2 his trust. The fortress of which Normandy had been so proud was handed over to the French King, and was at once given to the flames, to the sorrow of every true Norman heart. The King pledged himself, as one of the conditions of the surrender, not to restore the fortress for four years. But if the Norman writers may be trusted, he grossly belied his faith. His somewhat unreasonable demand had been granted, and no further provocation seems to have been given on the Norman side. But now that the protecting fortress was dismantled, Henry ventured on an actual invasion. He retired for a while; but he soon returned and crossed the border. He passed through the County of Hiesmes, the old appanage of Duke Robert; from the valley of the Dive he passed into the valley of the Orne, and burned the Duke's own town of Argentan. He then returned laden with booty, and on his way back, in defiance of his engagements, he restored and garrisoned the dismantled fortress of Tillières.3 The border fortress, so long the cherished defence of Normandy, now became the sharpest thorn in her side. It is impossible to doubt that this devastation of the County of Hiesmes was made by special agreement with the man who was most bound to defend it. The commander of the district was Thurstan surnamed Goz, the son of Ansfrid the Dane. In this description, so long after the first occupation of the country, we must recognize a son of a follower of Harold Blaatand, not a son of an original companion of Rolf. And a son of a follower of Harold Blaatand must by this time have been a man advanced in life. But neither his age and office, nor his Scandinavian descent and name, hindered Thurstan from playing into the hands of the French invaders. Seeing that the Duke had been thus compelled to yield to the King, Thurstan looked upon the moment as one propitious for revolt. He took some of the King's soldiers into his pay, and with their help he garrisoned the castle of Falaise against the Duke." Young William's indignation 1 Ib. "Quod [castrum] sub oculis omnium sub maximo dolore cordis confestim igne concremari perspexit." The speedy restoration of the fortress, of which we shall hear directly, shows what is really meant by this burning. That the castle was wholly of wood is inconceivable. But all the wooden appendages, all the roofs, floors, and fittings of the main building, were burned. The principal tower would thus remain dismantled, blackened, perhaps a little damaged in its masonry, but quite fit to be made available again in a short time. 2 Ib. "Sacramenta quæ Duci juraverat ne a quoquam suo in quatuor annis refi cerentur, irrita fecit." 3 Will. Gem. vii. 5. 4 Ib. vii. 6. "Turstenus cognomento Goz, Ansfridi Dani filius, qui tunc præses Oximensis erat." 5 See vol. i. pp. 126, 129, 146, 157. Without trusting all Dudo's details, there can be no doubt as to the general fact of these later settlements. 6 Will. Gem. vii. 6. "Zelo succensus infidelitatis, regales milites stippendiis conduxit, quos complices ad muniendum Falesiæ castellum, ne inde Duci serviret, sibi adscivit." The presence of the French soldiers is thus plain enough, and their presence seems to imply the complicity of the WILLIAM'S SIEGE OF FALAISE. 135 was naturally great. To select that particular spot as a centre of rebellion was not only a flagrant act of disloyalty, but the grossest of personal insults. Acting under the guidance of his guardian Ralph of Wacey, the Duke summoned all loyal Normans to his standard, and advanced to the siege of his birthplace. The castle was attacked by storm, a fact which shows that the town was loyal, proud as it well might be of numbering among its sons not only a sovereign, but a sovereign who was beginning to be renowned even in his boyhood. It was only on the side of the town that the castle could be assaulted in this way. William himself could hardly have swarmed up the steep cliffs which looked down upon the dwelling of his grandfather, nor could he, like the English invader four centuries later, command the fortress by artillery planted on the opposite height. By dint of sheer personal strength and courage, the gallant Normans assaulted the massive walls of the Norman fortress, in the heart of the Norman land, which French hirelings, in the pay of a Norman traitor, were defending against the prince to whom that fortress owes a renown which can never pass away. Their attacks made a breach, perhaps not in the donjon itself, but at any rate in its external defences; night alone, we are told, put an end to the combat, and saved Thurstan and his party from all the horrors of a storm. But the rebel chief now saw that his hopes were vain; he sought a parley with the Duke, and was allowed to go away unhurt on condition of perpetual banishment from Normandy. Thurstan's son, Richard Viscount of Avranches, proved a loyal servant to William, and in the end procured the pardon of his father.1 The son of the loyal Richard, the grandson of the rebel Thurstan, finds a place in English history by the name of Hugh the Wolf, the first of the mighty but short-lived line of the Counts Palatine of Chester.2 The young Duke's great qualities were now fast displaying themselves. At the earliest age which the rules of chivalry allowed, he received the ensigns of knighthood from King Henry, and his subjects now began, not without reason, to look forward to a season of peace and order under his rule.3 We hardly need the exaggerated talk of his extravagant panegyrist to feel sure that William, at an un French King; but there seems to be no sufficient authority for bringing in a second devastating invasion of the County of Hiesmes by Henry in person, as we find described in the Roman de Rou, 8526, where I do not understand Prevost's note. 1 Will. Gem. vii. 6. He founded Saint Gabriel's Priory near Bayeux, the small remains of which are among the finest Ro manesque work in Normandy. See De Caumont, Statistique Monumental du Calvados, i. 306. 2 See Will. Gem. viii. 38; Ord. Vit. 488 B, 522 A, B. 3 Will. Malms. iii. 240. "At ille, ubi primum per ætatem potuit, militiæ insignia a Rege Francorum accipiens, provinciales in spem quietis erexit." usually early age, taught men to see in him the born ruler. We hear, not only of his grace and skill in every warlike exercise, not only of his wisdom in the choice of his counsellors, but of his personally practising every virtue that becomes a man and a prince. William, we are told, was fervent in his devotions and righteous in his judgements, and he dealt out a justice as strict as that of Godwine or Harold upon all disturbers of the public peace.1 All this we can well believe. Of all these virtues he retained many traces to the last. A long career of ambition, craft, and despotic rule, never utterly seared his conscience, never brought him down to the level of those tyrants who neither fear God nor regard man. And in the fresh and generous days of youth, we can well believe that one so highly gifted, and who as yet had so little temptation to abuse his gifts, must have shone forth before all men as the very model of every princely virtue. But in one important point the public acts of William, or of those who acted in his name, hardly bear out the language of his panegyrists. His first ecclesiastical appointments were quite unworthy of the prince who was, somewhat later in life, to learn to appreciate and to reward the virtues of Maurilius, Lanfranc, and Anselm. The two greatest preferments of the Norman Church fell vacant during this period, and the way in which they were filled illustrates a not uncommon practice of the Norman princes which had few or no parallels in England. There have been few instances in England in any age of great spiritual preferments being perverted into means of maintenance for cadets or bastards of the royal house. In Normandy, at least since the days of Richard the Fearless, the practice had been shamefully common, and in the early days of William the scandal still continued. It must be remembered that the Prelates of Normandy, like the Prelates of the other great fiefs of the French Crown, were, in every sense, the subjects of the Prince within whose immediate dominions they found themselves. Here was one great point of difference between the condition of France and the condition of Germany. In Germany all the great churchmen, in every part of the country, held immediately of the Emperor. Every Bishop was therefore reckoned as a Prince. The episcopal city also commonly became a Free City of the Empire, and, as such, was a commonwealth enjoying practical independence. No such oases of ecclesiastical or municipal privilege 1 See above, p. 112. William of Poitiers (Giles, Scriptt. Will. Conq. 80; Duchesne, 179 B) gives him, as might be expected, a splendid panegyric. Among other virtues we read, "Summo studio cœpit ecclesiis Dei patrocinari, caussas impotentium tutari, jura imponere quæ non gravarent, judicia facere quæ nequaquam ab æquitate vel tem perantiâ deviarent. Imprimis prohibere cædes, incendia, rapinas. Rebus enim illicitis nimia ubique, ut supra docuimus, licentia fuit." See also the later panegyrics on his administration of justice, p. 88, and on his piety in 113, to which I shall have again to refer. POSITION OF THE NORMAN PRELATES. 137 interrupted the continuous dominion of a Norman or Aquitanian Duke. The Metropolitan of Rouen or of Bourdeaux might be either the loyal subject or the refractory vassal of his immediate Prince; but in no case was he a coordinate sovereign, owning no superior except in the common over-lord. It is only among those Bishops whose sees lay within the Crown lands, those who, in the extemporized jurisprudence of a later age, sat as Peers of France alongside of the great Dukes and Counts, that the slightest signs of any such hierarchical independence can be discerned. At an earlier age we have indeed seen the metropolitan see of Rheims holding a position which faintly approached that of Mainz or Köln;1 but even Rheims had now fallen not a little from its ancient greatness, and no such claims to princely authority were at any time put forward by the proudest Prelate of Bayeux or Rouen. It was as Count of Evreux, rather than as Primate of Normandy, that Archbishop Robert had been able to make himself so troublesome to his nephew and sovereign. That turbulent Prelate, after an episcopate of forty-eight years, had mended his ways, and had at last vacated both County and Archbishoprick by death. In his temporal capacity he was succeeded by a son and a grandson, after whom the County of Evreux passed by an heiress to the house of Montfort, giving the Count-Primate the honour of being, through female descendants, a forefather of the great Simon. The vacancy of the Archbishoprick placed the greatest spiritual preferment in the Duchy at the disposal of the young Duke. The choice of the new Primate was as little directed by considerations of ecclesiastical merit as that of his predecessor, and it proved in every way unfortunate. At the head of the Norman Church William's counsellors placed his uncle Malger (1037-1055), one of the sons of Richard the Good by Papia. We shall presently find him displaying no very priestly qualities, and the only act of his life which could be attributed to Christian or ecclesiastical zeal was one which wounded the Duke himself in the tenderest point. So too when, some years later, the great see of Bayeux fell vacant, William bestowed it on his half-brother 2 'Malgerius juvenis sedem suscepit ho noris, Natali clarus, sed nullo nobilis actu." See, for a fearful description of his misdeeds, Will. Pict. 116 ed. Giles. Amongst other things, he never received the pallium. The list of Archbishops in Mabillon (Vet. An. ii. 439) says, "Non electione meriti, sed caruali parentum [parents in the French sense] amore et adulatorum suffragio in pueritiâ sedem adeptus est pontificalem; omni destitutus tutelâ, potius adquievit carni et sanguini quam divinis mandatis." Odo, the son of Herleva by her husband Herlwin of Conteville.1 Odo, like Hugh of Rheims in earlier times,2 must have been a mere boy at the time of his appointment; but he held the see of Bayeux for fifty years (1048-1098), and during most part of that time his name was famous and terrible on both sides of the Channel. The character which he left behind him was a singularly contradictory one." England he was remembered only as the foremost among the conquerors and oppressors of the land, the man who won a larger share of English hatred than William himself, the man whose career of wrong was at last cut short by his royal brother, who, stern and unscrupulous as he was, at least took no pleasure in deeds of wanton oppression. Of Odo's boundless ambition and love of enterprise there is no doubt. The one quality led him to aspire to the Papal throne; the other led him first to forsake his diocese to rule as an Earl in England, and then to forsake it again to follow his nephew Duke Robert to the first Crusade. That he was no strict observer of ecclesiastical rules in his own person is shown by the fact that he left behind him a son, on whom however he at least bestowed the ecclesiastical name of John. Still Norman ecclesiastical history sets Odo before us in a somewhat fairer light than that in which we see him in English secular history. He at least possessed the episcopal virtue of munificence, and, whatever were the defects of his own conduct, he seems to have been an encourager of learning and good conversation in others. He was bountiful to all, specially to those of his own spiritual household. He rebuilt his own church at Bayeux (1077), where parts of his work still remain. The lower part of the lofty towers of the western front, the dim and solemn crypt beneath the choir, of that stately and varied cathedral, are relics of the church reared by its most famous Bishop. These precious fragments, severe but far from rude in style, form a striking contrast to the gorgeous arcades which in the next century succeeded Odo's nave, and to the soaring choir and apse raised by a still later age. Besides renewing the fabric, he increased the number of the clergy of his church, and in longinquas regiones celeberrima fama ; sed ipsius liberalissimi atque humillimi multa et industria et bonitas amplius 7 1 Will. Pict. 118 Giles; Will. Gem. vii. 3. 17; Ord. Vit. 660 B, 664 B. See Appendix U. 2See vol. i. p. 138. 3 A son of Herlwin and Herleva could not be born before 1036; Odo therefore, at the time of his appointment, could not have been above twelve years old. Will. Gem. vii. 17; Ord. Vit. 664 D. 5 See especially the portrait of him in Orderic, u. s. William of Poitiers (118 Giles) ventures to say, “Odonem ab annis puerilibus optimorum numero consona præconia optimorum inseruerunt. Fertur hic |