William of Ockham

“ The ‘Sermones Ockam’ preserved in a fifteenth-century manuscript in the Worcester Cathedral Library (74 Qu.) , and extending to 270 pages, are of a practical character, and contain occasional translations of sentences and phrases into French, and here and there anecdotes (e.g. one about Londoners on p. 141) : everything points to their being the work of some other Ockham.
Ockham is not to be confounded with William de Ocham, who appears as archdeacon of Stow in 1302 (see Denifle, Chartul. Univ. Paris'. vol. ii. pt. i. p. 486) . ”

“ NORTON, CHARLES ELIOT, LL.D., D.C.L., etc. (1827-1909) . —American biographer and critic. Church Building in the Middle Ages (1876) , translation of the New Life (1867) , and The Divine Comedy of Dante (1891) ; has ed. Correspondence of Carlyle and Emerson (1883) , Carlyle's Letters and Reminiscences (1887) , etc.
OCCAM or OCKHAM, WILLIAM (1270?-1349?) . —Schoolman, b. at Ockham, Surrey, studied at Oxf. and Paris, and became a Franciscan. As a schoolman he was a Nominalist and received the title of the Invincible Doctor. ”

“ It was this feeling, probably, quite as much as any settled hostility to William's right to reign, that made his barons so eager to engage in insurrections and rebellions. There was, however, after all, a real and deep-seated opposition to William's right of succession, founded in the ideas of the day. They could not well endure that one of so humble and even ignominious birth, on the mother's side, should be the heir of so illustrious a line as the great dukes of Normandy. William's enemies were accustomed to designate him by opprobrious epithets, derived from the circumstances of his birth. ”

“ He saw also over the carved upright piano, life-sized portraits of William of Orange and his English queen, a sight that, for a time, brought England and Holland side by side in his heart. William and Mary have left a halo round the English throne to this day, he the truest patriot that ever served an adopted country, she the noblest wife that ever sat upon a British throne, up to the time of Victoria and Albert the Good. As Ben looked at the pictures he remembered accounts he had read of King William's visit to The Hague in the winter of 1691. ”

“ William was, as we have said, the centre of opposition to Louis, and that began to mean to Catholicism as well. Also, William had married a daughter of King James and had thus some claim to interfere in the family domains. And, most important of all, as chief ruler of Holland, William had an army at command. With a portion of that army he set sail late in 1688 and landed in England. Englishmen of all ranks flocked to join him. King James fled to France, and a Parliament, hastily assembled in 1689, declared him no longer king and placed William and his wife Mary on the throne as joint rulers. ”

“ It was the defence of his order that had thrown Ockham into opposition to the papacy; this opposition had been strengthened and defined by the discovery of strictly dogmatic heresies in the teaching of John XXII; and his attack upon the authority of the holy see came as a result of his controversy. It was the conclusion to which his reasoning led, not, as with Marsiglio, the premise from which he started. The conditions of the struggle had driven him to cast in his lot with the emperor Lewis, and when in 1338 the crisis in Lewis's contest arrived it was Ockham whose services were called for. ”

“ Some asked for land in England, a domain, a castle, a town; others simply required some rich Saxon in marriage. Every thought, every desire of human avarice presented itself. William rejected no one, says the Norman chronicle, and satisfied every one as well as he could. He gave, beforehand, a bishopric in England to a monk of Fescamp, in return for a vessel and twenty armed men." [N] The Pope was William's chief supporter. Harold and all his adherents were excommunicated, and William received a banner and ring from Rome, the double emblem of military and ecclesiastical investiture. ”

“ The pitiless warrior, the stern and aweful king was a tender and faithful husband, an affectionate father. The lonely silence of his bearing broke into gracious converse with pure and sacred souls like Anselm. If William was "stark" to rebel and baron, men noted that he was "mild to those that loved God."
William and feudalism
But the greatness of the Conqueror was seen in more than the order and peace which he imposed upon the land. Fortune had given him one of the greatest opportunities ever offered to a king of stamping his own genius on the destinies of a people ”

“ Suddenly I understood William, felt as if the blood in us was the same, and knew how terribly he was drawn. Surely youth still has its quest, its never-found Grails to seek, and rover that I was I knew how much a man would leave for the strange Voice that calls, how much I myself had left, and still would leave. ”

“ In order to defeat this rising William the Red took the bold step of throwing himself upon the loyalty of the native English. He summoned out the militia of the shires, proclaiming that every man who did not follow his king to the field should be held nithing, a worthless coward, and promising that he would lighten his father's heavy yoke and rule with a gentle and merciful hand. The fyrd turned out in unexpected strength and loyalty, and with its aid William put down all the Norman rebels, and drove them out of the realm. ”

“ She had been some years married to George Hamilton, a soldier who had distinguished himself by his courage in Ireland and Flanders, and who probably held the courtier like doctrine that a lady is not dishonoured by having been the paramour of a king. William was well pleased with the marriage, bestowed on the wife a portion of the old Crown property in Ireland, and created the husband a peer of Scotland by the title of Earl of Orkney. Assuredly William would not have raised his character by abandoning to poverty a woman whom he had loved, though with a criminal love. ”

“ Some historians who have preceded us, fall into what we consider the error of eulogising William as if he had been the author of all the good that occurred in his reign, when the fact is that a great deal was accomplished, not alone without his agency, but actually in spite of him. When he came, or rather when he was called to the throne, the nation had profited by experience, and had become equally sensible to the dangers of democratic excess and of absolute monarchy. ”

“ William had been in his early days one of those intolerable nuisances, an infant prodigy, and at eight years old exhibited that ripeness of judgment and energy of action for which the birch is in our opinion the best remedy. He had quelled a disturbance in his own court, when very young; but a beadle in our own day can do as much as this, for a disturbance in a court is often quelled by that very humble officer. His marriage with Matilda, daughter of the Earl of Flanders, gave him the benefit of respectable connection, so useful to a young man starting in life ”

“ In 1086 every landowner in England swore to be faithful to King William within and without England and to defend him against his enemies. The subject’s duty to the King was to any duty which the vassal might owe to any inferior lord. When the King was the embodiment of national unity and orderly government, this was the greatest of all steps in the direction of both. Never did William or any other man act more distinctly as an English statesman, never did any one act tell more directly towards the later making of England, than this memorable act of the Conqueror. ”

“ He was stopped in his flight by some fishermen at Faversham, and was forced to return to London. William insisted that he should be sent to Rochester, and there allowed him to escape to France. After this final flight of James, William, on the advice of an assembly of notables, summoned a convention parliament on the 22nd of January 1689. After a great deal of discussion, William was at length proclaimed joint-sovereign of England in conjunction with his wife, Mary (Feb. 13th 1689) . ”

“ It was truly tragic that his doom should have come at the moment when he had once more drawn together a great alliance in Europe, and when he possessed a popularity in England such as he had never before enjoyed.
In viewing William’s character as a whole one is struck by its entire absence of ostentation, a circumstance which reveals his mind and policy more clearly than would otherwise be the case. No one can doubt his real belief in religion in spite of many moral failings or weaknesses. ”

“ William I., King of England, surnamed the Conqueror, was born in 1027 or 1028. He was the son of Robert, Duke of Normandy and Herleva, daughter of Fulbert, a tanner of Falaise. When he was about seven years old his father, intending to go on pilgrimage and having no legitimate sons, proposed him as his heir. The great men of the duchy did homage to the child, and a year later (1035) his father's death left him to make good his claim. Anarchy was the natural result of a minority. William's life was on more than one occasion in danger, and several of his guardians perished in his service. ”

“ All regal functions, from the coining of money to the holding of courts of justice, had passed to the great vassals. Even when a count or duke rebelled and declared war against the king, his liegemen were considered bound to follow their master and take part in his treason. Now William was determined that this abuse should never take root in England. He was careful not to allow any of his subjects to grow too strong; in distributing the lands of England he invariably scattered the possessions of each of his followers, so that no one man had any great district entirely in his hands. ”

“ In spite of his wretched health, he was a keen soldier, and had the reputation of being one of the best, if also one of the most unlucky, generals of his time. His talent chiefly showed itself in repairing the consequences of his defeats, which he did so cleverly that his conquerors seldom drew any advantage from their success. In private life William was cold, suspicious, and reticent. He reserved his confidence for his Dutch friends, openly saying that the English, who had betrayed their natural king, could not be expected to be true to a foreigner. ”

“ 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 whatever nation. ”

“ Men were no longer keeping out an invader; when they rose, they rose against a power which, however wrongfully, was the established government of the land. Two such movements took place. One was a real revolt of Englishmen against foreign rule. The other was a rebellion of William’s own earls in their own interests, in which English feeling went with the King. Both were short sharp struggles which stand out boldly in the tale. More important in the general story, though less striking in detail, are the relations of William to the other powers in and near the isle of Britain. ”

“ A man with a more malevolent turn of mind would very likely have acted as public expectation seemed to foreshadow, but William, as we have seen, soon made it clear that he had no fault to find with the Duke of Wellington, that he cherished no ill-will and was quite ready to let bygones be bygones. There can be no doubt that William, although he had no great defects of any deep or serious nature, no defects at least which are not common enough among the sovereigns of his time, was yet as undignified a figure for a throne as even the modern comic opera itself could imagine. ”

“ His will is not to be thwarted, whether in a matter of marriage or of any other. But he does not hurry matters; he waits for a favourable opportunity. Something, we know not what, must have made the year 1053 more favourable than the year 1049. We mark also William’s relations to the Church. He is at no time disposed to submit quietly to the bidding of the spiritual power, when it interferes with his rights or even when it crosses his will. Yet he is really anxious for ecclesiastical reform; he promotes men like Maurilius and Lanfranc ”

“ For, though the English were undoubtedly devout after their own fashion, there was much in the ecclesiastical state of England which displeased strict churchmen beyond sea, much that William, when he had the power, deemed it his duty to reform. The insular position of England naturally parted it in many things from the usages and feelings of the mainland, and it was not hard to get up a feeling against the nation as well as against its king. All this could not really strengthen William’s claim; but it made men look more favourably on his enterprise. ”

“ Now King William knew that kings are only to be better loved and obeyed than other men when they obey God themselves, and love mercy, and do right and justice to their subjects; and that men and countries have a right to be free, and to worship God as they please: and it was because King William knew this that the English chose him to be king when they sent away James the Second, because he wished to be like Louis the Fourteenth in most things. ”