Chapter VII · (continued 2)

Amnesty. The fifteenth and last clause is a kind of amnesty for any irregularity which might have happened during the short interregnum. Two days and parts of two other days had passed after the peace of King William—​if we may so speak of the days of unlaw—​had come to an end, and before the peace of King Henry had begun. If any man had during that time taken anything which belonged to the King or to any one else, he might restore it without any fine; if he kept it after the proclamation, he was to be heavily fined.[874]

Such was the famous charter of Henry, the document 358 to which Stephen Langton appealed as the birthright of English freemen.[875] Witnesses to the charter. It was witnessed on the day of the crowning by the bishop who had officiated, Maurice of London, by Gundulf Bishop (of Rochester), William Bishop-elect (of Winchester), Henry Earl (of Warwick), Simon Earl (of Northampton), Walter Giffard, Robert of Montfort, Roger Bigod, and Henry of Port.[876] Such names look forward and backward. There is already a Bigod, forefather of the Earl who would neither go nor hang.[877] There is a Simon, and if the likeness of names is merely accidental, the tradition is carried back in another way when we remember that Earl Simon of Northampton was the son-in-law of Waltheof.[878] The fewness of the names may perhaps show that the coronation of Henry, celebrated as it was amidst a burst of popular joy, was but scantily attended by the great men of the realm. The whole thing was almost as sudden as the death of Eadward and the election of Harold, and it did not, like those events, happen while the Witan were actually in session. The summons, or even the news, could have gone through a very small part only of the kingdom. One would be glad to know how men heard in distant shires, in Henry’s own Yorkshire for 359 instance, not only that the oppressor was gone, but that the new king was crowned, pledged by his oath and his seal to give his land a new time of peace and righteousness.

The new King had taken upon himself to undo the evils of his brother’s reign, to bring back the days of Eadward, to reign as an English king. One step towards the restoration of the good state was to fill the churches which his brother had sacrilegiously kept vacant. Appointments to abbeys. The see of Winchester he had filled already; he now began to fill the thirteen abbeys which Rufus had held in his hands on the day of his death. Several were filled before the year was out; two at least were filled on the very day of his coronation. Saint Eadmund’s and Ely. These were the abbey of Saint Eadmund, void by the death of its abbot Baldwin, and that of Ely, which had stood void for seven years since the death of the aged abbot Simeon.[879] The staff of Saint Eadmund was now placed in the hand of Robert, a young monk of Bec, who is described as a son, seemingly a natural son, of Earl Hugh of Chester.[880] That of Ely 360 was given to Richard, another monk of Bec, son of Richard of Clare.[881] In these appointments and in some others we again see the need in which Henry stood of pleasing the great nobles, even at the cost of sinning against ecclesiastical rule. In the case of the appointment to Saint Eadmund’s we are distinctly told that the King’s nomination was made against the will of the monks, and a little later Anselm thought it his duty to remove both Robert and Richard from their offices. Two other prelates, appointed before any long time had passed, are of greater personal fame. Herlwin Abbot of Glastonbury. 1100–1120. The name of Herlwin of Caen, who now received the staff of Glastonbury, lives in local memory as a great builder.[882] Faricius Abbot of Abingdon. 1100–1117. And the Italian Faricius, now placed in the vacant stall of Abingdon, figures among the most renowned abbots of his house, famous amongst his other merits for his skill in the healing art. Oddly enough, his skill in this way kept him back from higher honour. Had Faricius been less cunning in leechcraft, he might have been Archbishop of Canterbury.[883]

But to undo the evils of the days of unlaw and to 361 reign as an English king, something more was needed than to put men of Norman, or even Italian, birth in possession of English abbeys. Towards carrying out the former of these objects, Henry had a criminal to punish and a sufferer to restore. Towards carrying out the second, he had a wife to marry. These three events pretty well filled up the rest of the year. Anselm and Flambard. Henry had two bishops to deal with, who needed to be dealt with in two very different ways. They were between them the living representatives of the late rule of unright. The one was the embodiment of what its agents did, the other was the embodiment of what its victims underwent. The King had promised to put away the unrighteousnesses of his brother and of Randolf Flambard; he began by putting away their surviving author. Flambard imprisoned in the Tower. By the advice of those about him, the Bishop of Durham, the dregs of wickedness, as he is called in the vigorous words of one of our writers, was sent as a prisoner to the Tower of London.[884] This was most likely not the first case, but it is the first recorded case, in which the great fortress of the Conqueror was used as a state-prison for great and notable offenders. Randolf Flambard heads the long list of its unwilling inmates, few of whom better deserved their place there than he did. We hear nothing of any claim of ecclesiastical privilege on behalf of the man who had brought God’s Church low. Flambard was not allowed the advantage 362 of any of the legal subtleties which his predecessor in his see had known how to play off so skilfully, and which, one would think, he could have played off more skilfully still. We do not even hear whether the Bishop of Durham was summoned before any court of any kind. The accounts read rather as if his imprisonment was simply a stretch of the royal power in answer to a popular demand. The Tower may even have been the best place for Flambard’s safety, as it was the best place for the safety of Jeffreys, as understood by Jeffreys himself.[885] The words which say that the act was done by the advice of those about the King are also worthy of notice. The King’s inner council. The King’s inner council must certainly have contained the two Beaumont brothers, the subtle Count of Meulan and the upright Earl of Warwick. It contained Roger the Bigod, more honoured in his descendants than in himself. It contained too some of Henry’s old friends from his Norman fief, Richard of Redvers and Earl Hugh of Chester. We are told that as soon as the news of the death of Rufus was known in Normandy, several of the great men who were there, specially the Earls of Chester and Shrewsbury, hastened to England to acknowledge Henry.[886] We do not find Robert of Bellême among Henry’s inner counsellors; we do find Hugh of Avranches. And to the list we may also most likely add the bishop-elect of Winchester, William Giffard, a tried court official, though 363 one who afterwards showed that he could suffer for a principle. Roger, afterwards Bishop of Salisbury. And a man who was to be more famous than all of them, the patriarch of the long line of English Justiciars and Judges, the poor clerk who was to be presently the all-powerful Bishop Roger of Salisbury, may have already given his voice among men who were as yet so far above him in worldly place.

We are told that the imprisonment of the Bishop of Durham was one of two acts which the new King did in order that nothing might be wanting to the universal joy at his accession.[887] The other was the recall of the Archbishop of Canterbury. We have seen that, in legendary belief at least, the death of Rufus was very speedily made known, if not to Anselm himself, at least to his friends.[888] The news of the King’s death brought to Anselm. The news was presently brought to him in a more ordinary way by two monks, one of Bec, one of Canterbury. His head-quarters were now at Lyons, but he was at the moment staying at a monastery called God’s House.[889] There the messengers met him, and told him that King William was dead. Anselm was overwhelmed at the tidings, and burst forth into the bitterest weeping. Those who stood by wondered; but he told them with a voice broken with sobs that, by the truth which a servant of God ought not to transgress, he would far rather have died himself than that William should die as he had died.[890]

He is invited to come back by his own monks, Anselm now went back to Lyons, where another monk of Canterbury met him, bringing with him a formal letter from the convent of the metropolitan church, praying 364 him, now that the tyrant was dead, to come back without delay to comfort his children.[891] He took counsel with his friend Archbishop Hugh, and by his advice began his return to England, to the great grief, we are told, of the whole city of Lyons and all the lands thereabouts.[892] and by the King. He had not reached Clugny when he was met by a still more important bearer of tidings. A messenger came in the name of the new King of the English and his lords, bearing a royal letter, calling on Anselm to come back, and even blaming his delay in not coming sooner.[893] Importance of Henry’s letter. We have its text, every word of which deserves to be studied, as showing how popular the constitution of England still was in theory, and what was the kind of language which had to be used by one who was called on to play the part of a popular king. Henry, in setting forth his right to the crown, uses more popular language than is to be found in the charter itself. Its popular language. There he spoke of the choice of the barons; in the letter to Anselm he tells the Archbishop that his brother King William is dead, and that he is chosen king by the will of God and by the clergy and people of England.[894] He excuses his hasty coronation in the Archbishop’s absence on the ground of the urgency of the time. He would more gladly have received the blessing at his crowning from him than from any one else; but the necessity of the moment forbade; enemies had arisen against him 365 and against the people whom he had to rule; his barons therefore and his whole people had thought that the coronation could not be delayed. He had therefore, against his will, received the rite from Anselm’s vicars, and he trusted that Anselm himself would not be displeased.[895] Himself and the whole people of England, all whose souls were entrusted to Anselm’s care, prayed him to come back with all speed to give them the benefit of his counsel.[896] He committed himself and the whole people of England to the counsel of Anselm and of those who ought to consult with Anselm for the common good.[897] He would have sent messengers with money of his own for Anselm’s use; only since the death of his brother the whole world is so stirred against the kingdom of England that he could not send any one with any safety.[898] Anselm is earnestly prayed not to pass through Normandy, but to sail from Whitsand and land at Dover. There some of the King’s barons shall be ready to meet him with money which will enable him to pay anything that he may have borrowed.[899] The letter ends in a pious and imploring strain; “Hasten then, father, to come, lest our mother the church of Canterbury, so long tossed 366 and desolate for your sake, should any longer suffer the loss of souls.” Signatures to the letter. The signatures to the letter should be noticed. It is said to be signed by other bishops and barons as well, but the actual names are Gerard Bishop of Hereford, William Bishop-elect of Winchester, William of Warelwast, of whom we have heard so often, Henry Earl of Warwick, in some sort a milder king-maker, Robert Fitz-hamon, and his brother Hamon the dapifer.[900] It is worth notice that the Achitophel of Meulan does not set his name either to this letter or to the charter. Was it to give as national a character as might be to both documents that Robert, as yet only a French count and not an English earl, abstained from putting his name to them? One can fancy no other reason for its absence from the earlier document. By the time the letter to Anselm was sent, the Count of Meulan’s presence may well have been needed in Normandy.

Dangers of the King and kingdom. The dangers which, according to King Henry’s letter, beset the kingdom of England may have been somewhat exaggerated in his picture of them; but they were perfectly real. And no description of them could be better than that which the King gave when he spoke of them specially as dangers which beset the King and the people whom he had to rule. Intrigues of the Norman nobles with Duke Robert. It was most truly the King and the people of England who were threatened by the intrigues of the great Norman nobles with the restored ruler of Normandy—​if ruler he may be called. The effects of the Red King’s death were exactly opposite in Normandy and in England. Renewed anarchy in Normandy on William’s death. In England his reign of unright was at once changed for a rule as strong and more righteous. In Normandy, which had seen the better side of him, where he had brought back peace of some kind after the anarchy of Robert’s first reign, anarchy came 367 back again the moment the news of his death came. Within a week the forces of Evreux and Conches were again in motion, this time indeed not in order to attack one another, but for a joint raid against the lands of the Norman Beaumont, the possessions of the Count of Meulan. The Count, we are told, had abused his influence with Rufus to do both of them some wrongs, which, while Rufus lived, they were unable to avenge.[901] They now took the law into their own hands; so did everybody else. Normandy again became the same confused field of battle, with every man’s hand against every other man, which it had been before William the Red at least did it the service of putting one tyrant in the room of many.[902]

Return of Robert to Normandy. September, 1100. To this disturbed land Duke Robert came back in the month of September, bringing with him his wise and beautiful Duchess from Conversana. They went to Saint Michael in-Peril-of-the-Sea to give thanks for their safe return,[903] and Robert was held to have again taken possession of his duchy. The English Chronicler says that he was received blithely;[904] it was certainly not the interest of those whom a ruler like Henry would have checked in their evil ways to make any opposition to his fresh acknowledgement. His renewed no-government. As soon as Robert was again in his native land, all the energy and conduct which 368 he had shown in the East once more forsook him. The old idleness, the old wastefulness, came back again. He had already squandered all the money which he had received from his father-in-law; luckily the death of Rufus relieved him from the necessity of repaying the sum for which the duchy had been temporarily pledged. It had not been alienated for ever, and Henry had no claim to it during Robert’s life. Henry keeps his own fief. Robert therefore had no difficulty in taking possession—​such possession as he could take—​of all Normandy, except the districts which formed the fief which Rufus had granted to Henry. There, in the lands of Coutances, Avranches, and Bayeux, King Henry’s men still kept the land for him, and withstood all Robert’s attempts to dislodge them.[905] War between Henry and Robert. A border warfare thus began between the brothers almost from the first moment of the reign of Henry, the second reign of Robert. And it would seem that, though there was no open outbreak till the next year, the turbulent Norman nobles in England were, from the very beginning, Intrigues of the Normans in England with Robert. making Robert the centre of their intrigues against a prince whose rule was eminently inconvenient for them.[906] The Lion of Justice was exactly the kind of ruler for whom they did not wish; Robert, who would put no check upon them, was far more to their tastes. Could they only put him on the throne, they might have their own way in all things in England as well as in Normandy. The same schemes which disturbed the second year of the reign of Rufus disturbed the reign of Henry from the very beginning. It was in the midst of all these disorders, directly after Robert’s return, that Henry’s letter was sent to Anselm. 369 It was therefore not without reason that the King warned the Archbishop not to come back through Normandy, but to make his way to Whitsand. Return of Anselm. September 23, 1100. To Whitsand Anselm accordingly came, and crossed safely to Dover a few days before Michaelmas.[907] The whole land from which he had been now nearly three years absent received him with a burst of universal joy.[908]

Connexion of Anselm with Norman history. The chief points in the primacy of Anselm had all along had a singular connexion, by way of coincidence at least, with the changes of things in the Norman duchy. It was when William was making ready for his second Norman expedition that Anselm had first drawn on himself the Red King’s anger by the alleged smallness of his gift towards its cost.[909] It was just before the King set out that the Primate had given him his most memorable rebuke.[910] The return of William was at once followed by the interview at Gillingham[911] and the great assembly at Rockingham. The collection of money for the final occupation of the duchy did not directly lead to the second dispute;[912] but the connexion of time is still marked. Rufus comes back from Normandy to find fault with Anselm’s contingent of troops for the Welsh war;[913] and he does not go again to the mainland for the French 370 and Cenomannian wars till after he has driven Anselm from England. Now that the Red King is dead, everybody seems to come back to his old place. Robert comes back to Rouen; Anselm to Canterbury. And along with them, a third actor in our story, whom, like them, Rufus had dispossessed, came back also. Before the year was out, Maine was again free; Helias had won back city and castle without slash or blow.

Helias returns to Le Mans. As soon as the news of his enemy’s fall reached the Count of Maine in some of those southern possessions from which he had never been driven, he at once gathered a force and marched to Le Mans. But no force was needed; the loyal city received its banished prince with all joy.[914] The King’s garrison holds out in the royal tower. But possession of the city did not give Helias possession of the royal tower; that was still held by the garrison which had been placed in it by the Red King. One of their commanders was a man whom we know already, Walter of Rouen, the son of Ansgar.[915] The castle was well provided with arms and provisions, and all that was needed for defence. Helias calls in Fulk of Anjou. Helias, before undertaking a siege, sought the alliance and help of Fulk of Anjou, whom he acknowledged as over-lord of Maine.[916] Siege of the tower; The two counts sat down before the castle of the Conqueror; but no strictly warlike operations followed. courtesies between besieged and besiegers. Besieged and besiegers seem to have been on the most friendly terms. They sometimes exchanged threats, but more commonly jokes. It was agreed between 371 the two parties that Count Helias should, whenever he chose, put on a white tunic, and should, by the name of the White Bachelor, be received within the tower.[917] Such was the chivalrous confidence shown on both sides that the Count of Maine went in and out as he chose, and much that was sportive and little that was hostile went on between the two parties. Conference between Walter and Helias. At last Walter and his colleague Haimeric[918] opened their minds to Helias. They were in exactly the opposite case to the Confessor when he told the churl that he would hurt him if he could.[919] They explained to their supposed enemy that they could hurt him if they would, but that they had no mind to do so. The ground and the defences of the castle gave them the stronger position. They were not afraid of his artillery, and they could shower down stones and arrows upon him at pleasure.[920] But they had no mind to fight against one for whom they had a deep regard, especially as they did not know for whom they were fighting. The garrison know not whose men they are. They had been the men of the late King William; they did not now know whether they were the men of King Henry of England or of Duke Robert of Normandy. They proposed a truce, during which they might send messengers to both their possible lords; when they got answers, they might settle what to do.[921] A truce is made; they apply to Robert, The messenger came to Robert, and asked him whether he wished to keep the 372 royal tower of Le Mans or not. If he wished to keep it, he must send a strong force to rescue it from its Angevin and Cenomannian besiegers. The Duke, tired, we are told, with his long journeyings and more anxious for the repose of his bed than for the labours of war,[922] is made to give two somewhat contradictory reasons for leaving matters alone. On the one hand, he was satisfied with the duchy of Normandy; on the other hand, the nobles of England were inviting him to come and take the crown of that kingdom. He told them that they had better make an honourable peace with the besiegers. and to Henry. The messenger, without going back to Le Mans, crossed to England, and told King Henry exactly how matters stood. Henry was too busy at the moment to meddle in affairs beyond the sea.[923] He rewarded the messenger, he sent his thanks to the garrison, and left them to their own discretion. When the answer came, a message was sent to the White Bachelor, asking him to visit the tower. The day was now come when he might rejoice in the possession of that for which he had long wished. If he had any money in his hoard, he might now make a fine bargain. He asked what they meant. They told him that he had not conquered them, that they were quite able to withstand him, but that they had no lord to serve and were quite willing to give up the castle to him. They knew his worth and valour; they chose him of their own free will, and made him that day truly Count of Maine.[924] Surrender of the castle. They gave up the 373 castle and all that was in it; Helias of course treated them with all honour, and gave them a strong guard to shelter them from any attacks on the part of the citizens whose houses they had burned the year before.[925]

Last reign of Helias. 1100–1110. Thus, after all struggles, Helias of La Flèche was at last undisputed lord of the Cenomannian city and county. He reigned, in all honour and seemingly in perfect friendship with Bishop Hildebert,[926] for ten years longer. His friendship for Henry. He was the firm friend, and in some sort the vassal, of King Henry of England, and did him good service at Bayeux and at Tinchebrai.[927] Under his second reign Maine seems to have been peaceful; but there must have been some wars and fightings on its borders, as we find Rotrou Count of Perche a prisoner in the Conqueror’s tower.[928] His second marriage. 1109. The year before his death Helias married a second wife, Agnes, the daughter of Duke William of 374 Aquitaine and widow of Alfonso King of Gallicia.[929] But his only child was Eremberga, the daughter of his first wife Matilda of Château du Loir. Helias, as he was the worthiest, was also the last, of the counts who held Maine as a separate sovereignty, and who had for some generations filled no small place in their own quarter of the world. Later fortune of Maine. Maine became the heritage of his daughter, and passed to her husband the younger Fulk, Count of Anjou and King of Jerusalem,[930] and to her son Geoffrey Plantagenet. Thus Maine became an appendage to Anjou, to Normandy, to England. Descent of the Angevin kings from Helias. And every sovereign of England, from the first Angevin king onwards, could boast that he had in his veins, besides the blood of William and Cerdic, the blood, less famous it may be, but assuredly not less worthy, of Helias of Le Mans.

Meeting of Anselm and Henry; beginning of fresh difficulties. Changes in Anselm. Anselm landed in England after Helias had been received at Le Mans, but before he had won back the royal tower. The King and the Primate soon met, and difficulties at once arose between them. The truth is that Anselm had come back, in some things, another man. Or rather the man was the same; his gentleness, his firmness, his perfect single-mindedness, had not changed a whit. But he had learned doctrines at Rome and at Bari which had never been revealed to him at Bec or at Canterbury. Comparison of the dispute between Anselm The tale of Anselm’s dispute with Henry, his second banishment, his second return, goes beyond the prescribed limits of our story, and I have pointed 375 out its leading features elsewhere.[931] and Rufus and the dispute between Anselm and Henry. There is hardly anything in which the difference between William Rufus and Henry the First stands out more strongly. But we are here concerned only with the very earliest stage of the dispute, if indeed it is to be called a stage of the dispute at all. Henry and Anselm met at Salisbury. The King received the Archbishop with joy; he again excused himself by the necessities of the time for having received the royal unction from another prelate. Anselm fully admitted his excuses.[932] There was less agreement between them on the next point which the King started. Henry calls on Anselm to do homage. Henry called on Anselm to do homage to him after the manner of his predecessors, and, in the language of the time, to receive again the archbishopric at his hands.[933]

Phrase of receiving the archbishopric. This last phrase has, I think, sometimes been misunderstood. It has nothing in common with the fresh commissions which the bishops of Edward the Sixth’s day took out after the death of Henry the Eighth. It has nothing whatever to do with the spiritual office; in this phrase, as in so many others, by the “archbishopric” is to be understood simply the temporalities of the see. These were at this moment in the King’s hands through their seizure in the days of Rufus. Since then a new reign had begun; England had a new king; her inhabitants had a new lord; for the archbishop, like any other subject, to become the man of the new king was simply according to the law of Salisbury. For him to receive back his lands was his right; for him to receive them as a fief was no more than he had already done at the hands of the Red King. Anselm had then done 376 without scruple all that he was now asked to do. Effect of the new teaching on Anselm’s mind. But since then the decrees of Piacenza and Clermont, above all the decrees of Bari and Rome, where he had been himself present, had been put forth. And by those decrees the ancient customs of England were condemned, and the censures of the Church were denounced against all who should conform to them. Anselm deemed it his duty, in all single-mindedness, to obey the bidding of Rome rather than the law of England. We may regret, but we can neither wonder nor blame. Anselm, after all, was not an Englishman; he could not help looking at things with œcumenical rather than with insular eyes. He fairly told the king’s counsellors how matters stood; he was bound by the new decrees. If Henry would accept them, there might be perfect peace between them.[934] If not, he himself could be of no use in England; he would have to refuse to communicate with any to whom the King might give bishoprics or abbeys in the ancient fashion; he could not stay in England on the terms of disobeying the Pope. He asked of those to whom he spoke that the King would consider the matter, and tell him his decision, that he might know which way to turn himself.[935]

Difficulties of Henry. Henry was now, at the very beginning of his reign, in a great strait. He was naturally unwilling to give up one of the chief flowers of his crown, one which had been handed down from all the kings before him.[936] To 377 give up the investiture of the churches and the homage of their prelates would be to give up the half of his kingdom. On the other hand, he felt that it would not do to quarrel with the Archbishop at the very moment of his return to England, or to allow him to leave England while he himself was not yet firm on his throne. He feared—​doing Anselm, we may be sure, utter injustice—​that, if Anselm left England, he might go to Robert, and take up his cause. It would be perfectly easy, as he knew very well, to persuade Robert to accept the new decrees. And on those terms, Anselm might, so the words run, make Robert King of England[937]—​that is, he might bestow on him a consecration more regular than that which Henry had himself received from the Bishop of London. A truce made till Easter; the Pope to be asked to allow the homage. It was therefore agreed on both sides to make a truce or adjournment of all questions till the next Easter. Meanwhile both King and Archbishop should send messengers to the Pope, to pray him so to change his decrees as to allow the ancient customs of the kingdom to stand.[938] No personal scruple on Anselm’s part. We here see, on the one hand, that Anselm still had no kind of scruple of his own about the homage and investiture; it was with him simply a question of obedience to a superior. Let Paschal withdraw the decrees of Urban, and Anselm was perfectly ready to do by Henry as earlier archbishops had done by earlier kings. Effects of the reign of Rufus. On the other hand, we see how the temporal power had been weakened 378 and the spiritual power strengthened through the late King’s abuse of the temporal power. Rufus had given the foreign dominion a moral advantage, of which Henry now felt the sting. Men had come to look on the King as the embodiment of wrong, and on the Pope as the only surviving embodiment of right. Abasement of the kingly power. The King of the English was driven to ask the Bishop of Rome to allow the ancient laws of England to be obeyed. True this was while the King’s hold on his crown was still weak; when his position was more assured, he took a higher tone; but it marks the change which had happened that an English king, and such a king as Henry, should be driven so to abase himself even for a moment.

The truce agreed to; provisional restoration of the Archbishop’s temporalities. By the terms of the truce, things were to remain as they were for the present. Anselm was to be restored to his temporalities without homage or other conditions; but, if Paschal could not be brought to yield on the matter of the decrees, they were to pass to the King again.[939] Anselm looked on all this as useless; he knew the temper of the papal court better than the King and his friends did. But he agreed for the sake of peace; he wished to avoid the slightest suspicion of any wish to disturb the King in the possession of his kingdom.[940] The truce was therefore agreed to; the messengers were sent, and Anselm, when the court broke up, went once more in peace to his metropolitan city or to some other of his many houses.

But, besides settling the affairs of his Church and 379 realm, Henry had other more distinctly domestic and personal duties to discharge. Reformation of the court. He had to reform the household which he had inherited from his brother; he had also—​so we are told that the bishops and others strongly pressed upon him—​to reform his own life.[941] Personal character of Henry. The vices of Henry were at least not the vices of Rufus; inclination as well as duty led him to cleanse the court of its foulest abuses, to make a clean sweep of the works of darkness.[942] But it was only in a wholly abnormal state of things that Henry the First could have been hailed as a moral reformer. Henry’s mistresses and children. His private life was very unlike the life of his father. Unmarried, like both of his brothers till the recent marriage of Robert, he was already the father of several children by mothers of various nations. Robert Earl of Gloucester. Of his eldest and most famous son, Robert, afterwards the renowned Earl of Gloucester, the mother is unknown; but she appears to have been French.[943] Henry son of Nest. The British Nest, of whom we have often heard, the daughter of Rhys ap Tewdwr, had, before her marriage with Gerald of Windsor, borne a son to Henry who bore his own name.[944] Matilda Countess of Perche. Two of his mistresses bore the characteristic English name of Eadgyth. One was the mother of Matilda Countess of Perche, who died in the White Ship;[945] the other, who afterwards, like Nest, obtained an honourable marriage with the younger Robert of Ouilly, Robert son of Eadgyth. was the mother of a Robert who plays 380 a part in the civil wars forty years later.[946] Henry’s daughter by Isabel of Meulan. His birth therefore most likely came long after the times of which we are speaking, as did the birth of the daughter whom Henry is said to have had by a woman of a Norman house of the loftiest rank, Isabel, daughter of his chief counsellor, Robert Count of Meulan and Earl of Leicester.[947] Richard son of Ansfrida. The list of Henry’s natural children is not yet exhausted—​we have no account of the mother of the valiant Juliana; but the birth of one who is second in personal fame to Earl Robert of Gloucester had already taken place, and it is connected with a characteristic story which is worth telling. Story of his mother and her husband Anskill. A wealthy man of Berkshire, Anskill by name, was one of the chief tenants of the church of Abingdon. As far as his name is concerned, he might be Norman; he might be English or rather Danish. His enemies brought a charge against him to the Red King, who caused him to be kept in so sharp a prison that before long he died of his hardships.[948] He left a widow, whose name is given as Ansfrida, and a son named William. The King then seized on the manor of Sparsholt, which Anskill had held of the abbey, and gave it—​or perhaps only its wardship—​to one of his officers named Toustain, without reserving any service to the Church.[949] By this grant both 381 the young William and the church of Abingdon were wronged. For the wardship of its tenant would even, by Flambard’s own law, go to the abbey. The widow, by what instinct we are not told, betook herself to Henry to ask his intercession with his brother the King. Young William did not get back his land, which was recovered for the abbey at a later time. Henry’s son Richard. But his mother presently gave him a half-brother, Richard, who afterwards distinguished himself in the French wars, and died in the White Ship.[950] The interest of Henry, if it did not get back Sparsholt for its lawful tenant, was enough to secure for his new mistress the safe possession of her dower, and to provide for her legitimate son by an advantageous marriage.[951] Ansfrida 382 herself was in the end buried in the minster of Abingdon with honours of which Saint Hugh would hardly have approved, and her lawful son did not fail to give gifts to the place of his mother’s burial.[952]

Henry is exhorted to marry. Henry then, if he was fully entitled to reform the worst abuses of his brother’s household, stood in some need of reformation himself. His counsellors exhorted him to mend matters by giving himself a wife and his kingdom a queen. He had not far to look for one when policy and inclination led him the same way. He seeks for Eadgyth daughter of Malcolm. Notwithstanding all his irregularities, we are told that he had long loved Eadgyth or Matilda, the daughter of Malcolm, and it is further implied that his love was returned on her part.[953] It is not clear where she was at this moment, but seemingly no longer with her aunt Christina in her monastic shelter at Romsey.[954] She was now about twenty years old, some say of remarkable beauty, at all events of a pleasing face, and mistress of an amount of learning which must have equalled or exceeded that of her clerkly lover.[955] She had no great 383 worldly possessions;[956] Policy of the marriage. but she came of a stock which made a marriage with her the most politic choice which the King could make at the moment. Eadgyth looked on as English. Eadgyth had lived so long in England that men seem to have forgotten that she was the daughter of Malcolm, and to have remembered only that she was the daughter of Margaret. As such she was held to be of the right kingly kin of England,[957] marked out as the most fitting bride for a king whose purpose was to reign as an Englishman. True she came of the blood of Cerdic only by the spindle-side, and by the spindle-side Henry came of the blood of Cerdic himself.[958] Henry’s descent from Ælfred. But no one was likely to remember that a daughter of Ælfred was a remote ancestress of Henry’s mother, while everybody remembered that Eadgyth was the daughter of Margaret, the daughter of Eadward, the son of Eadmund, the son of Æthelred, the son of Eadgar. It was for the English King to take an English Lady, and to hand on the English crown to kings born in the land and sprung of the true blood of its ancient princes.

So thought the people; so thought the King; so 384 seemingly thought the daughter of Malcolm herself. Objections made to the marriage. But not a few mouths were opened to denounce the marriage as contrary to the laws of the Church. Eadgyth, they alleged, was a consecrated virgin, and a marriage with her would be sacrilege. Eadgyth said to have taken the veil. She had, they said, taken the veil at Romsey, when she was dwelling there with her aunt Christina.[959] She appealed to the Archbishop, to whom all looked to decide the matter.[960] She told her story, as we have already heard it, and called on Anselm to judge her cause in his wisdom. Anselm holds an assembly to settle the question. The Archbishop called together at Lambeth—​the manor of his friend the Bishop of Rochester—​an assembly of bishops, abbots, nobles, and religious men, before whom he laid the matter, and the evidence bearing on it.[961] There was the evidence of the maiden herself; there was the evidence of two archdeacons, William of Canterbury and Humbald of Salisbury, whom Anselm had sent to the monastery, and who, after inquiries among the sisters, reported that there was no ground to think that Eadgyth had ever been a veiled nun.[962] The Archbishop then left the assembly, and the rest, who are spoken of as the Church of England gathered into one place,[963] debated the question in his absence. Much stress was laid on the case of those women who, in the first days of the Conquest, had sought shelter in the cloister from 385 shame and violence, but who had not taken religion upon themselves.[964] Eadgyth declared free to marry. The late Archbishop had declared them free to marry, and the judgement of the assembly was that the same rule applied to the case of the daughter of Malcolm.[965] Anselm came back, and the debate and the decision were reported to him. He declared that he assented to the judgement, strengthened as it was by the great authority of Lanfranc.[966] Then Eadgyth herself was brought in, and heard with a pleased countenance all that had passed.[967] She then offered to confirm all that she had said by any form of oath that might be thought good. She did not fear that any one would disbelieve her; but she wished that no occasion should be left for any one to blaspheme.[968] Anselm told her that no oath was needed; if any man out of the evil treasure of his heart should bring forth evil things, he would not be able to withstand the amount and strength of the evidence by which her case was proved.[969] He gave her his blessing,[970] and she went forth, we may say, Lady-elect of the English.

Other versions of the story. In another version, also contemporary but not resting on the same high authority, things are made to take 386 another turn. The King bids Anselm perform the marriage rite between himself and the nameless daughter of Malcolm, called in this version David.[971] Anselm made to object. Anselm refuses on the ground that, having worn the veil of a nun, she belonged to a heavenly, not to an earthly bridegroom. The King says that he has sworn to her father to marry her, and that he cannot break his oath, unless it can be shown by a canonical judgement that the marriage is unlawful.[972] Anselm is therefore bidden to summon the Archbishop of York, and the rest of the bishops, abbots, and other ecclesiastical persons of all England, to come together and examine the matter.[973] Story of Rufus and the Abbess. The Abbess is brought before them, and she tells the story of the Red King’s visit to her flowers.[974] The King bids Anselm call on the synod for its judgement. Decision in favour of the marriage. The assembled fathers debate; canons are read, and it is judged that the maiden is free to marry, chiefly on the ground that, if she was veiled, it was while she was under age and without her father’s consent.[975] Anselm’s scruples and warning. The King asks Anselm whether he objects to this decision; Anselm says that he has no fault to find with it. Henry then asks Anselm to marry them at 387 once. Anselm pleads that, though the judgement is right, yet, as the maiden had somehow or other worn the veil, it were better that she should not marry; there were others, daughters of kings and counts, one of whom the King might marry instead. Henry still insists; Anselm performs the ceremony; but with a warning that England would not rejoice in the offspring of the marriage.[976] The fate of the White Ship and the wars of Stephen and Matilda are quoted as a proof of Anselm’s prophetic power.

The tone of this story is quite unlike that of the more trustworthy version; yet there is perhaps no actual contradiction between them. But the foreign writer stumbles greatly in his names and pedigrees, and writes by the light of forty years later. Later fables. We may see in his version the beginnings of the wild stories of later times, where Eadgyth is pictured as forced into the marriage against her will, and even as devoting her future offspring to the fiend.[977]

Marriage of Henry and Eadgyth. November 11, 1100. She takes the name of Matilda. A few days later, on the feast of Saint Martin, the marriage was celebrated by Anselm, and Matilda, as we must now call her, was hallowed to Queen.[978] It is only 388 a guess that this was the time of her change of name. One hardly sees its motive; it was Henry’s policy at this moment to be as English as possible, and the name of his bride was one of the few English names which the Normans now and then adopted. Could it be Henry’s abiding reverence for his mother which made him wish to place another Matilda on his throne? Be this as it may be, the new Queen bears no other name. The wedding and coronation. All the great men of the kingdom and a crowd of folk of lower degree came together to her wedding and crowning. At the door of the West Minster, as the multitude thronged towards the King and his bride, the Archbishop stood on high and harangued the people. Anselm’s speech. He told them how the whole matter had been settled, and on what grounds. And he once again called on any one who had aught else to say against the marriage to stand forth and say it.[979] The only answer was a general shout of assent to the judgement and the marriage.[980] The rite was done. Objections not wholly silenced. But there were still some who blamed Anselm for the course that he had taken;[981] and years afterwards the validity of Matilda’s marriage, and the consequent legitimacy of her children, was called in question by those whose political objects it suited to do so.[982]

It is somewhat singular that Matilda practically stepped into the place of the Lady whose name she had forsaken. There had been no queen constantly living in England since the elder Eadgyth. The elder Matilda had been but little in England; William Rufus had been pre-eminently the “bachelor king.” 389 Novelty of a queen. It must have been a wonderful change when the riot and foul excess of the Red King’s court gave way to a household presided over by a devout and virtuous woman. Regular life of the King and Queen. For a time at least Henry as well as his wife lived a sober and regular life. As a generation back the strict conduct of Henry’s father had called forth the jeers of the profligate scoffers of his day, so now the profligate scoffers of another generation jeered at the decorous court of Henry and Matilda, “Godric and Godgifu.” and mocked the English King and his English Lady by the characteristic English names of Godric and Godgifu.[983] 1100–1118. The married life of Matilda reached over eighteen years only; Children of the marriage. William; of her two children, both born early in her wedlock, she did not live to see her son, the Ætheling William, cut off in the White Ship; she did live to see her daughter of her own name raised to a place which had never before been filled by a daughter of England,the Empress Matilda. sitting as a crowned Augusta in the seat of Livia and Placidia.[984] After a while Henry seems to have fallen back into his old courses; Later life of Henry and Matilda. some at least of his natural children must have been born after his marriage; and the same kind of language which was used about his first marriage was used about his second.[985] The Queen, for whatever reason, ceased to follow the endless wanderings of the court; and lived in all royal pomp at 390 Westminster.[986] Her character. Her piety rivalled that of her mother; it was shown in all the usual forms of the time; and her brother David, not an undevout prince, went so near to a scoff as to ask his sister whether King Henry would care to kiss the lips which had kissed the ulcers of the lepers.[987] Her boundless liberality to the poor, to clerks, scholars, and strangers of every kind, was perhaps not the less amiable for a manifest touch of vanity.[988] We read that the means for her lavish bounty in this way had to be found by harsh exactions from her tenants; but, here as ever, the blame is laid upon the reeves rather than on their mistress.[989] “Good Queen Mold.” The memory of “good 391 Queen Mold” was long cherished, and we can hardly doubt that her presence by Henry’s side did much to help the fusion of Normans and English in her husband’s kingdom.

Two ecclesiastical events wind up the last year of the eleventh century. Guy of Vienne comes as Legate. One of them showed that there were limits to Anselm’s submission to the see of Rome. Guy Archbishop of Vienne came into England, professing to be papal Legate throughout all Britain. Legates had been seen in England before, but not with such a commission as superseded the authority of an acknowledged Primate. Earlier Legates. They had come both under Eadward and under William the Great; but they came in the doubtful days of Stigand, and the last time they came to set Stigand finally aside.[990] One Legate had come under William the Red; but it was to bring the pallium to Anselm.[991] Guy’s pretensions not acknowledged. But now all men were amazed at a foreign prelate claiming to exercise powers which had hitherto been held to belong to none but the Patriarch of the island world.[992] Legates waxed mightier before Henry’s reign was out;[993] this time Guy went back as he came. We get no details; but we read that no one acknowledged him as Legate, and that he was not able to discharge any legatine function.[994]

Death of Archbishop Thomas. November 18, 1100. The other event was the death of Archbishop Thomas of York, after an episcopate of thirty years. He died a few days after the King’s marriage, leaving a good name 392 behind him as the honoured rebuilder of his church and legislator of its chapter.[995] This was the first prelacy which had fallen vacant since Henry’s accession. To deal with the vacant see after his brother’s fashion would have been in the teeth of all the new King’s promises. He therefore soon gave the church of York another shepherd. But his choice fell on a man of a character widely different from either Thomas or Anselm. The new archbishop was Gerard Bishop of Hereford, of whom we have already heard a good deal, and heard some things that are passing strange.[996] The see of York given to Gerard of Hereford. Archbishop 1100–1108. He held the throne of the northern metropolis for eight years, and, when he died, he had some difficulty in finding a resting-place in his own minster.[997]

§ 3. The Invasion of Robert. January-August, 1101.

Likeness of the years 1088 and 1101. The first year of the twelfth century was a stirring time for England, though it was not crowded with great and striking events like the last year of the eleventh. It reads like an earlier chapter of our story coming over again. We have now again to tell well nigh the same tale which we told at the beginning of the reign of Rufus. Again we have a Norman rebellion on English soil; again we have a Norman invasion; again the 393 English people cleave steadily to the king whom they have chosen; again the Primate and the bishops in general take the side which was at once the side of the King and of the people. Action of the Bishop of Durham, And, as if to make the likeness square in the smallest details, a bishop set free from bonds is the foremost stirrer up of mischief, and again three sons of Earl Roger are the most active leaders of the revolt. of the sons of Earl Roger. The part of Bishop Odo of Bayeux in the former rebellion is in the present played to some extent by Bishop Randolf of Durham; the part of Robert of Bellême is played again in more than all its fulness by Robert of Bellême himself. Plots to give the crown to Duke Robert. There is again a party eager to place the Duke of the Normans on the throne of England; but this time that party is balanced by another which in the other tale does not appear till later, A party in Normandy for Henry. a party eager to place the King of the English in the ducal chair of Normandy.

Character of Robert and Eadgar. Robert, like his chosen companion Eadgar, could play an active and honourable part anywhere save in his own country. Both alike show to far greater advantage in Palestine and in Scotland than in Normandy or in England. The seeming inconsistency is not hard to understand. Neither of them perhaps lacked mere capacity—​Robert certainly did not. And Robert most certainly did not lack generous feeling. But both lacked that moral strength without which mere feeling and mere capacity can do very little. Such men can act well and vigorously now and then, by fits and starts, when some special motive is brought to bear upon them. They can act better on behalf of others than they can on behalf of themselves, because, when they act for others, a special motive is brought to bear upon them. Their own cause they may, if they like, neglect or betray—​forgetting that, when a prince betrays his own cause, he commonly betrays the cause of many 394 others; but it is a point of honour not to betray or to neglect the cause of another which is entrusted to them. Thus it was that both Robert and Eadgar, who could do nothing for themselves, could do a good deal for others, whether as counsellors, as negotiators, or as military commanders. Robert as crusader. The crusade had brought out all Robert’s best qualities; but we have seen that, even on the crusade, he had yielded to any great and sudden temptation. Amidst so many noble and valiant comrades, he could not shrink from the siege or the battle; and, once brought up to the siege or the battle, he showed himself, not only a daring soldier, but a skilful captain. But at Laodikeia he had been the same man that he was at Rouen. His relapse on his return to Normandy. Now that he was again at Rouen, Antioch and Jerusalem passed away; it was all Laodikeia with him. The dream of winning the English crown floated before his eyes, and at last stirred him up to action. His renewed misgovernment. Otherwise he sank into his old listlessness, his old lavishness, his old vices and follies of every kind. It may be an overdrawn picture which paints him as lying in bed till noon, and neglecting to attend mass, because he had no clothes to go in; the base persons of both sexes who surrounded him had carried them all off. Some odd chance that happened once must have been spoken of as a habit.[998] But there is no ground for doubting the general description of Robert’s misgovernment or rather no-government, both before he went to the crusade and after he came back from it.

Parties in England and Normandy. It may at first sight seem a paradox that there should be at the same moment a party in Normandy anxious to hand over the duchy to Henry and a party 395 in England anxious to hand over the kingdom to Robert. But quiet men in Normandy, who wished their country to enjoy some peace, would naturally wish to place it under the rule of Henry, while the kind of men who, at the accession of Rufus, had wished to bring Robert into England would equally wish to bring him now. Henry’s strict rule distasteful to the Norman nobles. They had perhaps already found out that where Henry reigned none might misdo with other, and to misdo with other was to a large part of the Norman nobles the very business of life.

Their plots against him. The greater part of those nobles were now beginning to plot against the King. The estates which most of them held in Normandy gave them special opportunities for so doing, by giving them excuses for going to and fro between England and Normandy. Robert of Bellême and his brothers. Of this they were not slow to take advantage. The three sons of Earl Roger of Shrewsbury, Robert of Bellême and his brothers Arnulf and Roger, were busy in this work; Robert of Pontefract. Ivo of Grantmesnil. so was Robert the son of Ilbert of Lacy, beginning to be known as Robert of Pontefract; so was Ivo of Grantmesnil, son of the deceased Sheriff of Leicestershire, himself best known as the rope-dancer of Antioch. Earl Walter. And we are somewhat surprised to find on the same list, now at the very end of his long life, the aged Walter Giffard, lord of Longueville and Earl of Buckingham. All these were in secret communication with the Duke.[999] But none of them, Robert of Bellême least of all, was inclined to serve the Duke or any other lord for naught. Duke Robert’s grants to Robert of Bellême. Duke Robert distributed castles and lands among them, and promised to give them greater gifts still when he should be king of England.[1000] To Robert of Bellême he granted the forest of Gouffers, 396 and the castle of Argentan of whose siege we heard seven years before;[1001] he further confirmed him in a claim very dear to the house of Bellême, by granting him the ducal right of advowson over the bishopric of Seez.[1002] He gives back Gisors to Pagan. And, strangest of all, the Duke gave back the fortress of Gisors, the bulwark of his duchy, to its former holder Theobald or Pagan, because he had once hospitably entertained him.[1003] Did not Robert of Bellême ask that, if his own master-piece of engineering was to pass out of the hands of the prince, it should pass into no hands but his own? Thus Duke Robert’s way of making ready for the conquest of England was to squander the resources of Normandy. Every inch of his territory, every stone of his fortresses, stood ready to be granted away, almost to any one who would take the trouble to ask for them.

Christmas Gemót at Westminster. 1100–1101. Things were thus brewing through the winter without any open outbreak. At Christmas King Henry wore his crown at Westminster.[1004] That was a better place than Gloucester for watching movements beyond the sea. And soon after the feast and assembly the cause of Robert was strengthened by an unexpected helper, whose coming seems to have put a new life into his supporters. Escape of the Bishop of Durham. The Bishop of Durham, Randolf Flambard, suddenly showed himself in his native land of 397 Normandy. We saw him but lately shut up, to the joy of all men, in the Conqueror’s Tower. His keeper, William of Mandeville, may have been negligent; at all events his captivity was easy.[1005] The King clearly did not mean it to be harsh, as he allowed him two shillings a day for his keep. Flambard, with all his sins, was a pleasant and liberal companion, and he kept many friends, even in his fall.[1006] He was allowed the company of those friends; with them he made merry in his prison, and gave costly banquets to them and to his keepers.[1007] At last the means of escape were given to him; a rope was brought hidden in a vessel of water or wine. The Bishop made a feast for his keepers, and plied them well with the wine. When they were snoring in their drunken sleep, Flambard tied his rope to the small column which divided one of the double windows usual in the architecture of his day.[1008] Even at such a moment, he did not forget that he was now a bishop; 398 he took his pastoral staff with him, and began to let himself down by the rope. But he had forgotten another, and at that moment a more useful, part of the episcopal dress. He left his gloves behind; so his hands suffered sadly in his descent. Moreover the Bishop was a bulky man and his rope was too short; so he fell with a heavy fall, and lay groaning and half dead.[1009] But his friends and followers were at the foot of the Tower ready to help him. How they came there it is not easy to see, unless there was treason in the fortress; they should surely have been kept out by the wall with which Rufus, at such cost to his people, had surrounded his father’s Tower.[1010] So however the tale is told. The Bishop’s faithful helpers had got good horses ready and his treasure all safe. They set sail for Normandy; Flambard went in one ship, his witch mother with the treasure in another. Adventures of his mother. This second vessel was seized by pirates and the treasure carried off; the old woman and the crew reached Normandy despoiled and sad.[1011] His reception by Duke Robert; he stirs him up against Henry. Flambard made his way to the court of Duke Robert, became his chief counsellor, and worked hard to stir him up by every means to an invasion of England.[1012]

399 Easter Gemót. April 21, 1101. Meanwhile King Henry held the Easter feast at Winchester. The questions between the King and Anselm adjourned. The only recorded business of the meeting is that, as the messengers who had been sent to the Pope had not come back, the matters in dispute between the King and the Archbishop were adjourned till their return.[1013] But meanwhile most of the chief men of Norman birth in England were, of their mickle untruth, the Chronicler says, plotting with the Duke against the King.[1014] Growth of the conspiracy. Any excuse was enough for treason; if Henry refused to make lavish grants after the manner of his brother, the refusal made another traitor.[1015] Instead of a list of the conspirators, we get a list of the few who remained faithful. The few faithful. These were the two Beaumont brothers, Roger Bigod, Henry’s old friend Richard of Redvers, and the lord of Gloucester and Glamorgan, Robert Fitz-Hamon.[1016] To these we ought surely to add old Earl Hugh; but he was drawing near to the end of his days. The rest sent secret messages to Robert, and mocked openly at Godric and Godgifu. It would seem however that there was as yet no open rebellion on English ground.

Whitsun Gemót. June 9, 1101. Popular character of the assembly. The King next kept the Whitsun feast; the place is not mentioned, but it was doubtless Westminster; and the malecontents do not seem to have followed the old tactics of refusing to appear in the assembly. This Pentecostal gathering is spoken of as a vast assemblage both of the nobles and of the people in general.[1017] In an 400 assembly held close to London the popular element would, as in the days of Stephen, be better able to make itself felt than at Winchester and Gloucester. Advice of Robert of Meulan. And it was on the popular element that the King relied. We are told that his subtle counsellor from Meulan taught him that, at such a moment as this, he must be lavish of promises, even to the length of promising London or York, if they should be asked for.[1018] He must promise now, and, when peace comes again, he may take all back again.[1019] In the assembly, King and nobles met with mutual suspicions. Mediation of Anselm. The common voice of all ranks put Anselm forward as the mediator between the nation and its sovereign. It was indeed his constitutional place, a place which in the late reign Anselm had never been able to fill, but in which he was now called on to act, and in which he acted honourably and vigorously. Renewed promise of good laws. A second promise of good laws was the result.[1020] Parties were now 401 divided very much as they had been at the beginning of the reign of Rufus. Anselm played the part of Lanfranc; The Church and the people for Henry. the bishops were all loyal; the English people clave unswervingly to the king of their own choice, the king born on their own soil, the king who could speak to the hearts of Englishmen in the English tongue. They, we are emphatically told, knew nothing of the rights of any other prince.[1021] They were for the English king, son of a king; they had no part or lot in the foreign duke, son of a duke. And it is implied that, not only the English by descent, but that men of all classes and all races, except the few great men who had a vested interest in anarchy, were with one consent steady in their loyalty to the King and ready to fight for him against any invader. England united against Norman invasion. There was again an united nation, a nation perhaps more united than it had been five-and-thirty years before, ready to withstand the new, the last attempt, at a Norman conquest of England. If a few earls and great lords played a game of yet more active treason than had been played by Eadwine and Morkere, they were not able, as Eadwine and Morkere had been able, to keep back any part of the force of England from joining the national standard.

Importance of the campaign of 1101. The campaign which now followed, if campaign is the right word when armies merely look at one another without fighting, marks an important stage in the process which it was the work of Henry’s reign finally to carry out, Fusion of Normans and English under Henry. Last opposition of Normans and English. the fusion of Normans and English in England. The siege of Rochester was the last time when 402 Normans and Englishmen, by those names, met in arms as enemies on English ground. Now, at Pevensey and at Portsmouth, we for the last time hear of Englishmen on English ground spoken of in such a way as to imply that there were other dwellers in England who were not English. In the first year of Henry such language was still true; to go no further, the chief counsellor of the King was the man who had been the first to break down the English barricade on Senlac. Long before the last year of Henry, the men who had fought on Senlac on either side had passed away; the sons and grandsons of the conquerors had put on the nationality of the conquered. Warfare of 1102. The struggle which did not come to blows this year did come to blows in the next; the fighting which was found not to be needed against Robert of Normandy was found to be needed against Robert of Bellême. Peace of King Henry. 1102–1135. Then for thirty-three years there was peace in the island, though there was often war on the mainland. Englishmen believed that the old score was wiped out when they won Normandy for an English king; and the belief, if partly a delusion, was not wholly so. English feeling about Tinchebrai. 1106. On English ground the distinction of races died out during the long peace of Henry; when the anarchy came, men tore one another in pieces on other pretences. But now Englishmen still go forth to withstand a Norman invasion, Englishmen marked off by the English name, not only from men of other lands, but also, though for the last time, from men who were not English within the English kingdom itself.

Meanwhile the exhortations of the Bishop of Durham had had their effect on the sluggish mind of the Norman Duke. Robert’s fleet. July, 1101. In the course of July the fleet which was to win England for Robert was ready at Tréport.[1022] The 403 ducal navy bore the force that was designed for the new conquest, horsemen, archers, and foot-soldiers of other kinds. King Henry meanwhile brought together the hosts of England. Henry’s levy. As of old, the fyrd flocked together from all parts, pressing on with a good will to the defence of England and her King. Henry now, like his brother thirteen years before, had on his side the two great moral powers, the people and the Church. Anselm and his contingent. There was no need this time to throw scorn on the men who came as the military contingent of the see of Canterbury. With them Anselm came in person,[1023] not surely to wield weapons with his own hands; but doubtless to bring about peace, if so he could, and, failing that, to exhort his flock to the last and most terrible of duties, to fight without flinching in a righteous war, when peace has become hopeless. It was not Anselm’s first sight of warfare; but he might now learn the difference between Duke Roger’s war of aggression against Capua, and the war which the English people were ready to wage for their native land and their native king.[1024] The English at Pevensey. The King and the Primate, the national force ready to act at their bidding, the stranger nobles ready to betray them to the 404 invader, gathered once more on the old battle-ground of Pevensey.[1025] There two invading Norman fleets had already shown themselves, with widely different results from their invasions. William Count of Mortain. The third was looked for on the same spot, perhaps all the more because of the very doubtful faith of the new lord of Pevensey, Count William of Mortain. For that same reason it was all the more needful to secure such a post against the invaders. At Pevensey then, under the ancient walls and the new donjon, the army came together, waiting for the coming of the hostile fleet. But Henry took means to check them on their voyage. The English fleet sent out. He sent forth his ships to watch the coasts, to watch the enemy and to hinder them from landing.[1026] But here we are met with a somewhat strange fact. Some of the crews desert to Robert. This is not the first time that we have found Englishmen at sea less faithful than Englishmen on land. Tostig found allies among the sailors who were sent to meet him;[1027] so now did Robert. Some of the crews threw aside their allegiance, joined the invaders, and guided them to land. Alleged agency of Flambard. This piece of treason is attributed to the craft and subtlety of the Bishop of Durham, perhaps only, as in the case of Eadric, from the general belief that, whatever mischief was done, he must have been the doer of it.[1028]

405 Coming of Robert and his fleet. This time the landing-place was not Pevensey, but it was a kindred spot. One writer contrasts Robert’s invasion with that of his father. William made his way into the land by his own strength, Robert only by the help of traitors.[1029] Comparison with his former attempt. But it might have been only fair to contrast Robert’s former attempt, when he sent others to land at Pevensey, but made no attempt to land anywhere himself, and this present attempt, when he came in his own person and actually landed on English ground. And the first and the third invasion have one point of likeness as distinguished from the second. The second invasion, that in the days of Rufus, was beaten back, because the attempt was made on Pevensey when Pevensey was well defended. Comparison of Harold and Henry. But as the Conqueror was able to land at Pevensey because Harold was far away in Yorkshire, so, because Henry was carefully guarding Pevensey, Robert was able to land elsewhere. The traitors guided his fleet along the narrow seas which had seen the Saxon landings which came next after those which made Anderida a wilderness. As the father had made his way to England almost in the wake of Ælle and Cissa, so the son made his way into England more nearly in the wake of Cerdic and Cynric. Robert lands at Portchester. July 20, 1101. The Norman fleet sailed up the haven of Portsmouth, and the Duke and his army landed as safely beneath the Roman walls of Portchester as his father and his army had landed beneath the Roman walls of Pevensey. Portchester castle and church. Those walls at least were there; the massive keep most likely was not yet; the priory of Austin canons, whose church, little altered, still abides within the castle walls, 406 was the work of Henry himself.[1030] Robert marches to besiege Winchester. From Portchester the invader naturally marched towards Winchester; there was the royal seat; there was the royal hoard. He pitched his camp in a fit place for a siege;[1031] He declines to attack the city because of the Queen. but, in one of his fits of generosity, he refused, on a purely personal ground, to attack the city. His godchild and sister-in-law Queen Matilda was already lying there in child-bed of her first child, either the Ætheling or the future Empress. Was the West-Saxon capital her morning-gift also, as it had been with Emma and the elder Eadgyth? When Robert heard of the Queen’s case, he turned away, saying that it would be the deed of a villain to assault the city at such a time.[1032]

Estimate of his conduct. In this story we see the better side of Robert, that spirit of true personal kindliness, which, like his dealings with his brother Henry at the siege of Saint Michael’s Mount, calls forth a personal liking for him in spite of all his follies and vices. But one and the same fallacy runs through all these stories of passing personal 407 generosity. War cannot be carried on without causing much distress to many people, to besieged garrisons suffering from thirst, to women in child-bed, and others. Therefore war should never be undertaken, except for some public object so great and righteous as to outweigh the distress caused to individuals. Therefore too he who is carrying on a war on what he believes to be adequate grounds, should not turn aside from any operation which will promote the cause which he has in hand, merely on account of the distress which it may cause to individuals. We can hardly fancy that Robert himself would have turned away from the siege of Jerusalem or Antioch out of thought for any single person, even a brother or sister. He would have felt such an act to be treason to the common cause of Christendom. At Saint Michael’s Mount and at Winchester he had no cause to betray; he was simply fighting for his own interests, which he might, if he chose, forbear to assert. The morality of his age, perhaps the military morality of any age, fails to see that what this proves is that he should not have been attacking Winchester or the Mount at all. Unless war is so high a duty as to outweigh all personal considerations, it is a crime.

Personal character of the chivalrous feeling. Again, in all these stories we see how the chivalrous spirit thinks of those only whose rank or kindred or some other personal cause brings their distress directly home to its thoughts. Others on the Mount were thirsty besides Henry; Winchester must have contained other women in child-bed besides Matilda. But Robert thinks only of those who are personally connected with himself. Of course that abstract way of looking at the matter which strict morality dictates is quite foreign to the notions of the eleventh century or of many later centuries, and must therefore not be pressed too far. And undoubtedly the personal kindliness which is always 408 shown by Duke Robert is quite enough to put him on another moral level from a monster like Robert of Bellême. It is also enough to put him on another level from William Rufus, whose generosity is simply a form of pride. Yet, after all, the Red King’s abiding duty and reverence towards his father, alive and dead, comes nearer to a moral principle than Robert’s momentary outbursts of kindly feeling.

Robert’s march from Winchester. From Winchester Robert is said to have turned towards London, under the belief that Henry was there.[1033] This is somewhat strange, as one would think that the sea-faring men who had guided him to Portchester must both themselves have known, and would take care to let him know, that the King was at Pevensey. But nothing would be more natural than that Robert should march on London while the King was known to be elsewhere. And the point where, in the only account which attempts any geographical detail, the armies are said to have met, suggests a march of Robert towards London, and a march of Henry from Pevensey designed to meet him on the road before he should reach London. The armies meet near Alton. Robert was by the wood of Alton when news was brought to him that his brother’s force was near, on the other side of the wood.[1034] This seems a likely point for the armies to 409 meet, when the one was going north-east from Portchester and the other going north-west from Pevensey. Wherever the spot was, the two hosts met face to face and made ready for battle. But, either then or earlier, many of the Norman barons in Henry’s army openly forsook the King’s cause and went over to the invaders. Desertion of the Earls of Shrewsbury and Surrey. Two of the traitors are mentioned by name. Robert of Bellême, who was a little time before plotting in Normandy in his character of lord of Montgomery, must now have been again in England to work this open treason in his character of Earl of Shrewsbury. The other was the King’s cousin, the Earl of Surrey, the younger William of Warren, who is spoken of as a bitter personal enemy of the King.[1035] William of Warren’s enmity to the King. Henry had, even in his charter of liberties, kept the forests in his own hands; for, besides his wars, his studies, and his love-intrigues, he found time for an indulgence in hunting, which even surpassed, it would seem, the measure of his fellows. His jests on the King’s love of hunting. This drew on him the mockery of Earl William, who jeered at his deer-slaying exploits, and bestowed on him the nickname of Hartsfoot.[1036] To mockery he now added treason, 410 and Henry did not forget either. Doubtful truth of other nobles. While these great lords forsook the King, other Norman nobles still clave to him outwardly, but only with a feigned heart. His trust was in the small band of faithful Normans, in the Primate and the bishops, and above all in the English people. Death of Earl Hugh. July 26, 1101. One of his oldest Norman friends was gone; Earl Hugh had ended his long and turbulent life as a three-days’-old monk in the house of Saint Werburh, the house which was the joint work of himself and Anselm.[1037]

Meanwhile every motive of religion, loyalty, and patriotism, was brought to bear on the minds of the royal army. While some among the barons were openly falling off, while the good faith of others was doubtful, the King put his whole trust in Anselm only. The Primate was set to exhort, publicly and privately, all whose defection was feared.[1038] Anselm’s energy on the King’s side. And exhort he did, and with good success, hindering at least any further open revolt. Robert himself was alarmed at the threat of excommunication which Anselm held over him.[1039] In the belief of Anselm’s biographer, the King at this moment owed his crown to the Archbishop.[1040] Henry’s promises to Anselm. It is added that, in this 411 moment of danger, Henry promised, not only to let Anselm exercise his full jurisdiction undisturbed, but also to obey in his own person all the decrees and orders of the Apostolic See.[1041] The former part of the promise Henry cannot be fairly charged with breaking; the latter engagement, if it was ever made at all, must surely have been made under some qualification, or else it must be referred to the same class of promises as the suggested grants of London and York. Still there can be no doubt that Anselm served the King well and loyally, and that his help went far to keep many wavering souls in their allegiance. Zeal of the English. But the mass of the English army hardly needed exhortation to keep them in their duty. They would perhaps be more deeply stirred by the voice of the King himself than even by that of the Primate. Never yet since the day of Senlac had Englishmen harnessed for the battle heard a crowned king call on them in their native tongue. Exhortation of the King. But now we see Henry marshalling his ranks in the old tactics, and speaking to his Englishmen as Brihtnoth or Harold might have spoken. The lifeless Latin catches some spark or echo from the song of Maldon, when King Henry rides round the wedge of warriors, and bids them meet the charge of the Norman knights by standing firm in the array of the ancient shield-wall. No wonder that their hearts were stirred; no wonder that they shouted loud for the battle, and told their King with one voice that they were ready for the work, and feared not a Norman in the invading host.[1042]

412 Negotiations between Henry and Robert. But the merits of the Norman lance and the English battle-axe were not again to be put to the trial on English ground. Harold and William had tried negotiation before the final appeal to arms; how much more then should the brothers Henry and Robert? Message of Henry. The King of the English first sent a herald to the invader to ask why he had dared to enter his kingdom in arms. Robert’s answer. Robert sent word back again that it was the kingdom of his father which he had entered, and that he demanded it as his due by the right of elder birth.[1043] His claim of elder birth. In English ears this appeal to the new-fangled notions of other lands must have sounded meaningless. To whom could a crown be due but to him to whom the folk of his land had given it? What was Robert and his elder birth to them? He, the stranger-born, might, for aught they knew, be the eldest son of Duke William of Normandy; but King Henry, the countryman of his people, was the only son of King William of England. Other messages followed; wise men on both sides sought to bring about a reconciliation between the brothers; others sought war rather than peace.[1044] Personal meeting of the brothers. We read on the one hand that, after many messages had gone to and fro, the King found that he could trust no negotiator but himself.[1045] Yet we hear also of Henry being represented by Robert Fitz-hamon, who was surely faithful, while the representatives of Robert are somewhat strangely said to have been two of Henry’s own rebels, the Earl of Shrewsbury and the lord of Cornwall.[1046] However 413 this may be, those on both sides who shrank from a war of brothers brought about a personal interview between the rival princes. Nothing could be more to the advantage of the calm genius of Henry. Robert, able to negotiate for others, was sure not to be able to negotiate for himself. The hosts of Normandy and England stood marshalled in all their pride of war, while the King and the Duke went forth alone into the plain between them. They agree on terms. The brothers talked together; after a while they embraced and kissed.[1047] Terms of agreement had been come to which were to save the blood of the subjects of both.

The treaty of 1101. Robert gives up all claim to England; Henry gives up his Norman possessions. By the treaty now sworn to Robert gave up all claim to the kingdom of England. Henry, on his part, gave up to Robert his county of Coutances, and all that he possessed within the borders of Normandy. One continental possession alone, a small and isolated one, he kept. He might give up the lands which he had once bought of Robert and which he had afterwards received in fief of William. He keeps Domfront. But he could not give up the town and castle of Domfront, whose people had of their own free will chosen him as their lord, and had received his oath never to give them over to any other lord. Domfront therefore, the border post of Normandy and Maine, once the solitary possession of the wanderer, now remained the solitary continental possession of the island king.[1048] Henry and Helias neighbours. Thus, in his small dominion on the mainland, Henry had in a neighbour his friend and ally Count Helias, a neighbourhood which had some influence on the events of a few years later. Yearly payment to Robert. Stipulation as to the succession. Besides the territorial cessions, the Duke was to receive a yearly payment of three thousand pounds from his brother. The vain provision was again inserted that, if either brother died without lawful issue 414 in the lifetime of the other, the survivor should succeed to his dominions. Such a provision might seem even vainer than ever, now that both brothers were lately married to young and fruitful wives. Dying out of the legitimate male line of both brothers. Yet it is strange to look forward, and to see how each brother outlived his son, and how short a time the younger brother outlived the elder. Neither Robert nor Henry could have dreamed that the succession of both would pass to the son of their sister at Chartres. Natural sons of Henry. Anyhow the arrangement shut out those who afterwards showed themselves to be, in personal qualities, the most worthy to reign. These were the natural sons of Henry. Earl Robert. Robert, the son of the unknown French mother, came to fill no small place in history as the renowned Earl of Gloucester; Richard. and the short life of Richard, the son of the Berkshire widow, showed him as a gallant soldier and something more. Thus the relations and the succession of the two states of Normandy and England were settled. But a personal matter still remained between the princes. Henry released from his homage to Robert. At some earlier time, most likely when he first received the Côtentin, Henry had become the man of Robert. But now Henry was a king; Robert was to remain only a duke. It was not becoming for a crowned and anointed king to be the man of a mere duke. Henry was therefore released from all personal obligations of homage towards his brother. Each prince to restore the partisans of the other. Lastly, a provision borrowed from the elder treaty was inserted, seemingly only for form’s sake. Each prince bound himself to restore the lands and honours of all men who had suffered forfeiture for supporting the cause of the other. The treaty sworn to. The treaty thus agreed to was, like the elder one, confirmed by the oaths of twelve of the chief men on each side.[1049] Robert and his army go back. Michaelmas, 1101. Part of the Duke’s army at once left England; part stayed till he himself went back at Michaelmas. 415 He tarried till then as his brother’s guest, treated with all honour, and enriched with many gifts. Mischief done by the Norman army. But it is recorded that the part of his army which stayed with him did much harm in the land.[1050]

§ 4. The Revolt of Robert of Bellême. 1102.

Continued disloyalty of the Norman nobles. King Henry was now made fast in his kingdom; but he still had enemies to strive against. The allegiance of many of the chief men of Norman birth in England was still not a little doubtful. They had to be fully brought under the royal power before either the King or his kingdom could be safe. Henry’s plan for breaking the power of the great barons. Henry, there can be little doubt, cold and calculating as he was, formed a settled plan for breaking the power of those great barons who, at least if they joined together, might easily make themselves dangerous to the peace of the land. It was not his policy to hurry, nor to make over-many enemies by attacking all the dangerous men at once. The work was to be done bit by bit; opportunities were to be found as they offered themselves, to settle matters with those who had been traitors once and who were likely to be traitors again.

The treaty does not apply to Flambard. To some of the most dangerous traitors of all the provisions of the late treaty did not apply. The Bishop of Durham had lost nothing in the cause of Duke Robert. He had been imprisoned, and his temporalities had been seized, on the ground of his old offences, 416 before Robert’s claims had been heard of. He had no claims to restoration, nor did he as yet find any favour. Death of Gilbert Bishop of Lisieux. August, 1101. He went back to Normandy, and there, in his banishment to his native land, he found means to provide for himself at the cost of one of its bishoprics. Gilbert Maminot, the skilful leech whom the Conqueror had placed in the see of Lisieux,[1051] died in August, while Duke Robert was in England. Fulcher, Flambard’s brother, holds the see. June 1102-January 1103. The see was not filled till the next June, when it was given to Flambard’s brother Fulcher, who was consecrated and held the bishopric with a good reputation for liberality till his death seven months later. Then Flambard caused the see to be bestowed on a young son of his own, Thomas by name. As far as a not very intelligible account can be made out, Thomas remained unconsecrated, while his father received the revenues. Flambard receives the revenues under cover of his son. It was not till after Henry’s conquest of Normandy that a more regular appointment to the bishopric was made.[1052]

Banishment of the Earl of Surrey. Earl William of Warren too paid the penalty of rebellion, rebellion aggravated by personal gibes against the King. If our accounts are correct, he was disinherited so soon that he went away to Normandy in company with Duke Robert. He is said to have had other companions in the same case.[1053] He was afterwards restored at Robert’s intercession; but the chronology is confused, and we may guess that his fall did not happen quite so soon as is said. If he did suffer forfeiture directly after the treaty, it must have been on some other ground, and not that of taking Robert’s side during the quarrel, which would have been covered by the treaty. On Earl William 417 chastisement had a good effect; His restoration. he came back to be a loyal subject and special friend of King Henry during the rest of his reign.[1054]

Henry’s rewards and punishments. Other dangerous persons were got rid of one by one, as occasion served. Henry rewarded bountifully all who served him faithfully; but no enemy escaped him; no traitor avoided forfeiture or heavy fines.[1055] Forfeiture came before long on some men who were, after the earls, among the greatest of the men of Norman birth in England. Banishment of Robert Malet; of Robert of Pontefract. Such was Robert Malet, son of the gossip of King Harold, a man great in the east of England. Such was one equally great in the north, Robert of Pontefract, the son of Ilbert of Lacy. Charges were brought against them in the King’s court, and forfeiture and banishment followed.[1056] In another case we know the exact nature of the charge, nor can we condemn the punishment, except so far as it was turned to the private advantage of a favourite. Private war unlawful in England. It was our boast in England that we needed not the Truce of God, that, alike before and after King William came into England, private war, the dearest privilege of the continental noble, was always a crime against the law.[1057] Ivo of Grantmesnil harries his neighbours’ lands. But now Ivo of Grantmesnil, the rope-dancer of Antioch, took upon him to bring the licence of Normandy into England, and to lay waste the lands of some of his neighbours. This was a deed which could not be passed by in the days of the King who had come to make peace in the land. His trial, and conviction. A trial, and a huge fine 418 on conviction, followed.[1058] Ivo, on the verge of ruin, betook himself to Count Robert of Meulan. He asks help of Robert of Meulan. Bargain between them. Let the Count reconcile him to the King, and he would again go to the crusade, and try to wipe out the shame of his former pilgrimage.[1059] A bargain was struck; Count Robert was to give Ivo five hundred marks towards his journey to Palestine, and was in return to take possession of all Ivo’s lands for fifteen years. Then they were to go back to his son Ivo, now a child, who was to marry the Count’s niece, the daughter of the Earl of Warwick.[1060] The elder Ivo went on his second crusade with his wife, the daughter of Gilbert of Ghent, and died on his pilgrimage. With him ended the short-lived greatness of the house of Grantmesnil in England. The inheritance of his father and grandfather passed away from the younger Ivo to swell the fortunes of the chief counsellor of the King.[1061]