CHAP. VIII. Soul. And at the moment when he wrote, it was no marvel if the Chronicler was inclined to dwell on the good rather than on the evil. The Crown of William passed to one who shared largely in his mere intellectual gifts, but who had no fellowship in the greater and nobler elements of his character. To appreciate William the Conqueror we have but to cast our glance onwards to William the Red. We shall then understand how men writhing under the scorpions of the son might well look back with regret to the whips of the father. We can understand how, under his godless rule, men might feel kindly towards the memory of one who never wholly cast away the thoughts of justice and mercy, and who in his darkest hours had still somewhat of the fear of God before his eyes. Strength of will in William. His military genius. In estimating the character of William one feature stands out preeminently above all others. Throughout his career we admire in him the embodiment, in the highest degree that human nature will allow, of the fixed purpose and the unbending will. From time to time there have been men who seem to have come into the world to sway the course of events at their good pleasure, men who have made destiny itself their vassal, and whose decrees it seems in vain for lesser men to seek to withstand. Such was the man who, with the blood of thousands reeking on his hands, could lay down despotic power, could walk unattended to his house, and calmly offer to give an account for any of his actions; and such in might, though assuredly not such in crime, was our first Norman King. Whatever the will of William decreed, he found a means to bring it about. Whatever his hand found to do, he did it with all his might. As a warrior, as a general, it is needless to sound his praises. His warlike exploits set him among the foremost captains of history, but his HIS STATESMANSHIP AND MILITARY GENIUS. 165 scrupulous warlike exploits are but the smallest part of his fame. CHAP. VIII. Others beside him might have led the charge at Val-èsdunes; others beside him might have chosen the happy moment for the ambush at Varaville; others beside him might have endured the weariness of the long blockade beneath the donjon of Brionne. Others, it may even be, beside him might have cut their way through palisade and shield-wall and battle-axe to the royal Standard of England. But none in his own age, and few in any age, have shown His statesmanship. themselves like him masters of every branch of the consummate craft of the statesman. Calm and clearsighted, he saw his object before him; he knew when to tarry and when to hasten; he knew when to strike and how to strike, and how to use alike the noblest and the vilest of men as his instruments. Utterly unscrupulous, though His unfar from unprincipled, taking no pleasure in wrong or ness as to oppression for its own sake, always keeping back his means. hands from needless bloodshed, he yet never shrank from force or fraud, from wrong or bloodshed or oppression, when they seemed to him the straightest paths to accomplish his purpose. His crimes admit of no denial; but, with one single exception, they never were wanton crimes. And when we come to see the school in which he was brought up, when we see the men whom he had to deal with from his childhood, our wonder really ought to be that his crimes were not infinitely blacker. virtues were throughout life many and great. much of his piety, and we see reason to believe that his piety was something more than the mere conventional piety of lavish gifts to monasteries. Punctual in every His reliexercise of devotion, paying respect and honour of every gious zeal. kind to religion and its ministers, William showed, in two ways most unusual among the princes of that age, that his zeal for holy things was neither hypocrisy nor fanaticism nor superstition. Like his illustrious contemporary on His personal His perso- excellence siastical appointments. CHAP. VIII. the Imperial throne, he appeared as a real ecclesiastical reformer, and he allowed the precepts of his religion General to have a distinct influence on his private life. He was of his eccle- one of the few princes of that age whose hands were perfectly clean from the guilt of simony. His ecclesiastical appointments for the most part do him honour; the patron of Lanfranc and Anselm can never be spoken of without respect. In his personal conduct he practised at least one most unusual virtue; in a profligate age he was a model of conjugal fidelity. He was a good and faithful friend, an affectionate brother-we must perhaps add, too indulgent a father. And strong as was his sense of religion, deep as was his reverence for the Church, openhanded as was his bounty to her ministers, no prince that ever reigned was less disposed to yield to ecclesiastical usurpations. No prince ever knew better how to control the priesthood within his own dominions; none knew better both how to win the voice of Rome to abet his purposes, and how to bid defiance to her demands when they infringed on the rights of his Crown and the laws of his Kingdom. While all Europe rang with the great strife of Pope and Cæsar, England and Normandy remained at peace under the rule of one who knew how, firmly and calmly, to hold his own against Hildebrand himself.1 Effects of his reign on Normandy, France, and Eng land. But to know what William was, no way is so clear as to see what William did in both the countries over which he was so strangely called to rule. We are too apt to look on him simply as the Conqueror of England. But so to do is to look at him only in his most splendid, but The philo-Roman side of William's character is strongly set forth by the Papal writer Bernold, Pertz, v. 439. Under the year 1084 he thus records the death ofMatilda; "Regina Anglorum obiit, uxor Willihelmi Regis, qui totam Anglorum terram Romano Pontifici tributariam fecit, nec aliquem in suâ potestate aliquid emere vel vendere permisit, quem Apostolicæ sedi inobedientem deprehendit." Here we may welcome an indirect tribute to the comparative independence of England under her native Kings. HIS GOOD GOVERNMENT IN NORMANDY. 167 com of his rule at the same time his least honourable, aspect. William CHAP. VIII. learned to become the Conqueror of England only by first becoming the Conqueror of Normandy and the Conqueror of France. He found means to conquer Normandy by the help of France and to conquer France by the help of Normandy. He turned a jealous over-lord into an effective ally against his rebellious subjects, and he turned those rebellious subjects into faithful supporters against that jealous over-lord. He came to his Duchy under every His early disadvantage. At once bastard and minor, with struggles. petitors for his coronet arising at every moment, with turbulent barons to hold in check and envious neighbours to guard against, he was throughout the whole of his early life beset by troubles, none of which were of his own making, and he came honourably out of all. The change which William wrought in Normandy was nothing Excellence less than a change from anarchy to good order. Instead in Norof a state torn by internal feuds and open to the attacks mandy. of every enemy, his Duchy became, under his youthful rule, a loyal and well-governed land, respected by all its neighbours, and putting most of them to shame by its prosperity. In the face of every obstacle, the mighty genius of the once despised Bastard raised himself and his principality to a place in the eyes of Europe such as Normandy and its prince had never held before. And these great successes were gained with far less of cruelty His geneor harshness than might have been looked for in so ruthless an age. He shared indeed in the fierce passions occasional of his race, and in one or two cases his wrath hurried him, or his policy beguiled him, into acts at which humanity shudders. At all stages of his life, if he was debonair to those who would do his will, he was beyond measure stern to all who withstood it.1 Yet when we 1 Chron. Petrib. 1087. "He was milde pam godum mannum þe God lufedon, and ofer eall gemett stearc þam mannum þe widewædon his ral forbearance and cruelty. CHAP. VIII. think of all that he went through, of the treachery and ingratitude which he met with on every side, how his most faithful friends were murdered beside him, how he himself had to flee for his life or to lurk in mean disguises, we shall see that it is not without reason that his panegyrist praises his general forbearance and clemency. In short, the reign of William as Duke of the Normans was alike prosperous and honourable in the highest degree. Had he never stretched forth his hand to grasp the diadem which was another's, his fame would not have filled the world as now it does, but he would have gone down to his grave as one of the best, as well as one of the greatest, rulers of his time. His reign in Eng land. If we turn from William Duke of the Normans to William King of the English, we may indeed mourn that, in a moral sense, the fine gold has become dim, but our admiration for mere greatness, for the highest craft of the statesman and the soldier, will rise higher than ever. No doubt he was highly favoured by fortune; nothing but an extraordinary combination of events could have made the Conquest of England possible. But then it is the true art of statesmanship, the art by which men like William carry the world before them, to know how to grasp every fortunate moment and to take advantage Difficulties of every auspicious turn of events. Doubtless William under- could never have conquered England except under peculiarly favourable circumstances; but then none but such a man as William could have conquered England under any circumstances at all. He conquered and retained a land far greater than his paternal Duchy, and a land in which he had not a single native partizan. Yet he con of his taking. willan." The former clause is rather oddly altered in the version of Robert "To hem þat wolde his wylle do, debonere he was and mylde, |