CHAPTER XI. THE NORMAN CONQUEST. 1053-1071. William. In the revolution which restored Godwine to power Difficulties of nothing is more remarkable than the inaction of William the Norman. To the duke, we can hardly doubt, the sudden success of Godwine was a bitter disappointment. The overthrow of his hopes was complete. Whatever promises Eadward may have made to him, he could hardly look for their fulfilment save with the aid of the Normans at Eadward's court, and the Norman court-party had been broken up. The Norman archbishop was driven over sea, and the duke was not less likely than his people to resent the wrong done to the primate. The Norman knights who found a refuge with the Scot king soon fell beneath the axes of Siward's hus-carls. How bitter a sense of disappointment lingered in Norman hearts we know from the fire which the memory of these events kindled when, a few years later, William called Normandy to avenge them. Nor was the temper of the duke such as to brook easily disappointment. But wroth CHAP. XI. 1053 1071. as he might be, it was impossible to attack EngThe Norman land with Flanders at her back. The overthrow Conquest. of William's schemes for a Flemish marriage by Godwine's dexterous negotiations with Pope and Emperor still tied the duke's hands. From the moment of the council, whether Baldwin called on William to fulfil his pledge in vain or no, the courts of Bruges and of Rouen steered apart again. Baldwin fell back on his old alliance with the house of Godwine. The marriage of Judith with Tostig announced his change of policy, and promised to bind the earl and the count inseparably together. The fall of Godwine only brought out into clearer light the friendship of Flanders. It was in Flanders that the earl found refuge in his exile. It was from Bruges that his intrigues with his English supporters were carried on. His fleet was gathered in the Scheldt, and Flemish seamen were mingled with his own. William, with his own duchy still ill in hand and France watching jealously across his southern border, knew well that the estrangement of Baldwin barred any hope of attack over sea. Nor was this estrangement the least weighty of the dangers which threatened William at home, for the hostility of such a neighbour was sure to stir into life the smouldering discontent of the Norman baronage. His marriage. We see the duke's consciousness of this danger from the step on which he ventured with a view of dispelling it. While Robert of Jumièges was still pleading at the papal court, William, by an act as daring as Godwine's, placed himself in opposition to the Papacy and the moral sense of Christendom. If he now CHAP. XI. Conquest. 10531071. claimed again the hand of Matilda it was with a full foresight of the difficulties in which such a marriage The Norman was to plunge him. The prohibition of Pope Leo was the most formidable of the obstacles in his way. But in 1053 Pope Leo was a prisoner in the hands of the Normans, who were founding a state in Southern Italy; and William seized the opportunity to wed Baldwin's daughter. But if Leo was a prisoner the Church was free, and the duke at once found himself face to face with the religious censure of the world about him. Rome laid the duchy under interdict. The archbishop of Rouen, his uncle Malger, threatened William with excommunication. His own counsellor, the prior of Bec, openly opposed the marriage. Lanfranc was now the foremost scholar of Western Christendom; and his disapproval was weightier than even the thunders of the Papacy. It stung William to the quick. In a wild burst of wrath he bade his men burn a manor-house of Bec to the ground and drive out Lanfranc from Norman land. In his haste to see his orders carried out the duke overtook the Italian hobbling on a lame horse towards the frontier. He angrily bade him hasten, and Lanfranc replied by a cool promise to go faster out of his land if he would give him a better steed. “You are the first criminal that ever asked gifts from his judge," retorted William ; but a burst of laughter told that his wrath had passed away, and duke and prior drew quietly together again. Wise or unwise, Lanfranc saw that it was too late to withstand the Flemish match; and William knew well that no persuasion in Christendom could do so much to win over the CHAP. XI. Papacy to forgiveness as that of the prior of Bec. The Norman Lanfranc made his way to Rome and sought for a Conquest. 1053. 1071. Victory of dispensation. But six years of tedious negotiation passed away and William remained unpardoned, while the censures of the Church woke into fresh life every element of hostility within and without his land. The old cry of bastardy was heard once more. The old claims of rival branches of the ducal house woke again to life. Revolts of his kinsmen, William of Eu and William of Arques, revealed the existence of a widespread plot among the Norman nobles; and these were hardly trodden out before France itself drew the sword. King Henry was still bent on the policy of balance which held one feudatory at bay by help of another. A few years back, when Geoffrey Martel threatened his crown, he had relieved himself of the pressure of the Angevin by alliance with the Norman duke. He now resolved to break the power of Normandy by an alliance with the Angevin. After fruitless aid to the Norman rebels the king himself took the field. One French army marched from Beauvais on Normandy to the right of the Seine; another under Henry himself advanced from Mantes on the duchy to the left of the river. The aid which came to the invader from Chartres and Aquitaine, from the men of Rheims and Laon, as from the burghers of Tours and Blois, shows how widely the greatness of William had revived the old hatred of the Normans. But the number of his assailants only heightened William's triumph. To meet the double attack the Norman forces were parted in two divisions, CHAP. XI. Conquest. 1053 1071. William himself leading the southern army, which defended the country between the Seine and the The Norman Oise, while four of the barons headed a body which guarded the land between the Seine and the Bresle. It was the last which first encountered the invaders. The French army under Henry's brother, Odo, and Count Guy of Ponthieu, which penetrated into the country about Aumale, had taken up its quarters in the little town of Mortemer, when it was surprised by the Norman onset. The town was set on fire, the French were slain as they hurried from its streets, and the whole army forced back in utter rout across the border. At night the news reached William as he lay with his host fronting Henry on the Seine. The cool craft and grim humour which underlay his dauntless courage showed itself in the use he made of the victory. Ralf of Toesny was sent to climb a tree in the neighbourhood of the king's camp, and at dawn the Frenchmen heard him shouting the famous words which still live in the verse of Wace," Up, Frenchmen, up; you sleep too long; go bury your brothers that lie dead at Mortemer!" Panic spread with the news through the invading army, and before the sun was high its tents were in a blaze, and Henry was hurrying in retreat towards Paris. He purchased the release of the French barons who lay in William's prisons by a peace which was concluded in 1055, and which left William free to deal with Geoffrey of Anjou. The capture of Count Guy in the battle of Mortemer had enabled William to exact an acknowledgement of his lordship over Ponthieu as the price of liberation; and a march from Domfront now won a like |