[10]Freeman, "The Norman Conquest."
One significant thing happened at this time. Who should make his appearance at the duke's court but Tostig, the son of Godwine, eager, no doubt, to plot against Harold, and to take a sufficient revenge for the banishment and defeat by means of which he was then an outcast. He did not linger long, for the busy duke sent him quickly away, not uncommissioned for the war that was almost ready to begin.
Harold also had set himself at work to gather his forces and to be in readiness for an attack which was sure to come. Another enemy was first in the field,[Pg288]for in the spring Tostig appeared in the Isle of Wight, the captain of a fleet of ships that were manned by Flemish and Norman men. He had received aid from William, and proceeded to wreak his vengeance upon the Kent and Sussex villages over which his father had once ruled. He does not appear to have gained any English allies, except at the seaport of Sandwich, where he probably hired some sailors; then he went northward from there with sixty ships and attacked the coast of Godwine's earldom. He made great havoc in the shore towns, but Eadwine and Morkere of Northumberland hurried to meet him with their troops and drove him away, so that with only twelve ships left he went to Scotland, where Malcolm, the Scottish king received him with a hearty welcome, and entertained him politely the rest of the summer. They had lately been sworn enemies, but now that Tostig was fighting against England, Malcolm put aside all bygone prejudice.
Go to Illus. ListENGLAND.
Go to Illus. List
ENGLAND.
In the summer of that eventful year, Tostig first proposed to the king of Denmark that he should come to England and help him to recover his earldom. Swegen had the good sense to refuse, and then the outlaw went on to Norway to make further proposals to Harold Hardrada, who also listened incredulously, but when Tostig suggested that Harold should be king of England, and that he would only ask to be under-king of the northern territory, that he would do homage to Harold and serve him loyally, the great Norwegian chieftain consented to make ready for an expedition. He seems to have been much like Rolf the Ganger, and a true, valiant viking at heart.[Pg290]The old saga whence the story comes makes us forget the plottings and claims of Rome and the glories of Norman court life; the accounts of Harold Hardrada's expedition are like a breath of cold wind from the Northern shores, and the sight of a shining dragon-ship stealing away between the high shores of a fiord, outward-bound for a bout of plundering. But the saga records also the fame and prowess of that other Harold, the son of Godwine, and magnifies the power of such an enemy.
Perhaps the English king trusted at first in the ability of the northern earls to take care of their own territory, and only tried to stand guard over the southern coast.
He gathered an army and kept it together all the latter part of the summer, a most unprecedented and difficult thing in those days; and with help from the local forces, or what we should call the militia, his soldiers kept guard along the shores of Sussex and Kent. We cannot estimate what a troublesome step forward in the art of warfare this was for Englishmen, who were used to quick forced marches and decisive battles, and a welcome dispersion after the cessation of whatever exciting cause or sudden summons had gathered them.
Harold's ships patrolled the Channel and the footsoldiers paced the downs, but food, always hard to obtain, became at last impossible, and in September the army broke ranks. Harold himself went back to London, whither the fleet was also sent, but on the way it met with disaster, and many of the ships were lost and many more began to leak and were reluctantly[Pg291]judged unseaworthy. The whole southern coast was left undefended; it was neither the king's fault nor the subjects' fault. Both had done their best,—but the crops must be gathered then or not at all, and at any rate, the army was weakened by famine and a growing belief in the uncertainty of attack.
Alas for Harold's peace of mind! In those very days William the Norman's host was clustering and gathering like bees just ready to swarm, on the coast of Normandy, and from the mouth of the Bergen fiord came Harold Hardrada with a great company, with a huge mass of treasure, such as had not for years and years floated away from a Northern haven. It seems as if he had determined to migrate, to crush the English usurper, and then to establish himself as Cnut had done in the richer southern kingdom. There must have been some knowledge in Norway of the state of things in England and Normandy, but this famous old adventurer was ready to fight whoever he met, and the Black Raven was flying at his masthead. Bad omens cast their shadows over this great expedition of the last of the sea-kings, but away he sailed to the Shetland Islands and left his wife and daughters there, while he gained new allies; and still farther south, Tostig came to meet him with a new army which he had gathered in Flanders. An Irish chieftain and a great lord from Iceland were there too, and down they all came upon the defenceless country that was marked as their prey, burning and destroying church and castle and humble homestead, daring the Englishmen to come out and fight and drive them away again. We have no time[Pg292]to trace their lawless campaign. The two northern earls summoned their vassals, but in a few days after the Northmen had landed they had taken, without much trouble it appears to us, the city of York, and news was hurriedly sent to the king of England.
What a grievous message! Harold, the son of Godwine, was ill, his southern coast was undefended, still he could not forget the message that William had sent to him late in the summer by a spy who had crossed to Normandy, that the Normans would soon come and teach him how many they were and what they could do. But a holy abbot consoled the king by telling him that Eadward the Confessor had shown himself in a vision and assured his successor of certain victory.
The prophecy was proved to be true; the king summoned his strength and his soldiers and marched to York. There King Harold was to set up his new kingdom; he had not the desire for revenge that filled Tostig's breast, and was anxious to prove himself a generous and wise ruler. As he came toward the walls which had been so easily won, the rival Harold's army comes in sight—first a great cloud of dust like a whirlwind, and next the shining spears prick through and glitter ominously. A little later Harold of England sends a message to his brother Tostig. He shall have again his kingdom of Northumberland if he will be loyal; and Tostig sends back a message in his turn to ask what shall be the portion of Harold Hardrada. "Seven feet of English ground for his grave," says the other Harold, and the fight begins.[Pg293]
Alas for the tall Northman, the winner of eighty castles from the Saracens, the scourge of Moslem and robber in Palestine; the ally of Sicily, of Russia, and the Greeks! Alas for the kingdom he had lightly lost in Norway! Alas for the wife and daughters who were watching all through those shortening September days in the Orkneys for the triumphant return of the fleet—for Harold the saga-man and sea-king, who built his hopes too high. He may be fierce with the old rage of the Berserkers, and lay sturdily about him with his heavy two-handed sword; he may mow down great swaths of Englishmen like grain, but the moment comes when an arrow flies with its sharp whistle straight at his throat, and he falls dead, and his best fighters fall in heaps above him; the flag of the Black Raven of Norway is taken. Tostig is dead, and Harold of England is winner of that great day at Stamford Bridge, the last great victory that he and his men would ever win, the last fight of England before the Conquest. Out of the crowd of ships that had come from the North only four and twenty sailed away again, and Harold made peace with the Orkney-men and the Icelanders and the rest. Since that day there has been peace between England and the countries of the Northern Seas. Harold's last victory was with the past, one might say, with the Northmen of another age and time, as if the last tie of his country were broken with the old warfare and earlier enemies. New relationships were established, the final struggle for mastery was decided. The battle of Stamford Bridge might have been called a deadly[Pg294]game at jousting, and the English knight receives the prize and rides home the victor of the tournament. Yet that very day of triumph saw the approach of a new foe—the Norman ships full of horses and men are ready to put out for the English shore. Harold must fight another battle and lose it, and a new order of things must begin in Britain. The Northmen and the Normans; it is a long step between the two, and yet England's past and her future meet; the swordsmen's arms that ache from one battle must try their strength again in another; but the Normans bring great gifts at the point of their arrows—without them "England would have been mechanical, not artistic; brave, not chivalrous; the home of learning, not of thought."
Three days after the fight Harold sits at a splendid banquet among his friends, and a breathless messenger comes in fleet-footed with bad news. Muster your axemen and lances, Harold, King of the English; the Normans have come like a flight of locusts and are landing on the coast of Kent.
[Pg295]
"I see thy glory, like a shooting star,Fall to the base earth from the firmament!Thy sun sets weeping in the lowly west."—Shakespeare.
TOC,INDXEarly in the summer there was a sound of wood-chopping and a crash of falling trees in the forests of Normandy, and along her shores in the shipyards the noise of shipwrights' mallets began, and the forging of bolts and chains. The hemp-fields enlarge their borders, and catch the eye quickly with their brilliant green leafage. There is no better trade now than that of the armorer's, and many a Norman knight sees to it that the links of his chain-mail jerkin and helmet are strongly sewn, and that he is likely to be well defended by the clanking habit that he must buckle on. Horses and men are drilling in the castle yards, and every baron gathers his troop, and is stern in his orders and authority. The churches are crowded, the priests are urging the holy cause, and war is in everybody's mind. The cherry blossoms whiten and fall, the apple-trees are covered with rosy snow, mid-summer sees the young fruit greaten on the boughs, the sun rides high in the sky,[Pg296]and the soldiers' mail weighs heavy; through the country-lanes go troops of footmen and horsemen. You can see the tips of their unstrung bows moving above the hedges, and their furled banners with heraldic device or pious seal. They are all going toward the sea, toward the mouth of the river Dive. The peasant women and children stand in their cottage doors and watch the straggling processions on their way. It is indeed a cause to aid with one's prayers, this war against the heathen English.
All summer long, armed men were collecting at William's head-quarters from every part of Normandy, or wherever his summons had wakened a favorable response. If we can believe the chroniclers, the army was well paid and well fed and kept in good order. It became a question which army would hold its ground longest; Harold's, on the Sussex downs, or William's, by the Dive. At last, news was brought that the Englishmen were disbanded, then the Frenchmen—as we begin to hear our Normans called,—the Frenchmen begin to make ready for their expedition. There may have been skirmishes by sea in the hot weather, but it was not until early autumn that William gave orders to embark. There are different stories about the magnitude of the force. The defeated party would have us believe that they were enormously overpowered, and so set the numbers very high; the conquerors, on the other hand, insist that they had not quantity so much as quality to serve them in the fight, and that it was not the size of their army but the valor of it that won the day. We are told that there were six hundred and ninety-six[Pg297]ships and fourteen thousand men; we are told also that there were more than three thousand ships and sixty thousand men, all told; and other accounts range between these two extremes.
Go to Illus. ListNORMAN VESSEL. (FROM BAYEUX TAPESTRY.)
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NORMAN VESSEL. (FROM BAYEUX TAPESTRY.)
For a month the Norman army waited at the mouth of the Dive for a south wind, but no south wind blew, while an adverse storm scattered them and strewed the shore with Norman bodies. At last, the duke took advantage of a westerly breeze and set sail for St. Valery, off the coast of Ponthieu, from whence he hoped to go more easily over to England. At the famous abbey of St. Valery he was saying his prayers and watching the weather-cocks for fifteen days, and he and his captains made generous offerings at the holy shrines. The monks came out at last in solemn procession bearing their sacred relics, and the Norman host knelt devoutly and did homage.[Pg298]At Caen, in June, the two great minsters had been dedicated, and William and Matilda had given their young daughter Cecily to the service of God, together with rich offerings of lands and money. In their own churches, therefore, and at many another Norman altar beside, prayer and praise never ceased in those days while Harold was marching to Stamford Bridge.
At last, on Wednesday, the twenty-seventh of September, the wind went round to the southward, and the great fleet sailed. The soldiers believed that their prayers had been answered, and that they were the favorites of heaven. They crowded on board the transport-ships, and were heedless of every thing save that they were not left behind, and had their armor and weapons ready for use. The trumpets were playing, their voices cried loud above the music that echoed back in eager strains from the shore. The horsemen shouted at their horses, and the open ships were plainer copies of the dragon-ships of old; they carried gayly dressed gentlemen, and shining gonfanons, and thickets of glittering spears. The shields were rich with heraldic blazoning, and the golden ship, Mora, that the Duchess Matilda had given to the duke, shone splendid on the gray water, as just at evening William himself set sail and turned the gilded figure of a boy blowing an ivory trumpet, like some herald of certain victory, toward the shore of Kent. The Pope's sacred banner was given to the welcome breeze, and William's own standard, figured with the three lions of Normandy, fluttered and spread itself wide. The[Pg299]colored sails looked gay, the soldiers sang and cheered, and away they went without a fear, these blessed Normans of the year 1066. On the Mora's masthead blazed a great lantern when the darkness fell. It was a cloudy night.
In the early morning, the Mora being lighter-laden than the rest, found herself alone on the sea, out of sight of either land or ships, but presently the loitering forest of masts rose into view. At nine o'clock William had landed at Pevensey on the Sussex shore. As he set foot for the second time on English soil, he tripped and fell, and the bystanders gave a woful groan at such a disastrous omen. "By the splendor of God," cried the duke, in his favorite oath, "I have taken seizin of my kingdom; see the earth of England in my two hands!" at which ready turn of wit a soldier pulled a handful of thatch from a cottage roof and gave it to his master for a further token of proprietorship. This also was seizin of all that England herself embraced.
There was nobody to hinder the Normans from landing or going where they pleased. At Pevensey they stayed only one day for lack of supplies, and then set out eastward toward Hastings. In the Bayeux tapestry, perhaps the most reliable authority so far as it goes, there is an appealing bit of work that pictures a burning house with a woman and little child making their escape. The only places of safety, we are told elsewhere, were the churchyards and the churches. William's piety could hardly let him destroy even an enemy's sacred places of worship.[Pg300]
The next few days were filled with uncertainty and excited expectancy. Clearly there was no army in the immediate neighborhood of Hastings; the Normans had that part of the world to themselves apparently, and hours and days went by leaving them undisturbed. Many a voice urged that they might march farther into the country, but their wary leader possessed his soul in patience, and at last came the news of the great battle in the north, of Harold's occupation of York, and the terrible disaster that had befallen the multitude of Harold Hardrada and Tostig, with their allies. Now, too, came a message to the duke from Norman Robert the Staller, who had stood by the Confessor's death-bed, and who kept a warm heart for the country of his birth, though he had become a loyal Englishman in his later years. Twenty thousand men have been slain in the north, he sends word to William; the English were mad with pride and rejoicing. The Normans were not strong enough nor many enough to risk a battle; they would be like dogs among wolves, and would be worse than overthrown. But William was scornful of such advice—he had come to fight Harold, and he would meet him face to face—he would risk the battle if he had only a sixth part as many men as followed him, eager as himself for his rights.
Go to Illus. ListWILLIAM THE CONQUEROR. (BAYEUX TAPESTRY.)
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WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR. (BAYEUX TAPESTRY.)
Harold had bestirred his feasting and idle army, and held council of his captains at York. Normans and French and the men of Brittany had landed at Pevensey in numbers like the sand of the sea and the stars of heaven. If only the south wind had[Pg302]blown before, so that he might have met these invaders with his valiant army, too soon dispersed! To have beaten back William and then have marched north to Stamford Bridge, that, indeed, would have been a noble record. Now the Normans were burning and destroying unhindered in the south; what should be done? And every captain-baron of the English gave his word that he would call no man king but Harold the son of Godwine; and with little rest from the battle just fought, they made ready to march to London. They knew well enough what this new invasion meant; a prophetic dread filled their hearts, for it was not alone out of loyalty to Harold, but for love of England, that these men of different speech and instincts must be pushed off the soil to which they had no lawful claim.
The fame of the northern victory brought crowds of recruits to the two banners, the Dragon of Wessex and Harold's own standard, the Fighting Man, as they were carried south again. Nothing succeeds like success; if Harold could conquer the great Hardrada, it were surely not impossible to defeat the Norman duke. So the thanes and churchmen alike rallied to the Fighting Man. The earls of the north half promised to follow, but they never kept their word; perhaps complete independence might follow now their half-resented southern vassalage. At least they did not mean to fight the battles of Wessex until there was no chance for evasion. But while Harold waited at London, men flocked together from the west and south, and he spent some days in his royal house at Westminster, heavy-hearted and full[Pg303]of care in his great extremity. He was too good a general, he had seen too much of the Norman soldiery already to underrate their prowess in battle; he shook his head gloomily when his officers spoke with scorn of their foes. One day he went on a pilgrimage to his own abbey at Waltham, and the monks' records say that, while he prayed there before the altar and confessed his sins and vowed his fealty to God, who reigns over all the kingdoms of the earth; while he lay face downward on the sacred pavement, the figure of Christ upon the cross bowed its head, as if to say again, "It is finished." Thurkill, the sacristan, saw this miracle, and knew that all hope must be put aside, and that Harold's cause was already lost.
Next, the Norman duke sent a message to Westminster by a monk from the abbey of Fécamp, and there was parleying to and fro about Harold's and William's rival claims to the English crown. It was only a formal challenging and a final provocation to the Englishmen to come and fight for their leader, there where the invaders had securely entrenched and established themselves. "Come and drive us home if you dare, if you can!" the Normans seemed to say tauntingly, and Harold saw that he must make haste lest the duke should be strengthened by reinforcements or have time to make himself harder to dislodge. William's demand that he should come down from the throne had been put into insolent words, and the Kentish people were being pitifully distressed and brought to beggary by the host of foreigners. Yet Gyrth, the son of Godwine, begged[Pg304]his royal brother to stay in London; to let him go and fight the Normans; and the people begged Harold, at the last moment, to listen to such good counsel. But Harold refused; he could never play coward's part, or let a man who loved him fight a battle in his stead; and so when six days were spent he marched away to the fight where the two greatest generals the world held must match their strength one against the other, hand to hand. The King of England had a famous kingdom to lose, the Duke of Normandy had a famous kingdom to win.
Go to Illus. ListA NORMAN MINSTREL.
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A NORMAN MINSTREL.
On the night before the fourteenth of October, the armies stood before each other near Hastings, on the field of Senlac, now called Battle. They made their camps hastily; for hosts of them the rude shelters were a last earthly dwelling-place and habitation of earthly hopes or fears. Through the Norman encampment went bands of priests, and the Normans prayed and confessed their sins. The Bishop of Coutances and Duke William's half-brother Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, both these high officials of the Church were there to stay the hands of their parishioners, and uphold the devout fighters in this crusade. Odo made the soldiers promise that whoever survived the morrow's battle would never again eat meat on Saturday; by such petty means he hoped to gain success at the hands of God who rules battles on a larger scope, and who, through the quarrels and jealousies of men, brings slowly near the day when justice shall be done on earth as it is in heaven. They sang hymns; the watch-fires flickered and faded; the gray morning dawned, and there in the[Pg305]dim light stood the English on a hillside that jutted like a promontory into the marshy plain. A woodland lay behind them, as if the very trees of the English soil had mustered with the men; in the thickest of the ranks was Harold's royal banner, the Fighting Man, and Harold himself stood close beside it with his brothers. The awful battle-axes, stained yet with the blood of those who died at Stamford Bridge, were in every man's hand, and every man was sheltered by his shield and kept silence. The Normans saw their foes stand waiting all together shoulder to shoulder, yet there was silence—an awful stillness in which to see so vast a host of men, and yet not hear them speak. The English had feasted that night, and sung their songs, and told the story of the northern fight. How their battle-axes looked gray and cold as the light dawned more and more! The Normans knew that they might feel the bitter edges and the cleaving steel of them ere the day was spent.[Pg306]
Archers first, behind them the lancers, and behind all, the horsemen; so the Normans were placed, high-hearted and bold with their great errand. To gain is better than to keep; by night this England might be theirs in spite of the battle-axes. While the day was yet young, Taillefer, the minstrel, went riding boldly out from the ranks singing the song of Roland and Charlemagne at Roncesvalles, tossing his sword lightly and fast into the air and catching it deftly as he galloped to the English lines. There sat the duke on his horse that was a present from the king of Spain. His most holy relics were hung about his neck; as he glanced from Taillefer along his army front he could see the Côtentin men, led by Neal of Saint Saviour, and his thoughts may have gone back quickly to the battle of his early youth at Val-ès-dunes. What a mighty host had gathered at his summons! All his Norman enemies were his followers now; he had won great championship, and if this day's fortune did not turn against him, the favor of the Holy Mother Church at Rome, the church of the apostles and martyrs, was won indeed; and no gift in Christendom would be more proudly honored than this kingdom of England made loyal to the papal crown. William the Bastard, the dishonored, insulted grandson of a Falaise tanner,—William, the Duke of proud Normandy, at the head of a host, knocking at the gates of England; nay, let us set the contrast wider yet, and show Rolf the Ganger, wet by salt spray on the deck of his dragon-ship, steering boldly southward, and William, Duke of the Normans, rich and great, a master of masters, and soon[Pg307]to be king of a wide and noble land, and winner of a great battle, if the saints whom he worshipped would fight upon his side.
Taillefer has killed his two men, and been killed in his turn; his song has ended, and his sword has dropped from his hand. The Normans cry "Dex aide! Dex aide! Ha Rou!" and rush boldly up the hill to Harold's palisades. The arrows flew in showers, but the English stand solid and hew at the horsemen and footmen from behind their shields. Every man, even the king, was on foot; they shouted "Out! out!" as the Normans came near; they cried "God Almighty!" and "Holy Cross!" and at this sound Harold must have sadly remembered how the crucifix had bowed its head as he lay prone before it. And the fight grew hotter and hotter, the Normans were beaten back, and returned again fiercely to the charge, down the hill, now up the hill over the palisades, like a pouring river of men, dealing stinging sword-thrusts—dropping in clumsy heaps of javelin-pricked and axe-smitten lifelessness; from swift, bright-eyed men becoming a bloody mass to stumble over, or feebly crying for mercy at the feet that trampled them; so the fight went on. Harold sent his captains to right and left, and William matched his captains against them valiantly. The Norman arrows were falling blunted and harmless from the English shields, and he told the archers to shoot higher and aim so that the arrows might fall from above into the Englishmen's faces. There was no sound of guns or smoke of powder in that day, only a fearful wrangling and chopping, and a whir of[Pg308]arrow and lance and twang of bowstring. Yes, and a dolorous groaning as closer and closer the armies grappled with each other, hand to hand.
Hour after hour the day spent itself, and the fight would never be done. There was a cry that the duke was dead, and he pulled off his helmet and hurried along the lines to put new courage into his men. The arrows were dropping like a deadly rain, the axemen and lancers were twisted and twined together like melted rock that burns and writhes its way through widening crack and crevice. The hot flood of Normans in chain-mail and pointed helmets sweeps this way, and the English with their leathern caps and their sturdy shoulders mailed like their enemies, swinging their long-handled weapons, pour back again, and so the day draws near its end, while the races mix in symbolic fashion in the fight as they must mix in government, in blood, in brotherhood, and in ownership of England while England stands.
Harold has fallen, the gleaming banner of the Fighting Man, with its golden thread and jewelry, is stained with blood and mire. An arrow has gone deep into the king's eye and brain; he has fallen, and his foes strike needless blows at his poor body, lest so valiant a spirit cannot be quieted by simple death. The English have lost the fight, there is a cry that they are flying, and the Normans hear it and gather their courage once more; they rally and give chase. All at once there is a shout that thrills them through and through—a glorious moment when they discover that the day is won. William the Bastard is William the Conqueror, a sad word for many[Pg309]English ears in days to come; to us the sign of great gain that was and is England's—of the further advance of a kingdom already noble and strong. The English are strongest, but the Normans are quickest. The battle has been given to Progress, and the Norman, not the Saxon, had the right to lead the way.
Go to Illus. ListSOLDIER IN CLOAK.
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SOLDIER IN CLOAK.
But the field of Senlac makes a sad and sorry sight as the light of the short October day is fading and the pale stars shine dimly through the chilly mist that gathers in from the sea. It is not like the bright Norman weather; the slow breeze carries a faint, heavy odor of fallen leaves, and the very birds give awesome cries as they fly over the battle-field. There are many of the victors who think of the spoils of England, but some better men remember that it is in truth a mighty thing to have conquered such a country. What will it mean in very truth that England is theirs?[Pg310]
Later, William the Conqueror and his knights are resting and feasting and bragging of their deeds, there where Harold's standards were overthrown and the banner of the Three Lions of Normandy waves in the cool night wind. The living men look like butchers from the shambles, and the dead lie in heavy heaps; here and there a white face catches a ray of light and appeals for pity in its dumb loneliness. There are groans growing ever fainter, and cries for help now and then, from a soldier whose wits have come back to him, though he lay stunned and maimed among those who are forever silent. There go weeping men and women with litters—they cannot find the king, and they must lead the woman who loved him best of all the earth, Edith the Swan-throated, through this terrible harvest-field to discover his wounded body among the heaps of slain. He must be buried on the sea-shore, the Norman duke gives command to William Malet, and so guard forever the coast he tried to defend.
The heralds of victory set sail exultantly across the brown water of the Channel; the messengers of defeat go mourning to London and through the sorrowful English towns. Harold the son of Godwine, and his brother, Gyrth the Good—yes, and the flower of all Southern England; no man of Harold's own noble following lived to tell the story and to bewail this great defeat. There were some who lived to talk about it in after days;—and there was one good joy in saying that as the Normans pursued them after the day was lost, they hid in ambush in the fens and routed their pursuers with deadly,[Pg311]unexpected blows. But the country side looked on with dismay while William fought his way to London, not without much toil and opposition, but at last the humbled earldoms willingly or unwillingly received their new lord. Since Eadgar the underwitted Atheling was not fit for the throne, and the house of Godwine had fallen, William the Norman was made monarch of England, and there was a king-crowning in Westminster at Christmas-tide.
[Pg312]
"Then in his house of wood with flaxen sailsShe floats, a queen, across the fateful seas."—A. F.
TOC,INDXRather than follow in detail the twenty-one years of William's English reign, we must content ourselves with a glance at the main features of it. We cannot too often remind ourselves of the resemblance between the life and growth of a nation and the life and growth of an individual; but while William the Conqueror is in so many ways typical of Normandy, and it is most interesting to follow his personal fortunes, there are many developments of Norman character in general which we must not overlook. William was about forty years old when the battle of Hastings was fought and won; Normandy, too, was in her best vigor and full development of strength. The years of decadence must soon begin for both; the time was not far distant when the story of Normandy ends, and it is only in the history of France and of England that the familiar Norman characteristics can be traced. Foremost in vitalizing force and power of centralization and individuality, while so much of Europe was[Pg313]unsettled and misdirected toward petty ends, this duchy of Rolf the Ganger seems, in later years, like a wild-flower that has scattered its seed to every wind, and plants for unceasing harvests, but must die itself in the first frost of outward assailment and inward weakness.
The march to London had been any thing but a triumphant progress, and the subjects of the new king were very sullen and vindictive. England was disheartened, her pride was humbled to the dust, and many of her leaders had fallen. In the dark winter weather there was sorrow and murmuring; the later law of the curfew bell, a most wise police regulation, made the whole country a prison.
A great deal of harrying had been thought necessary before the people were ready to come to William and ask him to accept the crown. William had a great gift for biding his time, and in the end the crown was proffered, not demanded. We learn that the folk thought better of their conqueror at last, that Cnut was remembered kindly, and the word went from mouth to mouth that England might do worse than take this famous Christian prince to rule over her. Harold had appealed to heaven when the fight began at Senlac, but heaven had given the victory to other hands. The northern earls had forsaken them, and at any rate the Norman devastations must be stopped. If William would do for England what he had done for his own duchy and make it feared for valor and respected for its prosperity like Normandy, who could ask more? So the[Pg314]duke called a formal council of his high noblemen and, after careful consideration, made known his acceptance! There was a strange scene at the coronation in Westminster. Norman horsemen guarded the neighboring streets, a great crowd of spectators filled the church, and when the question was put to this crowd, whether they would accept William for their king, there was an eager shout of "Yea! yea! King William!" Perhaps the Normans had never heard such a noisy outcry at a solemn service. Again the shout was heard, this time the same question had been repeated in the French tongue, and again the answer was "Yea! yea!"
The guards outside thought there was some treachery within, and feared that harm might come to their leader, so, by way of antidote or revenge, they set fire to the buildings near the minster walls. Out rushed the congregation to save their goods or, it might be, their lives, while the ceremony went on within, and the duke himself trembled with apprehension as he took the solemn oath of an English king, to do justice and mercy to all his people. There was a new crown to be put on,—what had become of the Confessor's?—but at last the rite was finished and William, king of the English, with his priests and knights, came out to find a scene of ruin and disorder; it was all strangely typical—the makeshift splendors, the new order of church and state, the burning hatred and suspicions of that Christmas-tide. Peace on earth, good-will to men! alas, it was any thing but that in the later years of William's reign.[Pg315]
No doubt he built high hopes and made deep plans for good governance and England's glory. He had tamed Normandy to his guiding as one tames a wild and fiery horse, and there seemed to be no reason why he could not tame England. In the beginning he attempted to prove himself lenient and kind, but such efforts failed; it was too plain that the Normans had captured England and meant to enjoy the spoils. The estates belonging to the dead thanes and ealdormen, who fought with Harold, were confiscated and divided among the Normans: this was the fortune of war, but it was a bitter grievance and injustice. O, for another Godwine! cried many a man and woman in those days. O, for another Godwine to swoop down upon these foreign vultures who are tearing at England's heart! But even in the Confessor's time there was little security for private property. We have even seen the Confessor's own wife banished from his side without the rich dowry she had brought him, and Godwine's estates had been seized and refunded again, as had many another man's in the reign of that pious king whom everybody was ready to canonize and deplore.
After the king had given orders to his army to stop plundering and burning, there was a good deal of irregular depredation for which he was hardly responsible. He was really king of a very small part of England. The army must not be disbanded, it must be kept together for possible defence, but the presence of such a body of rapacious men, who needed food and lodging, and who were not content[Pg316]unless they had some personal gain from the rich country they had helped to win, could not help being disastrous. Yet there is one certain thing—the duke meant to be master of his new possessions, and could use Englishmen to keep his Norman followers in check, while he could indulge his own countrymen in their love of power and aggrandizement at England's expense. There are touching pictures of his royal progress through the country in the early part of his reign; the widows of thanes and the best of the churls would come out with their little children, to crave mercy and the restitution of even a small part of their old estates to save them from beggary. Poor women! it was upon them that the heaviest burden fell; the women of a war-stricken country suffer by far the most from change and loss; not the heroes who die in battle, or the heroes who live to tell the story of the fight, and who have been either victors or vanquished. Men are more reasonable; they have had the recompense of taking part in the struggle. If they have been in the wrong or in the right, great truths have come home to them as they stood sword in hand.
The Norman barons, who had followed their leader beyond the Channel, had been won by promises, and these promises must be kept. They were made rich with the conquered lands, and given authority, one would think, to their heart's content. They were made the king's magistrates and counsellors, and as years went by there was more and more resentment of all this on the part of the English. They hated their Norman lords; they hated the[Pg317]taxes which the king claimed. The strong point of the Saxon civilization was local self-government and self-dependence; but the weak point was the lack of unity and want of proper centralization and superintendence. William was wise in overcoming this; instead of giving feudalism its full sway and making his Norman barons petty monarchs with right of coinage and full authority over their own dominion, he claimed the homage and loyalty, the absolute allegiance of his subjects. But for his foresight in making such laws, England might have been such a kingdom as Charles the Simple's or Hugh Capet's, and hampered with feudal lords greater than their monarch in every thing but name.
In England, at last, every man held his land directly from the king and was responsible to him. The Witanagemôt was continued, but turned into a sort of feudal court in which the officials of the kingdom, the feudal lords, had places. The Witan became continually a smaller body of men, who were joined with those officers of the royal power higher than they. It must be remembered that the Conqueror did not make his claim to the throne because he had won his right by the sword. He always insisted that he was the lawful successor to Eadward, and the name of Harold the Usurper was omitted from the list of English kings. Following this belief or pretence he was always careful to respect the nationality of the country, and made himself as nearly as possible an Englishman. His plans for supplanting the weakness and insularity of many English institutions by certain Continental[Pg318]fashions, wrought a tremendous change, and put the undeveloped and self-centred kingdom that he had won, on a footing with other European powers. The very taxes which were wrung from the unwilling citizens, no doubt, forced them to wider enterprise and the expansion of their powers of resource. Much of England's later growth has sprung from seed that was planted in these years—this early springtime of her prosperity, when William's stern hands swept from field and forest the vestiges of earlier harvests, and cleared the garden grounds into leafless deserts, only to make them ready for future crops.
The very lowest classes were more fortunate under William's rule than they had been in earlier times. Their rights and liberties were extended, and they could claim legal defence against the tyrannies of their masters. But the upper ranks of people were much more dissatisfied and unhappy. The spirit of the laws was changed; the language of the court was a foreign language; and the modified feudalism of the king put foreigners in all high places, who could hold the confiscated estates, and laugh at the former masters now made poor and resourceless. The folk-land had becomeTerra Regis; England was only a part of Normandy, and the king was often away, busier with the affairs of his duchy than of his kingdom. Yet, as had often happened before in this growing nation's lifetime, a sure process of amalgamation was going on, and though the fire of discontent was burning hot, the gold that was England's and the gold that was Normandy's were being melted together and growing into a greater[Pg319]treasure than either had been alone. We can best understand the individuality and vital force of the Norman people by seeing the difference their coming to England has made in the English character. We cannot remind ourselves of this too often. The Norman of the Conqueror's day was already a man of the world. The hindering conditions of English life were localism and lack of unity. We can see almost a tribal aspect in the jealousies of the earldoms, the lack of sympathy or brotherhood between the different quarters of the island. William's earls were only set over single shires, and the growth of independence was rendered impossible; and his greatest benefaction to his new domain was a thoroughly organized system of law. As we linger over the accounts of his reign, harsh and cruel and unlovable as he appears, it is rather the cruelty of the surgeon than of a torturer or of a cut-throat. The presence of the Normans among the nations of the earth must have seemed particularly irritating and inflammatory, but we can understand, now that so many centuries have smoothed away the scars they left, that the stimulus of their energy and their hot ambition helped the rest of the world to take many steps forward.
While we account for the deeds of the fighting Normans, and their later effects, we must not forget their praying brethren who stood side by side with them, lording it over the English lands and reaching out willing hands for part of the spoils. We must thank them for their piety and their scholarship, and for the great churches they founded, even while we[Pg320]laugh at the greed and wordliness under their monkish cloaks. Lanfranc was made bishop of Canterbury, and wherever the Conqueror's standard was planted, wherever he gained foothold, as the tide of his military rule ebbed and flowed, he planted churches and monasteries. Especially he watched over his high-towered Battle Abbey, which marked the spot where the banner of the Fighting Man was defeated and the banner of the Three Lions of Normandy was set up in its place.
Before we go further we must follow the king back to his duchy in the spring after that first winter in England. Three Englishmen were chosen to attend his royal highness, and although they might easily guess that there was something more than mere compliment in this flattering invitation, these northern earls, Eadwine, Morkere, and Waltheof (the Bear's great-grandson), were not anxious to hurry forward the open quarrel which William himself was anxious to avoid. Nothing could have been more unsafe in the unsettled condition of England than to have left these unruly leaders to plot and connive during his absence; besides, it would be a good thing to show such rough islanders the splendours of the Norman court.
The Norman chroniclers are not often willing to admit that England was in any respect equal to their own duchy, but when they have to describe William's triumphant return, they forget their prudence and give glowing accounts of the treasure of gold and silver that he brings with him, and even the magnificent embroideries, tapestries and[Pg321]hangings, and clerical vestments,—though they have so lately tried to impress upon their readers that heathen squalor of social life across the Channel which the Christian had sought to remedy. Church after church was richly endowed with these spoils, and the Conqueror's own Church of St. Stephen at Caen fared best of all. Beside the English wealth we must not forget the goods of Harold Hardrada, which had been brought with such mistaken confidence for the plenishing of his desired kingdom. There is a tradition of a mighty ingot of gold won in his Eastern adventures, so great that twelve strong youths could scarcely carry it. Eadwine and Morkere of Northumberland must have looked at that with regretful eyes.
Whatever the English prejudice might have been, the Normans had every reason to be proud of their seventh duke. He had advanced their fortunes in most amazing fashion, and they were proud of him indeed on the day when he again set his foot on Norman ground. The time of year was Lent. Spring was not yet come, but it might have been a summer festival, if one judged by the way that the people crowded from the farthest boundaries of the country to the towns through which William was to pass. It was like the glorious holidays of the Roman Empire. The grateful peasants fought and pushed for a sight of their leader. The world is never slow to do honor to its great soldiers and conquerors. The duke met his wife at Rouen, and that was the best moment of all; Matilda had ruled Normandy wisely and ably during his five or six[Pg322]months' absence, with old Roger de Beaumont for her chief counsellor.
The royal procession trailed its gorgeous length from church to church and from city to city about the duchy; the spoils of England seemed inexhaustible to the wondering spectators, and those who had made excuse to lag behind when their bows and lances were needed, were ready enough now to clutch their hands greedily in their empty pockets and follow their valiant countrymen. William himself was not slow in letting the value of his new domain be known; the more men the better in that England which might be a slippery prize to hold. He had many a secret conference with Lanfranc, who had been chief adviser and upholder of the invasion. The priest-statesman seems almost a greater man than the soldier-statesman; many a famous deed of that age was Lanfranc's suggestion, but nobody knew better than these two that the conquest of England was hardly more than begun, and long and deep their councils must have been when the noise of shouting in the streets had ended, and the stars were shining above Caen.
No city of Normandy seems more closely connected with those days than Caen. As one walks along its streets, beneath the high church towers and gabled roofs of the houses, it is easy to fancy that more famous elder generation of Normans alive again, to people Caen with knights and priests and minstrels of that earlier day. The Duchess Matilda might be alive yet and busy with her abbey church of Holy Trinity and her favorite household of nuns;[Pg323]the people shout her praises admiringly, and gaze at her lovingly as she passes through the street with her troop of attendants. Caen is prosperous and gay. "Large, strong, full of draperies and all sorts of merchandise; rich citizens, noble dames, damsels, and fine churches," says Froissart years afterwards. Even this very year one is tempted to believe that one sees the same fields and gardens, the same houses, and hears the same bells that William the Conqueror saw and heard in that summer after he had become king of England.
And in Bayeux, too, great portions of the ancient city still remain. There where the Northmen made their chief habitation, or in Rouen or Falaise, we can almost make history come to life. Perhaps the great tapestry was begun that very summer in Bayeux; perhaps the company of English guests, some of those noble dames well-skilled in "English work" of crewel and canvas, were enticed by Bishop Odo into beginning that "document in worsted" which more than any thing else has preserved the true history of the Conquest of England. Odo meant to adorn his new church with it, and to preserve the account of his own part in the great battle and its preliminaries, with the story of Harold's oath and disloyalty, and William's right to the crown. There is an Italian fashion of drawing in it—the figures are hardly like Englishmen or Normans in the way they stand or make gestures to each other in the rude pictures. Later history has associated the working of these more than fifteen hundred figures with Matilda and her maidens, as a tribute to the[Pg324]Conqueror's valor, but there are many evidences to the contrary. The old idea that the duchess and her women worked at the tapestry, and said their prayers while the army had gone to England, seems improbable the more one studies the work itself. Yet tradition sometimes keeps the grain of truth in its accumulation of chaff. There is no early record of it, and its historical value was rediscovered only in 1724 by a French antiquary. The bright worsteds of it still keep their colors on the twenty-inches wide strip of linen, more than two hundred feet in length. Odo is said to have given it to his chapter at Bayeux, and it has suffered astonishingly little from the ravages of time.
But we must return to Norman affairs in England. Odo himself and William Fitz-Osbern had been made earls of the Counties Palatine of Kent and Hereford, and were put in command in William's absence. The rapacity of these Norman gentlemen was more than their new subjects could bear. The bishop at least is pretty certain to have covered his own greedy injustice by a plea that he was following out the king's orders. Revolt after revolt troubled the peace of England. Harold's two sons were ready to make war from their vantage-ground in Ireland; the Danes and Scots were also conspiring against the new lord of the English. At last some of the Normans themselves were traitorous and troublesome, but William was fully equal to such minor emergencies as these. He went back to England late in 1067, after spending the summer and autumn in Normandy, and soon found himself busy[Pg325]enough in the snarl of revolt and disagreement. One trouble followed another as the winter wore away. The siege of Exeter was the most conspicuous event, but here too William was conqueror, and Southwestern England was forced to submit to his rule. At Easter-tide a stately embassy was sent to bring over the Duchess Matilda from Normandy, and when it returned she was hallowed as Queen by Ealdred the archbishop. Let us hope that, surrounded by her own kindred and people, she did not see the sorrowful English faces of those women who had lost husband and home together, and who had been bereft of all their treasures that strangers might be enriched.