
law, and yet had to win it in battle at the head of a foreign
army, had a great deal to do with the special character
of the Norman Conquest of England, and with the effect
which that Conquest has had on the history of England
ever since. There have been at different times conquests
of very different kinds. Sometimes a whole people has
gone from one land to another ; they have settled by force
in a land where other men were dwelling, and have killed
or driven out the men whom they found in the land, or
have let them live on as bondmen in their own land.
Here is mere force without any pretence of right, and a
conquest like this can happen only among people who are
quite uncivilized, as we English were when we first came
to the island of Britain. The Norman Conquest was
nothing at all like this ; the English were neither killed
nor driven out nor made slaves, but went on living in
their own land as before. The Norman Conquest was, so
to speak, less of a conquest than conquests of this kind.
But it was much more of a conquest than some other con-
quests of another kind have been. In some conquests of
later times all that has happened has been something of
this kind. A king has won a kingdom by force, or he
has added some new lands to the kingdom which he had
B 2
4 INTRODUCTION.
before. The changes made by such a conquest may be
only what we may call political changes, changes in the
government and most likely to some extent in the law. Such
a conquest may be made with very little change which
directly touches private men; it may be made without
turning anybody out of his house or land. Indeed many
men may even keep on the public offices which they held
before. Now the Norman Conquest of England, though
not so much as the other kind of conquest, was much more
than this. For though the English nation was not killed or
driven out, yet very many Englishmen had their lands,
houses, and offices taken from them and given to strangers.
And this happened specially with the greatest estates and
the highest offices. These passed almost wholly to strangers.
It was not merely that a foreign king won the English
crown, but that his foreign followers displaced Englishmen
in nearly all the highest places in the English kingdom.
4. Nature of the Norman Conquest. — Now this
special character of the Norman Conquest of England, as
being more than one kind of conquest and less than ano-
ther, came chiefly of the fact that a prince who. claimed the
English crown by law did in truth win it by force of arms.
No one in England supported his claim ; he had to make
it good at the head of a foreign army. And when he had
thus won the crown, he had at once to make himself safe
in the strange land which he had conquered, and to re-
ward those who had helped him to conquer it. He there-
fore very largely took away the lands and offices of the
English who had fought against him, and gave them to the
Normans and other strangers who had fought for him. But,
as he claimed to be king reigning according to law, he gave
them those lands and offices to be held of the English
crown, according to English law. From this, and from many
CAUSES AND EFFECTS OF THE CONQUEST. 5
other causes, it came about that the descendants of the Nor-
mans who settled in England step by step become, as we
may say, Englishmen, if not by blood yet by adoption. For
several generations after the Conquest the high places of the
land, the great estates and chief offices, were almost always
held by men of Norman or other foreign blood. But in a very
few generations these men learned to speak English and to
have the feelings of Englishmen. The effect of the Norman
Conquest of England was neither to make England subject
to Normandy nor to make it a Norman land. It gave to
England a much higher place in the world in general than
it had held before. At home, Englishmen were neither
driven out nor turned into Normans, but the Normans in
England were turned into Englishmen. But in this work
of turning themselves into Englishmen, they made, bit by
bit, many changes in the laws of England, and in the lan-
guage, manners, and thoughts of Englishmen.
5. Causes of the Norman Conquest. — We have thus
seen what kind of a work the Norman Conquest of England
was, as compared with other conquests of our own and of
other lands. It is well thoroughly to understand this in a
general way before we begin to tell our tale at all at length.
And before we come to tell the tale of the Conquest itself, we
must try clearly to understand what kind of people both Eng-
lishmen and Normans were at the time when the Normans
crossed the sea to conquer England. We must see what
were the real causes, and what were the immediate occasions,
which led to an event which seems so strange as that a Nor-
man Duke should give out that he had a right to the English
crown, and that he should actually be able to win it by war.
And to do this, we must run lightly over the history both of
the English and of the Normans down to the time when they
first began to have any dealings with one another. .
CHAPTER II.
The English and the Normans.
1. The English, and Norman Settlements. — When
the Normans crossed the sea to conquer England, the Eng-
lish had been much longer settled in the land which from
them was called England than the Normans had been in
the land which from them was called Normandy. It was
in the fifth century that the English began to settle in
those parts of the isle of Britain which from them took the
name of England. But it was not till the beginning of
the tenth century that the Normans settled in that part of
the mainland of Gaul which from them took the name of
Normandy. The English had thus been living for six
hundred years in their land, when the Normans had been
living only about a hundred and fifty years in theirs. The
English therefore in the eleventh century were more tho-
roughly at home in England than the Normans were in
Normandy. Among the English the adventurous spirit of
new settlers had spent itself in the long wars with the
Welsh which established the English dominion in Britain.
But in the Normans that spirit was still quite fresh. Their
conquest of England was only one, though it was the
greatest, of several conquests in foreign lands made by the
Normans about this time. Both were brave; but the
courage of the English was of the passive kind with which
men defend their own homes ; the courage of the Noumans
THE ENGLISH IN BRITAIN. J
of the restless, ambitious, kind with which men go forth
to seek for themselves new homes.
2. The English in Britain. — The first time when the
affairs of Normandy and of England came to have any-
thing to do with one another was about eighty years before
the Norman Conquest of England. At that time all Eng- .
land was united into one kingdom under the kings of the I
house of the West-Saxons. In the course of about a hun-
dred years after their first landing, the English had founded
seven or eight chief kingdoms, besides smaller states, at
the expense of the Welsh, occupying all the eastern and
central parts of Britain. Among these states four stand
out as of special importance, as having at different times
seemed likely to win the chief power over all their neigh-
bours. These were Kent, Wessex, Mercia, and Northum-
berland. The power of Kent came early to an end, but
for a long time it seemed very doubtful to which of the
other three the chief power would come. Sometimes one
had the upper hand, and sometimes another. But at last, in
the early years of the ninth century, the West-Saxon king
Ecgberht won the chief power over all the English king-
doms and over all the Welsh in the southern part of the
island. The northern parts of the island, inhabited by the
Picts, the Scots, and the northern W r elsh, remained quite
independent. And in the English and southern Welsh
kingdoms kings went on reigning, though the West-Saxon
king was their /0n/*and they were his men. That is, though
he had nothing to do with the internal affairs of their king-
doms, they were to follow him in matters of peace and war,
and at all events never to fight against him. Long before
the chief lordship thus came into the hands of the W
Saxon kings, all the English kingdoms had embraced Chris-
tianity. Kent was the first to do so ; its conversion began
8 THE ENGLISH AND THE NORMANS.
at the end of the sixth century (597), and all England had
become Christian before the end of the seventh.
3. The Danes in England. — Not long after the West-
Saxon kings had won the chief power over the other
English kingdoms, a series of events began which made a
great change in England, and which was of a truth the
beginning of the Normans as a people. The people of
Scandinavia, the Danes and the Northmen or Norwegians,
began about this time, first to plunder and then to settle
both in England and in Gaul. They were still heathens,
just as the English had been when they first landed in
Britain. Their invasions were therefore the more frightful,
and they took special delight in destroying the churches
and monasteries. In England all the latter part of the
ninth century is taken up with the story of their ravaging
and settlements. They settled in eastern and northern
England; they overran Wessex for a moment, but there
they were defeated and driven out by the famous King
Alfred. They had upset the other English kingdoms, so
that Wessex was now the only independent English and
Christian kingdom. Alfred could therefore treat with them
as the one English king. The Danish king Guthrum was
baptized, and a line was drawn between his dominions and
those of Alfred, leaving to Alfred all Wessex and the other
lands south of the Thames and all south-western Mercia.
Thus Alfred lost as an over-lord ; but his own kingdom was
enlarged ; and the coming of the Danes, by uprooting the
other English kingdoms, opened the way for the West-
Saxon Kings to win the whole of England. This was done
under Alfred's successors, Edward, JEthelstan, Edmund, and
Eadred, in the first half of the tenth century. After long
fighting, all the English kingdoms were won from the Danes
and were united to the kingdom of the West-Saxons. And
THE NORMANS IN GAUL. 9
the Kings of the English, as they were now called, held the
lordship over the other kingdoms of Britain, Scottish and
Welsh.
4. The Northmen in Gaul. — While this was going on
in Britain, something of much the same kind was going on
in Gaul. Throughout the ninth century the Northmen were
plundering in Gaul, sailing up the rivers, burning towns and
monasteries, and sometimes making small settlements here
and there. But in the beginning of the tenth century they
made a much greater and more lasting settlement. A colony
of Northmen settled in that part of Gaul which from them
took the name of Normandy, and there founded a new
European state. This was in the year 912. The great
dominion of the Franks under Charles the Great was now
quite broken up into four kingdoms. That of the West-
Franks, called Karolingia, because several of its kings bore
the name of Charles, took in the greater part of Gaul. The
crown was more than once disputed between the kings of
the house of Charles the Great, who reigned at Laon, and
the Dukes of the French, whose capital was Paris, and whose
duchy of Fra?ue was the greatest state of Gaul north of the
Loire. Some of these dukes themselves wore the crown, and,
when they did not, they were much more powerful than the
kings at Laon. But whether the king reigned at Paris or
Laon, the princes south of the Loire, though they called
themselves his men, took very little heed to him. Now when
the kingdom was at Laon, the king was pretty well out of
the way of invaders who came by sea ; but no part of
Gaul was more exposed than the duchy o{ Franco, with its
long seaboard on the Channel, and with the mouth of the
river Seine making a highway for the Northmen up to Rouen
and Paris. Paris was several times besieged in the ninth
century; and now at the beginning of the tenth, the coasts
10 THE ENGLISH AND THE NORMANS.
of Gaul, especially the northern coast, were ravaged by a
great pirate-leader named Rolf — called in Latin Rollo and
in French Rou — who had got possession of Rouen and
seemed disposed to settle in the land.
5. Settlement of Rolf. — At this time the kingdom of the
West-Franks was held by Charles, called the Simple, who
reigned at Laon. Robert, Duke of the French, was his man,
but a man much more powerful than his lord. But no prince
in Gaul had suffered so much from Rolfs ravages. So King
Charles and Duke Robert agreed that the best thing to be
done was very much what Alfred had done with Guthrum,
to grant to Rolf part of the land as his own, if he would be
baptized and hold it as the man of the king. So Rolf was
baptized with Duke Robert to his godfather, and he took
his name in baptism, though he was still commonly spoken
of as Rolf. And he received the city of Rouen and the land
from the Epte to the Dive, as a fief from King Charles, and
became his man. So Rolf and his followers settled down in the
land which from them was called the Land of the Northmen
and afterwards the Duchy of Normandy. It was enlarged in
Rolfs own time by the addition of the city of Bayeux and its
territory, and in the time of his son William Longsword, by
the addition of the peninsular land of Coutances, called the
Cdteniin, and the land of Avranches to the south of it. The
Norman dukes claimed also to be lords over the counties of
Britanny and Maine ; but they could never really make good
their power there. But the whole north coast of the duchy
of France now became the duchy of Normandy. Paris and
its prince, sometimes king, sometimes only duke, were quite
cut off from the sea by the land of the Norman dukes at
Rouen.
6. The Early Norman Dukes. — In this lay the begin-
ning of the strife between Normandy and France, which,
THE NORMAN DUCHY. II
when the same princes came to rule over England and Nor-
mandy, grew into the long wars between France and England.
The princes and people of France never forgot that they had
lost the great city of Rouen and all the fair land of Nor-
mandy. But King Charles at Laon gained by the duchy of
France being in this way weakened and cut in two. He
gained too because, when Rolf swore to be his man and be
faithful to him, he really kept his oath. For when, first Duke
Robert of France (922), and then Duke Rudolf of Burgundy
(923), rose up against King Charles and were made kings in
his stead, both Rolf and his son William after him clave to the
lord to whom Rolf had first sworn. Rolf too ruled his land
well, and put down thieves and murderers, so that the story
ran that he hung up a jewel in a tree, and no man dared to
take it. Under him and his son William Longsword (927-943)
most of the Normans gradually became Christians, and left off
their Scandinavian tongue and learned to speak French. By
the end of William's reign nothing but French was spoken at
Rouen ; but in the lands to the west, which had been won
more lately, men still spoke Danish, and many still clave to
the gods of the North. This heathen and Danish party
more than once revolted, and, after the death of Duke Wil-
liam, they even for a while got hold of the young Duke
Richard and made him join in their heathen worship. About
the same time new settlements from the North were made in
the Cotentin. But Duke Richard presently commended him-
self to Hugh the Great, Duke of the French; that is, he
became his man instead of the King's man. During the
rest of his reign the duchies of France and Normandy were
in close alliance, and Richard had a chief hand in giving the
kingdom to Hugh Capet, the son of Hugh the Great.
7. Manners of the Normans. — During Richard's reign
then the Normans were getting more and more French in
12 THE ENGLISH AND THE NORMANS.
their language and manners/ And more than this, it was
their help which took the crown of Karolingia from the
German kings at Laon, and gave it to the French kings at
Paris. Thus the Dukes of the French became Kings of the
French, and, as they extended their power, the name of their
duchy of France was gradually spread over nearly all Karol-
ingia, and over the greater part of the rest of Gaul. In the
time of the next Duke, Richard the Good (996-1026), there
was a great revolt of the peasants in Normandy. These
were most likely largely of Celtic descent, while all the great
landowners were Normans. And it is also noticed of this
duke that he began to draw new distinctions among his sub-
jects, and would have none but gentlemen about him. This is
almost the first time that we hear that word. The peasants
were put down, and the gentlemen had the upper hand.
The Normans had now quite changed from the ways of their
Northern forefathers. From seafaring men they had turned
into the best horsemen in the world. The Norman gentle-
man, mounted on his horse, with his shield like a kite, his
long lance, and sometimes his sword or mace-at-arms, be-
came the best of all fighting-men of his own kind. And,
now that they were fully settled in their own land, the Nor-
mans began, quite in the spirit of their forefathers, though in
another garb, to go all over the world to seek for fighting
wherever fighting was to be had. Often religious zeal was
mingled with love of fighting. Some went to help the
Christians of Spain against the Saracens, and others, later in
the century, went to help the Eastern Emperors against the
Turks. But their greatest exploits of all were done in the
two greatest of European islands, one the greatest in the
Mediterranean, the other the greatest in the Ocean, Sicily
and Britain.
8. The Normans in Italy and Sicily. — We shall
CONQUESTS OF THE NORMANS. 1 3
come presently to their doings in our own island. But it
is well to remark that the Norman Conquest of England
was no doubt largely suggested by the Norman exploits in
southern Italy and Sicily. These went on during nearly
the whole of the eleventh century; but they began under
Richard the Good. They were not enterprises of the Nor-
man dukes, or of the Norman state in any way, but of
private Norman gentlemen who went out to seek their for-
tunes. They founded more than one principality in southern
Italy, but the most famous settlement was that made by the
sons of a simple Norman gentleman called Tancred of
Hauteville. They conquered all southern Italy, putting an
end to the dominion of the Eastern Emperors, and they got
the Pope to invest them with what they conquered. Then
Robert Wiscard son of Tancred became Duke of Apulia.
He then went on to attack the Eastern Emperor beyond the
Hadriatic, and actually held Durazzo and other possessions
there for some while. Thence he came back to help the
Pope against the Western Emperor Henry the Fourth, so
that he defeated both Emperors in one year. His brother
Roger, partly with his help, conquered all Sicily from the
Mahometans. He was only called Greai Count; but his
son, another Roger, became the first King of Sicily. All
this began before the Norman Conquest of England, and
was going on at the same time. We speak of it here to
show what manner of men the Normans of the eleventh
century were. When private men could found duchies and
kingdoms and put Emperors to flight, we might indeed look
for great things whenever a Duke of the Normans at the
head of his whole people should put forth his full strength.
9. The Danish Conquest of England. — Meanwhile
the Danish invasions of England, which had been put an
end to by the great kings who followed Alfred, began
14 THE ENGLISH AND THE NORMANS.
again in the last twenty years of the tenth century, and
went on for thirty-six years (980-1016) till England was
altogether conquered. But these were invasions of another
kind from the earlier Danish invasions. In the ninth cen-
tury both England and Denmark were still made up of
various settlements, more or less distinct, and this or that
party of Danish adventurers came to settle in this or that
part of England. But in the course of the tenth century
Denmark, like England, had been joined together into one
kingdom; and the invasions now took the form of an
enterprise of a king of all Denmark trying to win the
crown of all England. But, though England was now joined
under one king, its different parts were not yet thoroughly
welded together, and it needed a great king to make the
whole force of the kingdom act together. In the former
part of the tenth century England had had such great kings ;
but when the Danish invasions began again, she had a king,
iEthelred, of quite another kind. His name means noble
rede or counsel, but men called him the Unready or man
without rede. For, though he sometimes had what we may
call fits of energy, they were commonly in the wrong place ;
and during his long reign it was only once towards the very
end that he showed himself as at all a national leader against
the enemy. Generally the Danes landed at this or that
point ; then, if the men of that shire had a brave leader, a
good fight was made against them; but there was no general
resistance. The king thought more of giving the Danes
money to go away than of fighting them. And of course
this only led them to come again for more money. In this
way one shire after another was harried; the land was weak-
ened bit by bit, till the Danes could march where they
.pleased, even in the inland parts. At last, in 10 13, the
Danish king Swen or Swegen was able to subdue all Eng-
THE DANES IN ENGLAND. Ij
land, and to make the English acknowledge him as king.
King jEthelred had to flee from the land and to take shelter
beyond the sea. And his wife and her children had to seek
for shelter beyond the sea along with him. By this time the
story of Normandy and the story of England are beginning
to be joined into one. For ^Ethelred's wife was a Norman
woman, and the land in which he and she sought shelter was
her own land of Normandy. We must now therefore go
back a little way in our story, and see how the Normans
and the English had already come to have dealings with one
another, in w r ar and in peace.
CHAPTER III.
The early dealings between English and Normans.
1. Early Dealings between England and Gaul.— Up
to the tenth century the English had very little to do with
their neighbours in Gaul. The English kings commonly
married the daughters of other English kings, or, after
there was only one kingdom, the daughters of their own
great men. It was somewhat more common for English
kings to give their daughters to foreign kings; but even
this did not happen very often. But in the days of Edward
the Elder and his son iEthelstan several of Edward's
daughters were married to the chief princes of Western
Europe. Among them one married King Charles of Laon
and another Duke Hugh of Paris. Thus King Lewis the
son of Charles was sister's son to the English kings JEthel-
stan and Edmund. They played a certain part in the affairs
of Gaul on behalf of their nephew, and, as Lewis was an
enemy of the Normans, it may be that some ill-feeling
between the English and the Normans began thus early.
But there was no open quarrel till the last years of the tenth
century, when iEthelred was King of the English, and
when the long reign of Richard the Fearless in Normandy
was coming near to its end.
2. The first Quarrel between England and Nor-
mandy .—The first time when Englishmen and Normans are
distinctly recorded to have met as enemies was in a quarrel
JETHELRED AND RICHARD. i;
which arose out of the Danish invasions of England. In 991
d and Duke Richard had a quarrel, and I
made friends by Pope John the Fifteenth. The ground
uarrel seems to have been that the Danes had been
allowed to sell the plunder of England in the Norman
ut nine years later we hear of another quarrel.
The Norman writers say that .Ethelred sent a fleet with
orders to harry the whole land and to bring Duke Richard
before him with his hands tied behind his back. Then they
tell us that the English fleet did land in the Cotentin, but
that they were driven back by the men of the land, with the
women helping them, without any help from Duke Richard. v
We need not believe these details, any more than we I
ve the details of many other stories of these times; but
there must be some ground for the tale. At any rate there
is no doubt that jEthelred in 1002 married Emma, the
liter of Duke Richard. This was most likely when
peace was made, and some say that JEthelred went over to
Normandy himself to bring home his bride.
3. The Marriage of ^thelred and Emma. — This
marriage marks one of the main stages in the events which
led to the Norman Conquest. First of all, it was, as we
have seen, an unusual thing for an English king to marry
a foreign wife. In all the time that the English had been
in Britain it had, as far as we know, happened only t\
before. This is one of many things which show tl.
land was now getting to have more to do with
lands than before. Secondly, by reason of this man
Normans and other French-speaking people now began for
the first time to settle in England and to hold En
Emma now became Lady of the English, lor by the custom
of the W( was called I . but
. . . , and she changed her name from the
C
1 8 DEALINGS BETWEEN ENGLISH AND NORMANS.
the English ^lfgifu. As the King's wife she received a gift
from her husband. This gift consisted of lands and towns,
and among them the city of Exeter. Here the Lady set one
Hugh, whom the English call the French churl, as her reeve.
When the Danes attacked Exeter in 1003, Hugh, if he did
not actually betray the city, at least made no good defence,
and Exeter was taken. Such was the beginning of Norman
command in England. Thirdly, for the first time in the
West-Saxon house, the children of a king were half-strangers
by birth, and what followed made them strangers yet more
thoroughly. And fourthly, the reigning houses of England
and Normandy now became of kin to one another, and it
was this which first put it into the head of Duke William
that he might perhaps succeed to the throne of his English
kinsfolk.
4. The Marriage of Cmit and Emma. — Emma, the
Norman Lady, now becomes a very important person in
English history. She was the wife of two kings and the
mother of two kings. Her first husband iEthelred had
not to stay very long in his banishment in Normandy.
For the next year Swegen the Da.nish king died. Then
the Danes chose his younger son Cnut or Canute to be
king in England, while his elder son Harold reigned in
Denmark. War followed between Cnut and iEthelred, in
which at last^Ethelred showed some little spirit, but in which
the great leader on the English side was his son Edmund,
called Ironside. He was not the son of Emma, whose chil-
dren, Alfred, Edward, and Godgifu, were still quite young,
but of an earlier wife of JEthelred. Then in the beginning
of 10 1 6 JEthelred died. Many of the English now thought
that it was best to accept Cnut as king; so he was chosen
at a meeting at Southampton, while Edmund was chosen in
another meeting in London. The English gradually joined
CNUT'S CONQUEST OF ENGLAND. ig
Edmund; he was a strong and brave captain, very unlike
his father ; six battles were fought in the year ; London was
three times besieged by Cnut; but in the last battle, at
Assandiin in Essex, Edmund was defeated by the treason
of his brother-in-law Eadric. Still he was so powerful that it
was agreed to divide the kingdom, Cnut reigning in the
North and Edmund in the South. But before the year was
out, Edmund died, and many thought that Eadric, some
that Cnut, had brought about his death. Then at the
Christmas of 1016-1017 Cnut was a third time chosen king
over all England, and one of the first things that he did was
to send to Normandy for the widowed Lady Emma, though
she was many years older than he was. She came over;
she married the new king, and was again Lady of the
English. She bore Cnut two children, Harthacnut and
Gunhild. Her three children by JEthelred were left in
Normandy. She seems not to have cared at all for them
or for the memory of ^Ethelred; her whole love passed to
her new husband and her new children. Thus it came
about that the children of ^Ethelred were brought up in
Normandy, and had the feelings of Normans rather than of
Englishmen, a thing which again greatly helped the Norman
Conquest.
5. The Reign of Cnut. — Though Cnut came in as a
foreign conqueror, yet he reigned as an English king. He
was chosen when he was quite young ; England was his first
kingdom ; and, though he soon inherited the kingdom of
Denmark and afterwards conquered Norway, yet England
was always the land which he loved best. He began harshly,
banishing or putting to death every one whom he thought at
all dangerous, especially such of the kinsfolk of iEthelred as
he could get at. Emma's two boys were safe in Normandy,
perhaps safer with their uncle Duke Richard— that is Richard
c 2
20 DEALINGS BETWEEN ENGLISH AND NORMANS.
the Good, son of Richard the Fearless, who reigned from 996
to 1026 — than they would have been with their mother in
England. But when Cnut was fully established on the throne,
he left off this harshness ; he ruled the English according to
their own laws, and gradually got rid of the Danes who had
come with him, and to whom he had given earldoms and other
high offices. These places were now again given to English-
men, and the chief among them was Godwine, Earl of the
West-Saxons. Under Cnut England became the centre of a
great Northern Empire, such as was not seen before or after.
His father Swegen had been baptized in his childhood ; but he
cast away Christianity and became a heathen again. His son
Cnut was therefore brought up as a heathen, but he was
baptized while still a young man by the name of Lambert,
though he was always called Cnut, just as Rolf was always
called Rolf and never Robert. He made the pilgrimage to
Rome, and was there received with great worship by the
Pope and by the Emperor Conrad, who came to be crowned
while he was there. All his wars were in the North, in
Scotland, Norway, and Sweden. He was always on good
terms with Duke Richard of Normandy ; but things changed
in this respect before the end of Cnut's reign. When
Richard the Good died, he was succeeded by his son
Richard the Third, who reigned only two years. Then in
1028 came his other son Robert, who is famous in several
ways, but perhaps most of all for being the father of
William the Conqueror of England.
6. Duke Robert and the English JEthelings. — There
seems no doubt that Cnut and Robert had some kind of
quarrel, but the story is told in different ways, and it is
not easy to make out the exact truth. But it seems that
Robert married Cnut's sister Estrith and then put her away.
She had, seemingly before this, been married to the Danish
CNUT AND ROBERT. 21
Earl Ulf, who was put to death by Cnut, and she was the
mother of Swegen called from her Eslrithson, who was after-
wards King of the Danes, and who plays a great part in
English history also. The Northern writers tell some wild
stories about Cnut invading Normandy and dying while
besieging Rouen ; but it is quite certain that he died quietly
at Shaftesbury in 1035. But it does seem likely that
Robert, though he never actually invaded England, yet made
ready to do so. He played a great part in the affairs of
the neighbouring states, and he seems to have been specially
pleased to restore dispossessed princes to their dominions.
Thus he restored Baldwin Count of Flanders and his own
lord Henry King of the French. He was therefore very
likely, above all if he had any quarrel with Cnut on other
grounds, to try to bring home his cousins, the English JZihel-
ings or King's sons, Alfred and Edward, and to set one of
them on the English throne. It is said that he got together
a fleet and set out, but he w r as hindered by the wind, and
driven to the coast of Britanny, where he hardly had a
quarrel with the reigning Count Alan. So, instead of con-
quering the greater Britain, of which England is part, all that
he did was to harry the lesser Britain in Gaul. But no doubt
this attempt of Duke Robert's would make an invasion of
England to be talked of in Normandy as a possible thing, and
might specially help to put it into the head of his son William.
7. The Second attempt of the iEthelings. — Of the
accession and youth of William we shall say more pre-
sently. It is enough to say now that Cnut and Robert
died nearly at the same time. After Cnut's death the king-
dom of England was again divided, as it had been before
between Edmund and Cnut. Earl Godwine and the West-
Saxons wished to keep the whole kingdom for Emma's son
Harthacnut, who was already reigning in Denmark under his
22 DEALINGS BETWEEN ENGLISH AND NORMANS.
father. But it was decreed that Harthacnut should have
Wessex only, and that the rest of England, together, it would
seem, with the overlordship of all, should pass to Harold, who
was said to be Cnut's son by an Englishwoman named
^Elfgifu. But Harthacnut stayed in Denmark, and his Eng-
lish kingdom was ruled by his mother Emma, with Godwine
to her minister. Thus we seem to be getting nearer to the
Norman Conquest, when the Norman Lady rules in Wessex.
And now comes a story which is told in the most opposite
ways by the old writers. It is certain that one or both of
the English jEthelings, Alfred and Edward, made another
attempt to get the kingdom of England, that Alfred fell into
the hands of Harold, that his eyes were put out by Harold's
orders, and that he soon afterwards died. But as to all the
details of the story, there is nothing but contradiction. Some
say that Edward invaded England with a Norman fleet, and
won a battle near Southampton, but sailed away without
doing anything more. Others say nothing about Edward
and only speak of Alfred. And it was believed by many that
Earl Godwine betrayed Alfred to Harold, though those who
say this seem to have forgotten that Godwine was the minister
of Harthacnut. Some say too that Alfred had a large party
of Normans with him, and that they were put to death in
various cruel ways. The chief thing for our purpose is that it
was fully believed in Normandy that either Godwine by him-
self, or the English people with Godwine at their head, had
betrayed and murdered the JEtheling, the kinsman of the
Norman Duke. So this was treasured up as a ground for
vengeance against the English nation in general and against
Godwine above all.
8. Emma and Edward. — The next thing that happened
in England was not likely to please the Normans much better.
For the West-Saxons got tired of waiting for their king Har-
EDWARD KING. 2$
thacnut, who stayed all the time in Denmark ; so in 1037 they
forsook him and chose Harold to be king over Wessex as well
as over the rest of England. The first thing that Harold did
was to drive the Lady Emma out of the land. She did not
go to Normandy, but to Flanders ; because Normandy was
just then, as we shall presently see, full of confusion. But in
1040 Harold died, and Harthacnut was chosen king over all
England. Thus England had a king who was, on the
mother's side, of Norman descent. Emma came back, and
Harthacnut sent for his half-brother Edward to come from
Normandy and live at his court. And Edward brought
with him a French nephew of his and of Harthacnut's.
This was Ralph, the son of their sister Godgifu or Goda,
daughter of JEthelred and Emma, who was married to a
French prince, Drogo Count of Mantes. So the foreign in-
fluence, Norman and French, was spreading. Their other
sister Gunhild, the daughter of Cnut and Emma, was married
to King Henry of Germany, afterwards the great Emperor
Henry the Third. Harthacnut, like his brother Harold,
reigned only a short time, and died in 1042. Then the
English said that they had had enough of strange kings, and
that they would have a king of the old stock. There were
only two men of that stock now living. Edmund Ironside
had left two little twin sons, Edmund and Edward, who
were sent away beyond sea in Cnut's time. Of these
Edmund was dead, but Edward was living far away in
Hungary. By modern law he would have been the right
heir, as the son of the elder brother. But in those days it
was deemed enough to choose within the kingly house, without
thinking of any particular rule of succession. So no one
thought of Edward who was away in Hungary, and the
Wise Men — the great men of the land in their assembly —
chose Edward who was near at hand, the son of jEthelred
24 DEALINGS BETWEEN ENGLISH AND NORMANS.
and Emma. Some were for choosing another Danish
king, Swegen, the son of Cnut's sister Estrith. Swegen
afterwards reigned very wisely in Denmark, and it might
perhaps have really been the best thing to choose him.
But the feeling was all in favour of a king of the old English
stock ; so Edward was chosen.
9. King Edward.- 1 - With Edward's election the con-
nexion between English and Norman affairs becomes closer
still ; we might almost say that the Norman Conquest be-
gan in his time." Men thought that, by choosing Edward,
the English royal house was restored to the crown; but
it was in truth very much as if a Norman king had been
chosen. Harthacnut had as much Norman blood in
him as Edward, but he had not been brought up in
Normandy ; his feelings and ways were Danish. But Ed-
ward's feelings and ways were all Norman. His being the
son of a Norman mother had not much to do with it, as
there was no great love between mother and son. Emma
had quite neglected her children by JEthelred, and she
seems even to have opposed Edward's election. He had
not been very long king before he took away all her trea-
sures. What really made Edward more of a Norman than
an Englishman was that he had lived in Normandy from his
childhood, and had made many friends there, and chiefly his
young cousin Duke William. He liked to speak French and
to have French-speaking people about him, specially Norman
churchmen, to whom he gave English bishoprics and other
high preferments. He also gave estates and offices to Nor-
man and other French-speaking laymen as far as he could ;
but the King could not give away the great temporal offices
so much according to his own pleasure as he could give away
the great places of the Church. He could not give away either
without the consent of his Wise Men ; but the Wise Men were
REIGN OF EDWARD. 2 5
J
more ready to allow a foreign bishop than a foreign earl. So,
while we find several French-speaking bishops and abbots in
Edward's reign, we find only one French-speaking earl. This
was the King's nephew Ralph the son of Godgifu. Of smaller
men, both clergy and laymen, many held benefices and
estates. This was specially so during the former part of
Edward's reign, which was chiefly a time of struggle between
English and foreign influences in the land.
10. King Edward and Earl Godwine. — Edward was
a devout and well-disposed man. His love of foreigners
he could hardly help; his chief fault was now and then
giving way to fits of passion, in which he sometimes gave
rash and cruel orders. But in these cases he seems to have
been commonly stirred up by his favourites. Otherwise
he was remarkably free from cruelty or any other of the
common vices of his time. Being thus a really good and
pious man, and one whom both Normans and English could
agree in reverencing, he was very early looked on as a saint
and thought to work miracles. But he was a weak man and
quite unfit to govern his kingdom. The first nine years of
his reign were one long struggle whether England should be
ruled by the King's foreign favourites or by the English Earl
Godwine. Godwine, along with his friend Bishop Lyfing,
had the chief hand in bringing about Eadward's election, and
this claim on the Kings gratitude made him yet mare the
first man in the kingdom than he was before. The King
married his daughter Edith, and his sons were gradually
raised to earldoms, some of them while they were very young.
Godwine was beyond all doubt an Englishman who loved
his own land and folk ; but he was over-grasping on his
own behalf and on that of his children. In marrying his
daughter to the King, he no doubt looked forward to a
grandson of his own wearing the crown ; but Edward had
l6 DEALINGS BETWEEN ENGLISH AND NORMANS.
no children, and, at least in the early part of his reign, he
seems to have had little love for his wife. And the gathering
together of many earldoms in the one house of the Earl of
the West-Saxons gave offence, not only to the Normans, but
seemingly to the earls and people of the rest of England.
Thus these first years of the reign of Eadward tell us the tale
both of the power of Godwine and of his fall.
11. The Earldoms. — It will be well here to explain who
were the chief men of England at this time, and what were the
earldoms which they held. At this time an earldom was not
a mere rank or title, but meant the government of one or
more shires over which the earl was set by the authority of the
King and his Wise Men. There were now four chief earl-
doms, answering to the four greatest of the ancient kingdoms,
those of Wessex, Mercia, Northumberland, and East-Anglia.
There were always these four; but there were also others as
well, and shires were often taken from one earldom and given
to another, as was thought good at the time. The Mercian
shires above all, those in the middle of England, were very
often handed to and fro between one earl and another. When
Edward was elected, Godwine was Earl of the West-Saxons,
that is, of all England south of the Thames. Siward, a famous
Dane, was Earl of the Northumbrians, that is of all England
north of the Humber and the Ribble, and also of Northamp-
tonshire and Huntingdonshire. Leofric was Earl of the Mer-
cians, but he had only the western part of Mercia under his
immediate rule. Who was Earl of the East-Angles we do not
know. Besides these there were other earls who held one or
more shires, seemingly under the great earls ; and as these
smaller earldoms became vacant, room was found both for
the King's friends and for the family of Godwine. Thus the
King's nephew Ralph was Earl, first of Worcester and then
of Hereford. And Godwine very soon got earldoms for his
THE POWER OF GODWINE. 2J
elder sons Swegen and Harold and for his wife's nephew
n, the brother of the Danish King Swegen. Swegen 1
n;clv-shaped government, taking in Somerset, Gloucester-
shire, Herefordshire, Berkshire, and Oxfordshire. Harold
had East-Anglia ; Beorn had all eastern Mercia except
Northamptonshire and Huntingdonshire. Thus the power
of Godwine and his house was very great ; but it was per-
haps shaken by the crimes of his eldest son Swegen, who
killed his cousin Beorn. For this he was banished, but wa 3
afterwards restored to his earldom.
12. Norman influence in England. — The way in which
Godwine had to strive against the King's love of strai.
town, as we have said, in the appointment of bishoprics
and other great offices in the Church. Early in his reign,
in 1044, the see of London was given to Robert, Abbot of
Jum&ges in Normandy, the first time that an English bishopric
had ever been held by a French-speaking man. Robert had
I power over the King, which he used against the English
and especially against Godwine. At last in 1051 Robert him-
self became Archbishop of Canterbury ; other bishoprics were
n to Normans, and Norman clerks and knights held bene-
fices and estates in various parts of the kingdom. But the
King did not venture to give an earldom to any Norman, or
:iy foreigner except his own nephew Ralph. One fashion
which the Normans brought in with them was that of building
castles. The English were used to fortify towns, and their
S and other chief men had lived in kails, often on the
tops of mounds and fenced in by a pal
mans now began to build casiUs, that is, either strong square
:s, or strong stone walls crowning the mounds. Th
they could oppress the people in many ways, and the writers
of the time always speak of the building of the castles with
a kind of shudder.
2 8 DEALINGS BETWEEN ENGLISH AND NORMANS.
13. The Banishment of Godwine. — The appointment
of Robert to the archbishopric marks the time when the
Normans had things most thoroughly their own way.
About this time the King's brother-in-law, Count Eustace
of Boulogne, came to pay him a visit. As he went home,
he and his followers rode into the town of Dover, and tried
to quarter themselves where they pleased in the houses.
So a fight followed, in which several men were killed on
both sides. Then the Count rode back and told the
King how insolently the men of Dover had dealt by
him. Then Edward flew into one of his angry fits, and
bade Godwine go and lay waste Dover with fire and sword.
But Godwine said that he would do no such thing; he
would do nothing to any man in his earldom except accord-
ing to law ; the men of Dover should be lawfully tried before
the Wise Men, and, if they were found guilty of any crime,
they should be lawfully punished. While these things were
doing in Kent, there came also a cry from Herefordshire
about the deeds of certain Normans there, Richard and his
son Osbern, who had built a castle called Richard's Castle,
and had greatly oppressed the people. And at the same
time the Archbishop and the other Normans were setting the
King against Godwine more than ever, and bringing up the
old story about his brother Alfred. Godwine and his sons
therefore gathered the men of their earldoms, and demanded
that the King should give up the foreigners, Count Eustace
among them, for lawful trial. Edward got together the
forces of the rest of the kingdom under the EarJs Siward,
Leofric, and Ralph, and made ready for war. The West-
Saxons and East-Angles accordingly marched on Gloucester,
where the King was ; but actual warfare was hindered by
Leofric, and it was agreed that all matters should be judged
in an assembly in London. The King came there with an
BANISIIMEXT OF GODWIN E. 2i)
army. The assembly met ; SwegerTs outlawry was renewed ;
Godwine and Harold were summoned to appear as criminals
for trial. As they refused to come without a safe-conduct,
were outlawed. Harold and Leofwine found shelter in
Ireland, Godwine and the rest of the family in Flanders.
The King's wife, the Lady Edith, stayed in England, but
she was shorn of her royal rank, and sent to the monastery
of Wherwell. The Normans now had for awhile everything
their own way. They thought it a good time for Duke
William to come over and pay a visit to his cousin the King.
William was now about twenty-three years of age, and he
had been called Duke ever since he was a child of seven.
We will now go back and see what had been going on in
Normandy during these early years of his reign.
CHAPTER IV.
The Youth of Duke William.
1. The Birth and Accession of Duke William. —
We have already spoken of Duke Robert, and how he
tried to bring back his cousins the JEthelings to England.
Towards the end of his reign Duke Robert determined to
go on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, to pray at the tomb of
Christ and win the forgiveness of his sins. Before he went,
he wished to settle the succession to his duchy, in case he
should die on so long and dangerous a journey. He had
no lawful children, and it was not at all clear who among
his kinsfolk had the best right to succeed him. So, after
some difficulty, he was able to persuade the wise men of
Normandy to accept as their future duke his little son Wil-
liam, who, as his parents had never been married, was called
William the Bastard, till he had won a right to be called
William the Conqueror and William the Great. William was
born before his father became Duke, while he was only
Count of the land of Hiesmes, of which Falaise, the town of
the rocks, was the capital, where Count Robert had a castle.
There is a famous castle there still, but it is somewhat later
than William's time, and he certainly was not born in it.
But there is no doubt that William was born at Falaise, and
that his mother Herleva was the daughter of a tanner of
that town, whom Robert afterwards made his chamberlain.
Herleva had also a daughter Adelaide by Duke Robert,
and after his death she married a knight named Herlwin of
MR Til OF DUKE WILLIAM. 3 1
Conteville, to whom she bore two sons, Odo and Robert,
William's half-brothers, who play a great part in our story.
William was not at all ashamed of the lowliness of his birth
on the mother's side, and, when he was duke, he raised her
sons to high honour. As he was not Duke Robert's lawful
son, he had no right to succeed according to modern law;
but the rules of succession were then not at all fixed, an 1
the Normans above all thought but little of lawful marr
and birth in such matters. The chief objection to William's
being acknowledged as the future duke was that he was a
mere child, about seven years old, so that, if his father died
while he was away, he would not be able to govern. But
Duke Robert said, " He is little, but he will grow," and at last
the wise men of Normandy sware to him. Then Robert
went on his pilgrimage and never came back. He died on
his way home, in 1035, a long way from his own land, at
Nikaia in Asia, where the famous Council of the Church was
held in the days of Constantine, and was buried there.
2. William's Childhood. — It was after William became
duke, but before he was a full-grown man, that the JEStheling
Alfred had come to his sad end in England, and that the
iEtheling Eadward had been chosen King there. We cannot
say how much William had personally to do with either matter.
He came to his duchy as a child ; but his childhood and youth
were of a kind which made him a man, and a strong and
man, very early. The Norman nobles were very hard to govern
at any time, and when the prince was a child, they did *
ever they chose. They were always fighting with one another,
and sometimes murdering one another by craft. And they
always rebelling against their young duke, and sometimes
seeking his life. For it must be remembered that they had
not at all wished to have llerleva's son for their lord, and
there were several kinsmen of Duke Robert who thought,
32 THE YOUTH OF DUKE WILLIAM.
and rightly according to our notions, that they had a better
right to the duchy than William. The young duke had
good and faithful guardians, but several of them were mur-
dered. The land in short was in a state of utter confusion.
And now that Normandy was divided and weak, the old
friendship with France began to give way, and the French
and their kings began again to remember that the settlement
of the Normans had cut off France from the sea. So Henry
the King of the French joined himself to William's other
enemies, and took his castle of Tillieres on the French
border. Thus he was William's enemy early in his reign,
and he became his enemy again afterwards ; but in the most
dangerous moment of William's Norman reign, the French
king was his firm friend. This was in 1047, when a large
part of Normandy rose in rebellion against William, of which
we must say a little more.
3. The Revolt of Western Normandy. — It will be
remembered that the western part of Normandy, the lands
of Bayeux and Coutances, were won by the Norman dukes
after the eastern part, the lands of Rouen and Evreux.
And it will be remembered that these western lands, won
more lately and fed by new colonies from the North,
were still heathen and Danish some while after eastern
Normandy had become Christian and French-speaking.
Now we may be sure that, long before William's day, all Nor-
mandy was Christian, but it is quite possible that the old
tongue may have lingered on in the western lands. At any
rate there was a wide difference in spirit and feeling between
the more French and the more Danish districts, to say no-
thing of Bayeux, where, before the Normans came, there
had been a Saxon settlement. One part of the duchy in
short was altogether Romance in speech and manners, while
more or less of Teutonic character still clave to the other.
BATTLE OF VAL-£S-DUNES. 33
So now Teutonic Normandy rose against Duke William, and
Romance Normandy was faithful to him. The nobles of
the Bessin and Cotentin made league with William's cousin
Guy of Burgundy, meaning, as far as one can see, to make
Guy Duke of Rouen and Evreux, and to have no lord at all
for themselves. Their leader was Neal, the Viscount of the
Cotentin, the son of the Neal who had beaten back the English
invasion in iEthelred's day. When the rebellion broke out,
William was among them at Valognes, and they tried to
seize him. But his fool warned him in the night; he rode
for his life, and got safe to his own Falaise.
4. The Battle of Val-es-Dunes. — All eastern Nor-
mandy was loyal ; but William doubted whether he could
by himself overcome so strong an array of rebels. So he
went to Poissy, between Rouen and Paris, and asked his
lord King Henry to help him. So King Henry came
with a French army; and the French and those whom
we may call the French Normans met the Teutonic Nor-
mans in battle at Val-es-dunes, not very far from Caen.
It was William's first pitched battle, a battle of horse-
men, in which King and Duke fought hand to hand against
the rebels, and each slew some of their chief men. Yet
King Henry was once thrown from his horse by a spear
from the Cotentin, a deed of which the men of the penin-
sula sang in their rimes. But they were beaten none the less,
and the whole land which had rebelled submitted. Neal
escaped, and was after a while pardoned, nor was Duke
William's hand at all heavy on his vanquished enemies.
But he had vanquished them thoroughly. He was now
fully master of his own duchy ; the battle of Val-es-dunes
finally fixed that Normandy should take its character from
Romance Rouen and not from Teutonic Bayeux. William
had in short overcome Saxons and Danes in Gaul before he
34 THE YOUTH OF DUKE WILLIAM.
came to overcome them in Britain. He had to conquer his
own Normandy before he could conquer England, and we
shall see that, between these two conquests, he had in some
sort to conquer France also.
5. Duke William's Visit to King Edward. — Thus
Duke William was for the first time master in Normandy,
and four years later it was no doubt said that King Ed-
ward was for the first time master in England. Godwine
was gone, and the King's Norman favourites had every-
thing their own way. And now the young Duke came
to pay his cousin a visit. With so many Normans at the
court and in other parts of the land, it might almost seem
to him that he was still in his own duchy. Was it now that
the thought first came into his head that he might succeed
his childless kinsman in a kingdom which looked as if it had
already become Norman ? Certain it is that William always
said that Edward had promised him the crown at his death ;
and this visit seems a more likely time for such a promise
than any time before or after. Of course we must remember
that Edward could not, by English law, really leave William
the crown ; the utmost that he could do would be to recom-
mend the Wise Men to choose him at his death. But just
at this time neither W T illiam nor Edward was likely to think
much about English law, and Edward's Norman counsellors
were still less likely to think about it than either of them.
We cannot say for certain how it was ; but we can hardly
doubt that Edward did make William some kind of promise,
and this seems the most likely time for it. At any rate
William had now conquered Normandy and had visited
England. These are two steps towards the time when he
again came to England, not as guest but as Conqueror.
6. Duke William in his own Duchy. — We shall see
presently that the course of events in England must have
WILLIAM AND EDWARD. $$
altogether thrown back William's hopes with regard to
the English crown. But he went on winning fame and
power in his own land beyond the sea. He ruled his
duchy wisely and well, and it flourished greatly under him.
He promoted learned men from other countries, above
all two men who lived to play a greater part in England
than in Normandy. These were Lanfranc from Pavia in
Italy and Anselm from Aosta in Burgundy. They were
both monks of the newly-founded monastery of Bee in Nor-
mandy, which was at this time a nursery of famous men.
The Duke married Matilda, daughter of Baldwin Count of
Flanders, by whom he had several daughters and, for the
present, three sons, Robert, Richard, and William., The
most famous of his daughters was Adela, who married
Stephen Count of Blois. But Duke William did not reign
without rebellions at home and wars abroad. For a short
time after the battle of Val-es-dunes the friendship between
the Duke and King Henry of France went on. Both joined
in a war against Geoffrey Count of Anjou, who now held
the land of Maine between Anjou and Normandy. In 1049
Duke William for the first time extended his dominions by
winning the castles of Domfront and Ambrieres in Maine,
of which Domfront has ever since been part of Normandy.
But before long King Henry got jealous of William's power,
and he was now always ready to give help to any Norman
rebels. Men in France began again to say that Normandy
was a land cut off from France, and that France should be
made again to reach to the sea as of old. And the other
neighbouring princes were jealous of him as well as the
King. His neighbours in Britanny, Anjou, Chartres, and
Ponthieu, were all against him. But the great Duke was
able to hold his own against them all, and before long to
make a great addition to his dominions.
D 2
$6 THE YOUTH OF DUKE WILLIAM.
7. Duke William's Wars with Prance. — The wars
between Normandy and France are very important, because
they have so great a bearing on English history. There
was no quarrel between England and France as long as
Normandy lay between them. But France and Normandy
had many quarrels and wars; sa, when the same prince
ruled in England and in Normandy, England was dragged
into the quarrels of Normandy, and there grew up a rivalry
between England and France which went on after Nor-
mandy was conquered by France. These wars therefore
between Duke William and King Henry are really the begin-
ning of the long wars between England and France. King
Henry invaded Normandy three times. The first time, in
1053, the King came to help a kinsman of the Duke's, Wil-
liam Count of Arques near Dieppe, where the castle with
a very deep ditch is still to be seen. This time the French
army was caught in an ambush and was utterly routed. In
this battle was killed Ingelram Count of Ponthieu, which
made room for the accession of his brother Count Guy. The
next year, 1054, King Henry came again with a much
greater army, gathered from his own kingdom and from the
dominions of many of the other princes of Gaul. They
came in two great divisions, to attack Normandy on both
sides of the Seine. That which came in on the right bank
was utterly cut to pieces in the town of Mortemer, which
they had occupied and where the Normans attacked them
by night. Then the Duke sent a messenger who crossed to
the other side of the river where the King's own army was,
where he climbed a tree and shouted to them in the dark-
ness to go bury their friends who were dead at Mortemer.
So they were seized with a panic and fled. In this battle the
new Count of Ponthieu, Guy, was taken prisoner, and was
not let go till he became Duke William's man for his county.
William's wars with France. 37
Peace was now made with France, and Duke William was
allowed to make some conquests at the expense of Anjou.
But very soon France and Anjou were again allied against
Normandy. In 1058 King Henry made his last invasion.
This time the French army was cut off by a sudden attack at
the ford of Varaville near the Dive. All these campaigns
show that William, who could fight so well in a pitched
battle, was no less skilful in all kinds of cunning enterprises.
Soon after this, in 1060, both King Henry and Geoffrey of
Anjou died. William was now safe from all attacks on that
side, all the more so as the new King of the French, Philip,
was a child, and the Regent was William's own father-in-law
Count Baldwin of Flanders.
8. The Conquest of Maine. — Thus William, who in
some sort conquered his own Normandy at Val-es-dunes,
did in some sort also conquer France at Mortemer and
Varaville. But he had not yet enlarged his dominions,
except at Domfront and Ambrieres and one or two other
points on the frontier towards Maine. He was presently
able to win the whole county. And this part of William's
life should be carefully studied, because his conquest of
Maine is strikingly like his conquest of England. In both
cases he won a land against the will of its people, and yet
with some show of legal right. Maine had had counts of
its own, some of them famous men, as were also many of
the bishops of the great city of Le Mans ; the citizens too
were stout and jealous of their freedom. But latterly the
land of Maine had come under the power of Geoffrey of
Anjou. On Geoffrey's death, the lawful Count Herbert, to
get back his county, commended himself to William, and
they settled that William's son Robert should marry Herbert's
sister Margaret, and that Maine should pass to their
descendants. This was something like Edward's promise of
38 THE YOUTH OF DUKE WILLIAM.
the English crown to William. In 1063 Herbert died child-
less, and William claimed the county on behalf of his son,
though he and Margaret were not yet married. But the
people of Maine chose for their count Walter Count of
Mantes, who had married Count Herbert's aunt Biota. He
was the son of King Edward's sister Godgifu and brother of
Ralph of Hereford. This was like the English people
choosing Harold. Then William made war on Maine, and
occupied the county bit by bit, till the city surrendered and
Walter submitted to him. Soon after this Walter and Biota
died ; William's enemies said that he poisoned them, which is
not in the least likely. But from this time he ruled over Maine
as well as over Normandy. We shall see that its brave
people revolted more than once against both him and his
sons. But the conquest of Maine raised William's power and
fame to a higher pitch than it reached at any other time
before his conquest of England. And, soon after the con-
quest of Maine, the affairs of Normandy and England, which
have stayed apart ever since William's visit to Edward, begin
to be joined together. It is time then to go back and see
what had been happening meanwhile in England.
CHAPTER V.
Harold Earl and King.
1. The Return of Godwine and Harold. — When
Duke William paid his visit to King Edward in 1052, God-
wine and all his family, save only the Lady Edith, were in
banishment, and the Normans were in full power in the
land. But before long the English were longing to have
Godwine back again. Men soon began to tire of the King's
foreign favourites, who, it seemed, could not even defend the
land against the Welsh. For the Welsh King Gruffydd came
into Herefordshire and smote the Normans who held
Richard's Castle. Men sent to ask Godwine to come back ;
he prayed the King to let him come back, and he got Count
Baldwin with whom he was staying and also the King of the
French to ask for him; but the King's favourites would not
let him hearken. Then, in 1052, Godwine made up his
mind to come back without the King's leave, as he knew that
no Englishman was likely to fight against him. He there-
fore set sail from Flanders, and Harold and Leofwine set sail
from Dublin. The crews of their ships must have been
Irish Danes, which perhaps made Englishmen afraid of them.
For, when they landed at Porlock in Somerset, the men of
the land withstood them, and Harold and Leofwine beat
them in a battle and harried the neighbourhood. But when
Godwine came to southern England, no man withstood his
coming, but in most parts the folk joined him willingly, say-
40 HAROLD EARL AND KING.
ing that they would live and die with him. The King got a
fleet against him ; but the crews had no heart, and the fleet
was scattered before Godwine came. At last Godwine's ships
and Harold's met, and they sailed up the Thames together,
and came before London on September 14. The citizens then
said that what the Earl would they would ; the King and his
earls brought up an army and another fleet, but the men
would not fight against Earl Godwine. Then peace was
made ; it was agreed that an assembly should be held the
next day to settle everything. Then Godwine landed, having
come back without shedding of blood. Then fear came on
all the Normans who were in and near London, and they
fled hither and thither. Specially the Norman Archbishop
Robert and Ulf Bishop of Dorchester cut their way out of
the city, slaying as they went, and went beyond sea, and
never came back to England.
2. The Restoration of Godwine. — The next day the
assembly met, and voted that Godwine and all his family
should be restored to all their goods and honours. It was
voted also that all the Normans who had misled the King,
especially Archbishop Robert, who was gone already,
should be banished. So Godwine and Harold got back
their earldoms, and the Lady Edith came back from her
monastery ; only Swegen did not come back ; for he had
repented him of his sins and gone barefoot on a pil-
grimage to Jerusalem, and had died on the way back, about
the time that his father and brothers came home. Of
the King's Norman friends some were allowed to stay, and
Bishop William of London was allowed to keep his bishopric ;
but from this time no more Normans got bishoprics or other
great offices. And the English Bishop Stigand got the arch-
bishopric of Canterbury instead of Robert. This is a thing
to be specially remembered; for it was made a charge
THE RETURN OF GODWINE. 4 1
against Stigand, Godwine, Harold, and the whole English
nation that Robert had been driven from his archbishopric
and Stigand put in his place, without the authority of the
Pope, but merely by a vote of the English assembly. The
Popes therefore never acknowledged Stigand as lawful
archbishop, and though he kept the archbishopric till four
years after William's coming, many people in England seem
to have been afraid to have any great ecclesiastical ceremony
done by him. Bishops commonly went to be consecrated by
the Pope, or else by the Archbishop of York. It is easy to
see how Duke William was able to turn all this to his own
ends.
3. The Death of Godwine. — At the Easter-tide of
the next year, April 15, 1053, Earl Godwine died. He
was seized with a fit while at the King's table, and died
three days after. The Normans told strange tales about
his death, but that is the simple story in our own Chroni-
cles. Then his son Harold succeeded him as Earl of the
West-Saxons, and was the chief ruler of England during
the remaining thirteen years of Edward's reign. There is
no sign of any dispute between the King and the Earl,
though Edward's chief favourite was not Harold, but his
younger brother Tostig. The King was allowed to have
his Norman friends about him in offices of his court, but not
to set them over the kingdom. Bishoprics were given either
to Englishmen or to men from Lorraine, that is, we should
now say, from Belgium, who could most likely speak both
Low-Dutch and French. The King's nephew Ralph and his
friend Odda kept their earldoms as long as they lived ; but,
as earldoms fell vacant, they were given to men of the two
great families of Godwine and Leofric. jElfgar son of
Leofric succeeded Harold in East-Anglia. In 1055 Siward
of Northumberland died, and his earldom was given to
42 HAROLD EARL AND KING.
Tostig the son of God wine. And when in 1057 the Earls
Leofric and Ralph died, the earldoms were parted out again.
JElfgar took his father's earldom of Mercia ; only Ralph's
earldom of Hereford, which needed specially to be guarded
against the Welsh, was added to Harold's earldom. Godwine's
son Gyrth succeeded JElfgar in East-Anglia, and his other
son Leofwine got Kent and the other shires round London.
Thus the greater part of England was under the rule of the
house of Godwine, and what was not remained under the
house of Leofric; for when JElfgar died, his son Edwin
succeeded him.
4. The Scottish and Welsh Wars. — These later years
of Edward's reign, in which Harold was truly the ruler of
England, were marked by several stirring events. Thus
there was a war with Scotland, where the crown had been
more than once disputed between two families. The pre-
sent king Macbeth had come to the crown after a battle
in which Duncan the former king w r as killed. Duncan was
a kinsman of Earl Siward, who therefore wished to restore his
son Malcolm. In 1054 Siward entered Scotland, defeated
Macbeth, and declared Malcolm king ; but the war went
on for four years longer, till Macbeth and his son were
killed and Malcolm got the whole kingdom. Then there
were several wars with the Welsh, under their last great king
Gruffydd son of Llywelyn. In 1055 EarliElfgar was banished;
he then joined Gruffydd in an invasion of Herefordshire.
Earl Ralph went out to meet him ; but either he only knew
the French way of righting or he liked it best. So he made
the English go into battle on horseback, to which they were
not used, and they were therefore defeated. jElfgar and
Gruffydd then burned and sacked Hereford ; but Earl Harold
came and fortified the city afresh. Peace was made with
Gruffydd, and iElfgar got his earldom back again. Gruffydd
SCOTTISH AND WELSH WARS. 43
presently made war again, but he lost part of his lands at the
next peace. He seems to have always kept up his connexion
with JElfgar and his family, and he married JElfgar's daughter
Ealdgyth. At last in 1062 his ravages could no longer be
borne, and it was determined to subdue him altogether. The
next year Earl Harold waged a great campaign in Wales, in
which, the better to fight among the mountains, he made the
English take to the Welsh way of fighting, and so made all
the Welsh submit. Gruffydd was presently killed by his own
people, and Earl Harold gave Wales to two princes, Bleddyn
and Rhiwallon, to hold as the King's men. These Welsh
and Scottish wars make up nearly all that happened between
England and other lands during this time. There was peace
with Normandy ; but Duke William paid no more visits to
his cousin the King. Of a visit which Earl Harold made to
him we shall speak presently.
5. The Succession to the Crown. — All this time men
must have been thinking who should be king whenever
King Edward should die. By English law, when the king
died, the Wise Men chose the next king. But they chose
from the kingly house, and, if the last king left a son of an
age to rule, he was almost always chosen. Indeed, if he
were actually the son of a king, born after his father was
crowned, he had a special right to be chosen. But the
crown had never been given to a woman, nor does it seem
that the son of a king's daughter had any claim above
another man. But it was held that, though the crown could
not pass by will, yet some weight ought to belong to the
wishes of the late King. Now King Edward had no
children, and the only man in the kingly house was his
nephew Edward, the son of his elder brother Edmund
Ironside. This is he who had been sent away as a child
in Cnut's time. He was now living in Hungary, with his
44 HAROLD EARL AND KING.
wife and three children, Edgar, Margaret, and Christina.
King Edward in 1054 sent for him to come to England,
doubtless meaning that he should succeed him. This shows
that he had quite given up all thought of being succeeded
by his Norman cousin. Edward the iEtheling — that is, the
king's son, as son of Edmund Ironside — came to England
in 1057; but he sickened and died soon after he landed.
His son Edgar was quite a child, and was not a king's son.
Moreover he was not born in the land, and he could hardly
have been much of an Englishman. Men had therefore to
think who should be king if King Edward died before
Edgar was grown up. One can fancy that the King might
have wished to leave the crown to his nephew Earl Ralph ;
but, though he was the King's nephew, he was not of the
kingly house, and he was not an Englishman. Ralph too
died the same year. We can hardly doubt that from this
time men began to think whether a time might not come
when they should have to choose a king not of the kingly
house. From this time Earl Harold seems to hold a special
place, and to be spoken of in a special way. His name is
joined with the King's name in a way which is not usual, and
he is even called Subregulus or Under-king. All this looks as
if the thought of choosing him king whenever Edward should
die was already in men's minds.
6. Earl Harold's Church at Waltham. — In those
days almost every great man, both in England and in Nor-
mandy, thought it his duty to make some great gift to the
Church, commonly to found or enrich some monastery,
lo build or rebuild its great church or minster. Many
monasteries were founded and churches built at this time
in Normandy by Duke William and his barons. And it
was the same in England. King Edward's great business
was to rebuild and enrich the minster of Saint Peter on the
HAROLD'S CHURCH AT WALTHAM. 45
:
isle of Thorney in the Thames, which, as standing west from
the great church of London, the church of Saint Paul, was
| known as the West Minster. So the Lady Edith, Earl
Leofric and his wife Godgifu, Earl Siward, Earl Odda, and
many bishops and abbots, were busy at this time building
churches and founding monasteries. Earl Godwine is the
only great man of the time of whom we hear nothing of the
kind. Earl Harold, on the other hand, was as bountiful as
any of them, only his bounty went, not to the monks, but to
the secular clergy. These were those clergy who were not,
like the monks, bound by special vows in their own persons,
but only by the general law of the Church. They were the
parish priests and the canons of cathedral and collegiate
churches ; only in England several cathedral churches were
now served by monks, and more were afterwards. For the
monks were much more in fashion just now ; Earl Harold
however, when he founded a great church, placed in it not
monks but secular canons. This was at Waltham in Essex.
A church had been founded there in Cnut's days by his
banner-bearer Tofig the Proud, who put in it a rood or cross
which had been brought from Leodgaresburh (afterwards
called Montacute) in Somerset, and which was thought to
work wonders. Harold now rebuilt Tofig's church on a
greater scale; and, whereas Tofig had founded only two
priests, Harold raised the number to twelve, one of whom
was Dean, and another Childmasier \ Earl Harold had through
his whole life a special reverence for the Holy Cross of
Waltham, and in battle the war-cry of his immediate following
was " Holy Cross."
7. Harold and William. — The Duke of the Normans
and the Earl of the West-Saxons were thus both of them
winning fame and power, each of them on his own side of
the sea. They were beyond all doubt the foremost men, the
46 HAROLD EARL AND KING.
one in England, the other in Gaul. But there was a differ-
ence between their positions which arose out of the different
political conditions of England and Gaul. Harold was a sub-
ject of the King of the English, his chief adviser and minister,
the ruler of a great part of the kingdom under the King. But
he was still a subject, though a subject who had some hope of
being one day chosen king over his own land and people.
William could not be called a subject of the King of the French ;
he was a sovereign prince, ruling his own land, and owing at
most an external homage to the king. But he had no chance,
as Harold had, of ever becoming a king in his own land ; his
only chance of becoming a king was by winning, either by
force or by craft, the crown of England. Harold and William
were therefore rivals. By this time they must have known that
they were rivals. But as yet nothing had happened to make
any open enmity between them. They could hardly have met
face to face ; but each must have carefully watched the course
of the other. And before long they were to meet face to face ;
but there are so many stories as to the way in which their
meeting came about that it is very hard to say anything at all
certain about it. Harold made a journey on the continent in
1058, when he made the pilgrimage to Rome. And it is said
that, on his way back, he carefully studied the state of things
among the princes of Gaul. At that time William's chief
enemies, Henry of France, William of Aquitaine, and Geoffrey
of Anjou, were all alive, and it may be that Harold had some
schemes of alliance with some of them, in case William
should ever put forth any dangerous claims. But of the
details of this journey we know nothing. The Norman
writers always said that Harold at some time or other took
an oath to William, which he broke by accepting the English
crown. But they tell the story in so many ways, with so
many differences of time, place, and circumstances, that we
HAROLD IN NORMANDY. 47
cannot be certain as to any details. The English writers
say nothing about the story ; but the fact that they do say
nothing about it is the best proof that there is some truth in
it. For there are many Norman slanders against Harold
which they carefully answer ; so we may be sure that, if they
could have altogether denied this story, if they could have
said that Harold never took any oath to William at all. they
would gladly have said so. We may therefore believe that
Harold did take some kind of oath to William, which oath
William was able to say that Harold had broken. But further
than this we can say nothing for certain. All that we can do
therefore is to tell the story in that way which, out of the
many ways in which it is told, seems the least unlikely.
8. The Oath of Harold. — It would seem then that, most
likely in the year 1064, after the Welsh war, Harold was sailing
in the Channel, most likely with his brother Wulfnoth and his
sister ^Elfgifu. They were wrecked on the coast of Ponthieu,
where Count Guy, according to the cruel custom of the time
towards shipwrecked people, shut up Harold in prison, in
hopes of getting a ransom. But the Earl contrived to send a
message to Guy's lord Duke William, and the Duke at once
sent to release him, paying Guy a large ransom. William then
took Harold to his court at Rouen and kept him there as his
guest in all friendship. Harold even consented, in return
doubtless for the kindness which the Duke had shown him,
to help William in a war which he was carrying on with the
Breton Count Conan, a war in which William and Harold
together took the town of Dinan. At some stage of this
visit Harold took the oath. It seems most likely that the
oath really was simply to marry one of William's daughters,
but that the oath was accompanied by an act of homage
to William. Such acts of homage were often done in return
for any favour, without much being meant by them ; and
48 HAROLD EARL AND KING.
Harold had just received a great favour from William in his
release from Guy's prison. The act might be understood
in two ways ; but it is plain that William would have a great
advantage when he came to claim the crown, from the fact
that Harold had in any way become his man. All kinds
of other stories, some strange, some quite impossible, are
told. Harold is made to promise, not only to secure the
crown to William on Edward's death, but to give up the
castle of Dover and other places in England to be held by
Norman garrisons. And there is one specially famous tale
how William tricked Harold into swearing quite unwittingly
in an unusually solemn way. He was made, so the story ran,
to put his hand on a chest, and it was shown to him after-
wards that this chest was full of the relics of saints. And those
who tell this story are much shocked at the supposed crime
of Harold, but seem to see no harm in the trick played by
William. The stories all contradict one another ; but they
all agree in one thing, namely in making Harold promise to
marry a daughter of William. And this promise he certainly
did not keep. After all this, Harold went back to England,
leaving, as it would seem, his brother Wulfnoth as a hostage
for fulfilment of his promise, whatever that promise was.
9. The Revolt of Northumberland. — It will be re-
membered that Tostig the son of Godwine had been made
Earl of the Northumbrians on the death of Siward in 1055.
Beside Northumberland, his earldom took in the outlying
shires of Northampton and Huntingdon. The Norman
tales speak of Harold and Tostig as having been enemies
from their boyhood ; but there is nothing to make us think
that there is any truth in this, and Tostig helped Harold
in his Welsh wars. Tostig had also some wars of his
own with Malcolm of Scotland, who invaded Northum-
berland, although he and Tostig were sworn brothers.
THE REVOLT OF NORTHUMBERLAND. 49
Tostig also, like Harold, made the pilgrimage to Rome,
and, when he and his people were robbed, he used some
very bold language to Pope Nicolas. In his own earl-
dom he had a fierce people to rule, and he ruled them
fiercely; beginning with stern justice, he gradually sank
into oppression. He seems also to have given offence by
staving away from his earldom with the King, with whom
he was a great favourite, and handing Northumberland
over to the rule of one Copsige. At last, when he had put
several of the chief men to death and had laid on a very
heavy tax, the whole people revolted. This was in October,
1065. They held an assembly at York, in which they declared
Tostig deposed, and chose Morkere the son of JElfgar to
be their earl. Under him Oswulf, a descendant of the old
earls, was to rule in Bernicia. They rifled Tostig's hoard ;
they killed his followers and friends, and marched to
Northampton, harrying the land as they went. There
Morkere's brother Edwin, the Earl of the Mercians, met
them with the men of his earldom and a great body of
Welshmen. Thus half England was in revolt. Tostig
meanwhile was hunting with the King in Wiltshire. The
King was eager to make war on the Northumbrians; but
Earl Harold wished to make peace, even at the expense
of his brother. The King at last gave him full power to
settle matters ; so he held an assembly at Oxford, and, as he
saw that it was hopeless to try to reconcile Tostig and the
Northumbrians, he granted their demands. Peace was
made, and the laws of Cnut were renewed ; that is to say,
it was decreed that Northumberland should be as well ruled
as it had been in Cnut's day. Morkere was acknowledged
as Earl of the Northumbrians ; but Northamptonshire and
Huntingdonshire were given to Waltheof the son of Siward.
And Oswulf, one of the blood of the old Northumbrian earls,
E
50 HAROLD EARL AND KING.
ruled, seemingly under Morkere, in the northern part of the
earldom, that which was now beginning to be specially called
Northumberland. Tostig wcs banished and sought shelter
in Flanders. By this revolution the house of Leofric became
again at least as powerful in England as the house of
God wine, setting aside the personal influence of Harold.
10. The Death of Edward. — We have now come
near to the end of King Edward's reign. All this time
he had been building the great church of Saint Peter at
Westminster, close by his palace, and he was just able to
finish it before he died. The Wise Men came together
at Westminster for the Christmas feast of 1065 ; the King
wore his crown as usual ; but he fell sick before the hallow-
ing of the new minster, which was done on Innocents' Day.
Before the feast was over, on January 5th, 1066, he died,
the last King of the male line of Cerdic. Before he died,
he uttered some strange words which were taken to be
a prophecy, and which were in aftertimes understood of
the Conquest of England and of the succession of the
kings who followed. But his last act was to recommend
the Wise Men to choose Earl Harold as king in his stead.
The next day, the feast of the Epiphany, King Edward
was buried in his own church of Saint Peter. He had built
it specially to be the crowning-place and the burying-place
of kings. It was put to both uses within a few days after it
was hallowed.
11. The Election and Coronation of Harold. — And
now the time had come for which men must have been
looking so long. King Edward was dead; a new king
had to be chosen, and there was no one in the kingly
house fit to be chosen. As the Christmas feast was not yet
over, the Wise Men were still gathered together at West-
minster ; so that they could choose at once. It is not clear
HAROLD CHOSEN KING. 51
whether anybody in England knew anything about Harold's
oath to William ; if anything was known of it, it must have
been held to be of no strength. Nor do we know whether
the claims either of William or of Edgar were spoken
of or thought of. The thing which is certain is that, as
soon as Edward was dead, the assembly met, and, accord-
ing to the late king's wishes, chose Earl Harold King.
The next day he was hallowed to king in the new church
of Saint Peter ; that is, he was crowned and anointed, and
he swore the oath to his people. As men had doubts
whether Stigand of Canterbury was a lawful archbishop,
ihe rite was done by Ealdred Archbishop of York. Of this
there is no real doubt, though some of the Norman writers
say that Harold was crowned by Stigand. That is, they
wish to imply that he was not lawfully crowned. For in
those days the crowning of a king was not a mere pageant.
It was his actual admission to the kingly office, just like the
consecration of a bishop. Till he was crowned, he might
have, by birth or election, the sole right to become king; but
he did not become king till the oil was poured on his head
and the crown set upon it. So men might argue that, if the
rite was done by an archbishop who had no good right to
his see, the coronation would not be valid. All this is worth
marking, as showing the feelings of the time. But there is
no doubt that Harold came to the crown quite regularly,
that he was recommended by Edward on his death-bed,
that he was regularly chosen by the assembly, and regularly
crowned by Archbishop Ealdred. If things had gone on
quietly, Harold would most likely have been the first of
a new line of kings. This event in our history is very much
like what had happened among the Franks three hundred
years before. The last King of the house of the Merwings
was deposed, and Pippin, the father of the Emperor Charles
E 2
52 HAROLD EARL AND KING.
the Great, was chosen King in his stead. Only in England
there was no need to depose Edward, but merely to choose
Harold when he died. And in one very important point the
change of the kingly house among the English was quite
unlike the same change among the Franks. For the Pope
specially approved of the election of Pippin, while the Pope
was very far from approving of the election of Harold.
12. King Harold in Northumberland. — One of the
English Chronicles says that the nine months of the reign
of Harold were a time of " little stillness/' So it truly
was; he was hard at work from the very beginning. At
what time Duke William first sent to challenge the crown
is not certainly known; but it is not likely to have been
very long after Harold's crowning. Of this however we
shall best speak in another chapter. But the new king
found at once that part of his kingdom was not ready
to acknowledge him. This was Northumberland, to the
people of which land he had lately shown so much favour
by confirming their deposition of his own brother, and their
choice of Morkere as their earl. Harold had indeed been
crowned by their own archbishop, and their chief men must
have acknowledged him along with the rest of the Wise
Men ; but we should remember that at an assembly in Lon-
don, though there would be many men present from Wessex,
Mercia, and East-Anglia, there could not be many from
Northumberland. This would indeed be true of almost every
assembly that was held at all ; for the three usual places were
Winchester, Westminster, and Gloucester, all of them places
convenient in turn for different parts of southern England,
but none of them convenient for Northumberland. But the
change of the kingly house was an act of greater weight
than any other, and the Northumbrians might have some
kind of ground for saying that the choice had been made
HAROLD IN NORTHUMBERLAND. 53
without their consent. How far the brother earls Edwin
and Morkere had anything to do with stirring up discontent
we cannot tell ; but their doings both before and after look
like it. Anyhow the Northumbrians refused to acknowledge
King Harold. The King now did just as he had done a few
months before. He did not think of force; but he went
himself to York, taking with him his friend Wulfstan Bishop
of Worcester, a most holy man, who was afterwards called
Saint Wulfstan. At York he held an assembly, and the
speeches of the King and the Bishop persuaded the North-
humbrians to submit without any fighting. And it was most
likely at this time, and by way of further pleasing the North-
humbrians, that King Harold married Ealdgyth the sister
of Edwin and Morkere and widow of the Welsh King
Gruffydd. He thus made it quite impossible that he could
marry Duke William's daughter. And the Norman writers
do not fail to speak against the marriage on that score, and
further to blame him for marrying the widow of a man whom
he had killed. Yet Harold had simply overcome Gruffydd
in fair warfare, and he had nothing to do with his death,
which was the deed of Gruffydd' s own people.
13. The Comet. — King Harold came back from York to
Westminster, and there kept his Easter feast. The usual place
was Winchester ; but London was now growing in importance,
and specially so during these few months of Harold's reign.
For he was busy the whole time in making ready for the
defence of all southern and eastern England, and for this
London was the best head-quarters. He did not appoint
any earl of the West-Saxons, but kept W r essex in his own
hands, while the south-eastern shires formed the earldoms
of his brothers Gyrth and Leofwine. We read mtch of his
good government and good laws, which of course simply
means that he went on doing as king as he had done as
54 HAROLD EARL AND KING.
earl. For any making of new laws he had no time. But
he seems to have given what heed he could to ecclesiastical
appointments and reform ; for it was specially needful for
him to get the clergy on his side. One thing specially
marked this Easter assembly. A most brilliant comet was
seen, which is recorded by all manner of writers both in
England and elsewhere. In those days, when astronomy
was little known, men believed that a comet was sent as a
sign that some great event was going to happen. So now
men gazed at the hairy star, and wondered what would come
of it. By this time every one must have known something
of the great struggle which was coming. The comet, it was
thought, foretold the fall of some great power; but they
could not yet tell whether it foretold the fall of Harold or
the fall of William.
14. Summary. — We have thus seen how, after the death
of his father, Harold, as Earl of the West-Saxons, gradually
became chief ruler of England, and how the path was opened
to him to become king on Edward's death. We have seen
how he made some kind of oath to Duke William which might
be said to be broken by his accepting the crown. We have
seen how he was nevertheless regularly named, chosen, and
crowned king, and how he got possession of the whole
kingdom. We have now to see what was all this while
going on beyond sea, what preparations his rival Duke
William was making, and what other dangers were threat-
ening England from other quarters.
CHAPTER VI.
The Two Harolds.
1. Tostig's Invasion. — Harold and the English people
must have known very well by this time the danger which
threatened them from Normandy. They did not perhaps
think so much of another danger which threatened them
at the same time. Besides Duke William, another foe
was arming against them, and, as it turned out, it was
this other foe who struck the first blow. It was indeed
a time of little stillness when men had to guard against two
invasions at once. Or rather it was found to be impossible
to guard against both of them. While King Harold
was doing all that man could do to make the southern
coast of England safe against the Norman, another enemy
whom he did not look for came against him in the north.
This was the famous King of the Northmen, Harold son
of Sigurd, called Hardrada, that is Hard-rede, the stern
in counsel. King Harold of Norway came before Duke
William of Normandy. And yet King Harold of Norway
was not the first to come. After all it was the south of
England which was first invaded, but it was by a much
smaller enemy than by either the great king or the great
duke. This was no other than the banished Earl Tostig.
He seems to have been trying to get help anywhere to put
him back in his earldom, even at the cost of a foreign con-
quest of England. Some say that he had been to Nor-
56 THE TWO HAROLDS.
mandy to stir up Duke William, some that he had been to
Norway to stir up King Harold. The accounts are not easy
to put together. But it is certain that by May he had got
together some ships from somewhere or other, and with
them he came to Wight. He then plundered along the south
coast ; but by this time King Harold of England was getting
ready his great fleet and army to withstand Duke William.
So King Harold marched to the coast, and Tostig sailed
away. He then sailed to Lindesey and plundered there.
But the Earls Edwin and Morkere drove him away, and
he found shelter in Scotland with King Malcolm.
2. Harold Hardrada. — Harold of Norway was the
most famous warrior of Northern Europe. His youth had
been passed in banishment ; so he took service under
the Eastern Emperors, who now kept a Scandinavian
guard called the Warangians. In that force he did many
exploits, specially by helping in the war, when in 1038
the Imperial general George Maniakes won back a large
part of Sicily from the Saracens. It is even said that he
w r aged war with the Saracens in Africa, and he then made
the pilgrimage to Jerusalem, which he is said to have not
done without fighting. And there is a stone at Venice,
which was brought from Peiraieus the haven of Athens, on
which is graven the name of Harold the Tall, and it has
been thought that this records some exploits of Harold
Hardrada there. And many strange tales are told of him, of
his killing dragons and lions, carrying off princesses, and the
like. In short he is one of the great heroes of Northern
romance. But there is no doubt that he came back to
Scandinavia, that he got the kingdom of Norway which had
been held by his forefathers, and waged a long war with
Swegen of Denmark. Now at the time of Edward's death
and our Harold's election the North was at peace. The
HAROLD HARDRADA. 57
great warrior was perhaps tired of peace ; and, either of nis
own thought or because he was stirred up by Tostig, he
began to plan an expedition against England. Whether
Tostig had stirred him up or not, it is certain that, when he
set out, Tostig joined him, bowed to him and became his
man, and helped him in his warfare against his own brother
and his own country.
3. Preparations of Harold of England.— All the sum-
mer of the year 1066 King Harold of England was doing
all that man could do to put southern England in a state
to withstand any attack from Normandy. If he knew at
all that King Harold of Norway was coming, it was still
his main business, as he could not be everywhere at once,
to defend that part of the kingdom which was under his
own immediate rule and which was exposed to the more
dangerous enemy. The care of the North he had to leave
to its own earls, Edwin and Morkere, who were now his
brothers-in-law, and who, of all men in the island, were the
most concerned to keep Tostig out of it. King Harold then
got together the greatest fleet and army that had ever been
seen in England, and with them he kept watching the coasts.
This was very hard work to do in those days. For only a
small part of his army, called his own housecarls, were
regular paid soldiers ; the greater part were the people of
the land, whose duty it was to fight for the land when they
were called upon. Such an army was ready enough to come
together and fight a battle ; but it was hard to keep them
for a long time under arms without fighting. And it was
also very hard to feed them, for of course they could not be
allowed to plunder in their own land. The wonderful thing
is that King Harold was able to keep them together so long
as from May to September. All that time they were waiting
for Duke William, and Duke William never came. Early in
58 THE TWO HAROLDS.
September they could hold out no longer; there was no
more to eat, and every man wanted to go home and reap his
own field. So the great fleet and army broke up, and
the land was left without any special defence. And in
the course of the month in which they broke up, both
enemies came. In that very September both King Harold
of Norway and Duke William of Normandy landed in Eng-
land. But King Harold of Norway came the first, and in-
deed the war with him was over before Duke William crossed
the sea.
4. The Voyage of Harold of Norway. — Whether then
he was stirred up by Tostig or whether he set forth of his
own will, King Harold of Norway got him together a mighty
fleet, and set sail for England, meaning to win the land and
reign there. But men said that he and his friends saw
strange dreams and visions on the way which forebode evil
to the host. One saw the host of England march to the
shore, and before them went a wolf, and a witch-wife rode
on the wolf, and she fed the wolf with carcases of men, and,
as soon as he had eaten one, she had another ready to give
him. It is well to mark these stories, which come out of the
old tales and songs of the Northmen, as they show what
manner of men they were who now came against England
for the last time. The whole story of Harold Hardrada is
told in one of the grandest of the old Northern tales, but,
when we come to examine it by our own Chronicles, we see
that only parts of it can be true. But, notwithstanding the
bad omens, the great fleet sailed on, and reached the isles of
Shetland and Orkney. These were then a Scandinavian
earldom, and its earls, Paul and Erling, joined the Nor-
wegian fleet. It was joined too by other Scandinavian
princes from Iceland and Ireland, by King Malcolm of
Scotland, and at last, when King Harold of Norway reached
THE NORWEGIAN INVASION. 59
the Tyne, by the English traitor Tostig. Whether by agree-
ment or not, he met the Norwegian fleet with whatever fol-
lowing he had, he became the man of Harold Hardrada, and
agreed to go on with him against his brother Harold of
England. They sailed along the coast of Yorkshire, as
Deira was now beginning to be called ; they ravaged Cleve-
land, and met with no resistance till they reached Scar-
borough. There the Northmen climbed the hills above the
town, and threw down great burning masses of wood to sec
it on fire. Then they sailed on; the men of Holderness
fought against them in vain ; they entered the mouth of the
Humber; the Northumbrians fled before them, and sailed,
as the small ships of those times could, a long way up the
country, up the river Wharfe to Tadcaster. So the Nor-
wegian fleet was able to sail up the Ouse towards York
without hindrance. They reached Riccall, a place about
nine miles from York by land, but much further by the river.
There the host disembarked ; some were left to guard the
ships, while the main body of the army, with Harold Hardrada
and Tostig at its head, set forth to march upon York.
5. The Battle of Fulford. — It would seem that the
two brother earls who ruled on either side of the Humber
had taken very little care to defend their coasts ; but they
were no cowards when actual fighting came. They were
now together at York; and when the Northmen came
near, they marched out with whatever troops they had, and
met Harold of Norway at Fulford, two miles from York,
on September 20th, 1066. Events now press so fast on
one another that we must remember the days of the
week, and the battle of Fulford was fought on Wednesday.
Though Fulford is much nearer to York than to Riccall,
Harold of Norway got thither before the English earls, and
was able to choose his own ground. The battle was fought
6o THE TWO HAROLDS.
on a ridge of ground with the river on one side and a ditch
and a marsh on the other. On this side was the weakest
part, the right, of the Norwegian army; here Earl Morkere
charged, and pressed on for a while. But on the left King
Harold of Norway, with his royal banner the Landwaster be-
side him, drove all before him. The English presently fled,
and not a few, besides those who were slain with the sword,
were hurled into the river and into the ditch. The two earls,
with the remnant of their host, found shelter at York.
6. The Surrender of York. — York held out only
four days, and made terms with the enemy on Sunday.
An assembly was held, in which Harold Hardrada was
received as king, and it was agreed that the men of
Northumberland should follow him against southern Eng-
land. Hostages for the city were given at once, and
hostages for the shire were promised. It is plain that all
this was not according to the real wishes of the Northum-
brians; but one would think that Edwin and Morkere must
have been poor commanders, not to have held out a little
longer. The Norwegian army now marched to Stamford-
bridge, about eight miles north-east of York, on the river
Derwent. Thither the hostages were to be brought. It is
not very clear why they went away so far from York, and
still further from their ships at Riccall. Perhaps it was be-
cause there seems to have been a royal house near at Aid by,
of which either Tostig or Harold of Norway may have had a
fancy for taking possession at once. Anyhow the mass of
the army encamped at Stamfordbridge. There was a wooden
bridge there across the Derwent, and the host was scattered
on both sides of the river.
7. The March of King Harold of England. — The
men of York needed only to wait one day longer, and
they would not have had to bow to Harold of Norway.
HAROLD HARDRADA AT YORK. 6 J
For King Harold of England was on his march ; that very
Sunday when they surrendered he was in Yorkshire ; on
Monday morning he was in York itself. When the fleet
and army which had guarded the south coast had dispersed,
the King rode to London, and there he heard the news of
the coming of Harold of Norway. It is said that he was sick
at the time ; but he bore up as well as he could to get ready
his army. And the story ran that King Edward appeared
in the night to Abbot iEthelsige of Ramsey, and bade him go
to the King and tell him to be of good cheer and go forth
and smite the enemies of England. Now this story proves
something; for those who put it together could not have
looked on Harold as a perjurer or usurper or one undutiful
to King Edward, as the Normans said he was. Harold was
condemned by the Pope at Rome, and yet Englishmen, even
in after times, did not think the worse of him for that. So a
tale like this is worth telling. In any case King Harold got
ready his army, and pressed on as fast as he could. When
he left London, he could not have known of the battle of
Fulford ; but he would, hear the news on the way, and it
would make him press on yet faster. On Sunday, September
29th, he reached Tadcaster, and reviewed the fleet in the
Wharfe. The next morning he reached York. The whole
city received him gladly ; but he passed on through the city
at once to attack the enemy. The land between York and
Stamfordbridge lies so that an army coming from York could
get very near to Stamfordbridge without being seen. So we
read that King Harold of England and his host came un-
awares on King Harold of Norway and his host. And
then, on that same Monday, was fought the first of the two
great battles of this year, the fight of Stamfordbridge.
8. The Battle of Stamfordbridge. — The Norwegian
story has a grand tale to tell of the battle, which may be
62 THE TWO HAROLDS.
read in many books. But it cannot be true ; it must have
been made many years after. For it describes the English
army as made up chiefly of horsemen and archers, which
were just the forces which an English army of that time
had not. In after days, when Englishmen had taken to the
Norman way of fighting, there were English archers and
horsemen, and the story must have been written then. But
in those days Englishmen fought on foot; those who rode
to the field got down from their horses when the fighting
began. The heavy-armed first hurled their javelins, and
then they fought with their great axes, or sometimes with
swords. The sword was the older weapon; the axe had
come in under Cnut. The light-armed had javelins, slings,
any weapons they could get ; the bow was the rarest of all.
But though we cannot believe the Norwegian story, we know
something of the battle from our own Chroniclers, and there
are bits in one of our Latin w T riters, Henry of Huntingdon,
which are plainly translated from an English song. And
that song must have been made at the very time, for only a
few days later men had something else to think about besides
making songs about Stamfordbridge. In this way we learn
that the battle began on the right side of the Derwent, that
nearest to York. The English army came unawares on the
part of the Northmen who were on that side, who were not
in order nor fully armed. They were presently cut to pieces.
But meanwhile the main body on the other side had time to
form under King Harold of Norway and Earl Tostig, and
one valiant Northman kept the bridge against the whole ~
English host. He cut down forty men with his axe ; one of
the few archers in the English army shot an arrow at him in
vain ; at last a man went below the bridge and pierced him
from below through his harness. Then the English crossed,
and the real battle began, the fight of the two Harolds. The
BATTLE OF STAMFORDBRIDGE. 63
fight was long and fearful between two armies equally brave,
fighting in much the same way, and each led on by a great
captain. But in the end the English won a complete victory.
Harold of Norway and Tostig were both killed in the battle,
and the great mass of the Norwegian army was cut off.
Tostig was known by a mark on his body and was buried at
York. And King Harold of England, who had marched into
York from Tadcaster on the Monday morning, marched back
again to York from Stamfordbridge on the same Monday
evening, having overthrown the first of the two enemies who
threatened him. So the hostages for all Yorkshire were
never given to Harold of Norway.
9. The Days after the Battle. — The Norwegian
army had been cut off at Stamfordbridge; but the Nor-
wegian fleet was still in the Ouse at Riccall. There
were Olaf the son of Harold of Norway and the Earls of
Orkney. King Harold of England offered them peace ; so
they came to York and gave hostages, and sware oaths
that they would keep friendship towards England. Some
days afterwards the feast of victory was kept at York ; and
while the King was at the board, a messenger came who had
ridden as fast as he could from the south to say that the
second enemy was come. Duke William of Normandy had
landed in Sussex, and was harrying the land. He had indeed
landed three days after the fight of Stamfordbridge, Thurs-
day, September 28th, 1066. We must now go back and see
all that he had been doing since the crowning of King
Harold of England.
CHAPTER VII.
The Coming of Duke William.
1. Duke William's Claims. — Every one who knew
what had happened between William and Harold must
have known that after that Duke William would certainly
claim the English crown whenever King Edward died.
He would most likely have done so, even if Harold
had never sworn anything to him; but now that Harold
had sworn something, whatever it was, he was yet more
sure to press his claims than before. It is worth while to
stop and think what William's claim really was. The
truth is that he had no real claim whatever; but he was
able in a cunning way to put several things together,
each of which sounded like a claim. And so, by using one
argument to one set of people and another to another, he
was able to persuade most men out of England that he was
the lawful heir to the English crown, kept out of his right by
the wrong-doing of Harold. Each of his claims was really
very easy to answer ; but each was of a kind which was likely
to persuade somebody, and the whole list together sounded
like a very strong claim indeed. The real case was this.
The people of England had a right to choose whom they
would for their King, and they had not chosen William. It
was indeed usual to choose out of the one kingly house, and
Harold did not belong to that house. But then neither did
William. William indeed said that he was Edward's near
WILLIAM'S CLAIMS. 65
kinsman and ought to succeed him. And no doubt in lands
where the notion of electing kings was going out of memory,
where hereditary succession was coming in, but where the
rules of hereditary succession were not yet fully fixed, this
claim would have an effect on men's minds. But in truth
William had no more claim by inheritance than he had
by election. He was indeed Edward's kinsman through
Edward's mother Emma; but he was not of the house of
the Old-English kings, which alone could give him any pre-
ference for the crown above other men. And meanwhile
there was young Edgar, a nearer kinsman than William, and
who was of the old kingly house. And it is worth noticing
that, about a hundred years after, when the notion of heredi-
tary succession had taken root, men began to speak, very
often of Harold, and sometimes of William too, as wrong-
doers against Edgar. But at the time no one thought
of this. And according to modern law King Edward himself
would also have been a wrong-doer against Edgar; for by
modern law Edgar, the grandson of the elder brother,
would come before Edward the younger brother. But most
surely no one at the time thought of that either. Then
William said that Edward had left him the crown. Now
there can be little doubt that Edward had once made him
some kind of promise ; but a king of the English could not
leave his crown to any one ; he could at most recommend
to the Wise Men, and Edward had recommended Harold.
William in short had no kind of right to the crown, whether
by birth, bequest, or election. /But it was easy for him to
talk as if he had; and it was still easier to bring in all
manner of other things, which had nothing to do with the
matter, but which all helped to make a fair show. Harold
was his man who had forsworn himself against him. Harold
had done despite to the bones of the Norman saints. These
F
66 THE COMING OF DUKE WILLIAM.
might be Harold's own personal sins, but the English people,
hi nothing to do with them. But William found something
tc say against the English people also. They had, with
Harold's father at their head, murdered the J^theling Alfred,
William's cousin, and his Norman companions. They had,
Harold among them, driven ort many Normans, among
them Archbishop Robert, and had set up a schismatic arch-
bishop in his place. They were an ungodly people, who did
not show respect enough to the Pope ; he, Duke William,
would go and teach them better ways. And, if all other
arguments should fail, he could offer lands and honours in
England to all who would come and help him to conquer Eng-
land. William in short could show himself all things to all
men, from a pious missionary to a mere robber. But mark
that all this care to put himself right in men's eyes shows
that we have got out of the days of mere violence. When
the English entered Britain, when the Danes entered Eng-
land, when the Northmen settled in what was to be Nor-
mandy, they did not think of putting forth so many good
reasons for what they did as Duke William put forth now.
2. Duke William's Challenge. — All these arguments
sounded very well on the mainland ; but no one listened
to them in England. Yet it was not for w T ant of hearing
them. Duke William heard of Edward's death and of
Harold's election and coronation in one message ; and
before long he sent a challenge to the new King. As
we have no exact dates, we cannot tell for certain whether
this was before or after Harold's journey to Northumber-
land ; but anyhow it was early in his reign. Nor can we
say exactly what were the terms of the message. William
of course called on Harold to do whatever he had sworn
to do. But, as there are many stories as to what it was
that Harold had sworn to do, so there are as many
WILLIAM'S CHALLENGE. 6 J
stories, and indeed more, as to what it was that William
now called on him to do. Let him give up the king, a ;
let him hold it of William as his lord; let him be iri
of half of it under William; let him in any case marry
William's daughter; he had at all events promised to do
that. Now, if the messar* came after Harold had married
Ealdgyth, this last part must have been mockery. Indeed
the whole message must have been sent, not with any hope
or thought that Harold would do anything because of it, but
simply that William might say that he had given his enemy
every chance, and might thus seem to put himself yet more
in the right and Harold yet more in the wrong. For it is
needless to say that whatever William asked Harold refused.
As there are different stories about William's challenge, so
there are different stories about Harold's answer. In some
accounts he is made to give an answer which covers every-
thing. His oath was not binding, because it was not taken
freely. He could not give up his kingdom or hold it of
William, for the English people had given him the crown,
and none but they could take it from him. And as for
marrying William's daughter, he says in one account that
the daughter whom he had promised to marry was dead, in
another that an English king could not marry a foreign wife
without the consent of the Wise Men. He is not made to
say that he is married already. So the message may have
come before he married Ealdgyth, or it may be that that
answer would have seemed to the Normans to be only
making bad worse.
3. Duke William's Councils. — Nothing was now left
to William, if he wished for the English crown, but to try
and take it by force. His first business then was to see
what help he could get in his own duchy. He first got
together a small council of his immediate friends and
F 2
68 THE COMING OF DUKE WILLIAM.
kinsfolk; they said that they would help him themselves,
but that they could not answer for anybody else. Then
he gathered a larger council of all the barons of Normandy
at Lillebonne. Here there was great opposition. Many
men said that it was no part of their duty to their duke
to follow him beyond sea; many also said that the under-
taking was rash, and that Normandy was not able to con-
quer England. And in the end the assembly did not come
to any general vote; but William talked over the barons
one by one, till they all promised to help him ; each would
give so many ships and so many men. And when the thing
was once blazed abroad, men began to take it up eagerly,
and all Normandy was full of zeal for the undertaking. The
first thing to be done was to make a fleet ; so trees were cut
down and ships were built, and all the havens of Normandy
were busy with the shipbuilding all the summer. In the
course of August the fleet was ready. All the great men of
Normandy had made presents of ships. And by that time
men enough to fill them had flocked in both from Normandy
and from other lands.
4. Duke William's Negotiations. — Everything at this
time was as lucky for William as it was unlucky for Harold.
Harold had two enemies coming against him at once, and
he could not bear up against both. So a few years before,
if William had set out on such an undertaking as the con-
quest of England, he would have left his duchy open to
several enemies at once. Just now he had no one to fear.
All his old enemies were dead; King Henry of France,
Duke William of Aquitaine, and Count Geoffrey of Anjou.
We have seen that it is not unlikely that Harold had once
thought of alliances with some of these princes, in case
William had any designs on England. There was no
such chance now. The young King Philip of France was
William's preparations. 69
under the guardianship of William's father-in-law Baldwin of
Flanders. In Anjou there was a civil war. The only neigh-
bour likely to be dangerous was Conan of Britanny. He
died about this time in the Angevin war, and there is a tale
that William contrived to poison his bridle, his gloves, and
his hunting-horn. The strange thing is that it is a Norman
writer who mentions this, and that the Bretons say nothing
about it. But it was not like William to poison any one,
and it is certain that, next to his own subjects, no people
followed him so readily as the Bretons. To the King of
the French William sent an embassy; some even say that
he offered to hold England of him. At any rate he made
things safe on the side of France. And he sent to the young
King Henry of Germany, the son of the Emperor Henry.
Here England had, by the death of the Emperor, really lost a
friend, and not merely the enemy of an enemy. Neither of
these kings gave William any help ; but they did all that he
wanted ; they did nothing against him, and they did not hinder
their subjects from joining his army. But William's greatest
negotiation of all was with the Pope, Alexander the Second.
He tried to show, not only that Harold was a perjurer and
a sinner against the saints, whom the Pope ought to punish,
but also that his enterprise against England would tend
greatly to the advantage of the Roman Church. Discipline
should be better enforced in England, and the money which
was paid to the Pope, called Romescot or Peferpence, should
be more carefully paid. And besides all this, there were
men at Rome who could see how much the authority of the
Pope would gain, if it were once allowed that he had the
right to dispose of crowns or to judge between one claimant
of a crown and another. Some of the cardinals said that
the Church ought not to meddle in matters of blood or to
set Christians to fight against one another. But the voice of
70 THE COMING OF DUKE WILLIAM.
these just men was overruled, chiefly by the arguments of
Hildebrand the Pope's chief counsellor, who was then Arch-
deacon of Rome, and who was afterwards himself the great
Pope Gregory the Seventh. So Pope Alexander, seemingly
without hearing any one on the English side, ruled that
Harold was a perjured man, and that the cause of Duke
William was righteous. So he gave the Duke a hallowed
banner and a ring with a hair of Saint Peter. William was
thus able to attack England, her king, and her freedom, as if
he had been going forth on a holy war against the enemies
of the faith.
5. The Voyage of Duke William. — In the course of
August all was ready. The fleet was built and manned,
and the army was ready to cross into England. The
place of meeting was at the mouth of the Dive. The
number of ships and of men is very differently told us;
but the Norman poet Wace, whose father was there, says
that the number of ships was 696. They were only large
boats for transport, with a single mast and sail. When
they were come together at the Dive, they were kept a whole
month waiting for a south wind to carry them to England.
It would have been better for England if the south wind had
blown at once; for in August King Harold and his army
were still ready to meet them ; but, as it was, the Normans
did not come till the first army was disbanded, and till
Harold was busy with the war in the north. At last, though
a south wind did not come, a west wind did, and the fleet
sailed to Saint Valery at the mouth of the Somme, in Count
Guy's land of Ponthieu. They were now much nearer to
England than they had been at the Dive ; but they still could
not cross till Wednesday, September 27, two days after the
fight of Stamfordbridge. Then at last the south wind blew,
and the fleet crossed in the night. The Duke's own ship, the
WILLIAM'S LANDING. 7 1
Mora, the gift of the Duchess Matilda, sailed first with a
huge lantern at its mast to guide them. On Thursday
morning the Duke of the Normans and his host landed at
Pevensey in Sussex. They landed under the walls of the
Roman city of Anderida, which had stood forsaken and
empty, ever since it had been stormed by the South-Saxons
nearly six hundred years before. There was just now no
force in those parts able to hinder the Norman landing.
There is a story that, as William landed, his foot slipped,
and he fell. But, as he arose with his hands full of English
earth, he turned and said that he had taken seizin or posses-
sion of his kingdom, for that the earth of England was in his
hands. Anyhow he took his first possession of English
ground at Pevensey, where he left a force. He then, on
Friday, September 29th, marched to Hastings, which he
made his head-quarters. He there threw up a mound and
made a wooden castle. And from this centre he began to
harry the land far and wide, in order to make King Harold
come the sooner and fight.
6. The March of King Harold. — The news of Duke
William's landing was, as we have seen, brought to King
Harold at York as fast as it could be brought. And
King Harold set out on his march southwards as fast
as man could set out. With his housecarls and such
men of the northern shires as were ready to follow
him at once, he set forth for London. Edwin and Mor-
kere were bidden to follow with all speed at the head
of the whole force of their earldoms, while the King sent
forth to gather the men of his own Wessex and of the earl-
doms of his brothers Gyrth and Leofwine, to come to the
muster at London. Thus the men of all southern and eastern
England came in at the King's word ; but the main strength
of the north never came. Edwin and Morkere kept their
72 THE COMING OF DUKE WILLIAM.
men back, most likely hoping to be able to hold their own
earldoms against either Harold or William. Thus King
Harold got little help in his second struggle from the land
which he had saved in the first. While the troops were
coming in, the King went to the church which he had himself
built at Waltham, and prayed there. And men said that
signs and wonders were wrought at his coming ; for
that the image on the Holy Cross bowed its head, as if to
say, l It is finished/ So the canons of Waltham feared that
harm would come to their King and founder. And two of
them followed King Harold's host to the place of battle,
that they might in anywise see the end.
7. Duke William's New Message. — The host was
now ready to set forth for Sussex, all but the men of
those shires whose force never came at all. And now
another messenger came from Duke William to the
King in London. A monk of Fecamp, a great abbey in
Normandy near the sea-coast, came and stood before the
King of the English on his throne. He bade him come
down from it and abide a trial at law between himself and
the Duke who claimed the crown by the bequest of Edward,
and whose man he had himself become. The King — so the
Norman writers say — answered that his oath to William, as
being unwilling, was of no force, and that any bequest to
William was made of no strength by Edward's later recom-
mendation of himself. This answer, it will be seen, did not
go to the root of the matter ; but it was answer enough to
this particular message. The King then sent his message
to Duke William to offer his friendship and rich gifts, if
he would go quietly out of the land ; but that, if he was
bent on fighting, he would meet him in battle on the next
Saturday. Then Earl Gyrth gave his brother wise but cruel
counsel. He said that, as Harold had anyhow sworn to
HAROLD'S MARCH. 73
William, it was not good that he should meet him in fight.
Let him, Gyrth, go against Duke William with the host which
had already come together; let the King meanwhile wait
for fresh troops, and lay waste all the land between London
and the sea, so that, even if the Normans won the fight
against Gyrth, they would have nothing to eat, and their
duke would be driven to go away. But King Harold said
that he would never let his brothers and his people go forth
to the fight while he himself shrank from it, and that he
would never burn a house or lay waste a field in the land
over which he was set to be king. So the King marched
from London with his host, and on Friday, October 13th,
he reached the hill of Senlac, seven miles inland from the
Duke's camp at Hastings, and there waited for the attack of
the Normans.
8. King Harold's Camp. — The English, as has been
already said, were used to fighting on foot. They were
stout men to hurl their javelins and to meet the enemy
hand to hand with their axes ; but they had no horsemen
and very few archers. The Normans, on the other hand,
were the best horsemen and archers in the world. It
was therefore King Harold's plan not to attack the
enemy, but to let them attack him; not to meet them in
a broad plain fit for horsemen, but to hold a strong place
in attacking which the Norman horses would be of less
use. So he pitched his camp on a hill which stands out
from the main line of hills, and the sides of which are in
parts very steep ; he fenced it in with a palisade, and with
a ditch on the south side where the ground was less steep.
The land between Hastings and Senlac was woody, broken,
and rolling ground, and the ground at the foot of the hill
must then have been a mere marsh. The Normans would
therefore have much ado to get to the hill and ride up it,
74 THE COMING OF DUKE WILLIAM.
and, if they got to the top, they would find the English
standing there ready to cut them down. So wisely had
King Harold chosen his place of fighting ; for he knew the
land of Sussex well.
9. The Last Challenge. — Both King Harold and Duke
William sent spies to see what the other was doing. It
is said that an English spy came back and said that in
the Norman camp were more priests than soldiers. In
an earlier time both Normans and English had worn their
beards; but now the Normans shaved the whole face like
priests, while the English wore only their whiskers on the
upper lip. So the spy took the shaven Normans for
priests. Then King Harold laughed, and said that they
would find these priests right valiant fighting men. One
tale tells that King Harold and Earl Gyrth rode out to-
gether to spy out the Norman camp, and came back un-
hurt. And it is also said that now, after the camp was
pitched on Senlac, Duke William sent yet a last message
and challenge to King Harold. Once more, would Harold
give up the kingdom to William, according to his oath ?
Would he and his brother Gyrth hold the kingdom of Wil-
liam as his men? Lastly, if he declined either of these
offers, would he meet William in single combat? The
crown should be the prize of the victor, and the blood of
their followers on both sides would be spared. But King
Harold refused all these offers ; for to have accepted any of
them, even the single combat, would have been to acknow-
ledge that the war was his personal quarrel with William,
and not the quarrel of the people of England whose land
William had unjustly invaded. It is plain that Harold had
no right to stake the crown on the issue of a single combat.
If William killed Harold, that would give William no right to
the crown, which it was for the people of England to give
William's last challenge. 75
to whom they would. And if Harold killed William, the
Norman army was not the least likely to go away quietly ;
there would have been a battle to fight after all. So King
Harold assuredly was right in refusing to stake the fate of
England on his own single person. All these stories, it
must be remembered, come from the Norman writers ; our
English Chronicles cut the tale very short. But we may be
pretty sure that there is some truth in them, and this story
of the challenge seems very likely. Anyhow by Friday
evening, every man in each army knew that the great fight
for the crown and the freedom of England was to be fought
on the morrow.
CHAPTER VIII.
The Great Battle.
1. The Authorities. — Before we tell the tale of the great
fight on Senlac which forms the centre of our whole story, it
will be well to stop and think for a while of the sources from
which the tale comes. Our own Chroniclers tell us very little ;
the defeat of the king and people of England was a thing on
which they did not love to dwell. We have therefore to get
most of the details from Norman sources. Of these there are
several, among which four are of special importance. There
is the Latin prose account by William, Archdeacon of Poi-
tiers, who was in the Conqueror's army, and the account in
Latin verse by Guy, Bishop of Amiens, who wrote very soon
after. Both of these were courtiers and flatterers of William ;
still we may learn a good deal from them. A more honest
writer, though not so near to the time, is Master Wace, a
canon of Bayeux, whose father crossed with William and was
therefore most likely in the battle. Wace wrote the history
of the Norman dukes in French rime, called the Roman
de Rou, and in it he gives a full account of the battle.
He had clearly taken great pains to find out all that he
could about the fight, and about everybody, on the Norman
side at least, who was in it. But more precious than all is
the famous Tapestry of Bayeux, which contains the whole
history of the Conquest, from Harold's voyage to the end of
the battle, wrought in stitchwork. This was made very soon
THE MORNING OF THE BATTLE. *7
j after the time by order of Bishop Odo for his church at
!j Bayeux. These are the main authorities ; from them, and
! from a sight of the ground, it is not hard to make out the
; story. And we get incidental pieces of knowledge, such
| as names of men who were in the battle on the English
side, from all manner of sources here and there, among
j them from the great record called Domesday, of which we
| shall presently speak.
2. The March of the Normans. — The Norman writers
! tell us that Duke William's army spent the night before
the battle, the night of Friday, October 13th, in prayer
and shrift, while the English spent it in drinking and sing-
ing. And certainly, if our men sang some of the old
battle-songs, we shall not think the worse of them. But
this is the kind of thing which we often find the writers
of the victorious side saying of a defeated army. Any-
how both armies were quite ready for their work early
on Saturday morning. The Normans marched from Hast-
ings to the height of Telham, opposite Senlac. There they
made ready for the fight ; the knights mounted their war-
horses and put on their harness. The Duke's hauberk was
by some chance turned the wrong way ; but his ready wit
turned this into a good omen, he said that a Duke was going
to be turned into a King. Then he mounted his horse ;
he looked out at the place where his spies told him that
the English King was posted, and he vowed that, where
Harold's standard stood, he would, if he won that day's fight,
build a minster to Saint Martin of Tours. Then the host
set out in three divisions. On the left Count Alan of Bri-
tanny commanded the Bretons, Poitevins, and Mansels.
Among them was one English traitor, Ralph of Wader or
of Norfolk. He was seemingly banished by Edward or
Harold, and, as he was of Breton descent by his mother, he
78 THE GREAT BATTLE.
now came back among his mother's people. On the right
Roger of Montgomery, one of the most famous lords of
Normandy, commanded the French and the mercenaries
from all parts. In the midst were the Normans themselves,
and in the midst of them was the banner which had come
from Rome, borne by a knight of Caux named Toustain (that
is, Thurstan) the White. Close by it rode the Duke and his
two half-brothers, Bishop Odo of Bayeux and Count Robert
of Mortain. The Duke carried^ round his neck the relics on
which Harold had sworn. In each of these three divisions
were three sets of soldiers. First went the archers and
other light-armed foot, who were to try to put the English
into disorder with their arrows and other missiles. Then
came the heavy-armed foot, who were to try and break down
the palisade, and lastly the horsemen. The archers had no
defensive armour ; the horsemen and heavy-armed foot had
coats of mail and helmets with nose-pieces. The knights
had their kite-shaped shields, their long lances carried over-
hand, and their swords for near fight. The Duke and the
Bishop alone carried maces instead of swords. The mace
was a most terrible and crushing weapon ; Odo, it was said,
carried it rather than a sword or lance, because the canons
of the Church forbade a priest to shed blood. In this array
they had to cross the rolling and marshy ground between the
hills of Telham and Senlac.
3. The Array of the English. — Meanwhile King
Harold marshalled his army on the hill, to defend their
strong post against the attack of the Normans. All were
on foot ; those who had horses made use of them only
to carry them to the field, and got down when the time
came for actual fighting. So we see in the Tapestry King
Harold riding round his host to marshal them and ex-
hort them ; then he gets down and takes his place in the
THE ARRAY OF THE ARMIES. 79
battle on foot. The army was made up of soldiers of
two very different kinds. Th the King's personal
following, his houseearls, his own thanes, and the picked
troops generally, among them the men of London who
claimed to be the King's special guards, and the men of
Kent who claimed to strike the first blow in the battle.
They had armour much the same as that of the Normans,
with javelins to hurl first of all, and for the close I
either the sword, the older English weapon, or more com-
monly the great Danish axe which had been brought in
by Cnut This was wielded with both hands, and was the
most fearful of all weapons, if the blow reached its mark ;
but it left its bearer specially exposed while dealing the blow.
The men were ranged as closely together as the space
needed for wielding their arms would let them ; and, Ik
the palisade, the front ranks made a kind of inner defence
with their shields, called the shield-wall. The Norman w r
were specially struck with the close array of the English, and
they speak of them as standing like trees in a wood. Be-
sides these choice troops, there were also the general 1
of the neighbouring lands, who came armed anyhow, with
such weapons as they could get, the bow being the rarest ot
all. These inferior troops were placed to the right, on the
I exposed part of the hill, while the King with his choice
troops stood ready to meet Duke William himself. The
King stood between his two ensigns, the national k.
the dragon of Wesscx, and his own Standard, flag
with the figure of a fighting man wrought on it in g
Close by the King Stood his brother Gyrth and Leofwine,
and his other kinsfolk — among them doubtless his uncle
JElfwig, the Abbot of the New Mincer at Winchester.
who came to the light with twelve of his
Abbot of Peterborough, was also there; but we do not hear
8o THE GREAT BATTLE.
of any of the bishops. Whether Earl Waltheof was there
is not certain; it is certain that Edwin and Morkere were
not.
4. The Beginning of the Battle. — By nine in the
morning, the Normans had reached the hill of Senlac,
and the fight began. But before the real attack was
made, a juggler or minstrel in the Norman army, known
as Taillefer, that is the Cleaver of Iron, asked the Duke's
leave to strike the first blow. So he rode out, singing songs
of Charlemagne, as the French call the Emperor Charles
the Great, and of Roland his paladin. Then he threw his
sword up in the air and caught it again ; he cut down two
Englishmen and then was cut down himself. After this
mere bravado came the real work. First came a flight of
arrows from each division of the Norman army. Then the
heavy-armed foot pressed on, to make their way up the hill
and to break down the palisade. But the English hurled
their javelins at them as they came up, and cut them down
with their axes when they came near enough for hand-
strokes. The Normans shouted " God help us ;" the English
shouted "God Almighty," and the King's own war-cry of " Holy
Cross " — the Holy Cross of Waltham. William's heavy-armed
foot pressed on along the whole line, the native Normans
having to face King Harold's chosen troops in the centre.
The attack was vain ; they were beaten back, and they could
not break down the palisade. Then the horsemen them-
selves, the Duke at their head, pressed on up the hill-side.
But all was in vain ; the English kept their strong ground ;
the Normans had to fall back; the Bretons on the left
actually turned and fled. Then the worse-armed and less
disciplined English troops could not withstand the temptation
to come down from the hill and chase them. The whole
line of the Norman army began to waver, and in many parts
THE NORMANS BEATEN BACK. 8 1
to give way. A tale spread that the Duke was killed.
William showed himself to his troops, and with his words,
looks, and blows, helped by his brother the Bishop, he
brought them back to the fight. The flying Bretons now
took heart ; they turned, and cut in pieces the English who
were chasing them. Thus far the resistance of the English
had been thoroughly successful, wherever they had obeyed
the King's orders and kept within their defences. But the
fault of those who had gone down to follow the enemy had
weakened the line of defence, and had shown the Normans
the true way of winning the day.
5. The Second Attack. — Now came the fiercest struggle
of the whole day. The Duke and his immediate following tried
to break their way into the English enclosure at the very point
where the King stood by his standard with his brothers. The
two rivals were near coming face to face. At that moment Ear!
Gyrth hurled his spear, which missed the Duke, but killed his
horse and brought his rider to the ground. William then
pressed to the barricade on foot, and slew Gyrth in hand to
hand fight. At the same time the King's other brother Earl
Leofwine was killed. The Duke mounted another horse,
and again pressed on ; but the barricade and the shield-wall
withstood all attempts. On the right the attack of the French
division had been more lucky ; the palisade was partly broken
down. But the English, with their shields and axes, still
kept their ground, and the Normans were unable to gain
the top of the hill or to come near the standard.
6. The Feigned Flight. — The battle had now gone on
for several hours, and Duke William saw that, unless he quite
changed his tactics, he had no hope of overcoming the resist-
ance of the English. They had suffered a great loss in the
death of the two earls, and their defences were weakened at
some points ; but the army, as a whole, held its ground as
G ,
$2 THE GREAT BATTLE.
firmly as ever. William then tried a most dangerous stratagem,
his taking to which shows how little hope he now had of gain-
ing the day by any direct attack. He saw that his only way
was to bring the English down from the hill, as part of them
had already come down. He therefore bade his men feign
flight. The Normans obeyed ; the whole host seemed to be
flying. The irregular levies of the English on the right again
broke their line ; they ran down the hill, and left the part
where its ascent was most easy open to the invaders. The
Normans now turned on their pursuers, put most of them to
flight, and were able to ride up the part of the hill which was
left undefended, seemingly about three o'clock in the afternoon.
The English had thus lost the advantage of the ground ; they
had now, on foot, with only the bulwark of their shields, to
withstand the horsemen. This however they still did for
some hours longer. But the advantage was now on the
Norman side, and the battle changed into a series of single
combats. The great object of the Normans was to cut
their way to the standard, where King Harold still fought.
Many men were killed in the attempt ; the resistance of the
English grew slacker ; yet, when evening was coming on,
they still fought on with their King at their head, and a
new device of the Duke's was needed to bring the battle to
an end.
7. The End of the Battle. — This new device was to bid
his archers shoot in the air, that their arrows might fall, as he
said, like bolts from heaven. They were of course bidden
specially to aim at those who fought round the standard.
Meanwhile twenty knights bound themselves to lower or bear
off the standard itself. The archers shot ; the knights pressed
on ; and one arrow had the deadliest effect of all ; it pierced the
right eye of King Harold. He sank down by the standard :
most of the twenty knights were killed, but four reached the
DEATH OF HAROLD. 83
King while he still breathed, slew him with many wounds, and
carried off the two ensigns. It was now evening; but,
though the King was dead, the fight still went on. Of
the King's own chosen troops it would seem that not a man
either fled or was taken prisoner. All died at their posts,
save a few wounded men who were cast aside as dead, but
found strength to get away on the morrow. But the ir-
regular levies fled, some of them on the horses of the slain
men. Yet even in this last moment, they knew how to re-
venge themselves on their conquerors. The Normans,
ignorant of the country, pursued in the dark. The English
were thus able to draw them to the dangerous place behind
the hill, where not a few Normans were slain. But the
Duke himself came back to the hill, pitched his tent there,
held his midnight feast, and watched there with his host
all night.
8. The Burial of Harold. — The next day, Sunday, the
Duke went over the field, and saw to the burial of his own men.
And the women of the neighbourhood came to beg the bodies
of their kinsfolk and friends for burial. They were allowed to
take them away to the neighbouring churches. But Duke
William declared that, if the body of Harold was found, he, as
a perjured man, excommunicated by the Pope, should not
have Christian burial. Harold's mother Gytha offered a vast
sum — the weight in gold of the body, it was said — to be
allowed to bury him at Waltham. But William refused, and
bade one of his knights, William Malet by name, to bury him,
without Christian rites, but otherwise with honour, under a
cairn on the rocks of Hastings. Yet there was a tomb of King
Harold at Waltham, and it was always said there that two of the
canons, who had followed Harold to the place, asked for his
body, that, when they could not tell it for his wounds, they
called in the help of a woman named Edith, whom he had loved
G 2
84 THE GREAT BATTLE.
before he was King, and that she knew it by a mark. They
were then allowed to bury him at Waltham. The truth most
likely is that King Harold's body fared very much as we know
that Earl Waltheofs body fared ten years later. That is, he
was first of all buried on the rocks, but afterwards William,
now King, relented and allowed him to be buried in his own
church. Anyhow there can be no doubt that Harold died
in the battle, as all the writers who lived at the time, both
Norman and English, say distinctly. But, as often happens
in such cases, there afterwards grew up a tale which said
that he was not killed, but only badly wounded, that he
was carried off alive, and lived for many years, dying at last
as a hermit at Chester. The like is told of Harold's brother
Gyrth ; but there is no reason to believe either tale.
9. Effects of the Battle. — It must be well understood
that this great victory did not make Duke William King
nor put him in possession of the whole land. He still held
only part of Sussex, and the people of the rest of the
kingdom showed as yet no mind to submit to him. If
England had had a leader left like Harold or Gyrth, Wil-
liam might have had to fight as many battles as Cnut had,
and that with much less chance of winning in the end.
For a large part of England fought willingly on Cnut's
side, while William had no friends in England at all, except
a few Norman settlers. William did not call himself King
till he was regularly crowned more than two months later,
and even then he had real possession only of about a third of
the kingdom. It was more than three years before he had
full possession of all. Still the great fight on Senlac none
the less settled the fate of England. For after that fight
William never met with any general resistance. He never
had to fight another pitched battle against another wearer or
claimant of the English crown. He was thus able to conquer
EFFECTS OF THE BATTLE. 85
the land bit by bit. N How this came about we shall see
in the next chapter. But it is very important not to make
either too much or too little of the Battle of Senlac or
Hastings. It did not make William either formally King or
practically master of the kingdom. But, as things turned
out, the result of the battle made it certain that he would
become both sooner or later.
CHAPTER IX.
How Duke William became King.
1. The Election of Edgar. — After the great battle,
Duke William is said to have expected that all England
would at once bow to him. In this hope he was dis-
appointed. For a full month after the battle, no one
submitted to him except in the places where he actually
showed himself with his army. The general mind of
England was to choose another king and to carry on
the war under him. But it was hard to know whom to
choose. Harold's brothers were dead ; his sons were
young, and it is not clear whether they were born in lawful
wedlock. Edwin and Morkere had by this time reached
London ; but no one in southern England was the least
likely to choose either of them. The only thing left to do
was to choose young Edgar, the last of the old kingly house.
The Wise Men in London therefore chose Edgar as king.
He did one or two acts of kingly power ; but he was never
full king, as not being crowned. He would doubtless have been
crowned at Christmas, had things turned out otherwise. When
he was chosen, Edwin and Morkere withdrew their forces
and went back to their own earldoms, taking their sister
Ealdgyth, the widow of Harold, with them to Chester. They
most likely thought, either that William would be satisfied
with occupying the lands which had been held by Harold
and his brothers; or else that they would be able to hold their
WILLIAM'S MARCH TO LONDON. 87
own earldoms against him. By so doing, they destroyed the
last chance of England, which was for the whole land to
rally faithfully round Edgar. Southern England alone,
weakened by the slaughter on Senlac, was quite unable to
withstand William.
2. William's March. — After the battle William waited five
days at Hastings, thinking that men would come in and bow
to him. But as none came in, he marched on into Kent.
The main strength of that land had been cut off in the battle ;
resistance was therefore not to be thought of, and one place sub-
mitted after another. So did Dover, where was one of the few
castles in England, and Canterbury. At this point William's
march was checked by sickness ; but even then he was able to
send messengeis to Winchester. That city, the dwelling-place
of the widowed Lady Edith, also submitted. He then marched
towards London; but he did not cross the Thames; his
policy was to win the great city by first occupying the lands
all round it. He however defeated a sally of the men of
London and burned the suburb of Southwark. He then
marched along the right bank of the Thames to Wallingford,
where he crossed the river. He then struck eastward to
Berkhampstead, meaning to hem in London from the north.
After Berkhampstead, he had no need, in this first campaign,
to march any further as an enemy.
S. William's Election and Coronation. — The men of
London were at first eager to carry on the war. But they
were weakened by the treason of the Northern earls, and,
as William gradually came round to the north of the city,
their hearts failed them. The Wise Men and the citizens
at last agreed that there was nothing to be done but to
submit to William. So the King-elect Edgar gave up his
claim, and went with Archbishop Ealdred and the other
chief men, and offered William the crown. It is said that
88' HOW DUKE WILLIAM BECAME KING.
he had some scruple in accepting it while he actually held
so small a part of the kingdom ; but he could not fail to see
how great a gain it would be to him in winning the rest, if
he could give himself out as the King of the English, law-
fully chosen and crowned. He therefore came to London,
and on Christmas- day he was regularly crowned and anointed
by Ealdred, as Harold had been on the day of the Epiphany.
At his crowning his Norman soldiers kept guard outside the
minster. And when the people within were asked whether
they would have Duke William for their king, and they
shouted, Yea, Yea, the Normans outside thought that some
harm was doing to the Duke ; so — a strange way of helping
him, one would think — they set fire to the houses near the
church. Others rushed out of the church to quench the fire,
and there was much confusion and damage. Thus the new
King's old and new subjects quarrelled on the very day of
his crowning, though hardly by any fault of his. Meanwhile
a fortress, the first beginning of the famous Tower of London,
w r as rising to keep the city in order. While it was building,
the King withdrew to Barking in Essex, not far from
London.
4. The Submission of the Northern Earls. — While
King William was at Barking, most of the chief men of
the north of England came and bowed to him, as
the chief men of the south had done at Berkhampstead.
Edwin and Morkere saw by this time that William had no
mind for half a kingdom ; so they came and bowed to him,
and were restored to their earldoms. Most likely Waltheof
did the same. So did Copsige, the former favourite and
lieutenant of Tostig, and other men of power in those parts.
William received them all graciously. But it would seem
that Oswulf did not come. At least it is certain that he
gave the new King some offence ; for before long, in
WILLIAM'S CROWNING. 89.
February, William deprived him of his earldom and gave it
to Copsige.
5. William's Position. — William was now King of
the English, as far as a regular election and coronation
and the submission of the chief men of the land could
make him so. But it must not be thought that he had
as yet any real authority over the whole kingdom. He
had actual possession of the south-eastern part, from
Hampshire to Norfolk. Of the chief cities he held Lon-
don, Winchester, Canterbury, Norwich, and most likely
Oxford. And it would seem that he was acknowledged
in part of Herefordshire, where a Norman, Osbern by
name, one of the old builders of Richard's Castle,
had been sheriff under Edward. But in all northern,
western, and north-western England, he was only king so
far as that there was no other king. No Norman soldier
had been seen anywhere near York, Exeter, Lincoln, or
Chester. The submission of the earls carried with it no
real obedience on the part of their earldoms. But it suited
William's policy, now that he was acknowledged as king,
to act in all things as if he had full power everywhere. Thus
he restored to Edwin and the rest the lands and offices
which he had as yet no means of taking from them. Thus
he professed to give the earldom of Oswulf to Copsige.
This last story teaches us what the real state of things was.
The truth is that Copsige, an enemy of Oswulf s, wished to
supplant him. It suited his ends to be able to use William's
name, and it suited William to give him authority to do so.
But William was not able to give Copsige any real power in
Northumberland. Very soon after he had gone thither as
the earl appointed by the new king, he was killed by the
partisans of Oswulf, who kept the earldom till later in the
year he was himself killed by a robber.
90 HOW DUKE WILLIAM BECAME KING.
6. William's Confiscations and Grants of Land.—
In William's reading of the law, he had himself been, ever
since Edward's death, not indeed full king, which he could
not be till he was crowned and anointed, but the only
person who had a right to become king. Those who had
hindered him from taking his crown peaceably, those above
all who had fought against him at Senlac, were rebels and
traitors. Harold, he held, was no king, but only an usurper ;
in the legal language of William's reign, he is never called
King but only Earl, and all his acts as king are looked on
as of no strength. In short, in William's view, as no English-
man had fought for him, as many Englishmen had fought
against him, the whole land of the kingdom, except of course
Church land, was forfeited to the crown. He might, if he
chose, take it all, and either keep it himself or grant it to whom
he would. But in the greater part of England he could not
as yet do this, and he was too wise to try to do it anywhere
all at once. Much land in England, that which was called
folkland, was in the beginning the common land of the nation.
This had been for a long time coming more and more to
be looked on as the land of the king. And now that the
king was a foreign conqueror, the change was fully carried
out, and the folkland passed to the new king as his own.
So did the great estates of Harold and the rest of the house
of Godwine, and of others who had died on Senlac. All this
King William took to himself, to keep as the de??iesne of
the crown or to reward his Norman followers, as he would.
As for the lands of men who submitted quietly, he seems at
first to have commonly granted them back again. For this
he often took a payment ; we read of the English generally
buying back their lands, and also of particular cases where
this was done. But it was the universal rule that no man,
Norman or English, had any right to lands, whether he had
GRANTS OF LAND. 9 1
held them before or not, unless he could prove a grant from
King William, which was best proved by having the King's
writ and seal to show. Thus, from the very beginning of
his reign, as any man, Norman or English, offended him
or did him good service, William was always seizing on land
and making grants of land till, by the end of his reign, by
far the greater part of the land of England had changed
hands. Most of it was granted to Normans or other
strangers, but Englishmen who in any way won his favour
both kept their old lands and received new grants. All this
began now ; but it only began ; it was only step by step
that the chief offices and estates of England passed from
the hands of Englishmen into the hands of strangers. As
yet it was only in south-eastern England that he could either
take or grant anything.
7. William's Visit to Normandy. — King William
now thought that it was time to go for a while to his
own land; so he crossed into Normandy for the feast of
Easter in the year 1067. It was natural that he should
wish to show himself to his old friends and subjects
in his new character of King and Conqueror. And it
was part of his policy too to treat England as if it was
thoroughly his own, and thereby to see how far it really
was so. In so doing it was needful to provide for the
government of the kingdom while he was away. The north
he could not help leaving as it was ; the part of the kingdom
which was really in his power he put under the rule of his
brother Bishop Odo and his chief friend William Fitz-Osbern.
To them he also gave earldoms, Kent to Odo and Hereford
to William. But neither then nor afterwards did he set
earls in the old fashion over the whole land ; he set them
only on the coasts or borders which were likely to be
attacked. Thus the Earl of Hereford had to keep the land
92
HOW DUKE WILLIAM BECAME KING.
against the Welsh, and the Earl of Kent to keep it against
any attacks from the mainland. Then the King called on
all the chief men of England to go in his train to Normandy.
He took with him Edgar the king of a moment, Archbishop
Stigand, the Earls Edwin, Morkere, and Waltheof, and
other men of power in the land. They all went as his
honoured guests and friends, though they were in truth
rather to be called hostages and prisoners. He then passed
through many parts of Normandy and gave gifts to many
churches. He stayed there till December. By that time
events had happened which called him back to England
CHAPTER X.
How King William won the whole Kingdom.
1. The Regency of Bishop Odo and Earl William. — .
The rule of those whom King William left in England
to govern in his name was not of a kind to win much love
from the English people. William himself seems to have done
all that he could to gain the good will of his new subjects,
consistently with firmly establishing his own power. He
could be harsh, and even cruel, when it served his purpose ;
but at no time does he seem to have been guilty of mere
wanton oppression for oppression's sake. He was always
strict in punishing open wrong-doers of any kind, of what-
ever nation. It was otherwise with his two lieutenants,
Bishop Odo and Earl William Fitz-Osbern. If they did
not actually take a pleasure in oppression, they at any rate
allowed their followers to do whatever they chose, and,
whatever wrong an Englishmen suffered, he could get no
redress. Above all things, they everywhere built castles
and allowed others to build them, and we have already seen
with what horror our forefathers looked on the building of
castles. It would almost seem as if oppression was worst
immediately under the eyes of the two regents. At least
it was in their own earldoms, in Odo's earldom of Kent and
in William Fitz-Osbern's earldom of Hereford, that special
outbreaks against the new King's authority now broke out.
But the two movements were of a different kind. In Kent,
94 HOW KING WILLIAM WON THE WHOLE KINGDOM.
which had fully submitted to William, the attempt was strictly
a revolt against an established government. In Hereford-
shire, where the whole land had not submitted, men still
tried, just as they might have done before the great battle,
to keep the foreign invaders out of a district which they had
not yet entered.
2. Eadric in Herefordshire. — The chief leader in resist-
ance to the Normans on the Herefordshire border was Eadric,
a powerful man in those parts who had never submitted to
the new king. He still kept part of the land quite free, hold-
ing out in the woods and other difficult places, whence the
Normans called him the Wild or Savage. Earl William's men
were always attacking him, but in vain. At last he made an
alliance with the Welsh Kings Bleddyn and Rhiwallon, those
to whom the kingdom of Gruffydd had been given by Harold.
With their help he laid waste the land which had submitted
to the Normans, and carried off great plunder. In fact the
Normans were never able to overcome Eadric, and we shall
hear of him again more than once.
3. Count Eustace at Dover. — The Kentishmen mean-
while sought for help beyond the sea, as Eadric had sought
for help beyond the border ; but it was a very strange helper
that they chose. They sent to Count Eustace of Boulogne,
the brother-in-law of King Edward, the same who had done
so much harm at Dover in Edward's days, and who had been
one of the four who mangled the dying Harold. They must
indeed have been weary of Odo when they sent for Eustace to
help them. Why Eustace listened to them is not very clear.
William had given him lands in England \ we do not hear of
any quarrel between them, and Eustace could hardly have
thought that he would be able to drive William out and to
make himself king instead. However this may be, he sailed
across with some troops, and was joined by a large body
WILLIAM COMES BACK. 95
of English, chiefly Kentishmen. Their first attempt was on
the castle of Dover ; but Eustace lost heart and gave way ;
the garrison sallied; his whole force was routed, and he
himself escaped to his own land.
4. William's Return. — Besides those who thus openly
revolted against William or withstood his power, other English-
men showed their discontent in various ways. Some left the
country altogether ; others tried to get help La various parts,
above all from King Swegen in Denmark. Swegen, it will be
remembered, was nephew of Cnut and cousin of Harold, and
there had been talk of choosing him king five-and-twenty years
before instead of Edward. If any foreign prince could really
have delivered England, Swegen was the man to do it. But
he missed the right time when so much of the land was still
unsubdued. The worst was that Englishmen could not
agree to act together. One district rose at one time and
one at another. Some were for Swegen, some for Edgar,
some for the sons of Harold ; Edwin and Morkere were
for themselves. So there was no common action against
William, and the land was lost bit by bit. In December
William came back. He held an assembly at Westminster,
where much land was confiscated and granted out again.
He also caused Count Eustace to be tried in his absence
and outlawed. As Count of Boulogne, Eustace owed William
no allegiance; but as his man, holding lands in England,
he could be thus tried and outlawed. In after times Eustace
gained the King's favour again, and got back his lands.
William also sent embassies to various foreign princes, to
hinder anything from being done against him in their lands.
Especially he sent the English Abbot iEthelsige as ambassador
to King Swegen. And he made two appointments which are
worth noticing. The bishopric of Dorchester was vacant ;
so he gave it to a Norman monk, Remigius of Fecamp.
\
g6 HOW KING WILLIAM WON THE WHOLE KINGDOM.
This was the beginning of a system which he carried on
through his whole reign, that of giving bishoprics, as they
became vacant, to Normans and other foreigners. Also the
earldom of Northumberland was vacant by the death of
Oswulf. William had not the least authority in Northumber-
land ; yet he made a show of again granting — or rather in
truth of selling — the earldom to Gospatric, a man of the kin
of the old earls. But Gospatric was as yet no more able
to take possession than Copsige had been.
5. The Siege of Exeter. — In the spring of 1068
William began seriously to undertake the conquest of
that part of England where his kingship was still a mere
name. All western, central, and northern England — all
Northumberland in the old sense, the greater part of
Mercia, and a large part of Wessex — was still unsubdued.
At this moment the state of things in the West was
specially threatening. Exeter, above all, the greatest city
of the West, was the centre of all resistance. Gytha, the
widow of Godwine and mother of Harold, was there, most
likely with her grandsons, Godwine, Edmund, and Magnus.
The citizens of Exeter made leagues with the oiher towns of
the West ; men joined them from other parts of England ; if
the other unconquered districts had risen at the same time,
and if they could all have agreed on some one course, it may
be that even now William could have been driven out.
But while the West was in arms, the North stayed quiet,
and even in Exeter itself men were not fully of one mind.
Before William went forth to war, he sent a message to the
men of Exeter, demanding that they should swear oaths to
him and receive him into the city. They sent word that they
would pay him the tribute which they had been used to pay
to the old kings, but that they would swear no oaths to him
nor receive him within their walls. That is, they would be
SIEGE OF EXETER. 97
a separate commonwealth, paying him tribute, but they
would not have him as their immediate king. William was
not likely to allow this kind of half-submission; so he
began his march against Exeter, taking care to call on the
force of the shires which were already conquered to come
with him. To strike fear into his chief enemy, he took and
harried the towns of Dorset on his way. The great men of
the city were frightened and sent to William, making sub-
mission and giving hostages. But the commons disowned
the submission; so William laid siege to the city, after he
had put out the eyes of one of the hostages. Exeter held
out bravely for eighteen days, and was then taken by under-
mining one of the towers. William then entered the city,
and granted his pardon to the citizens. Gytha and her
companions meanwhile escaped by the river. The King
then caused a castle called Rougemont, or the Red Hill, to
be built to keep the city in his power, and he greatly raised
the amount of its tribute ; but he seems to have done no
further harm.
6. The Conquest of the West. — The taking of
Exeter was followed, at once or before long, by the
conquest of all western England. Dorset, Devonshire,
Somerset, Cornwall, and most likely Gloucestershire and
Worcestershire, were now added to William's dominions.
But Eadric still held out in his corner of Herefordshire.
William was now master of all Wessex and East-Anglia
and of part of Mercia. His conquest of the western lands
was clearly followed by many confiscations and grants
of land ; above all the King's brother Count Robert got
nearly all Cornwall, and large estates in other shires.
Among these he got the hill in Somerset where the holy
cross of Waltham had been found, and which the Normans
called Montacuie or the peaked hill. William now thought
H
98 HOW KING WILLIAM WON THE WHOLE KINGDOM.
that things were quiet enough for him to bring his wife to
England; so at Pentecost, 1068, the Lady Matilda was
hallowed to Queen at Westminsteu by Archbishop Ealdred.
7. The First Conquest of the North. — Meanwhile,
just after the West was subdued, the North was in arms.
Though Edwin, Morkere, and Gospatric were nominally
William's earls in Northern England, yet their earldoms
had never submitted, and the earls themselves seem to
have lived chiefly at William's court. But now all Northern
England made ready to resist, York being naturally the
centre of the movement, as Exeter had been in the West.
They got the Welsh to help them, and sent messages to
Scotland and Denmark. The whole land was in arms.
And now Earl Gospatric went out and joined his own
people, and so did Edgar the iEtheling, and seemingly
the Earls Edwin and Morkere also ; so there was no lack
of leaders. King William marched to meet them as far as
Warwick, seemingly his first conquest in this campaign.
Near that town the English army met him \ but the hearts
of Edwin and Morkere failed them. They submitted, and
were restored to their earldoms and to William's seeming
favour; one of the King's daughters was even promised in
marriage to Edwin. The army now dispersed ; only a
party of the bolder men marched northwards and held Dur-
ham. Gospatric, with Edgar and his mother and sisters,
found shelter with King Malcolm in Scotland. William had
now nothing to do but to march northward, taking one
town after another. Sonre, it would seem, were taken by
force, while others submitted peaceably. In all cases he
built a castle to keep the town in order; but there was a
great difference in his treatment of one town and shire and
another. In some parts many more Englishmen kept their
lands and offices than in others ; these were doubtless those
FIRST CONQUEST OF THE NORTH. 99
which submitted most quietly. In this way he occupied most
likely Leicester and certainly Nottingham, and so went on to
York. The city submitted quietly; but a castle was built.
Having thus gained the capital of the North and the main
centre of resistance, William did not this time go on any
further, but marched back another way, occupying Lincoln,
Stamford, Cambridge, and Huntingdon. These two cam-
paigns of the year 1068 gave William a greater part of Eng-
land than he had won in 1066. Northumberland in the
narrower sense, with Durham, and north-western Mercia, with
Chester as the chief city, were all that now remained unsub-
dued. But William's hold on some of the lands which had
submitted was still very insecure.
8. The Sons of Harold. — This same year 1068 the
three sons of Harold, Godwine, Edmund, and Magnus,
who had escaped with their grandmother Gytha, came
back by sea with a force from Ireland, doubtless chiefly
Irish Danes. But they did nothing except plunder. They
were driven off from Bristol, and then fought a battle
with the men of Somerset, who were led by Eadnoth, a
man who had been their father's Staller or Master of
the horse, but who was now in the service of William.
Eadnoth was killed, and Harold's sons sailed away, having
only made matters worse. Some time in the same year
William had a son born to him in England, namely his
youngest son Henry. He was the only one of his sons who
was born after his father was crowned ; so he alone, accord-
ing to English notions, was a real iEtheling. Moreover he
was brought up as an Englishman. He was afterwards King
Henry the First.
9. The First Revolt of York. — Neither the North
nor the West long remained quiet. The year 1069 was
still fuller of fighting than the year 1068. But this was
H 2
LofC.i
IOO HOW KING WILLIAM WON THE WHOLE KINGDOM.
the year in which England was really conquered. At the
Christmas feast of 1068 William again made a grant of the
earldom of Northumberland in the narrower sense. That
land was still quite unsubdued ; but now that he had York,
it would be easier to attack Durham and the parts be-
yond. So the King granted the earldom to one Robert of
Comines, who set out with a Norman army to take posses-
sion. But he fared no better than Copsige had done. The
men of the land determined to withstand him ; but, through
the help of the Bishop Jjkhelwine, he entered Durham peace-
ably. But he let his men plunder ; so the men of the city and
neighbourhood rose and slew him and all his followers. This
success encouraged the men of Yorkshire and their leaders
who had fled to Scotland. Gospatric and Edgar came
back; they were welcomed at York and laid siege to the
castle. But King William at once marched north, drove them
away, built a second castle, and left his friend Earl William of
Hereford in command. He then sent a force against Dur-
ham, but it got no further than Northallerton. No sooner
was the King gone than the English again attacked the
castles at York, but they were defeated by Earl William.
And a little later, in June, Harold's sons came again and
plundered in Devonshire, but were driven away. So the
land was harried alike by friends and by foes.
10. The Coming of the Danes. — All this shows how
all efforts were in vain, simply for want of a real leader,
a king of men like Harold or Edmund Ironside. English-
men could fight; but their fighting was of no use, when
there was no steadiness in the chief men, no concert
between one part of the land and another. In fact they
seem to have fought best when they had no earls or other
great men at their head, when each district fought for
itself. In the autumn of this year 1069 there was the best
THE DANES AT YORK. IOI
chance of deliverance of all. A large part of England was
in arms at once. The West rose; the men of Somerset and
Dorset besieged the new castle of Montacute; the men of
Devonshire and Cornwall besieged the new castle of Exeter.
On the Welsh border Eadric with a host of Welsh and Eng-
lish attacked Shrewsbury; Staffordshire too, which most likely
had not yet submitted, was in arms. But all these movements
were put down one by one ; save that Staffordshire was left
alone for a while. Meanwhile yet greater things were doing
in the North. King Swegen of Denmark at last sent a great
fleet to the help of the English, under his brother Osbeorn
and his sons Harold and Cnut. After some vain attempts on
Dover, Sandwich, Ipswich, and Norwich, the Danes entered
the Humber, and the English came joyfully to meet them.
All the chief men of the north joined them. Edgar and
Gospatric came back from Scotland, and this time Earl
Waltheof joined them. William's commanders at York,
William Malet, he who had first buried Harold's body, and
Gilbert of Ghent, sent word to the King that they could hold
out for a whole year ; but it was not so. The host, Danish
and English, began to march on York, and Archbishop
Ealdred, worn out with troubles, died as they were coming.
The Norman commanders now set fire to the houses near
the castles, and a great part of the city was burned. The
Danes and English soon reached York ; the Normans sallied,
and were, some cut to pieces, some made prisoners, the two
leaders being among the prisoners. In this fight Earl V
theof slew many of the enemy, and won himself great fame.
The castles were broken down, and York was now quite free
from the Normans. But, instead of holding the city, the
English dispersed, and the Danes went back to their ships.
11. The Final Conquest of the North.— When King
William heard of the fall of York, he at once marched
102 HOW KIXG WILLIAM WOX THE WHOLE KIXGD03I.
northwards. But when he found that his enemies were
all scattered, he left his brother Robert in Lindesey
to act against the Danes, while he himself went and sub-
dued Staffordshire, seemingly by hard fighting. He then
marched to York, and recovered the city. And now he did
one of the most frightful deeds of his life. He caused all
northern England, beginning with Yorkshire, to be utterly laid
waste, that its people might not be able to fight against
him any more. The havoc was fearful ; men were starved
or sold themselves as slaves, and the land did not recover
for many years. Then King William wore his crown and
kept his Christmas feast at York. In January 1070 he set
out to conquer the extreme north, which was still unsubdued.
The Earls Waltheof and Gospatric now craved his pardon.
They w r ere restored to their earldoms, and Waltheof received
the King's niece Judith in marriage. William then went on
to Durham, where the Bishop and nearly everybody had fled
from the city, and ravaged the whole land as he had ravaged
Yorkshire. He then went back to York by a very hard
winter's march, and settled the affairs of his new conquest.
He was now at last master of all Northumberland, Deira and
Bernicia alike.
12. End of the Conquest,— Still William had not yet
possession of all England. Not only did Eadric still hold out
on his border, and it may be that the Isle of Ely had never
fully submitted ; but one whole corner of England, and one of
the chief cities, still held out. This was Chester. Now then
in February 1070 William made another hard winter march
from York to Chester. The sufferings of the army were fright-
ful, and many of the mercenaries mutinied. But William went
on, and received the submission of the last free English city,
whether peaceably or by fighting we know not. He built
castles at Chester and Stafford. He then marched to Salis-
THE CONQUEST COMPLETED.
bury, where he reviewed and 1 his army, as having
ih»w won the whole land. And so in trutli he had. If a few
points were still unsubdued, no whole shire or great town
held out against him. At last, more than three v r his
coronation, he was really king of the whole land in fact as well
as in name. From henceforth such opposition to him as we
still hear of was no longer resistance to an invader, but rather
revolt against an established, though foreign, government.
13. The New Archbishops.— William had now time to
turn his mind to the affairs of the Church. Things had
naturally got into confusion during the time of warfare ; and
besides this, William had made up his mind to subdue the
Church of England as well as the state, or rather to make the
Church a means whereby to hold the kingdom more firmly.
As he gradually transferred the greatest estates and bi-
temporal offices from Englishmen to strangers, so it was part
of his policy to do the same with the chief offices of the Church.
Mis rule was that, as the bishops died, Normans or other
strangers should be put in their places, and that those of the
English bishops against whom any kind of charge could be
brought should be deprived without waiting for their de
With the abbots the rule was less strict ; their temporal posi-
tion was not so important as that of die bishops. So, tb
several English abbots were deposed and many for
abbots were appointed, still many more Englishmen kept
their places than among the bishops, and some Englishmen
even received abbeys from William himself. In doing all
this he had the help of Pope Alexander and of those who
advised him; for it was part of William's policy to strengthen
the connexion of England with Rome, though he iirm!\
fused to give up a whit of his own royal power. At the
ist (A' 1070 two papal legates came, and, when the
King wore his crown, it was they who put it on his head. A
104 HOW KING WILLIAM WON THE WHOLE KINGDOM.
council was then held, in which Archbishop Stigand was
deposed, as his right to the archbishopric had all along been
thought doubtful. His successor was one of the most famous
scholars in Europe. This was Lanfranc of Pavia in Lom-
bardy, who had settled in Normandy and become a monk,
and was now abbot of the monastery of Saint Stephen at
Caen, which William himself had founded. Lanfranc be-
came Archbishop in August, and was William's right hand
man for the rest of his reign. The other archbishopric
also was vacant by the death of Ealdred of York. At Pen-
tecost this was given to a Norman, Thomas, a canon of
Bayeux, also a great scholar and a careful bishop. For
many of William's appointments were very good in them-
selves, if only the men chosen had not been strangers.
These two new archbishops went the next year to Rome to
receive from the Pope the pallium or badge of metropolitan
dignity; so England had two foreign primates. Stigand's other
bishopric of Winchester was also given to another Norman,
Walkelin. And so the work went on through the whole of
William's reign, till at the end, Saint Wulfstan of Worcester
was the only Englishman who was a bishop in England.
14. The Danes at Ely. — Before the two foreign arch-
bishops were consecrated, there was again fighting in
England. The Danish fleet, which after all had done so
little for England, stayed in the Humber while William
was subduing Northumberland. William then gave bribes
to the Danish commander Osbeorn, and it was agreed
that the Danes should sail back when the winter was over,
and that meanwhile they might plunder in England. Thus
again was the land harried by friends and foes alike. At last,
in May 1070, the Danes sailed to the Fenland, and showed
themselves at Ely. The people welcomed them, believing
that they would win the land ; most likely they were read}'
HERE WARD AT ELY. IOj
to have Swegen for king. Thus the revolts began almost
at the moment when the conquest was finished. We now
hear for the first time of the famous name of Hereward.
All manner of strange and impossible tales are told of him ;
but very little is known for certain about him, though
what we do know is quite enough to set him before us as
a stout champion of England. He had held lands in
Lincolnshire, and he had fled away from England, but when
or why is not known. He would seem to have come back
about the time when the Danes came to Ely, and he joined
himself with them and with the men of the land who helped
them. The abbey of Peterborough was now vacant by the
death of its Abbot Brand, and William had given it to a
Norman named Turold. He was a very stern man, and
came with a body of Norman soldiers to take possession of
the abbey. But Hereward was before him. Lest the wealth
of the abbey should be turned to help the enemy, he came
(June i, 1070) with the Danes and the men of the land, and
plundered the monastery. The Danes now went away,
taking with them much of the spoil of Peterborough. But,
when they got home, King Swegen banished his brother Earl
Osbeorn for having taken bribes from William and having
done so little for England.
15. The Defence of Ely. — About this time Eadnc the
Wild submitted to the King, which marks that all resistance
was over on his side of England. But the revolt went on in
the Fenland. The monastery of Ely was the centre of res
ance, as it stood in a land which then was really an island and
which was very easy to defend. The Abbot Thurstan, who
had been appointed by King Harold, and his monks, wei
first zealous for the patriots. Men flocked to the isle from all
parts, and they held out all the winter o{ 1070 and through
the greater part of the next year. In the spring of 107 1 the
106 HOW KING WILLIAM WON THE WHOLE KINGDOM.
two earls, Edwin and Morkere, at last left William's court,
being, it is said, afraid lest the King should put them in
bonds. Edwin tried to get to Scotland, but he was killed
on the way, either by his own men or by Normans to whom
he was betrayed. But Morkere made his way to Ely and
helped in the defence of the isle. Other chief men came
also ; but it is clear that the soul of the enterprise was Here-
ward. There are many tales told of his exploits ; but this at
least is certain. William came and attacked the isle from all
points, and there was much fighting for many months, in
which William Malet,whom the Danes had released, was killed.
At last in October 107 1, the isle surrendered. Some say
that the monks of Ely, when the King seized their lands out-
side the isle, turned traitors; others that Morkere and the other
chiefs grew fainthearted. Anyhow the war was at an end.
The King took possession of the isle; he built a castle at Ely
and laid a fine on the abbey, while Morkere and others were
kept in prison. Hereward alone did not submit, but sailed
out into the sea unconquered. There are several stories of
his end. It seems most likely that he was at last received
into William's favour, and even served under him in his wars
on the mainland. But some say that he was killed by a
party of Normans who set upon him without any orders from
the King, and that he died fighting bravely, one man against
many.
16. Summary. — Thus we see that, after five years from
William's first landing, he was in full possession of the kingdom
and had put down all opposition everywhere. The great battle
had given him real possession of south-eastern England only;
but it had given him the great advantage of being crowned
king before the end of the year. During the year 1067
William made no further conquests ; all western and northern
England remained unsubdued; but, except in Kent and
WILLIAM FULL KltiG* IO7
Herefordshire, there was no fighting in any part of the land
which had really submitted. The next two years were the
time in which all England was really conquered. The former
part of 1068 gave William the West. The latter part of that
year gave him central and northern England as far as York-
shire, the extreme north and north-west being still unsub-
dued. The attempt to win Durham in the beginning of
1069 led to two revolts at York. Later in the year all the
north and west was again in arms, and the Danish fleet came.
But the revolts were put down one by one, and the great
winter campaign of 1069-1070 conquered the still unsub-
dued parts, ending with the taking of Chester. Early in
1070 the whole land was for the first time in William's pos-
session; there was no more fighting, and he was able to give
his mind to the more peaceful part of his schemes, what we
may call the conquest of the native Church by the appoint-
ment of foreign bishops. But in the summer of 1070 began
the revolt of the Fenland, and the defence of Ely, which
lasted till the autumn of 107 1. After that William was full
king everywhere without dispute. There was no more
national resistance ; there was no revolt of any large part of
the country. There were still wars within the isle of Britain ;
but they were wars in which William could give out that he
was, as King of the English, fighting for England. And
there was one considerable revolt within the kingdom o(
England ; but it was not a revolt of the people. The
quest of the land, as far as fighting goes, was now finished.
We have now to see how the land fared under a king who
claimed to be king by law, but who had to win his crown
by fighting at the head of an invading army. His nil,
we shall see, was neither that of a king who had r<
ceeded according to law nor yet that o{ a mere invader who
did not even make any pretence to legal right
CHAPTER XL
King William's later Wars.
1. The Affairs of Wales. — W t illiam was now king
over all England, but he had not yet won that lordship
over the whole of Britain which had been held by the
old Kings of the English. But it was his full purpose
to win this also, as well as the rule of his immediate king-
dom. But of course neither the Scots nor the Welsh were
inclined to give him any greater submission than they could
help, and there was much fighting on both borders. The
care of the Welsh marches William put into the hands of
his earls. It was only on the borders and on the exposed
coasts that he placed earls at all. Besides his brother
Odo in Kent and his friend William Fitz-Osbern at Here-
ford, there was Earl Gospatric in Northumberland to guard
the northern border against the Scots, and Earl Ralph
in Norfolk to guard the east coast against the Danes. But
he did not appoint any earls to succeed Edwin and Mor-
kere. Parts however of Edwin's earldom were given to
two great Norman leaders, Roger of Montgomery who
became Earl of Shrewsbury, and Hugh of Avranches who
became Earl of Chester. Their duty, along with the Earl of
Hereford, was to keep the Welsh march. They received
vast estates and special powers, the Earl of Chester espe-
cially being more like a vassal prince, than an ordinary earl.
All these earls had much fighting with the Welsh, and they
AFFAIRS OF WALES AND SCOTLAND. I CO,
took much land from them and built many castles. Earl
r especially built a castle to which he gave the name of
his own castle in Normandy, Montgomery, whence a town.
and afterwards a shire, took its name. The Welsh princes
moreover were always fighting among themselves, and they
were often foolish enough to call in the Normans against
one another. So the English border advanced. At last in
1 08 1 it is said that King William went on a pilgrimage to
Saint David's, and about the same time he founded the
castle at Cardiff. Of the three earls of the border, William,
Roger, and Hugh, the last two outlived King William. But
Earl William Fitz-Osbern left England in 107 1, to marry
Richildis Countess of Flanders and to try to win her county.
There he was killed, and was succeeded in his earldom by
his son Roger, of whom we shall hear presently.
2. The First War with Scotland. — King Malcolm
of Scotland had all this while given himself out as a
friend of the English. He had at least promised them
help, and he had at any rate given all English exiles a
welcome shelter in Scotland. But, as if England had
become an enemy's country now that it was conquered by
William, in the course of the year 1070 he invaded Nort-
humberland and harried the land most cruelly, destroying
whatever little the Normans had left. Yet none the
when Edgar and his sisters came to seek shelter again, he
received them most kindly, and after a little while he married
Edgar's sister Margaret. This marriage was of great im-
portance in the history of Scotland. For Margaret brought
English ways into Scotland and made many reforms, and
for her goodness she was called a saint. From this time
the English part of the dominions of the King of Scots,
namely the earldom of Lothian and those parts of Scotland,
like Fife, which took to English ways, had altogether the upper
HO KING WILLIAM'S LATER WARS.
hand over the really Scottish part of the land. No doubt
this marriage made William look on Malcolm as still more
his enemy, but he could not as yet avenge his inroad. The
most part of 107 1 he was busy at Ely, and in 1072 he was
wanted in Normandy, where the affairs of Flanders made
things dangerous. But in August 1072 he set out to invade
Scotland by sea and land. It is to be noticed that Eadric,
the hero of Herefordshire, went with him. For we can well
believe that, now that William was really king over the
whole land, Englishmen were quite ready to serve him in a
war with the Scots, especially after Malcolm's invasion. But
there was no fighting ; for Malcolm came and met William
at Abernethy and became his man, as, since the days of
Edward the Unconquered, the Kings of Scots had ever
been to the Kings of the English. Thus had William won,
not only the kingdom of all England, but the lordship of all
Britain, like the kings who had been before him.
3. Affairs of Ireland.— There is in truth some reason to
believe that William sought for a lordship even beyond the
isle of Britain, such as the kings who were before him had
never had. The English Chronicle says that, if King William
had lived two years longer, he would have won all Ireland by
his wisdom, without any fighting. We cannot tell how this
might have been ; but it is certain that, though William never
had the rule of any part of Ireland, yet in his day England
began to have much more to do with Ireland, both with the
Danes who were settled there and with the native Irish. This
showed itself in bishops from Ireland coming to England
to be consecrated by Lanfranc. This was admitting an
English supremacy in spiritual things which was very likely
to grow into a supremacy in temporal things also.
4. Affairs of Northumberland. — As William came
back from Scotland, it is to be noticed that he confirmed
AFFAIRS OF NORTIIVMHERLAND AND MAINE. II!
the privileges of the bishopric of Durham. He had
i that see to a new bishop, Walcher from Lower Lor-
raine. The bishops of Durham gradually to I
I temporal rights, like the earls of Chester. Had all
earls and all bishops been like these two, the kingdom of
and might have fallen to pieces, as Germany did. 1 .
William also took away the earldom of Northumberland from
.Uric, and gave it to Waltheof, who was already Earl of
tiampton and Huntingdon. Earl Waltheof and Bis
Walcher were close friends. But Waltheof began his rule
by a great crime. This was killing the sons of Carl, though
they had been his comrades at the taking of York, bee
their father Carl, a chief man in the North, had killed Wal-
theof s grandfather Ealdred. 1 - the custom of deadly
feud, which was common in Scotland long after. Gospatric
went to Scotland, where King Malcolm gave him lands.
But he either kept or afterwards received lands in England,
and his descendants went on as chief men in the North.
One son of his, Doltin, seems to have received from
King Malcolm a small part of Cumberland, namely the
land about Carlisle. This was not yet part of the kingdom
I England.
The War of Maine. — William's next warfare \
on his own side of tl The city and land oi' Maine.
which he had won in 1063, now revolted him.
men of Maine fust chose as their count Hugh the
1 >f the Lombard Marqu< his m<
Gersendis was th of their last count Herbert But
she and her husband and son did not with the
citizens ol Le Mans; so the people proclaimed a
That i<, Le Mans should h had
striven to be. The whole land of 1 the citi
but they were betrayed by the nobles; so that the story of
ua king William's later wars.
Le Mans is like the story of Exeter. Then King William
in 1073 crossed the sea, taking with him a great host
of English, among whom, there is some reason to think,
was Hereward himself. One is sorry to think that a man
who had fought so well for freedom in his own land should
go and fight against freedom in another land ; but we may
be sure that the English of that day were glad to fight with
French-speaking men anywhere. With this army William
laid waste the whole land, and at last the city surrendered,
and was, as usual with him, well treated. Le Mans lost
its new freedom ; but it kept all its old rights and customs.
Then William made peace with Count Fulk of Anjou, who
also had claims over Maine; William's eldest son Robert
was to do homage to Fulk for the county. Thus King
William won the land of Maine the second time, ten years
after his first conquest.
6. William's Enemies. — At this time of his reign William
had to spend a great part of his time out of England. King
Philip of France was his enemy and Count Robert of Flanders.
And Count Robert's daughter was married to Cnut of Den-
mark, which helped to ally two of his enemies more closely.
But the strangest thing is that one German writer says that in
1074 it was fully believed that King William was thinking of
an expedition into Germany and of getting himself crowned
at Aachen. Another German writer, on the other hand, tells
the story quite the other way, and says that King Henry of
Germany (who was afterwards Emperor) sent to ask William's
help against his own enemies. Either way such stories show
that William was very much in men's thoughts and mouths
everywhere. And King Philip and Count Robert made a
very subtle plot for William's annoyance. This was to plant
the JGtheling Edgar at Montreuil, in the land between
Normandy and Flanders. He would thus be able to get
THE REVOLT OF THE EARLS. I 1 3
together English exiles, men from France and Flanders,
and volunteers and m< s of all kinds, to trouble the
Norman frontier. Edgar was now in Scotland with
r Queen Margaret He set out to go to France, but
driven back by a storm. And then William saw that it
was his best policy to win Edgar over to himself. So he
sent for him to Normandy, and he kept him for many \
at his court in great honour.
7. The Revolt of the Earls. — Meanwhile a revolt broke
out in England, which was not, like the revolt of Ely, a rising
of the English people against strangers, but a revolt of a few of
the great men for their own ends. Roger, Earl of Hereford,
his sister Emma in marriage to Ralph, Earl of Norfolk,
nst the King's orders, which was in itself an orTence.
Then at the bride-ale they began to talk treason, and to plot
how ihey might kill the King and divide the kingdom. Earl
Waltheof too was there ; but it is not clear how far be con-
sented to their schemes. On the whole it seems most likely
that he at first agreed and swore, and then repented and
drew back. He went and confessed to Archbishop Lan-
franc, who told him to go and tell the King everything. So
Waltheof crossed to Normandy and told everything, and the
g received him kindly and kept him with him. Mean-
while the two other earls had revolted openly. But they
found few men to help them, except their mei and
a number of Bretons who were attached to Earl Ralph.
Ralph moreover made a with Kin
sent jrel again. Th h, who might
have risen for fen, thought thai
likelj le of a revolt like this, and ti. : for the
King against the earls. Earl 1
Wulfstan and A! in bisb
and I | Ralph, who fled to Denmark,
I
114 KING WILLIAM'S LATER WARS.
while his wife defended the castle of Norwich against the
King. The Danes, under Cnut, came at last, and sailed up
to York ; but they did nothing except rob the minster.
Norwich castle surrendered ; the revolt was altogether put
down, and those who had a hand in it were punished in
various ways ; but none of them were put to death.
8. The Death of Waltheof. — Ralph of Norfolk had
escaped, and his latter end was better than his beginning ; for
he and his wife went to the crusade and died on the way.
Roger of Hereford was kept in prison, some say for the rest of
his days. But Waltheof, whose crime, if he had done any, was
less than theirs, was in Normandy with the King, and seemingly
in his favour. He came back to England with the King, and
was soon after put in prison. He was twice brought for trial
before an assembly of the great men, and the second time,
at Pentecost 1076, he was condemned to death and was
beheaded on the hills near Winchester on May 31. This was
the only time in his whole reign that William put any man to
death except in war. And it is strange that William, who
had forgiven his enemies, Waltheof himself among them, over
and over again, should have dealt so much more harshly
with Waltheof than with Roger and others who were far
more guilty. But it is said that Waltheof had many Norman
enemies, his wife Judith among them. His earldom of North-
humberland was given to his friend Bishop Walcher. The
English looked on him as a saint and martyr, and believed
that miracles were wrought at his tomb at Crowland. And
men generally believed that, after Waltheofs death, King
William's good luck, which had hitherto followed him in
such a wonderful way, began to 'forsake him.
9. The Rebellion of Robert.— And so it did, whether
the death of Waltheof had anything to do with it or not.
The very same year the Conqueror suffered his first defeat.
REBELLION OF ROBERT. II'
For some reason or other, he besieged Dol in Britanny ; but he
failed and had to fly. Then his son Robert got discontented,
because his father refused to give up any part of his domii
to him. Robert went away, and tried to get various pr;
to help him. King Philip did give him help, and many of the
young nobles of Normandy joined him. In 1079 Philip put
him in the castle of Gerberoi, and William came to besiege it.
In a sally, Robert overthrew his father, who was saved by the
Englishman Tokig, son of Wiggod of Wallingford. But
William could not take Gerberoi, and he was persuaded to
be reconciled to Robert. Meanwhile Malcolm of Scotland
made another frightful inroad into Northumberland, and in
1080 Robert was sent to chastise him. Robert did very
little, but on his way back he founded a new castle by
the Tyne, whence the town of Newcastle took its name.
Robert then again quarrelled with his father, and wen.
away into France, never to come back as long as his fa
lived.
10. The Death of Matilda. — William and his Queen
Matilda had lived in all love and confidence up to the time of
William's quarrel with Robert Then for the first time they
also quarrelled, because Matilda would send gifts* to her son in
his banishment, against his father's orders. A little later, in
1083, she died. Their second son Richard had already died in
a strange way while hunting in the New Forest, and oik
their daughters died while on her way to marry a Spanish
But, besides Robert, William's other sons, William and
Henry, were living; one daughter, Const ft to
Count Alan of Britanny, and another, Adela, to Count
i< n of Chartres. Anotlu : I nun. Just
about the time of Matilda's death there was another revolt in
Maine, where the Viscount Hubert held the castle of Sainte-
tnne for three years (1083-K all Willi..
Tl6 KING WILLIAM'S LATER WARS.
power. The castle could not be taken, and at last William
was driven to receive Hubert to his favour.
11. The Death of Bishop Walcher. — William had
thus during these years to undergo several domestic losses
and several defeats in war on the mainland. But his
hold on England was as firm as ever. After the revolt
of the earls, there was nothing which could be called a
rebellion, only a local outbreak, in which a local governor
lost his life on account of one particular wrong deed.
This was Bishop Walcher of Durham, to whom William
had given the earldom of Northumberland. This bishop
seems, as a temporal ruler, to have been weak rather than
oppressive ; he is not charged with wrong-doing himself,
but with failing to punish wrong- doers. He had several
favourites, both English and foreign, who did much mischief.
At last some of them murdered one Ligulf, an Englishman
of the highest rank in the country, and withal a chief friend
of the bishop himself. But even these men he spared, so
that the people believed that he had himself a hand in
Ligulf s murder. So when an Assembly met to judge the case,
the people, headed by the chief Englishmen present, killed
the bishop and all his followers. Then Odo was sent to
punish them \ but he took money, and put innocent men to
death, and again harried the land. This was in 1080, the
year that Robert was sent against the Scots. This was not
a revolt against the Norman king as such, but rather a riot,
such as might have happened just as well under Edward or
Harold, if any earl of theirs had given the same offence.
12. Death of Cnut of Denmark. — Thus there was
nothing, except the inroad of Malcolm, to be called war in
England after the revolt of the earls in 1075. But in Wil-
liam's last years a very formidable attack on England was
threatened. Cnut of Denmark, who had twice sailed up
DEATH OF WALCHER. II 7
the Humber, never quite gave up the thoughts of conquering
or delivering England. When he himself became 1
made great preparations, and was joined by his father-in-
law Robert of Flanders, and by Olaf of Norway, the
son of Harold Hardrada. In 1085 Cnut got together a
great fleet, and William brought over a vast host of mercena-
ries to guard the land. But a quarrel arose between Cnut
and his brother Olaf, and the next year Cnut was killed in a
church by his own men, and was called a saint and martyr.
Thus the danger was turned away from William.
13. Summary. — We have thus seen how William, hav
gradually conquered all England, went on to assert the old
lordship of the English crown over the rest of Britain. He
could not however, any more than the kings before him, keep
matters wholly quiet on the Welsh and Scottish borders. In
Wales the power of his earls advanced ; but King Malcolm,
though he became William's man, remained a dangerous
enemy. In England there was no real popular revolt after the
submission of Ely. The English generally did not favour the
rebel earls, and the death of Bishop Walcher was a riot rather
than a revolt On the whole, the land remained quite quiet
under William's rule. Beyond sea Maine revolted and was
conquered afresh ; but after this great success came se\
petty wars in which William's good fortune came to an end.
Yet, when England was concerned, it came back again, as the
great preparations of Cnut came to nothing. William
also his domestic troubles, the rebellion of one son, the death
of another, and the death of his wife. And in all this the
men of the time saw the penalty for the death of Waltheof.
CHAPTER XII.
How King William ruled the Land.
1. William's Government. — We have thus seen how
a foreign prince won, and how he kept, the kingdom of
England, and how little, after he had once really won it,
his rule was disturbed either by revolts at home or by
attacks from abroad. We now ask, What was the nature
of his government in England all this time ? The answer
must be that with which we started at first, namely that
his government was different both from that of a lawful
native king and from that of a conqueror who had come in
without any show of right. William was no wanton op-
pressor, and he no doubt honestly wished to rule his king-
dom as well as he could. He even tried to learn English,
that he might the better do his duty as an English king.
He professed to rule according to the law of King Edward,
that is, to rule as well and justly as King Edward had
done. And in fact he made very few changes in the old
laws. The changes which began with his reign were mostly
those gradual changes which could not fail to happen when
all circumstances were so greatly changed. The laws might
still be the same ; but their working could not be the same,
when the king was a stranger, and when all the greatest
estates and offices had passed into the hands of strangers. By
the end of William's reign there were very few Englishmen
WILLIAM'S LA WS. I I 9
holding great estates ; there was no English earl and only
one English bishop. Again, William's government was much
stronger than that of any king who had been before him; he
was better able to enforce the law, and he did enforce it very
strictly. The English writers give him all praise for making
good peace in the land, that is for severely punishing all
wrong- doers. A king who did this in those days was for-
given much that was bad in other ways. The special com-
plaint which men made against William's government was
that he was greedy and covetous, and laid on heavy taxes
which men deemed to be wrongful. This is no doubt true ;
but it is to be remembered that regular taxation was then
coming in as something new, and that in no age are men
fond of having their money taken from them.
2. William's Laws. —William however did make some
new laws. These laws were solemnly enacted in the regular
mblies of the kingdom ; but then those assemi
were gradually changing from gatherings of Englishmen
into gatherings of Normans. He renewed, as the saying
went, Edward's Law, with such changes as he said were
for the good of the English people. Some of these
changes were made merely for the time, while there was still
a distinction between English and French. This last is the
1 commonly used to take in both the Normans and all
the other French-speaking people whom William had brought
with him. Erenchmen who had settled in King Edn
time were to reckon as Englishmen. Normans and English-
men were to live in peace, but as the Normans were often
killed privily, | law was made for their protection. If
the murderer was not to be found, the hundred was to pay.
And for some purposes each nation was to keep its own law.
1 English and Normans used, in doubtful cases, to ap
to the judgement of God; but the Normans sought to find out
120 HOW KING WILLIAM RULED THE LAND.
the truth by single combat and the English by the ordeal of
hot iron. William allowed both ways, and ordered that each
man might keep the custom of his own nation. He forbade
the slave-trade by which men were sold out of the land,
chiefly to Ireland. This had been forbidden by earlier kings
also, but William himself could not wholly get rid of the evil
practice. He forbade the punishment of death ; criminals
might be blinded or mutilated, but not hanged or otherwise
killed. This rule he most strictly observed himself, save
only in the case of Waltheof. And just at the end of his
reign, in 1086, in a great assembly at Salisbury, he made what
was in the end the most important law of all. Every man in
the land, of whatever other lorpl he might be the man, swore
to be faithful to King William in all things, even against his
other lord. Of how great moment this law was we shall see
presently.
3. Changes in the Church. — Another law of William's
had reference to the affairs of the Church. It had hitherto
been the custom in England that both civil and eccle-
siastical matters should be dealt with in the general assem-
blies, both of the whole kingdom and of each shire. In
these last the earl and the bishop sat together. William
now ordered that the bishops should hold separate courts
for Church causes. And all through William's reign Lan-
franc held many synods of the clergy distinct from the
general assemblies of the kingdom. In these synods bishops
and abbots were deposed, and many new canons^ were
made. This was the time when Pope Gregory the Seventh
was trying to forbid the marriage of the clergy everywhere.
In England the secular clergy were very commonly married,
both the parish priests and the canons in the secular
minsters. The rule which Lanfranc laid down was that no
canon should even keep a wife to whom he was already
AFFAIRS OF THE CHURCH. 12 1
married; but the parish priests were allowed to keep their
wives, only the unmarried were not to marry, nor was any
married man to be ordained. Lanfranc was a monk and a
favourer of monks; new monasteries were founded, above all
King William's abbey of the Battle, built, in discharge of his
vow, on the hill of Senlac, with its high altar on the spot
where Harold's standard had stood. And monks were put
into some churches where there had before been secular
priests. The ecclesiastical rule of William and Lanfranc
tended on the whole to greater learning and stricter disci-
pline among the clergy ; but these gains were purchased by
thrusting strangers into all the chief places of the Church as
well as of the State.
4. The New Bishops and Abbots. — We have said
already that, as the bishops and abbots died, or, when
there was any pretext for so doing, were deprived, strangers
were appointed, always to the bishoprics, commonly to
the abbeys. Some of the foreign abbots were rude or fierce
men who despised the English. Such was Turold the stern
abbot of Peterborough, of whom we have already heard ; such
was Paul of Saint Alban's, who mocked at the old abbots
and pulled down their tombs. Such too was Thurstan of
Glastonbury, who, when his monks refused to sing the ser-
vice after a new fashion, brought soldiers into the church, who
slew several of them. But for this King William deposed
him. Hut William's prelates were not as a rule like tl
Most of the new bishops worked hard, according to their
light, in building their churches, and reforming their cha:
and dioceses. Some of them, in obedience to one of I.an-
franc's canons, moved their sees from smaller towns to greater.
Thus was the see of Lichfield moved aids
to Coventry), that of Elmham to Tl ifterwards
wich), that of Sherborne to Old Salisbury, that of Dorctu
122 HOW KING WILLIAM RULED THE LAND.
to Lincoln, and, after William's death, that of Wells to Bath.
Some of the new prelates lived on good terms with their
English neighbours; there is a document in which Saint
Wulfstan and his monks of Worcester enter into a bond of
spiritual brotherhood with several abbots, Norman and
English, and their monks. But besides this, Saint
Wulfstan did one good work which was his own. William's
law against the slave-trade was at first no better kept than
the same law when it was put forth by earlier kings. The
men of Bristol still went on selling English slaves to Ireland.
Bristol was in Wulfstan's diocese. So he went thither many
times, and often preached to the people against their great
sin, till they left off sinning, at least for a while.
5. King William and the Pope. — While King Wil-
liam helped Lanfranc in all his reforms, he would not
give up a whit of the authority in the affairs of the Church
which had been held by the kings who had been before
him. Both the English kings and the Norman dukes
were used to invest bishops and abbots by giving them
the ring and staff, the badges of their office. When Hilde-
brand, who had so greatly favoured William's attack on
England, became the famous Pope Gregory the Seventh, he
tried with all his might to take away this right from the Em-
peror and other princes ; but to the King of the English he
never said a word about the matter, and William himself, and
for a while his successors after him, went on investing the
prelates just as had been done before. At one time Pope
Gregory wrote to the King, demanding that the payment of
a penny from each house, called Romescot or Pe/erpence,
should be more regularly paid, and not only this, but that
the King should become his man for his kingdom. To this
William wrote back that he would pay the money, because
the kings before him had paid it ; but that, as no King of the
II //./ 1AM A '/OAT.
lish before him had ever become the man of the Pope, so
neither would he. W Dark, not onl\
in which William stood up for the rights of h
against so gr< . . hut also tiie way in *
he puts himself exactly in the place of the <
Giving himself out as their lawful successor
was theirs, but he claims nothing more.
6. The Imprisonment of Bishop Odo. — There was
another act of William's whicl how fiillj 1 he
was that no privilege and no favour should hinder him
either from carrying out his own will or from
ever he thought was for the good 01
Mis brother Odo, Bishop of Bayeui an 1 Earl of E
so puffed up with pride and cruelty that h
longer to be borne. We may believe that tl was
illy displeased with his doings in the North when
Bent to punish the riot in which Bishop Wakher
killed. At last, in 10S2, Odo fancied that he was going to be
made Pope whenever Gregory died, ft]
great company, or rather an army, in England and
mandy, and was going to set out for
then in Normandy ; but he came back
assembly, and formally accused his brother. He laid that
Odo's misdeeds could no longer l>
Wise Men of the land counsel him to do? T
semblj held its peace. Then th
. even against his brother; he hade his
him. But in those days it was thought ft
p, or indeed am
Then King William seized hia brother with
Odo cried out that it was unlawful I
none but • could judge him. I:
had told the King what to say I
124 H 0W KING WILLIAM RULED THE LAND.
that he did not seize the Bishop of Bayeux, but that he did
seize the Earl of Kent. So, whatever might become of the
Bishop of Bayeux, the Earl of Kent was kept in prison at
Rouen. Pope Gregory pleaded earnestly that he might be
set free ; but William kept him in ward till the day of his
own death.
7. The New Forest. — There is no doubt that William
was always anxious to do justice, whenever so to do did not
hinder his own plans. And this makes a great difference be-
tween him and mere oppressors who seem really to like to do
mischief. But we have seen that he could do very dreadful
things for the sake of his policy, and after awhile he came to
do things only less dreadful for the sake of his own pleasure.
Nearly all men of that time were fond of hunting ; William
was specially so. For his pleasure in this way he made a forest
in Hampshire, not far from his capital at Winchester, and,
after eight hundred years, that forest is called the New Forest
still. It must be remembered that a, forest does not properly
mean land all covered with wood. There were sure to be
wooded parts in a forest, but the whole was not wood. A
forest is land which is kept waste for hunting, and which is
put out of the common law of the land, and ruled by the
special and harsher law of the forest. Very hard punishments
were decreed against either man or beast that meddled with
the king's game. Now, to make or enlarge his New Forest,
William did not scruple to turn tilled land into a wilder-
ness, to take men's land from them, and to destroy houses
and churches. Just as men thought that William- lost his
luck after the death of Waltheof, so men thought that the
New Forest brought a special curse on his house. Certain
it is that three of his house, his two sons Richard and Wil-
liam, and his grandson a son of Robert, all died in a strange
way in the Forest.
■
DOMESDAY BOOK.
8. The Great Survey. — One of the greatest acts of V
Ham's reign, and that by which we come to learn more a
England in his time than from any other soi - done in
the assembly held at Gloucester at the Christmas of i c
Then the King had, as the Chronic I very deep speech
with his Wise Men/' This u deep speech n in English is in
French par h •tm nt ; and so we see how our assemblies (
by their later name. And the end of the deep speech
that commissioners were sent through all England, save only
the bishopric of Durham and the earldom of Northumbei .
to make a survey of the land. They were q by
whom every piece of land, great and small, was held
whom it had been held in King Edward's day, what il
worth now, and what it had been worth in K:
day. All this was written in a book kept at Winchester, \
men called Domesday Book. It is a most wonderful re
and tells us more of the state of England just at tin:
than we know of it for a long time before or after. But
above all things we see how far the land had passed from
Englishmen to Normans and other strangers. There
only a very few Englishmen who ke< ll all
like those of the chief Normans; but it is quite a mistak
think that every Englishman was driven out of his
and home. Crowds of Englishmen keep small \
fragments of great ones, sometimes held straight
King, sometimes of a Norman or an Englishman in Willi
favour. And when any man, Norman or
claim against any other man, Norma]
fairly set down in the book, for the King I
9. The Oath of Allegiance. -
portant than the great survey, foil
the survey was made, and the King knew how all the
his kingdom was held, he called all the land*
126 HOW KING WILLIAM RULED THE LAND.
account to a great assembly at Salisbury in August 1086.
There they all, of whatever lord they were the men, sware oaths
to King William and became his men. That is to say, William
had made up his mind to hinder in his kingdom the evils which
were growing up in other lands. Elsewhere it was generally
held that a man was bound to fight for his own lord, even
against his overlord the king. In this way the kingdom of
Karolingia or France, and the kingdoms held by the Em-
perors, broke up into principalities which were practically
independent. Most surely William himself would have been
greatly amazed if a man of the Duke of the Normans had
refused to go against the King of the French. But he took
care that there should at least be no such questions in the king-
dom of England. Every man in William's kingdom became
the King's man first of all, and was to obey him against all
-other men. There never was any one law made in England
of greater moment than this. England for a long time had
been getting more united, when the coming of William
brought in two sets of tendencies. On the one hand the
general strength of his government, and the mere fact that
the land was conquered, did much to make the land yet more
united. On the other hand, many of William's followers had
brought with them the new notions which caused other king-
doms to split in pieces. This wise law settled that the
first set of tendencies should get the upper hand, and that
the land should become more united by reason of the
Conquest. Since William's day no man has ever thought of
dividing the kingdom of England.
10. The Last Tax. — The great survey and the oath of
allegiance were nearly the last acts of William in England.
All that he did afterwards was to lay on one more heavy tax.
This was a tax of six shillings on every hide of land, a tax
which could be both more easily and more fairly raised now
THE OATH OF ALLEGIANCE.
that the survey was made. Men cried out more than ever,
and altogether it was a sad and strange time*
bad crops and fires and famines, and many chief men both in
England and Normandy died. And now the time came for
the great ruler of both those lands to die also.
CHAPTER XIII.
The Two Williams.
1. King William's Last War. — The way in which
the Conqueror came by his death was hardly worthy of
the great deeds of his life. The land between Rouen and
Paris, on the rivers Seine and Oise, known as the Vexin,
was a land which had long been disputed between Nor-
mandy and France. Border quarrels were always going
on, and just now there were great complaints of inroads
made by the French commanders in Mantes, the chief
town of the Vexin, on the lands of various Normans.
William made answer by calling on Philip to give up to
him the town of Mantes and the whole Vexin. Philip
only answered by making jests on William, who was just
now keeping quiet at Rouen, seeking by medical treat-
ment to lessen the bulk of his body. Philip said that the
King of the English was lying in, and that there would be
a great show of candles at his churching. Then King Wil-
liam was very wroth, and swore his most fearful oaths that,
when he rose up, he would light a hundred thousand candles
at the cost of the French King. So in August 1087, as soon
as he was able to get up, he entered the Vexin and harried
the land cruelly. He reached Mantes (August 15), entered
the town, caused it to be set on fire, and rode about to see
the burning. At last his horse stumbled, perhaps on the
burning embers ; he was thrown forward on the tall bow of
William's sickni \ n,
his saddle, and r i wound vrhich made liim
give over. I carried to R I there lay in the
priory of Saint Gervase outside the i
2. King William's last Sickness. — He la
more than three weeks. The chief prelal
came about him; some of them were skilful
could tend his body as well as his soul. But t
that there was no hope, and tuld him th die.
He then began to make ready for death. He \
repentance for all his wrong . for the harrying of
Northumberland long before and for the burning o:
just now. He sent money to make good the destruction
at Mantes, and he sent other money to the chin
and poor of England. Then he settled tl.
to his dominions. He said that by ail law Rob
succeed him in Normandy ; so it mu>:
woes would come on the land where Robert should rule.
About England he said that he did not dare to ED
order; but he wished, if it were God's will, that Wil
should succeed him, and he sent a letter to Archbishop I
franc, praying him to crown William, if he thought it i
do so. To his youngest son Henry he left live thoufl
pounds in money from his hoard. Robert P
and now his other sons left him, William to 1
kingdom, and Henry to look after his money. 1 ':.
bade all the men, Norman and English, whom he
in prison to be set fre * he
said he would not set free; be would Olllj
more mischief if he were let out But h
others prayed hard for him, an Will
the King bade th with the
3. King William's Death and Burial. on
September 9, 10S7, th lliam. the Conqi:
130 THE TWO WILLIAMS.
of England, died. There was fear and confusion through
all Rouen; men knew not what to do, now that the man
who had kept the land in peace was gone. For a while
the King's body lay stripped and forsaken. But at last
he was taken to Caen, to be buried in his own minster
of Saint Stephen without the walls. Then, when the rites
of burial began, one Asselin the son of Arthur rose and
said that the ground on which the church was built was his
and his father's, and he forbade that the body should be
buried in his soil. So they paid him at once for the grave,
and afterwards for the whole estate that he had lost. Then
was King William buried, and a shrine of cunning work-
manship was made over his grave ; but all is now gone.
4. William the Red. — The king who was now to suc-
ceed William the Great was his third son William — his
second son Richard had died in the New Forest. From
his ruddy face he was called William Rufus or the Red,
and sometimes the Red King. His character was a strange
mixture. He had a large share of his father's gifts; he was
brave, free of hand, and merry of speech ; and, when he
chose, he could be both a good captain and a good ruler.
But he had none of his father's really great qualities ; he
was a blasphemer of God and a man of the foulest life ;
without being so cruel in his own person as some other
princes, he was utterly reckless, and cared not how much
evil he caused. He was also quite careless of his
promises, except when he pledged his word as a good knight;
then he kept it faithfully ; any one who trusted himself to
his personal generosity was always safe. For we have now
come to the beginning of what is called chivalry, of which
William the Red was one of the first professors. He was
proud and self-willed above all men, and he. had not, like
his father, any steady purpose about any matter. He was
CORONATION OF WILLIAM RUFUS. 131
always beginning undertakings and no: 5 them. Yet
there is no doubt that he was a man of g
if he had chosen to use them better. He made a great
impression on the minds of men at the time, and of no 1
are there more personal stories told.
5. Accession of William Rufus. — It does not seem
that William Rufus was ever regularly chosen king. II
crossed to England with his father's letter to Lanfranc,
and on September 26, the Archbishop crowned him at
Westminster. No one gainsaid his claim ; all men bowed
to him and sware oaths to him. But it must be remem-
bered that there was really more to be said for either of
his brothers than for him. Robert was the eldest son,
was his father's natural successor in Normandy. And those
Normans who wished England and Normandy to stay to-
gether, would of course wish to have Robert for kin_
England. On the other hand, if the English had given up
all thought of a king of their own blood, the natur
for them was Henry. He alone was a real JEtheEn
king's son born in the land. But neither Robert nor Henry
was at hand, and William took the crown quite quietly. 11
held the Christmas feast at Westminster, and it seems to
have been then that he gave back the earldom of
his uncle Bishop Odo.
6. The Rebellion of Odo. — The new king had I
only a few months on the throne, when most of the
Normans openly rebelled against him, meant!
in his brother Duke Robert. At the head of the r
were the King's two uncles, Count Robert and
Odo. Odo was the first beginner of tb r, for
he found that he was not, as he had hoped to be, the
King's chief counsellor. Earl
Geollrey of Coutances, Bishop William of Durl.
1 33 THE TWO WILLIAMS.
others of the great men joined them; but Earl Hugh of
Chester, Archbishop Lanfranc and all the other bishops,
above all Saint Wulfstan at Worcester, remained faithful.
Then the King saw that he had nothing to trust to but
the native English. So he called them to his standard, and
made promises of good government in every way. Then
the people flocked to him from all parts, and he found him-
self at the head of a great English army. The rebels were
now smitten everywhere ; specially the King with his Eng-
lishmen beat back the troops that Duke Robert sent to land
at Pevensey. That is, they beat back a new Norman inva-
sion on the very spot where the Conqueror had landed.
Then they took the castle of Rochester, where Odo was,
and Odo had to come out with shame and to go back to
Normandy; he never saw England again. Many of the
rebels lost their lands ; but they afterwards got them back
again when peace was made between King William and his
brother Robert.
7. The End of the Conquest. — William Rufus was
very far from keeping the promises of good government
which he made to the native English when he needed
their help. Yet it would be hard to show that he directly
oppressed Englishmen as Englishmen ; his reign was rather
a time of general misrule, which oppressed all classes,
though undoubtedly the native English must have suffered
the most. But this war of the year 1088 was the last
stage of the Norman Conquest. It was the last time
that Englishmen and Normans, as such, met in battle
against one another on English soil. And, as far as fighting
went, the English had the better. In this war Englishmen,
fighting against Normans, kept the crown of England for a
Norman King. Thus by this war the Norman Conquest of
England was in some sort completed and in some sort un-
\7) OF THE CONQUEST.
done. It was completed so far as that the Norman b<
was now firmly established on the English throne. From
this time no one thought of driving out the kings who came
of the line of the Conqueror. No one thought again of
setting up Edgar, though he lived a long time after
one thought again of asking for help from Denmark. But the
Conquest was undone so far as that all this was done by
English themselves, so far as the Norman King was set on
the throne by English hands. At this point then we shall
best end our tale of the history of the Conquest, and stop to
look at the effects which the Conquest had, both at once
and on the later history of England.
CHAPTER XIV.
The Results of the Norman Conquest.
1. General Results of the Conquest. — We must
carefully distinguish the immediate effects of the Norman
Conquest, the changes which it made at the moment, from
its lasting results which have left their mark on all the
times which have come after. In many ways these two
have been opposite the one to the other. It might have
seemed at the time that the English people had altogether
lost their national life, their freedom, their laws, their lan-
guage, and everything that was theirs. But in truth the
Norman Conquest, which at the time seemed to destroy
all these things, has actually kept to us all these things —
except our language — more perfectly than we could have
kept them if the Norman Conquest had never happened.
We can see this by comparing the course of our history with
that of other kindred nations which never underwent anything
like the Conquest. In no other land have things gone on
from the beginning with so little real, break as in England.
From the earliest times till now, England has never been
without a national assembly of some kind. Our national
assemblies have changed their name and their form; but
they have never wholly stopped ; we have never had to begin
them again as something altogether new. But in many other
lands the national assemblies stopped altogether, and they
have had to be set up again as something new in later times,
very often after the pattern of ours. And so it is with
many other things, which might have died out bit by bit,
GENERAL RESULTS OF THE CONQUEST.
if there had never been any Conquest, and which n.
have been suddenly cut short, if the Conquest had been of
another kind from what it was. It is the foreign con-
quest wrought under the guise of law which is the
to everything in English history. And we shall find that
the Norman Conquest did not very greatly bring in thi
which were quite new, but rather strengthened and hast-
tendencies which were already at work. We shall see many
examples of this as we go on.
2. Intercourse with other lands. — One very c
case of this rule is the way in which England now be
to have much more to do with other lands than she
had before. But this was only strengthening
which was already at work. From the r<
onwards England was beginning to have more
do with the mainland. Or rather, whereas 1
before had to do, whether in war or in peace, almosl
with the kindred lands of Scandinavia, Germany, and I
ders, she now began to have much to do with ti.
speaking people, first in Normandy, then in France it
The great beginning of this was, as we have alrr
the marriage of ^Ethelred and Emma. Then came the i
of their son Edward, with his foreign ways and
favourites. All this in some sort made thi: r the
fuller introduction of foreigners and fore the
Conquest. When the same prince reigned ovei
Normandy, and when in after times the same }
not only over England and Normandy, but ov
large parts of Gaul, men went l\u kwards an 1 t
from one land to another. If strangers 1.
England, Englishmen often held high offices in i
lands. Our kings too, strangers b)
after they had quite become Englishmen,
136 THE RESULTS OF THE NORMAN CONQUEST.
wives and giving their daughters to foreign princes, far
more commonly than had been done before. Foreign trade
too increased ; England had a very old trade with Germany
and Flanders; this in no way ceased, while a great trade with
Normandy and other parts of Gaul grew up. And, besides
the fighting men and others who followed the kings, not a
few merchants and other peaceful men from other lands
settled in England. In every way, in short, Britain ceased to
be a world of its own ; England, and Scotland too, became
part of the general world of Western Europe.
3. Effects of the Conquest on the Church. — In
nothing did this come out more strongly than in the affairs
of the Church. The English Church was, more strictly
than any other, the child of the Church of Rome, and she
had always kept a strong reverence for her parent. But
the Church of England had always held a greater inde-
pendence than the other churches of the West, and the
kings and assemblies of the nation had never given up
their power in ecclesiastical matters. Church and State were
one. But from the time of the Conquest, the Popes got
more and more power, as was not wonderful when the
Conqueror himself had asked the Pope to judge between
him and Harold. Gradually all the new notions spread in
England; the Popes encroached more and more, and laws
after laws had to be made to restrain them, till the time
came when we threw off the Pope's authority altogether.
The affairs of Church and State got more and more distinct ;
the clergy began to claim to be free from all secular juris-
diction and to be tried only in the ecclesiastical courts ; the
marriage of the clergy too was more and more strictly for-
bidden. All this was the direct result of the Norman
Conquest. If the Conquest had never happened, it might
have come about in some other way; but it was in fact
ITS EFFECTS ON THE CHURCH.
through the Conquest that it did corn* William the
Conqueror, like many other great ml tem
which he himself could work, hut which smaller men <
not work. In after times the kinga and popes often pi I
into one another's hands to get their own ends,
uncommonly at the expense of both clergy and people.
More than once the whole nation of England, noble
and commons, had to rise up against Pope and King toge
4. Foreign Wars. — It was alaoowinj Norman O
quest that England began to be largi in contin
wars. Here again, this might very likely have come about in
some other way; but this was the way in which it did come
about. As long as Normandy w
between England and France, England and France could
hardly have any grounds of quarrel. But when England
Normandy had one prince, England got id in the quar-
rels between Normandy and France. England and France
became rival powers, and the rivalry went on f after
Normandy had been conquered by France. Then too both
England and Normandy passed to princes who h
great possessions in Gaul, and the chief of these, the dad
Aquitaine, was kept by the English kings long after the low
Normandy. Thus,through the Norman Conquest, Englan
came a continental power, mixed up with continental wars and
politics, and above all, engaged in a long rivalry with I
5. Effects on the Kingly Power. — One
of the Norman Conquest was greatly to
power of the kings. The Norman kinga kept all the
powers, rights, and revenues which tl.
had, and they added some new on< >. A king may be
looked on in two ways. He n
as the head of the state, of which other men a:
bers, or else as the chief lord, with ii
I38 THE RESULTS OF THE NORMAN CONQUEST.
the land for his men, holding their lands of him. Both
these notions of kingship were known in Europe; both
were known in England ; but William the Conqueror knew
how to use both to the strengthening of the kingly power.
Where the king is merely the lord of the chief men, the
kingdom is likely to split up. into separate principalities, as
happened both in Germany and in Gaul. William took care
that this should not happen in England by making his great
law which made every man the man of the king. But when
this point was once secured, it added greatly to the king's
power that he should be personal lord as well as chief of
the state, and that all men should hold their lands of him.
y The Norman kings were thus able to levy the old taxes as
heads of the state, and also to raise money in various ways
off the lands which were held of them. They could, like
the old kings, call the whole nation to war, and they could
further call on the men who held lands of them either to
do military service in their own persons or to pay money to
be let off. Thus the king could have at pleasure either a
national army, or a feudal army, that is an army of men who
did military service for their fiefs, or lastly an army of hired
mercenaries. And the kings made use of all three as
suited them. Another thing also happened. In the older
notion, kingship was an office, the highest office, an office
bestowed by the nation, though commonly bestowed on the
descendants of former kings. But now kingship came to
be looked on more and more as a possession, and it was
deemed that it ought to pass, like any other possession,
according to the strict rules of inheritance. Thus the crown
became more and more hereditary and less and less elective.
For several reigns after the Norman Conquest, things so
turned out that strict hereditary succession could not be
observed. Still, from the time of the Conquest, the tendency
CHANGES IN LAW AND GOVERNMENT. 139
was in favour of strict hereditary succession, and it became
the rule in the long run.
6. Effects on the Constitution and Administra-
tion. — We have already seen that both William the <
queror and the Norman kings after him made
direct changes in the law. Nor did they make many formal
changes in government and administration. They destroyed
no old institutions or offices, but they set up some
ones by the side of the old. And of these sometimes the
old lived on till later times, and sometimes the new.
sometimes old things got new names, which might n
us think that more change happened than really did
in this case again sometimes the old names lived on and
sometimes the new. Thus the, Normans called the shire
the county, and the king's chief officer in it, the sheriff,
called the viscount. Now we use the word county oftener than
the word shire; but the sheriff is never called niscatm
which has got another meaning. So, in the -
of all, the King is still called King by his Old-]-
but the assembly of the nation, the W\
of the Wise Men, is called a Parliament. But this is simply
because the wise men spoke or i with the I
as we read before that King William had u very deep
speech with his Wise Men" before he ordered the jj
survey. What is much more important than th<
of name is that the assembly has quite char con-
stitution. And yet it is truly the same oing
on ; there has been no sudden break ; < I l>een
made bit by bit; but we have never been with
assembly of some kind, and there never v. .lien
one kind of assembly was abolished and another kind
in its stead. The greatest change thai
a short time was that, in the twei
140 THE RESULTS OF THE NORMAN CONQUEST.
Conqueror's reign, an assembly which was almost wholly an
assembly of Englishmen changed into one which was almost
wholly an assembly of Normans. But even this change was not
made all at once. There was no time when Englishmen as a
body were turned out, and Normans as a body put in. Only,
as the Englishmen who held great offices died or lost them
one by one, Normans and other strangers were put in their
places one by one. Thus there came a great change in the
spirit and working of the assembly ; but there was little or
no immediate change in its form. And so it was in every
thing else. /Without any sudden change, without ever abolish-
ing old things and setting up new ones, new ideas came
in and practically made great changes in things which were
hardly at all changed in form. It is a mistake to think that
our Old-English institutions were ever abolished and new Nor-
man institutions set up in their stead. But it is quite true that
our Old-English institutions were greatly changed, bit by bit, by
new ways of thinking and doing brought over from Normandy.
7. Effects of the Conqueror's Personal Character. —
Besides all other more general causes, there can be no
doubt that the personal character of William himself had a
great effect on the whole later course of English history.
As William had no love for oppression for its own sake, so
neither had he any love for change for its own sake. He
saw that, without making any violent changes in English
law, he could get to himself as much power as he could wish
for. Both he and the kings for some time after him were
practically despots, kings, that is, who did according to
their own will. But they did according to their own
will, because 'they kept on all the old forms of freedom
so, in after times, as the kings grew weaker and the na-
tion grew stronger, life could be put again into the forms,
and the old freedom could be won back again. A smaller
EFFECT OF WILLIAM'S OWN CHARACTER. 141
man than William, one less strong and wise, would 1
likely have changed a great deal inure. And by so di
he would have raised far more opposition, and would
have done far more mischief in the long run. Willi
whole position was that he was lawful King of the
English, reigning according to English law. But a smaller
man than William would hardly have been able at once out-
wardly to keep that position, and at the same time real'
do in all things as he thought fit It is largely owing to
William's wisdom that there was no violent cb
sudden break, but that the general system of things wen
as before, allowing this and that to be changed bit by bit in
after times, as change was found to be needed.
8. Relations of Normans and Englishmen. — It
followed almost necessarily from the peculiar nature of
William's conquest that in no conquest did the conqu*
and the conquered sooner join together into ont
No doubt the fact that Normans and English « r all
kindred nations had something to do with this; but
union could hardly have been made so speedily
thoroughly, if it had not been for the peculiar character of
the conquest made under the form of law. Willia:
great deal of land from Englishmen and to Norm
but every Norman to whom he gave land had in some s«
become an Englishman in order to hold it. He held it
the King of the English according to the law of 1
he stepped exactly into the place of the Englishman
had held the land before him ; he took his
his burthens, whatever they might be. neith
He had to obey and to administer English law,
lish offices, to adapt himself in endless ways to the
of the land in which he found himself An i. except in
case of the very greatest noble8, there were men of I
142 THE RESULTS OF THE NORMAN CONQUEST.
English birth by his side, holding their lands as he held his,
holding offices, attending in assemblies, acting with him in
every way as members of the same political body. The son
of the Norman settler, born in the land, often the son of an
English mother, soon came to feel himself more English
than Norman. So the two nations were soon mingled to-
gether, so soon that a writer a hundred years after the Con-
quest could say that, among freemen, it was impossible to
say who was English and who was Norman by descent. Of
course in thus mixing together, the two nations influenced
one another ; each learned and borrowed something from the
other. The English did not become Normans; the Normans
did become Englishmen; but the Normans, in becoming Eng-
lishmen, greatly influenced the English nation, and brought
in many ways of thinking and doing which had not been
known in England before.
9. Effects of the Conquest on Language. — Above
all things, this took place in the matter of language. In
this we carry about us to this day the most speaking
signs of the Norman Conquest. If the Norman Conquest
had never happened, the English tongue would doubt-
less have greatly changed in the course of eight hundred
years, just as the other tongues of Europe have greatly
changed in that time. But it could not have changed in
the same way or the same degree. No other European
tongue has changed in exactly the same way, because no
other tongue has had the same causes of change brought to
bear on it. Our own Old-English tongue, as it was spoken
when the Normans came, was a pure Teutonic tongue, that
is, it was as nearly pure as any tongue ever is ; for there is
no tongue which has not borrowed some words from others.
So we had, since we came into Britain, picked up a few
words from the Welsh, and more from the Latin. But these
EFFECTS ON LANGUAGE. I43
were simply names of things which we knew nothing about
till we came hither, foreign things which we called by for
names. And we had kept our grammar, and what gram-
marians call the inflexions, that is, the forms and endings of
words, quite untouched. The Normans, on the other hand, after
their settlement in Gaul, had quite forgotten their old Danish
tongue, allied to the English, and, when they came to Eng-
land, they all spoke French. French is the Romance tongue of
Northern Gaul, that is, the tongue which grew up there as the
Latin tongue lost its old form, and a good many Teutonic
words crept in. The effect of the Norman Conquest on our
tongue has been twofold. We have lost nearly all our in-
flexions ; we should very likely have lost most of them if
there had been no Norman Conquest, for the other Teutonic
tongues have all lost some or all of their inflexions; but the
Norman Conquest made this work begin sooner and go on
quicker. Then we borrowed a vast number of French
words, many of them words which we did not want at all,
names of things which already had English names. But
this happened very gradually. For some while the two lan-
guages, French and English, were spoken side by side without
greatly affecting one another. French was the polite spe
Latin the learned speech, English the speech of the pec
but for a hundred and fifty years after the Conquest, French
was never used in public documents. Before !
mans in England learned to speak English, and they seem to
have done so commonly by the end of the twelfth century,
though of course they could speak French as well. Then
there came in a French, as distinguished from D in-
fluence ; French came in as a fashion, and it was not till
the fourteenth century that English quite won the day; and
when it came in, it had lost many oi its inflexions, and bor-
rowed very many French words. And since this
144 THE RESULTS OF THE NORMAN CONQUEST.
gone on taking in new words from French, Latin, and
other tongues, because we have lost the habit of making
new words in our own tongue. All these later changes are
not direct effects of the Norman Conquest; still they are
effects. The French fashion could never have set in so
strongly if the French tongue had not been already brought
in by the Normans.
10. Effects of the Conquest on Learning and Litera-
ture. — There can be no doubt that in all matters of learning
the Norman Conquest caused a great immediate advance
in England. There had in earlier times been more than
one learned period in England ; but the Danish wars had
thrown things back, and it does not seem that Edward, with
all his love for strangers, did much to encourage foreign
scholars. But with the coming of William this changed at
once. Lanfranc and Anselm for instance, the first arch-
bishops of Canterbury after the Conquest, were the greatest
scholars of their time. Men of learning and science of all
kinds came to England, and men in England, both of Nor-
man and of English blood, took to learning and science.
We have therefore during the twelfth century a large stock
of good writers who were born or who lived in England.
But they wrote in Latin, as was usual then and long after
with learned men throughout western Europe ; they there-
fore did nothing for the encouragement of a native literature.
Still men did not leave off writing in English ; the English
Chronicle goes on during the first half of the twelfth century,
and small pieces, chiefly religious, were still written. " But the
Norman Conquest had the effect of thrusting down English
literature into a lower place ; even when it was commonly
spoken, it ceased to be either a learned or a polite tongue.
On the other hand, the newly-born French literature took
great root in England. It was about the time of the Conquest
EFFECTS 01 MATURE AND Al
that men in Northern Gaol found out that the French tongue
which they talked h
which th< that it « rench
ell as to Bpeak it. 'I
oldest books of most Lingua.
Frencli verse flourished greatly amon both
in Normandj an J in J
man dukes, and specially of the Con
of England. Others, who were settl
began to love their new land, looks of . and
British history and legend. Thus, for a long time after
the Conquest, there was much ing on in I
in all three langi Many Fl ^ins-
tated into English, and some
But all this, though it Bfa
work. town the
the land for b
11. Effects of the Conquest on Art.— In
not much art in Western E
Books were illuminated, and thei
sculpture in churches, but thi be now
thou, k. Both in 1
the art of embroidery Been
hardly art in any I But in the art of buil
Norman Conques: When
. of building, we have mainly to do with -
nonly of
and
built thr«
manner of th
built evcrvwli
strike out
I4<5 THE RESULTS OF THE NORMAN CONQUEST.
saking the old Roman models with their round arches, they
devised new local styles in different parts. Thus one form of
what is called Romanesque architecture arose in Italy, another
in Southern Gaul, another in Northern Gaul, and so on.
The Normans of William's day were great builders, and the
Romanesque style of Northern Gaul grew up chiefly in
Normandy, and is commonly called Norman. In Edward's
day this new style came into England among other Norman
fashions, and under William it took firmer root. The new
prelates despised the English churches as too small, and they
rebuilt them on a greater scale, and of course in the new
style. For a while the old style which England had in
common with the rest of Western Europe was still used in
smaller buildings; but by the end of the eleventh century
the Norman style had taken full root in England, and in the
twelfth century it grew much richer and lighter. And as
stone building came more and more into use, the style
spread to houses and other buildings.
12. Effects of the Conquest on Warfare. — Military
architecture, the building of castles and other strong places,
is in some sort a part of the history of the building
art, no less than the building of churches and houses.
Still it has a character and a history of its own. In this
matter, and in all matters which had to do with warfare, the
Norman Conquest made the greatest change of all. In
England men could fence in a town with walls, but they had
no strong castles. Their strong places were great mounds
with a wooden defence on the top. But the Normans
brought in the fashion of building castles, as we have seen
in the history of Edward's reign. They sometimes built
lighter keeps on the old mounds; sometimes they built
massive strong towers ; and in either case they were fond
of surrounding them with deep ditches. These were the
EFFECTS ON WARFAR
types which the Normans brought in, ami they grew int<
elaborate times. Thu
with castles, and warfare took mainly the :
and besieging them r the Norman Con*,
hear for a long time much more of sieges, and much less
of battles in the l : . while in
much more of battles than of neges. Ti.
brought their own way of fighting into England, and
made great changes in English armies. Before the I
we had no horsemen and very fei - ; from I
we have both, and the old array goes out of use. Ye:
sometimes read of the Norman knights getting d
their horses and fighting with swords i In Old-
English fashion. And, as the archers came to be the strongest
part of an English army, and that which was thought specially
English, it was in one way a going back to tin te of
things. The weapon was ci but, in dm
horsemen were most thought of, a stout body of fuot was
still the strength of an English army.
13. Summary. — Thus we see the special way in which
the Norman Conquest, owing to its own :id to
the personal character of William, acted upon I
did not destroy or abolish our old laws or institution-
influencing, it gradually cl. ind in the en
And in this way the Conquest worked in the end for good.
We have really kept a more direct con:
times, without any sudden break «
dred nations which have never in the sai:
quered by strangers. There has
has been all bit by bit, with no gen-
ticular time. We will now, in
more particularly how ti. Mes \sorked in I
history o[ England.
l a
CHAPTER XV,
The Later History.
1. The Norman Kings. — William Rufus began his
reign as a Norman king of England only; Robert held
the duchy of Normandy. But William got, first part and
then the whole, of Normandy into his hands, and he
afterwards warred with France. Here then is the beginning
of our French wars, wars which the French writers from
the very beginning speak of as wars of the English against
the French. William Rufus* reign was one of great op-
pression and wrong, and in his time, under his minister
Randolf Flambard, the new customs about the holding
of land got put into a definite shape. At his death in
noo Normandy and England were again separated for a
while, for Robert again took his duchy, while Henry was
chosen King of the English. As he was the only one of
the Conqueror's children who was in any sense English, the
native English were strongly for him, and helped him to
keep the crown, when the Normans again wished for Robert.
This is the last time that we hear of the English and Nor-
mans in England acting as separate classes of people. The
reign of Henry, which lasted till 1135, was the time in which
the two races were gradually joined together. Henry also
pleased the English by marrying Edith or Matilda, the
daughter of Malcolm King of Scots and Margaret the sister
of the iEtheling Edgar. Thus his children sprang in the
THE NORMA X KINGS. 149
female line from the old kings. Then Robert ruled Nor-
mandy so ill that many oi wished to get rid
of him; so in 1106 King Henry won the duchy at the battle
of Tinchebrai. This was just forty years after William the
Great had won England, and men began to say that things
were now turned round. Henry's son, William the ^Etheling,
died before him. He therefore wished his crown to go to his
daughter Matilda, the widow of the Emperor Henry the
Fifth, whom he married to Count Geoffrey of Anjou. For
the rule to pass to a woman was a strange thing both in
England and in Normandy. So when Henry died, men
chose his sister's son Stephen of Blois. Steph nuch
loved by men of all races, but he had not strength to r
in those times. The friends of the Empress mse O]
him, and through the whole of Stephen's days, till 1
there was such a time as England never saw before or since.
All law vanished, and there was nothing but bloodshed and
plunder. Meanwhile Count Geoffrey conqueiv ml v.
At last it was settled that Stephen should keep the cr
for life, but that the son of Geoffrey and Matilda. II<
now Duke of the Normans, should reign after him.
2. Henry of Anjou. — Duke Henry soon succeeded
Stephen, and with him a new time began. He inlk
Normandy and Anjou; he took England by the agreement
with Stephen ; and before he became king he had mai
Eleanor, Countess of Poitou and Duchess of Aqui:
who brought with her all south-western Gaul. 1
King of the English became a great prince on the main-
land, and was far more powerful in Gaul than
the King of the French. Nun;
became parts of a vast dominion, the ruler of which was
in no way either Norman or English 1
descent. Yet, as he was English by fern
l 3
150 THE LATER HISTORY.
tried to see in him a representative of the old kings. In
this state of things all the natives of England, of whatever
race, began to draw closer together, and still more so under
Henry's sons, when a fashion set in of favouring men who
were altogether strangers, neither English nor Norman. This
reign was the time of the famous Archbishop Thomas, son
of Gilbert Becket. He was born of Norman parents in Eng-
land in Henry the First's reign, and he was the first man
born in the land who became archbishop after the Conquest.
We are most concerned with him here, because he shows
how the two races were now joined together. Thomas
throughout feels and speaks as an Englishman, and every-
body looks on him as such. Henry the Second was one of
our greatest kings, the first since the Conquest who was
really a lawgiver. A great deal of our later law dates from
lis time, and it is all law made for an united nation, without
distinction of Normans and English. It is not clear whether
Henry himself spoke English ; but he certainly understood
it, and it was commonly spoken by men of both races in his
time. Henry also increased the greatness of his kingdom by
establishing a fuller supremacy over Scotland and by be^
ginning the conquest of Ireland.
3. The Sons of Henry. — After Henry in 1189 came
his son Richard. He was born in England, but he was
really the least English of all our kings. He was only
twice in England during his reign, both times for a very
little while. He first came to be crowned, and afterwards
in 1 194 he came to take his crown again. For he went
to the crusade, and on his way back he was kept in prison
by the Emperor Henry the Sixth. To him he did homage
for something, as Harold did to William, and some say that
it was for the crown of England that he did homage. The
rest of his reign he was chiefly fighting in Gaul ; but while
THE LOSS OF NORMANDT,
1 ".I
he was away, England was ruled by his ministers. His first
chief minister was his chancellor William Longchamp, Bishop
of Ely. He came from Normandy, and he despised and
mocked Englishmen in every way. But the name of English-
man now took in all men born in the land, and we find
another bishop, also born in Normandy, speaking of it as a
strange and shameful thing that Bishop William could speak
no English. So the nation, under the King's brother Earl
John, rose and drove out the foreign chancellor. In the
later part of Richard's reign the land was better ruled by
his minister Archbishop Hubert. On Richard's death in
i Earl John succeeded quietlv in Normandv, and was
then elected King in England. But in Anjou'the notion
red.tary right had taken deeper root, and there men
were for Richard's nephew Arthur, because his father Geof-
frey was John's elder brother. In England a nephew had
always been passed over in such cases, and John's election
was quae lawful. King Philip of France took Arthur's side,
but Arthur was taken by John and, there is little doubt, was
murdured by him in I202 . Then Philip gathered a court
of peers and declared that John had by this crime forfeited
all the lands that he held of the crown of France. To carry
out this decree Philip, in 1203-4, conquered all continental
-Normandy; only the islands clave to their duke, and they
have stayed with the English kings ever since. So our Qu
still holds the true Normandy, the land which remain
man, while the rest of the duchy became French. Philip
took Anjou and the other Angevin lands; but not
Aquitaine, the duchy of Queen Eleanor, who was .till \W
Thus John and his successors lost continental Norman
hut kept Aquitaine.
1. Efiects of the loss of Normandy. - This final
anon of England and Normandy marks one of
152 THE LATER HISTORY.
chief stages in our story. If any un-English feelings still
lingered in the heart of any Englishman of Norman descent,
they quite died out now that England was the only country
of all Englishmen, and Normandy had become a foreign
and hostile land. While the first Angevin kings held their
great dominion in Gaul, though England was their greatest
and highest possession, we cannot say that it was in any way
the head or centre, or that their other lands were dependen-
cies of England. But now that the King of England held
only the duchy of Aquitaine in the further part of Gaul, that
duchy was distinctly a dependency of England, and it was
always leading our kings into quarrels with France. Thus
the rivalry between England and France, which began out
of the union between England and Normandy, went on after
Normandy was again joined to France. Thus both the
foreign and the domestic position of England was fixed by
the loss of Normandy. It is henceforth again a kingdom in-
habited by an united English people, but a kingdom holding
a large distant dependency as a fief of the French crown, and
made thereby the special rival of France.
5. The Nation and the Kings. — It may seem strange
that, just at this moment, when the chief outward signs
of the Norman Conquest were swept away, and when the
Normans in England had become thoroughly good English-
men, things should in one point seem to go back. The
thirteenth century, to which we have now come, is the
time when the French tongue came into use for official
documents. In old times men had used either English
or Latin. After the Conquest English gradually died out,
and for a while we have Latin only. Now French gra-
dually comes in, and we have Latin and French. Thus,
just when the English tongue was again coming to the
front, it was again driven back. But this increased use of
EARL SIMON AND KING EDWARD.
French was a mere fashion, owing very much to the [
influence which France and the French tongue bad jusl
over all parts of Europe. And now that the whole nation
was united, it was a mere fashion, and not a badge of con-
quest. But while the nation got more English, the 1.
got more foreign. John (u 99-1 21 6) filled the land with
foreign mercenaries, and became the man of the Po;
nation wrung the Great Charter from him, and this ma:
great stage. Long after the Conquest, whenever there
any bad rule, men called for the law of King Edward But
now we hear no more of the law of King Edward ; the Great
Charter gave all that had been asked for under that n
Under John's son Henry the Third ( u 1 the land
was eaten up by strangers and plundered by the Popes.
Then the nation joined together more than ever under
Simon of Montfort. Oddly enough, he rth a French-
man in the strictest sense ; but he inherited English es:
and he became a good Englishman, like King Cnut and
Archbishop Anselm. Under him and under the next king
Edward, (1272-1307) our national assemblies, now called /
h'aments, began to take their present shape, with an
House of Commons chosen by the shires and towns.
6. King Edward the First. — King Edward, the
of our later kings, and the first since the Conqi:
bore an English name, was in his own day called
the Third or Fourth, as he really was; but a:
he came to be called Edward the First, afl the Brst of the
name since the Conquest. Now at I
English king, whose object was the \ and
at home and abroad. He established tl
England over Wales and Scotland more thoroughly than
ever. Wales was now joined to England and «
incorporated with it ; but the :ion of Scotland led
154 THE LATER HISTORY.
to its complete independence. Like Henry the Second,
King Edward was a great lawgiver ; and from his day we
may say that we had got back again our old laws and free-
dom in shapes better suited to the times. All signs of the
Norman Conquest may now be said to have passed away,
except the use of the French tongue. King Edward spoke
English well, and much English was written in his time ; and,
when he was at war with France, he gave out that the French
king wished to invade England and wipe out the English tongue.
Still French went on as a fashion, and became more than
•ever the language of official writings.
7. The Wars with France. — The last traces of French
influence in England were finally got rid of during the
great war with France which began under Edward the
First's grandson Edward the Third (t 327 -1377). He
claimed the crown of France through his mother, and a
long war followed, which in 1360 was ended by the peace
of Bretigny. By this Edward gave up his claim to France,
but he kept the duchy of Aquitaine, the town of Calais which
he had conquered, and the county of Ponthieu, not as fiefs of
the crown of France, but as wholly independent dominions.
Then the French broke the peace ; the war began again, and
England lost nearly everything except Calais, Bourdeaux,
and Bayonne. But under Henry the Fifth (14 13-1422) the
war again began with vigour. He conquered Normandy, and
made a peace by which he was to succeed to the crown of
France. He died just too soon for this ; but his son Henry
the Sixth (1422-1460) succeeded in name to France as well
as to England, and was crowned at Paris. But in his day the
English were driven, first out of France, then out of Normandy,
and then out of Aquitaine (1453) ; so tnat England lost both
the old inheritance and the new conquest. Nothing was
kept but Edward the Third's conquest of Calais, which was
LAST TRACES OF FRENCH INFLUENCE. I "'
not lost till 1558. These long wars became more and more,
national wars of England against France. Edward the Third
indeed, who had been brought up by a French mother,
seems to have acted less as an English king than as a
French prince claiming the French crown. But the war
was quite national on the part of his subjects, and Henry
the Fifth was an English king in every sense. These
long wars with France naturally gave a blow to the use of
French At home, as being the speech of the enemy. English
quite gained the upper hand again in the course of the
fourteenth century. Henry the Fifth even had ministers who
could not speak French, and who therefore, in a conference
with the French ministers, demanded that they should use
Latin, as the common language of Western Christendom.
Yet such is the power of habit that acts of parliament were
written in French till quite late in the fifteenth century, and on
some solemn occasions, as when the Queen gives her assent
to an act of parliament, the French tongue is used still.
8. Summary. — Thus all things, the reign of Henry the
First, the Angevin dominion and the break-up of that dominion,
the un-English reigns of John and Henry the Third and the
English reign of Edward the First, the long war with France,
its victories and its defeats, all helped, in their several v.
to undo foreign influences in England and to make the land
more and more English. We have in fact advanced by going
back. All the best changes in our laws, institutions, and
customs, have been really returns, under new forms, to our
oldest ways of all. We have thus got rid of the effects of the
Norman Conquest; but it has been by the help of the
Norman Conquest itself that we have been able to get rid
of them. The Conquest did in short give the old life and
the old freedom a new start. It hindered them from dj
out or going to sleep. Men had always something to strive
I $6 THE LATER HISTORY.
for and struggle against ; and so we were able to keep and to
reform without ever destroying and building up afresh. All
this came of the special nature of the Norman Conquest
of England as it was explained at the beginning. But the
work was greatly helped by the fact that the Normans were
after all disguised kinsmen, and it was helped still more
by the personal character of their leader, by the strong will
and far-seeing wisdom of William the Great himself.
»/3/oo
Cfcurenc-on (pteee Settee.
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