WILLIAM TALVAS. 187 the destined enemy of his kind. But the words, when CHAP. VIII. uttered, would be meant and understood simply as a protest against the insult which was preparing for the aristocratic pride of the great Norman houses. Possibly indeed the tale, like other tales of the kind, may have been devised after the event; still it would mark none the less truly the feelings with which a man like William Talvas, boasting of a descent from the original conquerors of the land, looked on the unworthy sovereign whom destiny seemed to be providing for them. He Robert announces tion of Duke Robert however was bent on his purpose. gathered an assembly of the great men of his Duchy, his intenamong whom the presence of Archbishop Robert, perhaps pilgrimage. as being a possible competitor for the succession, is specially 1034-5. mentioned.1 The Duke set forth his intention of visiting the Holy Sepulchre, and told his hearers, that, aware of the dangers of such a journey, he wished to settle the succession to the Duchy before he set out. The voice of the Assembly bade him stay at home and continue to discharge the duties of government in person, especially at a time when there was no one successor or representative to whom they could be entrusted with any chance of the general good will. It was of course desirable to stave off the question. Robert might yet have legitimate heirs; or, in the failure of that hope, the Norman chiefs might gradually come to an agreement in favour of some other candidate. Let the Duke stay at home and guard his Duchy against the pretensions of the Breton and the Burgundian. But Robert would brook no delay in the accomplishment of his pious purpose; he would go at 1 Will. Gem. vi. 12. "Robertum ergo archiepiscopum cum optimatibus sui Ducatus accersivit." This looks as if Robert were the only churchman present. See vol. i. p. 197. Wace (8081) gathers together Bishops, Abbots, and Barons, but perhaps only in conformity with the custom of his own time. Roman de Rou, 8091 et seqq. CHAP. VIII. Once to the Holy Land; he would settle the succession He proposes William as his suc cessor. before he went. He brought forward the young William, and acknowledged him as his son. He was little, he told them, but he would grow; he was one of their own stock, brought up among them. His overlord the King of the French had engaged to acknowledge and protect him.2 He called on them to accept, to choose the never-ceasing mixture of elective and hereditary claims appears here as everywhere-the child as their future Lord, as his successor in the Duchy, should he never return from the distant land to which he was bound.3 The Normans were in a manner entrapped. There can be no doubt that nothing could be further from the wishes of the majority of the Assembly than to agree to the Duke's proposal; but there was nothing else to be done. If Robert could not be prevailed on to stay at home, some settlement must be made; and, little as any of them liked the prospect of the rule of the young Bastard, there was no other candidate in whose favour all parties could come to an agreeWilliam's ment on the spot. Unwillingly then the Norman nobility succession consented; they accepted the only proposal which was accepted. before them; they swore the usual oaths, and did homage to the son of Herleva as their future sovereign. The 4 Ki l'maintiendra o sa poessance." 3 Will. Gem. vi. 12. "Exponens autem eis Willelmum filium suum, quem unicum apud Falesiam genuerat, ab eis attentissime exigebat, ut hunc sibi loco sui dominum eligerent, et militiæ suæ principem præficerent.” A good precedent for the congé d'élire and letter missive. 4 Will. Gem. u. s. "Juxta decretum Ducis protinus eum promptâ vivacitate suum collaudavere principem ac dominum, pangentes illi fidelitatem non violandis sacramentis." Cf. Roman de Rou, 8117 et seqq. The WILLIAM'S SUCCESSION ACCEPTED. 189 kinsmen of Gunnor, the descendants of the comrades of CHAP. VIII. Rolf, became the men of the Tanner's grandson, and he himself was received as the man of King Henry at Paris.1 As far as forms went, no form was wanting which could. make William's succession indisputably lawful. Duke Robert then set forth on the pilgrimage from which he never returned. Within a few months, his short life and reign came to an end at Nikaia.2 Thus, in the same year William which beheld the great Empire of Cnut parted among his father his sons, did William, the seven years old grandson of in the Duchy. the Tanner Fulbert, find himself on the seat of Rolf and 1035. Richard the Fearless, charged with the mission to keep down, as his infant hands best might, the turbulent spirits who had been unwillingly beguiled into acknowledging him as their sovereign. succeeds evils of a Anarchy at once broke forth; all the evils which attend Necessary a minority in a rude age were at once poured forth upon minority. the unhappy Duchy. We see the wisdom with which the custom of our own and of most contemporary lands provided that the government of men should be entrusted to those events which followed make one doubt as to the genuineness of the "prompta vivacitas." 1 Roman de Rou, 8125. "Li Dus por la chose afermer, E por fere lunges durer, E par li puing li a livré ; Al Rei de France l'ad mené, There is nothing however to imply that William stayed longer at Paris than was needed for the ceremony. It is an exaggeration when we read in the Winchester Annals (p. 19 Luard), "Willelmo filio Roberti Ducis juvenculo morante cum Rege Francorum in Galliis." Rudolf Glaber (iv. 6) describes the accession of William in much the same way as the national writers; "Cui [Willelmo] antequam proficisceretur, universos sui ducaminis principes militaribus adstrinxit sacramentis, qualiter illum in Principem pro se, si non rediret, eligerent. Quod etiam statim ex consensu Regis Francorum Henrici unanimiter postmodùm firmaverunt." Does the phrase "militaribus sacramentis" mean "on their knightly honour," or is it merely a pedantic reference to the Roman military oath? See vol. i. p. 529. CHAP. VIII. only who had themselves at least reached man's estate. In England the exceptional minorities of the sons of Eadmund and of Eadgar had been calamitous, but they were nothing to compare to the minority of William of Normandy. In England the custom of regular national assemblies, the habit of submitting all matters to a fair vote, the recog nition of the Law as supreme over every man, hindered the state from falling into utter dissolution, even in those perilous times. The personal reign of Æthelred proved far weaker than the administration which Dunstan carried on in his name in his early years. But in Normandy, where constitutional ideas had found so imperfect a developement as compared with England, there was nothing of this kind to fall back upon. Nothing but the personal genius of a determined and vigorous Prince could keep that fierce nobility in any measure of order. With the accession of an infant there at once ceased to be any power to protect or to punish. "Woe Childhood to the land whose King is a child" is the apt quotation of an historian of the next age. The developement of the young Duke both in mind and body was undoubtedly precocious; but his early maturity was mainly owing to the stern discipline of that terrible childhood. It was in those years that he learned the arts which made Normandy, France, and England bow before him; but, at the age of seven years, William himself was no more capable than Ethelred of personally wielding the rod of rule. The child had good and faithful guardians, guardians perhaps no less well disposed to fulfil their trust towards him than Dunstan had been towards the children of Eadgar. But there was no one man in Normandy to whom every Norman could look up as every English of William. 1 Will. Malms. iii. 230. "Clarissima olim patria, intestinis dissensionibus exulcerata, pro latronum libito dividebatur, ut merito posset querimoniam facere, Væ terræ cujus Rex puer est."" See Ecclesiastes x. 16. The same text is used by R. Glaber, iv. 5, with a more general application. ANARCHY OF WILLIAM'S MINORITY. 191 anarchy of the time. man had looked up to the mighty Primate, and the bowl CHAP. VIII. and the dagger soon deprived the young Prince of the support of his wisest and truest counsellors. The minority of William was truly a time when every man did that which was right in his own eyes. And what seemed right in the eyes of the nobles of Normandy was commonly rebellion against their sovereign, ruthless oppression Utter of those beneath them, and endless deadly feuds with one another. We have already seen some specimens of their crimes in the doings of the house of Belesme. That house is indeed always spoken of as exceptionally wicked; but a state of things in which such deeds could be done, and could go unpunished, must have come very nearly to a complete break-up of society. The general pictures which we find given us of the time are fearful beyond expression. Through the withdrawal of all controlling power, every land-owner became a petty sovereign, and began to exercise all the sovereign rights of slaughter and devastation. The land soon bristled with castles. The Building of castles. mound crowned with the square donjon rose as the defence or the terror of every lordship. This castle-building 1 William of Jumièges (vii. 1) distinctly makes the building of these castles one of the main signs and causes of the general disorder of the country. "Sub ejus ineunte ætate, Normannorum plurimi aberrantes ab ejus fidelitate, plura per loca aggeres erexerunt, et tutissimas sibi munitiones construxerunt. Quarum dum auderent fisi munimine, protinùs inter eos diversi motus exoriuntur, seditiones concitantur, ac sæva patriæ incendia ubique perpetrantur," &c. So William of Malmesbury (iii. 230); "Mox quisque sua munire oppida, turres agere, frumenta comportare, caussas aucupari quibus quamprimùm à puero dissidia meditarentur." The agger" is the "mote" or mound on which the Norman castles were so often built. The word came almost to be used for the castle itself. In the Roman de Rou, 8847, a knight is described as standing at his gate "Entre li mostier è sa mote," that is, between the church and his own castle. According to Mr. Clark, the "agger" or "mote " was commonly an earlier earthwork made use of by the builders of the eleventh and twelfth centuries (Old London, p. 16). Yet the rebellious nobles are here clearly described as throwing up "6 aggeres" for the express purpose of building their castles, and we can hardly believe that the "tutissimæ munitiones" were of wood. |