Duke William II of Normandy

“ The Duke of Normandy was firmly resolved to assert his baseless claim to the throne by force of arms. He had a large treasure and many bold vassals, but he knew that his own strength was insufficient for such an enterprise as the invasion of England. Accordingly, he proclaimed his purpose all over Western Europe, and offered lands and spoil in England to every adventurer who would take arms in his cause. William's military reputation was so great, that he was able to enlist thousands of mercenaries from France, Brittany, Flanders, and Aquitaine. ”

“ 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, and the Normans above all thought but little of lawful marriage 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. ”

“ William and Arlotte.
William's mother.
Although the dukes of Normandy were very powerful potentates, reigning, as they did, almost in the character of independent sovereigns, over one of the richest and most populous territories of the globe, and though William the Conqueror was the son of one of them, his birth was nevertheless very ignoble. His mother was not the wife of Robert his father, but a poor peasant girl, the daughter of an humble tanner of Falaise; and, indeed, William's father, Robert, was not himself the duke at this time, but a simple baron, as his father was still living. ”

“ It appeared doubtful and dangerous in the eyes of mankind, for to mere superficial observers it seemed simply an aggressive war waged by a duke of Normandy, the ruler of a comparatively small and insignificant province, against a king of England, the monarch of one of the greatest and most powerful realms in the world. William, on the other hand, regarded it as an effort on the part of the rightful heir to a throne to dispossess a usurper. ”

“ A fierce combat of horse on the slopes of Val-ès-dunes, to the southeastward of Caen, left him master of the duchy, and the old Scandinavian Normandy yielded forever to the new civilization which streamed in with French alliances and the French tongue. William was himself a type of the transition. In the young duke’s character the old world mingled strangely with the new, the pirate jostled roughly with the statesman. William was the most terrible, as he was the last outcome of the northern race. ”

“ William, indeed, was just the man to attract one whose character was as weak as Eadward's. Since he received the dukedom he had beaten down the opposition of a fierce and discontented nobility at Val-ès-dunes (1047) . From that day peace and order prevailed in Normandy. Law in Normandy did not come as in England from the traditions of the shire-moot or the Witenagemot, where men met to consult together. It was the Duke's law, and if the Duke was a strong man he kept peace in the land. If he was a weak man, the lords fought against one another and plundered and oppressed the poor. ”

“ Geoffrey Martel himself said that there could nowhere be found so good a knight as the duke of Normandy. The princes of Gascony and Auvergne and even the kings of Spain sent him presents of horses and tried to win his favour. [57] Also it must have been about this time that William made overtures to Baldwin, count of Flanders, for the hand of his daughter, while in 1051 we know that he made a journey, fraught with memorable consequences, to the court of Edward the Confessor. In fact, with the subjugation of his barons and his first Angevin war William sprang at a bound into fame ”

“ All present at the assembly, ‘whose men soever they were,’ did so. The doctrine thus established, that the fealty owed to the king could not be overridden by an obligation to any inferior lord, saved England from the worst evils of feudalism. William heavily fined all against whom he could bring any charge, true or false; stayed in the Isle of Wight while the money was being collected, and then sailed off with it to Normandy.
A long-standing dispute as to the right to the French Vexin came to a head in 1087, when the French garrison in Mantes committed some ravages in the duke's dominions. ”

“ In Normandy that immediate business was mutual destruction—​civil war is too lofty a name; in Maine it was deliverance from the Norman yoke. I am not called on to tell in detail the whole story of every local strife between one Norman baron and another, not even in those 242 rare cases when the Duke himself stepped in as a judge or as a party in the strife. Those who loved nothing so well as slaughter, plunder, and burning, had now to make up for the many years during which the strong hand of William the Great had kept them back from those enjoyments. ”

“ When the news reached Norman William, hunting in his park at Rouen, he dropped his bow, returned to his palace, called his nobles to council, and presently sent ambassadors to Harold, calling on him to keep his oath and resign the Crown. Harold would do no such thing. The barons of France leagued together round Duke William for the invasion of England. Duke William promised freely to distribute English wealth and English lands among them. The Pope sent to Normandy a consecrated banner, and a ring containing a hair which he warranted to have grown on the head of Saint Peter. ”

“ Some writers have been desirous of refusing to this prince the title of Conqueror, in the sense which that term commonly bears; and, on pretence that the word is sometimes in old books applied to such as make an acquisition of territory by any means, they are willing to reject William's title, by right of war, to the crown of England. It is needless to enter into a controversy, which, by the terms of it, must necessarily degenerate into a dispute of words. It suffices to say, that the Duke of Normandy's first invasion of the island was hostile ”

“ The right of the strongest. One of those great events in English history, which occur at distant intervals, and form, respectively, a sort of bound or landmark, to which all other events, preceding or following them for centuries, are referred, is what is called the Norman Conquest. The Norman Conquest was, in fact, the accession of William, duke of Normandy, to the English throne. ”

“ Then, pointing to the beautiful boy by his side, he added, "I have a little fellow here, who, though he is little now, I acknowledge, will grow bigger by and by, with God's grace, and I have great hopes that he will become a brave and gallant man. I present him to you, and from this time forth I give him seizin [C] of the Duchy of Normandy as my known and acknowledged heir. And I appoint Alan, duke of Brittany, governor of Normandy in my name until I shall return, and in case I shall not return, in the name of [Pg 49] William my son, until he shall become of manly age." ”

“ Help expected from Normandy. It is certainly strange that a conspiracy in which William of Eu could be even suspected of taking a part should have found any support in Normandy; yet in those times men changed sides so easily that it is not impossible that he might have been again intriguing with Duke Robert himself. It is still more likely that some intrigue was going on, not with the Norman Duke but with the enemies of Rufus in Normandy as well as in England. It is certain that an invasion of south-eastern England was at this time daily dreaded ”

“ And in our present tale the holy war directly comes home to us, chiefly because so many men whom we have already heard of took a part in it. Above all, it places two of our chief actors before us in parts eminently characteristic of the two. We see how Duke Robert of Normandy went forth to show himself among the foremost and the worthiest in the struggle, and how King William of England took occasion of his brother’s zeal to gain his duchy by money wrung from English households and English churches. ”

“ Intrigues of the Norman nobles with Duke Robert. It was most truly the King and the people of England who were threatened by the intrigues of the great Norman nobles with the restored ruler of Normandy—​if ruler he may be called. The effects of the Red King’s death were exactly opposite in Normandy and in England. Renewed anarchy in Normandy on William’s death. In England his reign of unright was at once changed for a rule as strong and more righteous. ”

“ THE EARLY NORMANS.
1. William I., or the Conqueror.—William, the son of Robert, Duke of Normandy, and Arlotta, a tanner’s daughter, was crowned King of England on Christmas Day. He was a tall, strong man, who loved fighting and hunting. To those who stood in his way and opposed him, he was harsh and cruel; but in the main he loved order and just government. He made many good laws for the English, although in some instances he acted very sternly and tyrannically. But he would not allow any one else to oppress the people, and his strong hand kept his Norman followers under control. ”

“ 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 England. 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 England, when the Northmen settled in what was to be Normandy, they did not think of putting forth so many good reasons for what they did as Duke William put forth now. ”

“ Emma fled to Flanders.
Edward's accession.
Finally Harold died, and Hardicanute succeeded him. In a short time Hardicanute died, leaving no heirs, and now, of course, there was no one left [I] to compete with Emma's oldest [Pg 138] son Edward, who had remained all this time quietly in Normandy. He was accordingly proclaimed king. This was in 1041. He reigned for twenty years, having commenced his reign about the time that William the Conqueror was established in the possession of his dominions as Duke of Normandy. ”

“ Private war was a recognised custom in Normandy. For obvious reasons this custom was fenced round with stringent regulations; the duke’s license 36was necessary before a campaign could be opened and its conduct was subject to his general supervision. But private war is separated by no certain barrier from anarchy, and under a weak duke or during a minority the barons of Normandy would take the law into their own hands. Herein lay the real cause of the disorders which prevailed during the minority of William the Conqueror ”

“ Rome was an agreeable place of residence, and to live there as the embassador of a royal duke of Normandy was to enjoy a high degree of consideration, and to be surrounded continually by scenes of magnificence and splendor. Then, again, William himself was not always at leisure to urge the business forward by giving it his own close attention; for, during the period while these negotiations were pending, he was occupied, from time to time, with foreign wars, or in the suppression of rebellions among his barons. ”

“ Murderer as he was, he seems to have discharged his duty faithfully. There are men who are careless of general moral obligations, but who will strictly carry out any charge which appeals to personal honour. Anyhow Ralph’s guardianship brought with it a certain amount of calm. But men, high in the young duke’s favour, were still plotting against him, and they presently began to plot, not only against their prince but against their country. The disaffected nobles of Normandy sought for a helper against young William in his lord King Henry of Paris. ”

“ William II., king of England, surnamed Rufus or Ruddy, born in Normandy, third son of William I.; succeeded his father in 1087; had to face a rebellion, headed by Bishop Odo, in favour of his eldest brother, Robert, Duke of Normandy, which he suppressed by favour of the mass of the people, to whom he made promises which he did not keep, for he proved a stern and exacting ruler; his energy was great, but was frequently spasmodic ”

“ At present this is inexplicable, but it is certain that the duke besieged and took Eu and drove William Busac into exile. The place of refuge which he chose is very suggestive. He went to France and attached himself to King Henry, who married him to the heiress of the county of Soissons, where his descendants were ruling at the close of the century. [64] It is plain that the king’s opportunist policy has definitely turned against William of Normandy, when we find a Norman rebel received with open arms and given an important territorial position on the border of the royal demesne. ”

“ If the Duke of the Normans was to be transformed into the King of the English, it could be done only with the loyal support of his Norman followers; nor is it at all likely that, in a state so thoroughly feudal as Normandy, the suzerain would have ventured to assume so great an increase of rank and probable power without the express consent of his vassals, in disregard of what was certainly the usual feudal practice. The decision of the council was favourable, and William accepted the crown. ”