Chapter XIII · THE NEGOTIATIONS OF DUKE WILLIAM.[752] January–August, 1066.

CHAPTER XIII. THE NEGOTIATIONS OF DUKE WILLIAM.^[752] January–August, 1066.

Position of William at the death of Eadward.

The people of England had made their choice. They had placed the Crown of England upon the head of the foremost man of their own race. Harold, the son of Godwine, the son of Wulfnoth, sat in the kingly seat which had never before received an occupant of other than kingly birth. The news was not slow in reaching the ears of that mighty rival beyond the sea, who had long marked that kingly seat as his own heritage, and who could now complain to the world that his heritage had been torn from him by his own sworn vassal. We cannot doubt that William had long been watching every breeze which could bring tidings from England. The failing health of Eadward was known at Rouen as well as at Westminster,^[753] and William was doubtless ready to put in his claim at the first moment that the throne should be actually vacant. Even after the homage done by Harold, even if we enlarge that homage to the full extent which it assumes in the statements of William’s own laureate, the Duke could hardly have looked forward with any confidence to a peaceful succession to the English Crown. He might well doubt how far he had really bound Harold, and, if he had bound Harold, he had at least not bound England. 256|Effect on his scheme of the sudden election of Harold.| But William was doubtless ready for every occasion, ready, whatever might happen, with a plausible case to set before the world on his own behalf. His claim was not likely to meet with any acknowledgement in England, but it would at least be a gain for him to be able to say that it had been formally put forth at the right moment. And yet the course which events really took was perhaps, after all, still more to the wily Duke’s advantage. The death, the burial, the coronation, followed so fast upon one another that William had no opportunity of pressing his claim till after the choice of England had been irrevocably made. He might now, if he would, call on the reigning King to descend from an usurped throne; he could not call on the English nation to elect himself to a vacant throne. But he gained thereby an advantage of which the writers in his interest have not been slow to make use, the advantage of being able to represent the reigning King as an intruder. He could speak of him as one placed on the throne by some hasty and irregular act, as one reigning in any case in opposition to William’s own earlier right, perhaps even as reigning without the full and free consent of the English people. It is not to be forgotten that one count which Norman partizans bring against England is that the English people failed in gratitude to the deliverer who came to set them free from a tyrannical usurper.^[754]

§ 1. The Negotiations between William and Harold.

The news brought from England to Normandy.

Events had happened so fast at Westminster, on the eve of the Epiphany and on the festival itself, that the Duke of the Normans heard the whole story in a single message.^[755] 257An English ship carried the news to Normandy; whether it was sent specially by any of William’s friends in England, or whether it went simply in the ordinary course of communication between two friendly countries, we are not distinctly told. But, as a special messenger brought the news to the Duke, we may conceive that some of the strangers whom Harold’s clemency had allowed to remain in the land^[756] took the earliest opportunity of sending the news |Reception of the news by William.| to their native sovereign.^[757] A graphic description is given of the reception of the news by the Duke.^[758] He was in his park of Quevilly near Rouen,^[759] with many knights and esquires^[760] around him, going forth to the chase. He had in his hand his bow—the bow which, like that of Odysseus, no other man could bend^[761]—strung and bent and ready for the arrow. He was in the act of giving it to a page to bear after him, when there came to the gate a messenger, a man-at-arms from England. The new comer went straight to the Duke; he greeted him, he took him aside, and told him the news privily and briefly. “King Eadward 258has ended his days and Earl Harold is raised to the Kingdom.”^[762] The message at least acted as a respite for the destined victims of William’s bow, for the Duke had now other matters than hunting to think about. He turned aside from the craft of the woods; he was as a man in anger; ofttimes he laced and ofttimes he unlaced his mantle; he spake to no man and no man dared to speak to him.^[763] He crossed the Seine in a boat; he went to his hall, and entered therein; he sat down on a bench and turned from one side to another. His head rested against a pillar,^[764] and his face was covered with his mantle. Long time he thus sat in thought, no man daring to speak to him, though many asked one another what ailed him. |Dialogue between the Duke and William Fitz-Osbern.| At last one drew near whom long and intimate friendship allowed to deal more freely with his sovereign. The famous Seneschal, William Fitz-Osbern,^[765] of whom we have so often heard, now rode back from the park and entered the hall, humming a tune^[766] as he walked. He passed straight by 259the Duke, and many asked him what the news was which so ailed their sovereign. The Duke, hearing what passed between the Seneschal and the others, looked up. William Fitz-Osbern then told him that it was in vain for him to try to hide the news which he had heard, for that it was already blazed abroad through all the streets of Rouen. Every man in the city knew that Eadward was dead, and that Harold held the Kingdom of England. The Duke answered that that news was indeed the thing which grieved him. No news could grieve him more; he sorrowed alike for the death of Eadward and for the wrong done to him by Harold. Was he simply proving his friend? or were even his stout heart and wily brain cowed and perplexed for a moment by the suddenness of the tidings? At all events it is in the mouth of William Fitz-Osbern—the bold of heart^[767]—that the first exhortation to action is placed in our story. He bids the Duke not mourn, but arise and be doing. Let him begin, let him carry through what he begins; let him, in a word, cross the sea and wrest the Kingdom from the usurper.

William’s Embassy to Harold.

The result of William’s deliberations with this trusty counsellor was the sending of an embassy to the King |Contradictory accounts of the nature of William’s message.| of the English. The nature of the message is as diversely told as the rest of the story of which it forms the sequel. Again the contemporary English writers are silent; they make no mention of Norman affairs till later in the year, till the very eve of the Norman invasion. And of the other writers, each naturally throws the message into such a shape as suits his own version of that oath of which the message was necessarily the counterpart. Whatever Harold had sworn, whatever it suited William to give out that Harold had sworn, that of course William now called on 260Harold to perform. But that demand ranges in different versions from a summons to Harold to resign his Kingdom to a simple summons to marry William’s daughter.^[768] We hear of more messages than one, and in one account the tone of the second message is wonderfully lowered from the tone of the first. If Harold will not resign the Kingdom, nor give up the castle of Dover, nor do any of the other things which he has promised, let him at least marry the Duke’s daughter. If he declines to do even that, the Duke will certainly come against him in arms to support his rights. The date of the embassy, and the place of its reception by Harold, are as uncertain as the exact nature of the message or of the oath. It was a matter on which William was not likely to delay, and the number of events and negotiations which were crowded into a few months |Date of the Embassy uncertain.| show that he did not delay. But our only statement as to time is the assertion of a very untrustworthy writer that the message was either sent or received on the tenth day |[January 15, 1066?]| after Eadward’s death.^[769] One would like on many grounds to know whether it was received before or after Harold had set forth on his mission to win the hearts of the malecontents of Northumberland. One would like to know whether Harold received the message of William when surrounded by his own West-Saxons, or whether it reached him, as an earlier embassy from Gaul had reached Glorious Æthelstan,^[770] while he was engaged in arranging the affairs of the most distant and most troublesome portion of his |Possible bearing of the message on the discontents of Northumberland.| Kingdom. The point is interesting, as it is just possible that the Northumbrian opposition to Harold may have been in some degree connected with the challenge brought to him from Normandy. The succession of William was indeed not likely to be looked on with a whit more of favour in Northumberland than it was looked on in Wessex. But 261crafty spirits were at work, who might easily turn the claims of the Norman to their own ends. Such, it might be argued, were the results of the hasty election of Harold; such were the results of binding the free sons of the North by the voices of Wessex and East-Anglia. It would be better for the North again to choose its own King, a King who had never become the man of the stranger, a King whose right could not be challenged by any rival beyond the sea. Such arguments as these seem quite in character with the position of parties at the time, but we can neither affirm nor deny that they were actually used. The exact time of Harold’s northern journey, the exact time, place, and substance of the message which Harold received from the Norman Duke, are among those details of our story which must remain unknown to us.

Object of William in the negotiation; the embassy intended to be fruitless.

Whatever was the exact purport of the embassy, there can be no doubt as to its object. It was sent simply in order that William might add another count to his indictment against the English King. It was sent in order that William might be able to say, not only that Harold had neglected to perform his engagements, whatever they were, but that he had formally refused to perform them when formally called upon. Whatever William demanded, we may be sure that he demanded it only in the expectation, and even in the hope, that Harold would refuse it. He could not seriously expect that Harold would, at his bidding, either come down from his throne or consent to hold his Crown in vassalage. William knew the temper both of England and of her King a great deal too well for this. Even the summons to marry William’s daughter could hardly have been seriously meant; if Harold were already married, it could only have been sent in mockery.^[771] 262At all events, the one object of the embassy was to put Harold, according to William’s view of the case, still further in the wrong. Its object was to supply William with fresh topics for argument and for rhetoric in the appeal which he was about to make to Normandy, to Gaul, and to Christendom.

Different forms given to Harold’s answer.

The answer of Harold to the message is of course differently conceived, according as the message is differently conceived. The answer depends on the message, just as the message depends on the oath. But all accounts agree |His answer in any case a distinct refusal.| in describing the answer as a complete refusal. Whatever William summoned Harold to do, Harold refused to do it. And, according to some versions, if mockery was intended by the Norman, it was answered with mockery in return. The English King is called upon to fulfil his promise of giving his sister in marriage to a Norman noble. Harold answers that his sister is dead, and he asks whether the Duke wishes her corpse to be sent to him for the purpose.^[772] When called on himself to marry the Duke’s daughter, he answers, according to one version, that the daughter whom he promised |Constitutional language attributed to Harold. He cannot marry a foreign wife without the consent of the Witan.| to marry is already dead.^[773] According to another account, he takes a high constitutional ground. A King of the English cannot marry a foreign wife without the consent of the Witan of England. Such an act could not be done without doing great damage to his Kingdom.^[774] This answer, whether ever really made or not, is not likely to point to any formal enactment on the subject of royal 263|English feeling with regard to foreign marriages.| marriages. But it expresses the universal feeling of the nation that none but Englishwomen were fit to be wives and mothers of English Kings. England had seen one Norman Lady, and one King who was Norman on his mother’s side. There was no wish among the English people to see such another Lady or such another King. The marriage of Emma, and the Norman connexion which followed it, had well nigh been the undoing of England. That they had not been wholly her undoing was due to the reigning King and his father. Their dynasty at least, the Kings of the House of Godwine, should be for ever kept free from all foreign elements. Harold’s own Danish mother, the kinswoman or ally of the great Cnut, could hardly be looked on as a stranger. Tostig and his foreign wife were in banishment, and England had no wish for their return. The whole nation was no doubt fully purposed that the next brood of Æthelings whom England saw should be no half-caste offspring of Norman or even of German or Flemish mothers, but Englishmen of purely English blood. Against such a feeling as this Harold, even if he had wished, could not have dared to struggle. The answer put into his mouth, whether historically genuine or not, well expresses uncorrupted English feeling on this important point. It well expresses too the necessity under which a King of the English lay, not only to obey the written Law, but to consult in all things the wishes and feelings of the English people.

Argument attributed to Harold as to the validity of his oath.

Another form of the answer put into Harold’s mouth breathes an equally sound and constitutional spirit. William demands the Kingdom of England, which Harold, he alleges, had sworn to make over to him. The English King |The oath null without the consent of the Witan.| answers that such an oath was in itself void; to break it were a less evil than to keep it. The oath was one by which Harold bound himself to transfer to Duke William an heritage which was neither Harold’s nor William’s, 264but which only the voice of the English people could bestow on any man.^[775] The oath or vow which a maiden in her father’s house made without her parents’ knowledge was void by the laws of God and man.^[776] Much more then was the oath void which he, when still a subject, without the knowledge of King or people, had sworn under the pressure of a momentary constraint, on a matter touching the whole realm.^[777] It was not reasonable to ask him to give up a Crown which had been placed on his head by the common voice of his countrymen, and of which their voice alone could lawfully deprive him.^[778] Such is the doctrine which is put into Harold’s mouth by a writer whose divided |Constitutional importance of the answer.| sympathies lean decidedly to the Norman side. It is a doctrine most wholesome and necessary for a constitutional King, a doctrine which the historian himself allows to be true or at least highly plausible.^[779] Valuable, if it be a genuine record of what Harold said, this speech becomes almost more valuable if we look on it as the speech which a writer a generation later deemed most in keeping with Harold’s character and position. The argument, for its own purpose, as an answer to William, is perfect. The 265accession of Harold was not the act of Harold only; it was equally the act of the English people. However guilty Harold might be towards William, the English people were free from all guilt towards William and towards all mankind. And, whatever might be the guilt of Harold, it was a guilt which, as his own argument assumes, lay wholly in taking the oath, not at all in breaking it.

The Embassy fruitless in form, but William’s real point gained.

The errand then of the Norman ambassadors was a bootless one. No doubt it was the intention of him who sent them that it should be bootless. Whatever were their demands, whether they came once only or oftener, whether they raised their demands or lowered them, whether they dealt in persuasion only or in threats as well as persuasion,^[780] Harold, evidently speaking the voice of the English people, refused all that was demanded of him. No other course indeed was possible. The point hardly needs to be argued. Harold could not, without the consent of the Witan, either resign the Crown to William or hold it of him in vassalage. And the consent of the Witan would certainly not have been given for any such purpose. The whole question in short was frivolous. The dispute had reached a stage which was past negotiation, and Harold and William alike knew that all negotiation was vain. What William gained by his embassy was again to entangle Harold in the meshes of his subtle craft. Harold could only refuse every demand of William; but Harold’s refusal of William’s demands made another point on William’s side, of which he was not slow to take advantage.

266

§ 2. Claims and Arguments of William.

William’s only hope lay in war.

William had now no chance—in truth there had never been a time when he really had a chance—of winning the English Crown except by the sword. But, before he made that last appeal, he had many minds to work upon and to win over to his cause. An enterprise such as he designed was one such as no Norman Duke had ever before attempted. It was one which might seem altogether beyond the power of Normandy to achieve. William’s own father had indeed |1028–1035.| contemplated an English war, and he had actually gathered together a fleet for the invasion of England.^[781] But the enterprise of Robert was undertaken to restore the banished heir of England, driven from his native realm by a foreign invader. Such at least was the colour which Robert would put upon his schemes, and in carrying out such schemes he doubtless reckoned on a certain measure of English support. It was not really likely that Englishmen would have joined a Norman army to drive out Cnut in favour of the sons of Æthelred. But dreams of this kind are ever the food of exiles,^[782] and of princes who take up the cause of exiles. But in William’s case there was |No English party in favor of William.| no room for any delusions of this kind. William had no rights but his own to assert, and those rights, he must have known very well, were not acknowledged by a single native partizan. He might gain somewhat by sowing dissensions within the island, by abetting any schemes on the part of Eadgar or Tostig or the sons of Ælfgar. But his only gain in this way would be the gain of dividing and weakening England. Any English party which was dissatisfied with the election of Harold would assert the claims, not of William but of some English competitor. For direct 267|Difficulties of his enterprise.| help in England William could look only to the Norman settlers whom Harold had allowed to remain in the country. He had, in short, to win the English Crown, if he won it at all, by no means but that of open war. And he had to wage his warfare at a time when England was ruled by a King who was his own peer in the art of war, when the land was defended by an army in the highest state of efficiency, an army which had never known defeat, and which was flushed with the remembrance of hard-won victories. William had in short to make good his rights in the absence of the least hope of native help, and withal in the teeth of King Harold and his Housecarls.

Comparison of the Norman exploits in Apulia.

Such an enterprise as this might well seem to be beyond the powers of a Duke of the Normans and of his Duchy. The successes of the Normans in Apulia might indeed make it seem as if no enterprise could be impossible to Norman valour. If private adventurers could thus carve out principalities for themselves, what conquests might not be made by the Duke himself at the head of the whole force of the Duchy? And no doubt the example of the conquests made by his countrymen in the South of Europe was ever present to the mind of William in planning his |Differences between the two cases.| great undertaking in the North. But the mere fact that the warfare was in the one case waged in the South and in the other in the North, was an important element of difference between the Apulian and the English enterprise. The actors indeed in the one case were private adventurers, while in the other it would be a sovereign at the head of his subjects and vassals. Duke William could no doubt command a far greater force than the sons of Tancred of Hauteville, but then he was also obliged to |Greater difficulty of the English enterprise.| wage a wholly different kind of warfare. The Duke of the Normans could not afford to sit down in some corner of England, and to win his way step by step, ever and anon gaining this or that skirmish or taking this or that castle. 268And again, without joining in any ignorant depreciation of Byzantine military prowess, we may doubt whether the sons of Tancred had ever joined battle with enemies who could be at all compared with the enemies with whom Duke William would have to join battle in England. If they had ever met with really equal foes, it was when they |1053.| encountered Pope Leo’s German auxiliaries,^[783] and, by that time, they had risen somewhat above the condition of private adventurers. They had waged a desultory warfare against a town here and a castle there, towns and castles defended for the most part by the mercenaries of a distant Emperor. They had never faced, what William would have to face in England, a native King at the head at once of an armed nation and of a native standing army. |William’s daring the highest prudence.| All ordinary prudence would naturally shrink from such a risk. It is only minds like that of William which can rise above all ordinary prudence, which know their own power as none but themselves can know it, which feel instinctively that undertakings which would be madness in |Necessity of winning public favour for his enterprise.| others are in their hands certain of success. But William himself could not hope for success, unless he could win over others far and near to look with favour upon his schemes, and unless he could inspire them with that confidence in themselves and in their leader without which |First in his own Duchy.| such an undertaking would be simply hopeless. He had first to deal with the chiefs and people of his own Duchy. Without their consent, without their thorough good-will, he could do nothing. To cross the sea to conquer England was quite another matter from putting down Norman rebels, from driving out French and Angevin invaders, or even from annexing neighbouring towns and provinces, like Domfront and Le Mans. William’s men were bound by their feudal tenure to follow his standard on the field of Val-ès-dunes and beneath the walls of Alençon. But it 269might well be doubted whether their feudal tenure bound them to follow his standard beyond the sea in an enterprise in which Normandy had no interest. At all events they were not likely to muster with the like zeal for the more hazardous undertaking. The Cenomannian war had been a war of aggression no less than the English war would be, and the spoils of conquered England would doubtless be far richer than the spoils of conquered Maine. But men would not be so ready to trust themselves in hope of spoil in the unknown land beyond the sea as they were to go on a foray in an adjoining province, from which it was an easy matter to make their way back to their |The Normans to be persuaded, not compelled, to the undertaking.| own homes. To attempt, by any mere stretches of the ducal authority, to carry men across the seas to win crowns for William’s own personal behoof would have been simply hopeless. William knew better than to risk his popularity and his authority by any attempt of the kind. His object was to carry the feelings of his people with him, and to conquer England by the swords of Norman volunteers.

Various feelings to which William appealed.

But the feeling to which William was about to appeal was something more than the mere desire of spoil, or even than the higher sentiment of feudal loyalty. Nor did he design to make his appeal to his own Normandy only. It suited William’s purpose and disposition to give his enterprise a |Religious character of the age; specially religious character of William.| far higher character and a far wider range. The age was a religious age; Normandy was an eminently religious country; William professed, and in many respects honestly practised, a devotion to religion beyond that of other men. It is not without real propriety that the panegyrist of William stops at this stage of his narrative to tell us of the flourishing state of Normandy and the Norman Church under a prince equally valiant, just, and devout. William laboured to preserve the peace of his Duchy by keeping down all its disturbers with the strong hand; the Truce of God was nowhere so strictly kept as in the Norman 270land.^[784] William in his own person heard and judged the cause of the poor, the fatherless, and the widow; his justice kept back his courtiers and favourites from deeds of wrong; in his days the mighty man durst not remove the landmark of his poorer neighbour.^[785] An orthodox believer, a diligent student of scripture, a devout worshipper and communicant,^[786] a father careful for the education of his children,^[787] William from his youth up, layman and prince as he was, set a model to priests and prelates. He chose the good among them for his friends and counsellors, and he visited the unjust and neglectful with his severest displeasure. A zealous reformer, he constantly attended in person at ecclesiastical synods,^[788] and he kept a watchful eye over the administration of the episcopal and archidiaconal courts.^[789] Under his government churches rose, 271monasteries were restored to the purity of their rule, Abbots, Bishops, all ranks of the clergy, became models |Influence of Lanfranc on William’s counsels.| of the due discharge of their several duties. Nor is it without reason that, immediately on this panegyric, our author adds his first mention of the great man whom William had now chosen as his special counsellor in all matters touching the Church and religion. The Prior of Bec, the renowned Lanfranc, was now, not indeed in rank but in influence, the first man in the Norman Church.^[790] And it is impossible not to trace the hand of Lanfranc in the course which William now followed. The minds of the Duke and the Prior, exercised as they had been in such different pursuits, had still much in common. In both we see the same wide grasp, the same subtlety, the same daring. In many things Lanfranc would be the teacher, but he would ever find in William a pupil worthy of his teaching. The cosmopolitan traveller, who had migrated from Pavia to Bec—the scholar who had turned from the study of the laws of Cæsar^[791] to the study of the laws of God—the theologian who had refuted the heretic face to face—the diplomatist who had won the consent of the |The religious character of the enterprise| Roman Court to his sovereign’s marriage—he it was, we cannot doubt, who put into William’s hands the surest weapon for his conquest. He it was who taught him to 272|probably due to Lanfranc.| lay his claim, not only before Normandy, but before all Christendom, and to cloke a wrongful aggression under the guise of a Holy War. He it was who taught him to gather round his standard crusaders from well nigh every Western land, and in the end to set foot on English ground, not as an adventurer avenging his private quarrel, but as the champion of the Church, marching forth with the approval and the blessing of the temporal and the spiritual chiefs of Christendom.

Nature of William’s claim to the English Crown.

Let us then see what was the case against Harold and against England which William thus brought to be judged, as we may say, by the public conscience of Europe. The pleading of William and his advocates, not only in his own Norman Parliament, but at the bar of the Pope, the Emperor, and the whole world, is one of the most memorable instances of human subtlety. It was a wonderful example of the way in which wily men, men like William and Lanfranc, can persuade others, and most likely persuade |No valid claim, either by hereditary right, by bequest, or by election.| themselves also, that the worse cause is the better. I have more than once incidentally shown that William had no valid claim of any kind to the English Crown. He had no claim by hereditary right; for the Crown of England was not hereditary, and, if it had been hereditary, no conceivable theory of succession could make William the heir. He had no claim by bequest; for a King of the English could not bequeath his Kingdom like a private estate, and such power of recommendation as the King did possess had been exercised in favour of another. He had no claim by election; for the people of England, in full Gemót assembled, had chosen another as their |Harold’s oath irrelevant to the question.| King. He had indeed suffered a wrong, whatever was its nature and degree, at the hands of the King whom England had chosen. Harold had sworn to do something, and he had not done what he had sworn to do. That was 273literally all, and, as a claim on the Crown of England, it was nothing. If Harold were to resign the Crown, if Harold were killed in battle or in single combat, William would not thereby gain any right to the Crown which he had not before. Harold had no power, any more than Eadward had, to make over the Crown to another; his resignation or death would simply create a vacancy, which the people of England might fill as they would. The utmost that could be said on William’s side was that Harold’s injury gave William a casus belli, and that a victory over Harold would give William, by right of conquest, all that Harold possessed, the English Crown included. But so odious a straining of the Law of Nations was too clearly unjust for William to venture publicly upon |The right of conquest not put forward. William’s appeal to public opinion a mark of advancing civilization,| it. The right of conquest was a right which he took care never to put prominently forward. He always claimed as a lawful heir defrauded of a lawful possession. And it marks a stage in the growth of European civilization, when William saw that his cause would be strengthened by making his claim, formally and solemnly, in the eyes of all men. The age of mere brute force was clearly past, when a prince claiming a foreign Crown took such infinite pains to win the public opinion of Europe, when he employed so many pens and so many voices on his side. Unjust and delusive as were his claims, it marks a great step in human progress that any man’s claims should be put forward in so solemn a way. It was a distinct |and of the growing power of the Papacy.| tribute to the power of law and right and opinion. But it was a tribute no less distinct to the growing power of the Papacy. The Bishop of Rome was invited, if not to dispose of the Crown of England, at least to determine who was its lawful possessor. Herein, if Lanfranc the Churchman triumphed, William the statesman undoubtedly erred. He did not indeed err as regarded his own personal interests. No crown that William held or won 274could ever be at the disposal of any other mortal. But he erred as regarded the common interest of Kings and |Effect of William’s application to Rome.| of all independent governments. He invited the alliance and interference of a power which he himself knew how to manage, but which proved too strong for smaller men. The blast of the Roman trumpet which declared Harold a perjured usurper, and William the lawful heir of England, was but the forerunner of a still mightier blast which pealed forth ten years later. The power which William now invoked to bless and hallow the schemes of his ambition learned, from the precedent set by William himself, to venture on that crowning act of daring which declared |1076.| how King Henry, the son of Henry the Emperor, stood deprived of the Crowns of Italy and of the Teutonic Kingdom.^[792]

Fair colouring put by William and Lanfranc on a bad cause.

The case then which William laid before Normandy, before Rome, and before all Western Christendom, was, in itself, a pretence utterly weak and fallacious. He claimed a crown which the solemn act of those who alone could dispose of it had, freely and lawfully, given to another. But the craft of William—we must doubtless add, the craft of his monastic ally—knew well how to put a fair colouring on their cause. The Law of England utterly rejected William’s claim; but the Law of England was likely to be known to few beyond the bounds of the island realm. Worthless as were William’s claims, they had a side which to many minds would be more attractive than that great principle of English Law that no man could reign in England save by the will of the English |Mixture of various irrelevant considerations.| people. It was easy to put William’s claims into a taking and rhetorical shape; it was easy to mix them up with 275a whole crowd of considerations, which had no real bearing on the case, but which were admirably fitted to enlist the sympathies of different classes of men. It was easy, by skilful management, to insist now on one point, now on another, with little care as to their logical consistency, provided one point gained one class of supporters and another point gained another.^[793] In a large part of Europe, wherever the ideas of feudalism and chivalry had taken firm hold, the doctrine that the people alone had a right to choose their prince was fast passing |The hereditary principle was gaining strength on the Continent.| out of memory. The doctrine of hereditary right was daily spreading. It was daily taking firmer and firmer root, with regard both to the Crown of France and to the great fiefs which were held of that Crown. The doctrine that the King never dies had indeed not yet arisen; but the Parisian Kings had learned how to avoid the inconveniences of the interregnum and election by having their sons crowned in their own life-time.^[794] That the Empire was other than elective no man had dared to affirm; no man then, or seven hundred years later, would have ventured to deny that the highest place on earth was in theory open to every baptized man. But the moment with which we are dealing was precisely the moment when the Empire was showing the strongest tendency to become practically hereditary. In the Teutonic Kingdom, no less than in Latin France,^[795] the reigning King was at this moment a boy crowned as his father’s successor while his father still lived.^[796] The great fiefs of 276both crowns were fast changing, from great magistracies like English Earldoms, into hereditary principalities. In France indeed they had passed the stage of change; they had been for some time, to all intents and purposes, sovereignties which passed as a matter of course to the heir of the last possessor. Kingdoms, Duchies, Counties, were now looked upon as, wherever strict feudal notions prevail, they cannot fail to be looked upon, as possessions in which the princes invested with them had a personal |Different position of England from other countries.| right. In England, almost alone, an Earldom still kept its character as a great office, for the good administration of which the magistrate entrusted with it was answerable to the power which appointed him, the King and the general Assembly of the Nation. In short, the political constitution, once common to every Teutonic people, still flourished in England, while it had greatly decayed in Germany and |Harold’s claim strange in continental eyes.| had quite died out in France. It follows that, to most continental hearers, the claim of Harold, a man not of kingly blood, to reign solely by the will of the people would already sound something strange and unnatural. The claim of William, a prince, would, simply because he was a prince, be looked on with more favourable eyes. A reigning prince, a kinsman of the late King, would seem far better fitted to reign than a mere subject, possibly the grandson of a churl.^[797] Nor would the repugnance of the English to a King not of their own blood and speech be thoroughly intelligible on the Continent. England had never, except under constraint, chosen a foreign King, and Cnut the Dane was, after all, hardly a foreigner in the eyes of half the Kingdom. But on the Continent, at any rate among the nations of the various Romance tongues, 277princes had freely passed from one kingdom to another, as they could win them by conquest or by inheritance. Hugh of Provence had reigned in Italy;^[798] Odo of Chartres had sought, not without a fair chance of success, for a kingdom in Burgundy;^[799] and, the greatest instance of all, the Crowns of Burgundy and Italy, the Imperial Crown of Rome itself, were now, by the public Law of Europe, held to pass of right to the King of the Teutonic Kingdom. For the Duke of the Normans to grow into the King of the English would therefore seem a change far less strange in |No fixed law of succession anywhere.| continental than it seemed in insular eyes. And again, it was for William’s advantage that, though the doctrine of hereditary right was fast growing, the laws of hereditary succession had not yet been strictly fixed in any country. No one doubted that a son ought to succeed to his father, but it was by no means clear who ought to succeed to a prince who left no son. In fact this point has not to this day been settled by the common consent of Europe; it has followed in each kingdom the local law of that kingdom, and, I need not say, it is a point on which the Law of France and the Law of England have differed for ages. In truth it was only in an age when the law of hereditary succession was still very unsettled, that William the Bastard could have succeeded to anything, |No hereditary right in William.| whether in Normandy or in England. With regard to England, his claims would be at once set aside by a modern lawyer. He and Eadward had indeed a common ancestor in Richard the Fearless, but Richard the Fearless never was sovereign of England, nor was he in any line of succession which could have made him, under any circumstances, sovereign of England. Such a common ancestry |Doctrine of nearness of kin.| could give William no claim on the English Crown. But, till the law is very distinctly settled, the notion of nearness 278of kin is really more intelligible, and awakens more of sympathy, than the technical doctrine of representation. |Mixed nature of William’s claim.| William could therefore easily work on men’s minds by enlarging on his nearness of kin to Eadward, especially when that claim was mingled up with the claim founded on the alleged bequest of Eadward.^[800] He could talk of the kindred by blood between himself and the English King; he could talk of their mutual affection and mutual good offices; he could tell of the promise of the succession made to him by his childless cousin. All this could easily be wrought up into a claim which, in the eyes of men ignorant of the Law of England and knowing no very strict law of succession of their own, might easily seem stronger than the claims of Harold, which rested solely on the election of the English people. As for Eadgar, nearer of kin to Eadward than William was, and born withal of the true kingly stock of England, it best suited William’s purpose to say nothing about him. Out of England his existence was most likely hardly known. Nay, in the unsettled state of men’s minds, William might, if the objection was ever started, argue that Eadward might rightly pass by an incompetent minor, and bequeath his Crown to a kinsman almost as near in blood and so much better fitted to rule.^[801]

William’s claim adapted to

We thus see that William’s claim to the Crown, a claim artfully made up of bequest and hereditary right, was one 279|continental opinion at the time.| by no means ill suited to commend itself to many minds at the time. But it was not merely his claim as heir or legatee of Eadward that William now put forth to the world. There never was a more memorable example of the way in which one utterly fallacious argument can sometimes be made to bolster up another argument equally |The wrong done by Harold mixed up with William’s original claim.| fallacious. With William’s supposed original right by kindred or bequest the wrong done to him by Harold was cunningly mixed up. I have already argued that that wrong, whatever was its nature, could not really give William any right which he did not possess already. |Ingenuity and fallaciousness of this argument.| Neither Harold’s oath nor Harold’s breaking of his oath could, in law or morals, make William’s claim to the Crown one jot better or worse. But no tale could be better fitted further to inflame the minds of those who were already disposed to look on the Norman Duke as an injured man. It would indeed be a spirit-stirring tale in which William, and those who pleaded in William’s name, would set forth the wrong-doings of the faithless Englishman. |Aspect of the tale as told by William.| Harold, the sworn man of William, had turned against his lord; he had trodden under foot every duty of a vassal; rescued from the dungeon of Beaurain by William’s bounty, honoured with William’s personal friendship, admitted to the ranks of Norman chivalry by William’s hand, bound to William and his house by the promise of a daughter of Normandy to his wife—he had despised so many and so great favours; he had lifted up his heel against his lord and benefactor; the Kingdom which he had sworn to make over to William he had traitorously seized as his own; he had added, it might be, to his crime the further guilt of abusing the confidence of his own dying sovereign, and of wringing from him in his last moments an unwilling assent to the usurpation which he plotted. This was the light in which the tale of the election of Harold, a tale which seems so glorious in 280English eyes, would look in the eyes of those before whom William pleaded, of those on whom he called on to help him to assert his right and to chastise the wrong-doer. |Appeal to religious feelings.| Nor was this all; William had that to add which would speak at once to the deep religious feelings of his age and |Harold’s perjury no ordinary breach of feudal obligation, but a direct insult to the Norman Saints.| people. This was no common case of a vassal forgetting his duty to his lord. Who in that age could boast that he had always faithfully discharged all the duties arising out of the intricate, and often contradictory, relations of feudalism? On such mere backslidings as these William had never been unduly harsh. He had over and over again forgiven the men who had rebelled against him, and in the moment of victory he had ever kept his hands clean from bloodshed. But here was a wrong which he never could forgive, because a higher duty called on him to avenge it. He might pass by wrongs done against himself; but he would be himself a partaker in the guilt, if he passed by the wrongs done against a mightier power. Normandy had this time been wronged, not only in the person of her mortal sovereign but in the persons of her immortal guardians. Harold had done despite to all the saints of the Norman land; he had arrayed against him the wrath of every patron of every holy place from the stream of Eu to the Mount of the Archangel. The powers of Heaven were ready to fight against their blasphemer, and to bless the arms of him who stood forth as their earthly |The Crusades forestalled in William’s expedition.| avenger. Forestalling the enthusiasm with which, thirty years later, men pressed to wipe out their sins by a Crusade against the Infidel, William now called on all who would to win the favour of Heaven by going forth with him to avenge the insult offered to the saints of Normandy. William, in self-delusion, let us hope, rather than in conscious hypocrisy, called on all who would to aid him in the attack on an independent nation which he cloked under the name of a Holy War.

General character of William’s case.

281Such was in truth the claim by virtue of which William threw down his challenge to England and to the King whom England had chosen. In the eye either of logic or of sound morals, his fabric was but as a house of cards; each fallacy rested on another fallacy as weak as itself, and when one frail support gave way, the fall of the whole must follow. But men are in general but little under the rule either of logic or of morals; they are apt to be guided by impulse rather than by judgement; they find it much less fatiguing to echo some easily repeated formula than to go into the facts or the reason of anything. A case then like William’s, artfully put together, and in which each fallacy fitted ingeniously into another, really told with more effect than the few plain facts which formed the defence of Harold and of England. Instead of being a house of cards, William’s fabric of fallacies, each resting on the other, did, as a matter of practical policy, win for itself the strength of the firmest arch. |Various incentives appealed unto.| And artfully mixed up with his formal claims were incentives of all kinds, adapted to the character and passions of the various kinds of men with whom he had to deal. |The plunder of England promised.| To all, of whatever nation, who would flock to his standard he offered a share in the spoils of England. He would lead them to a land abounding in all manner of good things, a land fruitful in meat and drink and rich in gold and silver.^[802] The wealth of that goodly land should be the guerdon of all who had a share in its conquest. In that spirit of confident boasting which, in men like him, is often the highest wisdom, he promised beforehand all that was Harold’s, while Harold, he said, had not strength 282of mind to promise a single thing that was his.^[803] William here lighted on the true difference between his own position and that of his rival. Harold, content with his own, planning no aggression against William or against any other man, was not likely to promise rewards in Normandy to his Thegns or his Housecarls. And, with his own people, William could appeal to feelings which were at least |Appeal to Norman patriotism.| higher than the mere love of plunder. It was possible to appeal to a certain vein of Norman patriotism, and to represent, not only the English King, but the English |Norman grudges against England.| nation, as laden with a heavy weight of offences against the Norman Duchy. The English invasion in Æthelred’s time^[804] was perhaps forgotten—some critics may perhaps say that it never happened—at any rate it does not seem to have been prominently put forward. But William took care to announce himself as the true successor of his father in the expedition which his father undertook against England to support the rights of his cousins, |The murder of Ælfred.| the banished Æthelings.^[805] He, the chosen heir of Eadward, went forth, among other high and righteous purposes, to avenge the blood of Ælfred, shed by the father of the reigning King, who was himself—so it was given out—art and part in his father’s deed.^[806] The blood of a prince, partly Norman by birth, and endeared to Normandy 283by long residence in childhood and youth, might well call for vengeance at the hands of loyal Normans. |Expulsion of the Normans in 1052.| Then there was the wrong done, fourteen years back, to so many Normans, friends and guests of the late venerated King. Norman Knights and Prelates had had to flee for their lives before a lawless crowd of English rebels, hounded on against their own sovereign by the traitor Harold and |Special case of Archbishop Robert.| his traitor father. Chief among the victims was one whose wrongs, wrongs done against the Church and all godliness, were but the fit forerunners of the fouler wrong which had since been done directly against the saints in glory. The blasphemer of the Norman saints had been the despoiler of the Norman Primate. Robert of Jumièges, driven from the throne of Augustine, had come back to spend the remnant of his days in his own land, and to lay his bones beneath the slender towers and massive arches of the mighty minster which he himself had reared.^[807] That the murder of Ælfred was a crime in which Harold could have had no share, that the flight of Robert was his own act, that his deprivation was a righteous process of English Law, that, even had Harold been the murderer of Ælfred and the unrighteous despoiler of Robert, neither count could in any way strengthen William’s claim to the English Crown—all these were points on which few minds in Normandy were likely to dwell. All these irrelevant matters could easily be made use of to stir up the mind of Normandy against Harold and against England. And, if this was done, no matter how logically weak were the arguments by which it was done, the aim of William was gained.

General appeal against England.

But William, in the course of this great argument, showed himself emphatically all things to all men. There were other minds than those of his own Normans to be persuaded, there were ears in which another line of argument 284|The invasion represented as a missionary enterprise.| would sound more convincing. No diplomacy short of that of William and Lanfranc could have contrived to represent the invasion of England as an undertaking designed for the spiritual welfare of England. No brains less subtle than theirs could have converted William and his host into armed missionaries, eager to reform at the sword’s point the evil lives and the ecclesiastical abuses of |Charges brought against the English Church.| the ungodly islanders.^[808] A land which had not lost its ancient character of the Isle of Saints—a land which had so lately boasted of a King like Eadward and an Earl like Leofric—a land which was still illustrated by the virtues of the holy Wulfstan—a land where so many minsters were rising in increased stateliness, and where the wealth of the Church was daily added to—a land whose Earls and Bishops and sons of every degree pressed, year after year, to worship and to offer at the tombs of the Apostles—a land like this was branded as a land which needed to be again gathered |The Crusade preached against England.| in to the true fold, and the Crusade which had not yet been preached against Turks or Prussians or Albigenses was prematurely preached against the people of England. It was indeed easy to gather together, in England or in any other land, tales which showed that the Church had fallen from her first love. It was easy to tell of breaches of discipline and breaches of morals, to tell of the vast pluralities of Stigand and of the deeds of sacrilege wrought at Berkeley and Leominster. The orators of William may well have set forth tales like these before the Roman Court, alongside of the tale of the perjury of Harold and of the wrong done to their own master. But these were not the |Real crime of England its independence of Rome.| real crimes of England. Her crime in the eyes of Rome, the crime to punish which the Crusade of William was approved and blessed, was the independence still retained 285by the island Church and nation. A land where the Church and the nation were but different names for the same community, a land where Priests and Prelates were subject to the Law like other men, a land where the King and his Witan gave and took away the staff of the Bishop, was a land which in the eyes of Rome was more dangerous than a land of Jews or Saracens. Rome, ever watchful, ever mindful, had not forgotten the note of insular defiance when the heart of England spoke by the mouth of Tostig, and threatened the Pontiff on his throne.^[809] Even under Eadward, England had been no unresisting bond-slave, and her independence, so boldly asserted by one son of Godwine, was likely to be as boldly maintained by another. The opportunity which Rome had doubtless long looked for now offered itself. A sword was put into her hand by which the rebellious islanders might be brought under her full obedience. It was a policy worthy of William to send to the threshold of the Apostles to crave their blessing on his |William outwitted by Hildebrand.| intended work of reducing the rebellious land. And it was a policy worthy of one greater than William himself to make even William, for once in his life, the instrument of purposes yet more daring, yet more far-sighted, than his own. On the steps of the Papal chair, and there alone, had William and Lanfranc to cope with an intellect loftier and more subtle than even theirs. The counsellor of so many Pontiffs, so soon to be himself the most renowned of Pontiffs, knew with whom he had to deal, and knew how to bide his time as well as William himself. William was sent on an errand which none but William could perform, but of which William himself knew not the full bearing. Under his rule no man could doubt that England would be subject to none but him. With William for her King, she was as little likely to be the unresisting slave of Rome as if Harold himself should continue to guard her. But a seed 286was sown which was to bear fruit in other times and under weaker rulers. When Rome once took upon her to adjudge the Crown of England, the path was opened for that day of |1213.| shame and sorrow when a descendant of William stooped to receive the Crown of England as a fief of Rome.

§ 3. The Norman Council and the Assembly of Lillebonne.

Various negotiations carried on by William.

The case of William had thus to be brought to bear on the minds of his own people, on the minds of the neighbouring countries whence he invited and looked for volunteers, on the minds of the foreign princes whose help or at least whose neutrality he asked for, and, above all, on the minds of the Roman Pontiff and his advisers. The order of these various negotiations is not very clear,^[810] and in all probability all |He first consults a select Council of his own Duchy.| were being carried on at once. But there is little doubt that William’s first step, on receiving the refusal of Harold to surrender his Crown—or whatever else was the exact purport of the English King’s answer—was to lay the matter before a select body of his most trusty counsellors. The names of most of the men whom William thus honoured with his special confidence are already familiar to us. They were the men of his own blood, the friends of his youth, the faithful vassals who had fought at his side against French |Names and characters of the men assembled by William.| invaders and Norman rebels. There was his brother, Robert Count of Mortain, the lord of the castle by the waterfalls,^[811] the spoil of the banished Warling.^[812] And there was one closer than a brother, the proud William the son of Osbern, the son of the faithful guardian of his childhood.^[813] There, perhaps the only priest in that gathering of warriors, was his other brother, Odo of Bayeux, soon to prove himself a warrior as stout of heart and as strong of arm as any of his 287race.^[814] There too, not otherwise renowned, was Iwun-al-Chapel, the husband of the sister of William, Robert, and Odo.^[815] There was a kinsman, nearer in legitimate succession to the stock of Rolf than William himself, Richard of Evreux, the son of Robert the Archbishop, the grandson of Richard the Fearless.^[816] There was the true kinsman and vassal who guarded the frontier fortress of Eu,^[817] the brother of the traitor Busac and of the holy Prelate of Lisieux.^[818] There was Roger of Beaumont, who rid the world of Roger of Toesny,^[819] and Ralph, the worthier grandson of that old foe of Normandy and mankind.^[820] There was Ralph’s companion in banishment, Hugh of Grantmesnil,^[821] and Roger of Montgomery, the loyal son-in-law of him who cursed the Bastard in his cradle.^[822] There too were the other worthies of the day of Mortemer, Walter Giffard^[823] and Hugh of Montfort,^[824] and William of Warren, the valiant youth who had received the chiefest guerdon of that memorable ambush.^[825] These men, chiefs of the great houses of Normandy, founders, some of them, of greater houses in England, were gathered together at their sovereign’s bidding. They were to be the first to share his counsels in the enterprise which he was planning, an enterprise planned against the land which, with so many in that assembly, was to become a second home, a home perhaps all the more cherished that it was won by the might of their own right hands.

William consults the Council.

To this select Council the Duke made his first appeal. He told them, what some of them at least knew well already, of the wrongs which he had suffered from Harold 288of England.^[826] It was his purpose to cross the sea, in order to assert his rights and to chastise the wrong-doer. With the help of God and with the loyal service of his faithful Normans, he doubted not his power to do what he purposed.^[827] He had gathered them together to know their minds upon the matter. Did they approve of his purpose? Did they deem the enterprise within his power? Were they ready themselves to help him to the uttermost to |Answer of the Council.| recover his right? The answer of the Norman leaders, the personal kinsmen and friends of their sovereign, was wise and constitutional. They approved his purpose; they deemed that the enterprise was not beyond the power of Normandy to accomplish. The valour of the Norman knighthood, the wealth of the Norman Church,^[828] was fully enough to put their Duke in possession of all that he |They pledge their own service, but recommend the calling of a larger assembly.| claimed. Their own personal service they pledged at once; they would follow him to the war; they would pledge, they would sell, their lands to cover the costs of the expedition. But they would not answer for others. Where all were to share in the work, all ought to share in the counsel.^[829] Those whom the Duke had gathered together 289were not the whole baronage of Normandy. There were other wise and brave men in the Duchy, whose arms were as strong, and whose counsel would be as sage, as those of the chosen party to whom he spoke. Let the Duke call a larger meeting of all the Barons of his Duchy, and lay his designs before them.

The Assembly of Lillebonne.

The Duke hearkened to this advice, and he at once sent forth a summons for the gathering of a larger Assembly. This is the only time when we come across any details of |Difference between Norman and English Assemblies.| the proceedings of a Norman Parliament. And we at once see how widely the political condition of Normandy differed from that of England. We see how much further England had advanced, or, more truly, how much further Normandy had gone back, in the path of political freedom. The Norman Assembly which assembled to discuss the war against England was a widely different body from the Great Gemót which had voted for the restoration of Godwine. Godwine had made his speech before the King and all the people of the land.^[830] That people had met under the canopy of heaven, beneath the walls of the greatest city of |No Clergy or Commons in the Norman Assembly.| the realm. But in William’s Assembly we hear of none but Barons. The old Teutonic constitution had wholly died away from the memories of the descendants of the men who followed Rolf and Harold Blaatand. The immemorial democracy had passed away, and the later constitution of the mediæval States had not yet arisen. There was no Third Estate, because the personal right of every freeman to attend had altogether vanished, while the idea of the representation of particular privileged towns had not yet been heard of. And, if the Third Order was wanting, the First Order was at least less prominent than it was in other lands. The wealth of the Church had been already pointed out as an important element in the Duke’s ways and means, and both the wealth and the personal prowess 290of the Norman Clergy were, when the day came, freely placed at William’s disposal. The peculiar tradition of Norman Assemblies,^[831] which shut out the Clergy from all share in the national deliberations, seems now to have been relaxed. It is implied, rather than asserted,^[832] that the Bishops of Normandy were present in the Assembly which now met; but it is clear that the main stress of the debates fell on the lay Barons, and that the spirit of the Assembly was a spirit which was especially theirs.

Place of Meeting.

And, if the constitution of the Assembly differed widely from that of an English Gemót, the place of its meeting differed no less characteristically from the places of meeting most familiar to Englishmen. The law or custom of Eadward’s reign had chosen three of the chief cities of England to be, each in turn, the place of meeting for English national assemblies. The Norman Assembly met in a ducal dwelling far away from any of the great cities of the Duchy. It was gathered on a spot which had been a post of strength in far earlier times, and which, after ages of neglect, had been once more called into importance by |Juliobona or Lillebonne; its Roman remains.| William himself. The old Roman town of Juliobona stood at no great distance from the right bank of the Seine, and its representative, the modern Lillebonne, is familiar to travellers and students as one of the spots in Northern Gaul which are most rich in antiquities of Roman date.^[833] Within the present century a Roman theatre has been brought to light, where the main arrangements of the building are still perfectly preserved. Its solid arches and vast masses of walls still attest that matchless skill of 291the ancient conquerors in the constructive art of the builder which has made their works survive those of so many later ages. So it has been at Lillebonne; the works of the Roman Cæsars have proved more permanent than |Decay of the place.| the works of the Norman Dukes. Juliobona seems to have sunk into insignificance during the later days of Roman sway. It seems that, before the Imperial dominion had fully ceased, while the land was wasted alike by the Teutonic invasions and by the disputes of contending Emperors or Tyrants, the ancient buildings of the city had been largely destroyed of set purpose, in order to employ their materials in the construction of defences to shelter what was allowed to remain. Juliobona dwindled away, and the town makes no figure in history, until William called it again into being, as if expressly to become the scene of |The castle built by William.| this memorable meeting.^[834] On a slight elevation alike above the modern town and above the old Roman relic, William had reared a fortress which has now given way, partly to the military reconstructions of later ages, partly to the sheer barbarism of times which are almost our own. The site was a noble one. The theatre below, if it was not already hidden, might have seemed but a feeble reproduction by the hand of man of the glorious amphitheatre in which Lillebonne has been placed by the hand of nature. |Present state of Lillebonne.| From the top of a lofty tower of later days the eye looks down on the theatre on one side, on the other side on the modern town, with the graceful spire of its church, a work of the latest days of mediæval art. But the eye may almost pass by both to gaze on the wooded hills which, save at one point alone, shut in the view on every side. At that point, immediately above the Roman ruin, the hills, like the 292walls of the theatre, leave a gap which opens a view of the Seine glistening in the distance, and of the higher hills of the land between the Seine and the Dive which form the distant horizon. But no portion of the work of the great Duke now remains on that noble site. His donjon has given way to a grand round tower of later times, and to a taller one of octagonal shape, whose shattered walls still rise as the loftiest point of town or fortress. These changes were doubtless due to the fair requirements of the military art of later ages. But William’s noblest work has yielded to baser agents of destruction. Within his fortress, immediately above the theatre, as if to put the skill of his own age in direct competition with that of the old masters |William’s hall; its destruction.| of the world, William had built a noble hall, every stone of which has been destroyed in utter wantonness, but of whose general aspect a sufficient record has been preserved.^[835] Like most halls of that and of the two immediately succeeding ages—like that noble episcopal hall at Angers which we may take as the best representative of the ducal hall at Lillebonne—a vaulted undercroft supported the hall itself. A lower range of doorways, above them a range of the small coupled windows of the age, marked the two stages, and produced the effect, at once rich and solid, so characteristic of the best works of Norman skill. Within that stately hall, divided, no doubt, by ranges of pillars and arches which were then fresh from the hand of the craftsman, William now, as on more than one other occasion,^[836] gathered together the wisdom and valour of his Duchy, to hear and to ponder the mighty scheme on which his heart was bent.

Genuine parliamentary spirit of the Assembly.

Narrow as was the constitution of the Assembly, it showed, when it met, no lack either of political foresight or of parliamentary boldness. In a society so aristocratically 293constituted as that of Normandy was, the nobles are in truth, in a political sense, the people, and we must expect to find in any gathering of nobles both the virtues and the vices of a real popular assembly.^[837] William had already consulted his Senate; he had now to bring his resolution, fortified by their approval, before the body which came as near as any body in Normandy could come to the character of an Assembly of the Norman People. The valiant gentlemen of Normandy, as wary as they were valiant, proved good guardians of the public purse, trusty keepers of what one knows not whether to call the rights of the nation or the |William’s opening speech; he assumes the willingness of the Assembly, and asks only what amount they will contribute.| privileges of their order. The Duke laid his case before them. He told once more the tale of his own rights and of the wrong which Harold had done him. He said that his own mind was to assert his rights by force of arms. He would fain enter England in the course of the year on which they had entered.^[838] But without their help he could do nothing. Of his own he had neither ships enough nor men enough for such an enterprise. He would not ask whether they would help him in such a cause. He took their zeal and loyalty for granted; he asked only how many ships, how many men, each of his hearers would bring as a free-will offering.^[839]

The Assembly asks time to consider.

A Norman Assembly was not a body to be surprised into a hasty assent, even when the craft and the eloquence 294|Mingled feelings of the Assembly.| of William was brought to bear upon it. The Barons asked for time to consider of their answer. They would debate among themselves, and they would let him know the conclusion to which they came.^[840] William was obliged to consent to this delay, and the Assembly broke up into knots, greater or smaller, each eagerly discussing the great question. Parties of fifteen, twenty, thirty, forty, sixty, a hundred, gathered round this or that energetic speaker.^[841] Some professed their readiness to follow the Duke; others were in debt, and were too poor to venture on such hazards.^[842] |Strong opposition to the enterprise.| Other speakers set forth the dangers and difficulties of the enterprise. Normandy could not conquer England; their fair and flourishing land would be ruined by the attempt.^[843] The conquest of England was an undertaking beyond the power of a Roman Emperor.^[844] Harold and his land were rich; they had wealth to take foreign Kings and Dukes into their service;^[845] their own forces were in mere numbers such as Normandy could not hope to strive against.^[846] They had abundance of tried soldiers, and, above all, they had a mighty fleet, with crews skilled beyond other men 295in all that pertained to the warfare of the sea.^[847] How could a fleet be raised, how could the sailors be gathered together, how could they be taught, within a year’s space, to cope with such an enemy?^[848] The feeling of the Assembly was distinctly against so desperate an enterprise as the invasion of England. It seemed as if the hopes and schemes of William were about to be shattered in their beginning through the opposition of his own subjects.

Attempt of William Fitz-Osbern to cajole the Assembly.

A daring, though cunning, attempt was now made by William Fitz-Osbern, the Duke’s nearest personal friend, to cajole the Assembly into an assent to his master’s will. He appealed to their sense of feudal honour; they owed the Duke service for their fiefs; let them come forward and do with a good heart all, and more than all, that their tenure of their fiefs bound them to. Let not their sovereign be driven to implore the services of his subjects. |He points out the danger of opposition.| Let them rather forestal his will; let them win his favour by ready offerings even beyond their power to fulfil.^[849] He enlarged on the character of the lord with whom they had to deal. William’s jealous temper would not brook disappointment at their hands. It would be the worse for them in the end, if the Duke should ever have to say that he had failed in his enterprise because they had failed in readiness to support him.^[850]

He is commissioned to speak in

The language of William Fitz-Osbern seems to have startled and perplexed even the stout hearts with whom 296|the name of the Assembly.| he had to deal. The Barons prayed him to be their spokesman with the Duke. He knew their minds and could speak for them all, and they would be bound by what he said.^[851] But they gave him no direct commission to bind them to any consent to the Duke’s demand. Their words indeed tended ominously the other way; they feared the sea—so changed was the race which had once manned the ships of Rolf and Harold Blaatand—and they were not bound to serve beyond it.^[852]

His speech to the Duke;

A point seemed to have been gained by the seeming licence given by the Assembly to the Duke’s most intimate friend to speak as he would in the name of the whole baronage. William Fitz-Osbern now spoke to the Duke. He began with an exordium of almost cringing loyalty, setting forth how great was the zeal and affection of the Normans for their prince, and how there was no danger which they would not willingly undergo in his service.^[853] |his large offers| But the orator soon overshot his mark. He promised, in the name of the whole Assembly, that every man would not only cross the sea with the Duke, but would bring with him double the contingent to which his holding bound him. The lord of twenty knights’ fees would serve with forty knights, and the lord of a hundred with two hundred.^[854] He himself, of his love and zeal, would furnish 297sixty ships, well equipped, and filled with fighting men.^[855]

disowned by the Barons.

The Barons now felt themselves taken in a snare. They were in nearly the same case as the King against whom they were called on to march. They had indeed promised; they had commissioned William Fitz-Osbern to speak in their names. But their commission had been stretched beyond all reasonable construction; their spokesman had pledged them to engagements which had never entered into their minds.^[856] Loud shouts of dissent rose through the hall. The mention of serving with double the regular |Fears and confusion of the Assembly.| contingent awakened special indignation. With a true parliamentary instinct, the Norman Barons feared lest a consent to this demand should be drawn into a precedent, and lest their fiefs should be for ever burthened with this double service.^[857] The shouts grew louder; the whole hall was in confusion; no speaker could be heard; no man would hearken to reason or render a reason for himself.^[858]

No common vote passed, but the Barons severally

The rash speech of William Fitz-Osbern had thus destroyed all hope of a regular parliamentary consent on the part of the Assembly. But it is possible that the Duke gained in the end by the hazardous experiment of 298|won over by the Duke.| his Seneschal. It is even possible that the manœuvre may have been concerted beforehand between him and his master. It was not likely that any persuasion could have brought the Assembly as a body to agree to the lavish offer of volunteer service which was put into its mouth by William Fitz-Osbern. There was no hope of carrying any such vote on a formal division. But the confusion which followed the speech of the Seneschal hindered any formal division from being taken. The Assembly, in short, as an assembly, was broken up. The fagot was unloosed, and the sticks could now be broken one by one. The baronage of Normandy had lost all the strength of union; they were brought, one by one, within the reach of the personal fascinations of their sovereign. William conferred with each man apart;^[859] he employed all his arts on minds which, when no longer strengthened by the sympathy of a crowd, could not refuse anything that he asked. He pledged himself that the doubling of their services should not become a precedent; no man’s fief should be burthened with any charge beyond what it had borne from time immemorial.^[860] Men thus personally appealed to, brought in this way within the magic sphere of princely influence, were no longer slack to promise, and having once promised, they were not slack to fulfil. William had more than gained his point. If he had not gained the formal sanction of the Norman baronage to his expedition, he had won over each individual Norman Baron to serve him as a volunteer. And, wary as ever, William took heed that no man who had promised should 299draw back from his promise. His scribes and clerks were at hand, and the number of ships and soldiers promised by each Baron was at once set down in a book.^[861] A Domesday of the conquerors was in short drawn up in the ducal hall at Lillebonne, a forerunner of the greater Domesday of the conquered, which, twenty years later, was brought to King William of England in his royal palace at Winchester.

§ 4. William’s Alliance with Tostig.

William’s chances of support in England

William had thus, by a characteristic effort of his craft, won over his own Duchy to support him in his enterprise. He had now to seek for allies beyond his own borders. And, first and foremost, it concerned him to know whether he could look for any support in the land to whose dominion he aspired. There is not a shadow of evidence to show that William had a single native partizan within the four |confined to the Normans settled there.| seas of Britain.^[862]He may have carried on intrigues with the Normans whom Harold had allowed to remain in England. But even on this head we have no distinct evidence. A single notice some months later seems to show that, even at the time of William’s landing, the Normans in England, however eagerly they may have wished for his success, looked on his enterprise as hopeless.^[863] But it is certain that one, perhaps two,^[864] native Englishmen 300|William’s cause embraced by the banished Tostig.| were zealous on William’s behalf. At what stage of his negotiations we know not, but seemingly early in the year, one Englishman at least came to William’s court, to excite him to war against England and to offer his own services for the cause. But that Englishman was no discontented noble at Harold’s court, no leader of a powerful faction within his realm. He was an exile, buoyed up by an exile’s proverbially desperate hopes. The first foreign volunteer who answered to William’s summons was Tostig the son of Godwine.^[865]

Position and schemes of Tostig.

In the banished brother of the English King, William found an ally willing to help him in all his schemes, an ally far more impetuous than himself, far more eager to strike a blow at once and at all hazards. The fallen Earl of the Northumbrians had sunk from bad to worse. He had now thrown off every feeling of an Englishman and a brother of the English King. He had once perhaps dreamed of the Kingdom for himself; he now found himself shut out from all hopes of his Earldom, or indeed of restoration in any shape. Harold, as Earl, at the Northampton conference, had done all that he could do for his brother; but he had agreed to the sentence of outlawry which the national voice had called for, and he had not as King done anything to recall Tostig to his country. In fact the restoration of Tostig was in every way impossible. |His hopelessness of restoration.| He had shown his thorough unfitness to rule, and it is absurd to suppose that he would have been satisfied to sit down and live peaceably in England as a private man. Harold could have had neither the will nor the power to break the Oxford compact, to dispossess Morkere of the Earldom which had been so solemnly confirmed to him, and to set his brother to rule once more over the unwilling people of Northumberland. Nor could he be asked to depose in favour of a pardoned outlaw either of his two 301loyal brothers who ruled in Kent and in East-Anglia. Nor could Tostig reasonably hope that Harold would put him in a still closer relation to himself by restoring the West-Saxon Earldom in his favour. In short, no banished man ever seemed doomed to a more hopeless banishment. It is not wonderful then that the heart of Tostig was turned to an exceeding bitterness against the country which had cast him out, and against the brother who had refused to sacrifice the public weal to his interests. If he still retained the consciousness of originally right intentions, such a consciousness would only add fuel to the fire. It is quite possible that the murderer of Gamel and Ulf may have looked on himself as a martyr to the cause of good order among the barbarous Northumbrians. At all events, he looked on himself as absolved from all ties either to his |He determines on a restoration by force.| brother or to his country. An attempt at an armed return on the part of Tostig was no more than was to be expected. It was what any banished man of that age was sure to attempt, if he could only collect the needful force in any quarter. Osgod Clapa, Godwine, Ælfgar, Harold himself, had all set him the example. The practice was so common that it could hardly be looked upon as specially blameworthy. If we blame Harold severely for the slaughter at Porlock, it is really because he pays the penalty of his greatness, because we cannot help judging him by a severer standard than that by which we judge smaller |Difference between the case of Tostig and the cases of other returning exiles.| men.^[866] But there are very marked degrees in a course which, however usual at the time, must be set down as being in every case contrary to ideal loyalty and patriotism. The case of Godwine needs no defence; it is covered by the general right of insurrection against mis-government. If Godwine came to restore himself, he came also to deliver England. Harold, like Osgod Clapa, tried to effect his return by the help of mercenaries hired in a foreign land. 302But he did not ally himself with any enemies of the King or Kingdom. Ælfgar, on his first banishment, went a step further by leaguing himself with a rebellious vassal, if not within the Kingdom of England, at least within the Empire of Britain.^[867] On the occasion of his second banishment, he did not scruple to employ the help of a fleet of Wikings, who must have been cruising on the shores of England with no friendly intent.^[868] All these are steps in a descending scale. But neither Osgod nor Harold nor Ælfgar sank to the wickedness of roaming over the world in search of any foreign potentate who would restore him by force, even at the expense of the utter subjugation of England. Tostig alone did not scruple at this depth of treason. He stands before us as acting more distinctly as the enemy of his country than any Englishman whom we have come across since the days of Ælfric and Eadric.

Tostig goes from Flanders to Normandy.

Tostig, we have seen, on his banishment from England, took refuge with his brother-in-law Count Baldwin, and spent the winter at his court.^[869] But, early in the next year, perhaps not very long after the election of Harold, most likely as soon as the news of the messages which passed between William and Harold had found its way to Bruges, Tostig was at the Court of William, urging him to the invasion of England. He eagerly asked the Duke how he could suffer the perjurer to reign,^[870] and promised his own |Relations between William and Tostig.| vigorous help in promoting all his plans.^[871] It would seem that he reached Normandy before the Assembly at Lillebonne, and it is even implied that the exhortations of Tostig 303were among the inducements which led William to summon that Assembly.^[872] But Tostig’s exhortations could have been only a very secondary inducement, serving at most to strengthen and hasten a resolution which William had already formed. It would be an insult to William to suppose that he really needed Tostig as a counsellor. The relations between the two men are perfectly easy to understand; the small man was likely to be useful as a momentary tool in the hands of the great man. Though Tostig left his wife at the court of her brother, the family connexion between Judith and Matilda would secure him a brotherly reception at the Court of Rouen; indeed we are told that, on the strength of that connexion, Tostig and William had long been intimate friends.^[873] And now each of the two friends was in a position to be useful to the other. Tostig, driven from England, was in search of foreign help, and the Court of Normandy was the natural place for him to seek for it in the first instance. As soon as he knew of William’s designs on the English Crown, he would hail in him the very man for his purpose. And the prince who already contemplated the invasion of England would rejoice at an alliance with the banished and hostile brother of the English King. Tostig had doubtless, after the manner of exiles, persuaded himself that all England was ready to welcome, not only himself, but any stranger who might appear under the pretext of restoring him. William was too wise to believe tales of this kind, but he might well look on Tostig as likely to prove an useful tool, as one whose incursions might serve to harass the King of the English, and to distract his attention from the main danger. Tostig’s impetuous temper would naturally call for earlier and more effective support 304than the prudence of William would be inclined to give, or indeed than, at that early stage of his preparations, he was able to give. It was undesirable utterly to thwart Tostig, or to make an enemy of him; it was perhaps becoming |Tostig attacks England with William’s sanction. May, 1066.| desirable to get rid of him. He was therefore allowed to make an incursion on the English coasts. At his own risk, but with the Duke’s sanction, he set sail from the Côtentin at the head of such a naval force as he could get together. This force would doubtless consist of Flemish and Norman mercenaries and volunteers. The Norman account tells us that King Harold’s fleet was so vigorously on the alert that Tostig was unable to land in England, while contrary winds hindered his return to Normandy.^[874] We know however that he did land in England, and that he committed considerable ravages. ^[875] But, from this point, the career of Tostig and that of William become altogether distinct, and the story of Tostig’s later doings will join itself to another thread of my narrative. Tostig probably chafed under the restraints of William’s prudence; perhaps he thought himself forsaken, or even betrayed, by an ally whose support was so slowly and grudgingly given. It is certain that he soon threw up his alliance with the Norman Duke, and sought for more ready aid elsewhere.

305

§ 5. William’s Negotiations with Foreign Powers.

William invites volunteers from all parts.

The alliance with Tostig was a mere episode. The banished Earl could only be useful so far as he was likely to make a diversion of which William might take advantage. The Duke’s serious business lay on the continent. He invited soldiers from every quarter; the spoils of England were promised as their reward, and that promise brought abundance of volunteers from all parts of Gaul, from the royal domains, from Britanny, from Poitou and Aquitaine, and from the more distant land of Burgundy.^[876] Some accounts even bring men to William’s muster from the Norman colonies in Southern Italy.^[877] The presence of large bodies of these mercenaries or volunteers from all parts of Romance-speaking Europe is an undoubted fact, and it is |The Conquest not a national Norman enterprise.| one which it is most important to bear in mind. There can be no greater mistake than to look on William’s invasion as a national Norman undertaking, or on his army as consisting wholly of native Normans. We have just seen that it was only as volunteers that William’s own subjects followed him, and as volunteers men of any nation who chose to join him followed him equally. But it is a speaking witness, alike to William’s personal capacity for rule and to the inherent superiority of the Norman national character, that all this mixed multitude 306should have received a thoroughly Norman impress. The |Norman character impressed on the whole.| spoils of England were offered to all who would come, and from a large part of Europe men flocked eagerly to share them. But the head and the heart of the whole enterprise was Norman. The leaders of the enterprise, the Duke himself and most of the chief commanders, |Few foreign princes served; the mass of the foreign troops mere adventurers.| were Norman. A few princes or men of princely houses, like Eustace of Boulogne and Alan of Britanny, commanded their contingents in person. But the mass of the foreigners were mere adventurers, and we shall find that, when the day of battle came, they served under a Norman commander. We are indeed told that men came from all lands, not only for the sake of plunder, but to maintain the righteous cause of William.^[878] It is likely enough that, when the Papal approval was once given to the enterprise, men pressed, as they did in after years to the Crusade, to atone for past acts of robbery and slaughter by renewing them with the Church’s blessing. But all that redeemed William’s enterprise from being an enterprise of mere brigandage came from the presence of his own subjects. The instinct of mankind is right, after all, in looking on the Conquest as a Norman Conquest. It was the native Normans who were really foremost in the strife, and it was the native Normans who took the firmest root in the conquered land. William’s true strength lay, after all, in the gallant men who could at least boast of the comparatively ennobling motive that they were supporting their native sovereign in the pursuit of his fancied rights.

William’s embassies to foreign powers.

The share then, numerically a very important share, taken in the expedition by foreign adventurers is beyond all doubt. But the negotiations between William and the 307neighbouring potentates are involved in no small obscurity and contradiction.^[879] It was William’s manifest interest to obtain, if not the active alliance, at any rate the neutrality of all his neighbours. It was necessary for his purpose to feel as secure as he could make himself that no French or Angevin or Breton invasion of Normandy would take place during his absence. It was also an important subsidiary object to obtain from the neighbouring princes full licence for their subjects to take a share in the enterprise. For these |His embassy to King Henry. Condition of Germany and the Empire. 1056–1066.| objects he sent embassies as far as Germany and Denmark. The great Emperor Henry the Third had been, as I need hardly repeat, the constant ally of England. But he had now been dead ten years, and the childhood and youth of his son, the young King Henry, was a time of distress and confusion for the Teutonic Kingdom. The minority |Comparison between the minorities of William and of Henry the Fourth.| of Henry had been, in many points, a repetition of the minority of William. But there was one marked difference between the German and the Norman period of chaos. William had been constantly exposed to the attacks of traitors, and of foreign enemies who sought to deprive him of his coronet and his life. Henry had not as yet had to fear either foreign invaders or home-bred rebels; he was simply passed to and fro between the hands of several ambitious men who sought to reign in his name. And it is an instructive mark of the difference between the political systems of Germany and Normandy that the men who sought to rule in Henry’s name were almost wholly the great spiritual Princes of the Empire. While still a child, he had been, by |1062.| a mixture of craft and violence, transferred from the care of his mother to that of Hanno Archbishop of Köln,^[880] and |1063.| from the hands of Hanno he had passed into those of another princely churchman, the famous Adalbert of 308Bremen.^[881] The young King was now perhaps just beginning in some degree to exercise a will of his own. |1065.| He had, in the course of the last year, been girded with |1066.| the sword of knighthood;^[882] and this very year had witnessed the fall of Adalbert and the partial restoration of the power |No mention of the Norman embassy in German writers.| of Hanno.^[883] But, full as the German writers are as to the reign of Henry the Third and the minority of Henry the Fourth, they tell us absolutely nothing as to any relations between the Empire and Normandy.^[884] William is not spoken of by them till after he had obtained the Crown of England.^[885] From Norman sources we seem to hear both of an alliance with the great Emperor himself and of a later alliance entered into during his son’s minority.^[886] Such an alliance in the Emperor’s life-time, ten years or more back, need not have been in any way directed against England. 309|Possible influence of the Empress Agnes in favour of Normandy.| And an alliance with Normandy during the earliest years of King Henry, while he was still under his mother’s guardianship, might seem no unlikely object of his mother’s policy. The Empress Agnes, it must be remembered, was a member of that house of Poitiers which had suffered so deeply at the hands of Geoffrey of Anjou,^[887] and she might very naturally seek to maintain or to renew a connexion with a power which was the strongest enemy of the enemy of her own family. But, at the time which we have now reached, the power of Agnes had wholly passed away; alliance with Normandy moreover now meant hostility to England; and it is utterly impossible to see what interest either the young King or his successive archiepiscopal advisers could have in supporting the claims of William against the claims of |German help said to be promised to William.| Harold. Our Norman informant however describes Henry as, in high-sounding but somewhat vague terms, committing his Kingdom to an active support to the Norman side.^[888] This again, strange as it sounds, can hardly be sheer invention, though we instinctively suspect exaggeration |Probable state of the case.| in no small degree. It may be enough if we suppose that Henry or his counsellors agreed to put no hindrance in the way of such subjects of the Empire as might choose to join the Norman standard as volunteers.