CONSPIRACY OF GUY OF BURGUNDY. 159 could avail wholly to preserve Normandy for some years to come either from civil war or from foreign invasion. A far more deeply spread conspiracy than any that we have as yet heard of was now formed against the Duke (1047). We have now reached one of the great epochs in the life of the Conqueror; we shall soon have to tell of his first battle and his first victory. Within a few years after the proclamation of the Truce of God, not this or that isolated Baron, but the whole nobility of the most Norman part of Normandy rose in open revolt against their sovereign. The prime mover in the rebellion was Guy of Burgundy. He had been brought up with the Duke as his friend and kinsman,2 and he had received large possessions from his bounty. Among other broad lands, he held Vernon, the border fortress on the Seine, so often taken and retaken in the wars between France and Normandy. He held also Brionne, the castle on the Risle, lately the home of William's faithful guardian Count Gilbert.3 But the old jealousy was never lulled to sleep; the sway of the Bastard was insup portable, and, the greater the qualities that William displayed, the more insupportable was it doubtless felt to be. William had now reached manhood. After such a discipline as he had gone through, his nineteen years of life had given him all the caution and experience of a far more advanced age. He was as ready and as able to show himself a born leader of men as Cnut had been at the same time of life.4 The turbulent spirits of Normandy began to feel that they had found a master; unless a blow were struck in time, the days of anarchy and licence, the days of castle-building and oppression, would soon be over. Guy of Brionne therefore found many ready listeners, especially among the great lords of the true Norman land west of the Dive. He, the lawful heir of their Dukes, no bastard, no tanner's grandson, but sprung of a lawful marriage between the princely houses of Burgundy and Normandy, claimed the Duchy as his right by birth. But if the lords of the Bessin and the Côtentin would aid him in dispossessing the Bastard, he would willingly share the land with them.1 This most probably means that he would content himself with the more purely French parts of the Duchy, the original grant to Rolf, and would leave the Barons of the later settlements in the enjoyment of independence. We can thus understand, what at first sight seems puzzling, why the cause of Guy was taken up with such zeal. Otherwise it is hard to see why the chiefs of any part of Normandy, why, above all, the chiefs of this more strictly Scandinavian part, should cast aside a prince who was at any rate a native Norman, in favour of one whose connexion with Normandy was only by the spindle-side, and who must have seemed in their eyes little better than a Frenchman. We can thus also understand the geographical division of parties during the war which followed. William is faithfully supported by the French districts to the east, by Rouen and the whole land to the right of the Dive. These are the districts which the division between Guy and the confederate Lords would have given to the Burgundian prince, and which no doubt armed zealously against any such arrangement. To them the overthrow of William's authority meant their own handing over to a foreign ruler. But by the inhabitants, at any rate by the great lords, of the Lower Normandy, the Scandinavian land, it would seem that the struggle against the ducal power was felt as a struggle for renewed independence. We are told indeed that the sympathies of the mass of the people, even in the Bessin and the Côtentin, lay with William.2 This is quite possible. The peasant revolt may well have left behind it some abiding root of bitterness, bitterness which would show itself far more strongly against the immediate lords of the soil than against the distant sovereign, who is in such cases always looked to as a possible protector. But the great lords of the western districts joined eagerly in the rebellion; and the smaller gentry, willingly or unwillingly, followed their banners. The descendants of the second colony of Rolf, the descendants of the colonists of William Longsword and Harold Blaatand, drew the sword against the domination of those districts which, even a hundred years before, had become French.* Saxon Bayeux and Danish Coutances rose against Romanized Rouen and Evreux. We know not whether the old speech and the old worship may not still have lingered in some out-of-the-way corners; it is certain that the difference in feeling between the two districts was still living and working, just as the outward difference is still to this day stamped on their inhabitants. The foremost men of western 1 Roman de Rou, 8786; "E ki li voldreit fere dreit, E e meintenir le voleient So Will. Pict. 80. "Sed aut principatum aut maximam portionem Normanniæ ambiebat." 2 Roman de Rou, 8896 et seqq. 3 See vol. i. p. 119. See vol. i. pp. 129, 411. GEOGRAPHICAL DIVISION OF PARTIES. 3 161 Normandy at once attached themselves to Guy, and joined zealously in his plans. First in the revolt was the Viscount of Coutances, Neal of Saint Saviour, the son of the chief who had, forty-six years before, beaten back the host of Ethelred. The elder Neal had died, full of years, during the days of anarchy, and his son was destined to an equally long possession of his honours. In the very heart of his peninsula stood his castle by the Ouve, already consecrated by a small college of Canons, the foundation of his grandfather Roger, soon to give way to his own famous Abbey of Saint Saviour. This point formed the natural centre of the whole conspiracy. From that castle, Neal, the ruler of the Côtentin, commanded the whole of that varied region, its rich meads, its hills and valleys, its rocks and marshes, the dreary landes by the great minster of Lessay, the cliffs which look down on the fortress of Cæsar, and which had stood as beacons to guide the sails of Harold Blaatand to the rescue." The Viscount of Saint Saviour now became the chief leader of the rebellion, won over by the promises and gifts of Guy, who did not scruple to rob his mother of her possessions, and to bestow them on his ally. With Neal stood Randolf, Viscount of Bayeux, who, from his castle of Brichessart, held the same sway over the Saxons of the Bessin which Neal held over the Danes of the Côtentin. In the same company was Hamon, lord of Thorigny, lord too of the steep of Creuilly, where a vast fabric of later times has displaced his ancient donjon, and where the adjoining church bears witness to the splendour and bounty of the generation immediately following his own. Some personal 1 Both Neals bear the title of Viscount of the Côtentin, but others also bore it in their lifetime. See Delisle, Histoire du Château et des Sires de Saint-Sauveur-leVicomte (Valognes, 1867), p. 23. The collection of charters in this work is most valuable. 2 See vol. i. p. 203. The three chief conspirators, Neal, Randolf, and Hamon, are mentioned in various accounts. Will. Pict. 80; Will. Malms. iii. 230; Roman de Rou, 8748, 8778. William of Jumièges (vii. 17) speaks of Guy and Neal ("Nigellus Constantiensis præses") only. 3 In 1040 or 1042. Delisle, p. 3. The abbey was founded by Neal himself in the next year, 1048, according to Neustria Pia, 540. Cotman, Antiquities of Normandy, i. 9. But what seems to be Neal's foundation charter in Delisle (Preuves, p. 42; cf. 55, 59) is placed by him in 1080. 5 See vol. i. p. 146, for Harold Blaatand's occupation of Cherbourg. 6 This very curious fact comes out in a "Dan As Dens esteit un Normant E de Mezi è de Croillie." 2 peculiarity entitled him to bear, in the language of our Latin chroniclers, one of the most glorious cognomina of old Rome, and Hamon Dentatus became the forefather of men famous in British as well as in Norman history.1 One loyal chronicler, in his zeal, speaks of the rebel by the strange name of Antichrist; but, as in the case of Thurstan of Falaise, the stain was wiped out in the next generation. His son, Robert Fitz-Hamon, was destined to set the seal to the work of Offa and of Harold, to press down the yoke for ever upon the necks of the southern Cymry, and to surround his princely fortress of Cardiff with the lowlier castles of his twelve homagers of the land of Morganwg. Hardly less famous was a third Baron from the Saxon land, Grimbald of Plessis, whose ancestors and whose descendants have won no renown, but whose own name still remains impressed upon his fortress, and whose sister's son became the forefather of a mighty house in England. Of her stock came William of Albini, who, like the Tudor of later days, won the love of a widowed Queen, and whose name still lives among his works in the fortresses of Arundel and Castle Rising.3 By the help of these men the claims of the Burgundian became widely acknowledged. They swore to support his rights, and to deprive the Bastard of the Duchy which he had invaded, whether by force of arms or by the baser acts of treachery. They put their castles into a state of thorough defence; they stored them for a campaign or a siege, and made ready for the most extensive and thoroughly organized revolt which the troubled reign of the young Duke had yet beheld. The revolt began, as an earlier revolt had begun,5 with a treacherous attempt to seize or murder the Duke, in which Grimbald seems to have been the immediate agent. The opportunity was tempting, as William was now at a point in Neal's own Viscounty, at no great distance from his own castle. He was at Valognes, the old town so rich in Roman remains, and the rich and fanciful outline of whose Gothic mean. 3 Taylor's 's Wace, II. Castle Rising is eminently the castle of dowager Queens, the earlier parts having been built for Adeliza, and the later for Isabella, mother of Edward the Third. 1 William of Malmesbury introduces pendix W), and I see not what else it can him (ii. 230) as "Haimo Dentatus [Dan As Dens], avus Roberti quo nostro tempore in Angliâ multarum possessionum incubator exstitit." Robert died of a wound received at Tinchebrai, 1106 (Will. Malms. v. 398), and his daughter Mabel married the famous Robert Earl of Gloucester (Hist. Nov. i. 3). 2 Benoît, 32, 742; E par Hamun uns Antecriz." ↑ Roman de Rou, 8796; “Issi unt lur chastels garniz Fossez parcéz, dreciéz paliz." 5 See above, p. 129. 6 See Roman de Rou, 9347 et seqq. For the present story see vv. 88c0-8895, and Palgrave, iii. 212. WILLIAM'S ESCAPE FROM VALOGNES. 163 cupola is one of the most striking objects in the architecture of the district. Perhaps some scent of the coming danger reached him, and he had ventured into the enemy's country in order to search out matters for himself. But, in any case, he did not neglect the chosen amusement to which he and his race were given up, even beyond other men of their time. Several days had been spent in the employment of William's favourite weapon the bow1 against either savage or harmless victims. At last one night, when all his party except his immediate household had left him, while he was yet in his first sleep, Gallet his fool, like his uncle Walter at an earlier stage of his life,2 burst into his room, staff in hand, and aroused him. If he did not arise and flee for his life, he would never leave the Côtentin a living man. The Duke arose, half dressed himself in haste, leaped on his horse, seemingly alone, and rode for his life all that night. A bright moon guided him, and he pressed on till he reached the estuary formed by the rivers Ouve and Vire. There the ebbing tide supplied a ford, which was afterwards known as the Duke's Way. William crossed in safety, and landed in the district of Bayeux, near the church of Saint Clement. He entered the building, and prayed for God's help on his way. His natural course would now have been to strike for Bayeux; but the city was in the hands of his enemies; he determined therefore to keep the line between Bayeux and the sea, and thus to take his chance of reaching the loyal districts. As the sun rose, he drew near to the church and castle of Rye, the dwellingplace of a faithful vassal named Hubert. The Lord of Rye was standing at his own gate, between the church and the mound on which his castle was raised. William was still urging on his foaming horse past the gate; but Hubert knew and stopped his sovereign, and asked the cause of this headlong ride. He heard that the Duke was flying for his life before his enemies. He welcomed his prince to his house, he set him on a fresh horse, he bade his three sons ride by his side, and never leave him till he was safely lodged in his own castle of Falaise.5 The command of their father was faithfully executed by 3 |