THE HOUSE OF MONTGOMERY. 197 in history fully equal to that filled by her husband. Of him CHAP. VIII. we shall hear again as literally the foremost among the conquerors of England; we shall see him enriched with English estates and honours, bearing the lofty titles of Earl of Arundel and Shrewsbury, and, once at least, adorned with the loftier title which had been borne by Ethelred and Leofric. Once, and that while engaged in rebellion against 1087. his prince, he flits before us for a moment as Roger Earl of the Mercians.1 A munificent friend of monks both in England and in Normandy, he has left behind him a different reputation from that of either his father, his wife, or his sons. In one of those sons we shall see the name of his maternal ancestors revive, and, with their name, a double portion of their wickedness. William of Duke Wil Vaudreuil. But we have as yet to deal with the house of Montgomery only in its least honourable aspect. William, son Attempt of of the elder, and uncle of the younger, Roger, stands Montcharged with an attempt, aimed no longer at guardians gomery on or tutors, but at the person of the young Duke himself. liam at William was staying with his guardian Osbern at Vaudreuil, a castle on an island in the Eure, said to have been the place of captivity of the famous Fredegunda in Merowingian times.2 Thorold, it would seem, had been already murdered, but his assassins are spoken of only in general terms. But Osbern still watched over his young lord day and night. While at Vaudreuil he was butchered by Murder of William of Montgomery in the very bedchamber of the escape of Duke, and the young prince owed his own safety on this, and on many other occasions, to the zealous care of his maternal uncle Walter. Many a time did this faithful 470 A; "Præfata Mabilia multùm erat potens et sæcularis, callida et loquax, nimiumque crudelis." 1 Ord. Vit. 667 B. "Rogerius Merciorum Comes." 2 Will. Gem. vii. 2. See Palgrave, iii. 198. Stapleton, i. cxxvi. 3 Will. Gem. ib. "Deinde [after the death of Gilbert] Turoldus teneri Ducis pædagogus perimitur à perfidis patriæ desertoribus." Osbern; the Duke. CHAP. VIII. kinsman carry him from palace and castle to find a lurkingplace from those who sought his life in the cottages of the poor. The blood of Osbern was soon avenged; a faithful servant of the murdered Seneschal presently did to William of Montgomery as William of Montgomery had done to Osbern.2 In the state of things in Normandy at that moment crime could be punished only by crime. The remembrance of the faithful Osbern lived also in the memory of the Prince whose childhood he had so well Friendship guarded. His son William grew up from his youth as the Duke with familiar friend and counsellor of his namesake the Duke. of the William Fitz Osbern. This is that famous William Fitz-Osbern who lived to be, next to the Duke himself, the prime agent in the Conquest of England, who won, far more than the Duke himself, the hatred of the conquered people, and who at last perished in a mad enterprise after a crown and a wife in Flanders. The next enemy was Roger of Toesny, whom we have This is the way in which I read the story in William of Jumièges (vii. 2), compared with that put into Duke William's own mouth by Orderic (656 C). Sir Francis Palgrave seems to make Thorold and Osbern be murdered at once (199). But William of Jumièges seems to make these murders two distinct events. After the passage just quoted he goes on, "Osbernus quoque. . quâdam nocte, dum in cubiculo Ducis cum ipso in Valle Rodoili securus soporatur, repente in stratu suo à Willelmo Rogerii de Monte-gumeri filio jugulatus." Orderic puts the murders of Gilbert, Thorold (or Thurcytel), and Osbern together in general terms; "Turche tillum nutricium meum et Osbernum Herfasti filium, Normanniæ dapiferum, Comitemque Gislebertum patrem patriæ, cum multis aliis reipublicæ necessariis fraudulenter interfecerunt." The murder of Osbern can hardly fail to have been one of the occasions so pathetically referred to in Orderic; "Noctibus multotiens cognatorum timore meorum à Gualterio avunculo meo de camerâ principali furtim exportatus sum, ac ad domicilia latebrasque pauperum, ne à perfidis, qui ad mortem me quærebant, invenirer, translatus sum." 2 Will. Gem. vii. 2. "Barno quippe de Glotis, præpositus Osberni, injustam necem domini sui cupiens ulcisci, nocte quâdam expeditos pugiles congregavit, et domum, ubi Willelmus et complices sui dormiebant, adiit, ac omnes simul, sicut meruerant, statim trucidavit." REVOLT OF ROGER OF TOESNY. This 199 Rebellion already heard of as a premature Crusader, the savage foe CHAP. VIII. of the Infidels of Spain.1 Disappointed in his dream of a and death Kingdom in the Iberian peninsula, he returned to his of Roger of Toesny. native land to find it under the sway of the son of the Tanner's daughter. The proud soul of the descendant of Malahule scorned submission to such a lord; "A bastard is not fit to rule over me and the other Normans."2 He refused all allegiance, and began to ravage the lands of his neighbours. The one who suffered most was Humfrey de Vetulis, a son of Thorulf of Pont-Audemer, and of Weva the sister of Gunnor. He sent his son Roger of Beaumont against the aggressor. A battle followed, in which Roger of Toesny and his two sons were killed, and Robert of Grantmesnil received a mortal wound.3 fight was fought rather in defence of private property than in the assertion of any public principle. But the country gained by the destruction of so inveterate an enemy of peace as Roger of Toesny. And here, as at every step of this stage of our narrative, we become acquainted with men whose names are to figure in the later portion of our history. Robert of Grantmesnil was the father of Houses of Hugh of Grantmesnil, who had no small share in the nil and conquest of England and the division of its spoil. Roger of Beaumont became the patriarch of the first house of the Earls of Leicester. One of his descendants played an honourable part in the great struggle between King and Primate in the latter half of the twelfth century; and his 1 See vol. i. p. 514. 2 Will. Gem. vii. 3. "Comperiens autem quod Willelmus puer in Ducatu patri successerit, vehementer indignatus est, et tumidè despexit illi servire, dicens quod nothus non deberet sibi aliisque Normannis imperare." * See Will. Gem. vii. 3; viii. 37. Ord. Vit. 460 C. 4 Garnier, Vie de S. Thomas, 1830 (p. 66 ed. Hippeau); "E cil [quens] de Leicestre, ke mut par est senez." So William Fitz-Stephen (i. 235 Giles); "Comes Legecestriæ Robertus, qui maturitate ætatis et morum Grantmes Beaumont. CHAP. VIII. honours passed by female succession to that great deliverer who made the title of Earl of Leicester the most glorious in the whole peerage of England.1 the Duke's 2 Ralph of By this time William was getting beyond the years of Wacey chosen as childhood, and he was beginning to display those extraordiguardian. nary powers of mind and body with which nature had endowed him. He could now in some measure exercise a will of his own. He still needed a guardian, but, according to the principles of Roman Law, he had a right to a voice in determining who that guardian should be. He summoned the chief men of his Duchy, and, by their advice, he chose as his own tutor and as Captain-General of the armies of Normandy, Ralph the son of Archbishop Robert. The choice seems a strange one, as Ralph was no other than the murderer of William's former guardian Count Gilbert.3 But it may have been thought politic for the young Duke to strengthen his hands by an alliance with a former enemy, and to make, as in the case of Count Alan of Britanny, a practical appeal to the honour of a possible rival. The appointment of Ralph seems in fact to have had that effect. A time of comparative internal quiet now followed. But there still were traitors in the land. Many, we are told, of the Norman nobles, even of those who professed the firmest fidelity to the Duke, and were loaded by him with the highest honours, still continued to plot against him in secret. For a while they no longer aliis prominebat ;" and Herbert of Bosham (i. 147 Giles); "Nobilis vir Robertus, tunc Leicestræ Comes, inter honoratos honoratior." 'Amicia, daughter of Robert, third Earl of Leicester, married Simon the Third, Lord of Montfort. She was the mother of Simon the leader of the Crusade against the Albigenses, and the grandmother of our own Simon the Righteous. See Pauli, Simon von Montfort, 19, 20. 2 Will. Gem. vii. 4. "Rodulphum de Wacceio ex consultu majorum sibi tutorem eligit, et principem militiæ Normannorum constituit." 3 See above, p. 195. The expressions of William of Jumièges (vii. 4) are remarkable ; "Henricum igitur Regem Francorum adeunt, et titiones ejus per Norman RELATIONS BETWEEN NORMANDY AND FRANCE. 201 revolted openly on their own account; but there was a CHAP. VIII. potentate hard by whose ear was ever open to their suggestions, and who was ever ready to help them in any plots against their sovereign and their country. between and 945. 1031. From this point a new chapter opens in the relations Relations between Normandy and France. We have seen that, ever Normandy since the Commendation made by Richard the Fearless to France Hugh the Great,' the relations between the Norman Princes hitherto friendly. and the Dukes and Kings of Paris had been invariably friendly. It was to Norman help that the Parisian 987. dynasty in a great measure owed its rise to royalty; it was to Norman help that the reigning King of the French owed his restoration to his throne.4 Henry of Paris, made King by the help of Robert, had received Robert's son as his vassal, and had promised to afford him the protection due from a righteous overlord to a faithful vassal. But we now, from the accession of William, begin to see signs of Return to ill-feeling something like a return on the French side to the old state from the of feeling in the days when the Normans were still looked accession on as heathen intruders, and their Duke was held to be Duke only of the Pirates. We find the French applying contemptuous epithets to the Norman people," and we find the King of the French ready to seize every opportunity nicos limites hac illacque spargunt. Quos nominatim litteris exprimerem, si inexorabilia eorum odia declinare nollem. Attamen non alii exstiterunt, vobis in aure loquor circumstantibus, quam hi qui fideliores se profitentur et quos nunc majoribus Dux cumulavit honoribus." 1 See vol. i. p. 247. 3 Vol. i. pp. 250, 269. 5 See above, p. 189. 2 Vol. i. p. 272. 4 Vol. i. p. 519. Roman de Rou, 9907 et seqq. The great offence was calling the Normans "bigoz è draschiers." The first name has given cause to much controversy; the second is said to mean drinkers of ale, a wholesome witness of their Teutonic descent. But cf. Æsch. Suppl. 930; ἀλλ ἄρσενάς τοι τῆςδε γῆς οἰκήτορας εὑρήσετ', οὐ πίνοντας ἐκ κριθῶν μέθυ. of William. |