CHAP. VIII. his daughter Mabel and his son Arnulf. William curses young William. Mabel, the wife of Roger of Montgomery, will be a prominent character in our story for many years. Arnulf rebelled against his father, and drove him out to die wretchedly in exile. An act of wanton rapacity was presently punished by a supernatural avenger; Arnulf, like his uncle Warren, was strangled by a dæmon in his bed.1 Such was the character of the family whose chief, first in power and in crime among the nobility of Normandy, stood forth, as the story goes, as the mouthpiece of that nobility, to express the feelings with which the descendants of the comrades of Rolf, the descendants of Richard the Fearless, even the descendants of the brothers and sisters of Gunnor, looked on the possible promotion of the Tanner's grandson to be their lord. William Talvas, says the tale, in the days of his prosperity, was one day in the streets of Falaise, a town where the close neighbourhood of his possessions doubtless made him well known. The babe William, the son of the Duke and Herleva, was being nursed in the house of his maternal grandfather. A burgher, meeting the baron, bade him step in and see the son of his lord. William Talvas entered 1 Will. Gem. vii. 12. The tale is that he one day went out with his followers ("clientes") to rob, and seized on the pig of a certain nun ("inter reliqua porcum cujusdam sanctimonialis rapuit "). The holy woman pleaded earnestly for the restoration of her favourite (" gemens eum insequuta est, ac ut porcellus, quem nutrierat, sibi pro Deo redderetur obnixe deprecata est"), but all was in vain; the oppressor killed the pig and ate him for supper. The same night he was strangled in his bed. In those times no alternative was thought of except a supernatural intervention and an assassination by Arnulf's brother Oliver. But our historian altogether rejects this last view, as inconsistent with the high character of Oliver, who passed many years as a brave and honourable knight, and at last died in the odour of sanctity as a monk of Bec. This story contains nothing absolutely incredible; yet one is tempted to see in it a slightly ludicrous version of Nathan's parable, taking a shape impossible under the elder dispensation. Arnulf too does not seem to have had even the poor excuse of the presence of a wayfaring man. WILLIAM TALVAS. 185 the house and looked on the babe. He then cursed him, CHAP. VIII. saying that by that child and his descendants himself and his descendants would be brought to shame.1 A curse from the mouth of William Talvas might almost be looked on as a blessing, and the form of the prediction was such as to come very near to the nature of a panegyric. It is indeed the highest praise of the babe who then lay in his cradle, that he did something to bring to shame, something to bring under the restraints of law and justice, men like the hoary sinner who instinctively saw in him the destined enemy of his kind. But the words, when 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 men 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. announces Duke Robert however was bent on his purpose. He Robert gathered an assembly of the great men of his Duchy, he among whom the presence of Archbishop Robert, perhaps tion of pilgrimage. as being a possible competitor for the succession, is specially 1034-5. mentioned. 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 1 Roman de Rou, 8059 et seqq.; Palgrave, iii. 149. 2 Will. Gem. vi. 12. "Robertum ergo archiepiscopum cum optimatibus sui Ducatûs accersivit." This may be taken as if Robert were the only churchman present. See vol. i. p. 173. On the other hand, Wace (8081) gathers together Bishops, Abbots, and Barons, but this may be only in conformity with the custom of his own time. CHAP. VIII. at a time when there was no one successor or representa He proposes William as his successor. tive 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 then 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 once to the Holy Land; he would settle the succession 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.2 His over-lord the King of the French had engaged to acknowledge and protect him.3 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.4 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 4 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. WILLIAM'S SUCCESSION ACCEPTED. 187 succession prevailed on to stay at home, some settlement must be CHAP. VIII. 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 agreement on the spot. Unwillingly then the Norman nobility William's 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.1 The kinsmen of Gunnor, the descendants of the comrades of Rolf, became the men of the Tanner's grandson, and he himself was received as the man of King Henry at Paris.2 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.3 Thus, in the same year William which beheld the great empire of Cnut parted among his his father sons, did William, the seven years' old grandson of the in the Duchy. Tanner Fulbert, find himself on the seat of Rolf and Richard 1035. 1 Will. Gem. vi. 12. "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 events which followed make one doubt as to the genuineness of the "prompta vivacitas." 2 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 postmodum firmaverunt." Does the phrase "militaribus sacramentis" mean "on their knightly honour," or is it merely a pedantic reference to the Roman military oath? 3 See vol. i. p. 473. succeeds CHAP. VIII. 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. Necessary evils of a minority. Anarchy at once broke forth; all the evils which wait on a minority in a rude age were at once poured forth upon 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 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 unlucky, 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 acknowledgement 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, or, to speak more truly, where they had gone back in a way in which they had not gone back in 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 William. of an historian of the next age. The developement of 1 Will. Malms iii. 230. "Clarissima olim patria, intestinis dissensionibus exulcerata, pro latronum libitu dividebatur, ut merito posset querimoniam facere, Væ terræ cujus Rex puer est."" See Ecclesiastes ་ |