in House of 1035-1053. frontier, occasional outbreaks of a baron here and CHAP. X. there, failed to shake the hold on the land which The tightened with every day of the young duke's grasp. Godwine. Round him the men who were to play their part our history were already grouping themselves. William Fitz-Osbern was growing up as William's friend and adviser. The duke's half-brother, Odo, was already Bishop of Bayeux. But chance had brought a wiser counsellor to William's side than Odo or Fitz-Osbern. In the early years of his rule, Lanfranc, a wandering scholar from Lombardy, had opened a school at Avranches. Lanfranc was the son of a citizen of Pavia, where he had won fame for skill in the Roman law. Whether driven out by some civil revolution, or drawn by love of teaching to the west, Lanfranc made his way to Normandy; and, troubled as was the time, the fame of his school at Avranches soon spread throughout the land. A religious conversion, however, interrupted his work. Lanfranc quitted his scholars to seek the poorest and lowliest monastery he could find in Normandy, and came at last to a little valley edged in with woods of ash and elm, through which a "bec," or rivulet, ran down to the Risle, where Herlouin, a knight of Brionne, had found shelter from the world. Herlouin was busy building an oven with his own hands when the stranger greeted him with "God save you." "Are you a Lombard?" asked the knight-abbot, struck with the foreign look of the man. "I am," he replied: and praying to be made a monk, Lanfranc fell down at the mouth of the oven and kissed Herlouin's feet. The religious impulse was a real one; but in spite of the break from the world House of 1035-1053. CHAP. X. and its learning which Lanfranc sought in this reThe tirement at Bec, he was destined to be known as a Godwine. great scholar and statesman rather than as a saint. It was in vain that he dreamed of seeking a yet sterner refuge in some solitude. The abbot's will chained him to the monastery, and Lanfranc's teaching raised Bec in a few years into the most famous school in Christendom. The zeal which drew scholars and nobles alike to the little house of Herlouin was, in fact, the first wave of an intellectual movement which was now spreading from Italy to the ruder countries of the West. The whole mental activity of the time concentrated itself in the group of scholars who gradually gathered round Lanfranc; the fabric of the canon law and of medieval scholasticism, with the philosophic scepticism which first awoke under its influence, all trace their origin to Bec. But Lanfranc was to be more than a great teacher. The eye of the young duke saw in the Lombard one who was fitted to second his own ardent genius; and in no long time the prior of Bec stood high among his counsellors. Revolt in dy. William was soon to need wise counsel. Young as he was, the pressure of his heavy hand already warned the strongest that they must fight or obey. In the more settled land about the Seine order was now fairly established; and in the coming contest it held firmly by the duke. But in the Bessin and Cotentin, where the old heathen and Norse traditions had been strengthened by recent Danish settlements, the passion for independence was strong. The greatest lords of the Cotentin and the BessinNeal of St. Sauveur, Randolf of Bayeux, Hamon of CHAP. X. House of Thorigny, Grimbald of Plessis-waited but the signal to rise. And in 1047 the signal was given. Hith- The erto his bastard birth had done William little hurt, Godwine. for of the descendants of Richard the Fearless or 1035-1053. Richard the Good who might have claimed his duchy, some were churchmen, some had perished in the troubles of his youth, one had been his guardian and protector; while his cousin Guy, grandson of Richard the Good by his daughter's marriage with a Count of Burgundy, had been reared from childhood with William and gifted with broad lands at Vernon and Brionne. But Guy saw in the temper of the west a chance of winning the duchy from the bastard, and its lords were quick at answering his call. Dunes. So secret was the plot that William was hunting Valèsin the woods of the Cotentin when the revolt broke out, and only a hasty flight from Valognes to Falaise saved him from capture. As he dashed through the fords of Vire with Grimbald on his track the Bessin and Cotentin were already on fire behind. him; and their barons gathered at Bayeux swore on the relics of the saints that they would smite William wherever they might find him. They were soon to find him on the battle-field. The men of the more settled duchy beyond the Dive, the men of Caux and Hiesmes, the burghers of Lisieux and Rouen, of Evreux and Falaise, stood firmly by the duke. But William had no mind to stand the shock alone. Hardly twenty as he was, his cool head already matched the hot ardor of his youth; and he rode across the border to throw himself at the feet of the French king and beg for aid. The House of CHAP. X. old alliance between the house of Hrolf and the The house of Hugh Capet, shaken as it had been of late, Godwine. was still strong enough to secure the help he 1035–1053. Sought; and King Henry himself headed a body of troops which stood beside William's Normans on the field of Val-ès-Dunes, to the southeastward of Caen. The fight that followed was little more than a fierce combat of horse surging backwards and forwards over the slopes of the upland on which it was fought, and ended in the rout of the rebel host. The mills of the Orne were choked with the bodies of men slain in its fords or drowned in its stream. William's victory. The victory at Val-ès-Dunes was the turningpoint in William's career. It was not merely that he had shown himself a born warrior, that horse and man had gone down before his lance, that he had faced and routed the bravest warriors of the Bessin; nor was it only that with this victory the struggle of the wild Northman element in the duchy against civilization, against the French tongue, against union with Western Christendom, was to cease. It was that William had mastered Normandy. "Normans," said a Norman poet, "must be trodden down and kept under foot, for he only that bridles them may use them at his need;" and the young duke had bridled them to use them in a need which was soon to come. The valor which had so suddenly withstood him on the downs above Caen gave itself from that hour into its master's hands, and, mere youth of twenty as he was, William stood lord of Normandy as no duke had stood its lord before; lord of a Normandy whose restless vigor was spending itself as yet in the winning of realms for adventurers House of France and over sea, but was ready to spend itself now in win- CHAP. X. ning realms for its duke nearer home. Far off as The the conquest was, it was at Val-ès-Dunes that Will- Godwine. iam fought his first fight for the crown of Cerdic. 1035–1053. It was the men who had sworn to smite him, on the relics of Bayeux, who were to win for him England. It was France, however, rather than England, Anjou. which directly felt the change in William's attitude, for in the year after Val-ès-Dunes, William measured swords with the greatest of the then French powers. Girt in on every side by great feudatories, the crowned descendants of Hugh Capet had been saved from utter ruin by the firm support of the dukes of Normandy and the counts of Anjou. It was the Norman sword which had aided them to resist Burgundian disloyalty, and it was the sword of Norman and Angevin alike which saved them from the ambitious supremacy of the house of Blois. But it was just these two powers whose growth had now changed them from supports of the French crown into its most formidable dangers, and the policy of the French kings, unable to meet either singlehanded, became more and more a policy of balance between them. At this time Anjou was the more pressing of the two foes. From a small province on either side the lower course of the Mayenne, with a few castles scattered over the lands of Blois and Touraine to the south and to the east of it, it had grown into the largest and most powerful state of central France. Southern Touraine had been gradually absorbed. Northern Touraine had been won bit by bit. A victory of the Angevin count, Geoffrey Martel, left Poitou at his mercy, and the |