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.1 Thus, in the same year which beheld the great empire of Cnut parted among his sons, did William, the seven years' old grandson of the Tanner Fulbert, find himself on the seat of Rolf and Richard 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. 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 adminstration 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 to the land whose King is a child" is the apt quotation of an historian of the next age. The developement of the young Duke both in mind and body was undoubtedly precocious; but his early maturity was mainly owing to the stern discipline of that terrible childhood. It was in those years that he learned the arts which made Normandy, France, and England bow before him; but, at the age of seven years, William himself was no more capable than Æthelred of personally wielding the rod of rule. The child had good and faithful guardians, 2 honour," or is it merely a pedantic refer- merito posset querimoniam facere, Væ ence to the Roman military oath? 1 See vol. i. p. 319. 2 Will. Malms. iii. 230. "Clarissima olim patria, intestinis dissensionibus exulcerata, pro latronum libitu dividebatur, ut terræ cujus Rex puer est.'" See Ecclesiastes x. 16. The same text is used by R. Glaber, iv. 5, with a more general application. ANARCHY OF WILLIAM'S MINORITY. 125 guardians perhaps no less well disposed to fulfil their trust towards him than Dunstan had been towards the children of Eadgar. But there was no one man in Normandy to whom every Norman could look up as every Englishman had looked up to the mighty Primate, and the bowl and the dagger soon deprived the young Prince of the support of his wisest and truest counsellors. The minority of William was truly a time when every man did that which was right in his own eyes. And what seemed right in the eyes of the nobles of Normandy was commonly rebellion against their sovereign, ruthless oppression of those beneath them, and endless deadly feuds with one another. We have already seen some specimens of their doings in the crimes of the house of Belesme. That house is indeed always spoken of as exceptionally wicked; but a state of things in which such deeds could be done, and could go unpunished, must have come very nearly to an utter break-up of society. The general pictures which we find given us of the time are fearful beyond expression. Through the withdrawal of all controlling power, every land-owner became a petty sovereign, and began to exercise all the sovereign rights of slaughter and devastation. The land soon bristled with castles. The mound crowned with the square donjon rose as the defence or the terror of every lordship. This castle-building is now spoken of in Normandy with a condemnation nearly as strong as that with which it was spoken of in England, when, a few years after this time, the practice was introduced into England by the Norman favourites of Eadward.1 But there is a characteristic difference in the tone of the two complaints. The English complaint always is that the Frenchmen built castles and oppressed the poor folk, or that they did all possible evil and shame to their English neighbours. The Norman complaint, though not wholly silent as to the oppression of the humbler ranks, yet dwells mainly on the castle-building as a sign of rebellion against the authority of the Prince, and as an occasion of warfare between baron and baron. And it would have been well for the reputation of the Norman nobles of that age if they had confined themselves to open warfare with one another and open rebellion against their sovereign. But they sank below the common morality of their own age; private murder was as familiar to them as open war. The house of Belesme had a bad preeminence in this as in other crimes; but if they had a preeminence, they were far from having a monopoly. Perhaps no period of the same length in the history of Christendom contains the record of so many foul deeds of slaughter and mutilation as the early years of the reign of William. And they were constantly practised, not only against avowed and armed enemies, but against unharmed 1 On the building of castles see Ap- 1137; and Appendix S. pendix S. 2 See Chronn. Wig. 1066; Petrib. 1087, 3 See above, p. 90. See the story quoted in p. 121. and unsuspected guests. Some of the tales may be inventions or exaggerations; but the days in which such tales could even be invented must have been days full of deeds of horror. Isolated cases of similar crimes may doubtless be found in any age; but this period is remarkable alike for the abundance of crimes, for the rank of the criminals, and for the impunity which they enjoyed. To control these men was the duty laid upon the almost infant years of William, a duty with which nothing short of his own full and matured powers might seem fit to grapple. Yet over all these difficulties the genius of the great Duke was at last triumphant. His hand brought order out of the chaos, and changed a land wasted by rebellion and intestine warfare into one of the most prosperous regions of Europe, a land flourishing as no Norman ruler had seen it flourish before. When we think of the days in which William spent his youth, of the men against whom his early years were destined to be one continued struggle, we shall be less inclined to lift up our hands in horror at his later crimes than to dwell with admiration on that large share of higher and better qualities which, among all his evils deeds, clave to him to his dying day. § 2. From the Accession of William to the Battle of Val-ès-dunes. 1035-1047. We have seen among what kind of men the young Duke of the Normans had to pass the first years of his life and sovereignty. But his father, in leaving his one lamb among so many wolves, had at least provided him with trustworthy guardians. Alan of Britanny, a possible competitor for the Duchy, a neighbouring prince with whom Duke Robert had so lately been at war,1 was disarmed when his over-lord committed his son to his faith as kinsman and vassal, and even invested him with some measure of authority in Normandy itself. The immediate care of the young Duke's person was given to one Thurcytel or Thorold, names which point to a genuine Scandinavian descent in their bearer, and which would make us look to the Bessin as the probable place of his birth. Other guardians of high rank were the Seneschal Osbern, and Count Gilbert, both of them connected in the usual way with the ducal family. Osbern was the son of Herfast, a brother of the Duchess Gunnor; he was also married to a daughter of Rudolf of Ivry, the son of Asperleng and Sprota, the savage suppressor of the great peasant revolt.* ALAN AND GILBERT MURDERED. 127 Gilbert's connexion was still closer. He was illustrious alike in his forefathers and in his descendants. He sprang of the ducal blood of Normandy, and of his blood sprang the great houses of Clare and Pembroke in England. His father Godfrey was one of those natural children of Richard the Fearless who did not share the promotion of the offspring of Gunnor.1 He was lord of the border fortress of Eu, renowned in Norman history as early as the days of Rolf; he was lord too of the pleasant valley of the Risle, separated only by one wooded hill from the more memorable valley which is hallowed by the names of Herlwin, Lanfranc, and Anselm. All these worthy men paid the penalty of their fidelity. Count Alan died of poison (1039–1040), while he was besieging the castle of Montgomery, the stronghold of a house which we shall often have again to mention. He died at Vinmoutier, and was buried in the abbey of Fécamp. Breton slander afterwards threw the guilt of this crime upon the Duke himself, the person who had least to gain by it. Norman slander threw it on Alan's own subjects; but one can hardly doubt that, if the poisoned bowl was administered at all, it was administered by some one or other of the rebellious Norman nobles.5 Count Gilbert was murdered by assassins employed by Ralph of Wacey, son of Archbishop Robert. The sons of the murdered man fled to Flanders, and took refuge with the common protector of banished men, Count Baldwin. The lands of Gilbert were divided among various claimants; the County of Eu seems to have passed into the hands of his uncle William ; but his famous castle of Brionne fell to the lot of Guy of Burgundy, of whom, and of whose possession of the fortress, we shall hear much as we go on.3 8 4 1039. Obiit Alanus Dux Britanniæ filius Gauffredi. 3 Kal. Oct." Cf. Roman de Rou, 8139; 1 Will. Gem. viii. 37. "Gislebertus only, fuerat filius Godefridi Comitis Aucensis, naturalis videlicet filii primi Richardi Ducis Normannorum." See vol. i. p. 170. 2 See vol. i. P. 18, Gilbert is called "Comes Ocensis" by William of Jumièges (vii. 2), and the same writer (iv. 18) also says, "Licet Comes Gislebertus filius Godefridi Comitis ipsum comitatum parumper tenuerit, antequam occideretur." But see Stapleton, i. lvi. 66 3 Will. Gem. vii. 33. "Alanum patrem meum apud Winmusterium in Normanniâ veneno peremisti." Ord. Vit. 655 C. 'Alanno, dum Montem Gomerici obsidet, per fraudem Normannorum letaliter corrupto venenosâ potione." But the Breton Chronicle in Morice (Memoires pour servir de Preuves à l'histoire de Bretagne) says "Murut Alains a Normandie; A Fescamp jut en l'Abéie." See Prevost's note, i. 403. 4 Roman de Rou, 8136. 5 Orderic (567 A) says distinctly, "Alannum Comitem Britonum suique Ducis tutorem Normanni veneno perimere." 6 Will. Gem. vii. 2; Will. Malms. iii. 230. "Interfecto Gisleberto a Radulpho patruele suo, ubique cædes, ubique ignes versabantur." 7 This seems the meaning of the context of the passage from William of Jumièges quoted just above. 8 Ord. Vit. 686 D. Another still more criminal attempt introduces us yet more directly to one of the great Norman houses whose name has been more abiding than any other. I have just before mentioned Count Alan's siege of the castle of Montgomery. The name of that castle, a hill fortress in the diocese of Lisieux, enjoys a peculiar privilege above all others in Norman geography. Other spots in Normandy have given their names to Norman houses, and those Norman houses have transferred those names to English castles and English towns and villages. But there is only one shire in Great Britain which has had the name of a Norman lordship impressed upon it for ever. Roger, the present Lord of Montgomery, was, at the time of Duke Robert's death, in banishment at Paris.1 His five sons remained in Normandy, and were among the foremost disturbers of the peace of the country.2 But one of the five, Hugh, had a son, named, like his grandfather, Roger, who bore a better character and was destined to a higher fate. He had, through his mother, a connexion of the usual kind with the ducal house. Weva, a sister of Gunnor, was the wife of Thorulf of Pont-Audemer, the son of Torf, and her daughter Joscelina was the wife of Hugh of Montgomery, and mother of the younger Roger. On this Roger, William Talvas, in his old age, bestowed the hand of his daughter Mabel, who handed on the name, the honours, and the hereditary wickedness of the house of Belesme to her sons of the house of Montgomery. Mabel, small in stature, talkative, and cruel, guilty of fearful crimes and destined to a fearful doom, fills a place in history fully equal to that filled by her husband. Of him we shall hear again as literally the foremost among the conquerors of England; we shall see him enriched with English estates and honours, bearing the lofty titles of Earl of Arundel and Shrewsbury, and, once at least, adorned with the loftier title which had been borne by Ethelred and Leofric. Once (1087), and that while engaged in rebellion against his prince, he flits before us for a moment as Roger Earl of the Mercians. A munificent friend of monks both in England and in Normandy, he has left behind him a different reputation from that of either his father, his wife, or his 6 7 que sub eis pro facinoribus suis decederint, 66 "Rogerius Mercio |