CHAPTER VIII. THE EARLY YEARS OF WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR.1 § 1. Birth, Character, and Accession of William. WILLIAM, King of the English and Duke of the Normans, bears a name which must for ever stand forth among the foremost of mankind. No man that ever trod this earth was ever endowed with greater In this Chapter I have had of course mainly to depend on the Norman writers as my authorities. The Latin writers are to be found in the great collection of Duchesne. The first place is of course due to William of Poitiers. His Gesta Guillelmi has every advantage which can belong to the writings of a well-informed contemporary. But the work is disfigured by his constant spirit of violent partizanship (see above, p. 1). He must therefore be always followed with great caution, and in all purely English matters he is utterly untrustworthy. The beginning of his work is lost, so that we have no account from him of his hero's birth and childhood. William Calculus, a monk of Jumièges, according to Orderic (Prol. ad Lib. iii. p. 458), abridged Dudo, and continued the History of Normandy, through the reigns of Richard the Good, Richard the Third, Robert, and of William himself down to the Battle of Senlac (Ord. Vit. 618 D), presenting his work to William himself. This portion of the existing work ends at lib. vii. c. 42. He seems afterwards to have added the account of William's death (vii. 44), in which William of Poitiers and Guy of Amiens are spoken of. An eighth book, together with many interpolations in the earlier books, were added by a later hand, apparently by Robert of Torigny, Abbot of Saint Michael's Mount, commonly called Robert de Monte (see Pertz, vi. 475). William of Jumièges begins to be a contemporary writer in William's reign; with perhaps smaller opportunities of information than William of Poitiers, he is less violently prejudiced, and his work is of great value. His narrative forms the groundwork of the poetical history in the Roman de Rou. Its author, Master Wace, Canon of Bayeux early in the reign of Henry the Second, seems to have been a really honest and painstaking inquirer, and I do not look on his work as being any the less trustworthy on account of its poetical shape. But of course, whenever he departs from contemporary authority, and merely sets down floating traditions nearly a hundred years after the latest events which he records, his statements need to be very carefully weighed. I have used M. Pluquet's edition (Rouen, 1827) and the English Translation of part of the work by Mr. Edgar Taylor, whose genealogical and topographical notes are of great value. The other riming chronicler, Benoît de Sainte-More, a younger contemporary of Wace, is of a far more romantic turn, and is therefore of much smaller historical authority. Still he also preserves many curious traditions. Orderic Vital, whose work afterwards becomes of such pre CHARACTER OF WILLIAM. 107 natural gifts; to no man was it ever granted to accomplish greater things. If we look only to the scale of a man's acts without regard to their moral character, we must hail in the victor of Val-ès-dunes, of Varaville, and of Senlac, in the restorer of Normandy, the Conqueror of England, one who may fairly claim his place in the first rank of the world's greatest men. No man ever did his work more thoroughly at the moment; no man ever left his work behind him as more truly an abiding possession for all time. And when we consider all the circumstances of his life, when we judge him by the standard of his own age, above all when we compare him with those who came after him in his own house, we shall perhaps be inclined to dwell on his great qualities, on his many undoubted virtues, rather than to put his no less undoubted crimes in their darkest light. As we cannot refuse to place him among the greatest of men, neither will a candid judgement incline us to place him among the worst of men. If we cannot give him a niche among pure patriots and heroes, he is quite as little entitled to a place among mere tyrants and destroyers. William of Normandy has no claim to a share in the pure glory of Timoleôn, Ælfred, and Washington; he cannot even claim the more mingled fame of Alexander, Charles, and Cnut; but he has even less in common with the mere enemies of their species, with the Nabuchodonosors, the Swegens, and the Buonapartes, whom God has sent from time to time as simple scourges of a guilty world. Happily there are few men in history of whom we have better materials for drawing the portrait. We see him as he appeared to admiring followers of his own race; we see him also as he appeared to men of the conquered nation who had looked on him and had lived in his household.1 We have to make allowance for flattery on the one side; we have not to make allowance for calumny on the other. The feeling with which the Normans looked on their conquering leader was undoubtedly one of awe rather than of love; and the feeling with which the vanquished English looked on their Conqueror was undoubtedly one of awe rather than of simple hatred. Assuredly William's English subjects did not love him; but they felt a kind of sullen reverence for the King who was richer and mightier than all the Kings that were before him. In speaking of him, the Chronicler writes as it were with downcast eyes and bated breath, as if he were hardly dealing with a man of like passions with himself, but were rather drawing the portrait of a being eminent importance, is just now beginning to be of use, but as yet his main value is for information about Norman families and Norman monasteries. But his constant repetitions and utter lack of arrangement make him still more difficult to read or consult than William of Malmesbury himself. 1 Chron. Petrib. 1087. "Gif hwa gewilniged to gewitane hu gedon mann he was, odde hwilcne wurdscipe he hæfde, oððe hu fela lande he wære hlaford, ponne wille we be him awritan swa swa we hine ageaton, þe him on locodan and oðre hwile on his hirede wunedon." of another nature. Yet he holds the balance fairly between the dark and the bright qualities of one so far raised above the common lot of man. He does not conceal his crimes and his oppressions; but he sets before us the merits of his government and the good peace that he made in this land; he judicially sums up what was good and what was evil in him; he warns men to follow the good and to avoid the evil, and he sends him out of the world with a charitable prayer for the repose of his 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. 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 waik unattended to his house, and calmly offer to give an account for any of his actions;1 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 warlike exploits are but the smallest part of his fame. Others beside him might have led the charge at Val-ès-dunes; 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 themselves like him masters of every branch of the consummate craft of the statesman. Calm and clearsighted, he saw his See the article "Lucius Cornelius Sulla," Historical Essays, Second Series. HIS STATESMANSHIP AND MILITARY GENIUS. 109 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 far from unprincipled, taking no pleasure in wrong or oppression for its own sake, always keeping back his 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. His personal virtues were throughout life many and great. We hear 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 exercise of devotion, paying respect and honour of every 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 the Imperial throne, he appeared as a real ecclesiastical reformer, and he allowed the precepts of his religion to have a distinct influence on his private life. He was 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 brotherwe 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 1 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 of Matilda; "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 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 at the same time his least honourable, aspect. William 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 disadvantage. At once bastard and minor, with competitors 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 less than a change from anarchy to good order. Instead of a state torn by internal feuds and open to the attacks 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 or harshness than might have been looked for in so ruthless an age. He shared indeed in the fierce passions 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 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. welcome an indirect tribute to the comparative independence of England under her native Kings. 1 Chron. Petrib. 1087. "He was milde þam godum mannum þe God lufedon, and ofer eall gemett stearc þam mannum þe wiocwadon his willan." The former clause is rather oddly altered in the version of Robert of Gloucester (p. 374); "To hem þat wolde his wylle do, debo nere he was and mylde, And to hem þat hym wyp seyde strong tyrant and wylde." |