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STATE OF THE NORMAN SUCCESSION.

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only through females; the nearer kinsmen were of spurious or doubtful birth, and some of them were liable also to the same objection as Archbishop Robert. Had any strong opposition existed, William of Arques would probably have been found the best card to play; but there was no candidate whose claims were absolutely without cavil; there was none round whom national feeling could instinctively centre; there was none who was clearly marked out, either by birth or by merit, as the natural leader of the Norman people. This state of things must be borne in mind, in order to understand the fact, otherwise so extraordinary, that Robert was able to secure the succession to a son who was at once bastard and minor. There were strong objections against young William; but there were objections equally strong against every other possible candidate. Under these circumstances it was possible for William to succeed; but it followed, almost as a matter of course, that the early years of his reign were disturbed by constant rebellions. William's succession was deeply offensive to many of his subjects, especially to that large portion of the Norman nobility who had any kind of connexion with the ducal house. From the time of the child's birth, there can be little doubt that his father's intentions in his favour were at least suspected, and the suspicion may well have given rise to some of the rebellions by which Robert's reign was disturbed.1

At this stage of our narrative it becomes necessary to form some clear conception of the personality and the ancestry of some of the great Norman nobles. Most of them belonged to houses whose fame has not been confined to Normandy. We are now dealing with the fathers of the men, in some cases with the men themselves, who fought round William at Senlac, and among whom he divided the honours and the lands of England. These men became the ancestors of the new nobility of England, and, as their forefathers had changed in Gaul from Northmen into Normans, so, by a happier application of the same law, their sons gradually changed from Normans into Englishmen. Many a name famous in English history, many a name whose sound is as familiar to us as any word of our own Teutonic speech, many a name which has long ceased to suggest any thought of foreign origin, is but the name of some Norman village, whose lord, or perhaps some lowlier inhabitant, followed his Duke to the Conquest of England and shared in the plunder of the conquered. But the names which are most familiar to us as names of English lords and gentlemen of Norman descent belong, for the most part, to a sort of second crop, which first grew into importance on English soil. The great Norman houses whose acts for the most part whose crimes become of paramount importance 1 See vol. i. p. 313.

at the time with which we are now dealing, were mostly worn out in a few generations, and they have left but few direct representatives on either side of the sea.

High among these great houses, the third in rank among the original Norman nobility,' stood the house of Belesme, whose present head was William, surnamed Talvas.2 The domains held by his family, partly of the Crown of France, partly of the Duchy of Normandy, might almost put him on a level with princes rather than with ordinary nobles. The possession from which the family took its name lay within the French territory, and was a fief of the French Crown. But, within the Norman Duchy, the Lords of Belesme were masters of the valley bounded by the hills from which the Orne flows in one direction and the Sarthe in another. Close on the French frontier, they held the strong fortress of Alençon, the key of Normandy on that side. They are called Lords of the city of Seez, and, at the time of which we are speaking, a member of their house filled its episcopal throne. Their domains stretched to Vinoz, a few miles south-east of Falaise, and separated from the town by the forest of Gouffer. Ivo, the first founder of this mighty house, had been one of the faithful guardians of the childhood of Richard the Fearless, and had been enriched by him as the reward of his true service in evil days. But with Ivo the virtue of his race seems to have died out, and his descendants appear in Norman and English history as monsters of cruelty and perfidy, whose deeds aroused the horror even of that not over scrupulous age. Open robbery and treacherous assassination seem to have been their daily occupations. The second of the line, William of Belesme, had rebelled against Duke Robert, and had defended his fortress of Alençon against him. His eldest son Warren murdered a harmless and unsuspecting, friend, and was for this crime, so the men of his age said, openly seized and strangled by the fiend. Of his other sons, Fulk, presuming to ravage the ducal territory, was

1 See Palgrave, ii. 536.

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2 "William Talevaz," according to the Roman de Rou, 8061. Willelmus Talvacius," Will. Gem. vi. 7.

3 Roman de Rou, 8062. "Ki tint Sez, Belesme, è Vinaz."

4 Ivo, son of the elder William, a Prelate of whom Orderic draws a very favourable picture (469 D), did not scruple to attack and burn his own church, when it had been turned into a fortress by certain turbulent nobles. He tried to repair it, and reconsecrated it; but the walls, having been damaged by the fire, fell down. He was then charged with sacrilege at the Council

of Rheims, and defended himself by the necessity of the case. He was bidden by Pope Leo, as a penance, to rebuild the church. He went as far as Apulia, and even as Constantinople, collecting contributions and relics, and he began the work on such a scale that, forty years later, the efforts of his three successors had not enabled them to finish it. Will. Gem. vii. 13-15. No part of his building now remains.

5 Will. Gem. viii. 35. 313, 536.

6 Will. Gem. vi. 4.

See Palgrave, ii. See vol. i. p. 313.

THE HOUSE OF BELESME.

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killed in battle; Robert was taken prisoner by the men of Le Mans and was beheaded by way of reprisals for a murder committed by his followers. The surviving heir of the possessions and of the wickedness of his race was his one remaining son William Talvas.1 This man, we are told, being displeased by the piety and good life of his first wife Hildeburgis, hired ruffians to murder her on her way to church.2 At his second wedding-feast he put out the eyes and cut off the nose and ears of an unsuspecting guest.3 This was William the son of Geroy, one of a house whose name we shall often meet again in connexion with the famous Abbeys of Bec and Saint Evroul. A local war followed, in which William Talvas suffered an inadequate punishment for his crimes in the constant harrying of his lands. At last a more appropriate avenger arose from his own house. The hereditary wickedness of his line passed on to his daughter Mabel and his son Arnulf. 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. 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

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3 Ib. Orderic (460 D) adds, “ amputatis genitalibus." These stories of the extreme wickedness of the house of Belesme are doubtless not without foundation, but one cannot help suspecting exaggeration, especially when we remember that Orderic writes in the interest of the hostile house of Geroy. This particular outrage of William Talvas can hardly be an invention; but it must surely have had some motive which does not appear in our authorities.

4 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 brave and honourable knight, and at last died in the odour of sanctity as a monk of Bec.

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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.

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 the house and looked on the babe. He then cursed him, 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.

Duke Robert however was bent on his purpose. He gathered an assembly of the great men of his Duchy, among whom the presence of Archbishop Robert, perhaps as being a possible competitor for the succession, is specially mentioned.2 The Duke set forth his intention of visiting the Holy Sepulchre (1034-5), 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 at a time when there was no one successor or representative 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

1 Roman de Rou, 8059 et seqq.; Pal- See vol. i. p. 117. On the other hand, grave, iii. 149. Wace (8081) gathers together Bishops, Abbots, and Barons, but this may be only in conformity with the custom of his own time.

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.

WILLIAM'S SUCCESSION ACCEPTED.

3

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stay at home and guard his Duchy against the pretensions of the Breton and the Burgundian.1 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. 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. 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 prevailed on to stay at home, some settlement must be 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 consented; they accepted the only proposal which was before them; they swore the usual oaths, and did homage to the son of Herleva as their future sovereign.5 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. As far as forms went, no form was

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"Par li cunseil el Rei de France,

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Ki l'maintiendra o sa poessance." 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.

5 Will. Gem. vi. 12. 66 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."

6 Roman de Rou, 8125;

"Li Dus por la chose afermer,

E por fere lunges durer,

Al Rei de France l'ad mené,

E

par li puing li a livré;

Sun home le fist devenir

E de Normendie seisir."

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

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