Free Ebooks - THE POLITICAL HISTORY OF ENGLAND.

THE POLITICAL HISTORY OF ENGLAND.

Seventy-five years have passed since Lingard completed his HISTORY OF
ENGLAND, which ends with the Revolution of 1688. During that period
historical study has made a great advance. Year after year the mass of
materials for a new History of England has increased; new lights have
been thrown on events and characters, and old errors have been
corrected. Many notable works have been written on various periods of
our history; some of them at such length as to appeal almost exclusively
to professed historical students. It is believed that the time has come
when the advance which has been made in the knowledge of English history
as a whole should be laid before the public in a single work of fairly
adequate size. Such a book should be founded on independent thought and
research, but should at the same time be written with a full knowledge
of the works of the best modern historians and with a desire to take
advantage of their teaching wherever it appears sound.

The vast number of authorities, printed and in manuscript, on which a
History of England should be based, if it is to represent the existing
state of knowledge, renders co-operation almost necessary and certainly
advisable. The History, of which this volume is an instalment, is an
attempt to set forth in a readable form the results at present attained
by research. It will consist of twelve volumes by twelve different
writers, each of them chosen as being specially capable of dealing with
the period which he undertakes, and the editors, while leaving to each
author as free a hand as possible, hope to insure a general similarity
in method of treatment, so that the twelve volumes may in their
contents, as well as in their outward appearance, form one History.

As its title imports, this History will primarily deal with politics,
with the History of England and, after the date of the union with
Scotland, Great Britain, as a state or body politic; but as the life of
a nation is complex, and its condition at any given time cannot be
understood without taking into account the various forces acting upon
it, notices of religious matters and of intellectual, social, and
economic progress will also find place in these volumes. The 'footnotes'
will, so far as is possible, be confined to references to authorities,
and references will not be appended to statements which appear to be
matters of common knowledge and do not call for support. Each volume
will have an Appendix giving some account of the chief authorities,
original and secondary, which the author has used. This account will be
compiled with a view of helping students rather than of making long
lists of books without any notes as to their contents or value. That the
History will have faults both of its own and such as will always in some
measure attend co-operative work, must be expected, but no pains have
been spared to make it, so far as may be, not wholly unworthy of the
greatness of its subject.

Each volume, while forming part of a complete History, will also in
itself be a separate and complete book, will be sold separately, and
will have its own index, and two or more maps.

Vol. I. to 1066. By Thomas Hodgkin, D.C.L., Litt.D., Fellow of
University College, London; Fellow of the British Academy.

Vol. II. 1066 to 1216. By George Burton Adams, M.A., Professor of
History in Yale University, New Haven Connecticut.

Vol. III. 1216 to 1377. By T. F. Tout, M.A., Professor of Medieval and
Modern History in the Victoria University of Manchester; formerly Fellow
of Pembroke College. Oxford.

Vol. IV. 1377 to 1485. By C. Oman, M.A., Fellow of All Souls' College,
and Deputy Professor of Modern History in the University of Oxford.

Vol. V. 1485 to 1547. By H. A. L. Fisher, M.A., Fellow and Tutor of New
College, Oxford.

Vol. VI. 1547 to 1603. By A. F. Pollard, M.A., Professor of
Constitutional History in University College, London.

Vol. VII. 1603 to 1660. By F. C. Montague, M.A., Professor of History in
University College, London; formerly Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford.

Vol. VIII. 1660 to 1702. By Richard Lodge, M.A., Professor of History in
the University of Edinburgh; formerly Fellow of Brasenose College,
Oxford.

Vol. IX. 1702 to 1760. By I. S. Leadam, M.A., formerly Fellow of
Brasenose College, Oxford.

Vol. X. 1760 to 1801. By the Rev. William Hunt, M.A., D.Litt., Trinity
College, Oxford.

Vol. XI. 1801 to 1837. By the Hon. George C. Brodrick, D.C.L., late
Warden of Merton College, Oxford, and J. K. Fotheringham, M.A., Magdalen
College, Oxford, Lecturer in Classics at King's College, London.

Vol. XII. 1837 to 1901. By Sidney J. Low, M.A., Balliol College, Oxford,
formerly Lecturer on History at King's College, London.

THE POLITICAL HISTORY OF ENGLAND
IN TWELVE VOLUMES

Edited by William Hunt, D.Litt., and
Reginald L. Poole, M.A.

II.

THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND
FROM THE NORMAN CONQUEST TO THE DEATH OF JOHN
(1066-1216)

By

GEORGE BURTON ADAMS
Professor of History in Yale University

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

A.D.
Oct., 1066. After the battle of Hastings
Nov. The march on London
Winchester occupied
London submits
25 Dec. The coronation of William
Jan., 1067. Regulations for government
The confiscation of lands
The introduction of feudalism
Power of the Norman duke
March-Dec. William in Normandy
Revolts in England

CHAPTER II

Feb.-March, 1068. Conquest of the south-west
Coronation of Matilda
Summer. Final conquest of the north
Raid of Harold's sons
1069. Danish invasion; the north rebels
Dec. The harrying of Northumberland
Jan.-Feb., 1070. Conquest of the west
Reformation of the Church
Aug. Lanfranc made primate
Effect of the conquest on the Church
The king and the Church

CHAPTER III

1070-4. The revolt in Ely
Norman families in England
Centralization of the State
The New Forest
Aug., 1072. William invades Scotland
1073. He subdues Maine
1075. Revolt of Earls Roger and Ralph
1082. The arrest of Bishop Odo
William's son Robert
1086. The Domesday Book
9 Sept., 1087. The death of William

CHAPTER IV

26 Sept., 1087. Coronation of William II.
Apr.-June, 1088. The barons rebel.
Nov. The trial of William of St. Calais
1095. The revolt of Robert of Mowbray
28 May, 1089. The death of Lanfranc
Ranulf Flambard
Troubles in Normandy
April, 1090. The court resolves on war
Feb., 1091. William invades Normandy
Malcolm attacks England
1092. William occupies Carlisle
Nov., 1093. Death of Malcolm and Margaret

CHAPTER V

Lent, 1093. Illness of William II
March. Anselm named archbishop
Conditions on which he accepted
Jan., 1094. His first quarrel with the king
19 March. William crosses to Normandy
1095. Second quarrel with Anselm
March. The case tried at Rockingham
1096. Robert mortgages Normandy
1097. Renewed quarrel with Anselm
Nov. Anselm leaves England
1098. Wars on the continent
2 Aug., 1100. William II killed

CHAPTER VI

2 Aug., 1100. Henry claims the crown
5 Aug. His coronation
His character
Aug. His coronation charter
23 Sept. Return of Anselm
11 Nov. Henry's marriage
Beginning of investiture strife
Merits of the case
July, 1101. Robert invades England
He yields to Henry
1102. Robert of Belleme punished
1101-2. Fruitless embassies to Rome
27 April, 1103. Anselm again leaves England

CHAPTER VII

1104. Henry visits Normandy
1103-5. Dealings with Anselm
21 July, 1105. Meeting with Anselm and Adela
Aug., 1106. The compromise and reconciliation

CONTENTS OF THE SECOND VOLUME

A.D.
28 Sept., 1106. The battle of Tinchebrai
Terms of investiture compromise
21 April, 1109. Anselm's last years, and death
1109-11. Reform of local courts
1109-14. Marriage of Matilda and Henry V
1109-13. War with Louis VI of France
Growing power of the Church

CHAPTER VIII

March, 1116. William recognized as heir
Renewed war with France
1120. An advantageous peace
25 Sept., 1120. Henry's son William drowned
Robert made Earl of Gloucester
1123. Revolt of Norman barons
Jan., 1127. Matilda made Henry's heir
She marries Geoffrey of Anjou
1129. A period of peace
1130. The Pipe Roll of 1130
The Exchequer
Henry's charter to London
1 Dec, 1135. His death

CHAPTER IX

Dec., 1135. Stephen of Boulogne secures London
Obtains support of the Church
His coronation
Normandy accepts Stephen
1136. Charter to the Church
Matilda appeals to Rome
The first revolt
The impression created by Stephen
1137. Stephen in Normandy

CHAPTER X

1138. The beginning of civil war
The revolt around Bristol
22 Aug. The battle of the Standard
June, 1139. The arrest of the bishops
Matilda in England
1140. Stephen's purchase of support
2 Feb., 1141. The battle of Lincoln

CHAPTER XI

March, 1141. Matilda received in Winchester
24 June, 1141. She is driven from London
Stephen released
1142-4. Geoffrey conquers Normandy
1144. The fall of Geoffrey de Mandeville
1149. Henry of Anjou in England
1152. He marries Eleanor of Aquitaine
1153. Henry again in England
Nov. He makes peace with Stephen

CHAPTER XII

The character of Henry II
19 Dec., 1154. His coronation
1155. The pope's grant of Ireland
Jan., 1156. Henry in Normandy
1158. Treaty with Louis VII
June, 1159. Attack on Toulouse
New forms of taxation
1162. Thomas Becket made primate

CHAPTER XIII

1162. The position of Becket
July, 1163. First disagreement with Henry
The question of criminous clerks
1164. The constitutions of Clarendon
Oct. The trial of Becket
Becket flees from England
1165-70. War between king and primate
14 June, 1170. Young Henry crowned
July. Henry and Becket reconciled
29 Dec. Murder of Becket

CHAPTER XIV

Oct., 1171. Henry II in Ireland
May, 1172. Reconciled with the Church
Henry and his sons
Discontent of young Henry
1173. Plans of Henry II in the southeast
Young Henry and the barons rebel
12 July, 1174. Henry II's penance at Canterbury
12 July. The king of Scotland captured
6 Aug. Henry returns to Normandy
30 Sept. Peace concluded

CHAPTER XV

1175. Government during peace
The homage of Scotland
Judicial reforms
Itinerant justices and jury
The common law
1176. Young Henry again discontented
Affairs in Ireland
1177. Dealings with France
1180. Philip II king of France
1183. War between Henry's sons
11 June. Death of young Henry

CHAPTER XVI

1183. Negotiations with France
1184-5. The question of a crusade
1185. John in Ireland
1186. Philip II and Henry's sons
1187. War with Philip II
Renewed call for a crusade
1188. The Saladin tithe
A new war with Philip
Nov. Richard abandons his father
4 July, 1189. Peace forced on Henry
6 July. Death of Henry II

CHAPTER XVII

1189. Richard's first acts
Methods of raising money
Arrangements for Richard's absence
Conduct of William Longchamp
June, 1190. Richard goes on the crusade
1191. Events of the third crusade
Strife of John and Longchamp
Oct. Longchamp deposed
Philip II intrigues with John

CHAPTER XVIII

Dec., 1192. Richard imprisoned in Germany
1193. Negotiations for his release
16 March, 1194. He reaches London
War with Philip II
Hubert Walter justiciar
15 Jan., 1196. Treaty with France
Renewed war
7 Dec., 1197. Bishop Hugh refuses Richard's demand
1198. Financial difficulties
6 April, 1199. The death of Richard
The growth of English towns

CHAPTER XIX

April, 1199. John succeeds in Normandy
27 May. Crowned in Westminster
Philip II takes Arthur's side
1200. John's second marriage
1202. Trial and sentence of John
1 Aug. John captures Arthur
1203. Siege of Chateau-Gaillard
24 June, 1204. Capture of Rouen
1205. French conquest checked in Poitou

CHAPTER XX

1205. Question of the Canterbury election
17 June, 1207. The pope consecrates Langton
Taxation of the clergy
24 March, 1208. The interdict proclaimed
Power of the king
Nov., 1209. John excommunicated
1210. Expedition to Ireland
1212. Alliance against France
Philip II plans to invade England
May, 1213. John yields to the pope

CHAPTER XXI

20 July, 1213. The king absolved
Henry I's charter produced
Feb., 1214. John invades Poitou
27 July. Battle of Bouvines
The barons resist the king
The charter demanded
15 June, 1215. Magna Carta granted
Civil strife renewed
The crown offered to Louis of France
21 May, 1216. Louis lands in England
19 Oct., 1216. The death of John

APPENDIX

On authorities

INDEX

MAPS
(AT THE END OF THE VOLUME)

1. England and the French Possessions of William I. (1087)
2. England and France, July, 1185

CHAPTER I

THE CONQUEST

The battle of the 14th of October, 1066, was decisive of the struggle for
the throne of England, but William of Normandy was in no haste to gather
in the results of the victory which he had won. The judgment of heaven
had been pronounced in the case between him and Harold, and there was no
mistaking the verdict. The Saxon army was routed and flying. It could
hardly rally short of London, but there was no real pursuit. The Normans
spent the night on the battlefield, and William's own tent was pitched on
the hill which the enemy had held, and in the midst of the Saxon wounded,
a position of some danger, against which his friend and adviser, Walter
Giffard, remonstrated in vain. On the next day he fell back with his army
to Hastings. Here he remained five days waiting, the Saxon Chronicle
tells us, for the nation to make known its submission; waiting, it is
more likely, for reinforcements which were coming from Normandy. So keen
a mind as William's probably did not misjudge the situation. With the
only real army against him broken to pieces, with the only leaders around
whom a new army could rally dead, he could afford to wait. He may not
have understood the rallying power of the Saxon soldiery, but he probably
knew very well the character of the public men of England, who were left
alive to head and direct a new resistance. The only candidate for the
throne upon whom all parties could unite was a boy of no pronounced
character and no experience. The leaders of the nobility who should have
stood forth in such a crisis as the natural leaders of the nation were
men who had shown in the clearest way their readiness to sacrifice
England to their personal ambitions or grievances. At the head of the
Church were men of but little higher character and no greater capacity
for leadership, undisguised pluralists who could not avoid the charge of
disregarding in their own selfish interests the laws they were bound to
administer. London, where the greater part of the fugitives had gathered,
could hardly have settled upon the next step to be taken when William
began his advance, five days after the battle. His first objective point
was the great fortress of Dover, which dominated that important
landing-place upon the coast. On the way he stopped to give an example of
what those might expect who made themselves his enemies, by punishing the
town of Romney, which had ventured to beat off with some vigour a body of
Normans, probably one that had tried to land there by mistake.

Dover had been a strong fortress for centuries, perched on its cliffs as
high as an arrow can be shot, says one who may have been present at these
events, and it had been recently strengthened with new work. William
doubtless expected a difficult task, and he was correspondingly pleased
to find the garrison ready to surrender without a blow, an omen even more
promising than the victory he had gained over Harold. If William had
given at Romney an example of what would follow stubborn resistance, he
gave at Dover an example of how he proposed to deal with those who would
submit, not merely in his treatment of the surrendered garrison of the
castle, but in his payment of the losses of the citizens; for his army,
disappointed of the plunder which would have followed the taking of the
place by force, had burned the town or part of it. At Dover William
remained a week, and here his army was attacked by a foe often more
deadly to the armies of the Middle Ages than the enemies they had come
out to fight. Too much fresh meat and unaccustomed water led to an
outbreak of dysentery which carried off many and weakened others, who had
to be left behind when William set out again. But these losses were
balanced by reinforcements from Normandy, which joined him here or soon
afterwards. His next advance was towards Canterbury, but it had hardly
begun when delegations came up to meet him, bringing the submission of
that city and of other places in Kent. Soon after leaving Dover the duke
himself fell ill, very possibly with the prevailing disease, but if we
may judge by what seems to be our best evidence, he did not allow this to
interrupt his advance, but pushed on towards London with only a brief
stop at any point.[1] Nor is there any certain evidence to be had of
extensive harrying of the country on this march. His army was obliged to
live on what it could take from the inhabitants, and this foraging was
unquestionably accompanied with much unnecessary plundering; but there is
no convincing evidence of any systematic laying waste of large districts
to bring about a submission which everything would show to be coming of
itself, and it was not like William to ravage without need. He certainly
hesitated at no cruelty of the sort at times, but we can clearly enough
see reasons of policy in most at least of the cases, which may have made
the action seem to him necessary. Nearly all are instances either of
defensive action or of vengeance, but that he should systematically
ravage the country when events were carrying out his plan as rapidly as
could be expected, we have no reason to consider in accordance with
William's policy or temper. In the meantime, as the invading army was
slowly drawing near to London, opinion there had settled, for the time at
least, upon a line of policy. Surviving leaders who had been defeated in
the great battle, men high in rank who had been absent, some purposely
standing aloof while the issue was decided, had gathered in the city.
Edwin and Morcar, the great earls of north and middle England, heads of
the house that was the rival of Harold's, who seem to have been willing
to see him and his power destroyed, had now come in, having learned the
result of the battle. The two archbishops were there, and certain of the
bishops, though which they were we cannot surely tell. Other names we do
not know, unless it be that of Esegar, Harold's staller and portreeve of
London, the hero of a doubtful story of negotiations with the approaching
enemy. But other nobles and men of influence in the state were certainly
there, though their names are not recorded. Nor was a military force
lacking, even if the "army" of Edwin and Morcar was under independent and
not trustworthy command. It is clear that the tone of public opinion was
for further resistance, and the citizens were not afraid to go out to
attack the Conqueror on his first approach to their neighbourhood. But
from all our sources of information the fatal fact stands out plainly, of
divided counsels and lack of leadership. William of Malmesbury believed,
nearly two generations later, and we must agree with him, that if the
English could have put aside "the discord of civil strife," and have
"united in a common policy, they could have amended the ruin of the
fatherland." But there was too much self-seeking and a lack of
patriotism. Edwin and Morcar went about trying to persuade people that
one or the other of them should be made king. Some of the bishops appear
to have opposed the choice of any king. No dominating personality arose
to compel agreement and to give direction and power to the popular
impulse. England was conquered, not by the superior force and genius of
the Norman, but by the failure of her own men in a great crisis of her
history.

The need of haste seems an element in the situation, and under the
combined pressure of the rapid approach of the enemy and of the public
opinion of the city--citizens and shipmen are both mentioned--the leaders
of Church and State finally came to an agreement that Edgar atheling
should be made king. It was the only possible step except that of
immediate submission. Grandson of Edmund Ironside, the king who had
offered stubborn and most skilful resistance to an earlier foreign
invader, heir of a house that had been royal since the race had had a
history, all men could unite upon him, and upon him alone, if there must
be a king. But there was no other argument in his favour. Neither the
blood of his grandfather nor the school of adversity had made of him the
man to deal with such a situation. In later life he impressed people as a
well-mannered, agreeable, and frank man, but no one ever detected in him
the stuff of which heroes are made. He was never consecrated king, though
the act would have strengthened his position, and one wonders if the fact
is evidence that the leaders had yielded only to a popular pressure in
agreeing upon him against their own preference, or merely of the haste
and confusion of events. One act of sovereignty only is attributed to
him, the confirmation of Brand, who had been chosen by the monks Abbot
of Peterborough, in succession to Leofric, of the house of Edwin and
Morcar, who had been present at the battle of Hastings and had died
soon after. William interpreted this reference of the election to Edgar
for confirmation as an act of hostility to himself, and fined the new
abbot heavily, but to us the incident is of value as evidence of the
character of the movement, which tried to find a national king in this
last male of Cerdic's line.

From Canterbury the invading army advanced directly upon London, and took
up a position in its neighbourhood. From this station a body of five
hundred horsemen was sent forward to reconnoitre the approaches to the
city, and the second battle of the conquest followed, if we may call that
a battle which seems to have been merely one-sided. At any rate, the
citizens intended to offer battle, and crossed the river and advanced
against the enemy in regular formation, but the Norman knights made short
work of the burgher battalions, and drove them back into the city with
great slaughter. The suburb on the south bank of the Thames fell into the
hands of the enemy, who burned down at least a part of it. William
gained, however, no further success at this point. London was not yet
ready to submit, and the river seems to have been an impassable barrier.
To find a crossing the Norman march was continued up the river, the
country suffering as before from the foraging of the army. The desired
crossing was found at Wallingford, not far below Oxford and nearly fifty
miles above London. That he could have crossed the river nearer the city
than this, if he had wished, seems probable, and considerations of
strategy may very likely have governed William's movements. Particularly
might this be the case if he had learned that Edwin and Morcar, with
their army, had abandoned the new king and retired northward, as some of
the best of modern scholars have believed, though upon what is certainly
not the best of evidence. If this was so, a little more time would surely
convince the Londoners that submission was the best policy, and the best
position for William to occupy would be between the city and this army in
the north, a position which he could easily reach, as he did, from his
crossing at Wallingford. If the earls had not abandoned London, this was
still the best position, cutting them off from their own country and the
city from the region whence reinforcements must come if they came at all.
A long sweep about a hostile city was favourite strategy of William's.

From some point along this line of march between Dover and Wallingford,
William had detached a force to secure the submission of Winchester. This
city was of considerable importance, both because it was the old royal
residence and still the financial centre of the state, and because it
was the abode of Edith, the queen of Edward the Confessor, to whom it
had been assigned as part of her dower. The submission of the city seems
to have been immediate and entirely satisfactory to William, who confirmed
the widowed Lady of England in her rights and showed later some favour to
the monks of the new minster. William of Poitiers, the duke's chaplain,
who possibly accompanied the army on this march,[2] and wrote an account
of these events not long afterwards, tells us that at Wallingford Stigand,
Archbishop of Canterbury, came in and made submission to his master. There
is no reason to doubt this statement, though it has been called in
question. The best English chroniclers omit his name from the list of
those who submitted when London surrendered. The tide of success had been
flowing strongly one way since the Normans landed. The condition of things
in London afforded no real hope that this tide could be checked. A man of
Stigand's type could be depended upon to see that if William's success was
inevitable, an early submission would be better than a late one. If
Stigand went over to William at Wallingford, it is a clear commentary on
the helplessness of the party of resistance in London.

From Wallingford William continued his leisurely march, leaving a trail
of devastation behind him through Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, and
Hertfordshire, where he turned south towards London. But the city was
now convinced of the impossibility of resistance and was ready to yield
to the inevitable. How near the enemy was allowed to approach before
the step of actual surrender was taken is not quite certain. The
generally accepted opinion, on the authority of English chroniclers, is
that the embassy from London went to meet William at Berkhampsted,
thirty miles away, but if we could accept the suggestion which has been
made that Little Berkhampsted was the place intended, the distance
would agree better with the express statement of the chaplain, William
of Poitiers, that the city was in sight from the place of conference.
It is hard to avoid accepting William's statement, for it is precisely
the kind of thing which the men of the duke's army--which had been so
long approaching the city and thinking of its capture--would be likely
to notice and remember. It also agrees better with the probabilities
of the case. Thirty miles was still a safe distance, especially in
those days, and would allow much time for further debate and for the
unexpected to happen. Wherever the act of submission occurred, it was
in form complete and final for the city and for the chief men of
England. Edgar came to offer his useless and imperfect crown; Aldred,
Archbishop of York, was there to complete the submission of the Church;
bishops of several sees were also present, and chief men of the state,
among whom Edwin and Morcar are mentioned by one of the chroniclers who
had earlier sent them home to the north. Possibly he is right in both
statements, and the earls had returned to make their peace when they
saw that resistance was hopeless. These men William received most
kindly and with good promises, and Edgar in particular he embraced and
treated like a son.

This deputation from London, headed by their nominal king, came to offer
the crown to William. For him and for the Normans the decisive moment of
the expedition was now come. A definite answer must be made. According to
the account we are following, a kind of council of war of the Norman and
other barons and the leaders of the army seems to have been held, and to
this council William submitted the question whether it would be better to
take the crown now, or to wait until the country was more completely
subdued and until his wife Matilda could be present to share the honour
with him. This is the question which we are told was proposed, but the
considerations which seem to have led to the final decision bear less
upon this than upon the question whether William should be king at all or
not. We have before this date no record of any formal decision of this
question. It had been doubtless tacitly understood by all; the crown was
more or less openly the object of the expedition; but the time had now
come when the question stood as a sharp issue before William and before
his men and must be frankly met. If the Duke of the Normans was to be
transformed into the King of the English, it could be done only with the
loyal support of his Norman followers; nor is it at all likely that, in a
state so thoroughly feudal as Normandy, the suzerain would have ventured
to assume so great an increase of rank and probable power without the
express consent of his vassals, in disregard of what was certainly the
usual feudal practice. The decision of the council was favourable, and
William accepted the crown. Immediately a force of men was sent forward
to take military possession of the city and build, after the Norman
fashion, some kind of defences there, and to make suitable preparation
for the coming of the king who was to be. The interval William occupied
in his favourite amusement of the chase, and his army in continuing to
provide for their various wants from the surrounding country and that
with no gentle hand.

Whatever may have prevented the coronation of Edgar, there was to be no
unnecessary delay about William's. Christmas day, the nearest great
festival of the Church, was fixed upon for the ceremony, which was to
take place in the new abbey church of Westminster, where Harold had been
crowned and where the body of Edward lay. The consecration was to be
performed by Aldred, Archbishop of York. No Norman, least of all William,
who had come with the special blessing of the rightful pope, could allow
this sacred office to Stigand, whose way to the primacy had been opened
by the outlawry of the Norman archbishop Robert, and whose paillium was
the gift of a schismatic and excommunicated pope. With this slight
defect, from which Harold's coronation also suffered, the ceremony was
made as formal and stately as possible. Norman guards kept order about
the place; a long procession of clergy moved into the church, with the
duke and his supporting bishops at the end. Within, the old ritual of
coronation was followed as nearly as we can judge. Englishmen and
Frenchmen were asked in their own languages if they would have William to
be king, and they shouted out their approval; William then took oath to
defend the Church, to rule justly, to make and keep right law, and to
prevent disorders, and at last he was anointed and crowned and became
King of the English in title and in law. But all this had not taken place
without some plain evidence of the unusual and violent character of the
event. The Normans stationed without had mistaken the shouts of approval
which came from within for shouts of anger and protest, and in true
Norman fashion had at once fallen on whatever was at hand, people and
buildings, slaying and setting fire, to create a diversion and to be sure
of vengeance. In one point at least they were successful; the church was
emptied of spectators and the ceremony was finished, king and bishops
alike trembling with uncertain dread, in the light of burning buildings
and amid the noise of the tumult.

At the time of his coronation William was not far from forty years of
age. He was in the full tide of a vigorous physical life, in height and
size, about the average, possibly a trifle above the average, of the men
of his time, and praised for his unusual strength of arm. In mental gifts
he stood higher above the general run of men than in physical. As a
soldier and a statesman he was clear-headed, quick to see the right thing
to do and the right time to do it; conscious of the ultimate end and of
the combination of means, direct and indirect, slowly working out, which
must be made to reach it. But the characteristic by which he is most
distinguished from the other men of his time is one which he shares with
many of the conquerors of history--a characteristic perhaps indispensable
to that kind of success--an utterly relentless determination to succeed,
if necessary without hesitation at the means employed, and without
considering in the least the cost to others. His inflexible will greatly
impressed his own time. The men who came in contact with him were afraid
of him. His sternness and mercilessness in the enforcement of law, in the
punishment of crime, and in the protection of what he thought to be his
rights, were never relaxed. His laws were thought to be harsh, his
money-getting oppressive, and his forest regulations cruel and unjust.
And yet William intended to be, and he was, a good ruler. He gave his
lands, what was in those days the best proof of good government, and to
be had only of a strong king, internal peace. He was patient also, and
did not often lose control of himself and yield to the terrible passion
which could at last be roused. For thirty years, in name at least, he had
ruled over Normandy, and he came to the throne of England with a long
experience behind him of fighting against odds, of controlling a
turbulent baronage, and of turning anarchy into good order.

William was at last crowned and consecrated king of the English. But the
kingdom over which he could exercise any real rule embraced little more
than the land through which he had actually passed; and yet this fact
must not be understood to mean too much. He had really conquered England,
and there was no avoiding the result. Notwithstanding all the
difficulties which were still before him in getting possession of his
kingdom, and the length of time before the last lingering resistance was
subdued, there is no evidence anywhere of a truly national movement
against him. Local revolts there were, some of which seemed for a moment
to assume threatening proportions; attempts at foreign intervention with
hopes of native aid, which always proved fallacious; long resistance by
some leaders worthy of a better support, the best and bravest of whom
became in the end faithful subjects of the new king: these things there
were, but if we look over the whole period of the Conquest, we can only
be astonished that a handful of foreign adventurers overcame so easily a
strong nation. There is but one explanation to be found, the one to which
such national overthrow is most often due, the lack of leadership.

The panegyrist of the new king, his chaplain, William of Poitiers, leads
us to believe that very soon after the coronation William adopted
somewhat extensive regulations for the settlement of his kingdom and for
the restraint of disorders in his army. We may fairly insist upon some
qualification of the unfailing wisdom and goodness which this
semi-official historian attributes to his patron, but we can hardly do
otherwise than consider his general order of events correct, and his
account of what was actually done on the whole trustworthy. England had
in form submitted, and this submission was a reality so far as all were
concerned who came into contact with William or his army. And now the new
government had to be set going at once. Men must know what law was to be
enforced and under what conditions property was to be secure. The king's
own followers, who had won his kingdom for him, must receive the rewards
which they had expected; but the army was now a national and not an
invading army, and it must be restrained from any further indiscriminate
plunder or rioting. Two acts of William which we must assign to this time
give some evidence that he did not feel as yet altogether sure of the
temper of London. Soon after the ceremony at Westminster he retired to
Barking, a few miles distant, and waited there while the fortification in
the city was completed, which probably by degrees grew into the Tower.
And apparently at this time, certainly not long afterwards, he issued to
the bishop and the portreeve his famous charter for the city, probably
drawn up originally in the English language, or if not, certainly with an
English translation attached for immediate effect. In this charter the
clearest assurance is given on two points about which a great commercial
city, intimately concerned in such a revolution, would be most
anxious,--the establishment of law and the security of property. The king
pledges himself to introduce no foreign law and to make no arbitrary
confiscations of property. To win the steady adhesion of that most
influential body of men who were always at hand to bring the pressure of
their public opinion to bear upon the leaders of the state, the
inhabitants of London, this measure was as wise as was the building of
the Tower for security against the sudden tumults so frequent in the
medieval city, or even more dangerous insurrections.

At the same time strict regulations were made for the repression of
disorders in the army. The leaders were exhorted to justice and to avoid
any oppression of the conquered; the soldiers were forbidden all acts of
violence, and the favourite vices of armies were prohibited,--too much
drinking, we are told, lest it should lead to bloodshed. Judges were
appointed to deal with the offences of the soldiers; the Norman members
of the force were allowed no special privileges; and the control of law
over the army, says the king's chaplain, proudly, was made as strict as
the control of the army over the subject race. Attention was given also
to the fiscal system of the country, to the punishment of criminals, and
to the protection of commerce. Most of this we may well believe, though
some details of fact as well as of motive may be too highly coloured, for
our knowledge of William's attitude towards matters of this kind is not
dependent on the words of any panegyrist.

While William waited at Barking, other English lords in addition to those
who had already acknowledged him came in and made submission. The Norman
authorities say that the earls Edwin and Morcar were the chief of these,
and if not earlier, they must have submitted then. Two men, Siward and
Eldred, are said to have been relatives of the last Saxon king, but in
what way we do not know. Copsi, who had ruled Northumberland for a time
under Tostig, the brother of Harold, impressed the Norman writers with
his importance, and a Thurkill is also mentioned by name, while "many
other nobles" are classed together without special mention. Another great
name which should probably be added to this list is that of Waltheof,
Earl of Northampton and Huntingdon, of distinguished descent and destined
later to an unhappy fate. All of these the king received most kindly. He
accepted their oaths, restored to them all their possessions, and held
them in great honour.

But certainly not in all cases did things go so easily for the English.
Two bits of evidence, one in the Saxon Chronicle, that men bought their
lands of the king, and one in Domesday Book, a statement of the
condition of a piece of land "at the time when the English redeemed their
lands," lead us to infer that William demanded of the English that they
obtain from him in form a confirmation of their possessions for which
they were obliged to pay a price. No statement is made of the reasons by
which this demand was justified, but the temptation to regard it as an
application of the principle of the feudal relief is almost irresistible;
of the relief paid on the succession of a new lord, instead of the
ordinary relief paid on the recognition of the heir to the fief. If the
evidence were greater that this was a common practice in feudalism rather
than an occasional one, as it seems only to have been, it would give us
the simplest and most natural explanation of this act of William's. To
consider that he regarded all the land of the kingdom as rightly
confiscate, which has been suggested as an explanation, because of a
resistance which in many cases never occurred, and in most had not at the
time when this regulation must have been made, is a forced and unnatural
theory, and not in harmony with William's usual methods. To suppose that
he regarded this as an exceptional case, in which a relief on a change of
lords could be collected, is a less violent supposition. Possibly it was
an application more general than ordinary of the practice which was usual
throughout the medieval world of obtaining at a price, from a new king,
confirmations of the important grants of his predecessors. But any
explanation of the ground of right on which the king demanded this
general redemption of lands must remain from lack of evidence a mere
conjecture. The fact itself seems beyond question, and is an indication
of no little value of the views and intentions of the new king. The
kingdom was his; all the land must be held of him and with his formal
consent, but no uncalled-for disturbance of possession was to occur.

Beyond reasonable doubt at this time was begun that policy of actual
confiscation, where reasons existed, which by degrees transformed the
landed aristocracy from English into Norman. Those who had gained the
crown for the new king must receive the minor rewards which they had had
in view for themselves, and with no unnecessary delay. A new nobility
must be endowed, and policy would dictate also that at the earliest
moment the country should be garrisoned by faithful vassals of the king's
own, supplied with means of defending themselves and having
proportionately as much at stake in the country as himself. The lands and
property of those who had fought against him or who were irreconcilable
would be in his hands to dispose of, according to any theory of his
position which William might hold. The crown lands of the old kings were
of course his, and in spite of all the grants that were made during the
reign, this domain was increased rather than diminished under William.
The possessions of Harold's family and of all those who had fallen in the
battle with him were at once confiscated, and these seem to have sufficed
for present needs. Whatever may have been true later, we may accept the
conclusion that "on the whole William at this stage of his reign warred
rather against the memory of the dead than against the lives or fortunes
of the living."

These confiscated lands the king bestowed on the chiefs of his army. We
have little information of the way in which this change was carried out,
but in many cases certainly the possessions held by a given Saxon thane
in the days of Edward were turned over as a whole to a given Norman with
no more accurate description than that the lands of A were now to be the
lands of B. What lands had actually belonged to A, the old owner, was
left to be determined by some sort of local inquiry, but with this the
king did not concern himself beyond giving written orders that the change
was to be made. Often this turning over to a Norman of the estate of a
dispossessed Saxon resulted in unintended injustice and in legal quarrels
which were unsettled years afterwards. Naturally the new owner considered
himself the successor of the old one in all the rights which he
possessed. If for some of his manors the Saxon was the tenant of a church
or of an abbey, the Norman often seized upon these with the rest, as if
all were rightfully confiscated together and all held by an equally clear
title, and the Church was not always able, even after long litigation, to
establish its rights. We have little direct evidence as to the
relationship which such grants created between the recipient and the
king, or as to the kind of tenure by which they were held, but the
indirect evidence is constantly accumulating, and may be said to be now
indeed conclusive, that the relation and the tenure made use of were the
only ones with which the Normans were at this time familiar or which
would be likely to seem to them possible,--the relationship of vassal and
lord; and that with these first grants of land which the king made to his
followers was introduced into England that side of the feudal system
which Saxon England had never known, but which was, from this time on,
for nearly two centuries, to be the ruling system in both public and
private law.

In saying that the feudal system was introduced into England by these
grants, we must guard against a misconception. The feudal system, if we
use that name as we commonly do to cover the entire relations of the
society of that age, had two sides to it, distinct in origin, character,
and purpose. To any clear understanding of the organization of feudal
society, or of the change which its establishment made in English
history, it is necessary, although it is not easy, to hold these two
sides apart. There was in the practices and in the vocabulary of
feudalism itself some confusion of the two in the borderland that lay
between them, and the difficulty is made greater for us by the fact that
both sides were primarily concerned with the holding of land, and
especially by the fact that the same piece of land belonged at once to
both sides and was held at the same time by two different men, by two
different kinds of tenure, and under two different systems of law. The
one side may be called from its ruling purpose economic and the other
political. The one had for its object the income to be drawn from the
land; the other regarded chiefly the political obligations joined to the
land and the political or social rank and duties of the holders.

The economic side concerned the relations of the cultivators of the soil
with the man who was, in relation to them, the owner of that soil; it
regulated the tenures by which they held the little pieces which they
cultivated, their rights over that land and its produce, their
obligations to the owner of service in cultivating for him the lands
which he reserved for his own use, and, in addition, of payments to him
in kind and perhaps in money on a variety of occasions and occurrences
throughout the year; it defined and practically limited, also, the
owner's right of exaction from these cultivators. These regulations were
purely customary; they had grown up slowly out of experience, and they
were not written. But this was true also of almost all the law of that
age, and this law of the cultivators was as valid in its place as the
king's law, and was enforced in its own courts. It is true that most of
these men who cultivated the soil were serfs, at least not entirely free;
but that fact made no difference in this particular; they had their
standing, their voice, and their rights in their lord's "customary"
court, and the documents which describe to us these arrangements call
them, as they do the highest barons of the realm, "peers,"--that is,
peers of these customary courts. Not all, indeed, were serfs; many
freemen, small farmers, possibly it would not be wrong to say all who had
formerly belonged to that class, had been forced by one necessity or
another to enter into this system, to surrender the unqualified ownership
of their lands, and to agree to hold them of some lord, though traces of
their original full ownership may long have lingered about the land. When
they did this, they were brought into very close relations with the
unfree cultivators; they were parts of the same system and subject to
some of the same regulations and services but their land was usually held
on terms that were economically better than the serfs obtained, and they
retained their personal freedom. They were members of the lords' courts,
and there the serfs were their peers; but they were also members of the
old national courts of hundred and shire, and there they were the peers
of knights and barons.

This system, this economic side of feudalism, is what we know as the
manorial system. Its unit was the manor, an estate of land larger or
smaller, but large enough to admit of this characteristic organization,
managed as a unit, usually from some well-defined centre, the manor
house, and directed by a single responsible head, the lord's steward. The
land which constituted the manor was divided into two clearly
distinguished parts, the "domain" and the "tenures." The domain was the
part of each manor that was reserved for the lord's own use, and
cultivated for him by the labour of his tenants under the direction of
the steward, as a part of the services by which they held their lands;
that is, as a part of the rent paid for them. The returns from these
domain lands formed a very large part, probably the largest part, of the
income of the landlord class in feudal days. The "tenures" were the
holdings of the cultivators, worked for themselves by their own labour,
of varying sizes and held on terms of varying advantage, and usually
scattered about the manor in small strips, a bit here and another there.
Besides these cultivated lands there were also, in the typical manor,
common pasture lands and common wood lands, in which the rights of each
member of this little community were carefully regulated by the customary
law of the manor. This whole arrangement was plainly economic in
character and purpose it was not in the least political. Its object was
to get the soil cultivated, to provide mankind with the necessary food
and clothing, and the more fortunate members of the race with their
incomes. This purpose it admirably served in an age when local protection
was an ever present need, when the labouring man had often to look to the
rich and strong man of the neighbourhood for the security which he could
not get from the state. Whatever may have been the origin of this system,
it was at any rate this need which perpetuated it for centuries from the
fall of Rome to the later Middle Ages; and during this long time it was
by this system that the western world was fed and all its activities
sustained.

This economic side of feudalism, this manorial system, was not introduced
into England by the Norman Conquest. It had grown up in the Saxon states,
as it had on the continent, because of the prevalence there of the
general social and economic conditions which favoured its growth. It was
different from the continental system in some details; it used different
terms for many things; but it was essentially the same system. It had its
body of customary law and its private courts; and these courts, like
their prototypes in the Prankish state, had in numerous cases usurped or
had been granted the rights and functions of the local courts of the
nation, and so had annexed a minor political function which did not
naturally belong to the system. Indeed, this process had gone so far that
we may believe that the stronger government of the state established by
the Conqueror found it necessary to check it and to hold the operation of
the private courts within stricter limits. This economic organization
which the Normans found in England was so clearly parallel with that
which they had always known that they made no change in it. They
introduced their own vocabulary in many cases in place of the Saxon; they
identified in some cases practices which looked alike but which were not
strictly identical; and they had a very decided tendency to treat the
free members of the manorial population, strongly intrenched as they were
in the popular courts, as belonging at the same time to both sides of
feudalism, the economic and the political: but the confusion of language
and custom which they introduced in consequence is not sufficient to
disguise from us the real relationships which existed. Nor should it be
in the opposite process, which was equally easy, as when the Saxon
chronicler, led by the superficial resemblance and overlooking the great
institutional difference, called the curia of William by the Saxon name
of witenagemot.

With the other side of feudalism, the political, the case was different.
That had never grown up in the Saxon world. The starting-points in
certain minor Roman institutions from which it had grown, seem to have
disappeared with the Saxon occupation of Britain. The general conditions
which favoured its development--the almost complete breakdown of the
central government and the difficult and interrupted means of
communication--existed in far less degree in the Saxon states than in the
more extensive Frankish territories. Such rudimentary practices as seem
parallel to early stages of feudal growth were more so in appearance than
in reality, and we can hardly affirm with any confidence that political
feudalism was even in process of formation in England before the
Conquest, though it would undoubtedly have been introduced there by some
process before very long.

The political feudal organization was as intimately bound up with the
possession of land as the economic, but its primary object was different.
It may be described as that form of organization in which the duties of
the citizen to the state had been changed into a species of land rent. A
set of legal arrangements and personal relationships which had grown up
wholly in the field of private affairs, for the serving of private ends,
had usurped the place of public law in the state. Duties of the citizen
and functions of the government were translated into its terms and
performed as incidents of a private obligation. The individual no longer
served in the army because this service was a part of his obligation as a
citizen, but because he had agreed by private contract to do so as a part
of the rent he was to pay for the land he held of another man. The
judicial organization was transformed in the same way. The national
courts disappeared, and their place was taken by private courts made up
of tenants. The king summoned at intervals the great men of Church and
State to gather round him in his council, law court, and legislature, in
so far as there was a legislature in that age, the curia regis, the
mother institution of a numerous progeny; but he did not summon them, and
they came no longer, because they were the great men of Church and State,
the wise men of the land, but because they had entered into a private
obligation with him to attend when called upon, as a return for lands
which he had given them; or, in other words, as Henry II told the bishops
in the Constitutions of Clarendon, because they were his vassals. Public
taxation underwent the same change, and the money revenue of the feudal
state which corresponds most nearly to the income of taxation, was made
up of irregular payments due on the occurrence of specified events from
those who held land of the king, and these in turn collected like
payments of their tenants; the relief, for instance, on the succession of
the heir to his father's holding, or the aids in three cases, on the
knighting of the lord's eldest son, the marrying of his eldest daughter,
and the ransom of his own person from imprisonment. The contact of the
central government with the mass of the men of the state was broken off
by the intervening series of lords who were political rulers each of the
territory or group of lands immediately subject to himself, and exercised
within those limits the functions which the general government should
normally exercise for the whole state. The payments and services which
the lord's vassals made to him, while they were of the nature of rent,
were not rent in the economic sense; they were important to the suzerain
less as matters of income than as defining his political power and
marking his rank in this hierarchical organization. The state as a whole
might retain its geographical outlines and the form of a common
government, but it was really broken up into fragments of varying size,
whose lords possessed in varying degrees of completeness the attributes
of sovereignty.

This organization, however, never usurped the place of the state so
completely as might be inferred. It had grown up within the limits of a
state which was, during the whole period of its formation, nominally
ruled over by a king who was served by a more or less centralized
administrative system. This royal power never entirely disappeared. It
survived as the conception of government, it survived in the exercise of
some rights everywhere, and of many rights in some places, even in the
most feudal of countries. Some feeling of public law and public duty
still lingered. In the king's court, the curia regis, whether in
England or in France, there was often present a small group of members,
at first in a minor and subordinate capacity, who were there, not because
they were the vassals of the king, but because they were the working
members of a government machine. The military necessity of the state in
all countries occasionally called out something like the old general
levy. In the judicial department, in England at least, one important
class of courts, the popular county courts, was never seriously affected
by feudalism, either in their organization or in the law which they
interpreted. Any complete description of the feudal organization must be
understood to be a description of tendencies rather than of a realized
system. It was the tendency of feudalism to transform the state into a
series of principalities rising in tiers one above the other, and to get
the business of the state done, not through a central constitutional
machine, but through a series of graded duties corresponding to these
successive stages and secured by private agreements between the
landholders and by a customary law which was the outgrowth of such
agreements.

At the date of the Norman Conquest of England, this tendency was more
nearly realized in France than anywhere else. Within the limits of that
state a number of great feudal principalities had been formed, duchies
and counties, round the administrative divisions of an earlier time as
their starting-point, in many of which the sovereign of the state could
exercise no powers of government. The extensive powers which the earlier
system had intrusted to the duke or count as an administrative officer of
the state he now exercised as a practically independent sovereign, and
the state could expect from this portion of its territory only the feudal
services of its ruler, perhaps ill-defined and difficult to enforce. In
some cases, however, this process of breaking up the state into smaller
units went no further. Normandy, with which we are particularly
concerned, was an instance of this fact. The duke was practically the
sole sovereign of that province. The king of France was entirely shut
out. Even the Church was under the unlimited control of the duke. And
with respect to his subjects his power was as great as with respect to
his nominal sovereign. Very few great baronies existed in Normandy formed
of contiguous territory and capable of development into independent
principalities, and those that did exist were kept constantly in the
hands of relatives of the ducal house and under strong control. Political
feudalism existed in Normandy in even greater perfection and in a more
logical completeness, if we regard the forms alone, its practices and
customs, than was usual in the feudal world of that age; but it existed
not as the means by which the state was broken into fragments, but as the
machinery by which it was governed by the duke. It formed the bond of
connexion between him and the great men of the state. It defined the
services which he had the right to demand of them, and which they in turn
might demand of their vassals. It formed the foundation of the army and
of the judicial system. Every department of the state was influenced by
its forms and principles. At the same time the Duke of Normandy was more
than a feudal suzerain. He had saved on the whole, from the feudal
deluge, more of the prerogatives of sovereignty than had the king of
France. He had a considerable non-feudal administrative system, though it
might not reach all parts of the duchy. The supreme judicial power had
never been parted with, and the Norman barons were unable to exercise in
its full extent the right of high justice. The oath of allegiance from
all freemen, whosesoever vassals they might be, traces of which are to be
found in many feudal lands and even under the Capetian kings, was
retained in the duchy. Private war, baronial coinage, engagements with
foreign princes to the injury of the duke,--these might occur in
exceptional cases during a minority or under a weak duke, or in time of
rebellion; but the strong dukes repressed them with an iron hand, and no
Norman baron could claim any of them as a prescriptive right. Feudalism
existed in Normandy as the organization of the state, and as the system
which regulated the relations between the duke and the knights and the
nobles of the land, but it did not exist at the expense of the sovereign
rights of the duke.

This was the system which was introduced fully formed into England with
the grants of land which the Conqueror made to his barons. It was the
only system known to him by which to regulate their relations to himself
and their duties to the state. To suppose a gradual introduction of
feudalism into England, except in a geographical sense, as the
confiscation spread over the land, is to misunderstand both feudalism
itself and its history. This system gave to the baron opportunities which
might be dangerous under a ruler who could not make himself obeyed, but
there was nothing in it inconsistent with the practical absolutism
exercised by the first of the Norman kings and by the more part of his
immediate successors. Feudalism brought in with itself two ideas which
exercised decisive influence on later English history. I do not mean to
assert that these ideas were consciously held, or that they could have
been formulated in words, though of the first at least this was very
nearly true, but that they unconsciously controlled the facts of the time
and their future development. One was the idea that all holders of land
in the kingdom, except the king, were, strictly speaking, tenants rather
than owners, which profoundly influenced the history of English law; the
other was the idea that important public duties were really private
obligations, created by a business contract, which as profoundly
influenced the growth of the constitution. Taken together, the
introduction of the feudal system was as momentous a change as any which
followed the Norman Conquest, as decisive in its influence upon the
future as the enrichment of race or of language; more decisive in one
respect, since without the consequences in government and constitution,
which were destined to follow from the feudalization of the English
state, neither race nor language could have done the work in the world
which they have already accomplished and are yet destined to perform in
still larger measure.

But, however profound this change may have been, it affected but a small
class, comparatively speaking. The whole number of military units, of
knights due the king in service, seems to have been something less than
five thousand.[3] For the great mass of the population, the working
substratum, whose labours sustained the life of the nation, the Norman
Conquest made but little change. The interior organization of the manor
was not affected by it. Its work went on in the same way as before.
There was a change of masters; there was a new set of ideas to interpret
the old relationship; the upper grades of the manorial population
suffered in some parts of England a serious depression. But in the main,
as concerned the great mass of facts, there was no change of importance.
Nor was there any, at first at least, which affected the position of the
towns. The new system allowed as readily as the old the rights which
they already possessed. In the end, the new ideas might be a serious
matter for the towns in some particulars, but at present the conditions
did not exist which were to raise these difficulties. At the time, to
the mass of the nation, to everybody indeed, the Norman Conquest might
easily seem but a change of sovereigns, a change of masters. It is
because we can see the results of the changes which it really introduced
that we are able to estimate their profound significance.

The spoiling of England for the benefit of the foreigner did not consist
in the confiscation of lands alone. Besides the forced redemption of
their lands, William seems to have laid a heavy tax on the nation, and
the churches and monasteries whose lands were free from confiscation seem
to have suffered heavy losses of their gold and silver and precious
stuffs. The royal treasure and Harold's possessions would pass into
William's hands, and much confiscated and plundered wealth besides. These
things he distributed with a free hand, especially to the churches of the
continent whose prayers and blessings he unquestionably regarded as a
strong reinforcement of his arms. Harold's rich banner of the fighting
man went to Rome, and valuable gifts besides, and the Norman
ecclesiastical world had abundant cause to return thanks to heaven for
the successes which had attended the efforts of the Norman military arm.
If William despatched these gifts to the continent before his own return
to Normandy, they did not exhaust his booty, for the wonder and
admiration of the duchy is plainly expressed at the richness and beauty
of the spoils which he brought home with him.

Having settled the matters which demanded immediate attention, the king
proceeded to make a progress through those parts of his kingdom which
were under his control. Just where he went we are not told, but he can
hardly have gone far outside the counties of southern and eastern England
which were directly influenced by his march on London. In such a progress
he probably had chiefly in mind to take possession for himself and his
men of confiscated estates and of strategic points. No opposition showed
itself anywhere, but women with their children appeared along the way to
beseech his mercy, and the favour which he showed to these suppliants was
thought worthy of special remark. Winchester seems to have been visited,
and secured by the beginning of a Norman castle within the walls, and the
journey ended at Pevensey, where he had landed so short a time before in
pursuit of the crown. William had decided that he could return to
Normandy, and the decision that this could be safely done with so small a
part of the kingdom actually in hand, with so few castles already built
or garrisons established, is the clearest possible evidence of William's
opinion of the situation. He would have been the last man to venture such
a step if he had believed the risk to be great. And the event justified
his judgment. The insurrectionary movements which called him back clearly
appear to have been, not so much efforts of the nation to throw off a
foreign yoke, as revolts excited by the oppression and bad government of
those whom he had left in charge of the kingdom.

On the eve of his departure he confided the care of his new kingdom to
two of his followers whom he believed the most devoted to himself, the
south-east to his half brother Odo, and the north to William Fitz Osbern.
Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, but less an ecclesiastic, according to the ideals
of the Church, than a typically feudal bishop, was assigned the
responsibility for the fortress of Dover, was given large estates in Kent
and to the west of it, and was probably made earl of that county at this
time. William Fitz Osbern was the son of the duke's guardian, who had
been murdered for his fidelity during William's minority, and they had
been boys together, as we are expressly told. He was appointed to be
responsible for Winchester and to hold what might be called the marches,
towards the unoccupied north and west. Very probably at this time also he
was made Earl of Hereford? Some other of the leading nobles of the
Conquest had been established in their possessions by this date, as we
know on good evidence, like Hugh of Grantmesnil in Hampshire, but the
chief dependence of the king was apparently upon these two, who are
spoken of as having under their care the minor holders of the castles
which had been already established.

No disorders in Normandy demanded the duke's return. Everything had been
quiet there, under the control of Matilda and those who had been
appointed to assist her. William's visit at this time looks less like a
necessity than a parade to make an exhibition of the results of his
venture. He took with him a splendid assortment of plunder and a long
train of English nobles, among whom the young atheling Edgar, Stigand,
Archbishop of Canterbury, Earls Edwin and Morcar, Waltheof, son of
Siward, the Abbot of Glastonbury, and a thane of Kent, are mentioned by
name. The favour and honour with which William treated these men did not
disguise from them the fact that they were really held as hostages. No
business of especial importance occupied William during his nine months'
stay in Normandy. He was received with great rejoicing on every hand,
especially in Rouen, where Matilda was staying, and his return and
triumphal progress through the country reminded his panegyrist of the
successes and glories of the great Roman commanders. He distributed with
a free hand, to the churches and monasteries, the wealth which he had
brought with him. A great assembly gathered to celebrate with him the
Easter feast at the abbey of Fecamp. His presence was sought to add eclat
to the dedication of new churches. But the event of the greatest
importance which occurred during this visit to the duchy was the falling
vacant of the primacy of Normandy by the death of Maurilius, Archbishop
of Rouen. The universal choice for his successor was Lanfranc, the
Italian, Abbot of St. Stephen's at Caen, who had already made evident to
all the possession of those talents for government which he was to
exercise in a larger field. But though William stood ready, in form at
least, to grant his sanction, Lanfranc declined the election, which then
fell upon John, Bishop of Avranches, a friend of his. Lanfranc was sent
to Rome to obtain the pallium for the new archbishop, but his mission was
in all probability one of information to the pope regarding larger
interests than those of the archbishopric of Rouen.

In the meantime, affairs had not run smoothly in England. We may easily
guess that William's lieutenants, especially his brother, had not failed
on the side of too great gentleness in carrying out his directions to
secure the land with garrisons and castles. In various places unconnected
with one another troubles had broken out. In the north, where Copsi had
been made Earl of Northumberland, an old local dynastic feud was still
unsettled, and the mere appointment of an earl would not bring it to an
end. Copsi was slain by his rival, Oswulf, who was himself soon afterward
killed, but the Norman occupation had still to be begun. In the west a
more interesting resistance to the Norman advance had developed near
Hereford, led by Edric, called the Wild, descendant of a noble Saxon
house. He had enlisted the support of the Welsh, and in retaliation for
attacks upon himself had laid waste a large district in Herefordshire.
Odo had had in his county an insurrection which threatened for a moment
to have most serious consequences, but which had ended in a complete
failure. The men of Kent, planning rebellion, had sent across the channel
to Eustace, Count of Boulogne, who believed that he had causes of
grievance against William, and had besought him to come to their aid in
an attempt to seize the fortress of Dover. Eustace accepted the
invitation and crossed over at the appointed time, but his allies had not
all gathered when he arrived, and the unsteady character of the count
wrecked the enterprise. He attacked in haste, and when he failed to carry
the castle by storm, he retired in equal haste and abandoned the
undertaking. William judged him too important a man to treat with
severity, and restored him to his favour. Besides these signs which
revealed the danger of an open outbreak, William undoubtedly knew that
many of the English had left the country and had gone in various
directions, seeking foreign aid. His absence could not be prolonged
without serious consequences, and in December, 1067, he returned to
England.

[1] William of Poitiers, in Migne's Patrologia Latina, cxlix,
1258, and see F. Baring, in Engl. Hist. Rev., xiii. 18 (1898).

[2] Orderic Vitalis, ii. 158 (ed. Le Prevost).

[3] Round, Feudal England, p. 292.

CHAPTER II

THE SUBJUGATION OF LAND AND CHURCH

With William's return to England began the long and difficult task of
bringing the country completely under his control. But this was not a
task that called for military genius. Patience was the quality most
demanded, and William's patience gave way but rarely. There was no army
in the field against him. No large portion of the land was in
insurrection. No formal campaign was necessary. Local revolts had to be
put down one after another, or a district dealt with where rebellion was
constantly renewed. The Scandinavian north and the Celtic west were the
regions not yet subdued, and the seats of future trouble. Three years
were filled with this work, and the fifteen years that follow were
comparatively undisturbed. For the moment after his return, William was
occupied with no hostilities. The Christmas of 1067 was celebrated in
London with the land at peace, Normans and English meeting together to
all appearance with cordial good-will. A native, Gospatric, was probably
at this time made Earl of Northumberland, in place of Copsi, who had been
killed, though this was an exercise of royal power in form rather than in
reality, since William's authority did not yet reach so far. A Norman,
Remigius, was made Bishop of Dorchester, in place of Wulfwig, who had
died while the king was in Normandy, and William's caution in dealing
with the matter of Church reform is shown in the fact that the new bishop
received his consecration from Stigand. It is possible also that another
heavy tax was imposed at this time.

But soon after Christmas, William felt himself obliged to take the field.
He had learned that Exeter, the rich commercial city of the south-west,
was making preparations to resist him. It was in a district where Harold
and his family had had large possessions. His mother was in the city, and
perhaps others of the family. At least some English of prominence seem to
have rallied around them. The citizens had repaired and improved their
already strong walls. They had impressed foreigners, merchants even, into
their service, and were seeking allies in other towns. William's rule had
never yet reached into that part of England, and Exeter evidently hoped
to shut him out altogether. When the king heard of these preparations, he
acted with his usual promptitude, but with no sacrifice of his diplomatic
skill. The citizens should first be made to acknowledge their intentions.
A message was sent to the city, demanding that the oath of allegiance to
himself be taken. The citizens answered that they would take no oath, and
would not admit him within the walls, but that they were willing to pay
him the customary tribute. William at once replied that he was not
accustomed to have subjects on such conditions, and at once began his
march against the city. Orderic Vitalis thought it worthy of note, that
in this army William was using Englishmen for the first time as soldiers.

When the hostile army drew near to the town, the courage of some of the
leading men failed, and they went out to seek terms of peace. They
promised to do whatever was commanded, and they gave hostages, but on
their return they found their negotiations disavowed and the city
determined to stand a siege. This lasted only eighteen days. Some decided
advantage which the Normans gained--the undermining of the walls seems
to be implied--induced the city to try again for terms. The clergy,
with their sacred books and relics, accompanied the deputation, which
obtained from the king better promises than had been hoped for. For some
reason William departed from his usual custom of severity to those who
resisted. He overlooked their evil conduct, ordered no confiscations, and
even stationed guards in the gates to keep out the soldiers who would
have helped themselves to the property of the citizens with some
violence. But as usual he selected a site for a castle within the walls,
and left a force of chosen knights under faithful command, to complete
the fortification and to form the garrison. Harold's mother, Gytha, left
the city before its surrender, and finally found a refuge in Saint Omer,
in Flanders. Harold's sons also, if they were in Exeter, made their
escape before its fall.

After subduing Exeter, William marched with his army into Cornwall, and
put down without difficulty whatever resistance he found there. The
confiscation of forfeited estates was no doubt one object of his march
through the land, and the greater part of these were bestowed upon his
own half brother, Robert, Count of Mortain, the beginning of what grew
ultimately into the great earldom of Cornwall. In all, the grants which
were made to Robert have been estimated at 797 manors, the largest made
to any one as the result of the Conquest. Of these, 248 manors were in
Cornwall, practically the whole shire; 75 in Dorset, and 49 in
Devonshire. This was almost a principality in itself, and is alone nearly
enough to disprove the policy attributed to William of scattering about
the country the great estates which he granted. So powerful a possession
was the earldom which was founded upon this grant that after a time the
policy which had been followed in Normandy, in regard to the great
counties, seemed the only wise one in this case also, and it was not
allowed to pass out of the immediate family of the king until in the
fourteenth century it was made into a provision for the king's eldest
son, as it has ever since remained. These things done, William disbanded
his army and returned to spend Easter at Winchester.

Once more for a moment the land seemed to be at peace, and William was
justified in looking upon himself as now no longer merely the leader of a
military adventure, seeking to conquer a foreign state, but as firmly
established in a land where he had made a new home for his house. He
could send for his wife; his children should be born here. It should be
the native land of future generations for his family. Matilda came soon
after Easter, with a distinguished train of ladies as well as lords, and
with her Guy, Bishop of Amiens, who, Orderic tells us, had already
written his poem on the war of William and Harold. At Whitsuntide, in
Westminster, Matilda was crowned queen by Archbishop Aldred. Later in the
summer Henry, the future King Henry I, was born, and the new royal family
had completely identified itself with the new kingdom.

But a great task still lay before the king, the greatest perhaps that he
had yet undertaken. The north was his only in name. Scarcely had any
English king up to this time exercised there the sort of authority to
which William was accustomed, and which he was determined to exercise
everywhere. The question of the hour was, whether he could establish his
authority there by degrees, as he seemed to be trying to do, or only
after a sharp conflict. The answer to this question was known very soon
after the coronation of Matilda. What seemed to the Normans a great
conspiracy of the north and west was forming. The Welsh and English
nobles were making common cause; the clergy and the common people joined
their prayers; York was noted as especially enthusiastic in the cause,
and many there took to living in tents as a kind of training for the
conflict which was coming. The Normans understood at the time that there
were two reasons for this determination to resist by force any further
extension of William's rule. One was, the personal dissatisfaction of
Earl Edwin. He had been given by William some undefined authority, and
promoted above his brother, and he had even been promised a daughter of
the king's as his wife. Clearly it had seemed at one time very necessary
to conciliate him. But either that necessity had passed away, or William
was reluctant to fulfil his promise; and Edwin, discontented with the
delay, was ready to lead what was for him at least, after he had accepted
so much from William, a rebellion. He was the natural leader of such an
attempt; his family history made him that. Personal popularity and his
wide connexions added to his strength, and if he had had in himself the
gifts of leadership, it would not have been even then too late to dispute
the possession of England on even terms. The second reason given us is
one to which we must attach much greater force than to the personal
influence of Edwin. He in all probability merely embraced an opportunity.
The other was the really moving cause. This is said to have been the
discontent of the English and Welsh nobles under the Norman oppression,
but we must phrase it a little differently. No direct oppression had as
yet been felt, either in the north or west, but the severity of William
in the south and east, the widespread confiscations there, were
undoubtedly well known, and easily read as signs of what would follow in
the north, and already the borders of Wales were threatened n with the
pushing forward of the Norman lines, which went on so steadily and for so
long a time.

Whether or not the efforts which had been making to obtain foreign help
against William were to result finally in bringing in a reinforcement of
Scots or Danes, the union of Welshmen and Englishmen was itself
formidable and demanded instant attention. Early in the summer of 1068
the army began its march upon York, advancing along a line somewhat to
the west of the centre of England, as the situation would naturally
demand. As in William's earlier marches, so here again he encountered no
resistance. Whatever may have been the extent of the conspiracy or the
plans of the leaders, the entire movement collapsed before the Norman's
firm determination to be master of the kingdom. Edwin and Morcar had
collected an army and were in the field somewhere between Warwick and
Northampton, but when the time came when the fight could no longer be
postponed, they thought better of it, besought the king's favour again,
and obtained at least the show of it. The boastful preparations at York
brought forth no better result. The citizens went out to meet the king on
his approach, and gave him the keys of the city and hostages from among
them.

The present expedition went no further north, but its influence extended
further. Ethelwin, the Bishop of Durham came in and made his submission.
He bore inquiries also from Malcolm, the king of Scots, who had been
listening to the appeals for aid from the enemies of William, and
preparing himself to advance to their assistance. The Bishop of Durham
was sent back to let him know what assurances would be acceptable to
William, and he undoubtedly also informed him of the actual state of
affairs south of his borders, of the progress which the invader had made,
and of the hopelessness of resistance. The Normans at any rate believed
that as a result of the bishop's mission Malcolm was glad to send down an
embassy of his own which tendered to William an oath of obedience. It is
not likely that William attached much weight to any profession of the
Scottish king's. Already, probably as soon as the failure of this
northern undertaking was apparent, some of the most prominent of the
English, who seem to have taken part in it, had abandoned England and
gone to the Scottish court. It is very possible that Edgar and his two
sisters, Margaret and Christina, sought the protection of Malcolm at this
time, together with Gospatric, who had shortly before been made Earl of
Northumberland, and the sheriff Merleswegen. These men had earlier
submitted to William, Merleswegen perhaps in the submission at
Berkhampsted, with Edgar, and had been received with favour. Under what
circumstances they turned against him we do not know, but they had very
likely been attracted by the promise of strength in this effort at
resistance, and were now less inclined than the unstable Edwin to profess
so early a repentance. Margaret, whether she went to Scotland at this
time or a little later, found there a permanent home, consenting against
her will to become the bride of Malcolm instead of the bride of the
Church as she had wished. As queen she gained, through teaching her wild
subjects, by the example of gentle manners and noble life, a wider
mission than the convent could have furnished her. The conditions which
Malcolm accepted evidently contained no demand as to any English
fugitives, nor any other to which he could seriously object. William was
usually able to discern the times, and did not attempt the impracticable.

William intended this expedition of his to result in the permanent
pacification of the country through which he had passed. There is no
record of any special severity attending the march, but certainly no one
was able to infer from it that the king was weak or to be trifled with.
The important towns he secured with castles and garrisons, as he had in
the south. Warwick and Northampton were occupied in this way as he
advanced, with York at the north, and Lincoln, Huntingdon, and Cambridge
along the east as he returned. A great wedge of fortified posts was thus
driven far into that part of the land from which the greatest trouble was
to be expected, and this, together with the general impression which his
march had made, was the most which was gained from it. Sometime during
this summer of 1068 another fruitless attempt had been made to disturb
the Norman possession of England. Harold's sons had retired, perhaps
after the fall of Exeter, to Ireland, where their father had formerly
found refuge. There it was not difficult to stir up the love of
plundering raids in the descendants of the Vikings, and they returned at
this time, it is said with more than fifty ships, and sailed up the
Bristol Channel. If any among them intended a serious invasion of the
island, the result was disappointing. They laid waste the coast lands;
attacked the city of Bristol, but were beaten off by the citizens; landed
again further down in Somerset, and were defeated in a great battle by
Ednoth, who had been Harold's staller, where many were killed on both
sides, including Ednoth himself; and then returned with nothing gained
but such plunder as they succeeded in carrying off. The next year they
repeated the attempt in the same style, and were again defeated, even
more disastrously, this time by one of the newcomers, Brian of Britanny.
Such piratical descents were not dangerous to the Norman government, nor
was a rally to beat them off any test of English loyalty to William.

Even the historian, Orderic Vitalis, half English by descent and wholly
so by birth, but writing in Normandy for Normans and very favourable to
William, or possibly the even more Norman William of Poitiers, whom he
may have been following, was moved by the sufferings of the land under
these repeated invasions, revolts, and harryings, and notes at the close
of his account of this year how conquerors and conquered alike were
involved in the evils of war, famine, and pestilence. He adds that the
king, seeing the injuries which were inflicted on the country, gathered
together the soldiers who were serving him for pay, and sent them home
with rich rewards. We may regard this disbanding of his mercenary troops
as another sign that William considered his position secure.

In truth, however, the year which was coming on, 1069, was another year
of crisis in the history of the Conquest. The danger which had been
threatening William from the beginning was this year to descend upon him,
and to prove as unreal as all those he had faced since the great battle
with Harold. For a long time efforts had been making to induce some
foreign power to interfere in England and support the cause of the
English against the invader. Two states seemed especially fitted for the
mission, from close relationship with England in the past,--Scotland and
Denmark. Fugitives, who preferred exile to submission, had early sought
the one or the other of these courts, and urged intervention upon their
kings. Scotland had for the moment formally accepted the Conquest.
Denmark had not done so, and Denmark was the more directly interested in
the result, not perhaps as a mere question of the independence of
England, but for other possible reasons. If England was to be ruled by a
foreign king, should not that king on historical grounds be a Dane rather
than a Norman? Ought he not to be of the land that had already furnished
kings to England? And if Sweyn dreamed of the possibility of extending
his rule, at such a time, over this other member of the empire of his
uncle, Canute the Great, he is certainly not to be blamed.

It is true that the best moment for such an intervention had been allowed
to slip by, the time when no beginning of conquest had been made in the
north, but the situation was not even yet unfavourable. William was to
learn, when the new year had hardly begun, that he really held no more of
the north than his garrisons commanded. Perhaps it was a rash attempt to
try to establish a Norman earl of Northumberland in Durham before the
land had been overawed by his own presence; but the post was important,
the two experiments which had been made to secure the country through the
appointment of English earls had failed, and the submission of the
previous summer might prove to be real. In January Robert of Comines was
made earl, and with rash confidence, against the advice of the bishop, he
took possession of Durham with five hundred men or more. He expected, no
doubt, to be very soon behind the walls of a new castle, but he was
allowed no time. The very night of his arrival the enemy gathered and
massacred him and all his men but two. Yorkshire took courage at this and
cut up a Norman detachment. Then the exiles in Scotland believed the time
had come for another attempt, and Edgar, Gospatric, and the others, with
the men of Northumberland at their back, advanced to attack the castle in
York. This put all the work of the previous summer in danger, and at the
call of William Malet, who held the castle for him, the king advanced
rapidly to his aid, fell unexpectedly on the insurgents, and scattered
them with great slaughter. As a result the Norman hold on York was
tightened by the building of a second castle, but Northumberland was
still left to itself.

William may have thought, as he returned to celebrate Easter at
Winchester, that the north had learned a lesson that would be sufficient
for some time, but he must have heard soon after his arrival that the men
of Yorkshire had again attacked his castles, though they had been beaten
off without much difficulty. Nothing had been gained by any of these
attempts, but they must have been indications to any abroad who were
watching the situation, and to William as well, that an invasion of
England in that quarter might hope for much local assistance. It was
nearly the end of the summer before it came, and a summer that was on the
whole quiet, disturbed only by the second raid of Harold's sons in the
Bristol Channel.

Sweyn of Denmark had at last made up his mind, and had got ready an
expedition, a somewhat miscellaneous force apparently, "sharked up" from
all the Baltic lands, and not too numerous. His fleet sailed along the
shores of the North Sea and first appeared off south-western England. A
foolish attack on Dover was beaten off, and three other attempts to land
on the east coast, where the country was securely held, were easily
defeated. Finally, it would seem, off the Humber they fell in with some
ships bearing the English leaders from Scotland, who had been waiting for
them. There they landed and marched upon York, joined on the way by the
men of the country of all ranks. And the mere news of their approach, the
prospect of new horrors to be lived through with no chance of mitigating
them, proved too much for the old archbishop, Aldred, and he died a few
days before the storm broke. William was hunting in the forest of Dean,
on the southern borders of Wales, when he heard that the invaders had
landed, but his over-confident garrison in York reported that they could
hold out for a year without aid, and he left them for the present to
themselves. They planned to stand a siege, and in clearing a space about
the castle they kindled a fire which destroyed the most of the city,
including the cathedral church; but when the enemy appeared, they tried a
battle in the open, and were killed or captured to a man.

The fall of York gave a serious aspect to the case, and called for
William's presence. Soon after the capture of the city the Danes had gone
back to the Humber, to the upper end of the estuary apparently, and there
they succeeded in avoiding attack by crossing one river or another as the
army of the king approached. In the meantime, in various places along the
west of England, insurrections had broken out, encouraged probably by
exaggerated reports of the successes of the rebels in the north. Only one
of these, that in Staffordshire, required any attention from William, and
in this case we do not know why. In all the other cases, in Devon, in
Somerset, and at Shrewsbury, where the Welsh helped in the attack on the
Norman castle, the garrisons and men of the locality unassisted, or
assisted only by the forces of their neighbours, had defended themselves
with success. If the Danish invasion be regarded as a test of the
security of the Conquest in those parts of England which the Normans had
really occupied, then certainly it must be regarded as complete.

Prom the west William returned to the north with little delay, and
occupied York without opposition. Then followed the one act of the
Conquest which is condemned by friend and foe alike. When William had
first learned of the fate of his castles in York, he had burst out into
ungovernable rage, and the mood had not passed away. He was determined to
exact an awful vengeance for the repeated defiance of his power. War in
its mildest form in those days was little regulated by any consideration
for the conquered. From the point of view of a passionate soldier there
was some provocation in this case. Norman garrisons had been massacred;
detached parties had been cut off; repeated rebellion had followed every
pacification. Plainly a danger existed here, grave in itself and inviting
greater danger from abroad. Policy might dictate measures of unusual
severity, but policy did not call for what was done, and clearly in this
case the Conqueror gave way to a passion of rage which he usually held in
check, and inflicted on the stubborn province a punishment which the
standard of his own time did not justify.

Slowly he passed with his army through the country to the north of York,
drawing a broad band of desolation between that city and Durham.
Fugitives he sought out and put to the sword, but even so he was not
satisfied. Innocent and guilty were involved in indiscriminate slaughter.
Houses were destroyed, flocks and herds exterminated. Supplies of food
and farm implements were heaped together and burned. With deliberate
purpose, cruelly carried out, it was made impossible for men to live
through a thousand square miles. Years afterwards the country was still a
desert; it was generations before it had fully recovered. The Norman
writer, Orderic Vitalis, perhaps following the king's chaplain and
panegyrist William of Poitiers, while he confesses here that he gladly
praised the king when he could, had only condemnation for this deed. He
believed that William, responsible to no earthly tribunal, must one day
answer for it to an infinite Judge before whom high and low are alike
accountable.

Christmas was near at hand when William had finished this business, and
he celebrated at York the nativity of the Prince of Peace, doubtless with
no suspicion of inconsistency. Soon after Christmas, by a short but
difficult expedition, William drove the Danes from a position on the
coast which they had believed impregnable, and forced them to take to
their ships, in which, after suffering greatly from lack of supplies,
they drifted southward as if abandoning the land. During this expedition
also, we are told, Gospatric, who had rebelled the year before, and
Waltheof who had "gone out" on the coming of the Danes, made renewed
submission and were again received into favour by the king. The hopes
which the coming of foreign assistance had awakened were at an end.

One thing remained to be done. The men of the Welsh border must be taught
the lesson which the men of the Scottish border had learned. The
insurrection which had called William into Staffordshire the previous
autumn seems still to have lingered in the region. The strong city of
Chester, from which, or from whose neighbourhood at least, men had joined
the attack on Shrewsbury, and which commanded the north-eastern parts of
Wales, was still unsubdued. Soon after his return from the coast William
determined upon a longer and still more difficult winter march, across
the width of England, from York to Chester. It is no wonder that his army
murmured and some at least asked to be dismissed. The country through
which they must pass was still largely wilderness. Hills and forests,
swollen streams and winter storms, must be encountered, and the strife
with them was a test of endurance without the joy of combat. One
expedition of the sort in a winter ought to be enough. But William
treated the objectors with contempt. He pushed on as he had planned,
leaving those to stay behind who would, and but few were ready for open
mutiny. The hazardous march was made with success. What remained of the
insurrection disappeared before the coming of the king; it has left to us
at least no traces of any resistance. Chester was occupied without
opposition. Fortified posts were established and garrisons left there and
at Stafford. Some things make us suspect that a large district on this
side of England was treated as northern Yorkshire had been, and homeless
fugitives in crowds driven forth to die of hunger. The patience which
pardoned the faithlessness of Edwin and Waltheof was not called for in
dealing with smaller men.

From Chester William turned south. At Salisbury he dismissed with rich
rewards the soldiers who had been faithful to him, and at Winchester he
celebrated the Easter feast. There he found three legates who had been
sent from the pope, and supported by their presence he at last took up
the affairs of the English Church. The king had shown the greatest
caution in dealing with this matter. It must have been understood, almost
if not quite from the beginning of the Norman plan of invasion, that if
the attempt were successful, one of its results should be the revolution
of the English Church, the reform of the abuses which existed in it,
as the continental churchman regarded them, and as indeed they were.
During the past century a great reform movement, emanating from the
monastery of Cluny, had transformed the Catholic world, but in this
England had but little part. Starting as a monastic reformation, it
had just succeeded in bringing the whole Church under monastic control.
Henceforth the asceticism of the monk, his ideals in religion and
worship, his type of thought and learning, were to be those of the
official Church, from the papal throne to the country parsonage. It
was for that age a true reformation. The combined influence of the two
great temptations to which the churchmen of this period of the Middle
Ages were exposed--ignorance so easy to yield to, so hard to overcome,
and property, carrying with it rank and power and opening the way to
ambition for oneself or one's posterity--was so great that a rule of
strict asceticism, enforced by a powerful organization with fearful
sanctions, and a controlling ideal of personal devotion, alone could
overcome it. The monastic reformation had furnished these conditions,
though severe conflicts were still to be fought out before they would
be made to prevail in every part of western Europe. Shortly before the
appointment of Stigand to the archbishopric of Canterbury, these new
ideas had obtained possession of the papal throne in the person of Leo
IX, and with them other ideas which had become closely and almost
necessarily associated with them, of strict centralization under the
pope, of a theocratic papal supremacy, in line certainly with the
history of the Church, but more self-consciously held and logically
worked out than ever before.

In this great movement England had had no permanent share. Cut off from
easy contact with the currents of continental thought, not merely by the
channel but by the lack of any common interests and natural incentives to
common life, it stood in an earlier stage of development in
ecclesiastical matters, as in legal and constitutional. In organization,
in learning, and in conduct, ecclesiastical England at the eve of the
Norman Conquest may be compared not unfairly to ecclesiastical Europe of
the tenth century. There was the same loosening of the bonds of a common
organization, the same tendency to separate into local units shut up to
interest in themselves alone. National councils had practically ceased to
meet. The legislative machinery of the Church threatened to disappear in
that of the State. An outside body, the witenagemot, seemed about to
acquire the right of imposing rules and regulations upon the Church, and
another outside power, the king, to acquire the right of appointing its
officers. Quite as important in the eyes of the Church as the lack of
legislative independence was the lack of judicial independence, which was
also a defect of the English Church. The law of the Church as it bore
upon the life of the citizen was declared and enforced in the hundred or
shire court, and bishop and ealdorman sat together in the latter. Only
over the ecclesiastical faults of his clergy did the bishop have
exclusive jurisdiction, and this was probably a jurisdiction less well
developed than on the continent. The power of the primate over his
suffragans and of the bishop within his diocese was ill defined and
vague, and questions of disputed authority or doubtful allegiance
lingered long without exact decision, perhaps from lack of interest,
perhaps from want of the means of decision.

In learning, the condition was even worse. The cloister schools had
undergone a marked decline since the great days of Theodore and Alcuin.
Not merely were the parish priests ignorant men, but even bishops and
abbots. The universal language of learning and faith was neglected, and
in England alone, of all countries, theological books were written in the
local tongue, a sure sign of isolation and of the lack of interest in the
common philosophical life of the world. In moral conduct, while the
English clergy could not be held guilty of serious breaches of the
general ethical code, they were far from coming up to the special
standard which the canon law imposed upon the clergy, and which the
monastic reformation was making the inflexible law of the time. Married
priests abounded; there were said to be even married bishops. Simony was
not infrequent. Every churchman of high rank was likely to be a
pluralist, holding bishoprics and abbacies together, like Stigand, who
held with the primacy the bishopric of Winchester and many abbeys. That
such a man as Stigand, holding every ecclesiastical office that he could
manage to keep, depriving monasteries of their landed endowments with no
more right than the baron after him, refused recognition by every legally
elected pope, and thought unworthy to crown a king, or even in most cases
to consecrate a bishop, should have held his place for so many years as
unquestioned primate in all but the most important functions, is evidence
enough that the English Church had not yet been brought under the
influence of the great religious reformation of the eleventh century.

This was the chief defect of the England of that time--a defect upon all
sides of its life, which the Conquest remedied. It was an isolated land.
It stood in danger of becoming a Scandinavian land, not in blood merely,
or in absorption in an actual Scandinavian empire, but in withdrawal from
the real world, and in that tardy, almost reluctant, civilization which
was possibly a necessity for Scandinavia proper, but which would have
been for England a falling back from higher levels. It was the mission of
the Norman Conquest--if we may speak of a mission for great historical
events--to deliver England from this danger, and to bring her into the
full current of the active and progressive life of Christendom.

It was more than three years after the coronation of William before the
time was come for a thorough overhauling of the Church. So far as we
know, William, up to that time, had given no sign of his intentions. The
early adhesion of Stigand had been welcomed. The Normans seem to have
believed that he enjoyed great consideration and influence among the
Saxons, and he had been left undisturbed. He had even been allowed to
consecrate the new Norman bishop of Dorchester, which looks like an act
of deliberate policy. It had not seemed wise to alarm the Church so long
as the military issue of the invasion could be considered in any sense
doubtful, and not until the changes could be made with the powerful
support of the head of the Church directly expressed. It is a natural
guess, though we have no means of knowing, that Lanfranc's mission to
Rome in 1067 had been to discuss this matter with the Roman authorities,
quite as much as to get the pallium for the new Archbishop of Rouen. Now
the time had come for action.

Three legates of the pope were at Winchester, and there a council was
summoned to meet them. Two of the legates were cardinals, then a
relatively less exalted rank in the Church than later, but making plain
the direct support of the pope. The other was Ermenfrid, Bishop of Sion,
or Sitten, in what is now the Swiss canton of the Vallais. He had already
been in England eight years earlier as a papal legate, and he would bring
to this council ideas derived from local observation, as well as tried
diplomatic skill. Before the council met, the papal sanction of the
Conquest was publicly proclaimed, when the cardinal legates placed the
crown on the king's head at the Easter festival. On the octave of Easter,
in 1070, the council met. Its first business was to deal with the case of
Stigand. Something like a trial seems to have been held, but its result
could never have been in doubt. He was deprived of the archbishopric,
and, with that, of his other preferments, on three grounds: he had held
Winchester along with the primacy; he had held the primacy while Robert
was still the rightful archbishop according to the laws of the Church;
and he had obtained his pallium and his only recognition from the
antipope Benedict X. His brother, the Bishop of Elmham, was also deposed,
and some abbots at the same time.

An English chronicler of a little later date, Florence of Worcester,
doubtless representing the opinion of those contemporaries who were
unfavourable to the Normans, believed that for many of these depositions
there were no canonical grounds, but that they were due to the king's
desire to have the help of the Church in holding and pacifying his new
kingdom. We may admit the motive and its probable influence on the acts
of the time, without overlooking the fact that there would be likely to
be an honest difference in the interpretation of canonical rights and
wrongs on the Norman and the English sides, and that the Normans were
more likely to be right according to the prevailing standard of the
Church. The same chronicler gives us interesting evidence of the
contemporary native feeling about this council, and the way the rights of
the English were likely to be treated by it, in recording the fact that
it was thought to be a bold thing for the English bishop Wulfstan, of
Worcester, to demand his rights in certain lands which Aldred had kept in
his possession when he was transferred from the see of Worcester to the
archbishopric of York. The case was postponed, until there should be an
archbishop of York to defend the rights of his Church, but the brave
bishop had nothing to lose by his boldness. The treatment of the Church
throughout his reign is evidence of William's desire to act according to
established law, though it is also evidence of his ruling belief that the
new law was superior to the old, if ever a conflict arose between them.

Shortly after, at Whitsuntide, another council met at Windsor, and
continued the work. The cardinals had returned to Rome, but Ermenfrid was
still present. Further vacancies were made in the English Church in the
same way as by the previous council--by the end of the year only two, or
at most three, English bishops remained in office--but the main business
at this time was to fill vacancies. A new Archbishop of York, Thomas,
Canon of Bayeux, was appointed, and three bishops, Winchester, Selsey,
and Elmham, all of these from the royal chapel. But the most important
appointment of the time was that of Lanfranc, Abbot of St. Stephen's at
Caen, to be Archbishop of Canterbury. With evident reluctance he accepted
this responsible office, in which his work was destined to be almost as
important in the history of England as William's own. Two papal legates
crossing from England, Ermenfrid and a new one named Hubert, a synod of
the Norman clergy, Queen Matilda, and her son Robert, all urged him to
accept, and he yielded to their solicitation.

Lanfranc was at this time sixty-five years of age. An Italian by birth,
he had made good use of the advantages which the schools of that land
offered to laymen, but on the death of his father, while still a young
man, he had abandoned the path of worldly promotion which lay open before
him in the profession of the law, in which he had followed his father,
and had gone to France to teach and finally to become a monk. By 1045 he
was prior of the abbey of Bec, and within a few years he was famous
throughout the whole Church as one of its ablest theologians. In the
controversy with Berengar of Tours, on the nature of the Eucharist, he
had argued with great skill in favour of transubstantiation. Still more
important was the fact that his abilities and ideas were known to
William, who had long relied upon his counsel in the government of the
duchy, and that entire harmony of action was possible between them. He
has been called William's "one friend," and while this perhaps unduly
limits the number of the king's friends, he was, in the greatest affairs
of his reign, his firm supporter and wise counsellor.

From the moment of his consecration, on August 29, 1070, the reformation
of the English Church went steadily on, until it was as completely
accomplished as was possible. The first question to be settled was perhaps
the most important of all, the question of unity of national organization.
The new Archbishop of York refused Lanfranc's demand that he should take
the oath of obedience to Canterbury, and asserted his independence and
coordinate position, and laid claim to three bordering bishoprics as
belonging to his metropolitan see,--Worcester, Lichfield, and Dorchester.
The dispute was referred to the king, who arranged a temporary compromise
in favour of Lanfranc, and then carried to the pope, by whom it was again
referred back to be decided by a council in England. This decision was
reached at a council in Windsor at Whitsuntide in 1072, and was in favour
of Lanfranc on all points, though it seems certain that the victory was
obtained by an extensive series of forgeries of which the archbishop
himself was probably the author.[4] It must be added, however, that the
moral judgment of that age did not regard as ours does such forgeries in
the interest of one's Church. If the decision was understood at the time
to mean that henceforth all archbishops of York should promise canonical
obedience to the Archbishop of Canterbury, it did not permanently secure
that result. But the real point at issue in this dispute, at least for the
time being, was no mere matter of rank or precedence; it was as necessary
to the plans of Lanfranc and of the Church that his authority should be
recognized throughout the whole kingdom as it was to those of William. Nor
was the question without possible political significance. The political
independence of the north--still uncertain in its allegiance--would be far
easier to establish if it was, to begin with, ecclesiastically
independent.

Hardly less important than the settlement of this matter was the
establishment of the legislative independence of the Church. From the two
legatine councils of 1070, at Winchester and Windsor, a series begins of
great national synods, meeting at intervals to the end of the reign.
Complete divorce from the State was not at first possible. The council
was held at a meeting of the court, and was summoned by the king. He was
present at the sessions, as were also lay magnates of the realm, but the
questions proper to the council were discussed and decided by the
churchmen alone, and were promulgated by the Church as its own laws. This
was real legislative independence, even if the form of it was somewhat
defective, and before very long, as the result of this beginning, the
form came to correspond to the reality, and the process became as
independent as the conclusion.

William's famous ordinance separating the spiritual and temporal courts
decreed another extensive change necessary to complete the independence
of the Church in its legal interests. The date of this edict is not
certain, but it would seem from such evidence as we have to have been
issued not very long after the meeting of the councils of 1070. It
withdrew from the local popular courts, the courts of the hundred, all
future enforcement of the ecclesiastical laws, subjected all offenders
against these laws to trial in the bishop's court, and promised the
support of the temporal authorities to the processes and decisions of the
Church courts. This abolishing by edict of so important a prerogative of
the old local courts, and annulling of so large a part of the old law,
was the most violent and serious innovation made by the Conqueror in the
Saxon judicial system; but it was fully justified, not merely by the more
highly developed law which came into use as a result of the change, but
by the necessity of a stricter enforcement of that law than would ever be
possible through popular courts.

With these more striking changes went others, less revolutionary but
equally necessary to complete the new ecclesiastical system. The Saxon
bishops had many of them had their seats in unimportant places in their
dioceses, tending to degrade the dignity almost to the level of a rural
bishopric. The Norman prelates by degrees removed the sees to the chief
towns, changing the names with the change of place. Dorchester was
removed to Lincoln, Selsey to Chichester, Sherborne to Old Sarum, and
Elmham by two removes to Norwich. The new cities were the centres of life
and influence, and they were more suitable residences for barons of the
king, as the Norman bishops were. The inner organization of these
bishoprics was also improved. Cathedral chapters were reformed; in
Rochester and Durham secular canons were replaced by monastic clergy
under a more strict regime. New offices of law and administration were
introduced. The country priests were brought under strict control, and
earnest attempts were made to compel them to follow more closely the
disciplinary requirements of the Church.

The monastic system as it existed at the time of the Conquest underwent
the same reformation as the more secular side of the Church organization.
It was indeed regarded by the new ecclesiastical rulers as the source of
the Church's strength and the centre of its life. English abbots were
replaced by Norman, and the new abbots introduced a better discipline and
improvement in the ritual. The rule was more strictly enforced. Worship,
labour, and study became the constant occupations of the monks. Speedily
the institution won a new influence in the life of the nation. The number
of monks grew rapidly; new monasteries were everywhere established, of
which the best remembered, the Conqueror's abbey of Battle, with the high
altar of its church standing where Harold's standard had stood in the
memorable fight, is only an example. Many of these new foundations were
daughter-houses of great French monasteries, and it is a significant fact
that by the end of the reign of William's son Henry, Cluny, the source of
this monastic reformation for the world, had sent seventeen colonies into
England. Wealth poured into these establishments from the gifts of king
and barons and common men alike. Their buildings grew in number and in
magnificence, and the poor and suffering of the realm received their
share in the new order of things, through a wider and better organized
charity.

With this new monastic life began a new era of learning. Schools were
everywhere founded or renewed. The universal language of Christendom took
once more its proper place as the literary language of the cloister,
although the use of English lingered for a time here and there. England
caught at last the theological eagerness of the continent in the age when
the stimulus of the new dialectic method was beginning to be felt, and soon
demanded to be heard in the settlement of the problems of the thinking
world. Lanfranc continued to write as Archbishop of Canterbury.[5] Even
something that may be called a literary spirit in an age of general
barrenness was awakened. Poems were produced not unworthy of mention, and
the generation of William's sons was not finished when such histories had
been written as those of Eadmer and William of Malmesbury, superior in
conception and execution to anything produced in England since the days of
Bede. In another way the stimulus of these new influences showed itself in
an age of building, and by degrees the land was covered with those vast
monastic and cathedral churches which still excite our admiration and
reveal to us the fact that the narrow minds of what we were once pleased to
call the dark ages were capable, in one direction at least, of great and
lofty conceptions. Norman ideals of massive strength speak to us as clearly
from the arches of Winchester or the piers of Gloucester as from the firm
hand and stern rule of William or Henry.

In general the Conquest incorporated England closely, as has already been
said, with that organic whole of life and achievement which we call
Christendom. This was not more true of the ecclesiastical side of things
than of the political or constitutional. But the Church of the eleventh
century included within itself relatively many more than the Church of
to-day of those activities which quickly respond to a new stimulus and
reveal a new life by increased production. The constitutional changes
involved in the Conquest, and directly traceable to it through a long
line of descent, though more slowly realized and for long in less
striking forms, were in truth destined to produce results of greater
permanence and a wider influence. The final result of the Norman Conquest
was a constitutional creation, new in the history of the world. Nothing
like this followed in the sphere of the Church. But for a generation or
two the abundant vigour which flowed through the renewed religious life
of Europe, and the radical changes which were necessary to bring England
into full harmony with it, made the ecclesiastical revolution seem the
most impressive and the most violent of the changes which took place in
this age in English public organization and life. If we may trust a later
chronicler, whose record is well supported by independent and earlier
evidence, in the same year in which these legatine councils met, and in
which the reformation of the Church was begun, there was introduced an
innovation, so far as the Saxon Church is concerned, which would have
seemed to the leaders of the reform party hostile to their cause had they
not been so familiar with it elsewhere, or had they been conscious of the
full meaning of their own demands. Matthew Paris, in the thirteenth
century, records that, in 1070, the king decreed that all bishoprics and
abbacies which were holding baronies, and which heretofore had been free
from all secular obligations, should be liable to military service; and
caused to be enrolled, according to his own will, the number of knights
which should be due from each in time of war. Even if this statement were
without support, it would be intrinsically probable at this or some near
date. The endowment lands of bishopric and abbey, or rather a part of
these lands in each case, would inevitably be regarded as a fief held of
the crown, and as such liable to the regular feudal services. This was
the case in every feudal land, and no one would suppose that there should
be any exception in England. The amount of the service was arbitrarily
fixed by the king in these ecclesiastical baronies, just as it was in the
lay fiefs. The fact was important enough to attract the notice of the
chroniclers because the military service, regulated in this way, would
seem to be more of an innovation than the other services by which the
fief was held, like the court service, for example, though it was not so
in reality.

This transformation in life and culture was wrought in the English Church
with the full sanction and support of the king. In Normandy, as well as in
England, was this the case. The plans of the reform party had been carried
out more fully in some particulars in these lands than the Church alone
would have attempted at the time, because they had convinced the judgment
of the sovereign and won his favour. At every step of the process where
there was need, the power of the State had been at the command of the
Church, to remove abuses or to secure the introduction of reforms. But
with the theocratic ideas which went with these reforms in the teaching of
the Church William had no sympathy. The leaders of the reformation might
hold to the ideal supremacy of pope over king, and to the superior mission
and higher power of the Church as compared with the State, but there could
be no practical realization of these theories in any Norman land so long
as the Conqueror lived. In no part of Europe had the sovereign exercised
a greater or more direct power over the Church than in Normandy. All
departments of its life were subject to his control, if there was reason
to exert it. This had been true for so long a time that the Church was
accustomed to the situation and accepted it without complaint. This power
William had no intention of yielding. He proposed to exercise it in
England as he had in Normandy,[6] and, even in this age of fierce conflict
with its great temporal rival, the emperor, the papacy made no sharply
drawn issue with him on these points. There could be no question of the
headship of the world in his case, and on the vital moral point he was too
nearly in harmony with the Church to make an issue easy. On the importance
of obeying the monastic rule, the celibacy of the clergy, and the purchase
of ecclesiastical office, he agreed in theory with the disciples of
Cluny.[7] But, if he would not sell a bishopric, he was determined that
the bishop should be his man; he stood ready to increase the power and
independence of the Church, but always as an organ of the State, as a part
of the machine through which the government was carried on.

It is quite within the limits of possibility that, in his negotiations
with Rome before his invasion of England, William may have given the pope
to understand, in some indefinite and informal way, that if he won the
kingdom, he would hold it of St. Peter. In accepting the consecrated
banner which the pope sent him, he could hardly fail to know that he
might be understood to be acknowledging a feudal dependence. When the
kingdom was won, however, he found himself unwilling to carry out such an
arrangement, whether tacitly or openly promised. To Gregory VII's demand
for his fealty he returned a respectful but firm refusal. The sovereignty
of England was not to be diminished; he would hold the kingdom as freely
as his predecessors had done. Peter's pence, which it belonged of right
to England to pay, should be regularly collected and sent to Rome, but no
right of rule, even theoretical, over king or kingdom, could be allowed
the pope.

An ecclesiastical historian whose childhood and early youth fell in
William's reign, and who was deeply impressed with the strong control
under which he held the Church, has recorded three rules to govern the
relation between Church and State, which he says were established by
William.[8] These are: 1, that no one should be recognized as pope in
England except at his command, nor any papal letters received without his
permission; 2, that no acts of the national councils should be binding
without his sanction; 3, that none of his barons or servants should be
excommunicated, even for crimes committed, without his consent. Whether
these were consciously formulated rules or merely generalizations from his
conduct, they state correctly the principles of his action, and exhibit
clearly in one most important sphere the unlimited power established by
the Norman Conquest.

To this year, 1070, in which was begun the reformation of the Church,
was assigned at a later time another work of constitutional interest.
The unofficial compiler of a code of laws, the Leges Edwardi, written
in the reign of Henry I, and drawn largely from the legislation of the
Saxon kings, ascribed his work, after a fashion not unusual with
writers of his kind, to the official act of an earlier king. He relates
that a great national inquest was ordered by King William in this year,
to ascertain and establish the laws of the English. Each county elected
a jury of twelve men, who knew the laws, and these juries coming
together in the presence of the king declared on oath what were the
legal customs of the land. So runs the preface of the code which was
given out as compiled from this testimony. Such a plan and procedure
would not be out of harmony with what we know of William's methods
and policy. The machinery of the jury, which was said to be employed,
was certainly introduced into England by the first Norman king, and
was used by him for the establishment of facts, both in national
undertakings like the Domesday Book and very probably in local cases
arising in the courts. We know also that he desired to leave the old
laws undisturbed so far as possible, and the year 1070 is one in which
an effort to define and settle the future legal code of the state would
naturally fall. But the story must be rejected as unhistorical. An
event of such importance as this inquisition must have been, if it
took place, could hardly have occurred without leaving its traces in
contemporary records of some sort, and an official code of this kind
would have produced results in the history of English law of which we
find no evidence. The Saxon law and the machinery of the local courts
did survive the Conquest with little change, but no effort was made to
reduce the customs of the land to systematic and written form until a
later time, until a time indeed when the old law was beginning to give
place to the new.

[4] See H. Bohmer, Die Falschungen Erzbischof Lanfranks van Canterbury
(Leipzig, 1902).

[5] Boehmer, Kirche und Staat in England und in der Normandie,
pp. 103-106.

[6] Eadmer, Historia Novorum, p. 9.

[7] Boehmer, Kirche und Staat, pp. 126 ff.

[8] Eadmer, Hist. Nov., p. 10.

CHAPTER III

WILLIAM'S LATER YEARS

Political events had not waited for the reformation of the Church, and
long before these reforms were completed, England had become a thoroughly
settled state under the new king. The beginning of the year 1070 is a
turning-point in the reign of William. The necessity for fighting was not
over, but from this date onwards there was no more fighting for the
actual possession of the land. The irreconcilables had still to be dealt
with; in one small locality they retained even yet some resisting power;
the danger of foreign invasion had again to be met: but not for one
moment after William's return from the devastation of the north and west
was there even the remotest possibility of undoing the Conquest.

The Danes had withdrawn from the region of the Humber, but they had not
left the country. In the Isle of Ely, then more nearly an actual island
than in modern times, was a bit of unsubdued England, and there they
landed for a time. In this position, surrounded by fens and interlacing
rivers, accessible at only a few points, occurred the last resistance
which gave the Normans any trouble. The rich mythology which found its
starting-point in this resistance, and especially in its leader,
Hereward, we no longer mistake for history; but we should not forget that
it embodies the popular attitude towards those who stubbornly resisted
the Norman, as it was handed on by tradition, and that it reveals almost
pathetically the dearth of heroic material in an age which should have
produced it in abundance. Hereward was a tenant in a small way of the
abbey of Peterborough. What led him into such a determined revolt we do
not know, unless he was among those who were induced to join the Danes
after their arrival, in the belief that their invasion would be
successful. Nor do we know what collected in the Isle of Ely a band of
men whom the Peterborough chronicler was probably not wrong, from any
point of view, in calling outlaws. A force of desperate men could hope to
maintain themselves for some time in the Isle of Ely; they could not hope
for anything more than this. The coming of the Danes added little real
strength, though the country about believed for the moment, as it had
done north of the Humber, that the tide had turned. The first act of the
allies was the plunder and destruction of the abbey and town of
Peterborough shortly after the meeting of the council of Windsor. The
English abbot Brand had died the previous autumn, and William had
appointed in his place a Norman, Turold, distinguished as a good fighter
and a hard ruler. These qualities had led the king to select him for this
special post, and the plundering of the abbey, so far as it was not mere
marauding, looks like an answering act of spite. The Danes seem to have
been disposed at first to hold Peterborough, but Turold must have brought
them proposals of peace from William, which induced them to withdraw at
last from England with the secure possession of their plunder.

Hereward and his men accomplished nothing more that year, but others
gradually gathered in to them, including some men of note. Edwin and
Morcar had once more changed sides, or had fled from William's court to
escape some danger there. Edwin had been killed in trying to make his way
through to Scotland, but Morcar had joined the refugees in Ely. Bishop
Ethelwin of Durham was also there, and a northern thane, Siward Barn. In
1074 William advanced in person against the "camp of refuge." A fleet was
sent to blockade one side while the army attacked from the other. It was
found necessary to build a long causeway for the approach of the army and
around this work the fiercest fighting occurred; but its building could
not be stopped, and just as it was finished the defenders of the Isle
surrendered. The leaders were imprisoned, Morcar in Normandy for the rest
of William's reign. The common men were mutilated and released. Hereward
escaped to sea, but probably afterwards submitted to William and received
his favour. Edric the Wild, who had long remained unsubdued on the Welsh
borders, had also yielded before the surrender of the Isle of Ely, and
the last resistance that can be called in any sense organized was at an
end.

The comparatively easy pacification of the land, the early submission to
their fate of so strong a nation, was in no small degree aided by the
completeness with which the country was already occupied by Norman
colonies, if we may call them so. Probably before the surrender of Ely
every important town was under the immediate supervision of some Norman
baron, with a force of his own. In all the strategically important places
fortified posts had been built and regular garrisons stationed. Even the
country districts had to a large extent been occupied in a similar way.
It is hardly probable that as late as 1072 any considerable area in
England had escaped extensive confiscations. Everywhere the Norman had
appeared to take possession of his fief, to establish new tenants, or to
bring the old ones into new relations with himself, to arrange for the
administration of his manors, and to leave behind him the agents who were
responsible to himself for the good conduct of affairs. If he made but
little change in the economic organization of his property, and disturbed
the labouring class but slightly or not at all, he would give to a wide
district a vivid impression of the strength of the new order and of the
hopelessness of any resistance.

Already Norman families, who were to make so much of the history of the
coming centuries, were rooted in the land. Montfort and Mortimer; Percy,
Beauchamp, and Mowbray; Ferrets and Lacy; Beaumont, Mandeville, and
Grantmesnil; Clare, Bigod, and Bohun; and many others of equal or nearly
equal name. All these were as yet of no higher than baronial rank, but if
we could trust the chroniclers, we should be able to make out in addition
a considerable list of earldoms which William had established by this
date or soon afterwards, in many parts of England, and in these were
other great names. According to this evidence, his two half brothers, the
children of his mother by her marriage with Herlwin de Conteville, had
been most richly provided for: Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, as Earl of Kent,
and Robert, Count of Mortain, with a princely domain in the south-west as
Earl of Cornwall. One of the earliest to be made an earl was his old
friend and the son of his guardian, William Fitz Osbern, who had been
created Earl of Hereford; he was now dead and was succeeded by his son
Roger, soon very justly to lose title and land. Shrewsbury was held by
Roger of Montgomery; Chester by Hugh of Avranches, the second earl;
Surrey by William of Warenne; Berkshire by Walter Giffard. Alan Rufus of
Britanny was Earl of Richmondshire; Odo of Champagne, Earl of Holderness;
and Ralph of Guader, who was to share in the downfall of Roger Fitz
Osbern, Earl of Norfolk. One Englishman, who with much less justice was
to be involved in the fate which rightly befell these two Norman earls,
was also earl at this time, Watheof, who had lately succeeded Gospatric
in the troubled earldom of Northumberland, and who also held the earldoms
of Northampton and Huntingdon. These men certainly held important
lordships in the districts named, but whether so many earldoms, in form
and law, had really been established by the Conqueror at this date, or
were established by him at any later time, is exceedingly doubtful. The
evidence of the chroniclers is easily shown to be untrustworthy in the
matter of titles, and the more satisfactory evidence which we obtain from
charters and the Domesday Book does not justify this extensive list.
But the historian does not find it possible to decide with confidence in
every individual case. Of the earldoms of this list it is nearly certain
that we must drop out those of Cornwall, Holderness, Surrey, Berkshire,
and Richmond, and almost or quite certain that we may allow to stand
those of Waltheof and William Fitz Osbern, of Kent, Chester, and
Shrewsbury.

Independently of the question of evidence, it is difficult to see what
there was in the general situation in England which could have led the
Conqueror to so wide a departure from the established practice of the
Norman dukes as the creation of so many earls would be. In Normandy the
title of count was practically unknown outside the ducal family. The
feudal count as found in other French provinces, the sovereign of a
little principality as independent of the feudal holder of the province
as he himself was of the king, did not exist there. The four lordships
which bore the title of count, Talou or Arques, Eu, Evreux, and Mortain,
were reserved for younger branches of the ducal house, and carried with
them no sovereign rights. The tradition of the Saxon earldom undoubtedly
exercised by degrees a great influence on the royal practice in England,
and by the middle of the twelfth century earls existed in considerable
numbers; but the lack of conclusive evidence for the existence of many
under William probably reflects the fact of his few creations. But in the
cases which we can certainly trace to William, it was not the old Saxon
earldom which was revived. The new earldom, with the possible exception
of one or two earls who, like the old Prankish margrave, or the later
palatine count, were given unusual powers to support unusual military
responsibilities, was a title, not an office. It was not a government of
provinces, but a mark of rank; and the danger involved in the older
office, of the growth of independent powers within the state under local
dynasties which would be, though existing under other forms, as difficult
to control as the local dynasties of feudal France, was removed once for
all by the introduction of the Norman centralization. That no serious
trouble ever came from the so-called palatine earldoms is itself evidence
of the powerful monarchy ruling in England.

This centralization was one of the great facts of the Conquest. In it
resided the strength of the Norman monarchy, and it was of the utmost
importance as well in its bearing on the future history of England.
Delolme, one of the earliest of foreign writers on the English
constitution, remarks that the explanation of English liberty is to be
found in the absolute power of her early kings, and the most careful
modern student can do no more than amplify this statement. That this
centralization was the result of any deliberate policy on the part of
William can hardly be maintained. A conscious modification of the feudal
system as he introduced it into England, with a view to the preservation
of his own power, has often been attributed to the Conqueror. But the
political insight which would have enabled him to recognize the evil
tendencies inherent in the only institutional system he had ever known,
and to plan and apply remedies proper to counteract these tendencies but
not inconsistent with the system itself, would indicate a higher quality
of statesmanship than anything else in his career shows him to possess.
More to the purpose is the fact that there is no evidence of any such
modification, while the drift of evidence is against it. William was
determined to be strong, not because of any theory which he had formed of
the value of strength, or of the way to secure it, but because he was
strong and had always been so since he recovered the full powers of a
sovereign in the struggles which followed his minority. The concentration
of all the functions of sovereignty in his own hands, and the reservation
of the allegiance of all landholders to himself, which strengthened his
position in England, had strengthened it first in Normandy.

Intentional weakening of the feudal barons has been seen in the fact that
the manors which they held were scattered about in different parts of
England, so that the formation of an independent principality, or a quick
concentration of strength, would not be possible. That this was a fact
characteristic of England is probably true. But it is sufficiently
accounted for in part by the gradual spread of the Norman occupation, and
of the consequent confiscations and re-grants, and in part by the fact
that it had always been characteristic of England, so that when the
holding of a given Saxon thane was transferred bodily to the Norman
baron, he found his manors lying in no continuous whole. In any case,
however, the divided character of the Norman baronies in England must not
be pressed too far. The grants to his two half brothers, and the earldoms
of Chester and Shrewsbury on the borders of Wales, are enough to show
that William was not afraid of principalities within the state, and other
instances on a somewhat smaller scale could be cited. Nor ought
comparison to be made between English baronies, or earldoms even, and
those feudal dominions on the continent which had been based on the
counties of the earlier period. In these, sovereign rights over a large
contiguous territory, originally delegated to an administrative officer,
had been transformed into a practically independent power. The proper
comparison is rather between the English baronies of whatever rank and
those continental feudal dominions which were formed by natural process
half economic and half political, without definite delegation of
sovereign powers, within or alongside the provincial countships, and this
comparison would show less difference.

If the Saxon earl did not survive the Conquest in the same position as
before, the Saxon sheriff did. The office as the Normans found it in
England was in so many ways similar to that of the viscount, vicecomes,
which still survived in Normandy as an administrative office, that it was
very easy to identify the two and to bring the Norman name into common
use as an equivalent of the Saxon. The result of the new conditions was
largely to increase the sheriff's importance and power. As the special
representative of the king in the county, he shared in the increased
power of his master, practically the whole administrative system of the
state, as it affected its local divisions, was worked through him.
Administrator of the royal domains, responsible for the most important
revenues, vehicle of royal commands of all kinds, and retaining the
judicial functions which had been associated with the office in Saxon
times, he held a position, not merely of power but of opportunity.
Evidence is abundant of great abuse of power by the sheriff at the
expense of the conquered. Nor did the king always escape these abuses,
for the office, like that of the Carolingian count, to which it was in
many ways similar, contained a possibility of use for private and
personal advantage which could be corrected, even by so strong a
sovereign as the Anglo-Norman, only by violent intervention at intervals.

Some time after the Conquest, but at a date unknown, William set aside a
considerable portion of Hampshire to form a hunting ground, the New
Forest, near his residence at Winchester. The chroniclers of the next
generation describe the formation of the Forest as the devastation of a
large tract of country in which churches were destroyed, the inhabitants
driven out, and the cultivated land thrown back into wilderness, and they
record a contemporary belief that the violent deaths of so many members
of William's house within the bounds of the Forest, including two of his
sons, were acts of divine vengeance and proofs of the wickedness of the
deed. While this tradition of the method of making the Forest is still
generally accepted, it has been called in question for reasons that make
it necessary, in my opinion, to pronounce it doubtful. It is hardly
consistent with the general character of William. Such statements of
chroniclers are too easily explained to warrant us in accepting them
without qualification. The evidence of geology and of the history of
agriculture indicates that probably the larger part of this tract was
only thinly populated, and Domesday Book shows some portions of the
Forest still occupied by cultivators.[9] The forest laws of the Norman
kings were severe in the extreme, and weighed cruelly on beasts and men
alike, and on men of rank as well as simple freemen. They excited a
general and bitter hostility which lasted for generations, and prepared a
natural soil for the rapid growth of a partially mythical explanation to
account in a satisfactory way for the dramatic accidents which followed
the family of the Conqueror in the Forest, by the direct and tangible
wickedness which had attended the making of the hunting ground. It is
probable also that individual acts of violence did accompany the making,
and that some villages and churches were destroyed. But the likelihood is
so strong against a general devastation that history should probably
acquit William of the greater crime laid to his charge, and refuse to
place any longer the devastation of Hampshire in the same class with that
of Northumberland.

After the surrender of Ely, William's attention was next given to
Scotland. In 1070 King Malcolm had invaded northern England, but without
results beyond laying waste other portions of that afflicted country. It
was easier to show the Scots than the Danes that William was capable of
striking back, and in 1072, after a brief visit to Normandy, an army
under the king's command advanced along the east coast with an
accompanying fleet. No attempt was made to check this invasion in the
field, and only when William had reached Abernethy did Malcolm come to
meet him. What arrangement was made between them it is impossible to say,
but it was one that was satisfactory to William at the time. Probably
Malcolm became his vassal and gave him hostages for his good conduct, but
if so, his allegiance did not bind him very securely. Norman feudalism
was no more successful than the ordinary type, in dealing with a reigning
sovereign who was in vassal relations.

The critical years of William's conquest of England had been undisturbed
by any dangers threatening his continental possessions. Matilda, who
spent most of the time in Normandy, with her councillors, had maintained
peace and order with little difficulty; but in the year after his
Scottish expedition he was called to Normandy by a revolt in his early
conquest, the county of Maine, which it required a formidable campaign to
subdue. William's plan to attach this important province to Normandy by a
marriage between his son Robert and the youngest sister of the last count
had failed through the death of the proposed heiress, and the county had
risen in favour of her elder sister, the wife of the Italian Marquis Azo
or of her son. Then a successful communal revolution had occurred in the
city of Le Mans, anticipating an age of rebellion against the feudal
powers, and the effort of the commune to bring the whole county into
alliance with itself, though nearly successful for the moment at least,
had really prepared the way for the restoration of the Norman power by
dividing the party opposed to it. William crossed to Normandy in 1073,
leading a considerable army composed in part of English. The campaign was
a short one. Revolt was punished, as William sometimes punished it, by
barbarously devastating the country. Le Mans did not venture to stand a
siege, but surrendered on William's sworn promise to respect its ancient
liberty. By a later treaty with Fulk of Anjou, Robert was recognized as
Count of Maine, but as a vassal of Anjou and not of Normandy.

William probably returned to England after the settlement of these
affairs, but of his doings there nothing is recorded, and for some time
troubles in his continental dominions occupied more of his attention than
the interests of the island. He was in Normandy, indeed, during the whole
of that "most severe tempest," as a writer of the next generation called
it, which broke upon a part of England in the year 1075; and the first
feudal insurrection in English history was put down, as more serious ones
were destined to be before the fall of feudalism, by the king's officers
and the men of the land in the king's absence. To determine the causes of
this insurrection, we need to read between the lines of the story as it
is told us by the writers of that and the next age. Elaborate reasons for
their hostility to William's government were put into the mouths of the
conspirators by one of these writers, but these would mean nothing more
than a general statement that the king was a very severe and stern ruler,
if it were not for the more specific accusation that he had rewarded
those who had fought for him very inadequately, and through avarice had
afterward reduced the value even of these gifts.[10] A passage in a letter
of Lanfranc's to one of the leaders of the rebellion, Roger, Earl of
Hereford, written evidently after Roger's dissatisfaction had become known
but before any open rebellion, gives us perhaps a key to the last part of
this complaint.[11] He tells him that the king, revoking, we infer, former
orders, has directed his sheriffs not to hold any more pleas in the earl's
land until he can return and hear the case between him and the sheriffs.
In a time when the profits of a law court were important to the lord who
had the right to hold it, the entry of the king's officers into a
"liberty" to hear cases there as the representative of the king, and to
his profit, would naturally seem to the baron whose income was affected a
diminution of the value of his fief, due to the king's avarice. Nothing
could show us better the attitude natural to a strong king towards feudal
immunities than the facts which these words of Lanfranc's imply, and
though we know of no serious trouble arising from this reason for a
century or more, it is clear that the royal view of the matter never
changed, and finally like infringements on the baronial courts became one
of the causes of the first great advance towards constitutional liberty,
the Magna Carta.

This letter of Lanfranc's to Roger of Hereford is a most interesting
illustration of his character and of his diplomatic skill, and it shows
us clearly how great must have been his usefulness to William. Though it
is perfectly evident to us that he suspects the loyalty of Roger to be
seriously tempted, there is not a word of suspicion expressed in the
letter, but the considerations most likely to keep him loyal are strongly
urged. With the exception of the sentence about the sheriffs, and formal
phrases at the beginning and end, the letter runs thus: "Our lord, the
king of the English, salutes you and us all as faithful subjects of his
in whom he has great confidence, and commands us that as much as we are
able we should have care of his castles, lest, which God avert, they
should be betrayed to his enemies; wherefore I ask you, as I ought to
ask, most dear son, whom, as God is witness, I love with my whole heart
and desire to serve, and whose father I loved as my soul, that you take
such care of this matter and of all fidelity to our lord the king that
you may have the praise of God, and of him, and of all good men. Hold
always in your memory how your glorious father lived, and how faithfully
he served his lord, and with how great energy he acquired many things and
held them with great honour.... I should like to talk freely with you; if
this is your will, let me know where we can meet and talk together of
your affairs and of our lord the king's. I am ready to go to meet you
wherever you direct."

The letter had no effect. Roger seems to have been a man of violent
temper, and there was a woman in this case also, though we do not know
that she herself influenced the course of events. The insurrection is
said to have been determined upon, and the details of action planned,
at the marriage of Roger's sister to Ralph Guader, Earl of Norfolk, a
marriage which William had forbidden.

There was that bride-ale
That was many men's bale,

said the Saxon chronicler, and it was so indeed. The two chief
conspirators persuaded Earl Waltheof to join them, at least for the
moment, and their plan was to drive the king out of England and to
divide the kingdom between them into three great principalities, "for
we wish," the Norman historian Orderic makes them say, "to restore in
all respects the kingdom of England as it was formerly in the time of
King Edward," a most significant indication of the general opinion
about the effect of the Conquest, even if the words are not theirs.

After the marriage the Earls of Norfolk and Hereford separated to raise
their forces and bring them together, when they believed they would be
too strong for any force which could be raised to act against them. They
counted on the unpopularity of the Normans and on the king's difficulties
abroad which would prevent his return to England. The king did not
return, but their other hope proved fallacious. Bishop Wulfstan of
Worcester and Abbot Ethelwy of Evesham, both English prelates, with some
Norman help, cut off the line of communication in the west, and Earl
Roger could not force his way through. The two justiciars, William of
Warenne and Richard of Bienfaite, after summoning the earls to answer in
the king's court, with the aid of Bishop Odo and the Bishop of Coutances,
who was also a great English baron, raised an army of English as well as
Normans, and went to meet Earl Ralph, who was marching westwards.
Something like a battle took place, but the rebels were easily defeated.
Ralph fled back to Norwich, but it did not seem to him wise to stop
there. Leaving his wife to stand a siege in the castle, he sailed off to
hasten the assistance which had already been asked for from the Danes. A
Danish fleet indeed appeared off the coast, but it did nothing beyond
making a plundering raid in Yorkshire. Emma, the new-made wife of Earl
Ralph, seems to have been a good captain and to have had a good garrison.
The utmost efforts of the king's forces could not take the castle, and
she at last surrendered only on favourable terms. She was allowed to
retire to the continent with her forces. The terms which were granted
her, as they are made known in a letter from Lanfranc to William, are
especially interesting as giving us one of the earliest glimpses we have
of that extensive dividing out of land to under-vassals, the process of
subinfeudation, which must already have taken place on the estates
granted to the king's tenants in chief. A clear distinction was made
between the men who were serving Ralph because they held land of him, and
those who were merely mercenaries. Ralph's vassals, although they were in
arms against Ralph's lord, the king, were thought to be entitled to
better terms, and they secured them more easily than those who served him
for money. Ralph and Emma eventually lived out the life of a generation
of those days, on Ralph's Breton estates, and perished together in the
first crusade.

Their fellow-rebels were less fortunate. Roger surrendered himself to be
tried by the king's court, and was condemned "according to the Norman
law," we are told, to the forfeiture of his estates and to imprisonment
at the king's pleasure. From this he was never released. The family of
William's devoted guardian, Osbern, and of his no less devoted friend,
William Fitz Osbern, disappears from English history with the fall of
this imprudent representative, but not from the country. It has been
reserved for modern scholarship co prove the interesting fact of the
continuance for generations of the male line of this house, though in
minor rank and position, through the marriage of the son of Earl Roger,
with the heiress of Abergavenny in Wales.[12] The fate of Waltheof was
even more pathetic because less deserved. He had no part in the actual
rebellion. Whatever he may have sworn to do, under the influence of the
earls of stronger character, he speedily repented and made confession to
Lanfranc as to his spiritual adviser. Lanfranc urged him to cross at once
to Normandy and make his confession to the king himself. William received
him kindly, showed no disposition to regard the fault as a serious one,
and apparently promised him his forgiveness. Why, on his return to
England, he should have arrested him, and after two trials before his
court should have allowed him to be executed, "according to English law,"
we do not surely know. The hatred of his wife Judith, the king's niece,
is plainly implied, but is hardly enough to account for so radical a
departure from William's usual practice in this the only instance of a
political execution in his reign. English sympathy plainly took the side
of the earl. The monks of the abbey at Crowland, which he had favoured in
his lifetime, were allowed the possession of his body. Soon miracles were
wrought there, and he became, in the minds of monks and people, an
unquestioned martyr and saint.

This was the end of William's troubles in England which have any real
connexion with the Conquest. Malcolm of Scotland invaded Northumberland
once more, and harried that long-suffering region, but without result;
and an army of English barons, led by the king's son Robert, which
returned the invasion soon after, was easily able to force the king of
the Scots to renew his acknowledgment of subjection to England. The
failure of Walcher, Bishop of Durham, to keep his own subordinates in
order, led to a local riot, in which the bishop and many of his officers
and clergy were murdered, and which was avenged in his usual pitiless
style by the king's brother Odo. William himself invaded Wales with a
large force; received submissions, and opened the way for the extension
of the English settlements in that country. The great ambition of Bishop
Odo, and the increase of wealth and power which had come to him through
the generosity of his brother, led him to hope for still higher things,
and he dreamed of becoming pope. This was not agreeable to William, and
may even have seemed dangerous to him when the bishop began to collect
his friends and vassals for an expedition to Italy. Archbishop Lanfranc,
who had not found his brother prelate a comfortable neighbour in Kent,
suggested to the king, we are told, the exercise of his feudal rights
against him as his baron. The scene must have been a dramatic one, when
in a session of the curia regis William ordered his brother's arrest, and
when no one ventured to execute the order laid hands upon him himself,
exclaiming that he arrested, not the Bishop of Bayeux, but the Earl of
Kent. William must have had some strong reason for this action, for he
refused to consent to the release of his brother as long as he lived. At
one time what seemed like a great danger threatened from Denmark, in the
plans of King Canute to invade England with a vast host and deliver the
country from the foreigner. William brought over from Normandy a great
army of mercenaries to meet this danger, and laid waste the country
along the eastern coast that the enemy might find no supplies on landing;
but this Danish threat amounted to even less than the earlier ones, for
the fleet never so much as appeared off the coast. All these events are
but the minor incidents which might occur in any reign; the Conquest had
long been finished, and England had accepted in good faith her new
dynasty.

Much more of the last ten years of William's life was spent in Normandy
than in England. Revolts of unruly barons, attacks on border towns or
castles, disputes with the king of France, were constantly occupying him
with vexatious details, though with nothing of serious import. Most
vexatious of all was the conduct of his son Robert. With the eldest son
of William opens in English history a long line of the sons and brothers
of kings, in a few cases of kings themselves, who are gifted with popular
qualities, who make friends easily, but who are weak in character, who
cannot control men or refuse favours, passionate and selfish, hardly
strong enough to be violently wicked as others of the line are, but
causes of constant evil to themselves and their friends, and sometimes to
the state. And with him opens also the long series of quarrels in the
royal family, of which the French kings were quick to take advantage, and
from which they were in the end to gain so much. The ground of Robert's
rebellion was the common one of dissatisfaction with his position and his
father's refusal to part with any of his power in his favour. Robert was
not able to excite any real insurrection in Normandy, but with the aid of
his friends and of the French king he maintained a border war for some
time, and defended castles with success against the king. He is said
even, in one encounter, to have wounded and been on the point of slaying
his father. For some time he wandered in exile in the Rhine valley,
supported by gifts sent him by his mother, in spite of the prohibition of
her husband. Once he was reconciled with his father, only to begin his
rebellion again. When the end came, William left him Normandy, but people
thought at least that he did it unwillingly, foreseeing the evil which
his character was likely to bring on any land over which he ruled.

The year 1086 is remarkable for the formation of one of the most unique
monuments of William's genius as a ruler, and one of the most instructive
sources of information which we have of the condition of England during
his reign. At the Christmas meeting of the court, in 1085, it was
decided, apparently after much debate and probably with special reference
to the general land-tax, called the Danegeld, to form by means of
inquiries, officially made in each locality, a complete register of the
occupied lands of the kingdom, of their holders, and of their values. The
book in which the results of this survey of England were recorded was
carefully preserved in the royal treasury, and soon came to be regarded
as conclusive evidence in disputed questions which its entries would
concern. Not very long after the record was made it came to be popularly
known as the Domesday Book, and a hundred years later the writer on the
English financial system of the twelfth century, the author of the
"Dialogue concerning the Exchequer,"[13] explained the name as meaning
that the sentences derived from it were final, and without appeal, like
those of the last great day.

An especially interesting feature of this survey is the method which was
employed to make it. Two institutions which were brought into England by
the Conquest, the king's missi and the inquest, the forerunners of the
circuit judge and of the jury, were set in motion for this work; and the
organization of the survey is a very interesting foreshadowing of the
organization which a century later William's great-grandson was to give
to our judicial system in features which still characterize it, not
merely in England but throughout great continents of which William never
dreamed. Royal commissioners, or missi, were sent into each county. No
doubt the same body of commissioners went throughout a circuit of
counties. In each the county court was summoned to meet the
commissioners, just as later it was summoned to meet the king's justice
on his circuit. The whole "county" was present to be appealed to on
questions of particular importance or difficulty if it seemed necessary,
but the business of the survey as a rule was not done by the county
court. Each hundred was present by its sworn jury, exactly as in the
later itinerant justice court, and it was this jury which answered on
oath the questions submitted to it by the commissioners, exactly again as
in the later practice. Their knowledge might be reinforced, or their
report modified, by evidence of the men of the vill, or other smaller
sub-division of the county, who probably attended as in the older county
courts, and occasionally by the testimony of the whole shire; but in
general the information on which the survey was made up was derived from
the reports of the hundred juries. The questions which were submitted to
these juries show both the object of the survey and its thorough
character. They were required to tell the name of each manor and the name
of its holder in the time of King Edward and at the time of the inquiry;
the number of hides it contained; the number of ploughs employed in the
cultivation of the lord's domain land, and the number so used on the
lands held by the lord's men,--a rough way of determining the amount of
land under cultivation. Then the population of the manor was to be given
in classes: freemen and sokemen; villeins, cotters, and serfs; the amount
of forest and meadow; the number of pastures, mills, and fish-ponds; and
what the value of the manor was in the time of King Edward, at the date
of its grant by King William, and at the time of the inquiry. In some
cases evidently the jurors entered into such details of the live stock
maintained by the manor as to justify the indignant words of the Saxon
chronicler, that not "an ox nor a cow nor a swine was left that was not
set down in his writing."

The object of all this is plain enough. It was an assessment of the
property of the kingdom for purposes of taxation. The king wished to find
out, as indeed we are told in what may be considered a copy or an
abstract of the original writ directing the commissioners as to their
inquiries, whether he could get more from the kingdom in taxes than he
was then getting. But the record of this inquest has served far different
purposes in later times. It is a storehouse of information on many sides
of history, personal, family, geographical, and especially economic. It
tells us much also of institutions, but less than we could wish, and less
than it would have told us if its purpose had been less narrowly
practical. Indeed, this limiting of the record to a single definite
purpose, which was the controlling interest in making it, renders the
information which it gives us upon all the subjects in which we are now
most interested fragmentary and extremely tantalizing, and forces us to
use it with great caution. It remains, however, even with this
qualification, a most interesting collection of facts, unique in all the
Middle Ages, and a monument to the practical genius of the monarch who
devised it.

On August 1 of the same year in which the survey was completed, in a
great assembly on Salisbury Plain, an oath of allegiance to the king was
taken by all the land-holding men of England, no matter of whom they
held. This has been represented as an act of new legislation of great
institutional importance, but the view cannot be maintained. It is
impossible to suppose that all land-owners were present or that such an
oath had not been generally taken before; and the Salisbury instance was
either a renewal of it such as was occasionally demanded by kings of this
age, or possibly an emphatic enforcement of the principle in cases where
it had been neglected or overlooked, now perhaps brought to light by the
survey.

Already in 1083 Queen Matilda had died, to the lasting and sincere grief
of her husband; and now William's life was about to end in events which
were a fitting close to his stormy career. Border warfare along the
French boundary was no unusual thing, but something about a raid of the
garrison of Mantes, into Normandy, early in 1087, roused William's
especial anger. He determined that plundering in that quarter should
stop, and reviving old claims which had long been dormant he demanded the
restoration to Normandy of the whole French Vexin, of which Mantes was
the capital city. Philip treated his claims with contempt, and added a
coarse jest on William's corpulence which roused his anger, as personal
insults always did, to a white heat. The land around Mantes was cruelly
laid waste by his orders, and by a sudden advance the city was carried
and burnt down, churches and houses together. The heat and exertion of
the attack, together with an injury which he received while riding
through the streets of the city, by being thrown violently against the
pummel of his saddle by the stumbling of his horse, proved too much for
William in his physical condition, and he was carried back to Rouen to
die after a few weeks.

A monastic chronicler of a little later date, Orderic Vitalis, gives us a
detailed account of his death-bed repentance, but it was manifestly
written rather for the edification of the believer than to record
historical fact. It is interesting to note, however, that while William
is made to express the deepest sorrow for the numerous acts of wrong
which were committed in the process of the Conquest of England, there is
no word which indicates any repentance for the Conquest itself or belief
on William's part that he held England unjustly. He admits that it did
not come to him from his fathers, but the same sentence which contains
this admission affirms that he had gained it by the favour of God. It has
been strongly argued from these words, and from others like them, which
are put into the mouth of William later in this dying confession, when he
comes to dispose of his realms and treasures, that William was conscious
to himself that he did not possess any right to the kingdom of England
which he could pass on hereditarily to his heirs. These words might
without violence be made to yield this meaning, and yet it is impossible
to interpret them in this way on any sound principle of criticism,
certainly not as the foundation of any constitutional doctrine. There is
not a particle of support for this interpretation from any other source;
everything else shows that his son William succeeded him in England by
the same right and in the same way that Robert did in Normandy. William
speaks of himself in early charters, as holding England by hereditary
right. He might be ready to acknowledge that it had not come to him by
such right, but never that once having gained it he held it for himself
and his family by any less right than this. The words assigned to William
on his death-bed should certainly be interpreted by the words of the same
chronicler, after he has finished the confession; and these indicate some
doubt on William's part as to the effect of his death on the stability of
his conquest in England, and his great desire to hasten his son William
off to England with directions to Lanfranc as to his coronation before
the news of his own death should be spread abroad. They imply that he is
not sure who may actually become king in the tumults which may arise when
it becomes known that his own strong rule is ended; that rests with God:
but they express no doubt of the right of his heirs, nor of his own right
to determine which one among them shall succeed him.

With reluctance, knowing his disposition, William conceded Normandy to
Robert. The first-born son was coming to have special rights. More
important in this case was the fact that Robert's right to Normandy had
been formally recognized years before, and that recognition had never
been withdrawn. The barons of the duchy had sworn fealty to him as his
father's successor, and there was no time to put another heir in his
place, or to deal with the opposition that would surely result from the
attempt. William was his father's choice for England, and he was
despatched in all haste to secure the crown with the aid of Lanfranc. To
Henry was given only a sum of money, joined with a prophecy that he
should eventually have all that the king had had, a prophecy which was
certainly easy after the event, when it was written down, and which may
not have been difficult to a father who had studied carefully the
character of his sons. William was buried in the church of St. Stephen,
which he had founded in Caen, and the manner in which such foundations
were frequently made in those days was illustrated by the claim, loudly
advanced in the midst of the funeral service, that the land on which the
participants stood had been unjustly taken from its owners for the
Conqueror's church. It was now legally purchased for William's burial
place. The son, who was at the moment busy securing his kingdom in
England, afterwards erected in it a magnificent tomb to the memory of his
father.

[9] Round, Victoria History of Hampshire, i. 412-413. But See
F. Baring in Engl. Hist. Rev. xvi. 427-438 (1901).

[10] Orderic Vitalis, ii. 260.

[11] Lanfranc, Opera (ed. Giles), i. 64.

[12] Round, Peerage Studies, pp. 181 ff.

[13] Dialogus de Scaccario, i. 16 (ed. Hughes, p. 108).

CHAPTER IV

FEUDALISM AND A STRONG KING

William, the second son of the Conqueror, followed with no filial
compunction his father's command that he should leave his death-bed and
cross the channel at once to secure the kingdom of England. At the port
of embarkation he learned that his father had died, but he did not turn
back. Probably the news only hastened his journey, if this were possible.
In England he went first to Winchester to get possession of his father's
great treasure, and then to Canterbury with his letter to Lanfranc.
Nowhere is there any sign of opposition to his succession, or of any
movement in favour of Robert, or on Robert's part, at this moment. If the
archbishop had any doubts, as a man of his good judgment might well have
had, knowing the new king from his boyhood, they were soon quieted or he
resolved to put them aside. He had, indeed, no alternative. There is
nothing to indicate that the letter of his dying master allowed him any
choice, nor was there any possible candidate who gave promise of a better
reign, for Lanfranc must have known Robert as well as he knew William.
Together they went up to London, and on September 26, 1087, hardly more
than two weeks after he left his father's bedside, William was crowned
king by Lanfranc. The archbishop took of him the customary oath to rule
justly and to defend the peace and liberty of the Church, exacting a
special promise always to be guided by his advice; but there is no
evidence of any unusual assembly in London of magnates or people, of any
negotiations to gain the support of persons of influence, or of any
consent asked or given. The proceedings throughout were what we should
expect in a kingdom held by hereditary right, as the chancery of the
Conqueror often termed it, and by such a right descending to the heir.
This appearance may possibly have been given to these events by haste and
by the necessity of forestalling any opposition. Men may have found
themselves with a new king crowned and consecrated as soon as they
learned of the death of the old one; but no objection was ever made.
Within a few months a serious insurrection broke out among those who
hoped to make Robert king, but no one alleged that William's title was
imperfect because he had not been elected. If the English crown was held
by the people of the time to be elective in any sense, it was not in the
sense which we at present understand by the word "constitutional."

Immediately after the coronation, the new king went back to Winchester to
fulfil a duty which he owed to his father. The great hoard which the
Conqueror had collected in the ancient capital was distributed with a
free hand to the churches of England. William II was as greedy of money
as his father. His exactions pressed even more heavily on the kingdom,
and the Church believed that it was peculiarly the victim of his
financial tyranny, but he showed no disposition to begrudge these
benefactions for the safety of his father's soul. Money was sent to each
monastery and church in the kingdom, and to many rich gifts of other
things, and to each county a hundred pounds for distribution to the poor.

Until the following spring the disposition of the kingdom which Lanfranc
had made was unquestioned and undisturbed. William II wore his crown at
the meeting of the court in London at Christmas time, and nothing during
the winter called for any special exertion of royal authority on his
part. But beneath the surface a great conspiracy was forming, for the
purpose of overthrowing the new king and of putting his brother Robert in
his place. During Lent the movers of this conspiracy were especially
active, and immediately after Easter the insurrection broke out. It was
an insurrection in which almost all the Norman barons of England took
part, and their real object was the interest neither of king nor of
kingdom, but only their own personal and selfish advantage. A purely
feudal insurrection, inspired solely by those local and separatist
tendencies which the feudal system cherished, it reveals, even more
clearly than the insurrection of the Earls of Hereford and Norfolk under
William I, the solid reserve of strength in the support of the nation
which was the only thing that sustained the Norman kingship in England
during the feudal age.

The writers upon whom we depend for our knowledge of these events
represent the rebellious barons as moved by two chief motives. Of these
that which is put forward as the leading motive is their opposition to
the division of the Norman land into two separate realms, by the
succession of the elder brother in Normandy and of the younger in
England. The fact that these barons held fiefs in both countries, and
under two different lords, certainly put them in an awkward position, but
in one by no means uncommon throughout the feudal world. A suzerain of
the Norman type, however, in the event of a quarrel between the king and
the duke, could make things exceedingly uncomfortable for the vassals who
held of both, and these men seem to have believed that their divided
allegiance would endanger their possessions in one land or the other.
They were in a fair way, they thought, to lose under the sons the
increase of wealth and honours for which they had fought under the
father. A second motive was found in the contrasted characters of the two
brothers. Our authorities represent this as less influential than the
first, but the circumstances of the case would lead us to believe that it
had equal weight with the barons. William they considered a man of
violence, who was likely to respect no right; Robert was "more
tractable." That Robert was the elder son, that they had already sworn
allegiance to him, while they owed nothing to William, which are
suggested as among their motives, probably had no real influence in
deciding their action. But the other two motives are so completely in
accord with the facts of the situation that we must accept them as giving
the reasons for the insurrection. The barons were opposed to the
separation of the two countries, and they wished a manageable suzerain.

The insurrection was in appearance an exceedingly dangerous one. Almost
every Norman baron in England revolted and carried his vassals with him.
Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, the king's uncle, was the prime mover in the
affair. He had been released from his prison by the Conqueror on his
death-bed, and had been restored by William II to his earldom of Kent;
but his hope of becoming the chief counsellor of the king, as he had
become of Robert in Normandy, was disappointed. With him was his brother,
Robert of Cornwall, Count of Mortain. The other great baron-bishop of the
Conquest, Geoffrey of Coutances, was also in insurrection, and with him
his nephew, Robert of Mowbray, Earl of Northumberland. Another leading
rebel was Roger, Earl of Shrewsbury, with his three sons, the chief of
whom, Robert of Belleme, was sent over from Normandy by Duke Robert, with
Eustace of Boulogne, to aid the insurrection in England until he should
himself be able to cross the channel. The treason of one man, William of
St. Calais, Bishop of Durham, was regarded by the English writers as
particularly heinous, if indeed we are right in referring their words to
him and not to Bishop Odo; it is at least evident from the sequel that
the king regarded his conduct in that light. The reason is not altogether
clear, unless it be that the position of greatest influence in England,
which Bishop Odo had desired in vain, had been given him by the king.
Other familiar names must be added to these: William of Eu, Roger of
Lacy, Ralph of Mortimer, Roger Bigod, Hugh of Grantmesnil. On the king's
side there were few Norman names to equal these: Hugh of Avranches, Earl
of Chester, William of Warenne, and of course the vassals of the great
Archbishop Lanfranc. But the real strength of the king was not derived
from the baronial elements. The castles in most of the great towns
remained faithful, and so did nearly all the bishops and the Church as a
whole. But the weight which turned the scale and gave the decision to the
king, was the support of the great mass of the nation, of the English as
opposed to the Norman.

For so great a show of strength, the insurrection was very short-lived,
and it was put down with almost no fighting. The refusal of the barons to
come to the Easter court, April 14, was their first overt act of
rebellion, though it had been evident in March that the rebellion was
coming, and before the close of the summer confiscation or amnesty had
been measured out to the defeated rebels. We are told that the crown was
offered to Robert and accepted by him, and great hopes were entertained
of decisive aid which he was to send; but nothing came of it. Two sieges,
of Pevensey castle and of Rochester castle, were the most important
military events. There was considerable ravaging of the country by the
rebels in the west, and some little fighting there. The Bishop of
Coutances and his nephew seized Bristol and laid waste the country about,
but were unsuccessful in their siege of Ilchester. Roger of Lacy and
others collected a force at Hereford, and advanced to attack Worcester,
but were beaten off by the Norman garrison and the men of Bishop
Wulfstan. Minor incidents of the same kind occurred in Gloucestershire,
Leicestershire, Norfolk, and the north. But the decisive events were in
the south-east, in the operations of the king against his uncle Odo. At
London William called round him his supporters, appealing especially to
the English, and promising to grant good laws, to levy no unjust taxes,
and to allow men the freedom of their woods and of hunting. With an army
which did not seem large, he advanced against Rochester, where the Bishop
of Bayeux was, to strike the heart of the insurrection.

Tunbridge castle, which was held for Odo, was first stormed, and on the
news of this Odo thought it prudent to betake himself to Pevensey, where
his brother, Robert of Mortain, was, and where reinforcements from Robert
of Normandy would be likely to land. William at once turned from his
march to Rochester and began the siege of Pevensey. The Norman
reinforcements which Robert finally sent were driven back with great
loss, and after some weeks Pevensey was compelled to surrender. Bishop
Odo agreed to secure the surrender of Rochester, and then to retire from
England, only to return if the king should send for him. But William
unwisely sent him on to Rochester with a small advance detachment, to
occupy the castle, while he himself followed more slowly with the main
body. The castle refused to surrender. Odo's expression of face made
known his real wishes, and was more convincing than his words. A sudden
sally of the garrison overpowered his guards, and the bishop was carried
into the castle to try the fortune of a siege once more. For this siege
the king again appealed to the country and called for the help of all
under the old Saxon penalty of the disgraceful name of "nithing." The
defenders of the castle suffered greatly from the blockade, and were soon
compelled to yield upon such terms as the king pleased, who was with
difficulty persuaded to give up his first idea of sending them all to the
gallows.

The monk Orderic Vitalis, who wrote an account of these events a
generation after they occurred, was struck with one characteristic of
this insurrection, which the careful observer of any time would hardly
fail to notice. He says: "The rebels, although they were so many and
abundantly furnished with arms and supplies, did not dare to join battle
with the king in his kingdom." It was an age, to be sure, when wars were
decided less by fighting in the open field than by the siege and defence
of castles; and yet the collapse of so formidable an insurrection as
this, after no resistance at all in proportion to its apparent fighting
strength, is surely a significant fact. To notice here but one inference
from it, it means that no one questioned the title of William Rufus to
the throne while he was in possession. Though he might be a younger son,
not elected, but appointed by his father, and put into the kingship by
the act of the primate alone, he was, to the rebellious barons as to his
own supporters, the rightful king of England till he could be overthrown.

The insurrection being put down, a general amnesty seems to have been
extended to the rebels. The Bishop of Bayeux was exiled from England;
some confiscations were made, and some rewards distributed; but almost
without exception the leaders escaped punishment. The most notable
exception, besides Odo, was William of St. Calais, the Bishop of Durham.
For some reason, which does not clearly appear, the king found it
difficult to pardon him. He was summoned before the king's court to
answer for his conduct, and the account of the trial which followed in
November of this year, preserved to us by a writer friendly to the bishop
and present at the proceedings, is one of the most interesting and
instructive documents which we have from this time. William of St.
Calais, as the king's vassal for the temporalities of his bishopric, was
summoned before the king's feudal court to answer for breach of his
feudal obligations. William had shown, in one of the letters which he had
sent to the king shortly before the trial, that he was fully aware of
these obligations; and the impossibility of meeting the accusation was
perfectly clear to his mind. With the greatest subtlety and skill, he
sought to take advantage of his double position, as vassal and as bishop,
and to transfer the whole process to different ground. With equal skill,
and with an equally clear understanding of the principles involved,
Lanfranc met every move which he made.[14]

From the beginning the accused insisted upon the privileges of his order.
He would submit to a canonical trial only. He asked that the bishops
should appear in their pontificals, which was a request that they judge
him as bishops, and not as barons. Lanfranc answered him that they could
judge him well enough clad as they were. William demanded that his
bishopric should be restored to him before he was compelled to answer,
referring to the seizing of his temporalities by the king. Lanfranc
replied that he had not been deprived of his bishopric. He refused to
plead, however, until the point had been formally decided, and on the
decision of the court against him, he demanded the canonical grounds on
which they had acted. Lanfranc replied that the decision was just, and
that he ought to know that it was. He requested to be allowed to take
counsel with the other bishops on his answer, and Lanfranc explained that
the bishops were his judges and could not be his counsel, his answer
resting on a principle of the law necessary in the courts of public
assembly, one which gave rise to elaborate regulations in some feudal
countries. Bishop William finally refused to accept the judgment of the
court on several grounds, but especially because it was against the
canons; and Lanfranc explained at greater length than before, that he had
not been put on trial concerning his bishopric, but concerning his fief,
as the Bishop of Bayeux had been tried under William I. But all argument
was in vain. The bishop could not safely yield, and he insisted on his
appeal to Rome. On his side the king insisted on the surrender of the
bishop's castle, the last part of his fief which he still held, and was
sustained by the court in this demand. The bishop demurred, but at last
yielded the point to avoid arrest, and after considerable delay, he was
allowed to cross over to the continent. There he was welcomed by Robert
and employed in Normandy, but he never went any farther nor pushed his
appeal to Rome, which in all probability he had never seriously intended,
though there is evidence that the pope was disposed to take up his cause.
Throughout the case the king was acting wholly within his right,
regarding the bishop as his vassal; and Lanfranc's position in the trial
was in strict accordance with the feudal law.

This was the end of serious rebellion against King William Rufus. Seven
years later, in 1095, a conspiracy was formed by some of the barons who
had been pardoned for their earlier rebellion, which might have resulted
in a widespread insurrection but for the prompt action of William. Robert
of Mowbray, Earl of Northumberland, who had inherited the 280 manors of
his uncle, the Bishop of Coutances, and was now one of the most powerful
barons of the kingdom, had been summoned to the king's court, probably
because the conspiracy was suspected, since it was for a fault which
would ordinarily have been passed over without remark, and he refused to
appear. The king's hands were for the moment free, and he marched at once
against the earl. By degrees the details of the conspiracy came out. From
Nottingham, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was accompanying the march,
was sent back to Kent to hold himself in readiness at a moment's notice
to defend that part of England against an expected landing from Normandy.
This time it had been planned to make Stephen of Aumale, a nephew of the
Conqueror, king in William's place; but no Norman invasion occurred. The
war was begun and ended by the siege and surrender of Mowbray's two
castles of Tynemouth and Bamborough. In the siege of the latter, Mowbray
himself was captured by a trick, and his newly married wife was forced to
surrender the castle by the threat of putting out his eyes. The earl was
thrown into prison, where, according to one account, he was held for
thirty years. Treachery among the traitors revealed the names of the
leaders of the plot, and punishments were inflicted more generally than
in 1088, but with no pretence of impartiality. A man of so high rank and
birth as William of Eu was barbarously mutilated; one man of minor rank
was hanged; banishment and fines were the penalties in other cases.
William of St. Calais, who had been restored to his see, fell again under
the suspicion of the king, and was summoned to stand another trial, but
he was already ill when he went up to the court, and died before he could
answer the charges against him. There were reasons enough in the heavy
oppressions of the reign why men should wish to rebel against William,
but he was so fixed in power, so resolute in action, and so pitiless
towards the victims of his policy, that the forming of a dangerous
combination against him was practically impossible.

The contemporary historians of his reign tell us much of William's
personality, both in set descriptions and in occasional reference and
anecdote. It is evident that he impressed in an unusual degree the men of
his own time, but it is evident also that this impression was not so much
made by his genius as a ruler or a soldier, by the possession of the
gifts which a great king would desire, as by something in his spirit and
attitude towards life which was new and strange, something out of the
common in words and action, which startled or shocked men of the common
level and seemed at times to verge upon the awful. In body he was shorter
than his father, thick-set and heavy, and his red face gave him the name
Rufus by which he was then and still is commonly known. Much of his
father's political and military ability and strength of will had
descended to him, but not his father's character and high purpose. Every
king of those times thought chiefly of himself, and looked upon the state
as his private property; but the second William more than most. The money
which he wrung from churchman and layman he used in attempts to carry out
his personal ambitions in Normandy, or scattered with a free hand among
his favourites, particularly among the mercenary soldiers from the
continent, with whom he especially loved to surround himself, and whose
licensed plunderings added greatly to the burden and tyranny of his
reign. But the ordinary doings of a tyrant were not the worst things
about William Rufus. Effeminate fashions, vices horrible and unheard-of
in England, flourished at his court and threatened to corrupt the nation.
The fearful profanity of the king, his open and blasphemous defiance of
God, made men tremble, and those who were nearest to him testified "that
he every morning got up a worse man than he lay down, and every evening
lay down a worse man than he got up."

In the year after the suppression of the first attempt of the barons
against the king, but before other events of political importance had
occurred, on May 28, 1089, died Lanfranc, the great Archbishop of
Canterbury, after nearly nineteen years of service in that office. Best
of all the advisers of the first William, he was equally with him
conqueror of England, in that conquest of laws and civilization which
followed the mere conquest of arms. Not great, though famous as a
theologian and writer, his powers were rather of a practical nature. He
was skilful in the management of men; he had a keen appreciation of legal
distinctions, and that comprehensive sight at the same time of ends and
means which we call the organizing power. He was devoted to that great
reformation in the religious and ecclesiastical world which occurred
during his long life, but he was devoted to it in his own way, as his
nature directed. He saw clearly, for one thing, that the success of that
reformation in England depended on the maintenance of the strong
government of the Norman kings; and from his loyalty to them he never
swerved, serving them with wise counsel and with all the resources at his
command. Less of a theologian and idealist than his successor Anselm,
more of a lawyer and statesman, he could never have found himself, for
another thing, in that attitude of opposition to the king which fills so
much of his successor's pontificate.

As his life had been of constant service to England, his death was an
immediate misfortune. We cannot doubt the opinion expressed by more than
one of the writers of the next reign, that a great change for the worse
took place in the actions of the king after the death of Lanfranc. The
aged archbishop, who had been in authority since his childhood, who might
seem to prolong in some degree the reign or the influence of his father,
acted as a restraining force, and the true character of William expressed
itself freely only when this was removed. In another way also the death
of Lanfranc was a misfortune to England. It dates the rise to influence
with the king of Ranulf Hambard, whose name is closely associated with
the tyranny of Rufus; or if this may already have begun, it marks his
very speedy attainment of what seems to have been the complete control of
the administrative and judicial system of the kingdom. Of the early
history of Ranulf Flambard we know but little with certainty. He was of
low birth, probably the son of a priest, and he rose to his position of
authority by the exercise of his own gifts, which were not small. A
pleasing person, ingratiating manners, much quickness and ingenuity of
mind, prodigality of flattery, and great economy of scruples,--these were
traits which would attract the attention and win the favour of a man like
William II. In Ranulf Flambard we have an instance of the constantly
recurring historical fact, that the holders of absolute power are always
able to find in the lower grades of society the ministers of their
designs who serve them with a completeness of devotion and fidelity which
the master rarely shows in his own interest, and often with a genius
which he does not himself possess.

Our knowledge of the constitutional details of the reign either of
William I or William II is very incomplete, and it is therefore difficult
for us to understand the exact nature of the innovations made by Ranulf
Flambard. The chroniclers leave us no doubt of the general opinion of
contemporaries, that important changes had been made, especially in the
treatment of the lands of the Church, and that these changes were all in
the direction of oppressive exactions for the benefit of the king. The
charter issued by Henry I at the beginning of his reign, promising the
reform of various abuses of his brother's reign, confirms this opinion.
But neither the charter nor the chroniclers enable us to say with
confidence exactly in what the innovations consisted. The feudal system
as a system of military tenures and of judicial organization had
certainly been introduced by William the Conqueror, and applied to the
great ecclesiastical estates of the kingdom very early in his reign. That
all the logical deductions for the benefit of the crown which were
possible from this system, especially those of a financial nature, had
been made so early, is not so certain. In the end, and indeed before very
long, the feudal system as it existed in England became more logical in
details, more nearly an ideal feudalism, with reference to the rights of
the crown, than anywhere else in Christendom. It is quite within the
bounds of possibility that Ranulf Flambard, keen of mind, working under
an absolute king, whose reign was followed by the longer reign of another
absolute king, not easily forced to keep the promises of his coronation
charter, may have had some share in the logical carrying out of feudal
principles, or in their more complete application to the Church, which
would be likely to escape feudal burdens under a king of the character of
the first William. Indeed, such a complete application of the feudal
rights of the crown to the Church, the development of the so-called
regalian rights, was at this date incomplete in Europe as a whole, and
according to the evidence which we now have, the Norman in England was a
pioneer in that direction.

The loudest complaints of these oppressions have come down to us in
regard to Canterbury and the other ecclesiastical baronies which fell
vacant after the death of Lanfranc. This is what we should expect: the
writers are monks. It seems from the evidence, also, that in most cases
no exact division had as yet been made between those lands belonging to a
monastic bishop or an abbot, which should be considered particularly to
form the barony, and those which should be assigned to the support of the
monastic body. Such a division was made in time, but where it had not
been made before the occurrence of a vacancy, it was more than likely
that the monks were placed on very short commons, and the right of the
king to the revenues interpreted in the most ample sense. The charter of
Henry I shows that in the case of lay fiefs the rights of the king,
logically involved in the feudal system, had been stretched to their
utmost limit, and even beyond. It would be very strange if this were not
still more true in the case of ecclesiastical fiefs. The monks, we may be
sure, had abundant grounds for their complaints. But we should notice
that what they have in justice to complain of is the oppressive abuse of
real rights. The system of Ranulf Flambard, so far as we can determine
what it was, does not differ in its main features from that which was in
operation without objection in the time of Henry II. The vacant
ecclesiastical, like the vacant lay, fief fell back into the king's
domain. It is difficult to determine just what its legal status was then
considered to be, but it was perhaps regarded as a fief reverting on
failure of heirs. Certainly it was sometimes treated as only an escheated
or forfeited lay fief would be treated. Its revenues might be collected
by the ordinary machinery, as they had been under the bishop, and turned
into the king's treasury; or it might be farmed out as a whole to the
highest bidder. There could be no valid objection to this. If the legal
position which Lanfranc had so vigorously defended was correct, that a
bishop might be tried as a baron by a lay court and a lay process, with
no infringement of his ecclesiastical rights, then there could be no
defence against this further extension of feudal principles. Relief,
wardship, and escheat were perfectly legitimate feudal rights, and there
was no reason which the state would consider valid why they should not be
enforced in all fiefs alike. The case of the Bishop of Durham, in 1088,
had already established a precedent for the forfeiture of an
ecclesiastical barony for the treason of its holder, and in that case the
king had granted fiefs within that barony to his own vassals. Still more
clearly would such a fief return to the king's hands, if it were vacant.
But if the right was clear, it might still be true that the enforcement
of it was new and accompanied with great practical abuses. Of this much
probably we must hold Ranulf Flambard guilty.

The extension and abuse of feudal law, however, do not fill up the
measure of his guilt. Another important source of royal revenue, the
judicial system, was put under his control, and was forced to contribute
the utmost possible to the king's income. That the justiciarship was at
this time as well defined an office, or as regularly recognized a part of
the state machinery, as it came to be later, is hardly likely. But that
some officer should be clothed with the royal authority for a special
purpose, or in the absence of the king for general purposes, was not an
uncommon practice. In some such way as this Ranulf Flambard had been
given charge of the king's interests in the judicial system, and had much
to do by his activities in that position with the development of the
office of justiciar. Exactly what he did in this field is as uncertain as
in that of feudal law, though the one specific instance which we have on
record shows him acting in a capacity much like that of the later
itinerant justice. However this may be, the recorded complaints of his
oppressions as judge, though possibly less numerous and detailed than of
his mistreatment of the Church, are equally bitter. He was the despoiler
of the rich, the destroyer of the poor. Exactions already heavy and
unjust he doubled. Money alone decided cases in the courts. Justice and
the laws disappeared. The rope was loosened from the very neck of the
robber if he had anything of value to promise the king; while the popular
courts of shires and hundreds were forced to become engines of extortion,
probably by the employment of the sheriffs, who were allowed to summon
them, not according to the old practice, but when and where it suited
their convenience. The machinery of the state and the interpretation of
its laws were, in days like these, completely at the mercy of a tyrannous
king and an unscrupulous minister. No system of checks on absolute power
had as yet been devised; there were no means of expressing public
discontent, nor any form of appeal but insurrection, and that was
hopeless against a king so strong as Rufus. The land could only suffer
and wait, and at last rejoice that the reign was no longer. In the
meantime, from the beginning of Robert's rule in the duchy across the
channel, the condition of things there had been a standing invitation to
his brother to interfere. Robert is a fair example of the worst type of
men of the Norman-Angevin blood. Not bad in intention, and not without
abilities, he was weak with that weakness most fatal of all in times when
the will of the ruler gave its only force to law, the inability to say
no, the lack of firm resisting power. The whole eleventh century had been
nourishing the growth, in the favouring soil of feudalism, of the manners
and morals of chivalry. The generation to which William and Robert
belonged was more strongly influenced in its standards of conduct by the
ideals of chivalry than by any other ethical code, and both these princes
are examples of the superior power of these ideals. In the age of
chivalry no princely virtue was held of higher worth than that of
"largesse," the royal generosity which scattered gifts on all classes
with unstinted hand; but Robert's prodigality of gifts was greater than
the judgment of his own time approved, and, combined with the inability
to make himself respected or obeyed, which often goes with such
generosity, it was the source of most of his difficulties. His ideal
seemed to be that every man should have what he wanted, and soon it was
apparent that he had retained very little for himself.

The castles of Normandy were always open to the duke, and William the
Conqueror had maintained garrisons of his own in the most important of
them, to insure the obedience of their holders. The first move that was
made by the barons of Normandy, on the news of William's death, was to
expel these garrisons and to substitute others of their own. The example
was set by Robert of Belleme, the holder of a powerful composite lordship
on the south-west border and partly outside the duchy. On his way to
William's court, he heard of the duke's death, and he instantly turned
about, not merely to expel the ducal garrisons from the castles of his
own fiefs, but to seize the castles of his neighbours which he had reason
to desire, and some of these he destroyed and some he held for himself.
This action is typical of the influence of Robert's character on
government in Normandy. Contempt for the authority of the duke meant not
merely that things which belonged to him would be seized upon and his
rights denied, but also that the property and rights of the weak, and
even of those who were only a little weaker than their neighbours, were
at the mercy of the stronger.

Duke Robert's squandering of his resources soon brought him to a want of
ready money intolerable to a prince of his nature, and his mind turned at
once with desire to the large sum in cash which his father had left to
Henry. But Henry was not at all of the stamp of Robert. He was perfectly
clear headed, and he had no foolish notions about the virtue of
generosity. He preferred to buy rather than to give away. A bargain was
struck between them, hardly six months after their father's death, and
the transaction is characteristic of the two brothers. For three thousand
pounds of silver, Henry purchased what people of the time regarded as a
third of Robert's inheritance, the lordship of the Cotentin, with its
important castles, towns, and vassals. The chroniclers call him now Count
of the Cotentin, and he there practised the art of government for a time,
and, in sharp contrast to Robert, maintained order with a strong hand.
During the same summer of 1088, Henry crossed over to England to get
possession of the lands of his mother Matilda, which she had bequeathed
to him on her death. This inheritance he does not seem to have obtained,
at least not permanently; but there was no quarrel between him and
William at that time. In the autumn he returned to Normandy, taking with
him Robert of Belleme. Robert had been forgiven his rebellion by the
king, and so clear was the evidence that Henry and Robert of Belleme had
entered into some kind of an arrangement with King William to assist his
designs on Normandy, or so clear was it made to seem to Duke Robert, that
on their landing he caused them both to be arrested and thrown into
prison. On the news of this the Earl of Shrewsbury, the father of Robert
of Belleme, crossed over from England to the aid of his son, and a short
civil war followed, in the early part of the next year, in which the
military operations were favourable to the duke, but his inconstancy and
weakness of character were shown in his releasing Robert of Belleme at
the close of the war as if he had himself been beaten. Henry also was
soon released, and took up again his government of the Cotentin.

William may have felt that Robert's willingness to accept the crown of
England from the rebel barons gave him the right to take what he could
get in Normandy, though probably he was not particularly troubled by the
question of any moral justification of his conduct. Opportunity would be
for him the main consideration, and the growing anarchy in the duchy
furnished this. Private war was carried on without restraint in more than
one place, and though the reign of a weak suzerain was to the advantage
of the rapacious feudal baron, many of the class preferred a stronger
rule. The arguments also in favour of a union of the kingdom and the
duchy, which had led to the rebellion against William, would now, since
that attempt had failed, be equally strong against Robert. For William no
motive need be sought but that of ambition, nor have we much right to say
that in such an age the ambition was improper. The temptation which the
Norman duchy presented to a Norman king of England was natural and
irresistible, and we need only note that with William II begins that
determination of the English kings to rule also in continental dominions
which influences so profoundly their own history, and hardly less
profoundly the history of their island kingdom, for centuries to come. To
William the Conqueror no such question could ever present itself, but the
moment that the kingdom and the duchy were separated in different hands
it must have arisen in the mind of the king.

But if William did not himself care for any moral justification of his
plans, he must make sure of the support of his English vassals in such an
undertaking; and the policy of war against Robert was resolved upon in a
meeting of the court, probably the Easter meeting of 1090. But open war
did not begin at once. William contented himself for some months with
sending over troops to occupy castles in the north-eastern portion of
Normandy, which were opened to him by barons who were favourable to his
cause or whose support was purchased. The alarm of Robert was soon
excited by these defections, and he appealed to his suzerain, King Philip
I of France, for aid. If the policy of ruling in Normandy was natural for
the English king, that of keeping kingdom and duchy in different hands
was an equally natural policy for the French king. It is hardly so early
as this, however, that we can date the beginning of this which comes in
the end to be a ruling motive of the Capetian house. Philip responded to
his vassal's call with a considerable army, but the money of the king of
England quickly brought him to a different mind, and he retired from the
field, where he had accomplished nothing.

In the following winter, early in February of 1091, William crossed over
into Normandy to look after his interests in person. The money which he
was wringing from England by the ingenuity of Ranulf Flambard he
scattered in Normandy with a free hand, to win himself adherents, and
with success. Robert could not command forces enough to meet him in the
field, and was compelled to enter into a treaty with him, in which, in
return for some promises from William, he not merely accepted his
occupation of the eastern side of the duchy, which was already
accomplished, but agreed to a similar occupation by William of the
north-western corner.

Cherbourg and Mont-Saint-Michel, two of the newly ceded places, belonged
to the dominions which "Count" Henry had purchased of his brother, and
must be taken from him by force. William and Robert marched together
against him, besieged him in his castle of Mont-Saint-Michel, and
stripped him of his lordship. Robert received the lion's share of the
conquest, but William obtained what he wished. Henry was once more
reduced to the condition of a landless prince, but when William returned
to England in August of this year both his brothers returned with him,
and remained there for some time.

William had been recalled to England by the news that King Malcolm of
Scotland had invaded England during his absence and harried
Northumberland almost to Durham. Malcolm had already refused to fulfil
his feudal obligations to the new king of England, and William marched
against him immediately on his return, taking his two brothers with him.
At Durham Bishop William of St. Calais, who had found means to reconcile
himself with the king, was restored to his rights after an exile of three
years. The expedition to Scotland led to no fighting. William advanced
with his army to the Firth of Forth. Malcolm met him there with an army
of his own, but negotiations were begun and conducted for William by his
brother Robert, and for Malcolm by the atheling Edgar, whose expulsion
from Normandy had been one of the conditions of the peace between William
and Robert. Malcolm at last agreed to acknowledge himself the man of
William II, with the same obligations by which he had been bound to his
father, and the king returned to England, as he had gone, by way of
Durham. Very likely something in this expedition suggested to William
that the north-western frontier of England needed rectification and
defence. At any rate, early in the spring of the next year, 1092, he
marched against Carlisle, expelled Dolphin, son of the Gospatric of
William the Conqueror's time, who was holding it under Malcolm of
Scotland, built and garrisoned a castle there, and after his return to
the south sent a colony of English families to occupy the adjacent
country. This enlargement of the area of England was practically a
conquest from the king of Scotland, and it may have been, in violation of
the pledge which William had just given, to restore to Malcolm all his
former possessions. Something, at least, led to immediate complaints from
Malcolm, which were without avail, and a journey that he made by
invitation the next year, to confer with William at Gloucester, resulted
only in what he regarded as further humiliating treatment. On his return
to Scotland he immediately took arms, and again invaded Northumberland.
This, however, was destined to be the last of his incursions, for he was
killed, together with his eldest son, Edward, near Alnwick, on the
eastern coast. The news of the death of her husband and son at once
proved fatal to Queen Margaret. A reaction followed against English
influence in the state, which she had supported, and a conflict of
parties and a disputed succession gave to William an opportunity to
interfere in favour of candidates of his own, though with little real
success. At least the north of England was relieved of the danger of
invasion. This year was also marked by important advances in the conquest
of South Wales by the Norman barons of the country.

[14] Dugdale, Monasticon, ed. 1846, 1.244 ff--and Symeon of Durham,
Deinjusta Vexations (Rolls series), i. 170 ff.

CHAPTER V

WILLIAM RUFUS AND ANSELM

In following the history of Malcolm of Scotland we have passed by events
of greater importance which make the year 1093 a turning-point in the
reign of William Rufus. The appointment of Anselm to the archbishopric of
Canterbury divides the reign into two natural divisions. In the first
period William secures his hold on power, develops his tyrannous
administrative system and his financial extortions, begins his policy of
conquest in Normandy, forces Scotland to recognize his supremacy, and
rounds off his kingdom towards the north-west. The second period is more
simple in character, but its events are of greater importance. Apart from
the abortive rebellion of Robert of Mowbray, which has already been
narrated, William's authority is unquestioned. Flambard's machine appears
to run smoothly. Monks record their groans and give voice to their
horror, but the peace of the state is not disturbed, nor are precautions
necessary against any foreign enemy. Two series of events fill up the
history of the period, both of great and lasting interest. One is the
long quarrel between the king and the archbishop, which involve the
whole question of the relation between Church and State in the feudal
age; and the other is the king's effort to gain possession of Normandy,
the introductory chapter of a long history.

Early in Lent, 1093, or a little earlier, King William fell sick at a
royal manor near to Gloucester, and was carried in haste into that city.
There he lay during the rest of Lent, so ill that his death was expected
at any moment, and it was even reported that he had died. Brought face to
face with death, the terrors of the world to come seized hold of him. The
medieval sinner who outraged the moral sentiment of his time, as William
did, was sustained by no philosophical doubt of the existence of God or
belief in the evolutionary origin of ethics. His life was a reckless
defiance or a careless disregard of an almighty power, whose
determination and ability to punish him, if not bought off, he did not
question. The torments of a physical hell were vividly portrayed on all
occasions, and accepted by the highest as well as the lowest as an
essential part of the divine revelation. William was no exception to this
rule. He became even more shockingly defiant of God after his recovery
than he had been before. God, he declared to the Bishop of Rochester,
should never have in him a good man because of the evil which He had done
him. And God let him have what he wished, adds the pious historian,
according to the idea of good which he had formed. And yet, if he had
been allowed time for a death-bed repentance at the end of his life, he
would have yielded undoubtedly to the same vague terrors, and have made a
hasty bid for safety with gifts and promises. At any rate now, when the
nobles and bishops who came to visit him suggested that it was time for
him to make atonement for his evil deeds, he eagerly seized upon the
chance. He promised to reform his life, to protect the churches, and not
put them up any more for sale, to annul bad laws, and to decree good
ones; and bishops were sent to lay these promises on the altar. Some of
his good resolutions could only be carried out by virtue of a royal writ,
and an order was drawn up and sealed, commanding the release of
prisoners, the remission of debts due the crown, and the forgiving of
offences. Great was the rejoicing at these signs of reformation, and
prayers were, everywhere offered for so good a king, but when he had once
recovered, his promises were as quickly forgotten as the very similar
ones which he had made in the crisis of the rebellion of loss. William
probably still believed, when he found himself restored to health, that
nobody can keep all his promises, as he had answered when Lanfranc
remonstrated with him on the violation of his coronation pledges. Before
his recovery, however, he took one step in the way of reformation from
which he did not draw back. He appointed a new Archbishop of Canterbury.
It was the fear of death alone which wrung this concession from the king,
and it shows a clear consciousness on his part of the guilt of retaining
the archbishopric in his hands. Only a few weeks earlier, at the meeting
of the Christmas court, when the members had petitioned that he would be
graciously pleased to allow prayers to be offered that he might be led to
see the wrong which he was doing, he had answered with contempt, "Pray as
much as you like; I shall do what I please. Nobody's praying is going to
change my mind." Now, however, he was praying himself, and anxious to get
rid of this guilt. The man whom all England with one voice declared to be
the ideal archbishop was at hand, and the king besought him most
earnestly to accept the appointment, and so to aid him in his endeavour
to save his soul.

This man was Anselm, now abbot of the famous monastery of Bec, where
Lanfranc had been at one time prior. Born sixty years before, at Aosta,
in the kingdom of Burgundy, in the later Piedmont, he had crossed into
France, like Lanfranc, led by the desire of learning and the religious
life. Finally he had become a monk at Bec, and had devoted himself to
study and to theological writing. Only with great reluctance, and always
imperfectly, did he attend to the administrative duties which fell to him
as he was made first prior and then abbot of the monastery. His cast of
mind was wholly metaphysical, his spirit entirely of the cloister and the
school. The monastic life, free from the responsibilities of office,
exactly suited him, and he was made for it. When all England was
importuning him to accept the primacy, he shrank back from it with a
reluctance which was wholly genuine, and an obstinacy which belonged also
to his nature. He felt himself unfitted for the place, and he foresaw the
result. He likened his future relation with the king to that of a weak
old sheep yoked with an untamed bull. In all this he was perfectly right.
That harmony which had existed between Lanfranc and the Conqueror,
because each understood the other's position and rights and was
interested in his work, was never for a moment possible between Anselm
and William Rufus; and this was only partly due to the character of the
king. So wholly did the archbishop belong to another world than the
king's that he never appreciated the double position in which his office
placed him. One side of it only, the ecclesiastical, with its duties and
rights and all their logical consequences, he clearly saw. At the
beginning of his primacy, he seemed to understand, and he certainly
accepted, the feudal relationship in which he was placed to the king, but
the natural results of this position he never admitted. His mind was too
completely taken up with the other side of things; and with his fixedness
of purpose, almost obstinacy of character, and the king's wilfulness,
conflict was inevitable.

It was only with great difficulty that Anselm was brought to accept the
appointment. Being in England on a visit to Hugh, Earl of Chester, he had
been brought to the king's bedside when he fell sick, as the man best
able to give him the most certain spiritual comfort; and when William had
been persuaded of his guilt in keeping the primacy so long vacant, Anselm
was dragged protesting to the presence of the sick man, and his fingers
were partially forced open to receive the pastoral staff which William
extended to him. Then he was carried off, still protesting, to a church
near by, where the religious ceremonies usual on the appointment of a
bishop were performed. Still Anselm refused to yield to this friendly
violence. He returned immediately to the king, predicted his recovery,
and declared that he had not accepted the primacy, and did not accept it,
in spite of all that had been done. For some reason, however, William
adhered to this much of his reformation. He gave order for the immediate
transfer to his appointee of all that pertained to the archbishopric, and
sent to Normandy for the consent of the secular and ecclesiastical
superiors of Anselm, the duke and the Archbishop of Rouen, and of the
monks of his abbey. At length Anselm yielded, not because his judgment
had been changed as to the wisdom of the appointment, but sacrificing
himself rather, in the monastic spirit, to the call of Heaven.

It was near the end of September, however, before the new archbishop was
enthroned. Several matters had first to be arranged to the satisfaction
of Anselm, and among these were three conditions which he presented to be
agreed to by the king. William was probably ready to agree without
hesitation that he would take the archbishop as his guide and director in
religious matters, and equally ready to pay no attention to the promise
afterward. A more difficult condition was, that all the lands which had
belonged to the church of Canterbury at Lanfranc's death should be
restored, including, evidently, certain lands which William had granted
to his own men. This condition would show that the king had treated the
archbishopric as a forfeited fief, and that its lands had been alienated
on terms unfavourable to the Church. William hesitated long on this
condition, and tried to persuade Anselm to waive it; but the letters of
the future archbishop show that his conscience was deeply engaged and
would not permit him to agree to anything that would impoverish his see,
and the king must have yielded in the end. The third condition was, that
Anselm should be allowed to continue in the obedience of Pope Urban II,
whom he had already acknowledged in Normandy. This must also have been a
disagreeable condition to the king. The divided state of Christendom,
into which it had been thrown by the conflict between the pope and the
emperor on the question of investitures, was favourable to that
autocratic control of the Church which William Rufus desired to maintain.
He had no wish to decide between the rival popes, nor was he willing to
modify his father's rule that no pope should be recognized by the English
Church without the king's consent. We are not told that in this
particular he made anything more than a vague promise to do what he ought
to do, but very likely Anselm may have regarded this point more as a
warning to the king of his own future action than as a necessary
condition of his acceptance of the archbishopric.

All these preliminaries being settled in some form satisfactory to
Anselm, he yielded to the universal desire, and was enthroned on
September 25. The rejoicing of this day at Canterbury was not allowed to
go on, however, without interruption by the king. Ranulf Flambard
appeared in person and served a writ on the new archbishop, summoning him
to answer in some suit in the king's court. The assurance of Anselm's
friend and biographer, Eadmer, that this action concerned a matter wholly
within the province of the Church, we can hardly accept as conclusive
evidence of the fact; but Anselm was certainly right in regarding such an
act on this day as foreboding greater troubles to come. On December 4,
Anselm was consecrated at an assembly of almost all the bishops of
England, including Thomas, Archbishop of York. The occasion is noteworthy
because the Archbishop of York interrupted the proceedings to object to
the term "metropolitan of all Britain," applied to the church of
Canterbury, calling attention to the fact that the church of York was
known to be metropolitan also. The term primate was at once substituted
for that of metropolitan, since the archbishops of Canterbury did not
claim the right to exercise an administrative authority within the see of
York.

It is interesting to notice, in view of the conflict on investitures
which was before long to begin in England, and which had already been for
years so bitterly fought upon the continent, that all these events
happened without the slightest questioning on the part of any one of the
king's sole right to dispose of the highest see of the realm as he
pleased. There was no suggestion of the right of election, no objection
to lay investiture, no protest from any one. Anselm accepted investiture
with the staff from the hand of the king without remark. He acknowledged
his feudal relation to him, swore fealty to him as a vassal,[15] and was
ready to perform his obligations of feudal service, at least upon his own
interpretation of their extent. A little later, in 1095, after the first
serious conflict between himself and the king, when the papal legate in
England took of him his oath of fealty to the pope, the oath contained the
usual Norman clause reserving his fealty to the king. A clause in the
bishop's oath to the pope so unusual as this could not have passed in
that age without notice. It occasioned instant criticism from strict
ecclesiastics on the continent, and it must have been consciously inserted
by Anselm and consciously accepted by the legate. Such facts as these,
combined with the uncompromising character of Anselm, are more striking
evidence of the absolutism of the Norman monarchy than anything which
occurred in the political world during this period.

Within a few days after his consecration, Anselm set out from Canterbury
to attend the Christmas meeting of the king's court at Gloucester. There
he was well received by the king, but the most important business before
the court was destined to lead to the first breach between them. Robert
of Normandy had grown tired of his brother's long delay in keeping the
promises which he had made in the treaty of Caen. Now there appeared at
Gloucester a formal embassy from him, authorized to declare William
forsworn and faithless, and to renounce all peace and agreement with him
unless he held to the treaty or exculpated himself in due form. There
could be no hesitation about an answer to this demand. It is more than
likely that William himself, within a short time, would have sought for
some excuse to begin again his conquest of Normandy, if Robert had not
furnished him this one. War was at once resolved upon, and preparations
made for an immediate campaign. The most important preliminary question,
both for William and for England, was that of money, and on this question
the scruples of Anselm and the will of the king first came into
collision. Voluntary aids, donations of money for the special
undertakings or necessities of the king, were a feature of William's
financial management, though their voluntary character seems often to
have been more a matter of theory than of reality. If the sum offered was
not so large as the king expected, he refused to accept it and withdrew
his favour from the delinquent until he received the amount he thought
proper. Anselm was persuaded by his friends to conform to this custom,
and hoping that he might in this way secure the favour and support of the
king in his ecclesiastical plans, he offered him five hundred pounds of
silver. At first William was pleased with the gift and accepted it, but
his counsellors advised him that it was too small, and Anselm was
informed that it would not be received. The archbishop's attempt to
persuade William to take the money only called out an angry answer. "Keep
your own to yourself," the king said, "I have enough of mine;" and Anselm
went away rejoicing that now evil-minded men would have no occasion to
say that he had bought his office, and he promised the money to the poor.
The archbishop was acting here entirely within his legal rights, but it
was not an auspicious beginning of his pontificate. Within a few weeks
the prelates and nobles of England were summoned to meet again--at
Hastings, from which port the king intended to cross to Normandy. The
weather was for some weeks unfavourable, and during the delay the church
of the new abbey of Battle was dedicated; Robert Bloet, who had been
appointed Bishop of Lincoln while the king was in fear of death, was
consecrated, though Anselm himself had not as yet received his pallium
from the pope; and Herbert Losinga, Bishop of Thetford, who had bought
his bishopric from the king and afterwards, apparently in repentance, had
personally sought the confirmation of the pope, was suspended from his
office because he had left the realm without the permission of the king
and had sought from the unacknowledged Pope Urban the bishopric which the
king asserted his full right to confer. He afterwards recovered William's
favour and removed his see to Norwich. At Hastings, in a personal
interview with the king, Anselm sought permission to hold a synod of the
kingdom, which had not up to this time been allowed during the reign, and
remonstrated with him in the plainest language for keeping so many
monasteries without abbots while he used their revenues for wars and
other secular purposes. In both respects William bluntly refused to
change his conduct, and when Anselm sought through the bishops the
restoration of his favour, refused that also "because," he said, "I do
not know why I should grant it." When it was explained to Anselm that
this was a formula of the king's which meant that his favour was to be
bought, he refused on grounds of policy as well as of principle to
increase, or even to renew, his former offer. This seemed like a final
breach with the king. William's anger was great when he heard of Anselm's
decision. He declared that he would hate him constantly more and more,
and never would hold him for his spiritual father or a bishop. "Let him
go home as soon as he likes," he cried, "he need not wait any longer to
give his blessings to my crossing over" and Anselm departed at once from
Hastings.

On March 19, 1094, William at last crossed to Normandy. The campaign
which followed was without decisive results. He was no nearer the
conquest of the duchy at the end than at the beginning. Indeed, we can
hardly say that the campaign had an end. It died away by degrees, but no
formal peace was made, and the duchy came finally into the hands of
William, not by conquest, but by other means. On William's landing an
attempt was made to renew the peace at an interview between him and
Robert, but without avail. Then those who had signed the treaty of Caen
as guarantors, twelve barons for Robert and twelve for William, were
called upon to say who was acting in violation of the treaty. They
decided, apparently without disagreement, against William, but he refused
to be bound by their verdict. The war which followed was a typical feudal
war, the siege of castles, the capture of men and towns. Robert called in
once more his suzerain, Philip of France, to his aid, and captured two
important castles, that of Argentan towards the south, and that of La
Houlme in the north-west. William then took a step which illustrates
again the extent of his power and his arbitrary use of it. He ordered a
levy of ten thousand men from England to be sent him in Normandy, and
when they had assembled at Hastings, Ranulf Flambard, by the king's
orders we are told, took from them the ten shillings which each man had
been furnished for his expenses, and sent them home. Robert and Philip
were now marching against William at Eu, and it was probably by the
liberal use of this money that "the king of France was turned back by
craft and all the expedition dispersed." About the same time William sent
for his brother Henry to join him. Henry had reappeared in western
Normandy not long before, and had begun the reconstruction of his power
there. Invited by the inhabitants of Domfront to protect them against
Robert of Belleme, he had made that place a starting-point from which he
had recovered a considerable part of his earlier possessions. Now William
sent ships to bring him by sea to Eu, probably wishing to use his
military skill against their common enemy. For some reason, however, the
ships departed from their course, and on the last day of October he
landed at Southampton, where he stayed some weeks. On December 28,
William also returned to England, and in the spring, Henry was sent back
to Normandy with supplies of money to keep up the war against Robert.

The year 1094 had been a hard one for both England and Normandy. The
duchy had suffered more from the private wars which prevailed everywhere,
and which the duke made no effort to check, than from the invasion of
William. England in general had had peace, under the strong hand of the
king, but so heavy had been the burden of the taxation which the war in
Normandy had entailed that agriculture declined, we are told, and famine
and pestilence followed. In the west the Welsh had risen against the
Norman lords, and had invaded and laid waste parts of the English border
counties. In Scotland William's ally, Duncan, had been murdered, and his
uncle, Donald, who represented the Scottish national party, had been made
king in his place. William found difficulties enough in England to occupy
him for some time, particularly when, as was told above, the refusal of
Robert of Mowbray to appear at court in March revealed the plans of the
barons for another insurrection.

Before he could attempt to deal with any of these difficulties, however,
another question, more troublesome still, was forced upon the king. A few
weeks after his landing Anselm came to him and asked leave to go to Rome
to get his pallium from the pope. "From which pope?" asked the king.
Anselm had already given warning of the answer which he must make, and at
once replied, "From Urban." Here was joined an inevitable issue between
the king and the archbishop; inevitable, not because of the character of
the question but because of the character of the two men. No conflict
need have arisen upon this question. When Anselm had remonstrated with
the king on the eve of his Norman expedition, about the vacant abbeys
that were in his hands, William in anger had replied that Lanfranc would
never have dared to use such language to his father. We may be sure for
one thing, that Lanfranc would have dared to oppose the first William
with all his might, if he had thought the reason sufficient, but also
that his more practical mind would never have allowed him to regard this
question as important enough to warrant the evils that would follow in
the train of an open quarrel between king and primate. During the last
years of Lanfranc's life, at least from 1084, no pope had been formally
recognized in England. To Anselm's mind, however, the question was one of
vital importance, where delay would be the sacrifice of principle to
expediency. On the other hand, it seems clear to us, looking back on
these events, that William, from the strength of his position in England,
could have safely overlooked Anselm's personal recognition of Urban, and
could have tacitly allowed him even to get his pallium from the pope
without surrendering anything of his own practical control of the Church.
William, however, refused to take this course. Perhaps he had come to see
that a conflict with Anselm could not be avoided, and chose not to allow
him any, even merely formal, advantages. The student of this crisis is
tempted to believe, from the facts of this case, from the king's taking
away "the staff" from the Bishop of Thetford, if the words used refer to
anything more than a confiscation of his fief, and especially from his
steady refusal to allow the meeting of a national council, that William
had conceived the idea of an independent Church under his supreme control
in all that pertained to its government, and that he was determined to be
rid of an Archbishop of Canterbury, who would never consent to such a
plan.

Of the dispute which followed we have a single interesting and detailed
account, written by Eadmer who was in personal attendance on Anselm
through it all, but it is the account of a devoted partisan of the
archbishop which, it is clear, we cannot trust for legal distinctions,
and which is not entirely consistent with itself. According to this
narrative, William asserted that Anselm's request, as amounting to an
official recognition of one of the two popes, was an attack upon his
sovereignty as king. This Anselm denied,--he could not well appreciate
the point,--and he affirmed that he could at the same time be true to the
pope whom he had recognized and to the king whose man he was. This was
perfectly true from Anselm's point of view, but the other was equally
true from William's. The fundamental assumptions of the two men were
irreconcilable. The position of the bishop in a powerful feudal monarchy
was an impossible one without some such practical compromise of tacit
concessions from both sides, as existed between Lanfranc and William I.
Anselm desired that this question, whether he could not at the same time
preserve his fidelity to both pope and king, be submitted to the decision
of the king's court, and that body was summoned to meet at Rockingham
castle at an early date. The details of the case we cannot follow. The
king appears to have been desirous of getting a condemnation of Anselm
which would have at least the practical effect of vacating the
archbishopric, but he met with failure in his purpose, whatever it was,
and this it seems less from the resistance of the bishops to his will
than from the explicit refusal of the lay barons to regard Anselm as no
longer archbishop. The outcome of the case makes it clear that there was
in Anselm's position no technical violation of his feudal obligations to
the king. At last the actual decision of the question was postponed to a
meeting to be held on the octave of Whitsuntide, but in the meantime the
king had put into operation another plan which had been devised for
accomplishing his wish. He secretly despatched two clerks of his chapel
to Italy, hoping, so at least Anselm's biographer believed, to obtain, as
the price of his recognition of Urban, the deposition of Anselm by the
authority of the pope for whom he was contending. The opportunity was
eagerly embraced at Rome. A skilful and not over-scrupulous diplomatist,
Walter, Cardinal-Bishop of Albano, was immediately sent back to England
with the messengers of Rufus, doubtless with instructions to get as much
as possible from the king without yielding the real principle involved in
Anselm's case. In the main point Walter was entirely successful. The man
of violent temper is not often fitted for the personal conflicts of
diplomacy; at least in the strife with the papal legate the king came off
second best. It is more to be wondered at that a man of so acute a mind
as William of St. Calais, who was now one of the king's most intimate
advisers, did not demand better guarantees.

Cardinal Walter carefully abstained at first from any communication with
Anselm. He passed through Canterbury without the archbishop's knowledge;
he seemed to acquiesce in the king's view of the case. William believed
that everything was going as he wished, and public proclamation was made
that Urban was to be obeyed throughout his dominions. But when he pressed
for a deposition of Anselm, he found that this had not been included in
the bargain; nor could he gain, either from the legate or from Anselm,
the privilege of bestowing the pallium himself. He was obliged to yield
in everything which he had most desired; to reconcile himself publicly
with the archbishop, and to content himself with certain not unimportant
concessions, which the cardinal wisely yielded, but which brought upon
him the censure of the extreme Church party. Anselm promised to observe
faithfully the laws and customs of the kingdom; at this time also was
sworn his oath of fidelity to the pope, with the clause reserving his
fealty to the king; and Cardinal Walter formally agreed that legates
should be sent to England only with the consent of the king. But in the
most important points which concerned the conflict with the archbishop
the king had been defeated. Urban was officially recognized as pope, and
the legate entered Canterbury in solemn procession, bearing the pallium,
and placed it on the altar of the cathedral, from which Anselm took it as
if he had received it from the hands of the pope.

Inferences of a constitutional sort are hardly warranted by the character
of our evidence regarding this quarrel, but the facts which we know seem
to imply that even so powerful and arbitrary a king as William Rufus
could not carry out a matter on which his heart was so set as this
without some pretence of legal right to support him, at least in the case
of so high a subject as the Archbishop of Canterbury; and that the barons
of the kingdom, with the law on their side, were able to hold the king's
will in check. Certainly the different attitude of the barons in the
quarrel of 1097, where Anselm was clearly in the wrong, is very
suggestive.

Already before the close of this business the disobedience of Robert of
Mowbray had revealed to the king the plot against him, and a considerable
part of the summer of 1095 was occupied in the reduction of the
strongholds of the Earl of Northumberland. In October the king invaded
Wales in person, but found it impossible to reach the enemy, and retired
before the coming on of winter. In this year died the aged Wulfstan,
Bishop of Worcester, the last of the English bishops who survived the
Conquest. His bishopric fell into the hands of Flambard, and furnishes us
one of the best examples we have of his treatment of these fiefs. On the
first day of the next year died also William of St. Calais, Bishop of
Durham, who had once more fallen under the king's displeasure for some
reason, and who had been compelled to come up to the Christmas court,
though too ill to travel. He left incomplete his new cathedral of Durham,
which he had begun on a splendid scale soon after his return from exile
early in the reign, beginning also a new period in Norman architecture of
lighter and better-proportioned forms, with no sacrifice of the
impression of solid strength.

This year of 1096, which thus began for England with the death of one of
the ablest of her prelates, is the date of the beginning for Europe as a
whole of one of the most profound movements of medieval times. The
crusades had long been in preparation, but it was the resolution and
eloquence of Pope Urban which turned into a definite channel the strong
ascetic feeling and rapidly growing chivalric passion of the west, and
opened this great era. The Council of Clermont, at which had occurred
Urban's famous appeal and the enthusiastic vow of the crusaders, had been
held in November, 1095, and the impulse had spread rapidly to all parts
of France. The English nation had no share in this first crusade, and but
little in the movement as a whole; but its history was from the beginning
greatly influenced by it. Robert of Normandy was a man of exactly the
type to be swept away by such a wave of enthusiasm, and not to feel the
strength of the motives which should have kept him at home. His duty as
sovereign of Normandy, to recover the castles held by his brother, and to
protect his subjects from internal war, were to him as nothing when
compared with his duty to protect pious pilgrims to the tomb of Christ,
and to deliver the Holy Land from the rule of the infidel. William Rufus,
on the other hand, was a man to whom the motives of the crusader would
never appeal, but who stood ready to turn to his own advantage every
opportunity which the folly of his brother might offer. Robert's most
pressing need in such an undertaking was for money, and so much more
important did this enterprise seem to him than his own proper business
that he stood ready to deliver the duchy into the hands of his brother,
with whom he was even then in form at war for its possession, if he could
in that way obtain the necessary resources for his crusade. William was
as eager to get the duchy as Robert was to get the money, and a bargain
was soon struck between them. William carried over to Normandy 10,000
marks--the mark was two-thirds of a pound--and received from Robert, as a
pledge for the payment of the loan, the possession of the duchy for a
period of at least three years, and for how much longer we cannot now
determine with certainty, but for a period which was probably intended to
cover Robert's absence. The duke then set off at once on his crusade,
satisfied with the consciousness that he was following the plain path of
duty. With him went his uncle, Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, to die in Sicily in
the next winter.

William had bought the possession of Normandy at a bargain, but he did
not propose to pay for it at his own cost. The money which he had spent,
and probably more than that, he recovered by an extraordinary tax in
England, which excited the bitter complaints of the ecclesiastical
writers. If we may trust our interpretation of the scanty accounts which
have reached us, this money was raised in two ways, by a general land-tax
and by additional personal payments from the king's own vassals. By grant
of the barons of England a Danegeld of four shillings on the hide, double
the usual tax, was collected, and this even from the domain lands of the
Church, which it was asserted, though with doubtful truth, had always
been exempt. The clergy paid this tax, but entered formal protest against
it, probably in order to prevent, if possible, the establishment of a
precedent against their liberties. The additional payment suggested by
some of the chroniclers is to be seen in detail in the case of Anselm,
who regarded this as a reasonable demand on the part of the king, and
who, besides passing over to the treasury what he collected from his men,
made on advice a personal payment of 200 marks, which he borrowed from
the Canterbury monks on the security of one of his domain manors. Not
all the churches were so fortunate as to have the ready money in the
treasury, and in many cases ornaments and sacred utensils were
sacrificed, while the lay lords undoubtedly recovered their payments by
like personal auxilia from their men, until the second tax really
rested like the first upon the land. The whole formed a burden likely to
cripple seriously the primitive agriculture of the time, as we are told
that it did.

Having taken possession of Normandy, William returned to England at
Easter in 1097. The Welsh had been making trouble again, and the king
once more marched against them in person; but a country like Wales was
easily defended against a feudal army, and the expedition accomplished
little and suffered much, especially in the loss of horses. William
returned probably in no very amiable mood, and at once sent off a letter
to Anselm complaining that the contingent of knights which he had sent to
meet his obligation of service in the campaign was badly furnished and
not fit for its duties, and ordered him to be ready to do him right
according to the sentence of the king's court whenever he should bring
suit against him. To this letter Anselm paid no attention, and he
resolved to let the suit against him go by default, on the ground that
everything was determined in the court by the will of the king, and that
he could get no justice there. In taking this position, the archbishop
was putting himself in the wrong, for the king was acting clearly within
his legal rights; but this fact Anselm probably did not understand. He
could not enter into the king's position nor his own in relation to him,
but he might have remembered that two years before, for once at least,
the king had failed to carry through his will in his court.

The case came on for trial at the Whitsuntide court at Windsor, but
before anything was determined Anselm sent by certain barons to ask the
king's leave to go to Rome, which was at once refused. This action was
evidently not intended by Anselm as an appeal of the case to Rome, nor
was it so understood by the king; but for some reason the suits against
him were now dropped. Anselm's desire to visit Rome apparently arose from
the general condition of things in the kingdom, from his inability to
hold synods, to get important ecclesiastical offices filled, or to reform
the evils of government and morals which prevailed under William. In
other words, he found himself nominally primate of England and
metropolitan of the great province of Canterbury, but in reality with
neither power nor influence. Such a condition of things was intolerable
to a man of Anselm's conscientiousness, and he had evidently been for
some time coming to the conclusion that he must personally seek the
advice of the head of the Church as to his conduct in such a difficult
situation. He had now definitely made up his mind, and as the Bishop of
Winchester told him at this time, he was not easy to be moved from a
thing he had once undertaken. He repeated his request in August, and
again in October of the same year. On the last occasion William lost his
temper and threatened him with another suit in the court for his
vexatious refusal to abide by the king's decision. Anselm insisted on his
right to go. William pointed out to him, that if he was determined to go,
the result would be the confiscation of the archbishopric,--that is, of
the barony. Anselm was not moved by this. Then the bishops attempted to
show him the error of his ways, but there was so little in common between
their somewhat worldly position as good vassals of the king, and his
entire other-worldliness, that nothing was gained in this way. Finally,
William informed him that if he chose he might go, on the conditions
which had been explained to him,--that is, of the loss of all that he
held of the king. This was permission enough for Anselm, and he at once
departed, having given his blessing to the king.

No case could be more typical than this of the irreconcilable conflict
between Church and State in that age, irreconcilable except by mutual
concessions and compromise, and the willingness of either to stand partly
in the position of the other. If we look at the matter from the political
side, regarding the bishop as a public officer, as a baron in a feudally
organized state, the king was entirely right in this case, and fully
justified in what he did. Looking at the Church as a religious
institution, charged with a spiritual mission and the work of moral
reformation, we must consider Anselm's conduct justified, as the only
means by which he could hope to obtain freedom of action. Both were in a
very real sense right in this quarrel, and both were wrong. Not often
during the feudal period did this latent contradiction of rights come to
so open and plain an issue as this. That it did so here was due in part
to the character of the king, but in the main to the character of the
archbishop. Whether Lanfranc could have continued to rule the Church in
harmony with William Rufus is an interesting question, but one which we
cannot answer. He certainly would not have put himself legally in the
wrong, as Anselm did, and he would have considered carefully whether the
good to be gained for the cause of the Church from a quarrel with the
king would outweigh the evil. Anselm, however, was a man of the
idealistic type of mind, who believed that if he accepted as the
conditions of his work the evils with which he was surrounded, and
consented to use the tools that he found ready to his hand, he had made,
as another reformer of somewhat the same type once said of the
constitution of the United States in the matter of slavery, "a covenant
with death and an agreement with hell."

Anselm left England early in November, 1097, not to return during the
lifetime of William. If he had hoped, through the intervention of the
pope, to weaken the hold of the king on the Church of England, and to be
put in a position where he could carry out the reforms on which his heart
was set, he was doomed to disappointment. After a stay of some months at
Lyons, with his friend Archbishop Hugh, he went on to Rome, where he was
treated with great ceremonial honour by the pope, but where he learned
that the type of lofty and uncompromising independence which he himself
represented was as rare in the capital of the Christian world as he had
found it among the bishops of England. There, however, he learned a
stricter doctrine on the subject of lay investitures, of appointments to
ecclesiastical office by kings and princes, than he had yet held, so that
when he finally returned to England he brought with him the germs of
another bitter controversy with a king, with whom but for this he might
have lived in peace.

In the same month with Anselm, William also crossed to Normandy, but
about very different business. Hardly had he obtained possession of the
duchy when he began to push the claims of the duke to bordering lands, to
the French Vexin, and to the county of Maine, claims about which his
brother had never seriously concerned himself and which, in one case,
even his father had allowed to slumber for years. Robert had, indeed,
asserted his claim to Maine after the death of his father, and had been
accepted by the county; but a revolt had followed in 1190, the Norman
rule had been thrown off, and after a few months Elias of La Fleche, a
baron of Maine and a descendant of the old counts, had made himself
count. He was a man of character and ability, and the peace which he
established was practically undisturbed by Robert; but the second William
had no mind to give up anything to which he could lay a claim. He
demanded of the French king the surrender of the Vexin, and warned Elias,
who had taken the cross, that the holy errand of the crusade would not
protect his lands during his absence. War followed in both cases,
simultaneous wars, full of the usual incidents, of the besieging of
castles, the burning of towns, the laying waste of the open country; wars
in which the ruin of his peasantry was almost the only way of coercing
the lord. William's operations were almost all successful, but he died
without accomplishing all that he had hoped for in either direction. In
the Vexin he captured a series of castles, which brought him almost to
Paris; in Maine he captured Le Mans, lost it again, and finally recovered
its possession, but the southern part of the county and the castles of
Elias there he never secured.

In the year 1098 Magnus, king of Norway, had appeared for a moment with a
hostile fleet off the island of Anglesey. Some reason not certainly known
had brought him round Scotland, perhaps to make an attack on Ireland. He
was the grandson of the King Harold of Norway, who had invaded England on
the eve of the Norman Conquest and perished in the battle of Stamford
Bridge, and he had with him, it is said, a son of Harold of England: to
him the idea of a new invasion of England would not seem strange. At any
rate, after taking possession of the Isle of Man, he came to the help of
the Welsh against the earls, Hugh of Chester and Hugh of Shrewsbury, who
were beginning the conquest of Anglesey. The incident is noteworthy
because, in the brief fighting which occurred, the Earl of Shrewsbury was
slain. His death opened the way for the succession of his brother, Robert
of Belleme, to the great English possessions of their father in Wales,
Shropshire, and Surrey, to which he soon added by inheritance the large
holdings of Roger of Bully in Yorkshire and elsewhere. These
inheritances, when added to the lands, almost a principality in
themselves, which he possessed in southern Normandy and just over the
border in France, made him the most powerful vassal of the English king.
In character he had inherited far more from his tyrannous and cruel
mother, Mabel, daughter of William Talvas of Belleme, than from his more
high-minded father, Roger of Montgomery, the companion of the Conqueror.
As a vassal he was utterly untrustworthy, and he had become too powerful
for his own safety or for that of the king.

Some minor events of these years should be recounted. In 1097 William had
sent Edgar the atheling to Scotland with an army, King Donald had been
overthrown, and Edgar's nephew, himself named Edgar, with the support of
the English king, had been made king. In 1099 Ranulf Flambard received
the reward of his faithful services, and was made Bishop of Durham, in
some respects the most desirable bishopric in England. Greater prospects
still of power and dominion were opened to William a few months before
his death, by the proposition of the Duke of Aquitaine to pledge him his
great duchy for a sum of money to pay the expenses of a crusade. To add
to the lands he already ruled those between the Loire and the Garonne
would be almost to create a new monarchy in France and to threaten more
dangerously at this moment the future of the Capetian kingdom than did
two generations later the actual union of these territories and more
under the king of England.

But William was now rapidly approaching the term of his life. The
monastic chronicles, written within a generation or two later, record
many visions and portents of the time foreshadowing the doom which was
approaching, but these are to us less records of actual facts than
evidences of the impression which the character and government of the
king had made, especially upon the members of the Church. On August 2,
1100, William rode out to hunt in the New Forest, as was his frequent
custom. In some way, how we do not know, but probably by accident, he was
himself shot with an arrow by one of his company, and died almost
instantly. Men believed, not merely that he was justly cut off in his
sins with no opportunity for the final offices of the Church, but that
his violent death was an instance, the third already, of the doom which
followed his father's house because of the evil that was done in the
making of the Forest. The king's body was brought to Winchester, where it
was buried in the old minster, but without the ordinary funeral rites.
One of his companions that day, Walter Tirel, a French baron who had been
attracted to the service of the king by the prospect of rich reward which
it offered, was thought to have been responsible for his death, and he
fled in haste and escaped to his home; but he afterwards solemnly
declared, when there would have been no danger to himself in confession,
that it was not his arrow that slew the king, and whose it was will never
be known.

[15] Eadmer, Hist. Nov., p. 41.

CHAPTER VI

THE STRUGGLE FOR POWER

In the hunting party which William Rufus led out on August 2, 1100, to
his mysterious death in the New Forest, was the king's younger brother,
Henry. When the cry rang through the Forest that the king was dead, Henry
seized the instant with the quick insight and strong decision which were
marked elements of his genius. He rode at once for Winchester. We do not
even know that he delayed long enough to make sure of the news by going
to the spot where his brother's body lay. He rode at full speed to
Winchester, and demanded the keys of the royal treasury, "as true heir,"
says Ordesic Vitalis, one of the best historians of Henry's reign,
recording rather, it is probable, his own opinion than the words of the
prince. Men's ideas were still so vague, not yet fixed and precise as
later, on the subject of rightful heirship, that such a demand as
Henry's--a clear usurpation according to the law as it was finally to
be--could find some ground on which to justify itself; at least this,
which his historian suggests and which still meant much to English minds,
that he was born in the purple, the son of a crowned king.

But not every one was ready to admit the claim of Henry. Between him and
the door of the treasury William of Breteuil, who also had been of the
hunting party and who was the responsible keeper of the hoard, took his
stand. Against the demand of Henry he set the claim of Robert, the better
claim according even to the law of that day, though the law which he
urged was less that which would protect the right of the eldest born than
the feudal law regarding homage done and fealty sworn. "If we are going
to act legally," he said to Henry, "we ought to remember the fealty which
we have promised to Duke Robert, your brother. He is, too, the eldest
born son of King William, and you and I, my Lord Henry, have done him
homage. We ought to keep faith to him absent in all respects as if he
were present." He followed his law by an appeal to feeling, referring to
Robert's crusade. "He has been labouring now a long time in the service
of God, and God has restored to him, without conflict, his duchy, which as
a pilgrim he laid aside for love of Him." Then a strife arose, and a
crowd of men ran together to the spot. We can imagine they were not
merely men of the city, but also many of the king's train who must have
ridden after Henry from the Forest. Whoever they were, they supported
Henry, for we are told that as the crowd collected the courage of the
"heir who was demanding his right" increased. Henry drew his sword and
declared he would permit no "frivolous delay." His insistence and the
support of his friends prevailed, and castle and treasury were turned
over to him.[16]

This it was which really determined who should be king. Not that the
question was fully settled then, but the popular determination which
showed itself in the crowd that gathered around the disputants in
Winchester probably showed itself, in the days that followed, to be the
determination of England in general, and thus held in check those who
would have supported Robert, while Henry rapidly pushed events to a
conclusion and so became king. There is some evidence that, after the
burial of William, further discussion took place among the barons who
were present, as to whether they would support Henry or not, and that
this was decided in his favour largely by the influence of Henry of
Beaumont, Earl of Warwick, son of his father's friend and counsellor, the
Count of Meulan. But we ought not to allow the use of the word witan in
this connexion, by the Saxon chronicler, or of "election" by other
historians or by Henry himself, to impose upon us the belief in a
constitutional right of election in the modern sense, which could no more
have existed at that time than a definite law of inheritance. In every
case of disputed succession the question was, whether that one of the
claimants who was on the spot could secure quickly enough a degree of
support which would enable him to hold the opposition in check until he
became a crowned king. A certain amount of such support was indispensable
to success. Henry secured this in one way, Stephen in another, and John
again in a third. In each case, the actual events show clearly that a
small number of men determined the result, not by exercising a
constitutional right of which they were conscious, but by deciding for
themselves which one of the claimants they would individually support.
Some were led by one motive, and some by another. In Henry's case we
cannot doubt that the current of feeling which had shown itself in
Winchester on the evening of the king's death had a decisive influence on
the result, at least as decisive as the early stand of London was
afterwards in Stephen's case.

Immediately, before leaving Winchester, Henry performed one royal act of
great importance to his cause, and skilfully chosen as a declaration of
principles. He appointed William Giffard, who had been his brother's
chancellor, Bishop of Winchester. This see had been vacant for nearly
three years and subject to the dealings of Ranulf Flambard. The immediate
appointment of a bishop was equivalent to a proclamation that these
dealings should now cease, that bishoprics should no longer be kept
vacant for the benefit of the king, and it was addressed to the Church,
the party directly interested and one of the most powerful influences in
the state in deciding the question of succession. The speed with which
Henry's coronation was carried through shows that the Church accepted his
assurances.

There was no delay in Winchester. William was killed on the afternoon of
Thursday, August 2; on Sunday, Henry was crowned in Westminster, by
Maurice, Bishop of London. Unhesitating determination and rapid action
must have filled the interval. Only a small part of England could have
learned of William's death when Henry was crowned, and he must have known
at the moment that the risk of failure was still great. But everything
indicates that Henry had in mind a clearly formed policy which he
believed would lead to success, and he was not the man to be afraid of
failure. The Archbishop of Canterbury was still in exile; the Archbishop
of York was far away and ill; the Bishop of London readily performed the
ceremony, which followed the old ritual. In the coronation oath of the
old Saxon formula, Henry swore, with more intention of remembering it
than many kings, that the Church of God and all Christian people he would
keep in true peace, that he would forbid violence and iniquity to all
men, and that in all judgments he would enjoin both justice and mercy.

The man who thus came to the throne of England was one of her ablest
kings. We know far less of the details of his reign than we could wish.
Particularly scanty is our evidence of the growth in institutions which
went on during these thirty-five years, and which would be of especial
value in illustrating the character and abilities of the king. But we
know enough to warrant us in placing Henry beyond question in the not
long list of statesmen kings. Not without some trace of the passions
which raged in the blood of the Norman and Angevin princes, he exceeded
them all in the strength of his self-control. This is the one most marked
trait which constantly recurs throughout the events of his long reign.
Always calm, we are sometimes tempted to say even cold, he never lost
command of himself in the most trying circumstances. Perfectly
clear-headed, he saw plainly the end to be reached from the distant
beginning, and the way to reach it, and though he would turn aside from
the direct road for policy's sake, he reached the goal in time. He knew
how to wait, to allow circumstances to work for him, to let men work out
their own destruction, but he was quick to act when the moment for action
came. Less of a military genius than his father, he was a greater
diplomatist. And yet perhaps we call him less of a military genius than
his father because he disliked war and gave himself no opportunities
which he could avoid; but he was a skilful tactician when he was forced
to fight a battle. But diplomacy was his chosen weapon, and by its means
he won battles which most kings would have sought to win by the sword.
With justice William of Malmesbury applied to him the words of Scipio
Africanus: "My mother brought me forth a general, not a mere soldier."

These were the gifts of nature. But when he came to the throne, he was a
man already disciplined in a severe school. Ever since the death of his
father, thirteen years before, when he was not yet twenty, the events
which had befallen him, the opportunities which had come to him, the
inferences which he could not have failed to make from the methods of his
brothers, had been training him for the business of his life. It was not
as a novice, but as a man experienced in government, that he began to
reign. And government was to him a business. It is clear that Henry had
always far less delight in the ordinary or possible glories of the
kingship than in the business of managing well a great state; and a name
by which he has been called, "The Lion of Justice," records a judgment of
his success. Physically Henry followed the type of his house. He was
short and thick-set, with a tendency to corpulence. He was not "the Red";
the mass of his black hair and his eyes clear and serene struck the
observer. Naturally of a pleasant disposition and agreeable to those
about him, he was quick to see the humorous side of things and carried
easily the great weight of business which fell to him. He was called
"Beauclerc," but he was never so commonly known by this name as William
by his of "Rufus." But he had, it would seem with some justice, the
reputation of being a learned king. Some doubtful evidence has been
interpreted to mean that he could both speak and read English. Certainly
he cherished a love of books and reading remarkable, at that time, in a
man of the world, and he seems to have deserved his reputation of a
ready, and even eloquent, speaker.

It was no doubt partly due to Henry's love of business that we may date
from his reign the beginning of a growth in institutions after the
Conquest. The machinery of good government interested him. Efforts to
improve it had his support. The men who had in hand its daily working in
curia regis and exchequer and chancery were certain of his favour, when
they strove to devise better ways of doing things and more efficient
means of controlling subordinates. But the reign was also one of advance
in institutions because England was ready for it. In the thirty-five
years since the Conquest, the nation which was forming in the island had
passed through two preparatory experiences. In the first the Norman, with
his institutions, had been introduced violently and artificially, and
planted alongside of the native English. It had been the policy of the
Conqueror to preserve as much as possible of the old while introducing
the new. This was the wisest possible policy, but it could produce as yet
no real union. That could only be the work of time. A new nation and a
new constitution were foreshadowed but not yet realized. The elements
from which they should be made had been brought into the presence of each
other, but not more than this was possible. Then followed the reign of
William II. In this second period England had had an experience of one
side, of the Norman side, carried to the extreme. The principles of
feudalism in favour of the suzerain were logically carried out for the
benefit of the king, and relentlessly applied to the Church as to the lay
society. That portion of the old English machinery which the Conqueror
had preserved fell into disorder, and was misused for royal, and worse
still, for private advantage. This second period had brought a vivid
experience of the abuses which would result from the exaggeration of one
of the elements of which the new state was to be composed at the expense
of the other. One of its most important results was the reaction which
seems instantly to have shown itself on the death of William Rufus, the
reaction of which Henry was quick to avail himself, and which gives us
the key to an understanding of his reign.

It is not possible to cite evidence from which we may infer beyond the
chance of question, either a popular reaction against the tyranny of
William Rufus, or a deliberate policy on the part of the new king to make
his hold upon the throne secure by taking advantage of such a reaction.
It is perhaps the duty of the careful historian to state his belief in
these facts, in less dogmatic form. And yet, when we combine together the
few indications which the chroniclers give us with the actual events of
the first two years of Henry's reign, it is hardly possible to avoid such
a conclusion. Henry seems certainly to have believed that he had much to
gain by pledging himself in the most binding way to correct the abuses
which his brother had introduced, and also that he could safely trust his
cause to an English, or rather to a national, party against the element
in the state which seemed unassimilable, the purely Norman element.

On the day of his coronation, or at least within a few days of that
event, Henry issued, in form of a charter,--that is, in the form of a
legally binding royal grant,--his promise to undo his brother's misdeeds;
and a copy of this charter, separately addressed, was sent to every
county in England. Considered both in itself as issued in the year 1100,
and in its historical consequences, this charter is one of the most
important of historical documents. It opens a long list of similar
constitutional documents which very possibly is not yet complete, and it
is in form and spirit worthy of the best of its descendants. Considering
the generally unformulated character of feudal law at this date, it is
neither vague nor general. It is to be noticed also, that the practical
character of the Anglo-Saxon race rules in this first charter of its
liberties. It is as business-like and clean cut as the Bill of Rights, or
as the American Declaration of Independence when this last gets to the
business in hand.

The charter opens with an announcement of Henry's coronation. In true
medieval order of precedence, it promises first to the Church freedom
from unjust exactions. The temporalities of the Church shall not be sold
nor put to farm, nor shall anything be taken from its domain land nor
from its men during a vacancy. Then follows a promise to do away with all
evil customs, and a statement that these in part will be enumerated. Thus
by direct statement here and elsewhere in the charter, its provisions are
immediately connected with the abuses which William II had introduced,
and the charter made a formal pledge to do away with them. The first
promises to the lay barons have to do with extortionate reliefs and the
abuse of the rights of wardship and marriage. The provision inserted in
both these cases, that the barons themselves shall be bound by the same
limitations in regard to their men, leads us to infer that William's
abuses had been copied by his barons, and suggests that Henry was looking
for the support of the lower ranks of the feudal order. Other promises
concern the coinage, fines, and debts due the late king, the right to
dispose by will of personal property, excessive fines, and the punishment
of murder. The forests Henry announces he will hold as his father held
them. To knights freedom of taxation is promised in the domain lands
proper of the estates which they hold by military service. The law of
King Edward is to be restored with those changes which the Conqueror had
made, and finally any property of the crown or of any individual which
has been seized upon since the death of William is to be restored under
threat of heavy penalty.

So completely does this charter cover the ground of probable abuses in
both general and local government, when its provisions are interpreted as
they would be understood by the men to whom it was addressed, that it is
not strange if men thought that all evils of government were at an end.
Nor is it strange in turn, that Henry was in truth more severe upon the
tyranny of his brother while he was yet uncertain of his hold upon the
crown, than in the practice of his later years. As a matter of fact, not
all the promises of the charter were kept. England suffered much from
heavy financial exactions during his reign, and the feudal abuses which
had weighed most heavily on lay and ecclesiastical barons reappeared in
their essential features. They became, in fact, recognized rights of the
crown. Henry was too strong to be forced to keep such promises as he
chose to forget, and it was reserved for a later descendant of his,
weaker both in character and in might of hand, to renew his charter at a
time when the more exact conception, both of rights and of abuses, which
had developed in the interval, enabled men not merely to enlarge its
provisions but to make them in some particulars the foundation of a new
type of government. Events rapidly followed the issue of the charter
which were equally emphatic declarations of Henry's purpose of reform,
and some of which at least would seem like steps in actual fulfilment of
the promises of the charter. Ranulf Flambard was arrested and thrown into
the Tower; on what charge or under what pretence of right we do not know,
but even if by some exercise of arbitrary power, it must have been a very
popular act. Several important abbacies which had been held vacant were
at once filled. Most important of all, a letter was despatched to
Archbishop Anselm, making excuses for the coronation of the king in his
absence, and requesting his immediate return to England. Anselm was at
the abbey of La Chaise Dieu, having just come from Lyons, where he had
spent a large part of his exile, when the news came to him of the death
of his royal adversary. He at once started for England, and was on his
way when he was met at Cluny by Henry's letter. Landing on September 23,
he went almost immediately to the king, who was at Salisbury. There two
questions of great importance at once arose, in one of which Anselm was
able to assist Henry, while the other gave rise to long-continued
differences between them.

The question most easily settled was that of Henry's marriage. According
to the historians of his reign, affection led Henry to a marriage which
was certainly most directly in line with the policy which he was carrying
out. Soon after his coronation, he proposed to marry Edith, daughter of
Malcolm, king of Scotland, and of Margaret, sister of the atheling Edgar.
She had spent almost the whole of her life in English monasteries, a good
part of it at Romsey, where her aunt Christina was abbess. Immediately
the question was raised, whether she had not herself taken the veil,
which she was known to have worn, and therefore whether the marriage was
possible. This was the question now referred to Anselm, and he made a
most careful examination of the case, and decision was finally pronounced
in a council of the English Church. The testimony of the young woman
herself was admitted and was conclusive against any binding vow. She had
been forced by her aunt to wear the veil against her will as a means of
protection in those turbulent times, but she had always rejected it with
indignation when she had been able to do so, nor had it been her father's
intention that she should be a nun. Independent testimony confirmed her
assertion, and it was formally declared that she was free to marry. The
marriage took place on November 11, and was celebrated by Anselm, who
also crowned the new queen under the Norman name of Matilda, which she
assumed.

No act which Henry could perform would be more pleasing to the nation as
a whole than this marriage, or would seem to them clearer proof of his
intention to rule in the interest of the whole nation and not of himself
alone, or of the small body of foreign oppressors. It would seem like the
expression of a wish on Henry's part to unite his line with that of the
old English kings, and to reign as their representative as well as his
father's, and it was so understood, both by the party opposed to Henry
and by his own supporters. Whatever we may think of the dying prophecy
attributed to Edward the Confessor, that the troubles which he foresaw
for England should end when the green tree--the English dynasty--cut off
from its root and removed for the space of three acres' breadth--three
foreign reigns--should without human help be joined to it again and bring
forth leaves and fruit, the fact that it was thought, in Henry's reign,
to have been fulfilled by his marriage with Matilda and by the birth of
their children, shows plainly enough the general feeling regarding the
marriage and that for which it stood. The Norman sneer, in which the king
and his wife are referred to as Godric and Godgifu, is as plain an
indication of the feeling of that party. Such a taunt as this could not
have been called out by the mere marriage, and would never have been
spoken if the policy of the king, in spite of the marriage, had been one
in sympathy with the wishes of the extreme Norman element.

But if it was Henry's policy to win the support of the nation as a whole,
and to make it clear that he intended to undo the abuses of his brother,
he had no intention of abandoning any of the real rights of the crown.
The second question which arose on the first meeting of Anselm and Henry
involved a point of this kind. The temporalities of the Archbishop of
Canterbury were still in the king's hands, as seized by William Rufus on
Anselm's departure. Henry demanded that Anselm should do homage for this
fief, as would any baron of the king, and receive it from his hand. To
the astonishment of every one, Anselm flatly refused. In answer to
inquiries, he explained the position of the pope on the subject of lay
investiture, declared that he must stand by that position, and that if
Henry also would not obey the pope, he must leave England again. Here was
a sharp issue, drawn with the greatest definiteness, and one which it was
very difficult for the king to meet. He could not possibly afford to
renew the quarrel with Anselm and to drive him into exile again at this
moment, but it was equally impossible for him to abandon this right of
the crown, so long unquestioned and one on which so much of the state
organization rested. He proposed a truce until Easter, that the question
might be referred to the pope, in the hope that he would consent to
modify his decrees in view of the customary usages of the kingdom, and
agreeing that the archbishop should, in the meantime, enjoy the revenues
of his see. To this delay Anselm consented, though he declared that it
would be useless.

According to the archbishop's devoted friend and biographer, Eadmer, who
was in attendance on him at this meeting at Salisbury, Anselm virtually
admitted that this was a new position for him to take. He had learned
these things at Rome, was the explanation which was given; and this was
certainly true, though his stay at Lyons, under the influence of his
friend, Archbishop Hugh, a strong partisan of the papal cause, was equally
decisive in his change of views.[17] He had accepted investiture
originally from the hand of William Rufus without scruple; he had never
objected to it with regard to any of that king's later appointments. In
the controversy which followed with Henry, there is nothing which shows
that his own conscience was in the least degree involved in the question.
He opposed the king with his usual unyielding determination, not because
he believed himself that lay investiture was a sin, but because pope and
council had decided against it, and it was his duty to maintain their
decision.

This was a new position for Anselm to take; it was also raising a new
question in the government of England. For more than a quarter of a
century the papacy had been fighting this battle against lay investiture
with all the weapons at its disposal, against its nearest rival, the
emperor, and with less of open conflict and more of immediate success in
most of the other lands of Europe. But in the dominions of the Norman
princes the question had never become a living issue. This was not
because the papacy had failed to demand the authority there which it was
striving to secure elsewhere. Gregory VII had laid claim to an even more
complete authority over England than this. But these demands had met with
no success. Even as regards the more subordinate features of the
Hildebrandine reformation, simony and the celibacy of the clergy, the
response of the Norman and English churches to the demand for
reformation had been incomplete and half-hearted, and not even the
beginning of a papal party had shown itself in either country. This
exceptional position is to be accounted for by the great strength of the
crown, and also by the fact that the sovereign in his dealings with the
Church was following in both states the policy marked out by a long
tradition. Something must also be attributed, and probably in Normandy as
well as in England, to the clearness with which Lanfranc perceived the
double position of the bishop in the feudal state. The Church was an
important part of the machinery of government, and as such its officers
were appointed by the king, and held accountable to him for a large part
at least of their official action. This was the theory of the Norman
state, and this theory had been up to this time unquestioned. It is
hardly too much to call the Norman and English churches, from the
coronation of William I on to this time, practically independent national
churches, with some relationship to the pope, but with one so external in
its character that no serious inconvenience would have been experienced
in their own government had some sudden catastrophe swept the papacy out
of existence.

It was, however, in truth impossible for England to keep itself free from
the issue which had been raised by the war upon lay investiture. The real
question involved in this controversy was one far deeper than the
question of the appointment of bishops by the sovereign of the state.
That was a point of detail, a means to the end; very important and
essential as a means, but not the end itself. Slowly through centuries of
time the Church had become conscious of itself. Accumulated precedents of
the successful exercise of power, observation of the might of
organization, and equally instructive experience of the weakness of
disorganization and of the danger of self-seeking, personal or political,
in the head of the Christian world, had brought the thinking party in the
Church to understand the dominant position which it might hold in the
world if it could be controlled as a single organization and animated by
a single purpose. It was the vision of the imperial Church, free from all
distracting influence of family or of state, closely bound together into
one organic whole, an independent, world-embracing power: more than this
even, a power above all other powers, the representative of God, on
earth, to which all temporal sovereigns should be held accountable.

That the Church failed to gain the whole of that for which it strove was
not the fault of its leaders. A large part of the history of the world in
the eleventh and twelfth centuries is filled with the struggle to create,
in ideal completeness, this imperial Church. The reformation of Cluny had
this for its ultimate object. From the beginning made by that movement,
the political genius of Hildebrand sketched the finished structure and
pointed out the means to be employed in its completion. That the emperor
was first and most fiercely attacked was not due to the fact that he was
a sinner above all others in the matter of lay investiture or simony. It
was the most urgent necessity of the case that the papacy should make
itself independent of that power which in the past had exercised the most
direct sovereignty over the popes, and before the conflict should end be
able to take its seat beside the empire as an equal, or even a superior,
world power. But if the empire must be first overcome, no state could be
left out of this plan, and in England as elsewhere the issue must sooner
or later be joined.

It must not be understood that mere ambition was at the bottom of this
effort of the Church. Of ambition in the ordinary sense it is more than
probable that no leader of this movement was conscious. The cause of the
Church was the cause of God and of righteousness. The spiritual power
ought justly to be superior to the temporal, because the spiritual
interests of men so far outweigh their temporal. If the spiritual power
is supreme, and holds in check the temporal, and calls the sovereign to
account for his wrong-doing, the way of salvation will be easier for all
men, and the cause of righteousness promoted. If this kind of a Church is
to be organized, and this power established in the world, it is essential
that so important an officer in the system as the bishop should be chosen
by the Church alone, and with reference alone to the spiritual interests
which he is to guard, and the spiritual duties he must perform. Selection
by the state, accountability to the state, would make too serious a flaw
in the practical operation of this system to be permitted. The argument
of the Church against the practice of lay investiture was entirely sound.

On the other hand, the argument of the feudal state was not less sound.
It is difficult for us to get a clear mental picture of the organization
of the feudal state, because the institutions of that state have left few
traces in modern forms of government. The complete transformation of the
feudal baronage into a modern nobility, and the rise on the ruins of the
feudal state of clearly defined, legislative, judicial, and
administrative systems have obscured the line of direct descent. But the
feudal baron was very different from a modern noble, and there was no
bureaucracy and no civil service in the feudal state beyond their mere
beginnings in the personal servants of the king. No function of
government was the professional business of any one, but legislative,
judicial, administrative, financial, and military operations were all
incidental to something else. This may not seem true of the sheriff; but
that he had escaped transformation, after the feudalization of England,
into something more than an administrative officer makes the Norman state
somewhat exceptional at that time, and the history of this office, even
under the most powerful of kings, shows the strength of the tendency
toward development in the direction of a private possession. Even while
remaining administrative, the office was known to the Normans by a name
which to some extent in their own home, and generally elsewhere, had come
to be an hereditary feudal title,--the viscount. In this system of
government, the baron was the most essential feature. Every kind of
government business was performed in the main through him, and as
incidental to his position as a baron. The assembly of the barons, the
curia regis, whether the great assembly of all the barons of the
kingdom, meeting on occasions by special summons, or the smaller assembly
in constant attendance on the king, was the primitive and
undifferentiated machine by which government was carried on. If the
baronage was faithful to the crown, or if the crown held the baronage
under a strong control, the realm enjoyed good government and the nation
bore with comparatively little suffering the burdens which were always
heavy. If the baronage was out of control, government fell to pieces, and
anarchy and oppression took its place.

In this feudal state, however, a bishop was a baron. The lands which
formed the endowment of his office--and in those days endowment could
take no other form--constituted a barony. The necessity of a large income
and the generosity of the faithful made of his endowment a great fief. It
is important to realize how impossible any other conception than this was
to the political half of the world. In public position, influence upon
affairs, wealth, and popular estimation, the bishop stood in the same
class with the baron. The manors which were set aside from the general
property of the Church to furnish his official income would, in many
cases, provide for an earldom. In fitness to perform the manifold
functions of government which fell to him, the bishop far exceeded the
ordinary baron. The state could not regard him as other than a baron; it
certainly could not dispense with his assistance. It was a matter of
vital importance to the king to be able to determine what kind of men
should hold these great fiefs and occupy these influential positions in
the state, and to be able to hold them to strict accountability. The
argument of the state in favour of lay investiture was as sound as the
argument of the Church against it.

Here was a conflict of interests in which no real compromise was
possible. Incidental features of the conflict might be found upon which
the form of a compromise could be arranged. But upon the one essential
point, the right of selecting the man, one or the other of the parties
whose interests were involved must give way. It is not strange that in
the main, except where the temporary or permanent weakness of the
sovereign made an exception, that interest which seemed to the general
run of men of most immediate and pressing importance gained the day, and
the spiritual gave way to the temporal. But in England the conflict was
now first begun, and the time of compromise had not yet come. Henry's
proposal to Anselm of delay and of a new appeal to the pope was chiefly a
move to gain time until the situation of affairs in England should turn
more decidedly in his favour. He especially feared, Eadmer tells us, lest
Anselm should seek out his brother Robert and persuade him--as he easily
could--to admit the papal claims, and then make him king of England.

Robert had returned to Normandy from the Holy Land before the arrival of
Anselm in England. He had won much glory on the crusade, and in the rush
of events and in the constant fighting, where responsibility for the
management of affairs did not rest upon him alone, he had shown himself a
man of energy and power. But he came back unchanged in character. Even
during the crusade he had relapsed at times into his more indolent and
careless mood, from which he had been roused with difficulty. In southern
Italy, where he had stopped among the Normans on his return, he had
married Sibyl, daughter of Geoffrey of Conversana, a nephew of Robert
Guiscard, but the dowry which he received with her had rapidly melted
away in his hands. He was, however, now under no obligation to redeem
Normandy. The loan for which he had pledged the duchy was regarded as a
personal debt to William Rufus, not a debt to the English crown, and
Henry laid no claim to it. Robert took possession of Normandy without
opposition from any quarter. It is probable that if Robert had been left
to himself, he would have been satisfied with Normandy, and that his
easy-going disposition would have led him to leave Henry in undisturbed
possession of England. But he was not left to himself. The events which
had occurred soon after the accession of William Rufus repeated
themselves soon after Henry's. No Norman baron could expect to gain any
more of the freedom which he desired under Henry than he had had under
William. The two states would also be separated once more if Henry
remained king of England. Almost all the Normans accordingly applied to
Robert, as they had done before, and offered to support a new attempt to
gain the crown. Robert was also urged forward by the advice of Ranulf
Flambard, who escaped from the Tower in February, 1101, and found a
refuge and new influence in Normandy. Natural ambition was not wanting to
Robert, and in the summer of 1101 he collected his forces for an invasion
of England.

Though the great Norman barons stood aloof from him--Robert of Belleme
and his two brothers Roger and Arnulf, William of Warenne, Walter
Giffard, and Ivo of Grantmesnil, with others--Henry was stronger in
England than Robert. No word had yet been received from Rome in answer to
the application which he had made to the pope on the subject of the
investiture; and in this crisis the king was liberal with promises to the
archbishop, and Anselm was strongly on his side with the Church as a
whole. His faithful friends, Robert, Count of Meulan, and his brother
Henry, Earl of Warwick, were among the few whom he could trust. But his
most important support he found, as his brother William had found it in
similar circumstances, in the mass of the nation which would now be even
more ready to take the side of the king against the Norman party.

Henry expected the invaders to land at Pevensey, but apparently, with the
help of some part of the sailors who had been sent against him, Robert
landed without opposition at Portsmouth, towards the end of July, 1101.
Thence he advanced towards London, and Henry went to meet him. The two
armies came together near Alton, but no battle was fought. In a conflict
of diplomacy, Henry was pretty sure of victory, and to this he preferred
to trust. A meeting of the brothers was arranged, and as a result Robert
surrendered all the real advantages which he had crossed the channel to
win, and received in place of them gains which might seem attractive to
him, but which must have seemed to Henry, when taken all together, a
cheap purchase of the crown. Robert gave up his claim to the throne and
released Henry, as being a king, from the homage by which he had formerly
been bound. Henry on his side promised his brother an annual payment of
three thousand marks sterling, and gave up to him all that he possessed
in Normandy, except the town of Domfront, which he had expressly promised
not to abandon. It was also agreed, as formerly between Robert and
William Rufus, that the survivor should inherit the dominions of the
other if he died without heirs. A further provision concerned the
adherents of each of the brothers during this strife. Possessions in
England of barons of Normandy, which had been seized by Henry because of
their fidelity to Robert, should be restored, and also the Norman estates
of English barons seized by Robert, but each should be free to deal with
the barons of his own land who had proved unfaithful. This stipulation
would be of especial value to Henry, who had probably not found it
prudent to deal with the traitors of his land before the decision of the
contest; but some counter-intrigues in Normandy in favour of Henry were
probably not unknown to Robert.

Robert sent home at once a part of his army, but he himself remained in
England long enough to witness in some cases the execution by his brother
of the provision of the treaty concerning traitors. He took with him, on
his return to Normandy, Orderic Vitalis says, William of Warenne and many
others disinherited for his sake. Upon others the king took vengeance one
at a time, on one pretext or another, and these included at least Robert
of Lacy, Robert Malet, and Ivo of Grantmesnil. The possessions of Ivo in
Leicestershire passed into the hands of the faithful Robert, Count of
Meulan--faithful to Henry if not to the rebel who sought his help--and
somewhat later became the foundation of the earldom of Leicester.

Against the most powerful and most dangerous of the traitors, Robert of
Belleme, Henry felt strong enough to take steps in the spring of 1102. In
a court in that year Henry brought accusation against Robert on
forty-five counts, of things done or said against himself or against his
brother Robert. The evidence to justify these accusations Henry had been
carefully and secretly collecting for a year. When Robert heard this
indictment, he knew that his turn had come, and that no legal defence was
possible, and he took advantage of a technical plea to make his escape.
He asked leave to retire from the court and take counsel with his men. As
this was a regular custom leave was granted, but Robert took horse at
once and fled from the court. Summoned again to court, Robert refused to
come, and began to fortify his castles. Henry on his side collected an
army, and laid siege first of all to the castle of Arundel. The record of
the siege gives us an incident characteristic of the times. Robert's men,
finding that they could not defend the place, asked for a truce that they
might send to their lord and obtain leave to surrender. The request was
granted, the messengers were sent, and Robert with grief "absolved them
from their promised faith and granted them leave to make concord with the
king." Henry then turned against Robert's castles in the north. Against
Blyth he marched himself, but on his approach he was met by the townsmen
who received him as their "natural lord." To the Bishop of Lincoln he
gave orders to besiege Tickhill castle, while he advanced towards the
west, where lay Robert's chief possessions and greatest strength.

In his Shrewsbury earldom Robert had been preparing himself for the final
struggle with the king ever since he had escaped his trial in the court.
He counted upon the help of his two brothers, whose possessions were also
in those parts, Arnulf of Pembroke, and Roger called the Poitevin, who
had possession of Lancaster. The Welsh princes also stood ready, as their
countrymen stood for centuries afterwards, to combine with any party of
rebellious barons in England, and their assistance proved of as little
real value then as later. With these allies and the help of Arnulf he
laid waste a part of Staffordshire before Henry's arrival, the Welsh
carrying off their plunder, including some prisoners. Robert's chief
dependence, however, must have been upon his two very strong castles of
Bridgenorth and Shrewsbury, both of which had been strengthened and
provisioned with care for a stubborn resistance.

Henry's first attack with what seems to have been a large force was on
Bridgenorth castle. Robert had himself chosen to await the king's attack
in Shrewsbury, and had left three of his vassals in charge of
Bridgenorth, with a body of mercenaries, who often proved,
notwithstanding the oaths of vassals, the most faithful troops of feudal
days. He had hoped that his Welsh friends would be able to interfere
seriously with Henry's siege operations, but in this he was disappointed.
The king's offers proved larger than his, at least to one of the princes,
and no help came from that quarter. One striking incident of this siege,
though recorded by Orderic Vitalis only, is so characteristic of the
situation in England, at least of that which had just preceded the
rebellion of Robert, and bears so great an appearance of truth, that it
deserves notice. The barons of England who were with the king began to
fear that if he were allowed to drive so powerful an earl as Robert of
Belleme to his ruin the rest of their order would be henceforth at his
mercy, and no more than weak "maid-servants" in his sight. Accordingly,
after consulting among themselves, they made a formal attempt to induce
the king to grant terms to Robert. In the midst of an argument which the
king seems to have been obliged to treat with consideration, the shouts
of 3000 country soldiers stationed on a hill near by made themselves
heard, warning Henry not to trust to "these traitors," and promising him
their faithful assistance. Encouraged by this support, the king rejected
the advice of the barons.

The siege of Bridgenorth lasted three weeks. At the end of that time,
Henry threatened to hang all whom he should capture, unless the castle
were surrendered in three days; and despite the resistance of Robert's
mercenaries, the terms he offered were accepted. Henry immediately sent
out his forces to clear the difficult way to Shrewsbury, where Robert,
having learned of the fall of Bridgenorth, was awaiting the issue,
uncertain what to do. One attempt he made to obtain for himself
conditions of submission, but met with a flat refusal. Unconditional
surrender was all that Henry would listen to. Finally, as the king
approached, he went out to meet him, confessed himself a traitor and
beaten, and gave up the keys of the town. Henry used his victory to the
uttermost. Personal safety was granted to the earl, and he was allowed to
depart to his Norman possessions with horses and arms, but this was all
that was allowed him. His vast possessions in England were wholly
confiscated; not a manor was left him. His brothers soon afterwards fell
under the same fate, and the most powerful and most dangerous Norman
house in England was utterly ruined. For the king this result was not
merely the fall of an enemy who might well be feared, and the acquisition
of great estates with which to reward his friends; it was a lesson of the
greatest value to the Norman baronage. Orderic Vitalis, who gives us the
fullest details of these events states this result in words which cannot
be improved upon: "And so, after Robert's flight, the kingdom of Albion
was quiet in peace, and King Henry reigned prosperously three and thirty
years, during which no man in England dared to rebel or to hold any
castle against him."

From these and other forfeitures Henry endowed a new nobility, men of
minor families, or of those that had hitherto played no part in the
history of the land. Many of them were men who had had their training and
attracted the king's attention in the administrative system which he did
so much to develop, and their promotion was the reward of faithful
service. These "new men" were settled in some numbers in the north, and
scholars have thought they could trace the influence of their
administrative training and of their attitude towards the older and more
purely feudal nobility in the events of a century later in the struggle
for the Great Charter.

These events, growing directly out of Robert's attempt upon England, have
carried us to the autumn of 1102; but in the meantime the equally
important conflict with Anselm on the subject of investitures had been
advanced some stages further. The answer of Pope Paschal II to the
request which had been made of him, to suspend in favour of England the
law of the Church against lay investitures, had been received at least
soon after the treaty with Robert. The answer was a flat refusal, written
with priestly subtlety, arguing throughout as if what Henry had demanded
was the spiritual consecration of the bishops, though it must be admitted
that in the eyes of men who saw only the side of the Church the
difference could not have been great. So far as we know, Henry said
nothing of this answer. He summoned Anselm to court, apparently while his
brother was still in England, and peremptorily demanded of him that he
should become his man and consecrate the bishops and abbots whom he had
appointed, as his predecessors had done, or else immediately leave the
country. It is uncertain whether the influence of Robert had anything to
do with this demand, as Eadmer supposed, but the recent victory which the
king had gained, and the greater security which he must have felt,
doubtless affected its peremptory character. Anselm again based his
refusal of homage on his former position, on the doctrine which he had
learned at Rome. Of this Henry would hear nothing; he insisted upon the
customary rights of English kings. The other alternative, however, which
he offered the archbishop, or with which he threatened him, of departure
from England, Anselm also declined to accept, and he returned to
Canterbury to carry on his work quietly and to await the issue.

This act of Anselm's was a virtual challenge to the king to use violence
against him if he dared, and such a challenge Henry was as yet in no
condition to take up. Not long after his return to Canterbury, Anselm
received a friendly letter from the king, inviting him to come to
Westminster, to consider the business anew. Here, with the consent of the
assembled court, a new truce was arranged, and a new embassy to Rome
determined on. This was to be sent by both parties and to consist of
ecclesiastics of higher rank than those of the former embassy, who were
to explain clearly to the pope the situation in England, and to convince
him that some modification of the decrees on the subject would be
necessary if he wished to retain the country in his obedience. Anselm's
representatives were two monks, Baldwin of Bee and Alexander of
Canterbury; the king's were three bishops, Gerard of Hereford, lately
made Archbishop of York by the king, Herbert of Norwich, and Robert of
Coventry.

The embassy reached Rome; the case was argued before the pope; he
indignantly refused to modify the decrees; and the ambassadors returned
to England, bringing letters to this effect to the king and to the
archbishop. Soon after their return, which was probably towards the end
of the summer, 1102, Anselm was summoned to a meeting of the court at
London, and again required to perform homage or to cease to exercise his
office. He of course continued to refuse, and appealed to the pope's
letters for justification. Henry declined to make known the letter he had
received, and declared that he would not be bound by them. His position
was supported by the three bishops whom he had sent to Rome, who on the
reading of the letter to Anselm declared that privately the pope had
informed them that so long as the king appointed suitable men he would
not be interfered with, and they explained that this could not be stated
in the letters lest the news should be carried to other princes and lead
them to usurp the rights of the Church. Anselm's representatives
protested that they had heard nothing of all this, but it is evident that
the solemn assertion of the three bishops had considerable weight, and
that even Anselm was not sure but that they were telling the truth.

On a renewed demand of homage by the king, supported by the bishops and
barons of the kingdom, Anselm answered that if the letters had
corresponded to the words of the bishops, very likely he would have done
what was demanded as the case stood, he proposed a new embassy to Rome to
reconcile the contradiction, and in the meantime, though he would not
consecrate the king's nominees, he agreed not to regard them as
excommunicate. This proposal was at once accepted by Henry, who regarded
it as so nearly an admission of his claim that he immediately appointed
two new bishops: his chancellor, Roger, to Salisbury, and his larderer,
also Roger, to Hereford.

Perhaps in the same spirit, regarding the main point as settled, Henry
now allowed Anselm to hold the council of the English Church which
William Rufus had so long refused him. The council met at Westminster and
adopted a series of canons, whose chief object was the complete carrying
out of the Gregorian reformation in the English Church. The most
important of them concerned the celibacy of the priesthood, and enacted
the strictest demands of the reform party, without regard to existing
conditions. No clerics of any grade from subdeacon upward, were to be
allowed to marry, nor might holy orders be received hereafter without a
previous vow of celibacy. Those already married must put away their
wives, and if any neglected to do so, they were no longer to be
considered legal priests, nor be allowed to celebrate mass. One canon,
which reveals one of the dangers against which the Church sought to guard
by these regulations, forbade the sons of priests to inherit their
father's benefices. It is very evident from these canons, that this part
of the new reformation had made but little, if any, more headway in
England than that which concerned investiture, and we know from other
sources that the marriage of secular clergy was almost the rule, and that
the sons of priests in clerical office were very numerous. Less is said
of the other article of the reform programme, the extinction of the sin
of simony, but three abbots of important monasteries, recently appointed
by the king, were deposed on this ground without objection. This
legislation, so thorough-going and so regardless of circumstances, is an
interesting illustration of the uncompromising character of Anselm,
though it must be noticed that later experience raised the question in
his mind whether some modifications of these canons ought not to be made.

That Henry on his side had no intention of surrendering anything of his
rights in the matter of investiture is clearly shown, about the same
time, by his effort to get the bishops whom he had appointed to accept
consecration from his very useful and willing minister, Gerard,
Archbishop of York. Roger the larderer, appointed to Hereford, had died
without consecration, and in his place Reinelm, the queen's chancellor,
had been appointed. When the question of consecration by York was raised,
rather than accept it he voluntarily surrendered his bishopric to the
king. The other two persons appointed, William Giffard of Winchester, and
Roger of Salisbury, seemed willing to concede the point, but at the last
moment William drew back and the plan came to nothing. The bishops,
however, seem to have refused consecration from the Archbishop of York
less from objection to royal investiture than out of regard to the claims
of Canterbury. William Giffard was deprived of his see, it would seem by
judicial sentence, and sent from the kingdom.

About the middle of Lent of the next year, 1103, Henry made a new attempt
to obtain his demands of Anselm. On his way to Dover he stopped three
days in Canterbury and required the archbishop to submit. What followed
is a repetition of what had occurred so often before. Anselm offered to
be guided by the letters from Rome, in answer to the last reference
thither, which had been received but not yet read. This Henry refused. He
said he had nothing to do with the pope. He demanded the rights of his
predecessors. Anselm on his side declared that he could consent to a
modification of the papal decrees only by the authority which had made
them. It would seem as if no device remained to be tried to postpone a
complete breach between the two almost co-equal powers of the medieval
state; but Henry's patience was not yet exhausted, or his practical
wisdom led him to wish to get Anselm out of the kingdom before the breach
became complete. He begged Anselm to go himself to Rome and attempt what
others had failed to effect. Anselm suspected the king's object in the
proposal, and asked for a delay until Easter, that he might take the
advice of the king's court. This was unanimous in favour of the attempt,
and on April 27, 1103, he landed at Wissant, not an exile, but with his
attendants, "invested with the king's peace."

Four years longer this conflict lasted before it was finally settled by
the concordat of August, 1107; but these later stages of it, though not
less important considered in themselves, were less the pressing question
of the moment for Henry than the earlier had been. They were rather
incidents affecting his gradually unfolding foreign policy, and in turn
greatly affected by it. From the fall of Robert of Belleme to the end of
Henry's reign, the domestic history of England is almost a blank. If we
put aside two series of events, the ecclesiastical politics of the time,
of which interested clerks have given us full details, and the changes in
institutions which were going on, but which they did not think posterity
would be so anxious to understand, we know of little to say of this long
period in the life of the English people. The history which has survived
is the history of the king, and the king was in the main occupied upon
the continent. But in the case of Henry I, this is not improperly English
history. It was upon no career of foreign conquest, no seeking after
personal glory, that Henry embarked in his Norman expeditions. It was to
protect the rights of his subjects in England that he began, and it was
because he could accomplish this in no other way that he ended with the
conquest of the duchy and the lifelong imprisonment of his brother. There
were so many close bonds of connexion between the two states that England
suffered keenly in the disorders of Normandy, and the turbulence and
disobedience of the barons under Robert threatened the stability of
Henry's rule at home.

[16] Ordetic Vitalis, iv. 87 f.

[17] Liebermami, Anselm und Hugo van Lyon, in Aufsaetze dem
Andenken an Georg Waitz gewidmet.

CHAPTER VII

CONFLICT WITH THE CHURCH

Robert of Belleme had lost too much in England to rest satisfied with the
position into which he had been forced. He was of too stormy a
disposition himself to settle down to a quiet life on his Norman lands.
Duke Robert had attacked one of his castles, while Henry was making war
upon him in England, but, as was usual in his case, totally failed; but
it was easy to take vengeance upon the duke, and he was the first to
suffer for the misfortunes of the lord of Belleme. All that part of
Normandy within reach of Robert was laid waste; churches and monasteries
even, in which men had taken refuge, were burned with the fugitives.
Almost all Normandy joined in planning resistance. The historian,
Orderic, living in the duchy, speaks almost as if general government had
disappeared, and the country were a confederation of local states. But
all plans were in vain, because a "sane head" was lacking. Duke Robert
was totally defeated, and obliged to make important concessions to Robert
of Belleme. At last Henry, moved by the complaints which continued to
come to him from churchmen and barons of Normandy, some of whom came over
to England in person, as well as from his own subjects, whose Norman
lands could not be protected, resolved himself to cross to Normandy. This
he did in the autumn of 1104, and visited Domfront and other towns which
belonged to him. There he was joined by almost all the leading barons of
Normandy, who were, indeed, his vassals in England, but who meant more
than this by coming to him at this time.

The expedition, however, was not an invasion. Henry did not intend to
make war upon his brother or upon Robert of Belleme. It was his intention
rather to serve notice on all parties that he was deeply interested in
the affairs of Normandy and that anarchy must end. To his brother Robert
he read a long lecture, filled with many counts of his misconduct, both
to himself personally and in the government of the duchy. Robert feared
worse things than this, and that he might turn away his brother's wrath,
ceded to him the county of Evreux, with the homage of its count, William,
one of the most important possessions and barons of the duchy. Already in
the year before Robert had been forced to surrender the pension Henry had
promised him in the treaty which they had made after Robert's invasion.
This was because of a rash visit he had paid to England without
permission, at the request of William of Warenne, to intercede for the
restoration of his earldom of Surrey. By these arrangements Robert was
left almost without the means of living, but he was satisfied to escape
so easily, for he feared above all to be deprived of the name of duke and
the semblance of power. Before winter came on the king returned to
England.

In this same year, following out what seems to have been the deliberate
purpose of Henry to crush the great Norman houses, another of the most
powerful barons of England was sent over to Normandy, to furnish in the
end a strong reinforcement to Robert of Belleme, a man of the same stamp
as himself, namely William of Mortain, Earl of Cornwall, the king's own
cousin. At the time of Henry's earliest troubles with his brother Robert,
William had demanded the inheritance of their uncle Odo, the earldom of
Kent. The king had delayed his answer until the danger was over, had then
refused the request, and shortly after had begun to attack the earl by
suits at law. This drove him to Normandy and into the party of the king's
open enemies. On Henry's departure, Robert with the help of William began
again his ravaging of the land of his enemies, with all the former
horrors of fire and slaughter. The peasants suffered with the rest, and
many of them fled the country with their wives and children.

If order was to be restored in Normandy and property again to become
secure, it was clear that more thorough-going measures than those of
Henry's first expedition must be adopted. These he was now determined to
take, and in the last week of Lent, 1105, he landed at Barfleur, and
within a few days stormed and destroyed Bayeux, which had refused to
surrender, and forced Caen to open its gates. Though this formed the
extent of his military operations in this campaign, a much larger portion
of Normandy virtually became subject to him through the voluntary action
of the barons. And in a quite different way his visit to Normandy was of
decisive influence in the history of Henry and of England. As the
necessity of taking complete possession of the duchy, in order to secure
peace, became clear to Henry, or perhaps we should say as the vision of
Normandy entirely occupied and subject to his rule rose before his mind,
the conflict with Anselm in which he was involved began to assume a new
aspect. As an incident in the government of a kingdom of which he was
completely master, it was one thing; as having a possible bearing on the
success with which he could conquer and incorporate with his dominions
another state, it was quite another.

Anselm had gone to Rome toward the end of the summer of 1103. There he
had found everything as he had anticipated. The argument of Henry's
representative that England would be lost to the papacy if this
concession were not granted, was of no avail. The pope stood firmly by
the decrees against investiture. But Henry's ambassador was charged with
a mission to Anselm, as well as to the pope; and at Lyons, on the journey
back, the archbishop was told that his return to England would be very
welcome to the king when he was ready to perform all duties to the king
as other archbishops of Canterbury had done them. The meaning of this
message was clear. By this stroke of policy, Henry had exiled Anselm,
with none of the excitement or outcry which would have been occasioned by
his violent expulsion from the kingdom.

On the return of his embassy from Rome, probably in December, 1103, Henry
completed the legal breach between himself and Anselm by seizing the
revenues of the archbishopric into his own hands. This, from his
interpretation of the facts, he had a perfect right to do, but there is
very good ground to suppose that he might not have done it even now, if
his object had been merely to punish a vassal who refused to perform his
customary services. Henry was already looking forward to intervention in
Normandy. His first expedition was not made until the next summer, but it
must by this time have been foreseen, and the cost must have been
counted. The revenues of Canterbury doubtless seemed quite worth having.
Already, in 1104, we begin to get complaints of the heavy taxation from
which England was suffering. In the year of the second expedition, 1105,
these were still more frequent and piteous. Ecclesiastics and Church
lands bore these burdens with the rest of the kingdom, and before the
close of this year we are told that many of the evils which had existed
under William Rufus had reappeared.[18]

True to his temporizing policy, when complaints became loud, as early as
1104, Henry professed his great desire for the return of Anselm, provided
always he was willing to observe the customs of the kingdom, and he
despatched another embassy to Rome to persuade the pope to some
concession. This was the fifth embassy which he had sent with this
request, and he could not possibly have expected any other answer than
that which he had already received. Soon a party began to form among the
higher clergy of England, primarily in opposition to the king, and, more
for this reason probably than from devotion to the reformation, in
support of Anselm, though it soon began to show a disposition to adopt
the Gregorian ideas for which Anselm stood. This disposition was less
due to any change of heart on their part than to the knowledge which they
had acquired of their helplessness in the hands of an absolute king, and
of the great advantage to be gained from the independence which the
Gregorian reformation would secure them. Even Gerard of York early
showed some tendency to draw toward Anselm, as may be seen from a letter
which he despatched to him in the early summer of 1105, with some
precautions, suppressing names and expressions by which the writer might
be identified.[19] Toward the end of the year he joined with five other
bishops, including William Giffard, appointed by Henry to Winchester, in
a more open appeal to Anselm, with promise of support. How early Henry
became aware of this movement of opposition is not certain, but we may be
sure that his department of secret service was well organized. We shall
not be far wrong if we assign to a knowledge of the attitude of powerful
churchmen in England some weight among the complex influences which led
the king to the step which he took in July of this year.

In March, 1105, Pope Paschal II, whose conduct throughout this
controversy implies that he was not more anxious to drive matters to open
warfare than was Henry, advanced so far as to proclaim the
excommunication of the Count of Meulan and the other counsellors of the
king, and also of those who had received investiture at his hand. This
might look as if the pope were about to take up the case in earnest and
would proceed shortly to excommunicate the king himself. But Anselm
evidently interpreted it as the utmost which he could expect in the way
of aid from Rome, and immediately determined to act for himself. He left
Lyons to go to Reims, but learning on the way of the illness of the
Countess of Blois, Henry's sister Adela, he went to Blois instead, and
then with the countess, who had recovered, to Chartres. This brought
together three persons deeply interested in this conflict and of much
influence in England and with the king Anselm, who was directly
concerned; the Countess Adela, a favourite with her brother and on
intimate terms with him and Bishop Ivo of Chartres, who had written much
and wisely on the investiture controversy. And here it seems likely were
suggested, probably by Bishop Ivo, and talked over among the three, the
terms of the famous compromise by which the conflict was at last ended.

Anselm had made no secret of his intention of proceeding shortly to the
excommunication of Henry. The prospect excited the liveliest apprehension
in the mind of the religiously disposed Countess Adela, and she bestirred
herself to find some means of averting so dread a fate from her brother.
Henry himself had heard of the probability with some apprehension, though
of a different sort from his sister's. The respect which Anselm enjoyed
throughout Normandy and northern France was so great that, as Henry
looked forward to an early conquest of the duchy, he could not afford to
disregard the effect upon the general feeling of an open declaration of
war by the archbishop. The invitation of the king of France to Anselm, to
accept an asylum within his borders, was a plain foreshadowing of what
might follow.[20] Considerations of home and foreign politics alike
disposed Henry to meet halfway the advances which the other side was
willing to make under the lead of his sister.

With the countess, Anselm entered Normandy and met Henry at Laigle on
July 21, 1105. Here the terms of the compromise, which were more than two
years later adopted as binding law, were agreed upon between themselves,
in their private capacity. Neither was willing at the moment to be
officially bound. Anselm, while personally willing, would not formally
agree to the concessions expected of him, until he had the authority of
the pope to do so. Subsequent events lead us to suspect that once more
Henry was temporizing. Anselm was not in good health. He was shortly
after seriously ill. It is in harmony with Henry's policy throughout, and
with his action in the following months, to suppose that he believed the
approaching death of the archbishop would relieve him from even the
slight concessions to which he professed himself willing to agree. It is
not the place here to state the terms and effect of this agreement, but
in substance Henry consented to abandon investiture with the ring and
staff, symbols of the spiritual office; and Anselm agreed that the
officers of the Church should not be excommunicated nor denied
consecration if they received investiture of their actual fiefs from the
hand of the king. Henry promised that an embassy should be at once
despatched to Rome, to obtain the pope's consent to this arrangement, in
order that Anselm, to whom the temporalities of his see were now
restored, might be present at his Christmas court in England.

Delay Henry certainly gained by this move. The forms of friendly
intercourse were restored between himself and Anselm. The excommunication
was not pronounced. The party of the king's open enemies in Normandy, or
of those who would have been glad to be his open enemies in France, if
circumstances had been favourable, was deprived of support from any
popular feeling of horror against an outcast of the Church. But he made
no change in his conduct or plans. By the end of summer he was back in
England, leaving things well under way in Normandy. Severer exactions
followed in England, to raise money for new campaigns. One invention of
some skilful servant of the king's seemed to the ecclesiastical
historians more intolerable and dangerous than anything before. The
king's justices began to draw the married clergy before the secular
courts, and to fine them for their violation of the canons. By
implication this would mean a legal toleration of the marriage, on
payment of fines to the king, and thus it would cut into the rights of
the Church in two directions. It was the trial of a spiritual offence in
a secular court, and it was the virtual suspension of the law of the
Church by the authority of the State. Still no embassy went to Rome.
Christmas came and it had not gone. Robert of Belleme, alarmed at the
plans of Henry, which were becoming evident, came over from Normandy to
try to make some peaceable arrangement with the king, but was refused all
terms. In January, 1106, Robert of Normandy himself came over, to get, if
possible, the return of what he had lost at home; but he also could
obtain nothing. All things were in Henry's hands. He could afford to
refuse favours, to forget his engagements, and to encourage his servants
in the invention of ingenious exactions.

But Anselm was growing impatient. New appeals to action were constantly
reaching him from England. The letter of the six bishops was sent toward
the close of 1105. He himself began again to hint at extreme measures,
and to write menacing letters to the king's ministers. Finally, early in
1106, the embassy was actually sent to Rome. Towards the end of March the
Roman curia took action on the proposal, and Anselm was informed, in a
letter from the pope, that the required concessions would be allowed. The
pope was disposed to give thanks that God had inclined the king's heart
to obedience; yet the proposal was approved of, not as an accepted
principle, but rather as a temporary expedient, until the king should be
converted by the preaching of the archbishop, to respect the rights of
the Church in full. But Anselm did not yet return to England. Before the
envoys came back from Rome, Henry had written to him of his expectation
of early crossing into Normandy. On learning that the compromise would be
accepted by the pope, Henry had sent to invite him at once to England,
but Anselm was then too ill to travel, and he continued so for some time.
It was nearly August before Henry's third expedition actually landed in
Normandy, and on the 15th of that month the king and the archbishop met
at the Abbey of Bee, and the full reconciliation between them took place.
Anselm could now agree to the compromise. Henry promised to make
reformation in the particulars of his recent treatment of the Church, of
which the archbishop complained. Then Anselm crossed to Dover, and was
received with great rejoicing.

The campaign upon which Henry embarked in August ended by the close of
September in a success greater than he could have anticipated. He first
attacked the castle of Tinchebrai, belonging to William of Mortain, and
left a fortified post there to hold it in check. As soon as the king had
retired, William came to the relief of his castle, reprovisioned it, and
shut up the king's men in their defences. Then Henry advanced in turn
with his own forces and his allies, and began a regular siege of the
castle. The next move was William's, and he summoned to his aid Duke
Robert and Robert of Belleme, and all the friends they had left in
Normandy. The whole of the opposing forces were thus face to face, and
the fate of Normandy likely to be settled by a single conflict. Orderic,
the historian of the war, notes that Henry preferred to fight rather than
to withdraw, as commanded by his brother, being willing to enter upon
this "more than civil war for the sake of future peace."

In the meantime, the men of religion who were present began to exert
themselves to prevent so fratricidal a collision of these armies, between
whose opposing ranks so many families were divided. Henry yielded to
their wishes, and offered to his brother terms of reconciliation which
reveal not merely his belief in the strength of his position in the
country and his confidence of success, but something also of his general
motive. The ardour of religious zeal which the historian makes Henry
profess we may perhaps set aside, but the actual terms offered speak for
themselves. Robert was to surrender to Henry all the castles and the
jurisdiction and administration of the whole duchy. This being done,
Henry would turn over to him, without any exertion on his part, the
revenues of half the duchy to enjoy freely in the kind of life that best
pleased him. If Robert had been a different sort of man, we should
commend his rejection of these terms. Possibly he recalled Henry's
earlier promise of a pension, and had little confidence in the certainty
of revenues from this source. But Henry, knowing the men whose advice
Robert would ask before answering, had probably not expected his terms to
be accepted.

The battle was fought on September 28, and it was fiercely fought, the
hardest fight and with the largest forces of any in which Normans or
Englishmen had been engaged for forty years. The main body of both armies
fought on foot. The Count of Mortain, in command of Robert's first
division, charged Henry's front, but was met with a resistance which he
could not overcome. In the midst of this struggle Robert's flank was
charged by Henry's mounted allies, under Count Elias of Maine, and his
position was cut in two. Robert of Belleme, who commanded the rear
division, seeing the battle going against the duke, took to flight and
left the rest of the army to its fate. This was apparently to surrender
in a body. Henry reports the number of common soldiers whom he had taken
as ten thousand, too large a figure, no doubt, but implying the capture
of Robert's whole force. His prisoners of name comprised all the leaders
of his brother's side except Robert of Belleme, including the duke
himself, Edgar the English atheling, who was soon released, and William
of Mortain. The victory at once made Henry master of Normandy. There
could be no further question of this, and it is of interest to note that
the historian, William of Malmesbury, who in his own person typifies the
union of English and Norman, both in blood and in spirit, records the
fact that the day was the same as that on which the Conqueror had landed
forty years earlier, and regards the result as reversing that event, and
as making Normandy subject to England. This was not far from its real
historical meaning.

Robert clearly recognized the completeness of Henry's success. By his
orders Falaise was surrendered, and the castle of Rouen; and he formally
absolved the towns of Normandy in general from their allegiance to
himself. At Falaise Robert's young son William, known afterwards as
William Clito, was captured and brought before Henry. Not wishing himself
to be held responsible for his safety, Henry turned him over to the
guardianship of Elias of Saint-Saens, who had married a natural daughter
of Robert's. One unsought-for result of the conquest of Normandy was that
Ranulf Flambard, who was in charge of the bishopric of Lisieux, succeeded
in making his peace with the king and obtained his restoration to Durham,
but he never again became a king's minister. Only Robert of Belleme
thought of further fighting. As a vassal of Elias, Count of Maine, he
applied to him for help, and promised a long resistance with his
thirty-four strong castles. Elias refused his aid, pointed out the
unwisdom of such an attempt, defended Henry's motives, and advised
submission, promising his good influences with Henry. This advice Robert
concluded to accept. Henry, on his side, very likely had some regard to
the thirty-four castles, and decided to bide his time. Peace, for the
present, was made between them.

Some measures which Henry considered necessary for the security of
Normandy, he did not think it wise to carry out by his own unsupported
action. In the middle of October a great council of Norman barons was
called to meet at Lisieux. Here it was decreed that all possessions which
had been wrongfully taken from churches or other legitimate holders
during the confusion of the years since the death of William the
Conqueror should be restored, and all grants from the ducal domain to
unworthy persons, or usurpations which Robert had not been able to
prevent, were ordered to be resumed. It is of especial interest that the
worst men of the prisoners taken at Tinchebrai were here condemned to
perpetual imprisonment. The name of Robert is not mentioned among those
included in this judgment, and later Henry justifies his conduct toward
his brother on the ground of political necessity, not of legal right. The
result of all these measures--we may believe it would have been the
result of the conquest alone--was to put an end at once to the disorder,
private warfare, and open robbery from which the duchy had so long
suffered. War enough there was in Normandy, in the later years of Henry's
reign, but it was regular warfare. The license of anarchy was at an end.
Robert was carried over to England, to a fate for which there could be
little warrant in strict law, but which was abundantly deserved and fully
supported by the public opinion of the time. He was kept in prison in one
royal castle or another until his death twenty-eight years later. If
Henry's profession was true, as it probably was, that he kept him as a
royal prisoner should be kept, and supplied him with the luxuries he
enjoyed so much, the result was, it is possible, not altogether
disagreeable to Robert himself. Some time later, when the pope
remonstrated with Henry on his conduct, and demanded the release of
Robert, the king's defence of his action was so complete that the pope
had no reply to make. Political expediency, the impossibility of
otherwise maintaining peace, was the burden of his answer, and this, if
not actual justice, must still be Henry's defence for his treatment of
his brother.

Henry returned to England in time for the Easter meeting of his court,
but the legalization of the compromise with Anselm was deferred to
Whitsuntide because the pope was about to hold a council in France, from
which some action affecting the question might be expected. At
Whitsuntide Anselm was ill, and another postponement was necessary. At
last, early in August, at a great council held in the king's palace in
London, the agreement was ratified. No formal statement of the terms of
this compromise has been given us by any contemporary authority, but such
accounts of it as we have, and such inferences as seem almost equally
direct, probably leave no important point unknown. Of all his claims,
Henry surrendered only the right of investiture with ring and staff.
These were spiritual symbols, typical of the bishop's relation to his
Church and of his pastoral duties. To the ecclesiastical mind the
conferring of them would seem more than any other part of the procedure
the actual granting of the religious office, though they had been used by
the kings merely as symbols of the fief granted. Some things would seem
to indicate that the forms of canonical election were more respected
after this compromise than they had been before, but this is true of
forms only, and if we may judge from a sentence in a letter to the pope,
in which Anselm tells him of the final settlement, this was not one of
the terms of the formal agreement, and William of Malmesbury says
distinctly that it was not. In all else the Church gave way to the king.
He made choice of the person to be elected, with such advice and counsel
as he chose to take, and his choice was final. He received the homage and
conferred investiture of the temporalities of the office of the new
prelate as his father and brother had done. Only when this was completed
to the king's satisfaction, and his permission to proceed received, was
the bishop elect consecrated to his spiritual office.

To us it seems clear that the king had yielded only what was a mere form,
and that he had retained all the real substance of his former power, and
probably this was also the judgment of the practical mind of Henry and of
his chief adviser, the Count of Meulan. We must not forget, however, that
the Church seemed to believe that it had gained something real, and that
a strong party of the king's supporters long and vigorously resisted
these concessions in his court. The Church had indeed set an example, for
itself at least, of successful attack on the absolute monarchy, and had
shown that the strongest of kings could be forced to yield a point
against his will. Before the century was closed, in a struggle even more
bitterly fought and against a stronger king, the warriors of the Church
looked back to this example and drew strength from this success. It is
possible, also, that these cases of concession forced from reluctant
kings served as suggestion and model at the beginning of a political
struggle which was to have more permanent results. All this, however, lay
yet in the future, and could not be suspected by either party to this
earliest conflict.

The agreement ratified in 1107 was the permanent settlement of the
investiture controversy for England, and under it developed the practice
on ecclesiastical vacancies which we may say has continued to the present
time, interrupted under some sovereigns by vacillating practice or by a
more or less theoretical concession of freedom of election to the Church.
Henry's grandson, Henry II, describes this practice as it existed in his
day, in one of the clauses of the Constitutions of Clarendon. The clause
shows that some at least of the inventions of Ranulf Flambard had not
been discarded, and there is abundant evidence to show that the king was
really stating in it, as he said he was, the customs of his grandfather's
time. The clause reads: "When an archbishopric or bishopric or abbey or
priory of the king's domain has fallen vacant, it ought to be in the
king's hands, and he shall take thence all the returns and revenues as
domain revenues, and when the time has come to provide for the Church,
the king shall call for the chief persons of the Church [that is, summon
a representation of the Church to himself], and in the king's chapel the
election shall be made with the assent of the king and with the counsel
of those ecclesiastics of the kingdom whom he shall have summoned for
this purpose, and there the elect shall do homage and fealty to the king,
as to his liege lord, of his life and limb and earthly honour, saving his
order, before he shall be consecrated."

This long controversy having reached a settlement which Anselm was at
least willing to accept, he was ready to resume the long-interrupted
duties of primate of Britain. On August 11, assisted by an imposing
assembly of his suffragan bishops, and by the Archbishop of York, he
consecrated in Canterbury five bishops at once, three of these of
long-standing appointment,--William Giffard of Winchester, Roger of
Salisbury, and Reinelm of Hereford; the other two, William of Exeter and
Urban of Landaff, recently chosen. The renewed activity of Anselm as head
of the English Church, which thus began, was not for long. His health had
been destroyed. His illness returned at frequent intervals, and in less
than two years his life and work were finished. These months, however,
were filled with considerable activity, not all of it of the kind we
should prefer to associate with the name of Anselm. Were we shut up to
the history of this time for our knowledge of his character, we should be
likely to describe it in different terms from those we usually employ.
The earlier Anselm, of gentle character, shrinking from the turmoil of
strife and longing only for the quiet of the abbey library, had
apparently disappeared. The experiences of the past few years had been,
indeed, no school in gentleness, and the lessons which he had learned at
Rome were not those of submission to the claims of others. In the great
council which ratified the compromise, Anselm had renewed his demand for
the obedience of the Archbishop of York, and this demand he continued to
push with extreme vigour until his death, first against Gerard, who died
early in 1108, and then against his successor, Thomas, son of Bishop
Samson of Worcester, appointed by Henry. A plan for the division of the
large diocese of Lincoln, by the creation of a new diocese of Ely, though
by common consent likely to improve greatly the administration of the
Church, he refused to approve until the consent of the pope had been
obtained. He insisted, against the will of the monks and the request of
the king, upon the right of the archbishop to consecrate the abbot of St.
Augustine's, Canterbury, in whatever church he pleased, and again, in
spite of the king's request, he maintained the same right in the
consecration of the bishop of London. The canon law of the Church
regarding marriage, lay or priestly, he enforced with unsparing rigour.
Almost his last act, it would seem, before his death, was to send a
violent letter to Archbishop Thomas of York, suspending him from his
office and forbidding all bishops of his obedience, under penalty of
"perpetual anathema," to consecrate him or to communicate with him if
consecrated by any one outside of England. On April 21, 1109, this stormy
episcopate closed, a notable instance of a man of noble character, and in
some respects of remarkable genius, forced by circumstances out of the
natural current of his life into a career for which he was not fitted.

For Henry these months since the conquest of Normandy and, the settlement
of the dispute with Anselm had been uneventful. Normandy had settled into
order as if the mere change of ruler had been all it needed, and in
England, which now occupied Henry's attention only at intervals, there
was no occasion of anxiety. Events were taking place across the border of
Normandy which were to affect the latter years of Henry and the future
destinies of England in important ways. In the summer of 1108, the long
reign of Philip I of France had closed, and the reign, nearly as long, of
his son, Louis VI, had begun, the first of the great Capetian kings, in
whose reign begins a definite policy of aggrandizement for the dynasty
directed in great part against their rivals, the English kings. Just
before the death of Anselm occurred that of Fulk Rechin, Count of Anjou,
and the succession of his son Fulk V. He was married to the heiress of
Maine, and a year later this inheritance, the overlordship of which the
Norman dukes had so long claimed, fell in to him. Of Henry's marriage
with Matilda two children had been born who survived infancy,--Matilda,
the future empress, early in 1102, and William in the late summer or
early autumn of 1103. The queen herself, who had for a time accompanied
the movements of her husband, now resided mostly at Westminster, where
she gained the fame of liberality to foreign artists and of devotion to
pious works.

It was during a stay of Henry's in England, shortly after the death of
Anselm, that he issued one of the very few documents of his reign which
give us glimpses into the changes in institutions which were then taking
place. This is a writ, which we have in two slightly varying forms, one
of them addressed to Bishop Samson of Worcester, dealing with the local
judicial system. From it we infer that the old Saxon system of local
justice, the hundred and county courts, had indeed never fallen into
disuse since the days of the Conquest, but that they had been subjected
to many irregularities of time and place, and that the sheriffs had often
obliged them to meet when and where it suited their convenience; and we
are led to suspect that they had been used as engines of extortion for
the advantage both of the local officer and of the king. All this Henry
now orders to cease. The courts are to meet at the same times and places
as in the days of King Edward, and if they need to be summoned to special
sessions for any royal business, due notice shall be given.

Even more important is the evidence which we get from this document of a
royal system of local justice acting in conjunction with the old system
of shire courts. The last half of the writ implies that there had arisen
thus early the questions of disputed jurisdiction, of methods of trial,
and of attendance at courts, with which we are familiar a few generations
later in the history of English law. Distinctly implied is a conflict
between a royal jurisdiction on one side and a private baronial
jurisdiction on the other, which is settled in favour of the lord's
court, if the suit is between two of his own vassals; but if the
disputants are vassals of two different lords, it is decided in favour of
the king's,--that is, of the court held by the king's justice in the
county, who may, indeed, be no more than the sheriff acting in this
capacity. This would be in strict harmony with the ruling feudal law of
the time. But when the suit comes on for trial in the county court, it is
not to be tried by the old county court forms. It is not a case in the
sheriffs county court, the people's county court, but one before the
king's justice, and the royal, that is, Norman method of trial by duel is
to be adopted. Finally, at the close of the writ, appears an effort to
defend this local court system against the liberties and immunities of
the feudal system, an attempt which easily succeeded in so far as it
concerned the king's county courts, but failed in the case of the purely
local courts.[21]

If this interpretation is correct, this writ is typical of a process of
the greatest interest, which we know from other sources was
characteristic of the reign, a process which gave their peculiar form to
the institutions of England and continued for more than a century. By
this process the local law and institutions of Saxon England, and the
royal law and central institutions of the Normans, were wrought into a
single and harmonious whole. This process of union which was long and
slow, guided by no intention beyond the convenience of the moment,
advances in two stages. In the first, the Norman administration, royal
and centralized, is carried down into the counties and there united, for
the greater ease of accomplishing certain desired ends of administration,
with the local Saxon system. This resulted in several very important
features of our judicial organization. The second stage was somewhat the
reverse of this. In it, certain features which had developed in the local
machinery, the jury and election, are adopted by the central government
and applied to new uses. This was the origin of the English parliamentary
system. It is of the first of these stages only that we get a glimpse, in
this document, and from other sources of the reign of Henry, and these
bits of evidence only allow us to say that those judicial arrangements
which were put into organized form in his grandson's reign had their
beginning, as occasional practices, in his own. Not long after the date
of this charter, a series of law books, one of the interesting features
of the reign, began to appear. Their object was to state the old laws of
England, or these in connexion with the laws then current in the courts,
or with the legislation of the first of the Norman kings. Private
compilations, or at most the work of persons whose position in the
service of the state could give no official authority to their codes,
their object was mainly practical; but they reveal not merely a general
interest in the legal arrangements existing at the moment, but a clear
consciousness that these rested upon a solid substratum of ancient law,
dating from a time before the Conquest. Towards this ancient law the
nation had lately turned, and had been answered by the promise in Henry's
coronation charter. Worn with the tyranny of William Rufus, men had
looked back with longing to the better conditions of an earlier age, and
had demanded the laws of Edward or of Canute, as, under the latter, men
had looked back to the laws of Edgar, demanding laws, not in the sense of
the legislation of a certain famous king, but of the whole legal and
constitutional situation of earlier times, thought of as a golden age
from which the recent tyranny had departed. What they really desired was
never granted them. The Saxon law still survived, and was very likely
renewed in particulars by Henry I, but it survived as local law and as
the law of the minor affairs of life. The law of public affairs and of
all great interests, the law of the tyranny from which men suffered, was
new. It made much use of the local machinery which it found but in a new
way, and it was destined to be modified in some points by the old law,
but it was new as the foundation on which was to be built the later
constitution of the state. The demand for the laws of an earlier time did
not affect the process of this building, and the effort to put the
ancient law into accessible form, which may have had this demand as one
of its causes, is of interest to the student of general history chiefly
for the evidence it gives of the great work of union which was then going
on, of Saxon and Norman, in law as in blood, into a new nation.

It was during the same stay in England that an opportunity was offered to
Henry to form an alliance on the continent which promised him great
advantages in case of an open conflict with the king of France. At
Henry's Whitsuntide court, in 1109, appeared an embassy from Henry V of
Germany, to ask for the hand of his daughter, then less than eight years
old. This request Henry would not be slow to grant. Conflicting policies
would never be likely to disturb such an alliance, and the probable
interest which the sovereign of Germany would have in common with himself
in limiting the expansion of France, or even in detaching lands from her
allegiance, would make the alliance seem of good promise for the future.
On the part of Henry of Germany, such a proposal must have come from
policy alone, but the advantage which he hoped to gain from it is not so
easy to discover as in the case of Henry of England. If he entertained
any idea of a common policy against France, this was soon dropped, and
his purpose must in all probability be sought in plans within the empire.
Henry's recent accession to the throne of Germany had been followed by--a
change of policy. During the later years of his unfortunate father, whose
stormy reign had closed in the triumph of the two enemies whom he had
been obliged to face at once, the Church of Gregory VII, contending with
the empire for equality and even for supremacy, and the princes of
Germany, grasping in their local dominions the rights of sovereignty, the
ambitious prince had fought against the king, his father. But when he had
at last become king himself, his point of view was changed. The conflict
in which his father had failed he was ready to renew with vigour and with
hope of success. That he should have believed, as he evidently did, that
a marriage with the young English princess was the most useful one he
could make in this crisis of his affairs is interesting evidence, not
merely of the world's opinion of Henry I, but also of the rank of the
English monarchy among the states of Europe.

Just as she was completing her eighth year, Matilda was sent over to
Germany to learn the language and the ways of her new country. A stately
embassy and a rich dower went with her, for which her father had provided
by taking the regular feudal aid to marry the lord's eldest daughter, at
the rate of three shillings per hide throughout England. On April 10,
1110, she was formally betrothed to the emperor-elect at Utrecht. On July
25, she was crowned Queen of Germany at Mainz. Then she was committed to
the care of the Archbishop of Trier, who was to superintend her
education. On January 7,1114, just before Matilda had completed her
twelfth year, the marriage was celebrated at Mainz, in the presence of a
great assembly. All things had been going well with Henry. In Germany and
in Italy he had overcome the princes and nobles who had ventured to
oppose him. The clergy of Germany seemed united on his side in the still
unsettled investiture conflict with the papacy. The brilliant assembly of
princes of the empire and foreign ambassadors which gathered in the city
for this marriage was in celebration as well of the triumph of the
emperor. On this great occasion, and in spite of her youth, Matilda bore
herself as a queen, and impressed those who saw her as worthy of the
position, highest in rank in the world, to which she had been called. To
the end of her stay in Germany she retained the respect and she won the
hearts of her German subjects.

By August, 1111, King Henry's stay in England was over, and he crossed
again to Normandy. What circumstances called him to the continent we do
not know, but probably events growing out of a renewal of war with Louis
VI, which seems to have been first begun early in 1109.[22] However this
may be, he soon found himself in open conflict all along his southern
border with the king of France and the Count of Anjou, with Robert of
Belleme and other barons of the border to aid them. Possibly Henry feared
a movement in Normandy itself in favour of young William Clito, or learned
of some expression of a wish not infrequent among the Norman barons in
times a little later, that he might succeed to his father's place. At any
rate, at this time, Henry ordered Robert of Beauchamp to seize the boy in
the castle of Elias of Saint-Saens, to whom he had committed him five
years before. The attempt failed. William was hastily carried off to
France by friendly hands, in the absence of his guardian. Elias joined him
soon after, shared his long exile, and suffered confiscation of his fief
in consequence. It would not be strange if Henry was occasionally
troubled, in that age of early but full-grown chivalry, by the sympathy of
the Norman barons with the wanderings and friendless poverty of their
rightful lord; but Henry was too strong and too severe in his punishment
of any treason for sympathy ever to pass into action on any scale likely
to assist the exiled prince, unless in combination with some strong enemy
of the king's from without.

Henry would appear at first sight greatly superior to Louis VI of France
in the military power and resources of which he had immediate command, as
he certainly was in diplomatic skill. The Capetian king, master only of
the narrow domains of the Isle of France, and hardly of those until the
constant fighting of Louis's reign had subdued the turbulent barons of
the province; hemmed in by the dominions, each as extensive as his own,
of the great barons nominally his vassals but sending to his wars as
scanty levies as possible, or appearing openly in the ranks of his
enemies as their own interests dictated; threatened by foreign foes, the
kings of England and of Germany, who would detach even these loosely held
provinces from his kingdom,--the Capetian king could hardly have defended
himself at this epoch from a neighbour so able as Henry I, wielding the
united strength of England and Normandy, and determined upon conquest.
The safety of the Capetian house was secured by the absence of both these
conditions. Henry was not ambitious of conquest; and as his troubles with
France increased so did dissensions in Normandy, which crippled his
resources and divided his efforts. The net result at the close of Henry's
reign was that the king of England was no stronger than in 1110, unless
we count the uncertain prospect of the Angevin succession; while the king
of France was master of larger resources and a growing power.

It seems most likely that it was in the spring of 1109 that the rivalry
of the two kings first led to an open breach. This was regarding the
fortress of Gisors, on the Epte, which William Rufus had built against
the French Vexin. Louis summoned Henry either to surrender or to demolish
it, but Henry refused either alternative, and occupied it with his
troops. The French army opposed him on the other side of the river, but
there was no fighting. Louis, who greatly enjoyed the physical pleasure
of battle, proposed to Henry that they should meet on the bridge which
crossed the river at this point, in sight of the two armies, and decide
their quarrel by a duel. Henry, the diplomatist and not the fighter,
laughed at the proposition. In Louis's army were two men, one of whom had
lately been, and the other of whom was soon to be, in alliance with
Henry, Robert of Jerusalem, Count of Flanders, and Theobald, Count of
Blois, eldest son of Henry's sister and brother of his successor as king,
Stephen of England. Possibly a truce had soon closed this first war, but
if so, it had begun again in the year of Henry's crossing, 1111; and the
Count of Blois was now in the field against his sovereign and defeated
Louis in a battle in which the Count of Flanders was killed. The war with
Louis ran its course for a year and a half longer without battles.
Against Anjou Henry built or strengthened certain fortresses along the
border and waited the course of events.

On November 4, 1112, an advantage fell to Henry which may have gone far
to secure him the remarkable terms of peace with which the war was
closed. He arrested Robert of Belleme, his constant enemy and the enemy
of all good men, "incomparable in all forms of evil since the beginning
of Christian days." He had come to meet the king at Bonneville, to bring
a message from Louis, thinking that Henry would be obliged to respect his
character as an envoy. Probably the king took the ground that by his
conduct Robert had forfeited all rights, and was to be treated
practically as a common outlaw. At any rate, he ordered his arrest and
trial. On three specific counts--that he had acted unjustly toward his
lord, that summoned three times to appear in court for trial he had not
come, and that as the king's viscount he had failed to render account of
the revenues he had collected--he was condemned and sentenced to
imprisonment. On Henry's return to England he was carried over and kept
in Wareham castle, where he was still alive in 1130. The Norman historian
Orderic records that this action of Henry's met with universal approval
and was greeted with general rejoicing.

During Lent of the next year, 1113, Henry made formal peace with both his
enemies, the king of France and the Count of Anjou. The peace with the
latter was first concluded. It was very possibly Fulk's refusal to
recognize Henry's overlordship of Maine that occasioned the war. To this
he now assented. He did homage for the county, and received investiture
of it from the hand of the king. He also promised the hand of his
daughter Matilda to Henry's son William. Henry, on his side, restored to
favour the Norman allies of Fulk. A few days later a treaty was made at
Gisors, with the king of France. Louis formally conceded to Henry the
overlordship of Belleme, which had not before depended upon the duchy of
Normandy, and that of Maine, and Britanny. In the case of Maine and of
Britanny this was the recognition of long-standing claims and of
accomplished facts, for Count Alan Fergant of Britanny, as well as Fulk
of Anjou, had already become the vassal of Henry, and had obtained the
hand of a natural daughter of the king for his son Conan, who in this
year became count. But the important lordship of Belleme was a new
cession. It was not yet in Henry's hands, nor had it been reckoned as a
part of Normandy, though the lords of Belleme had been also Norman
barons. Concessions such as these, forming with Normandy the area of many
a kingdom, were made by a king like Louis VI, only under the compulsion
of necessity. They mark the triumph of Henry's skill, of his vigorous
determination, and of his ready disregard of the legal rights of others,
if they would not conform to his ideas of proper conduct or fit into his
system of government. The occupation of Belleme required a campaign.
William Talvas, the son of Robert, while himself going to defend his
mother's inheritance of Ponthieu, had left directions with the vassals of
Belleme for its defence, but the campaign was a short one. Henry,
assisted by his new vassal, the Count of Anjou, and by his nephew,
Theobald of Blois, speedily reduced city and lordship to submission.

Orderic Vitalis, who was living in Normandy at this time, in the
monastery of St. Evroul, declares that following this peace, made in the
spring of 1113, for five years, Henry governed his kingdom and his duchy
on the two sides of the sea with great tranquillity. These years, to the
great insurrection of the Norman barons in 1118, were not entirely
undisturbed, but as compared with the period which goes before, or with
that which follows, they deserve the historian's description. One great
army was led into Wales in 1114, and the Welsh princes were forced to
renew their submission. Henry was apparently interested in the slow
incorporation of Wales in England which was going forward, but prudently
recognized the difficulties of attempting to hasten the process by
violence. He was ready to use the Church, that frequent medieval engine
of conquest, and attempted with success, both before this date and later,
to introduce English bishops into old Welsh sees. From the early part of
this reign also dates the great Flemish settlement in Pembrokeshire,
which was of momentous influence on all that part of Wales.

These years were also fully occupied with controversies in the Church,
whose importance for the state Henry clearly recognized. Out of the
conflict over investitures, regarded from the practical side, the Norman
monarchy had emerged, as we have seen, in triumph, making but one slight
concession, and that largely a matter of form. From the struggle with
the empire on the same issue, which was at this date still unsettled, the
Church was destined to gain but little more, perhaps an added point of
form, depending for its real value on the spirit with which the final
agreement was administered. In the matter of investitures, the Church
could claim but little more than a drawn battle on any field; and yet, in
that great conflict with the monarchies of Europe into which the papacy
had been led by the genius of Hildebrand, it had gained a real and great
victory in all that was of the most vital importance. The pope was no
longer the creature and servant of the emperor; he was not even a bishop
of the empire. In the estimation of all Christendom, he occupied an equal
throne, exercised a co-ordinate power, and appeared even more directly as
the representative of the divine government of the world. Under his rule
was an empire far more extensive than that which the emperor controlled,
coming now to be closely centralized with all the machinery of
government, legal, judicial, and administrative, highly organized and
pervaded from the highest to the lowest ranks with a uniform theory of
the absolute right of the ruler and of the duty of unquestioning
obedience which the most perfect secular absolutism would strive in vain
to secure. To have transformed the Church, which the emperor Henry III
had begun to reform in 1046, into that which survived the last year of
his dynasty, was a work of political genius as great as history records.

It was not before the demand of the pope in the matter of investiture
that the Norman absolute government of the Church went down. It fell
because the Norman theory of the national Church, closely under the
control of the state in every field of its activity, a part of the state
machinery, and a valuable assistant in the government of the nation, was
undermined and destroyed by a higher, and for that age a more useful,
conception. When the idea of the Church as a world-wide unity, more
closely bound to its theocratic head than to any temporal sovereign, and
with a mission and responsibility distinct from those of the state, took
possession of the body of the clergy, as it began to do in the reign of
Henry, it was impossible to maintain any longer the separateness of the
Norman Church. But the incorporation of the Norman and English churches
in the papal monarchy meant the slipping from the king's hands of power
in many individual cases, which the first two Norman kings had exercised
without question, and which even the third had continued to exercise.

The struggle of York to free itself from the promise of obedience to
Canterbury was only one of the many channels through which these new
ideas entered the kingdom. A new tide of monasticism had arisen on the
continent, which did not spend itself even with the northern borders of
England. The new orders and the new spirit found many abiding places in
the kingdom, and drew laity as well as clergy under their strong
influence. This was especially, though not alone, true of the Augustinian
canons, who possessed some fifty houses in England at the close of
Henry's reign, and in the later years of his life, of the Cistercians,
with whose founding an English saint, Stephen Harding, had had much to
do, and some of whose monasteries founded in this period, Tintern,
Rievaulx, Furness, and Fountains, are still familiar names, famous for
the beauty of their ruins. This new monasticism had been founded wholly
in the ideas of the new ecclesiastical monarchy, and was an expression of
them. The monasteries it created were organized, not as parts of the
state in which they were situated, but as parts of a great order,
international in its character, free from local control, and, though its
houses were situated in many lands, forming almost an independent state
under the direct sovereignty of the pope. The new monarchical papacy,
which emerged from the conflicts of this period, occupied Christendom
with its garrisons in these monastic houses, and every house was a source
from which its ruling ideas spread widely abroad.

A new education was also beginning in this same period, and was growing
in definiteness of content and of organization, in response to a demand
which was becoming eager. At many centres in Europe groups of scholars
were giving formal lectures on the knowledge of the day, and were
attracting larger and larger numbers of students by the fame of their
eloquence, or by the stimulus of their new method. The beginnings of
Oxford as a place of teachers, as well as of Paris, reach back into this
time. The ambitious young man, who looked forward to a career in the
Church, began to feel the necessity of getting the training which these
new schools could impart. The number of students whom we can name, who
went from England to Paris or elsewhere to study, is large for the time;
but if we possessed a list of all the English students, at home or
abroad, of this reign, we should doubtless estimate the force of this
influence more highly, even in the period of its beginning. For the ideas
which now reigned in the Church pervaded the new education as they did
the new monasticism. There was hardly a source, indeed, from which the
student could learn any other doctrine, as there has remained none in the
learning of the Roman Church to the present day. The entire literature of
the Church, its rapidly forming new philosophy and theology, its already
greatly developed canon law, breathed only the spirit of a divinely
inspired centralization. And the student who returned, very likely to
rapid promotion in the English Church, did not bring back these ideas for
himself alone. He set the fashion of thinking for his less fortunate
fellows.

It was by influences like these that the gradual and silent transformation
was wrought which made of the English Church a very different thing at the
end of these thirty-five years from what it had been at the beginning of
the reign. The first two Norman kings had reigned over a Church which knew
no other system than strict royal control. Henry I continued to exercise
to the end of his reign, with only slight modification and the faint
beginnings of change, the same prerogatives, but it was over a Church
whose officers had been trained in an opposing system, and now profoundly
disbelieved in his rights. How long would it avail the Norman monarchy
anything to have triumphed in the struggle of investitures, when it could
no longer find the bishop to appoint who was not thoroughly devoted to the
highest papal claims? The answer suggested, in its extreme form, is too
strong a statement for the exact truth; for in whatever age, or under
whatever circumstances, a strong king can maintain himself, there he can
always find subservient tools. But the interested service of individuals
is a very different foundation of power from the traditional and
unquestioning obedience of a class. The history of the next age shows
that the way had been prepared for rapid changes, when political
conditions would permit; and the grandson of the first Henry found
himself obliged to yield, in part at least, to demands of the Church
entirely logical in themselves, but unheard of in his grandfather's time.

[18] Eadmer, p. 172.

[19] Liebermann, Quadripartitus, p. 155.

[20] Anselm, Epist. iv. 50, 51; Luchaire, Louis VI, Annales, No. 31.

[21] See American Historical Review, viii, 478.

[22] Luchaire, Louis VI, Annales, p. cxv.

CHAPTER VIII

THE KING'S FOREIGN INTERESTS

We need not enter into the details of the long struggle between
Canterbury and York. The archbishopric of Canterbury was vacant for five
years after the death of Anselm; its revenues went to support the various
undertakings of the king. In April, 1114, Ralph of Escures, Bishop of
Rochester, was chosen Anselm's successor. The archbishopric of York had
been vacant only a few months, when it was filled, later in the summer,
by the appointment of Thurstan, one of the king's chaplains. The question
of the obligation of the recently elected Archbishop of York to bind
himself to obedience to the primate of Britain, whether settled as a
principle or as a special case, by an English council or by the king or
under papal authority, arose anew with every new appointment. In the
period which follows the appointment of Thurstan, a new element of
interest was added to the dispute by the more deliberate policy of the
pope to make use of it to gain a footing for his authority in England,
and to weaken the unity and independence of the English Church. This
attempt led to a natural alliance of parties, in which, while the issue
was at bottom really the same, the lines of the earlier investiture
conflict were somewhat rearranged. The pope supported the claim of York,
while the king defended the right of Canterbury as bound up with his own.

At an important meeting of the great council at Salisbury, in March,
1116, the king forced upon Thurstan the alternative of submission to
Canterbury or resignation. The barons and prelates of the realm had been
brought together to make formal recognition of the right to the
succession of Henry's son William, now fourteen years of age. Already in
the previous summer this had been done in Normandy, the barons doing
homage and swearing fealty to the prince. Now the English barons followed
the example, and, by the same ceremony, the strongest tie known to the
feudal world, bound themselves to accept the son as their lord on the
death of his father. The prelates, for their part, took oath that if they
should survive Henry, they would recognize William as king, and then do
homage to him in good faith. The incident is interesting less as an
example of this characteristic feudal method of securing the succession,
for this had been employed since the Conquest both in Normandy and in
England, than because we are told that on this occasion the oath was
demanded, not merely of all tenants in chief, but of all inferior
vassals. If this statement may be accepted, and there is no reason to
doubt it, we may conclude that the practice established by the Conqueror
at an earlier Salisbury assembly had been continued by his sons. This was
a moment when Henry was justified in expressing his will, even on a
matter of Church government, in peremptory command, and when no one was
likely to offer resistance. Thurstan chose to surrender the
archbishopric, and promised to make no attempt to recover it; but
apparently the renunciation was not long regarded as final on either
side. He was soon after this with the king in Normandy, but he was
refused the desired permission to go to Rome, a journey which Archbishop
Ralph soon undertook, that he might try the influence of his presence
there in favour of the cause of Canterbury and against other pretensions
of the pope.

From the date of this visit to Normandy, in the spring of 1116, Henry's
continental interests mix themselves with those of the absolute ruler of
the English Church, and he was more than once forced to choose upon which
side he would make some slight concession or waive some right for the
moment. Slowly the sides were forming themselves and the opposing
interests growing clear, of a great conflict for the dominion of northern
France, a conflict forced upon the English king by the necessity of
defending the position he had gained, rather than sought by him in the
spirit of conquest, even when he seemed the aggressor; a conflict in
which he was to gain the victory in the field and in diplomacy, but to be
overcome by the might of events directed by no human hand and not to be
resisted by any.

The peace between Henry and Louis, made in the spring of 1113, was broken
by Henry's coming to the aid of his nephew, Theobald of Blois. Theobald
had seized the Count of Nevers on his return from assisting Louis in a
campaign in the duchy of France in 1115. The cause was bad, but Henry
could not afford to see so important an ally as his nephew crushed by his
enemies, especially as his dominions were of peculiar strategical value
in any war with the king of France. To Louis's side gathered, as the war
developed, those who had reason from their position to fear what looked
like the policy of expansion of this new English power in north-western
France, especially the Counts of Flanders and of Anjou. The marriage of
Henry's son William with Fulk's daughter had not yet taken place, and the
Count of Anjou might well believe--particularly from the close alliance
of Henry with the rival power of Blois--that he had more to fear than to
hope for from the spread of the Norman influence. At the same time the
division began to show itself among the Norman barons, of those who were
faithful to Henry and those who preferred the succession of Robert's son
William; and it grew more pronounced as the war went on, for Louis took
up the cause of William as the rightful heir of Normandy. In doing this
he began the policy which the French kings followed for so many years,
and on the whole with so little advantage, of fomenting the quarrels in
the English royal house and of separating if possible the continental
possessions from the English.

On Henry's side were a majority of the Norman barons and the counts of
Britanny and of Blois. For the first time, also, appeared upon the stage
of history in this war Henry's other nephew, Stephen, who was destined to
do so much evil to England and to Henry's plans before his death. His
uncle had already made him Count of Mortain. The lordship of Belleme,
which Henry had given to Theobald, had been by him transferred to Stephen
in the division of their inheritance. It was probably not long after this
that Henry procured for him the hand of Matilda, heiress of the county of
Boulogne, and thus extended his own influence over that important
territory on the borders of Flanders. France, Flanders, and Anjou
certainly had abundant reason to fear the possible combination into one
power of Normandy, Britanny, Maine, Blois, and Boulogne, and that a power
which, however pacific in disposition, showed so much tendency to
expansion. For France, at least, the cause of this war was not the
disobedience of a vassal, nor was it to be settled by the siege and
capture of border castles.

The war which followed was once more not a war of battles. Armies, large
for the time, were collected, but they did little more than make
threatening marches into the enemy's country. In 1118 the revolt of the
Norman barons, headed by Amaury of Montfort, who now claimed the county
of Evreux, assumed proportions which occasioned the king many
difficulties. This was a year of misfortunes for him. The Count of Anjou,
the king of France, the Count of Flanders, each in turn invaded some part
of Normandy, and gained advantages which Henry could not prevent. Baldwin
of Flanders, however, returned home with a wound from an arrow, of which
he shortly died. In the spring of this year Queen Matilda died, praised
by the monastic chroniclers to the last for her good deeds. A month later
Henry's wisest counsellor, Robert of Meulan, died also, after a long life
spent in the service of the Conqueror and of his sons. The close of the
year saw no turn of the tide in favour of Henry. Evreux was captured in
October by Amaury of Montfort, and afterwards Alencon by the Count of
Anjou.

The year 1119, which was destined to close in triumph for Henry, opened
no more favourably. The important castle of Les Andelys, commanding the
Norman Vexin, was seized by Louis, aided by treachery. But before the
middle of the year, Henry had gained his first great success. He induced
the Count of Anjou, by what means we do not know,--by money it was
thought by some at the time,--to make peace with him, and to carry out
the agreement for the marriage of his daughter with the king's son. The
county of Maine was settled on the young pair, virtually its transfer to
Henry. At the same time, Henry granted to William Talvas, perhaps as one
of the conditions of the treaty, the Norman possessions which had
belonged to his father, Robert of Belleme. In the same month, June, 1119,
Baldwin of Flanders died of the wound which he had received in Normandy,
and was succeeded by his nephew, Charles the Good, who reversed Baldwin's
policy and renewed the older relations with England. The sieges of
castles, the raiding and counter-raiding of the year, amounted to little
until, on August 20, while each was engaged in raiding, the opposing
armies commanded by the two kings in person unexpectedly found themselves
in the presence of one another. The battle of Bremule, the only encounter
of the war which can be called a battle, followed. Henry and his men
again fought on foot, as at Tinchebrai, with a small reserve on
horseback. The result was a complete victory for Henry. The French army
was completely routed, and a large number of prisoners was taken, though
the character which a feudal battle often assumed from this time on is
attributed to this one, in the fact reported that in the fighting and
pursuit only three men were killed.

A diplomatic victory not less important followed the battle of Bremule by
a few weeks. The pope was now in France. His predecessor, Gelasius II,
had been compelled to flee from Italy by the successes of the Emperor
Henry V, and had died at Cluny in January, 1119, on his way to the north.
The cardinals who had accompanied him elected in his stead the Archbishop
of Vienne, who took the name of Calixtus II. Gelasius in his short and
unfortunate reign had attempted to interfere with vigour in the dispute
between York and Canterbury, and had summoned both parties to appear
before him for the decision of the case. This was in Henry's year of
misfortunes, 1118, and he was obliged to temporize. The early death of
Gelasius interrupted his plan, but only until Calixtus II was ready to go
on with it. He called a council of the Church to meet at Reims in
October, to which he summoned the English bishops, and where he proposed
to decide the question of the obedience of York to Canterbury. Henry
granted a reluctant consent to the English bishops to attend this
council, but only on condition that they would allow no innovations in
the government of the English Church. To Thurstan of York, to whom he had
restored the temporalities of his see, under the pressure of
circumstances nearly two years before, he granted permission to attend on
condition that he would not accept consecration as archbishop from the
pope. This condition was at once violated, and Thurstan was consecrated
by the pope on October 19. Henry immediately ordered that he should not
be allowed to return to any of the lands subject to his rule.

At this council King Louis of France, defeated in the field and now
without allies, appealed in person to the pope for the condemnation of
the king of England. He is said, by Orderic Vitalis who was probably
present at the council and heard him speak, to have recited the evil
deeds of Henry, from the imprisonment of Robert to the causes of the
present war. The pope himself was in a situation where he needed to
proceed with diplomatic caution, but he promised to seek an interview
with Henry and to endeavour to bring about peace. This interview took
place in November, at Gisors, and ended in the complete discomfiture of
the pope. Henry was now in a far stronger position than he had been at
the beginning of the year, and to the requests of Calixtus he returned
definite refusals or vague and general answers of which nothing was to be
made. The pope was even compelled to recognize the right of the English
king to decide when papal legates should be received in the kingdom.
Henry was, however, quite willing to make peace. He had won over Louis's
allies, defeated his attempt to gain the assistance of the pope, and
finally overcome the revolted Norman barons. He might reasonably have
demanded new advantages in addition to those which had been granted him
in the peace of 1113, but all that marks this treaty is the legal
recognition of his position in Normandy. Homage was done to Louis for
Normandy, not by Henry himself, for he was a king, but by his son William
for him. It is probable that at no previous date would this ceremony have
been acceptable, either to Louis or to Henry. On Louis's part it was not
merely a recognition of Henry's right to the duchy of Normandy, but it
was also a formal abandonment of William Clito, and an acceptance of
William, Henry's son, as the heir of his father. This act was accompanied
by a renewal of the homage of the Norman barons to William, whether made
necessary by the numerous rebellions of the past two years, or desirable
to perfect the legal chain, now that William had been recognized as heir
by his suzerain, a motive that would apply to all the barons.

This peace was made sometime during the course of the year 1120. In
November Henry was ready to return to England, and on the 25th he set
sail from Barfleur, with a great following. Then suddenly came upon him,
not the loss of any of the advantages he had lately gained nor any
immediate weakening of his power, but the complete collapse of all that
he had looked forward to as the ultimate end of his policy. His son
William embarked a little later than his father in the White Ship, with
a brilliant company of young relatives and nobles. They were in a very
hilarious mood, and celebrated the occasion by making the crew drunk.
Probably they were none too sober themselves; certainly Stephen of Blois
was saved to be king of England in his cousin's place, by withdrawing to
another vessel when he saw the condition of affairs on the White Ship.
It was night and probably dark. About a mile and a half from Barfleur the
ship struck a rock, and quickly filled and sank. It was said that William
would have escaped if he had not turned back at the cries of his sister,
Henry's natural daughter, the Countess of Perche. All on board were
drowned except a butcher of Rouen. Never perished in any similar calamity
so large a number of persons of rank. Another child of Henry's, his
natural son Richard, his niece Matilda, sister of Theobald and Stephen, a
nephew of the Emperor Henry V, Richard, Earl of Chester, and his brother,
the end of the male line of Hugh of Avranches, and a crowd of others of
only lesser rank. Orderic Vitalis records that he had heard that eighteen
ladies perished, who were the daughters, sisters, nieces, or wives of
kings or earls. Henry is said to have fallen to the ground in a faint
when the news was told him, and never to have been the same man again.

But if Henry could no longer look forward to the permanence in the second
generation of the empire which he had created, he was not the man to
surrender even to the blows of fate. The succession to his dominions of
Robert's son William, who had been so recently used by his enemies
against him, but who was now the sole male heir of William the Conqueror,
was an intolerable idea. In barely more than a month after the death of
his son, the king took counsel with the magnates of the realm, at a great
council in London, in regard to his remarriage. In less than another
month the marriage was celebrated. Henry's second wife was Adelaide,
daughter of Geoffrey, Duke of Lower Lorraine, a vassal of his son-in-law,
the emperor, and his devoted supporter, as well as a prince whose
alliance might be of great use in any future troubles with France or
Flanders. This marriage was made chiefly in hope of a legitimate heir,
but it was a childless marriage, and Henry's hope was disappointed.

For something more than two years after this fateful return of the king
to England, his dominions enjoyed peace scarcely broken by a brief
campaign in Wales in 1121. At the end of 1120, Archbishop Thurstan, for
whose sake the pope was threatening excommunication and interdict, was
allowed to return to his see, where he was received with great rejoicing.
But the dispute with Canterbury was not yet settled. Indeed, he had
scarcely returned to York when he was served with notice that he must
profess, for himself at least, obedience to Canterbury, as his
predecessors had done. This he succeeded in avoiding for a time, and at
the beginning of October, in 1122, Archbishop Ralph of Canterbury died,
not having gained his case. An attempt of Calixtus II to send a legate to
England, contrary to the promise he had made to Henry at Gisors, was met
and defeated by the king with his usual diplomatic skill, so far as the
exercise of any legatine powers is concerned, though the legate was
admitted to England and remained there for a time. In the selection of a
successor to Ralph of Canterbury a conflict arose between the monastic
chapter of Christ church and the bishops of the province, and was decided
undoubtedly according to the king's mind in favour of the latter, by the
election of William of Corbeil, a canon regular. Another episcopal
appointment of these years illustrates the growing importance in the
kingdom of the great administrative bishop, Roger of Salisbury, who seems
to have been the king's justiciar, or chief representative, during his
long absences in Normandy. The long pontificate of Robert Bloet, the
brilliant and worldly Bishop of Lincoln, closed at the beginning of 1123
by a sudden stroke as he was riding with the king, and in his place was
appointed Roger's nephew, Alexander.

During this period also, probably within a year after the death of his
son William, Henry took measures to establish the position of one of his
illegitimate sons, very likely with a view to the influence which he
might have upon the succession when the question should arise. Robert of
Caen, so called from the place of his birth, was created Earl of
Gloucester, and was married to Mabel, heiress of the large possessions of
Robert Fitz Hamon in Gloucester, Wales, and Normandy. Robert of
Gloucester, as he came to be known, was the eldest of Henry's
illegitimate sons, born before his father's accession to the throne, and
he was now in the vigour of young manhood. He was also, of all Henry's
children of whom we know anything, the most nearly like himself, of more
than average abilities, patient and resourceful, hardly inheriting in
full his father's diplomatic skill but not without gifts of the kind, and
earning the reputation of a lover of books and a patron of writers. A
hundred years earlier there would have been no serious question, in the
circumstances which had arisen, of his right to succeed his father, at
least in the duchy of Normandy. That the possibility of such a succession
was present in men's minds is shown by a contemporary record that the
suggestion was made to him on the death of Henry, and rejected at once
through his loyalty to his sister's son. Whether this record is to be
believed or not, it shows that the event was thought possible.[23]

Certainly there was no real movement, not even the slightest, in his
favour, and this fact reveals the change which had taken place in men's
ideas of the succession in a century. The necessity of legitimate birth
was coming to be recognized as indisputable, though it had not been by
the early Teutonic peoples. Of the causes of this change, the teachings
of the Church were no doubt the most effective, becoming of more force
with its increasing influence, and especially since, as a part of the
Hildebrandine reformation, it had insisted with so much emphasis on the
fact that the son of a married priest could have no right of succession
to his father's benefice, being of illegitimate birth; but the teachings
of the sacredness of the marriage tie, of the sinfulness of illicit
relations, and of the nullity of marriage within the prohibited degrees,
were of influence in the change of ideas. It is also true that men's
notions of the right of succession to property in general were becoming
more strict and definite, and very possibly the importance of the
succession involved in this particular case had its effect. One may
almost regret that this change of ideas, which was certainly an advance
in morals, as well as in law, was not delayed for another generation; for
if Robert of Gloucester could have succeeded on the death of Henry
without dispute, England would have been saved weary years of strife and
suffering.

The death of the young William was a signal to set Henry's enemies in
motion again. But they did not begin at once. Henry's position was still
unweakened. Very likely his speedy marriage was a notice to the world that
he did not propose to modify in the least his earlier plans. Probably
also the absence of Fulk of Anjou, who had gone on a pilgrimage to
Jerusalem soon after his treaty of 1119 with Henry, was a cause of delay,
for the natural first move would be for him to demand a return of his
daughter and her dowry. Fulk's stay was not long in the land of which he
was in a few years to be king, and on his return he at once sent for his
daughter, probably in 1121. She returned home, but as late as December,
1122, there was still trouble between him and Henry in regard to her
dowry, which Henry no doubt was reluctant to surrender.

About the same time, Henry's old enemy, Amaury of Montfort, disliking the
strictness of Henry's rule and the frequency of his demands for money,
began to work among the barons of Normandy and with his nephew, the Count
of Anjou, in favour of William Clito. It was already clear that Henry's
hope of another heir was likely to be disappointed, and Normandy would
naturally be more easily attracted to the son of Robert than England The
first step was one which did not violate any engagement with Henry, but
which was, nevertheless, a decided recognition of the claims of his
nephew, and an open attack on his plans. Fulk gave his second daughter,
Sibyl, in marriage to William Clito, and with her the county of Maine,
which had been a part of Matilda's dower on her marriage with Henry's son
William. Under the circumstances, this was equivalent to an announcement
that he expected William Clito to be the Duke of Normandy. Early in 1123,
Henry sent over troops to Normandy, and in June of that year he crossed
himself, to be on the spot if the revolt and war which were threatening
should break out. In September the discontented barons agreed together to
take arms. It is of interest that among these was Waleran of Meulan, the
son of the king's faithful counsellor, Count Robert. Waleran had
inherited his father's Norman possessions while his brother Robert had
become Earl of Leicester in England.

In all this the hand of Louis, king of France, was not openly seen.
Undoubtedly, however, the movement had his encouragement from the
beginning, and very likely his promise of open support when the time
should come. The death of the male heir to England and Normandy would
naturally draw Henry's daughter Matilda, and her husband the emperor,
nearer to him; and of this, while Henry was still in England, some
evidence has come down to us though not of the most satisfactory kind.
Any evidence at the time that this alliance was likely to become more
close would excite the fear of the king of France and make him ready to
support any movement against the English king. Flanders would feel the
danger as keenly, and in these troubles Charles the Good abandoned his
English alliance and supported the cause of France.

The contest which followed between the king and his revolted barons is
hardly to be dignified with the name of war. The forced surrender of a
few strongholds, the long siege of seven weeks, long for those days, of
Waleran of Meulan's castle, of Pont Audemer and its capture, and the
occupation of Amaury of Montfort's city of Evreux, filled the remainder
of the year 1123, and in March of 1124 the battle of Bourgtheroulde, in
which Ralph, Earl of Chester, defeated Amaury and Waleran and captured a
large number of prisoners, virtually ended the conflict. Upon the leaders
whom he had captured Henry inflicted his customary punishment of long
imprisonment, or the worse fate of blinding. The Norman barons had taken
arms, and had failed without the help from abroad which they undoubtedly
expected. We do not know in full detail the steps which had been taken to
bring about this result, but it was attributed to the diplomacy of Henry,
that neither Fulk of Anjou nor Louis of France was able to attack him.

Henry probably had little difficulty in moving his son-in-law, the
emperor Henry V, to attack Louis of France. Besides the general reason
which would influence him, of willingness to support Matilda's father at
this time, and of standing unfriendliness with France, he was especially
ready to punish the state in which successive popes had found refuge and
support when driven from Italy by his successes. The policy of an attack
on Louis was not popular with the German princes, and the army with which
the Emperor crossed the border was not a large one. To oppose him, Louis
advanced with a great and enthusiastic host. Taking in solemn ceremony
from the altar of St Denis the oriflamme, the banner of the holy defender
of the land, he aroused the patriotism of northern France as against a
hereditary enemy. Even Henry's nephew, Theobald of Blois, led out his
forces to aid the king. The news of the army advancing against them did
not increase the ardour of the German forces; and hearing of an
insurrection in Worms, the Emperor turned back, having accomplished
nothing more than to secure a free hand for Henry of England against the
Norman rebels.

Against Fulk of Anjou Henry seems to have found his ally in the pope. The
marriage of William Clito with Sibyl, with all that it might carry with
it, was too threatening a danger to be allowed to stand, if in any way it
could be avoided. The convenient plea of relationship, convenient to be
remembered or forgotten according to the circumstances, was urged upon
the pope. The Clito and his bride were related in no nearer degree than
the tenth, according to the reckoning of the canon law, which prohibited
marriage between parties related in the seventh degree, and Henry's own
children, William in his earlier, and Matilda in her later marriage, with
the sister and brother of Sibyl, were equally subject to censure. But
this was a different case. Henry's arguments at Rome--Orderic tells us
that threats, prayers, and money were combined--were effective, and the
marriage was ordered dissolved. Excommunication and interdict were
necessary to enforce this decision; but at last, in the spring of 1125,
Fulk was obliged to yield, and William Clito began his wanderings once
more, followed everywhere by the "long arm" of his uncle.

At Easter time in 1125, probably a few days before the date of the papal
bull of interdict which compelled the dissolution of the marriage of
William and Sibyl, a papal legate, John of Crema, landed in England.
Possibly this departure from Henry's practice down to this time was a
part of the price which the papal decision cost. The legate made a
complete visitation of England, had a meeting with the king of Scots, and
presided at a council of the English Church held in September, where the
canons of Anselm were renewed in somewhat milder form. On his return to
Rome in October, he was accompanied by the Archbishops of Canterbury and
York, who went there about the still unsettled question of the obedience
of the latter. Not even now was this question settled on its merits, but
William of Corbeil made application, supported by the king, to be
appointed the standing papal legate in Britain. This request was granted,
and formed a precedent which was followed by successive popes and
archbishops. This appointment is usually considered a lowering of the
pretensions of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and an infringement of the
independence of the English Church, and to a considerable extent this is
true. Under a king as strong as Henry I, with an archbishop no stronger
than William of Corbeil, or, indeed, with one not exceptionally strong,
the papal authority gained very little from the arrangement. But it was a
perpetual opportunity; it was a recognition of papal right. Under it the
number of appeals to Rome increased; it marks in a legal way the advance
of papal authority and of a consciousness of unity in the Church since
the accession of the king, and it must have been so regarded at Rome. The
appointment gave to Canterbury at once undoubted supremacy over York, but
not on the old grounds, and that question was passed on to the future
still unsettled.

In the spring of 1125 also occurred an event which again changed the
direction of Henry's plans. On May 23, the emperor Henry V died, without
children by his marriage to Matilda. The widowed Empress, as she was
henceforth called by the English though she had never received the
imperial crown, obeyed her father's summons to return to him in Normandy
with great reluctance. She had been in Germany since her early childhood,
and she was now twenty-three years of age. She could have few
recollections of any other home. She loved the German people, and was
beloved by them. We are told even that some of them desired her to reign
in her husband's stead, and came to ask her return of Henry. But the
death of her husband had rendered her succession to the English throne a
matter of less difficulty, and Henry had no mind to sacrifice his own
plans for the benefit of a foreign people. In September, 1126, he
returned with Matilda to England, and in January following, at a great
council in London, he demanded and obtained of the baronage, lay and
spiritual, an oath to accept Matilda as sovereign if he should die
without a male heir. The inference is natural from the account William of
Malmesbury gives of this event, that in the argument before the council
much was made of the fact that Matilda was a descendant of the old Saxon,
as well as of the Norman, line. It is evident, also, that there was
hesitation on the part of the barons, and that they yielded reluctantly
to the king's demand.

The feudalism of France and England clearly recognized the right of women
to succeed to baronies, even of the first importance, though with some
irregularities of practice and the feudal right of marriage which the
English kings considered so important rested, in the case of female
heirs, on this principle. The king's son, Robert of Gloucester, and his
nephew Stephen, now Count of Boulogne, who disputed with one another the
right to take this oath to Matilda's succession next after her uncle,
David, king of Scots, had both been provided for by Henry in this way.
Still, even in these cases, a difference was likely to be felt between
succession to the barony itself, and to the title and political authority
which went with it, and the difference would be greater in the case of
the highest of titles, of the throne of such a dominion as Henry had
brought together. Public law in the Spanish peninsula had already, in one
case, recognized the right of a woman to reign, but there had been as yet
no case in northern Europe. The dread of such a succession was natural,
in days when feudal turbulence was held in check only by the reigning
king, and when even this could be accomplished only by a king of
determined force. The natural feeling in such cases is undoubtedly
indicated by the form of the historian's statement referred to above,
that Robert of Gloucester declined the suggestion that he should be king
out of loyalty to "his sister's son." It was the feeling that the female
heir could pass the title on to her son, rather than that she could hold
it herself.

William of Malmesbury states, in his account of these events, that he had
often heard Bishop Roger of Salisbury say that he considered himself
released from this oath to Matilda because it had been taken on condition
that she should not be married out of the kingdom except with the counsel
of the barons.[24] The writer takes pains at the same time to say that he
records this fact rather from his sense of duty as a historian than
because he believes the statement. It has, however, a certain amount of
inherent probability. To consult with his vassals on such a question was
so frequently the practice of the lord, and it was so entirely in line
with feudal usage, that the barons would have had some slight ground on
which to consider themselves released from this oath, even if such a
specific promise had not been made, nor is it likely that Henry would
hesitate to make it if he thought it desired. It is indeed quite possible
that Henry had not yet determined upon the plan which he afterwards
carried out, though it may very likely have been in his mind, and that he
was led to this by events which were taking place at this very time in
France.

Matilda's return to her father, and Henry's evident intention to make her
the heir of his dominions, of Normandy as well as of England, seem to
have moved King Louis to some immediate action in opposition. The
separation of the duchy from the kingdom, so important for the
interests of the Capetian house, could not be hoped for unless this plan
was defeated. The natural policy of opposition was the support of William
Clito. At a great council of his kingdom, meeting at the same time with
Henry's court in which Matilda's heirship was recognized, the French king
bespoke the sympathy and support of his barons for "William of Normandy."
The response was favourable, and Louis made him a grant of the French
Vexin, a point of observation and of easy approach to Normandy. At the
same time, a wife was given William in the person of Jeanne, half sister
of Louis's queen, and daughter of the Marquis of Montferrat. A few weeks
later William advanced with an armed force to Gisors, and made formal
claim to Normandy.

It was hardly these events, though they were equivalent to a formal
notification of the future policy of the king of France, which brought
Henry to a decision as to his daughter's marriage. On March 2, the Count
of Flanders, Charles the Good, was foully murdered in the Church of St.
Donatian at Bruges. He was without children or near relatives, and
several claimants for the vacant countship at once appeared. Even Henry I
is said to have presented his claim, which he would derive from his
mother, but he seems never seriously to have prosecuted it. Louis, on the
contrary, gave his whole support to the claim of William Clito, and
succeeded with little difficulty in getting him recognized by most of the
barons and towns as count. This was a new and most serious danger to
Henry's plans, and he began at once to stir up troubles for the new count
among his vassals, by the support of rival claimants, and in alliance
with neighbouring princes. But the situation demanded measures of direct
defence, and Henry was led to take the decisive step, so eventful for all
the future history of England, of marrying Matilda a second time.
Immediately after Whitsuntide of 1127, Matilda was sent over to Normandy,
attended by Robert of Gloucester and Brian Fitz Count, and at Rouen was
formally betrothed by the archbishop of that city to Geoffrey, son of
Fulk of Anjou. The marriage did not take place till two years later.

For this marriage no consent of English or Norman barons was asked, and
none was granted. Indeed, we are led to suspect that Henry considered it
unlikely that he could obtain consent, and deemed it wiser not to let his
plans be known until they were so far accomplished as to make opposition
useless. The natural rivalry and hostility between Normandy and Anjou had
been so many times passed on from father to son that such a marriage as
this could seem to the Norman barons nothing but a humiliation, and to
the Angevins hardly less than a triumph. The opposition, however, spent
itself in murmurs. The king was too strong. Probably also the political
advantages were too obvious to warrant any attempt to defeat the scheme.
Matilda herself is said to have been much opposed to the marriage, and
this we can easily believe. Geoffrey was more than ten years her junior,
and still a mere boy. She had but recently occupied the position of
highest rank in the world to which a woman could attain. She was
naturally of a proud and haughty spirit. We are told nothing of the
arguments which induced her to consent; but in this case again the
political advantage, the necessity of the marriage to the security of her
succession, must have been the controlling motive.

That these considerations were valid, that Henry was fully justified in
taking this step in the circumstances which had arisen, is open to no
question, if the matter is regarded as one of cold policy alone. To leave
Matilda's succession to the sole protection of the few barons of England,
who were likely to be faithful, however powerful they might be, would
have been madness under the new conditions. With William Clito likely to
be in possession of the resources of a strong feudal state, heartily
supported by the king of France, felt by the great mass of Norman barons
to be the rightful heir, and himself of considerable energy of character,
the odds would be decidedly in favour of his succession. The balance
could be restored only by bringing forward in support of Matilda's claim
a power equal to William's and certain not to abandon her cause. Henry
could feel that he had accomplished this by the marriage with Geoffrey,
and he had every reason to believe that he had converted at the same time
one of the probable enemies of his policy into its most interested
defender. Could he have foreseen the early death of William, he might
have had reason to hesitate and to question whether some other marriage
might not lead to a more sure success. That this plan failed in the end
is only a proof of Henry's foresight in providing, against an almost
inevitable failure, the best defence which ingenuity could devise.

William Clito's tenure of his countship was of but little more than a
year, and a year filled with fighting. Boulogne was a vassal county of
Flanders; but the new count, Stephen, undoubtedly carrying out the
directions of his uncle, refused him homage, and William endeavoured to
compel his obedience by force. Insurrections broke out behind him, due in
part to his own severity of rule; and the progress of one of his rivals
who was destined to succeed him, Dietrich of Elsass, was alarming. Louis
attempted to come to his help, but was checked by a forward move of Henry
with a Norman army. The tide seemed about to turn in Henry's favour once
more, when it was suddenly impelled that way by the death of William.
Wounded in the hand by a spear, in a fight at Alost, he died a few days
later. His father was still alive in an English prison, and was informed
in a dream, we are told, of this final blow of fortune. But for Henry
this opportune death not merely removed from the field the most dangerous
rival for Matilda's succession, but it also re-established the English
influence in Flanders. Dietrich of Elsass became count, with the consent
of Louis, and renewed the bond with England. Not long afterwards by the
influence of Henry he obtained as wife, Geoffrey of Anjou's sister Sibyl,
who had been taken from William Clito.

Geoffrey and Matilda were married at Le Mans, on June g, 1129, by the
Bishop of Avranches, in the presence of a brilliant assembly of nobles
and prelates, and with the appearance of great popular rejoicing. After a
stay there of three weeks, Henry returned to Normandy, and Matilda, with
her husband and father-in-law, went to Angers. The jubilation with which
the bridal party was there received was no doubt entirely genuine.
Already before this marriage an embassy from the kingdom of Jerusalem had
sought out Fulk, asking him to come to the aid of the Christian state,
and offering him the hand of the heiress of the kingdom with her crown.
This offer he now accepted, and left the young pair in possession of
Anjou. But this happy outcome of Henry's policy, which promised to settle
so many difficulties, was almost at the outset threatened with disaster
against which even he could not provide. Matilda was not of gentle
disposition. She never made it easy for her friends to live with her, and
it is altogether probable that she took no pains to conceal her scorn of
this marriage and her contempt for the Angevins, including very likely
her youthful husband. At any rate, a few days after Henry's return to
England, July 7,1129, he was followed by the news that Geoffrey had
repudiated and cast off his wife, and that Matilda had returned to Rouen
with few attendants. Henry did not, however, at once return to Normandy,
and it was two full years before Matilda came back to England.

The disagreement between Geoffrey and Matilda ran its course as a family
quarrel. It might endanger the future of Henry's plans, but it caused him
no present difficulty. His continental position was now, indeed, secure
and was threatened during the short remainder of his life by none of his
enemies, though his troubles with his son-in-law were not yet over. The
defeat of Robert and the crushing of the most powerful nobles had taught
the barons a lesson which did not need to be repeated, and England was
not easily accessible to the foreign enemies of the king. In Normandy the
case was different, and despite Henry's constant successes and his
merciless severity, no victory had been final so long as any claimant
lived who could be put forward to dispute his possession. Now followed
some years of peace, in which the history of Normandy is as barren as the
history of England had long been, until the marriage of Matilda raised up
a new claimant to disturb the last months of her father's life. During
Henry's last stay in Normandy death had removed one who had once filled a
large place in history, but who had since passed long years in obscurity.
Ranulf Flambard died in 1128, having spent the last part of his life in
doing what he could to redeem the earlier, by his work on the cathedral
of Durham, where in worthy style he carried on the work of his
predecessor, William of St. Calais. Soon after died William Giffard, the
bishop whom Henry had appointed before he was himself crowned, and in his
place the king appointed his nephew, Henry of Blois, brother of Count
Stephen, who was to play so great a part in the troubles that were soon
to begin. About the same time we get evidence that Henry had not
abandoned his practice of taking fines from the married clergy, and of
allowing them to retain their wives.

The year 1130, which Henry spent in England, is made memorable by a
valuable and unique record giving us a sight of the activities of his
reign on a side where we have little other evidence. The Pipe Roll of that
year has come down to us.[25] The Pipe Rolls, so called apparently from
the shape in which they were filed for preservation, are the records of
the accounting of the Exchequer Court with the sheriffs for the revenues
which they had collected from their counties, and which they were bound to
hand over to the treasury. From a point in the reign of Henry's grandson,
these rolls become almost continuous, and reveal to us in detail many
features of the financial system of these later times. This one record
from the reign of the first Henry is a slender foundation for our
knowledge of the financial organization of the kingdom, but from it we
know with certainly that this organization had already begun as it was
afterward developed.

It has already been said that the single organ of the feudal state, by
which government in all its branches was carried on, was the curia
regis. We shall find it difficult to realize a fact like this, or to
understand how so crude a system of government operated in practice,
unless we first have clearly in mind the fact that the men of that time
did not reason much about their government. They did not distinguish one
function of the state from another, nor had they yet begun to think that
each function should have its distinct machinery in the governmental
system. All that came later, as the result of experience, or more
accurately, of the pressure of business. As yet, business and machinery
both were undeveloped and undifferentiated. In a single session of the
court advice might be given to the king on some question of foreign
policy and on the making or revising of a law; and a suit between two of
the king's vassals might be heard and decided: and no one would feel that
work of different and somewhat inconsistent types had been done. One
seemed as properly the function of the assembly as the other. In the
composition of the court, and in the practice as to time and place of
meeting, there was something of the same indefiniteness. The court was
the king's. It was his personal machine for managing the business of his
great property, the state. As such it met when and where the king
pleased, certain meetings being annually expected; and it was composed of
any persons who stood in immediate relations with the king, and whose
presence he saw fit to call for by special or general summons, his
vassals and the officers of his household or government. If a vassal of
the king had a complaint against another, and needed the assistance of
the king to enforce his view of the case, he might look upon his standing
in the curia regis as a right; but in general it was a burden, a
service, which could be demanded of him because of some estate or office
which he held.

In the reign of the first Henry we can indeed trace the beginnings of
differentiation in the machinery of government, but the process was as
yet wholly unconscious. We find in this reign evidence of a large
curia regis and of a small curia regis. The difference had probably
existed in the two preceding reigns, but it now becomes more apparent
because the increasing business of the state makes it more prominent.
More frequent meetings of the curia regis were necessary, but the
barons of the kingdom could not be in constant attendance at the court
and occupied with its business. The large court was the assembly of all
the barons, meeting on occasions only, and on special summons. The
small court was permanently in session, or practically so, and was
composed of the king's household officers and of such barons or bishops
as might be in attendance on the king or present at the time. The
distinction thus beginning was destined to lead to most important
results, plainly to be seen in the constitution of to-day, but it was
wholly unnoticed at the time. To the men of that time there was no
distinction, no division. The small curia regis was the same as the
larger; the larger was no more than the smaller. Who attended at a
given date was a matter of convenience, or of precedent on the three
great annual feasts, or of the desire of the king for a larger body of
advisers about some difficult question of policy; but the assembly was
always the same, with the same powers and functions, and doing the same
business. Cases were brought to the smaller body for trial, and its
decision was that of the curia regis. The king asked advice of it,
and its answer was that of the council. The smaller was not a committee
of the larger. It did not act by delegated powers. It was the curia
regis itself. In reality differentiation of old institutions into new
ones had begun, but the beginning was unperceived.

It was by a process similar to this that the financial business of the
state began to be set off from the legislative and judicial, though it
was long before it was entirely dissociated from the latter, and only
gradually that the Exchequer Court was distinguished from the curia
regis. The sheriffs, as the officers who collected the revenues of the
king, each in his own county, were responsible to the curia regis.
probably from early times the mechanical labour of examining and
recording the accounts had been performed by subordinate officials; but
any question of difficulty which arose, any disputed point, whether
between the sheriff and the state or between the sheriff and the
taxpayer, must have been decided by the court itself, though probably by
the smaller rather than by the larger body. Certainly it is the small
curia regis which has supervision of the matter when we get our first
glimpse of the working of this machinery. Already at this date a procedure
had developed for examining and checking the sheriff's accounts, which is
evidently somewhat advanced, but which is interesting to us because still
so primitive. Twice a year, at Easter and at Michaelmas, the court met
for the purpose, under an organization peculiar to this work, and with
some persons especially assigned to it; and it was then known as the
Exchequer. The name was derived from the fact that the method of
balancing accounts reminded one of the game of chess. Court and sheriff
sat about a table of which the cloth was divided into squares, seven
columns being made across the width of the cloth, and these divided by
lines running through the middle along the length of the table, thus
forming squares. Each perpendicular column of squares stood for a fixed
denomination of money, pence, shillings, pounds, scores of pounds,
hundreds of pounds, etc. The squares on the upper side of the table
stood for the sum for which the sheriff was responsible, and when this
was determined the proper counters were placed on their squares to set
out the sum in visible form, as on an abacus. The squares of the lower
side of the table were those of the sheriffs credits, and in them
counters were placed to represent the sum for which the sheriff could
submit evidence of payments already made. Such payments the sheriff was
constantly making throughout the year, for fixed expenses of the state or
on special orders of the king for supplies for the court, for transport,
for the keeping of prisoners, for public works, and for various other
purposes. The different items of debt and credit were noted down by
clerks for the permanent record. When the account was over, a simple
process of subtracting the counters standing in the credit squares from
those in the debit showed the account balanced, or the amount due from
the sheriff, or the credit standing in his favour, as the case might be.

At the Easter session of the court the accounts for the whole year were
not balanced, the payment then made by the sheriff being an instalment
on account, of about one-half the whole sum due for the year. For this
he received a tally stick as a receipt, in which notches of different
positions and sizes stood for the sum he had paid. A stick exactly
corresponding was kept by the court, split off, indeed, from his, and
the matching of the two at the Michaelmas session, when the year's
account was finally closed, was the sheriff's proof of his former
payment. The revenue of which the sheriff gave account in this way
consisted of a variety of items. The most important was the firma
comitatus, the farm or annual sum which the sheriff paid for his
county as the farmer of its revenue. This was made up of the estimated
returns from two sources, the rents from the king's lands in the county,
and the share of the fines which went to the king from cases tried in
the old popular courts of shire and hundred. The administration of
justice was a valuable source of income in feudal days, whether to the
king or to the lord who had his own court. But the fines which helped
to make up the ferm of the county were not the only ones for which the
sheriff accounted. He had also to collect, or at least in a general way
to be responsible for, the fines inflicted in the king's courts as held
in his county by the king's justices on circuits, and these were frequent
in Henry's time. If a Danegeld or an aid was taken during the year, this
must also be accounted for, together with such of the peculiarly feudal
sources of income, ward-ships, marriages, escheats, etc., as were in the
sheriffs hands. On the roll appear also numerous entries of fees paid by
private persons to have their cases tried in the king's courts, or to
have the king's processes or officers for the enforcement of their
rights.

Altogether the items were almost as numerous as in a modern budget, but
one chief source of present revenue, the customs duties, is conspicuously
absent, and the general aspect of the system is far more that of income
from property than in a modern state, even fines and fees having a
personal rather than a political character. A careful estimate of all the
revenue accounted for in this Pipe Roll of 1130 shows that Henry's annual
income probably fell a little short of 30,000 English pounds in the money
of that day, which should be equal in purchasing power, in money of our
time, to a million and a half or two million pounds.[26] This was a large
revenue for the age. Henry knew the value of money for the ends he wished
to accomplish, and though he accumulated large store of it, he spent it
unsparingly when the proper time came. England groaned constantly under
the heavy burden of his taxes, and the Pipe Roll shows us that there was
ground for these complaints. The Danegeld, the direct land-tax, had been
taken for some years before this date, with the regularity of a modern
tax, and as it was taken at a rate which would make it in any age a heavy
burden, we can well believe that it was found hard to bear in a time
when the returns of agriculture were more uncertain than now, and when
the frequently occurring bad seasons were a more serious calamity.
Economically, however, England was well-to-do. She had enjoyed during
Henry's reign a long age of comparative quiet. For nearly a generation
and a half, as the lives of men then averaged, there had been no war,
public or private, to lay waste any part of the land. In fact, since
early in the reign of Henry's father, England had been almost without
experience of the barbarous devastation that went with war in feudal
days. Excessive taxation and licensed oppression had seemed at times a
serious burden. Bad harvests and the hunger and disease against which the
medieval man could not protect himself had checked the growth of wealth
and population. Yet on the whole the nation had gained greatly in three
generations.

Especially is this to be seen in the development of the towns, in the
growth of a rich burgher class containing many foreign elements, Norman,
Flemish, and Jewish, and living with many signs of comfort and luxury, as
well as in the indications of an active and diversified commercial life.
The progress of this portion of the nation, the larger portion in numbers
but making little show in the annals of barons and bishops whose more
dramatic activities it supported is marked in an interesting way by a
charter granted by Henry to London, in the last years of his reign.[27]
His father had put into legal form a grant to the city, but it was not,
strictly speaking, a city charter. It was no more than a promise that law
and property should be undisturbed. Henry's charter goes much beyond this,
though it tells us no more of the internal government of the city. In
return for a rent of L300 a year, the king abandoned to the city all his
revenues from Middlesex, and because he would have no longer any interest
in the collection of these revenues the city might choose its own sheriff,
and presumably collect them for itself. The king's pleas were surrendered,
the city was to have its own justiciar, and to make this concession a real
one, no citizen need plead in any suit outside the city walls. Danegeld
and murder fines were also given up, and the local courts of the city were
to have their regular sittings. Behind a grant like this must lie some
considerable experience of self-government, a developed and conscious
capacity in the citizens to organize and handle the machinery of
administration. But of this there is no hint in the charter, nor do we
know much of the inner government of London till some time later. Of the
wealth and power of the city the charter speaks still more plainly, and of
this there was to be abundant evidence in the period which follows the
close of Henry's reign.

Henry's stay in England at this time was not long. Towards the end of the
summer he returned to Normandy, though with what he was occupied there we
have little knowledge. A disputed election to the papacy had taken place,
and the pope of the reform party, Innocent II, had come to France, where
that party was strong. The great St. Bernard, the most influential
churchman of his time, had declared for him, and through his influence
Henry, who met Innocent in January, 1131, recognized him as the rightful
pope. In the following summer he returned to England, and brought back
with him Matilda, who had now been two full years separated from her
husband; but about this time Geoffrey thought better of his conduct, or
determined to try the experiment of living with his wife again, and sent a
request that Matilda be sent back to him. What answer should be given him
was considered in a meeting of the great council at Northampton, September
8, almost as if her relationship with Geoffrey were a new proposition; and
it was decided that she should go. A single chronicler records that Henry
took advantage of this coming together of the barons at the meeting of the
court to demand fealty to Matilda, both from those who had formerly sworn
it and from those who had not.[28] Such a fact hardly seems consistent
with the same chronicler's record of the excuse of Roger, Bishop of
Salisbury, for violating his oath; but if it occurred, as this repetition
of the fealty was after Matilda's marriage with Geoffrey and immediately
after a decision of the baronage that she should return to him, it would
make the bishop's argument a mere subterfuge or, at best, an exception
applying to himself alone. Matilda immediately went over to Anjou, where
she was received with great honour.

Few things remain to be recorded of the brief period of life left to the
king. He had been interested, as his brother had been, in the extension
of English influence in Cumberland, and now he erected that county into a
new bishopric of Carlisle, in the obedience of the Archbishop of York. On
March 25, 1133, was born Matilda's eldest son, the future Henry II; and
early in August the king of England crossed the channel for the last
time, undoubtedly to see his grandson. On June 1, of the next year, his
second grandson, Geoffrey, was born. A short time before, the long
imprisonment of Robert of Normandy closed with his death, and the future
for which Henry had so long worked must have seemed to him secure. But
his troubles were not over. The medieval heir was usually in a hurry to
enter into his inheritance, and Geoffrey of Anjou, who probably felt his
position greatly strengthened by the birth of his son, was no exception
to the rule. He demanded possessions in Normandy. He made little wars on
his own account. Matilda, who seems now to have identified herself with
her husband's interests, upheld his demands. Some of the Norman barons,
who were glad of any pretext to escape from the yoke of Henry, added
their support, especially William Talvas, the son of Robert of Belleme,
who might easily believe that he had a long account to settle with the
king. But Henry was still equal to the occasion. A campaign of three
months, in 1135, drove William Talvas out of the country and brought
everything again under the king's control, though peace was not yet made
with his belligerent son-in-law. Then came the end suddenly. On November
25, Henry, still apparently in full health and vigour, planning a hunt
for the next day, ate too heartily of eels, a favourite dish but always
harmful to him, and died a week later, December 1, of the illness which
resulted. Asked on his death-bed what disposition should be made of the
succession, he declared again that all should go to Matilda, but made no
mention of Geoffrey.

Henry was born in 1068, and was now past the end of his sixty-seventh
year. His reign of a little more than thirty-five years was a long one,
not merely for the middle ages, when the average of human life was short,
but for any period of history. He was a man of unusual physical vigour.
He had been very little troubled with illness. His health and strength
were still unaffected by the labours of his life. He might reasonably
have looked forward to seeing his grandson, who was now nearing the end
of his third year, if not of an age to rule, at least of an age to be
accepted as king with a strong regency under the leadership of Robert of
Gloucester. A few years more of life for King Henry might have saved
England from a generation that laboured to undo his work.

With the death of Henry I a great reign in English history closed.
Considered as a single period, it does not form an epoch by itself. It is
rather an introductory age, an age of beginnings, which, interrupted by a
generation of anarchy, were taken up and completed by others. We are
tempted to suspect that these others receive more credit for the
completed result than they really deserve, because we know their work so
well and Henry's so imperfectly. Certainly, we may well note this fact,
that every new bit of evidence which the scholar from time to time
rescues from neglect tends to show that the special creations for which
we have distinguished the reign of Henry's grandson, reach further back
in time than we had supposed. To this we may add the fact that, wherever
we can follow in detail the action of the king, we find it the action of
a man of political genius. Did we know as much of Henry's activity in
government and administration as we do of the carrying out of his foreign
policy, it is more than probable that we should find in it the clear
marks of creative statesmanship. Not the least important of Henry's
achievements of which we are sure was the peace which he secured and
maintained for England with a strong and unsparing hand. More than thirty
years of undisturbed quiet was a long period for any land in the middle
ages, and during that time the vital process of union, the growing
together in blood and laws and feeling of the two great races which
occupied the land, was going rapidly forward.

[23] Gesta Stephani (Rolls Series), p. 10.

[24] William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum, sec. 452.

[25] Edited by Joseph Hunter and published by the Record Commission
in 1833.

[26] Ramsay, Foundations of England, ii, 328.

[27] Round, Geoffrey de Mandeville, 347 ff.

[28] W. Malm., Historia Novella, sec. 455, and cf. sec. 452.

CHAPTER IX

BARGAINING FOR THE CROWN

Earls and barons, whom the rumour of his illness had drawn together,
surrounded the death-bed of Henry I and awaited the result. Among them
was his natural son Robert of Gloucester; but his legal heiress, the
daughter for whom he had done so much and risked so much, was not there.
The recent attempt of her husband, Geoffrey of Anjou, to gain by force
the footing in Normandy which Henry had denied him, had drawn her away
from her father, and she was still in Anjou. It was afterward declared
that Henry on his death-bed disinherited her and made Stephen of Boulogne
heir in her place; but this is not probable, and it is met by the
statement which we may believe was derived directly from Robert of
Gloucester, that the dying king declared his will to be still in her
favour. However this may be, no steps were taken by any one in Normandy
to put Matilda in possession of the duchy, or formally to recognize her
right of succession. Why her brother Robert did nothing and allowed the
opportunity to slip, we cannot say. Possibly he did not anticipate a
hostile attempt. At Rouen, whither Henry's body was first taken, the
barons adopted measures to preserve order and to guard the frontiers,
which show that they took counsel on the situation; but nothing was done
about the succession.

In the meantime, another person, as deeply interested in the result, did
not wait for events to shape themselves. Stephen of Boulogne had been a
favourite nephew of Henry I and a favourite at his uncle's court, and he
had been richly provided for. The county of Mortain, usually held by some
member of the ducal house, had been given him; he had shared in the
confiscated lands of the house of Belleme; and he had been married to the
heiress of the practically independent county of Boulogne, which carried
with it a rich inheritance in England. Henry might very well believe that
gratitude would secure from Stephen as faithful a support of his
daughter's cause as he expected from her brother Robert. But in this he
was mistaken. Stephen acted so promptly on the news of his uncle's death
that he must already have decided what his action would be.

When he heard that his uncle had died, Stephen crossed at once to
England. Dover and Canterbury were held by garrisons of Earl Robert's and
refused him admittance, but he pushed on by them to London. There he was
received with welcome by the citizens. London was in a situation to hail
the coming of any one who promised to re-establish order and security,
and this was clearly the motive on which the Londoners acted in all that
followed. A reign of disorder had begun as soon as it was known that the
king was dead, as frequently happened in the medieval state, for the
power that enforced the law, or perhaps that gave validity even to the
law and to the commissions of those who executed it, was suspended while
the throne was vacant. A great commercial city, such as London had grown
to be during the long reign of Henry, would suffer in all its interests
from such a state of things. Indeed, it appears that a body of
plunderers, under one who had been a servant of the late king's, had
established themselves not far from the city, and were by their
operations manufacturing pressing arguments in favour of the immediate
re-establishment of order. It is not necessary to seek for any further
explanation of the welcome which London extended to Stephen. Immediately
on his arrival a council was held in the city, probably the governing
body of the city, the municipal council if we may so call it, which
determined what should be done. Negotiations were not difficult between
parties thus situated, and an agreement was speedily reached. The city
bound itself to recognize Stephen as king, and he promised to put down
disorder and maintain security. Plainly from the account we have of this
arrangement, it was a bargain, a kind of business contract; and Stephen
proceeded at once to show that he intended to keep his side of it by
dispersing the robber band which was annoying the city and hanging its
captain.

It is unnecessary to take seriously the claim of a special right to fill
the throne when it was vacant, which the citizens of London advanced for
themselves according to a contemporary historian of these events.[29] This
is surely less a claim of the citizens than one invented for them by
a partisan who wishes to make Stephen's position appear as strong as
possible; and no one at the time paid any attention to it. Having secured
the support of London, after what can have been only a few days' stay,
Stephen went immediately to Winchester. Before he could really believe
himself king, he had to secure the royal treasures and more support than
he had yet gained. Stephen's own brother Henry, who owed his promotion in
the Church, as Stephen did his in the State, to his uncle, was at this
time Bishop of Winchester; and it was due to him, as a contemporary
declares, that the plan of Stephen succeeded, and the real decision of the
question was made, not at London, but at Winchester.[30] Henry went out
with the citizens of Winchester to meet his brother on his approach, and
he was welcomed as he had been at London. Present there or coming in soon
after, were the Archbishop William of Canterbury, Roger, Bishop of
Salisbury, the head of King Henry's administrative system, and seemingly a
few, but not many, barons. On the question of making Stephen king, the
good, though not strong, Archbishop of Canterbury, was greatly troubled by
the oath which had been sworn in the interest of Matilda. "There are not
enough of us here," his words seem to mean, "to decide upon so important a
step as recognizing this man as king, when we are bound by oath to
recognize another."[31]

Though our evidence is derived from clerical writers, who might
exaggerate the importance of the point, it seems clear from a number of
reasons that this oath to Matilda was really the greatest difficulty in
Stephen's way. That it troubled the conscience of the lay world very much
does not appear, nor that it was regarded either in Normandy or England
as settling the succession. If the Norman barons had been bound by this
oath as well as the English, as is altogether probable, they certainly
acted as if they considered the field clear for other candidates. But it
is evident that the oath was the first and greatest difficulty to be
overcome in securing for Stephen the support of the Church, and this was
indispensable to his success. The active condemnation of the breaking of
this oath survived for a long time in the Church, and with characteristic
medieval logic the fate of those few who violated their oaths and met
some evil end was pointed to as a direct vengeance of God, while that of
the fortunate majority of the faithless is passed over in silence,
including the chief traitor Hugh Bigod, who, as Robert of Gloucester
afterwards declared, had twice sworn falsely, and made of perjury an
elegant accomplishment.[32]

If the scruples of the archbishop were to be overcome, it could not be
done by increasing the number of those who were present to agree to the
accession of Stephen. No material increase of the party of his adherents
could be expected before the ceremony of coronation had made him actual
king. It seems extremely probable that it was at this crisis of affairs,
that the scheme was invented to meet the hesitation of the archbishop; and
it was the only way in which it could have been overcome at the moment.
Certain men stepped forward and declared that at the last Henry repented
of having forced his barons to take this oath, and that he released them
from it. It is hardly possible to avoid the accumulated force of the
evidence which points to Hugh Bigod as the peculiarly guilty person, or to
doubt it was here that he committed the perjury of which so many accused
him. He is said to have sworn that Henry cut off Matilda from the
succession and appointed Stephen his heir; but he probably swore to no
more than is stated above.[33] That Matilda was excluded would be an
almost necessary inference from it, and that Stephen was appointed heir in
her place natural embroidery upon it. Nor can there be any reasonable
doubt, I think, that his oath was deliberately false. Who should be made
to bear the guilt of this scheme, if such it was, cannot be said. It is
hardly likely that Henry of Winchester had any share in it. Whether true
or false, the statement removed the scruples of the archbishop and secured
his consent to Stephen's accession.

With this declaration of Hugh Bigod's, however, was coupled another
matter more of the nature of a positive inducement to the Church. Bishop
Henry seems to have argued with much skill, and very likely to have
believed himself, that if they should agree to make his brother king, he
would restore to the Church that freedom from the control of the State
for which it had been contending since the beginning of the reign of
Henry I, and which was now represented as having been the practice in the
time of their grandfather, William the Conqueror. Stephen agreed at once
to the demand. He was obliged to pay whatever price was set upon the
crown by those who had the disposal of it; but of all the promises which
he made to secure it, this is the one which he came the nearest to
keeping. He swore to "restore liberty to the Church and to preserve it,"
and his brother pledged himself that the oath would be kept. Besides the
adhesion of the Church, Stephen secured at Winchester the royal treasure
which had been accumulated by his uncle and which was not small, and the
obedience of the head of the administrative system, Roger of Salisbury,
who seems to have made no serious difficulty, but who excused his
violation of his oath to Matilda by another pretext, as has already been
mentioned, than the one furnished by Hugh Bigod.

With the new adherents whom he had gained, Stephen at once returned from
Winchester to London for his formal coronation. This took place at
Westminster, probably on December 22, certainly within a very few days of
that date. His supporters were still a very small party in the state.
Very few of the lay barons had as yet declared for him. His chief
dependence must have been upon the two cities of London and Winchester,
and upon the three bishops who had come to his coronation with him, and
who certainly held positions of influence and power in Church and State
far beyond that of the ordinary bishop. At his coronation Stephen renewed
his oath to respect the liberty of the Church, and he issued a brief
charter to the nation at large which is drawn up in very general terms,
confirming the liberties and good laws of Henry, king of the English, and
the good laws and good customs of King Edward, but this can hardly be
regarded as anything more than a proclamation that he intended to make no
changes, a general confirmation of existing rights at the beginning of a
new reign. The Christmas festival Stephen is said to have celebrated at
London with great display. His party had not yet materially grown in
strength, but he was now a consecrated king, and this fait accompli, as
it has been called, was undoubtedly a decided argument with many in the
next few weeks.

Throughout the three weeks that had elapsed since he had learned of his
uncle's death, Stephen had acted with great energy, rapidity, and
courage. Nor is there anything in the course of his reign to show that he
was at any time lacking in these qualities. The period of English history
upon which we enter with the coronation of Stephen is not merely a dreary
period, with no triumphs abroad to be recorded, nor progress at home,
with much loss of what had already been gained, temporary, indeed, but
threatening to be permanent. It is also one of active feudal strife and
anarchy, lasting almost a generation, of the loosening of the bonds of
government, and of suffering by the mass of the nation, the like of which
never recurs in the whole of that history. But this misery fell upon the
country in Stephen's time, not because he failed to understand the duty
of a king, nor because he lacked the energy or courage which a king must
have. The great defect of Stephen's character for the time in which he
lived was that he yielded too easily to persuasion. Gifted with the
popular qualities which win personal favour among men, he had also the
weakness which so often goes with them; he could not long resist the
pressure of those about him. He could not impress men with the fact that
he must be obeyed. His life after his coronation was a laborious one, and
he did not spare himself in his efforts to keep order and to put down
rebellion; but the situation passed irrecoverably beyond his control as
soon as men realized that his will was not inflexible, and that swift and
certain punishment of disobedience need not be feared. Stephen was at
this time towards forty years old, an age which promised mature judgment
and vigorous rule. His wife, who bore the name of Matilda, so common in
the Norman house, was a woman of unusual spirit and energy, and devotedly
attached to him. She stood through her mother, daughter of Malcolm and
Margaret of Scotland, in the same relationship to the empress Matilda
that her husband did, and her descendants would therefore be equally near
akin to the old Saxon dynasty as those of the Empress.

If Stephen had seized the earliest opportunity, his cousin Matilda had
been scarcely less prompt, but she had acted with less decision and with
less discernment of the strategic importance of England. As soon as she
learned of her father's death, she entered Normandy from the south, near
Domfront, and was admitted to that town and to Argentan and Exmes without
opposition by the viscount of that region, who was one of King Henry's
"new men" in Normandy, and who recognized her claims at once. In a few
days she was followed by her husband, Geoffrey, who entered the duchy a
little farther to the east, in alliance with William Talvas, who opened
to him Sees and other fortified places of his fief. So far all seemed
going well, though as compared with the rapidity of Stephen's progress
during those same days, such successes would count but little. Then, for
some unaccountable reason, Geoffrey allowed his troops to plunder the
Normans and to ravage cruelly the lands which had received him as a
friend. The inborn fierceness of the Normans burst out at such treatment,
and the Angevins were swept out of the country with as great cruelties as
they had themselves exercised. Whether this incident had any influence on
the action of the Norman barons it is not possible to say, but it must
have been about the same time that they met at Neubourg to decide the
question of the succession. We have no account of what they did or of
what motives influenced their first decision. Theobald, Count of Blois
and of Champagne, Stephen's elder brother, was present apparently to urge
his own claim, and him they decided, or were on the point of deciding, to
recognize as duke. At this moment a messenger from Stephen arrived and
announced that all the English had accepted Stephen and agreed that he
should be king. This news at once settled the question for the Norman
barons. The reason which we have seen acting so strongly on earlier
occasions--the fear of the consequences if they should try to hold their
lands of two different suzerains--was once more the controlling motive,
and they determined to accept Stephen. Theobald acquiesced in this
decision, though unwillingly, and retired to his own dominions, to show
but little interest in the long strife which these events began.

In England the effect of Stephen's coronation soon made itself felt.
Immediately after the Christmas festivities in London he went with his
court to Reading, whither the body of King Henry had now been brought
from Normandy. There it was interred with becoming pomp, in the presence
of the new king, in the abbey which Henry had founded and richly endowed.
There Stephen issued a charter which is of especial historical value. It
records a grant to Miles of Gloucester, and is signed among others by
Payne Fitz-John. Both these were among Henry's "new men." Miles of
Gloucester especially had received large gifts from the late king, and
had held important office under him. Such men would naturally support
Matilda. They might be expected certainly to hesitate until her cause was
hopeless. Their presence with Stephen, accepting him as king so soon
after his coronation, is evidence of great value as to the drift of
opinion in England about the chance of his success. The charter is
evidence also of one of the difficulties in Stephen's way, and of the
necessity he was under of buying support, which we have seen already and
which played so great a part in the later events of his reign. The
charter confirms Miles in the possession of all the grants which had been
made him in the late reign, and binds the king not to bring suit against
him for anything which he held at the death of Henry. The question
whether a new king, especially one who was not the direct heir of his
predecessor, would respect his grants was a question of great importance
to men in the position of Miles of Gloucester.

At Reading, or perhaps at Oxford, where Stephen may have gone from the
burial of Henry, news came to him that David, king of Scotland, had
crossed the border and was taking possession of the north of England,
from Carlisle to Newcastle. David professed to be acting in behalf of his
niece, Matilda, and out of respect to the oath he had sworn to support
her cause, and he was holding the plundering habits of his army well in
check. We are told that it was with a great army that Stephen marched
against him. He had certainly force enough to make it seem wise to David,
who was on his way to Durham, to fall back and negotiate. Terms were
quickly arranged. David would not conform to the usual rule and become
Stephen's man; and Stephen, still yielding minor matters to secure the
greater, did not insist. But David's son Henry did homage to Stephen, and
received the earldom of Huntingdon, with a vague promise that he might be
given at some later time the other part of the possessions of his
grandfather, Waltheof, the earldom of Northumberland, and with the more
substantial present grant of Carlisle and Doncaster. The other places
which David had occupied were given up.

From the north Stephen returned to London to hold his Easter court. He
was now, he might well believe, king without question, and he intended
to have the Easter assembly make this plain. Special writs of summons
were sent throughout England to all the magnates of Church and State;
and a large and brilliant court came together in response. Charters
issued at this date, when taken together, give us the names of three
archbishops--one, the Archbishop of Rouen--and thirteen bishops, four
being Norman, and thirty-nine barons and officers of the court who were
present, including King David's son Henry, who had come with Stephen from
the north. At this assembly Stephen's queen, Matilda, was crowned, and so
brilliant was the display and so lavish the expenditure that England was
struck with the contrast to the last reign, whose economies had in part
at least accumulated the treasure which Stephen might now scatter with
a free hand to secure his position. The difficulties of his task are
illustrated by an incident which occurred at this court. Mindful of the
necessity of conciliating Scotland, he gave to young Henry, at the Easter
feast, the seat of honour at his right hand; whereupon, the Archbishop of
Canterbury, offended because his claims of precedence had been set aside,
left the court; and Ralph, Earl of Chester, angered because Carlisle, to
which he asserted claims of hereditary right, had been made over to
Henry, cried out upon the young man, and with other barons insulted him
so grievously that his father David was very angry in his turn.

Immediately after the Easter festivities, the court as a body removed to
Oxford. Just after Easter Robert of Gloucester, the Empress's brother,
had landed in England. Stephen had been importuning him for some time to
give up his sister's cause and acknowledge him as king. So far as we
know, Robert had done nothing up to this time to stem the current of
events, and these events were probably a stronger argument with him than
Stephen's inducements. All England and practically all Normandy had
accepted Stephen. The king of Scotland had abandoned the opposition.
Geoffrey and Matilda had accomplished nothing, and seemed to be planning
nothing. The only course that lay plainly open was to make the best terms
possible with the successful usurper, and to await the further course of
events. William of Malmesbury, who looked upon Earl Robert as his patron
and who wrote almost as his panegyrist, thinking, perhaps, dissimulation
a smaller fault than disregard of his oath, accounted for his submission
to Stephen by his desire to gain an opportunity to persuade the English
barons to saner counsels. This statement can hardly be taken as evidence
of Robert's intention, but at any rate he now joined the court at Oxford
and made his bargain with Stephen. He did him homage, and promised to be
his man so long as the king should maintain him in his position and keep
faith with him.

At this Oxford meeting another bargain, even more important to Stephen
than his bargain with the Earl of Gloucester, was put into a form which
may be not improperly called a definitive treaty. This was the bargain
with the Church, to the terms of which Stephen had twice before
consented. The document in which this treaty was embodied is commonly
known as Stephen's second charter; and, witnessed by nearly all those who
witnessed the London charters already referred to, and by the Earl of
Gloucester in addition, it had the force of a royal grant confirmed by
the curia regis. Nothing could prove to us more clearly than this
charter how conscious Stephen was of the desperate character of the
undertaking on which he had ventured, and of the vital necessity of the
support of the Church. The grant is of the most sweeping sort. All that
the Church had demanded in the conflict between Anselm and Henry I is
freely yielded, and more. All simony shall cease, vacancies shall be
canonically filled; the possessions of the Church shall be administered
by its own men during a vacancy,--that is, the feudal rights which had
been exercised by the last two kings are given up; jurisdiction over all
ecclesiastical persons and property is abandoned to the Church;
ecclesiastics shall have full power to dispose of their personal property
by will; all unjust exactions, by whomsoever brought in,--including among
these, no doubt, as Henry of Huntingdon expressly says, the Danegeld,
which the Church had insisted ought not to be paid by its domain
lands,--are to be given up. "These all I concede and confirm," the
charter closes, "saving my royal and due dignity." Dignity in the modern
sense might be left the king, but not much real power over the Church if
this charter was to determine future law and custom. The English Church
would have reached at a stroke a nearer realization of the full programme
of the Hildebrandine reform than all the struggles of nearly a century
had yet secured in any other land, if the king kept his promises. As a
matter of fact, he did not do so entirely, though the Church made more
permanent gain from the weakness of this reign than any other of the
contending and rival parties.

One phrase at the beginning of this charter strikes us with surprise. In
declaring how he had become king, Stephen adds to choice by clergy and
people, and consecration by the archbishop, the confirmation of the pope.
Since when had England, recognized the right of the pope to confirm its
sovereigns or to decide cases of disputed succession? Or is the papacy
securing here, from the necessities of Stephen, a greater concession than
any other in the charter, a practical recognition of the claim which once
Gregory VII had made of the Conqueror only to have it firmly rejected,
and which the Church had not succeeded in establishing in any European
land? In reality England had recognized no claim of papal overlordship,
nor was any such claim in the future based upon this confirmation. The
reference to the pope had been practically forced upon Stephen, whether
he would have taken the step himself or not, and the circumstances made
it of the highest importance to him to proclaim publicly the papal
sanction of his accession. Probably immediately on hearing the news of
Stephen's usurpation, Matilda had despatched to Pope Innocent II,--then
residing at Pisa because Rome was in possession of his rival, Anacletus
II,--an embassy headed by the Bishop of Angers, to appeal to the pope
against the wicked deeds of Stephen, in that he had defrauded her of her
rights and broken his oath, as William of Normandy had once appealed to
the pope against the similar acts of Harold.[34] At Pisa this embassy was
opposed by another of Stephen's, whose spokesman was the archdeacon of
Sees. It must have started at about the same time as Matilda's, and it
brought to the pope the official account of the bishops who had taken part
in the coronation of Stephen.

In the presence of Innocent something like a formal trial occurred. The
case was argued by the champions of the two sides, on questions which it
belonged to the Church to decide, or which at least the Church claimed
the right to decide, the usurpation of an inheritance, and the violation
of an oath. Against Matilda's claim were advanced the arguments which had
already been used with effect in England, that the oath had been extorted
from the barons by force, and