THE INTERREGNUM.[1503]
October 15–December 25, 1066.
[Sidenote: The throne vacant.]
England was thus again without a King. For the second time within this memorable year the throne had become vacant. But the vacancy of October differed widely in every way from the vacancy of January. Then a King had gone to his grave in peace, and the election of his successor could be made by the free voices of the English people. That successor had now given his life for England, and, as in the days of Swend and Cnut, a foreign invader was again in the land, claiming the votes of the Witan with a victorious army to back his [Sidenote: William not yet King.] claims. For we must remember that still, after the day of Senlac, William was only a candidate for the Crown. He claimed an exclusive right to become King, but he did not claim to be King as yet. One flatterer only[1504] ventures to give him the kingly title before his formal election and consecration. Till those ceremonies had been performed, William was not King _de jure_, and he was as yet very far from being King _de facto_. All that he had as yet was military possession of part of one shire. But [Sidenote: His success practically certain.] his work was practically over; he had now simply to bide his time and slowly to gather in his harvest. He had already in effect conquered England, for the one man was gone who could still have saved her from conquest. With Harold the true hope and strength of England had fallen.[1505]
[Sidenote: William’s expectation of immediate submission disappointed.]
No one knew this better than the Conqueror himself. His expectation was that all England would at once submit to him.[1506] And though he was mistaken in that expectation, the mistake was not one which carried him very far away from the truth. He simply expected that to happen at once, which was sure to happen before long, [Sidenote: No idea of submission among the English as yet.] and which did happen within two months. But for the moment no Englishman dreamed of submission.[1507] Men as little thought of acknowledging the Norman after a single victory as their fathers had thought of acknowledging the Dane in the like case. Ælfred and Eadmund had fought battle after battle with the invaders, and it was only after a long alternation of victory and defeat that Guthrum and Cnut had obtained a settlement, and after all only a partial settlement, in the land. No man therefore who was not actually within the reach of William’s hand thought, in the first days after the fight of Senlac, of submitting to the Conqueror. William had returned to his camp at Hastings, and he there tarried, ready to receive the allegiance of those whom he looked on as his lawful subjects. But not a single Englishman came to his camp to bow to him and become his man.[1508] The voice of Englishmen, the voice at least of all who were neither too far off to hear the news nor too near to be practically within William’s power, called for another King to lead them forth to another battle.
[Sidenote: The news reaches London.]
The news of the defeat of the English army and of the death of the King was brought to London by some of the fugitives from Senlac.[1509] Before long, the wounded Sheriff Esegar contrived to make his way thither from the hill of [Sidenote: Eadwine and Morkere hear the news, and hasten to London.] slaughter.[1510] Meanwhile the two Northern Earls were on their tardy march, waiting to see what course events might take. The news of Harold’s fall reached them on their way. They hastened to London,[1511] and, as their first [Sidenote: They send Ealdgyth to Chester.] measure of precaution, they sent their sister, the Lady Ealdgyth, to the distant city of Chester in the Earldom [Sidenote: Gemót in London for the election of a King.] of Eadwine.[1512] Men were now flocking together from the lands immediately threatened by William to seek for safety in the great city.[1513] It was therefore possible to hold an Assembly which might fairly represent the national will. The Witan, among whom the citizens of London and the sailors are specially mentioned, met to choose a King.[1514] The choice was far from being so easy in October as it [Sidenote: No qualified candidate forthcoming. Harold’s sons unqualified.] had been in January. There was now no one man who could, either by his birth or by his personal merits, command the unanimous vote of the nation. The late King had left sons, but they were not born Æthelings, sons of a crowned King; indeed they were most likely not even born in lawful wedlock.[1515] They had therefore no claim even to a constitutional preference, and young and undistinguished as they were, they could have no claim on the score of personal merit. We have no evidence that the names of Eadmund, Magnus, and Godwine, the three sons of Harold, were so much as mentioned[1516] in the debates of the Witan. The Crown thus passed away for ever from the newly [Sidenote: Loss of Gyrth and Leofwine.] chosen dynasty. Had Harold’s two brothers lived, things might have gone otherwise. One cannot doubt that Gyrth was in every way worthy to reign, and we can believe that the voice of Wessex and East-Anglia at least would have been raised in favour either of him or of Leofwine. But the two heroes had fallen with their King and brother; young Wulfnoth was personally undistinguished and was far away in the hands of the enemy; no candidate from [Sidenote: Waltheof not yet distinguished.] the House of Godwine was forthcoming. Looking to the other great Houses, there was one whose name was soon to become famous and honoured among Englishmen; but as yet Waltheof the son of Siward had not shown himself as a leader of men,[1517] and the Earldom which he ruled was the [Sidenote: Candidature of Eadwine and Morkere.] smallest in the Kingdom. In the House of Leofric indeed there was no lack of candidates. Eadwine and Morkere were open to receive any crowns that they could get. In their eyes no doubt the happy moment had come, when Mercian hands might grasp the sceptre, if possible of the whole realm, at any rate of its northern half. We do not hear what arrangements were to be made between the two brothers; but the two together were urgent with the men of London to raise one or other of them to the Imperial Crown.[1518] But their hopes were disappointed. There was in truth no general feeling to which they could appeal. The candidature of Eadwine or Morkere could have presented no sort of attraction to the men of London, [Sidenote: Election of the Ætheling Eadgar.] of Wessex, or of East-Anglia. In the absence then of any better qualified candidate, of any one leader on whom all could agree, the sentiment of hereditary descent prevailed. There was one in the land who, whatever else he was, was the grandson of Ironside, the heir of Ælfred and Ecgberht, the last male of the stock of Cerdic and Woden. To fill the vacancy caused by the death of Harold, the Witan of England called on the young Ætheling Eadgar to ascend the throne of his fathers.[1519]
[Sidenote: The choice bad, but unavoidable.]
It is vain to discuss the merits of the choice. It could be justified only by the sad truths that any King was better than no King at all, and that at that moment no better King was forthcoming. There may even have been a faint hope that William might be satisfied with the overthrow of his personal enemy, and that he would not press his claims against a boy who had never wronged him, a boy who might pass as the heir, who was certainly the next of kin, of the deceased King for whom he professed so deep a reverence. How far the choice was strictly [Sidenote: Eadwine and Morkere agree to the election.] unanimous we know not. There is no doubt that Eadwine and Morkere, seeing no hopes of their own elevation, gave a formal consent to the election of Eadgar.[1520] On the [Sidenote: Opposition of some of the Bishops.] other hand we find it hinted that the Bishops opposed the choice of the Ætheling.[1521] We know not how many of the English Bishops were at this time in London. It [Sidenote: The two Archbishops for Eadgar.] is certain that the two Primates, Stigand and Ealdred, were both present, and that both concurred in the election of Eadgar.[1522] It would appear also that Wulfstan of Worcester and Walter of Hereford were also in the city.[1523] [Sidenote: The opposition probably made by the foreign Bishops.] Now we may be sure that any influence which belonged to the Bishop of the Diocese, the Norman William, would be exerted to hinder the election of Eadgar. A Norman Prelate might now, without dishonour, recommend submission to the armed candidate of his own race. Even Wulfstan, the friend of Harold, might not feel himself equally bound to Eadgar, and his later conduct may perhaps show that, in face of the invasion of William, he was not unlikely to play the part of Jeremiah in face of the invasion of Nabuchodonosor. We may suspect too that the Lotharingian Prelate of Hereford, and his brethren of Wells and Sherborne, would not be specially zealous in the national cause. We need not suspect them of actual treason, but to exhort to submission to the Conqueror after the death of Harold would bear an aspect quite different from an attempt to weaken the national power of resistance while the King still lived. Even a national and patriotic writer, speaking with the experience of a few weeks later, argues that an early submission would have been the wisest course.[1524] The minds of foreign churchmen would be specially open to those spiritual influences which William had contrived to array on his side. Nothing could be easier than to argue that, in the great assize of Senlac, the judgement of God had been visibly given on behalf of the invader, and that those who continued to fight against him would incur the guilt of fighting against God.
[Sidenote: Eadgar seemingly not crowned.]
But such arguments, if used, were as yet of none effect. Young Eadgar was regularly elected King. Whether he was crowned we are not distinctly told. Every motive of policy would plead for a coronation as speedy as the coronation of Harold. But the election of Harold had taken place during one of the Church’s solemn seasons, and it was possible to perform the ceremony before the festival was over. But if the coronation of Eadgar was to take place on one of the days usually chosen for such solemnities, it would have to be delayed till the Feast [Sidenote: The coronation probably delayed till Christmas.] of Christmas. In all probability the rite was fixed for that festival, and, when the festival came, the rite had to be performed on another. Eadgar then never was full King, King crowned and anointed. But his authority was acknowledged, and he performed at least one kingly act. The Golden Borough of Saint Peter lacked an [Sidenote: Death of Abbot Leofric, November 1.] Abbot. The patriot Leofric, wounded in the great battle, had found his way home, and had died on the Festival of All Saints.[1525] The monks of his house forthwith chose [Sidenote: Brand elected Abbot, and confirmed by Eadgar.] their Provost Brand as his successor, and sent him to Eadgar for the royal confirmation.[1526] His reception was favourable; he received his staff from the hands of the Ætheling.[1527] But we shall see that this acknowledgement of the national candidate on the part of the monks of Peterborough was a crime in the eyes of the invader which called for a heavy atonement.
[Sidenote: The Londoners and others prepare for another battle.]
The nation had thus chosen a successor to the King who had died on Senlac. The cry of every patriotic heart was for a vigorous carrying on the war with the invader. The citizens of London, above all, were eager to hazard [Sidenote: Chances of resistance.] another battle.[1528] The chances of such an enterprise were still far from being hopeless. The slaughter of Fulford, of Stamfordbridge, and of Senlac had indeed been frightful, and, as ever, it had fallen most heavily on the best portions of the army, on the King’s Thegns and the Housecarls. Still the strength of England was far from being broken, and we may be sure that Ælfred or Eadmund would have been perfectly ready to risk a fourth battle. But there was no Ælfred or Eadmund now to lead the forces of England. The King-elect was young and inexperienced,[1529] and those whom England looked to as her leaders again [Sidenote: Eadwine and Morkere withdraw their forces.] proved faithless. Eadwine and Morkere had consented to the election of Eadgar, as nine months before they had consented to the election of Harold. But of giving loyal support to either prince they never dreamed. The forces of Northumberland were again refused to the defence of Wessex. For Wessex, for East-Anglia, Eadgar and William might strive as they would. William would perhaps be content with that portion of the realm which formed the immediate possession of the personal foe whom he had overthrown. With the House of Leofric, with the men of Northumberland, William had no quarrel. Perhaps he might be content not to attack them. At all events, the forces of Northumberland and North-western Mercia would be better reserved for the defence of their own homes. Eadwine and Morkere then, with the levies of their Earldoms, withdrew to Northumberland, and left Eadgar and England to their fate.[1530]
[Sidenote: Resistance hopeless after the defection of the Earls.]
This was the consummation of the manifold treasons of the sons of Ælfgar. An united England might yet have resisted; for a divided England there was no hope. A people who could not agree under any leader of their own race, became of necessity the prey of the stranger.[1531] But the fault rested wholly with the men who preferred their own selfish interests to the public welfare. The patriotic zeal of the men of London was thwarted by the base secession [Sidenote: No further general combination against William.] of the Northern traitors. By their act all was lost. After the day of Senlac William never again met Englishmen in a pitched battle. He experienced much gallant local resistance before his power was fully established over the whole land. But never again did he see the forces of all England, or even the forces of all Wessex, drawn out against him. Indeed it does not seem that any English weapon, save those of the great city itself, was again lifted against him till his formal investiture with the kingship of England enabled him to treat all further opposition as rebellion.
[Sidenote: William returns to Hastings. October 15.]
While England was thus betrayed and ruined within the walls of London, the Conqueror was, step by step, taking possession of the devoted land. He had returned, as we have seen, to Hastings, in the hope of receiving an immediate submission.[1532] In that hope he remained in his camp for five days.[1533] During that time he also received some reinforcements from Normandy to supply the serious losses which the battle had inflicted on his army.[1534] As no English homagers came in to him, he now thought it time to set [Sidenote: He does not march at once on London.] forth to follow up his great success by force of arms. But he had no intention of marching at once upon London. It again was William’s policy to bide his time. He no doubt fully understood the state of the case; he felt certain that the divided land, deprived of its one born leader, would never organize any general or effective resistance. He knew that in a short time he would either be able to overcome local resistance piecemeal, or else the English, unable to unite under a single native chief, would submit to him in sheer despair. It was therefore his policy not to hasten. But it was equally his policy not to remain idle. His policy in fact was much the same in England as it had been in Maine. Political and military reasons alike bade him to secure the south-eastern portions of England before he hazarded any attack on the great city. Six days therefore after the battle, William began his eastward march along the south coast.
[Sidenote: He marches to Romney. October 20,]
The first point which he reached was Romney, where he was within the borders of the ancient Kingdom of Kent. Romney was, in those days, no less than Pevensey, a famous haven, but the physical agencies which have wrought so much change along that whole line of coast, have destroyed the importance of the town by removing the sea from its immediate neighbourhood. Like most of the havens of this coast, it was endowed with special privileges, and in return for them it was expected to take its share in the naval defence of the land.[1535] The men of Romney had not been [Sidenote: Norman stragglers killed at Romney.] slack in the discharge of that duty. They had, as we have seen, at some time before the great battle,[1536] cut in pieces a body of Norman stragglers, for whose blood William now came to take vengeance. It was his policy now, as ever, to be harsh wherever he met with resistance and gentle to [Sidenote: William’s politic ravages.] all who submitted easily. The line of his march was marked by ceaseless ravage,[1537] ravage inflicted, no doubt, like the ravages before the battle, with a deliberate purpose. Before the battle, he had wished to provoke Harold to come to the rescue of his suffering subjects.[1538] He now wished to strike terror, and thereby to bring about submission. Harrying then as he went, William reached [Sidenote: His vengeance at Romney.] Romney. The words which describe his doings there are short, pithy, and terrible. “He took what vengeance he would for the slaughter of his men.”[1539]
The next point of his march was one where he might [Sidenote: He marches to Dover. October 21.] expect to be checked by an obstacle such as he would seldom meet with in any part of the land which he had entered.[1540] The famous cliff of Dover was already defended [Sidenote: Dover Castle.] by a castle before which William might have looked for a siege as long and as weary as those which he had gone through before Brionne, Domfront, and Arques. The town of Dover lies, like that of Hastings, between two heights. The easternmost of the two had been made a post of defence in the days of the ancient conquerors, and it had not been neglected either by the Kentish Kings or by the West-Saxon rulers who succeeded them. The tower of Roman work, the famous Pharos, is still there; there too is an ancient church, lately recovered from desecration, which dates from the earliest days of English Christianity.[1541] Few buildings in England show us so well how the first believers of our race strove, under the guidance of Roman missionaries, to reproduce the works of [Sidenote: Works of Harold at Dover.] Roman skill in their lowlier temples. The eye of Earl Harold had marked the importance of the site, and the spot which lay so temptingly open to an invading enemy had been made secure against all attack.[1542] It may well be that the evil deed of Eustace had called special attention to the necessity of strengthening the town. And Harold, the observant pilgrim and traveller, who had so carefully studied all that Gaul had to offer him, as he introduced the latest improvements of Norman ecclesiastical art into his church at Waltham, introduced also the latest improvements of Norman military art into his castle at Dover.[1543] [Sidenote: Strength of the fortress.] A fortress arose, of whose strength, both from its position and from its defences, Norman writers speak with all respect; a fortress whose fame had crossed the sea, and whose surrender William was said to have specially demanded as being the surrender of one of the keys of England.[1544] The castle on the cliff was commonly deemed to be safe against all assailants, and a vast crowd of people from the surrounding country had sought for shelter within its precincts, when the invading host drew nigh.[1545]
[Sidenote: Dover surrenders without resistance.]
That a fortress like this should have been surrendered without a blow not only moves our indignation, but moves our amazement also, when we think of the valour which Englishmen had just before shown at Senlac and which they were again to show at York and at Ely.[1546] Englishmen were undoubtedly far better used to fighting pitched battles than they were to either the defence or the attack of fortified places. And it has been conjectured with some probability that the garrison placed to defend the castle against attack from the sea might, when the invader had actually landed at another point, have joined the King’s muster and have fought and died along with the rest of his personal following.[1547] Whatever was the cause, the fact is certain. Before William had thrown up a bank or shot an arrow against the castle of Dover, town [Sidenote: William’s clemency.] and castle were freely surrendered into his hands.[1548] It was now as plainly his policy to show himself mild and debonair as it had been his policy at Romney to show himself beyond measure stark.[1549] The men of Dover were, according to William’s code, rebels who had laid down their arms, and who were therefore entitled to pardon. To do them any wanton harm was wholly against his scheme of conduct. [Sidenote: The town accidentally burned.] But some of the unruly soldiers of his army felt themselves defrauded of their expected plunder, and they had recourse to the usual Norman means of destruction. Fire was as freely used at Dover as it had been at Mayenne or at Dinan, but this time it was used without any order from Duke William for its use. A large part of the town was [Sidenote: William makes good the loss to the owners.] burned.[1550] But the politic liberality of the Duke made good their losses to the owners of the destroyed houses,[1551] and the offenders were only sheltered from punishment by their numbers and by the baseness of their condition.[1552] William [Sidenote: He strengthens the castle.] remained at Dover eight days. He further strengthened the fortifications of the castle,[1553] which now received that Norman garrison with which Harold had failed to people it. The sick, who were a numerous body, were left behind, and William marched on, ready to receive other surrenders or to subdue other opponents.[1554]
[Sidenote: The Kentish towns submit.]
The politic severity of William at Romney and his no less politic lenity at Dover did their work effectually. There was no King, no national army, in the field; each town or district had to shift for itself and to defend itself how it could. The examples of Romney and Dover showed that, for each isolated place, submission was a safer course than [Sidenote: He marches towards Canterbury (October 29), and receives the submission of the city on the road.] resistance. The fear of William’s name fell upon all the towns and villages of Kent, and they were not slow in making their submission.[1555] First among them was the head of the ancient Kingdom, the famous metropolis of England.[1556] As William was on his march from Dover to Canterbury, messengers met him bearing the submission of the city. They brought hostages and the tribute due by custom from the citizens to the King.[1557] The example of the local capital was soon followed by the other towns of the shire. From all parts of Kent men came to do their homage to the Conqueror, to offer him gifts, and, as his own poet adds, to kiss his feet.[1558] At an unknown point in [Sidenote: He encamps at the Broken Tower. October 31.] the neighbourhood of Canterbury, known as the Broken Tower, William pitched his camp, and, like his rival earlier in the year,[1559] he was here somewhat checked in his progress by a severe sickness.[1560] Like Harold, he is said to have [Sidenote: His sickness.] struggled with all his power against the weakness of the flesh; but it is plain that his sickness acted as a real check to his advance, for he remained in the neighbourhood of the Kentish capital for a whole month.[1561] But even this time of constrained inaction was not wasted. Where William could not be present in the flesh, he could be present by the terror of his name and in the persons of his messengers. Kent and Sussex might now be looked on as conquered. [Sidenote: He sends an embassy to Winchester.] William now stretched forth his hands to the West, and sought for the submission of the ancient capital of the West-Saxon [Sidenote: Position of Eadgyth.] Kings. Winchester, the city of Ælfred and Cnut, once the morning-gift of Emma, was now again the morning-gift and the dwelling-place of the widowed Eadgyth.[1562] It was on every ground, political and military, a great object to obtain early possession of so important a city. It was also a manifest part of William’s policy to put himself into friendly relations with the widow of the King whose lawful successor he gave himself out to be. Out of deference, we are told, to the widowed Lady, he would not appear before the city in any military array; he simply sent messengers to the magistrates of Winchester asking for submission and tribute.[1563] Eadgyth, as we have seen, was perhaps actually William’s partizan; at all events she had no motive to run any risk either on behalf of the young Eadgar [Sidenote: Winchester submits.] or on behalf of the Mercian brothers. She took counsel with the chief men of her city, and the result of their debates was at once to offer their submission to the Duke, accompanied with gifts both from the Lady and from the citizens.[1564] William had not yet been two months in England; since his great victory he had had no occasion to strike a blow; and the strongest fortress in England, the ancient ecclesiastical metropolis, and the ancient temporal capital, were already in his hands.
[Sidenote: London still holds out.]
But there was one spot where another spirit reigned; there was one city which even now had no mind to bow to the invader. The men of London, whose forefathers had beaten back Swend and Cnut, whose brothers had died around the Standard of Harold, were not men to surrender their mighty city, defended by its broad river and its [Sidenote: William sets out for London, c. December 1.] Roman walls,[1565] without at least meeting the invader in the field. William, master of Dover, Canterbury, and Winchester, now directed his march along the old Roman road, directly on the great city.[1566] He marched on, ravaging, burning, and slaughtering as he went,[1567] and drew near to the southern bank of the river. One account seems to describe him as occupying Westminster—therefore as crossing the river—as planting his military engines by Saint Peter’s minster, and as beginning, or at least threatening, a formal siege of the city.[1568] But nothing in the whole story is plainer than that William did not cross the river till long after. A more credible version represents him as sending before him a body of five hundred knights, whether simply to reconnoitre or in the hope of gaining anything by a [Sidenote: Skirmish, and burning of Southwark.] sudden attack. The citizens sallied; a skirmish followed; the English were beaten back within the walls; the southern suburb of the city, Southwark, where Godwine had waited in his own house for the gathering of two memorable assemblies, was given to the flames.[1569] The pride of the citizens was supposed to be somewhat lowered by this twofold blow;[1570] but it is plain that William did not yet venture any direct attack on the city. His ships were far away, and the bridge of London would have been a spot even less suited for an onslaught of Norman cavalry than the hill-side of Senlac. He trusted to the gradual working of fear and of isolation even on the hearts of those valiant [Sidenote: He keeps on the right bank of the Thames, and marches to Wallingford.] citizens. He kept on the right bank of the Thames, harrying as he went, through Surrey, Hampshire, and Berkshire, till at Wallingford a ford and a bridge supplied safe and convenient means of crossing for his army.[1571] He was now in the shire of the brave Sheriff Godric, in a King’s town, part of which seems to have been set aside as a sort of special barrack or garrison for the King’s Housecarls.[1572] But the stout heart of the lord of Fifhide had ceased to beat; Sheriff and Housecarls alike had dealt their last blow for England on the far South-Saxon hill. No force was ready on the bridge of Wallingford to bar the approach of [Sidenote: He crosses the Thames into Mercia.] the invader. He passed the great border stream, and for the first time set foot on Mercian soil. He was now on the old battle-ground of Bensington, where Angle and Saxon, now being fast united in one common bondage, had in other days fought out their border quarrels.[1573] He passed beneath the hills, so marked in the distance by their well-known clumps, where the Briton had, in yet earlier days, bid defiance to the conquerors of the world. He was now within the Diocese whence the voice of England had driven his unworthy countryman, the Norman Ulf, the Bishop who did nought bishoplike.[1574] He was now within the Earldom which his own hand had made vacant, when he avenged the fall of his Spanish horse by the fall of a son of Godwine.[1575] [Sidenote: He still does not march on London; reason of his course.] But he still did not march straight upon London. His plan evidently was to surround the city with a wide circle of conquered and desolated country, till sheer isolation should compel its defenders to submit. South and west of London, he was master from Dover to Wallingford; his course was now to march on, keeping at some distance from the city, till the lands north and east of London should be as thoroughly wasted and subdued as the lands south of the [Sidenote: He reaches Berkhampstead.] Thames. He followed out this plan till he reached Berkhampstead in Hertfordshire.[1576] But by this time the spirit of London itself had failed. The blow which had been dealt at Senlac had at last reached the heart of England. At Berkhampstead the second act of William’s great work was played out. The Conquest there received the formal ratification of the conquered.[1577]
[Sidenote: Esegar chief in command in London.]
The chief military command in London was in the hands of the wounded Staller Esegar, the Sheriff of the Middle-Saxons. His wound was so severe that he could neither walk nor ride, but was carried about the city in a litter.[1578] But he is spoken of as being the soul of all the counsels taken by the defenders of London.[1579] The defection of the Northern Earls had left him the layman of highest rank in the city, the natural protector and military adviser of [Sidenote: Tale of his communications] the young King-elect. A tale is told of messages which are said to have gone to and fro between Esegar and [Sidenote: with William.] William. But it is hard to know how far we ought to believe a story which implies that London was besieged by William, which it certainly was not.[1580] William, we [Sidenote: William’s secret message.] are told, sent a secret message to Esegar. He asked only for a formal acknowledgement of his right. Let William have the name of King, and all things in the Kingdom should be ruled according to the bidding of the Sheriff of the Middle-Saxons.[1581] Esegar listens; he has no intention of yielding even thus far, but he thinks it prudent to dissemble. [Sidenote: Esegar summons an assembly, and proposes a feigned submission to William] He summons an Assembly, among the members of which we may possibly discern the forerunners of the famous Aldermen of London.[1582] He sets forth the general sad estate of the country and the special dangers of the besieged city. It would be prudent to send a cunning messenger who should entrap the invader with wily words. Let him offer a feigned submission, which might at least cause delay and stave off the immediate danger.[1583] The [Sidenote: Esegar’s messenger deceived by William.] messenger went; but to deceive William was found to be no such easy matter. The fox—it is his own poetical panegyrist who makes the comparison—is not to be caught in a trap laid in open day.[1584] William pretends to accept the proposals of Esegar, the exact details of which are not told us.[1585] But he wins over the messenger by crafty speeches, backed by gifts and by promises greater than the gifts.[1586] The messenger goes back to London to enlarge on the might, the wisdom, the just rights, and the various excellences of William.[1587] The invader is one whom it is on every ground hopeless to resist. His intentions are friendly; he offers peace to the city; wisdom [Sidenote: Submission to William agreed on.] dictates one course only, that of immediate submission to such a candidate for the Kingdom.[1588] The people applaud; the Senate approves; both orders—their distinct action is clearly marked—vote at once to forsake the cause of the young Ætheling,[1589] and to make their submission to the conquering Duke.
[Sidenote: Eadgar, Ealdred, and others submit to William at Berkhampstead.]
Whatever truth there may be in this story, it is certain that a resolution to the same effect as that described by the poet was actually come to within the walls of London. While William was at Berkhampstead, an embassy came to submit and to do homage to him, an embassy which might be fairly looked upon as having a right to speak in the name of at least Southern England. Thither came Eadgar, a King deposed before he was full King. Thither came the Metropolitan of York, perhaps also the Metropolitan of Canterbury. Thither came at least two other Bishops, Wulfstan of Worcester and Walter of Hereford, and with them came the best men of London, and many other of the chief men of England.[1590] And on a sad and shameful errand they came. They came to make their submission to the invader and to pray him to accept the Crown of England. The defection of the Northern Earls, the terror struck into men’s hearts by William’s ravages, had done their work. They bowed to him for need.[1591] Hard indeed the need was, but the need stared them in the face; men of cold wisdom even said that they ought to have bowed to William long before.[1592] They sware oaths to him [Sidenote: William’s promises and gracious reception of Eadgar.] and gave him hostages.[1593] William received his new subjects graciously; to the young rival who had so easily fallen before him he was specially gracious. The kiss of peace was given by the Conqueror to Eadgar and to his companions,[1594] and he pledged his word that he would be good Lord to them.[1595] Such a submission on the part of so many men of such lofty rank might of itself be deemed [Sidenote: William invited to accept crown.] equivalent to an election to the Crown. But a more direct requisition seems not to have been wanting. It was probably at Berkhampstead[1596] that William was, as we are told, prayed by the chief men of England, spiritual and temporal, to accept the vacant Crown. They needed a King; they had always been used to submit to a crowned King and to none other.[1597] Here we may clearly see the almost superstitious [Sidenote: Feelings of Englishmen at the moment.] importance which was then attached to the ceremony of coronation. The uncrowned Eadgar had been no full King, and he had been unable to defend his people. The armed candidate who was encamped at Berkhampstead [Sidenote: Policy of submission.] was no longer to be withstood by force of arms. The best course was to acknowledge and receive him at once, and by the mystic rite of consecration to change him from a [Sidenote: Example of Cnut.] foreign invader into an English King. We must bear in mind that men were living who could remember how an earlier foreign invader had been changed into an English King, into a King who had won his place among the noblest of England’s native worthies. England had accepted Cnut the Dane, and she had flourished under him as she had never flourished before or since. Men might hope that the like good luck would follow on their [Sidenote: Comparison between William and Cnut.] acceptance of William the Norman. William in truth promised better than Cnut in every way. Instead of a half-heathen Sea-king, he was the model prince of Europe, the valiant soldier, the wise ruler, the pious son of the Church, the prince who, among unparalleled difficulties, had raised his paternal Duchy to a state of prosperity and good government which made it the wonder and the envy of continental lands. The hopes of those who dreamed that William would prove a second Cnut were doomed to be woefully disappointed. But such hopes were at the time, if not reasonable, at all events plausible. It is easy to understand how men may have been led away by them. [Sidenote: Seeming judgement of God in William’s favour.] Men too, especially churchmen, might easily argue that the event had proved that it was God’s will that William should be received. Harold had appealed to God’s judgement upon the field of battle,[1598] and the verdict of God’s judgement had been given against him. Those who had fought under the banner of the Fighting Man against the banner of the Apostle were proved to have been in truth men fighting against God. All these arguments, backed by the presence in the land of William’s victorious army, would have their effect upon men’s minds. We can even understand that they might produce something more than a mere sullen submission to physical force. We can understand that men may have brought themselves to a belief, unwilling indeed, but not either absolutely compulsory or absolutely hypocritical, that the King who had been so visibly sent to them by the hand of God ought to be [Sidenote: Artificial frame of mind of Englishmen at the time.] frankly and loyally acknowledged. We can believe that the request made by so many Englishmen that the Conqueror would at once assume the English Crown was made in an artificial but not a dishonest frame of mind. It was made in that state of artificial hope, even of artificial eagerness, which is not uncommon in men who are striving to make the best of a bad bargain. For the moment they really wished for William as their King. But it was only for the moment that the wish lasted.
[Sidenote: William calls a Council of his officers.]
The Crown was thus offered to William, but we are told that it was by no means eagerly accepted by him. He summoned a Council of his chief officers and advisers[1599]—we are hardly to suppose a Norman military Gemót—and laid the matter before them. Possibly he merely wished to prove the minds of his friends and followers; possibly the arguments which they brought forward had real weight with him. [Sidenote: His professed unwillingness to accept the Crown at once.] Was it, he asked, expedient for him to take the Crown, while he was still so far from being in complete possession of the Kingdom?[1600] We must remember that though the Prelates of York, Worcester, and Hereford were in William’s camp, yet York, Worcester, and Hereford were not in [Sidenote: Extent of William’s actual authority in England.] William’s hands. William had actual possession only of the south-eastern shires. His authority reached westward as far as Winchester, northward as far as his plunderers could go from the spot where he was now encamped. Was it prudent then, he argued, so hastily to assume a kingship which, in the greater part of the land, would [Sidenote: He wishes his wife to be crowned with him.] still be kingship only in name? He wished moreover—and here we may believe that William spoke from the heart—that whenever he should be raised into a crowned King, his beloved and faithful Duchess might be there to share his honours.[1601] He asked then the opinion of the Assembly as to the immediate acceptance of the Crown which was pressed upon him.
The military Council was strongly in favour of William’s acceptance of the Crown, but the decisive answer was given, not by any of William’s native subjects, but by [Sidenote: Speech of Hamon of Thouars.] one of the most eminent of the foreign volunteers. Hamon, Viscount of Thouars, a man, we are told, as ready of speech as he was valiant in fight,[1602] had, on the height of Telham, been the first to hail the Duke as a future King.[1603] He was not unwilling that the words which had then fallen from him as an omen should now assume full shape and substance. The Aquitanian chief began in a courtly strain, by praising the condescension of the general who deigned to take the opinion of his soldiers on such a point. It was not, he said, a matter for much deliberation, when all were united in one wish. It was the desire of every man in William’s army to see his lord become a King as soon as might be.[1604] To make William a King was the very object for which all of them had crossed the sea, the object for which they had exposed themselves to the dangers of the deep and of the battle.[1605] As for England itself, the wisest men in England, the highest in rank and character, were there, offering the kingship of their land to William. They doubtless knew best what was for the good of their own country. They clearly saw in William a fit man to reign over them, one under whose rule themselves and their country would flourish.[1606] An offer thus pressed on him [Sidenote: William determines to accept the Crown at once.] from all sides it was clearly his duty to accept. William, we are told, weighed what was said, and determined at once to accept the Crown. He felt that, if he were once crowned King, the magic of the royal name would have its effect. It would do something to damp the spirit of resistance in the still unsubdued portions of the country. Men who were eager to fight against a mere foreign invader, would be less inclined to withstand a King formally chosen and consecrated according to the Laws of the Kingdom.[1607] The Duke of the Normans therefore signified to the English embassy his readiness at once to assume [Sidenote: The coronation fixed for Christmas.] the kingship of England. The day for the consecration of the King-elect was of course fixed for the great Festival of the Church which was drawing near. The Midwinter Feast was to be again held at Westminster by a crowned King. On the Feast of the Nativity, within less than a full year from the consecration of the minster itself, the church of Eadward was to behold another King crowned and anointed within its walls. Events had indeed followed fast on one another since the Christmas Gemót of the last year had been held by the last King of the House of Cerdic.
[Sidenote: Position of William.]
The Conqueror was thus King-elect. His plans had [Sidenote: Triumph of his policy.] answered. His arts and his arms had been alike successful. And the triumph of his subtlety had been specially his own. It was the chance shot of an arrow which had overcome the English King, but it was William’s own policy which had overcome the English people. King in truth only by the edge of the sword, he had so managed matters that he had now the formal right to call himself King, not only by the bequest of Eadward but by the election of the English people. But, having won this great success of his craft, he was not inclined to jeopard what he had won by the neglect of any needful military [Sidenote: He sends to fortify a post in London.] precaution. He did not trust himself in London till his position there was secured, till some steps had been taken towards holding the lofty spirit of the citizens in check. He sent on a detachment before him to prepare a fortress in or close to the city.[1608] This was doubtless one of those hasty structures of wood of which we have heard at Brionne[1609] and at Arques;[1610] but it was the germ which grew into the noblest work of Norman military art, the mighty Tower of Gundulf. Orders were also sent to make everything ready for the reception of the new King and for the great [Sidenote: Opposite accounts of William’s conduct.] ceremony of his inauguration. Of William’s conduct meanwhile two exactly opposite pictures are given us by the Norman and by the English writers. His panegyrist tells us that all was quiet and peaceful; as there were no longer any human foes to be slaughtered, William could carry on his favourite warfare with the denizens of the air and of the forest.[1611] The English writers, on the other hand, tell us how, notwithstanding the submission of his new subjects, notwithstanding his own promises to them, the King-elect still allowed his soldiers to harry the country and burn the towns.[1612] There is probably truth [Sidenote: Ravage probably not ordered, but much irregular damage done.] in both accounts. William had no longer any motive for systematic ravages, such as he had been guilty of before and after the battle. No records of any devastations in Hertfordshire remain, such as the records which we have seen of his devastations in Sussex.[1613] But we have seen also, from what happened at Dover,[1614] how hard it was to control men, many of whom doubtless thought that whatever was left to an Englishman was something taken from themselves. We have seen also that, from whatever cause, William, though he indemnified the sufferers, failed to punish the criminals. We may believe that something of the same sort took place now. Systematic ravages, carried on by the Duke’s order, doubtless stopped, but the excesses of his army, the amount of burning and plundering done without his order, but which he failed to check or to punish, was doubtless considerable.
[Sidenote: William marches to London.]
From Berkhampstead to London, whatever was the amount of damage done by the way, William marched on without opposition.[1615] When the preparations which were to keep the city in subjection were completed, William drew near in readiness for the great rite which was to change the Conqueror into a King. As to the place of the ceremony there could be no doubt. William was to be crowned in the church which had been reared by his kinsman and predecessor, and where his mortal remains, lifeless, yet undecayed, and already displaying their wonder-working powers, lay as it were to welcome him.[1616] William was thus to be consecrated within the same temple where Harold had been consecrated less than a year before. He was to be consecrated with the same [Sidenote: Alleged refusal of Stigand to consecrate William.] rites and by the same hand. I wish we could believe, on the report of some later English writers, that William sought for consecration at the hands of Stigand, and that the high-souled Primate refused to pour the holy unction on the head of an usurper and a man of blood.[1617] But had William offered to be crowned by Stigand, he would indeed have fallen away from his character as the reformer of English ecclesiastical discipline.[1618] The act too would have been equivalent to giving up one of his three counts against England;[1619] it would have been an acknowledgement that Archbishop Robert had been lawfully deposed. The scruple which had affected even the mind of Harold, would probably be really felt by William with ten times as great force; it would certainly be professed by him [Sidenote: Stigand not allowed to consecrate William.] with ten times as great ostentation. The special favourite and champion of Rome could not, in common consistency, ask for consecration at the hands of a Primate whom Rome had declared to be no Primate at all, and who had no pallium save that which he had received from an usurper of [Sidenote: Position of Stigand; his share in the ceremony.] the Holy See.[1620] Still Stigand, though not a lawful Primate, was at least an ordained Priest and a consecrated Bishop; he might perhaps even be recognized as the lawful occupant of the see of Winchester. He was also personally the first man in England, to whom it was William’s policy for the present to avoid giving any needless offence. He was therefore allowed to take a part in the ceremony second only to that of the actual celebrant. But the sacramental rite itself was to be performed by the hands [Sidenote: The actual consecration performed by Ealdred.] of Ealdred. The Northern Primate was the only canonical Metropolitan in the realm, and he was the man who, as having been the leader of the embassy at Berkhampstead, might be looked on as having been the first Englishman to take a formal part in making William King.[1621] The Primate of Northumberland had thus in one year to anoint two Kings, the champion of England and her Conqueror. He had to anoint both far away from his own province, and to anoint both at a time when he could in no way pledge himself that the willing consent of his province should confirm his own formal act.
[Sidenote: Coronation of William. December 25.]
The Christmas morn at last came; and once more, as on the day of the Epiphany, a King-elect entered the portals of the West Minster to receive his Crown. But [Sidenote: The approach to the church guarded by Norman horseman.] now, unlike the day of the Epiphany, the approach to the church was kept by a guard of Norman horsemen.[1622] Otherwise all was peaceful. Within the church all was in readiness; a new crown, rich with gems,[1623] was ready for the ceremony; a crowd of spectators of both nations [Sidenote: The Coronation procession.] filled the minster. The great procession then swept on.[1624] A crowd of clergy bearing crosses marched first; then followed the Bishops; lastly, surrounded by the chief men of his own land and of his new Kingdom, came the renowned Duke himself, with Ealdred and Stigand on either side of him.[1625] Amid the shouts of the people, William the Conqueror passed on to the royal seat before the high altar, there to go through the same solemn rites which had so lately been gone through on the same spot by his fallen rival. The Te Deum which had been sung [Sidenote: William elected before the altar.] over Harold was now again sung over William. And now again, in ancient form, the crowd that thronged the minster was asked whether they would that the candidate who stood before them should be crowned King over the land. But now a new thing, unknown to the coronation of Eadward or of Harold, had to mark the coronation of William. A King was to be crowned who spake not our ancient tongue, and, with him, many who knew not the speech of England stood there to behold the rite. It was therefore not enough for Ealdred to demand in his native tongue whether the assembled crowd consented to the consecration of the Duke of the Normans. The question had to be put a second time in French by Geoffrey, Bishop of Coutances, one of the Prelates who had borne his part in those rites in the camp at Hastings which had ushered in the day of Saint Calixtus.[1626] The assent of the assembled multitude of both nations was given in ancient form. The voices which on the Epiphany had shouted “Yea, yea, King Harold,” shouted at Christmas with equal apparent zeal, “Yea, yea, King William.” Men’s hearts had not changed, but they had learned, through the events of that awful year, to submit as cheerfully as might be to the doom which could not be escaped.[1627] The shout rang loud through the minster; it reached the ears of the Norman horsemen who kept watch around the building. They had doubtless never before heard the mighty voice of an assembled people. They deemed, or professed to deem, that some evil was being done to the [Sidenote: The Norman horsemen fire the houses near the church.] newly chosen sovereign. Instead however of rushing in to his help, they hastened, with the strange instinct of their nation, to set fire to the buildings around the minster.[1628] [Sidenote: Scene of utter confusion; William and the clergy left alone in the church.] At once all was confusion; the glare was seen, the noise was heard, within the walls of the church. Men and women of all ranks rushed forth to quench the flames or to save their goods, some, it is said, to seek for their chance of plunder in such a scene of terror.[1629] The King-elect, with the officiating Prelates and clergy and the monks of the Abbey, alone remained before the altar. They trembled, and, perhaps for the first and the last time in his life, William trembled also.[1630] His heart had never failed him either in council or in battle, but here was a scene the like of which William [Sidenote: William’s coronation oath.] himself was not prepared to brave. But the rite went on; the trembling Duke took the oaths of an English King, the oaths to do justice and mercy to all within his realm, and a special oath, devised seemingly to meet the case of a foreign King, an oath that, if his people proved loyal to him, he would rule them as well as the best of the Kings who had gone before him.[1631] The prayers and litanies and hymns went on; the rite, hurried and maimed of its splendour, lacked nothing of sacramental virtue or of ecclesiastical [Sidenote: William crowned and anointed King.] significance. All was done in order; while the flames were raging around, amid the uproar and the shouts which surrounded the holy place, Ealdred could still nerve himself to pour the holy oil upon the royal head, to place the rod and the sceptre in the royal hands. In the presence of that small band of monks and Bishops the great rite was brought to its close, and the royal diadem with all its gleaming gems rested firmly on the brow of William, King of the English.
[Sidenote: Summary.]
The work of the Conquest was now formally completed; the Conqueror sat in the royal seat of England. He had claimed the Crown of his kinsman; he had set forth his claim in the ears of Europe; he had maintained it on the field of battle, and now it had been formally acknowledged by the nation over which he sought to rule. As far as words and outward rites went, nothing was now wanting; William was King, chosen, crowned, and anointed. But how far he still was from being in truth ruler over the whole land, the tale which is yet in store will set before us. We have yet to see how gradually William won, how sternly yet how wisely, he ruled, the land which he had conquered. We have to see how, one by one, the native chiefs of England were subdued, won over, or cut off, and how the highest offices and the richest lands of England were parted out among strangers. We have to see the Conqueror in all his might; we have to see him too in those later and gloomier years, when home-bred sorrows gathered thickly around him, and when victory at last ceased to wait upon his banners. At last, by a cycle as strange as any in the whole range of history, we shall follow him to his burial as we have followed him to his crowning, and we shall see the body of the Conqueror lowered to his grave, in the land of his birth and in the minster of his own rearing, amid a scene as wild and awful as that of the day which witnessed his investiture with the royalty of England.
APPENDIX.
NOTE A. p. 3.
THE AUTHORITY OF THE BAYEUX TAPESTRY.
It will be seen that, throughout this volume, I accept the witness of the Bayeux Tapestry as one of my highest authorities. I do not hesitate to say that I look on it as holding the first place among the authorities on the Norman side. That it is a contemporary work I entertain no doubt whatever, and I entertain just as little doubt as to its being a work fully entitled to our general confidence. I believe the Tapestry to have been made for Bishop Odo, and to have been most probably designed by him as an ornament for his newly rebuilt cathedral church of Bayeux. In coming to these conclusions I have been mainly guided by what seems to me the unanswerable internal evidence of the Tapestry itself. Of that internal evidence I shall presently state the more important points, but, as the age and antiquity of the Tapestry have been made the subjects of a good deal of controversy, I think it right to begin by giving a summary of the literature of that controversy.
The earliest notice of the Tapestry is to be found in a communication made by M. Lancelot in 1724 to the French Academy, which was printed in the sixth volume of their Memoirs, p. 739 (Paris, 1729), and which, in some sort, entitles him to the honour of being looked on as its discoverer. Among the papers of M. Foucault, who had been Intendant in Normandy, was found what Lancelot calls “un Monument de Guillaume le Conquerant.” This was no other than a copy of the earlier scenes of the Tapestry, as far down as the coming of William’s messengers to Guy. The real nature of the monument was quite unknown; that it might be tapestry was simply one conjecture out of many which Lancelot made before the truth was found out. And he not unnaturally connected his discovery with Caen rather than with Bayeux. But the description which he gave of that part of the Tapestry which he had then seen, and the historical disquisition which he added, showed a very creditable knowledge of the original writers both English and Norman. His conclusion was as follows;
“Plus j’ay examiné le monument qui a servi de sujet à ces remarques, et plus je me suis persuadé qu’il estoit du temps à peu près où s’est passé l’évenement qu’il represente; habits, armes, caractères de lettres, ornements, goût dans les figures representées, tout sent le siècle de Guillaume le Conquérant, ou celuy de ses enfants.” (p. 755.)
Lancelot then was the first to call attention to the Tapestry, but without knowing that it was tapestry or where it was to be seen. This discovery was owing to the diligence of Montfaucon, who first conjectured, and afterwards found his conjecture to be right, that the fragment published by Lancelot was a copy of part of a roll of tapestry which used to be exhibited on certain feast-days in Bayeux Cathedral. Montfaucon gave two accounts of it in his Monumens de la Monarchie Françoise, at vol. i. p. 371, and at the beginning of vol. ii. He decides (ii. 2), on the evidence of the style of the work, the form of the armour, &c., that the work is a contemporary one, and he accepts as probable, what he says was the common opinion at Bayeux, that it was wrought by Queen Matilda. He thought that the Tapestry was designed to go on to the coronation of William, and that its imperfect state was owing to the Queen’s death in 1083.
The first volume of Montfaucon was published in 1729, the second in 1730. In the latter year Lancelot communicated to the Academy a second paper, which appeared in the eighth volume of the Memoirs (Paris, 1733), p. 602. He had by that time found out another fact with regard to the monument. The Tapestry, known locally as “la Toilette du Duc Guillaume,” was thus mentioned in an inventory of the goods of the Church of Bayeux of the date of 1476;
“Item. Une tente tres longue et etroite de telle à broderie de ymages et eserpteaulx [escripteaulx] faisans representation du Conquest d’Angleterre, laquelle est tendue environ la nef de l’Eglise le jour et par les octaves des Reliques.”
A short notice of the Tapestry in Beziers’ History of Bayeux (Caen, 1773) is wholly founded on Lancelot and Montfaucon.
The first English mention of the Tapestry, as far as I can make out, is to be found in Stukeley’s Palæographia Britannica, ii. 2. An abridgement of Montfaucon’s account, by Smart Lethicullier, F.R.S. and F.S.A., is added as an Appendix to Ducarel’s Anglo-Norman Antiquities, No. I. But the earliest actual writers of English history who dealt with the age and authority of the Tapestry were two authors who hold such different places in the estimation of the scholar as Lord Lyttelton and David Hume. Lyttelton (Hist. Henry II. i. 353, ed. 1769) came to a conclusion unfavourable to the authority of the Tapestry; but he did not come to it without really reading and thinking about the matter. His main point of objection was the supposed discrepancy between the Tapestry and the narrative of William of Poitiers with regard to the details of the Breton war, an objection perfectly reasonable as far as it goes, and the grounds of which I shall examine elsewhere (see Note T). Assuming, I suppose, that the tradition which ascribed the work to a Matilda must have some groundwork, Lyttelton “judged” that it was made by the orders, not of William’s Queen Matilda, but of her granddaughter the Empress.
This “judgement,” it should be noticed, was simply Lyttelton’s own conjecture, thrown out on his own responsibility. It is curious to mark the fate of this conjecture in the hands of Hume. It is due to Hume to say that he seems to have had a clearer notion of the real value of the Tapestry than Lyttelton. Yet in 1762, when he published the first edition of his early history, he knew the Tapestry only as “a very curious and authentic monument _lately discovered_. It is a tapestry, _preserved in the ducal palace at Roüen_, and _supposed_ to have been wrought by orders of _Matilda, wife to the Emperor_. At least it is of very great antiquity.” (i. 128.)
When this was written, the first discovery of the Tapestry, at least of the part of which Hume was speaking, was thirty-eight years old. Still it was in Hume’s eyes “lately discovered,” because he had most likely never before heard of it. The cathedral at Bayeux and the ducal palace at Rouen were all one to him, just as Milan and Pavia, Guelf and Ghibelin, were all one to him, when (p. 183) he turned Lanfranc into “a Milanese monk.” The tradition of Bayeux and the conjecture of Lyttelton are seemingly rolled together in the word “supposed,” and one might almost guess that Hume, while writing the reign of Eadward, had not yet learned to distinguish one Matilda from another; it clearly was quite indifferent to him which Emperor it was that either of them married.
But the beginning of any really serious and critical enquiry into the age and authority of the Tapestry was reserved for the present century. Attention began to be called to it during the time of the French Republic. Some curious letters on the subject are printed in Pluquet’s “Essai Historique sur la ville de Bayeux,” pp. 76–81. It appears that the Tapestry at one time narrowly escaped being cut into shreds to adorn a civic car. It afterwards actually underwent a fate almost as degrading. The elder Buonaparte, then “First Consul,” carried it off to Paris, and showed it at the Louvre, to stir up his subjects—“citizens” they are still called in the official letters—to another conquest of England! But this kind of folly had at least the advantage of fixing the thoughts of learned men on the Tapestry itself. The firstfruits of their studies appeared in 1812, in the form of a paper by the Abbé de la Rue, Professor at Caen and Canon of Bayeux, of which an English translation by Mr. Douce is printed in the Archæologia, vol. xvii. p. 85. M. de la Rue followed Lyttelton in attributing the Tapestry to the time and the orders of the Empress Matilda. Against the tradition which attributed it to the wife of the Conqueror he brings several arguments. It is nowhere mentioned in the will of Queen Matilda or in any other wills or charters of her age or that of her sons. If it had been placed in Bayeux Cathedral in Queen Matilda’s time, it must have perished in the fire by which that church was destroyed in 1106. Some relics were saved, but no one would have taken the trouble to save the Tapestry. Some points of non-agreement between the accounts in the Tapestry and the Roman de Rou show that Wace had never seen the Tapestry. But, as a Canon of Bayeux, he could not fail to have seen it, if it had been there in his time. The work again must be later than Queen Matilda’s time, because the border contains references to fables of Æsop, which were not known in the West till the time of the Crusades. It is shown moreover to be of English work, from the occurrence of the mysterious Ælfgyva. This name he takes to be an English way of describing the Duchess, afterwards Queen, Matilda. Wadard again, whose name he takes to be English, and the word “Ceastra” are brought as proofs of English workmanship. Another point on which he strongly insists is that the Normans are called _Franci_ in the Tapestry, which he argues would not have been done by Norman artists. He concludes therefore that the Tapestry was made in England by order of the Empress, at some time between 1162, about which time Wace wrote, and 1167, the year of her own death.
This communication led to several other papers on the subject in the Archæologia, and to what was more valuable than all, to the publication of the beautiful and accurate representation of the Tapestry itself, made for the Society of Antiquaries by Stothard. At vol. xviii. p. 359 of the Archæologia is a letter written in 1816 by Mr. Hudson Gurney, who had seen the Tapestry for himself. He argues in favour of the antiquity attributed to the work by the local tradition. He insists on various points of costume, and on the evident attempt at preserving a likeness in the figures, especially in that of William. He concludes that it was made for Queen Matilda by English workwomen. The nineteenth volume of the Archæologia contains three papers on the Tapestry or on subjects connected with it. The first by Mr. Amyot, at p. 88, does not deal with the question of the age of the Tapestry itself, but only with the evidence which it gives as to the cause of Harold’s voyage to Normandy. The second, at p. 184, is a powerful argument by Stothard in favour of the antiquity of the Tapestry, but in which he does not commit himself to any connexion with Queen Matilda. Stothard was the first to see that the one proposition did not involve the other. He enlarges on the costume as belonging to the eleventh century and not to the twelfth, and on the utter improbability that any mediæval artist of a later age should attend to antiquarian accuracy in these matters. He remarks also on the obscure persons represented on the Norman side, Turold, Vital, and Wadard, as distinct proof that the Tapestry was a contemporary Norman work.
In the hands of Stothard the subject had for the first time fallen into hands really capable of dealing with it as it deserved. But Stothard is well followed up in a second paper by Mr. Amyot in p. 192 of the same volume, in which he disposes of most of the arguments of M. de la Rue against the antiquity of the Tapestry. He still however seems to think that, if it were a contemporary monument, it must have been the work of Queen Matilda, or wrought by her order. Mr. Amyot also points out that Wadard is not only, as Stothard had seen, a proper name, but that it is the name of a real man who appears in Domesday, and also that Wadard, Turold, and Vital were all tenants of Odo. Mr. Amyot very appositely observes that “Franci” was the only name which could properly express the whole of William’s mingled army, and that “Franci” and “Francigenæ” are the words constantly opposed to “Angli” in documents of the age of the Conqueror and much later.
In 1824 M. de la Rue republished at Caen his essay in the Archæologia, with an Appendix containing an attempt at a refutation of Stothard and Amyot. He was again briefly answered by another Norman antiquary, M. Pluquet, in his Essai Historique sur la ville de Bayeux (Caen, 1829). Pluquet was the first distinctly to assert that the work had nothing to do with either Matilda, but that it was made by order of Bishop Odo (p. 81). In 1840 Mr. Bolton Corney put forth a tract, in which he attempted to show that the Tapestry was made by the Chapter of Bayeux after the French Conquest of Normandy. He argues that, during the union of England and Normandy, the _conquest_ of England, which William took such pains to disguise under the semblance of legal right, would not be thus ostentatiously set forth in Normandy. Some learned person, he holds, was employed to keep the costume right, a degree of antiquarian care for which it would be hard to find a parallel in the middle ages.
Thierry reprinted Lancelot’s account as a note at the end of his first volume (p. 353, ed. 1840), adding two notes of his own. In the first he accepts the Tapestry as a contemporary work, designed for the ornament of the church of Bayeux, and quotes M. de la Rue as attributing the work to the Empress Matilda. In the second he quotes him as attributing it neither to William’s Queen Matilda nor to Matilda the Empress, but to Eadgyth-Matilda, the wife of Henry the First. I do not know whether this was a confusion of Thierry’s, or whether De la Rue ever came to change his opinion. At any rate Thierry successively accepts these two distinct theories as highly probable, and sees in one or other of them the explanation of the alleged English words and forms which are found in several places of the Tapestry.
Dr. Lingard (Hist. of England, i. 547, ed. 1849) gives a note to the subject, for the substance of which he professes to be indebted to Mr. Bolton Corney. But he does not commit himself to the more grotesque parts of Mr. Corney’s theory. He altogether rejects the supposed connexion between the Tapestry and any of the Matildas. He holds that it was originally made as a decoration for the church of Bayeux, and that it was designed to commemorate the share which the men of Bayeux bore in the Conquest of England. This he infers from the prominence given to Odo, and from the appearance of his retainers, Turold, Vital, and Wadard. Rather than attribute the work to Matilda, he inclines to believe that the Tapestry originated in the personal vanity of some of these men, or of their descendants.
I suppose I am not expected to take any serious notice of some amusing remarks on the Tapestry made by Miss Agnes Strickland (Queens of England, i. 65, 66), who recommends “the lords of the creation” “to leave the question of the Bayeux Tapestry to the decision of the ladies, to whose province it belongs.” According to Miss Strickland, the Tapestry was “in part at least designed for Matilda by Turold, a dwarf artist.” Miss Strickland speaks of a Norman tradition to that effect, but perhaps even a “lord of the creation” may venture to ask where that Norman tradition is to be found.
I return into the every-day world in company with Dr. Collingwood Bruce, who read a paper on the Tapestry before the Archæological Institute at Chichester in 1853, which afterwards grew into a volume called “The Bayeux Tapestry Elucidated” (London, 1856). Dr. Bruce follows Stothard in the argument for the early date of the Tapestry, drawn from the correctness of the costume. He argues further on the same side from the manifest object of the Tapestry, namely to set forth the right of William to the English Crown. He cleaves in a somewhat unreasoning way to the tradition which attributes the work to the first Matilda, but he fully grasps the manifest connexion of the Tapestry with Bayeux and its church. He even goes so far as to attribute the two or three apparently English forms which appear in the legends of the Tapestry to the common use of the Teutonic language in the Bessin, which he supposes, without any authority that I know of, to have lasted as late as the reign of William. Dr. Bruce however thinks that the designer of the Tapestry, as distinguished from those who wrought it in the stitch-work, was an Italian.
Sir Francis Palgrave, in the posthumous part of his work (iii. 254), has an incidental reference to the Tapestry, in which he takes for granted that it is the work of Queen Matilda, without any hint that any question has ever been raised about the matter.
Lastly, Mr. Planché published a paper “On the Bayeux Tapestry” in the Journal of the British Archæological Association for June, 1867 (p. 134). Mr. Planché follows M. Pluquet, and gives a good summary of his arguments; he then goes minutely through the Tapestry, giving his views at each stage, to some of which I shall have to refer again. “The report,” he says, “mentioned by Montfaucon that it was the work of Queen Matilda and her handmaids, originated probably in the suggestion of some antiquary of the sixteenth or seventeenth century repeated till it assumed the consistency of a fact.”
I now go on to give my own reasons for accepting the early date of the Tapestry. The arguments of Stothard drawn from the accurate representation of the costume of the eleventh century seem to me unanswerable. Dr. Bruce adds a good instance of his own in a comparison of the Tapestry with a passage in the Roman de Rou. Wace (v. 12628) speaks of the horse of William Fitz-Osbern as “all covered with iron,” (see above, p. 455, and Taylor’s note, p. 162), whereas in the Tapestry “not a single horse is equipped in steel armour; and if we refer to the authors who lived at that period we shall find that not one of them mentions any defensive covering for the horse.”
Mr. Amyot’s arguments with regard to Wadard, Vital, and Turold seem to me distinctly to prove that the work was a contemporary one, and one made for Bishop Odo and the church of Bayeux. As Dr. Lingard says, it is quite inconceivable that these persons, who are of no importance in the general history, whose reputation must have been purely local, should have received such prominence in any but a purely local work. The only persons on the Norman side who appear by name in the representation of the landing and of the battle are the Duke and his two brothers, Count Eustace of Boulogne, and these three obscure retainers of Bishop Odo. We see them here in the Tapestry, and the industry of Mr. Amyot and Dr. Lingard has traced them out in Domesday, but no other mention survives of them. Ralph, the son of Turold, Vital, Wadard “homo episcopi,” all occur in Domesday, 1, 6, 7, 8, 8 _a_, 9, 10, 32, 77, 155 _b_, 238 _b_, 342 _b_, and in every case their land is held of Bishop Odo. It is plain that, in the mind of the designer of the Tapestry, the Bishop of Bayeux and his favourite followers came next after Duke William himself. This fact seems to me to be equally decisive in favour of its being a contemporary work and against its being a work of Matilda.
Here, I think, is abundant evidence both to establish the contemporary date, and to show the object of the work. It was plainly a gift from Odo to his own newly-built cathedral. But it is quite possible that the work was done in England. The evidence is certainly very slight. I believe it is wholly contained in the words “at Hastingaceastra” (pl. 11). I cannot think that “at” for “ad” proves anything, but the form “ceastra” goes a good way to prove that the work was English. The notion of Dr. Bruce and Mr. Planché that these forms are not English but Saxon of Bayeux, seems very fanciful. Besides, the form “ceaster” is one which is not Nether-Dutch in a wide sense, but distinctly and locally English. I know of no instance of its occurrence in the Bessin, or indeed anywhere out of England.
Most of the objections made to the early date of the Tapestry are well disposed of by M. Pluquet and Mr. Planché; but to one of their arguments I must demur. M. de la Rue (see above, p. 566) objected that the borders contain scenes from Æsop’s Fables, which he says were not known in the West till afterwards. Mr. Planché, oddly enough, quotes (p. 136) Freculf, Bishop of Lisieux, who, he tells us, “lived in the eleventh century,” as saying that Eadward caused the Fables of Æsop to be translated into English. He goes on with a reference to the false Ingulf, which I need not discuss. As for Freculf, who died somewhere about the year 853, if he said anything at all about our Eadward, he must have enjoyed a prophetic power rivalling that of the saint himself. But it is well known that Mary of France, the poetess of the thirteenth century, professes to have made her French version of the Fables from an English version made by an English King. Mary’s knowledge of English will be a point of some importance in the last stage of this work; at present I am concerned only with the words (ii. 401, ed. Roquefort. See Palgrave, iv. 225),
“Li rois Henris qui moult l’ama Le translata puis en Engleiz.”
Other manuscripts however read Auvert, Auvres, &c., names which of course mean Ælfred. The whole matter is discussed by M. de la Rue in Roquefort’s Preface (ii. 34). If Ælfred be the right reading, there is no doubt of the early knowledge of the Fables in England. If Henry be the right reading, I certainly think that the King meant is Henry the First, whose probable English education I shall have to discuss hereafter. I think we may guess that, if Henry translated anything into English, it was early in life that he did it, and Henry was born about the time when the Tapestry must have been making.
For my own part I should reverse the argument. I have that confidence in the Tapestry that I accept the figures wrought in its border as proof that the Fables were known in Normandy and England in the eleventh century.
The external evidence then seems to be complete. The work must be a contemporary one; there is no evidence to connect it with Matilda; there is every evidence to connect it with Odo. It was probably, but I cannot say certainly, made in England. I now turn to that branch of the question which to me is yet more interesting, the internal evidence for looking on the Tapestry as I look on it, as a primary authority for the subject of the present volume, as in fact the highest authority on the Norman side.
I ground this belief on the way in which the story is told. It is told from the Norman point of view, but it is told with hardly any of the inventions, exaggerations, and insinuations of the other Norman authorities. In fact the material has a certain advantage. Stitch-work must tell its tale simply and straightforwardly; it cannot lose itself in the rhetoric of Eadward’s Biographer or in the invective of William of Poitiers. And the tale which the Tapestry tells us comes infinitely nearer to the genuine English story than it does even to the narrative of the Conqueror’s laureate. To the later romances, the tales for instance of Eadward’s French Biographer, it gives no countenance whatever. With regard to the great controversial points, those which I shall go through in detail in future notes, the Tapestry nearly always agrees with the authentic account. There is not a word or a stitch which at all countenances any of the calumnious tales which were afterwards current. In the Tapestry the bequest of Eadward to Harold, his orderly acceptance of the Crown, his ecclesiastical coronation, all appear as plainly as they do in the narrative of Florence. The only point of diversity is that the Tapestry seems to represent Stigand, and not Ealdred, as the consecrator. Now there was no absolute necessity for a partizan of William to deny the facts of the case. William’s claim rested rather on the invalidity of the bequest, the election, and the coronation, than on any denial that the ceremonies themselves had taken place. And accordingly, in the earlier Norman writers, most of the facts are admitted in a kind of way. It is not till long afterwards that we find the full developement of those strange fables which, in so many modern histories, have supplanted the truth. Had the Tapestry been a work of later date, it is hardly possible that it could have given the simple and accurate account of these matters which it does give. A work of the twelfth or thirteenth century would have brought in, as even honest Wace does in some degree, the notions of the twelfth or the thirteenth century. One cannot conceive an artist of the time of Henry the Second, still less an artist later than the French Conquest of Normandy, agreeing so remarkably with the authentic writings of the eleventh century. The truth was in those days almost wholly forgotten, and no one would have been likely to represent the story with any accuracy.
But though the Tapestry perverts the story less than any other Norman account, it is still essentially a Norman account. One main object of the work is plainly to set forth the right of William to the English Crown. This was of course the great object of William himself and of his contemporary partizans. But it was not an object which greatly occupied men’s minds in the days of Henry the Second or later. The writers of that time, as I shall presently show, are as bitter, perhaps more bitter, against Harold than the Norman writers of his own time; but their bitterness comes from a different source. Under the Angevin dynasty, descended, as it was, in a roundabout way from Old-English royalty, men were beginning to look on Harold and William as alike usurpers. We begin to hear of strict hereditary right and of the exclusion of the lawful heir. Henry the Second encouraged his panegyrists to set forth his lawful descent from ancient English Kings, without any reference whatever to his descent from the Norman invader. It was only in the female line that Henry was either Norman or English; in his real ancestry, in his real feelings and character, he was as little one as the other. It is most unlikely that any one should have wrought, in the days of Henry or for Henry’s mother, a work which throughout breathes the spirit of the earliest days of the Conquest.
In like manner, the representation of William’s landing and of the great battle could have come only from the hand of a contemporary. The mere fulness of detail, the evident delight with which the artist dwells on all the little incidents of the campaign, point it out as the work of one in whose memory they were all vividly retained. The notices of insignificant people, like Turold, Wadard, and Vital, while they point to the place for which the Tapestry was designed, point also to a time when these retainers of Bishop Odo were still living. In the days of the Empress Matilda their fame is not likely to have been great, even at Bayeux. So again every antiquarian detail is accurate; the nose-pieces, the lack of armour on the horses, the care taken to represent every man bearded, moustached, or close-shaven, according to his age and nation (see vol. ii. p. 27), all bespeak the work of a contemporary artist. The idea of Mr. Corney that the Chapter of Bayeux in the thirteenth century would specially order its artists to attend to such points is ludicrous beyond measure, and it had been disposed of beforehand in the masterly argument of Stothard. But the Tapestry is equally accurate in greater matters. The English army is an English army of the eleventh century and nothing else. The two classes of warriors, the _here_ and the _fyrd_, the Housecarls in their coats of mail with their great axes, the peasantry armed almost anyhow, are nowhere more clearly marked. The utter absence of horses, except as a means, as in the days of Brihtnoth (see vol. i. pp. 299, 301), for reaching or leaving the field—the King himself fighting on foot—the ensign of the West-Saxon Dragon—all these are touches from a contemporary hand, which it is utterly inconceivable that any artist working a hundred or a hundred and fifty years later could have preserved. It is worth while to mark the remarkable contrast between the Battle of Senlac as represented in the Tapestry, and the Battle of Stamfordbridge as described by Snorro. The contemporary artist represented things as he saw them; the writer of the thirteenth century described things as he saw them also; but then they did not see the same things. The Bayeux Tapestry represents Harold’s army at Senlac as Harold’s army really was. The narrative in the Heimskringla describes Harold’s army at Stamfordbridge after the pattern of an army of the thirteenth century.
This precious monument is now well preserved and cared for. After its ridiculous journey to Paris, it came back safe to its Norman home, but it was kept for a while in a way which did not tend much to its preservation. It was wound round a sort of windlass, and was unwound and handled whenever anybody looked at it. It is now in a much better position. It is kept under glass in the public Library at Bayeux, where it is stretched out round the room at a convenient height, where it may be studied with the greatest ease. I have there examined it three times, once in 1861, and twice in 1867, and I may say that, fully to realize its value and importance, it should be seen. Stothard’s reduction is admirable in every way, and serves for every ordinary purpose of study, but I doubt whether any one thoroughly takes in what the Tapestry is till he has seen it with his own eyes. I had myself learned to value the Tapestry long before I saw it, but my examination of it certainly made my confidence in it far stronger and clearer. It is no small matter to spell over the details of the story in the picture itself, and the process reaches its height at the last stage. I think no one can see the end of the battle, the Housecarls every one lying dead in his harness, while the light-armed are taking to flight, some of them on the horses of the fallen, and not feel that he is in the presence of a work traced out by one who had himself seen the scenes which he thus handed down to later ages.
NOTE B. p. 14.
EADWARD’S BEQUEST OF THE CROWN TO HAROLD.
At this stage of my history, I need hardly say that every point has been matter of dispute from the time of the events themselves down to our own day. I give in the text the narrative which I believe to be the accurate one, adding references to the particular authorities on which I found it. In this and the following notes I purpose to examine minutely into the different statements made at the time and soon after. I purpose also to go a little more fully than usual into the statements of later writers. Mere copyists or compilers, writing some ages after the events, are in no sense authorities; they can add nothing to our knowledge of the events themselves. But, on a point of our history of such paramount importance, and one which has been so fiercely disputed, it does in a certain way add to our knowledge of history to see how the facts of those times looked in the eyes of men of various later ages.
I need not tell any reader of mine that I hold that King Harold was a King as lawful as any King—I might almost say more lawful than any other King—that ever reigned over England. No other King in our history ever reigned so distinctly by the national will. But there is no King, there is hardly any man, in our history who has been made the object of such ceaseless calumny from his own time to ours. The hostile faction triumphed, not only on the field of battle, but in the pages of pretended history, and, for eight hundred years, the name of Harold has been constantly branded with the appellations of “perjurer” and “usurper.” My object is to do what I can to undo this great wrong, to bring back the true history of a great man and of a great time, and to set forth Harold and his acts as they appeared to his countrymen in his own days. This I have endeavoured to do in my text. In this and the following notes I intend to go systematically through all the points in which the witness of contemporary English writers on these matters has been obscured and forgotten through notions drawn from less trustworthy sources.
Of the two great charges brought against Harold, those of usurpation and perjury, both can be traced up to his own time. Both come from the tongues and pens of contemporary Norman accusers. But, of the two, the charge of perjury was the one which was the more insisted on in the times nearest to his own. In Harold’s own day, and for some generations after, the charge which told most against him was the charge of breach of faith, aggravated by irreverence to the relics of the saints. In the eyes of Harold’s contemporary enemies, and in the eyes of the later writers who look on him from the same point of view, Harold is a faithless vassal, breaking his plighted faith to his liege lord. He is something even worse; he is one who did not shrink from breaking an oath of unusual solemnity, and who thereby drew on himself the wrath of a number of holy persons whose wonder-working relics he thus set at nought. But modern writers who take a view unfavourable to Harold have commonly dwelt less on the perjury and more on the usurpation. In their eyes Harold is a violator of constitutional order, who ascended the throne to the prejudice of the lawful heir. In the one view the injured party is the Norman Duke; in the other it is the English Ætheling. The two charges, though often mixed together, are in themselves quite distinct. The charge of usurpation affects the right to the Crown; the charge of perjury does not touch it. Let Harold’s perjury have been of the blackest kind, it could not give either William or Eadgar any right to the Crown which they would not have had if Harold had not sworn at all. If the Crown was hereditary, no engagement, no breach of any engagement, between William and Harold could bar the indefeasible rights of the natural heir. If the Crown could pass by bequest, no such engagement could bar the right of Eadward to bequeath it to whom he would. If the Crown was elective, no such engagement could bar the right of the electors to choose whom they would. Nowhere is the wonderful skill of William more clearly shown than in the way in which he made men forget these very obvious distinctions. I therefore put aside the question of perjury from the present question. I have elsewhere discussed Harold’s oath at length, both as it bears on the facts of the history and as it bears on the character of Harold (see p. 240 et seqq. and Appendix R). But the oath has nothing to do with the present subject. It bears only indirectly on the rightfulness of Harold’s accession; on the facts of his accession it does not bear at all.
As to the facts of Harold’s accession, the strictly English writers make three distinct assertions;
First, That Harold was named as his successor by Eadward;
Secondly, That he was regularly elected King by the Witan;
Thirdly, That he was regularly consecrated King by Archbishop Ealdred.
These three assertions are made by the best English writers in a perfectly plain and unmistakeable way. They stand before us as assertions about which there can be no question, except the question whether they are true or false. All three are more or less directly traversed by Norman writers and by later writers who followed Norman traditions. But the contradiction is by no means so plain and unmistakeable as the assertion. The Norman writers seem afraid of looking the facts in the face. They shroud themselves in a cloud of vague and declamatory phrases. They use language which serves to put their own colour on the story, without venturing directly to deny the assertions made by the English writers. They admit some nomination, some election, some consecration; only they attach some vague epithet, they add some ambiguous qualification, insinuating rather than asserting that there was something invalid about each of the processes. I will now go through the statements on each side in detail.
I take as my text the narrative of Florence (1066), who puts forth our three propositions in the clearest and tersest shape. His account runs thus;
“Quo [Eadwardo] tumulato, Subregulus Haroldus, Godwini Ducis filius, quem Rex ante suam decessionem regni successorem elegerat, a totius Angliæ primatibus ad regale culmen electus, die eodem ab Aldredo Eboracensi Archiepiscopo in Regem est honorificè consecratus.”
This passage may be looked on as a formal manifesto on the English side. It is the most remarkable and the most important of several passages of Florence (see vol. ii. p. 607) in which he does more than merely record an event, in which he evidently has other statements before his eye, and chooses his words so as distinctly, though silently, to contradict them. Though no other version of the facts is spoken of, yet every word is evidently weighed with careful reference to other versions; every word, in short, disposes of some Norman calumny or other. Harold reigns according to the last will of Eadward; that last will therefore was not in favour of William or of any other candidate. To express Eadward’s action in the matter, a word is used (“elegerat”) which is evidently meant to express free and deliberate choice, and to exclude any tales about an unwilling nomination wrung from him in his last moments. Again, Harold reigns by the election of the chief men of all England; this excludes the stories about his seizing the Crown without election, or with the approbation of a few of his own partizans only. Lastly, Harold is crowned, on the day indeed of the burial of Eadward, but after the funeral rites are finished, and evidently in the same building, the new minster of Saint Peter. This excludes the tale of his seizing the moment when the people were intent on the burial of the late King in order to be crowned in some hasty and irregular way at Saint Paul’s or elsewhere. He is solemnly consecrated King; this excludes the stories about his not being crowned at all, about his being crowned without any religious ceremony, about his putting the Crown on his own head. He is consecrated by Ealdred, by an Archbishop to whose position there was no canonical objection; therefore not by Stigand, whom strict churchmen looked on as an usurper. Nothing can be more evident than that Florence knew all the hostile inventions and perversions, and that he framed his own narrative so as to contradict the greatest possible number of them. In the same spirit, he goes on, at this point, to give that splendid panegyric on Harold’s government which is clearly meant as an answer to Norman calumnies of another kind. No passage in any writer of any age was ever written with more scrupulous care; in none does every word deserve to be more attentively weighed.
Now for the time which we have now reached the authority of Florence is all but the highest possible. He was a contemporary, in so far as he must have been born before 1066, though he could hardly have been old enough to record the events of that year from personal knowledge. But he had every opportunity of hearing of them from eye-witnesses and actors. As a member of the church of Worcester, he had the special advantage of being able to hear the story from his own Bishop Saint Wulfstan, the chosen friend of King Harold. His testimony therefore, even if it stood alone, is of that kind which even very sceptical critics allow to be thoroughly trustworthy. His statement is clear, terse, and forcible, and evidently designed to set aside other statements which he thought untrustworthy. But this is not all. The testimony of Florence does not stand alone. It is confirmed by the absolutely contemporary Chroniclers. It is confirmed, as far as the form of his work allows, by the Biographer of Eadward. Now the Biographer was not only a contemporary, but if not himself an eye-witness, he had his information from eye-witnesses, and that, not years after, but at the very time. The testimony of Florence again is confirmed by a witness more unexceptionable than all, by the earliest and most trustworthy witness on the Norman side, by the contemporary Tapestry. By one or more of these authorities Florence is borne out in every statement but one. He affirms that Harold was consecrated by Ealdred. The Chroniclers are silent as to the consecrator; the Tapestry implies—it can hardly be said directly to affirm—that the consecrator was Stigand. On all other points every jot and tittle of his story is confirmed by authorities still higher than his own, and on this one point he is not contradicted by the highest of all. Here is evidence of an amount and of a kind which the historian is lucky when he can get.
Florence wrote with two at least of the Chronicles before him, those namely of Abingdon and Worcester. Their narratives he translated and harmonized, and, when he thought it needful, he expanded them. In this case he thought a large expansion needful, in order to contradict the misstatements of enemies. But these Chronicles themselves assert, though in a less pointed and controversial form, two at least of the facts which Florence himself asserts. The Peterborough Chronicle, which Florence most probably had not before him, is only less distinct and emphatic than Florence himself as to all three. The bequest, the election, the consecration, are all distinctly asserted by one or more of the three Chroniclers. The only assertion which rests wholly on the authority of Florence himself is the assertion that Ealdred was the consecrator.
The two Chronicles which Florence followed distinctly assert that Eadward named Harold as his successor. I have already quoted the poetical passage in full at vol. ii. p. 537 (see also above, p. 19). The words which now immediately concern us are those in which the bequest is distinctly asserted; Eadward “made fast the Kingdom to Harold the noble Earl.” Then in the prose entry which follows, both Chronicles assert Harold’s royal consecration; “Her wearð Harold Eorl eac to Cynge gehalgod.” These words would certainly not be used of any but the regular ecclesiastical ceremony. These two Chroniclers however do not distinctly speak of the election. We may perhaps say that it was quite in character with their general political views to insist more on the royal bequest than on the popular election. (See vol. ii. pp. 12, 13, 600.) But this was a point on which the democrat of Peterborough was not likely to hold his peace. His account of the reign of Harold is much shorter than those of either of the other two annalists, but his account of his accession is fuller and more emphatic. He is also, as usual, more careful than his brethren as to his dates. And his words have a sort of triumphant ring as if they were written down at the moment. The poem preserved by the Abingdon and Worcester Chroniclers shows the same feeling. It was doubtless composed soon after the death of Eadward, by a gleeman eager on behalf of the new King. But their prose entries, with their remark on the “little stillness” of Harold’s reign (see above, p. 47), could not have been made till all was over. The entry in the Peterborough Chronicle runs thus;
“On þissum geare man halgode þet mynster æt Westmynstre on Cyldamæsse dæg. And se Cyng Eadward forðferde on Twelfta mæsse æfen, and hine mann bebyrgede on Twelftan mæssedæg, innan þære niwa halgodre circean on Westmynstre. And Harold Eorl feng to Englalandes cynerice, _swa swa se Cyng him geuðe, and eac men hine þærto gecuron_, and wæs gebletsod to Cyng on Twelftan mæssedæg.”
Here we have bequest, election, and consecration as clearly expressed as by Florence himself. Earl Harold is blessed to King over the Kingdom of England, as the King had granted to him and—words written with delight by that patriotic pen—as men eke chose him thereto.
The further examination of the election and coronation I leave to future notes. I now go on with my more immediate subject, namely the bequest. On this point the words of the Biographer should be very carefully marked, and they should be no less carefully compared with the picture in the Tapestry. It is from these two sources that I have drawn the narrative in the text (p. 14). We cannot too often remember the Biographer’s peculiar position. He was a courtier, probably a foreigner, writing to Eadgyth under the reign of William. He could not be expected to trumpet forth the nomination and election of Harold with all the glee of the Peterborough Chronicler. On the election indeed he was not in any case likely to be eloquent; it is, as we have often seen, his invariable tendency to put the monarchical element forward on all occasions, just as the Peterborough writer always delights to dwell on the popular side of every public act. But to put even the bequest forward in any prominent way did not suit either his position or the scheme of his work. We have seen that he nowhere directly mentions the fact that either Harold or William ever reigned. William is never mentioned, never alluded to in any intelligible way. The only allusion to Harold’s reign is to be found in his mention of “Reges æquivoci” (p. 426) fighting near the Humber. One who writes in this sort of way could not be expected to insist at all strongly on Eadward’s nomination of Harold as his successor. A distinct and formal announcement that Harold was the choice of Eadward was to the Peterborough Chronicler a present fact which he delighted to record. To Florence it was a fact of national history which it was important to preserve in the face of contradictory fictions. To the Biographer it was a fact which it did not suit his scheme prominently to dwell on, while any prominent dwelling on it might not have been specially agreeable to his patroness. He therefore records the fact in a way, but he keeps it in the background; he mixes up the commendation of England to Harold with the commendation of Eadgyth, and he tries as it were to hide the Kingdom under the skirts of the Lady. Harold is, first of all, to be faithful and respectful to his sister; the Kingdom is given him as something quite secondary, perhaps as an incidental means of doing the more honour to Eadgyth. Yet the words after all really amount to a bequest. Eadward, in this narrative, enlarges on the merits of Eadgyth; he then stretches forth his hand to Harold, and says, “Hanc _cum omni regno_ tutandam commendo.” The words alone might perhaps not strike a casual reader, but, when we read them by the light of the known facts and of the words of the contemporary Chroniclers, we at once see their meaning. The Biographer so chose his expressions as distinctly to imply a fact which it was not convenient for him directly to assert. He chose also a somewhat remarkable and a somewhat ambiguous word, “commendare.” As applied to Eadgyth and to Eadward’s Norman friends it would simply mean, “I entrust them to your protection;” but, as applied to a Kingdom, the word is a technical word, and carries a technical meaning. As a man, like the “commendati homines” of Domesday, _commended_ himself to his lord, so the lord was often said to _commend_ to his man the estate which he granted to him (see vol. i. p. 136). One can hardly doubt that the word was chosen on purpose. Eadward doubtless used, as I have ventured to make him in the text, some form of words, which the Biographer, even in slurring over the matter, expressed by the technical term “commendare,” and which the Chroniclers expressed by the words “geuðe”—most likely the actual word used, if Eadward spoke English—and “befæste þæt rice.” The case, under the circumstances, seems very plain, and what follows makes it plainer still. Eadward, having commended to Harold his wife and his Kingdom, goes on to make to him a series of requests (see p. 15) which imply that his own royal authority will, on his death, pass to Harold. They are requests which could be made only to a future King, or to one who was about to be clothed with the authority of a King. They would indeed be equally in place if addressed to a Regent. According to modern ideas, we should probably have expected the last wishes of Eadward to be that the young Eadgar should reign, but that Harold should govern. But such an arrangement was not in accordance with the customs of the time. A Regency seems never to have been thought of; not a word in any of our authorities leads us to believe that such a scheme entered the head of any man. The words then, if not addressed to a future Regent, must be addressed to a future King. In short, I have no doubt that the Biographer, the highest authority for Eadward’s personal acts, who had his information directly from persons who were present by Eadward’s death-bed (see p. 10, note 1), meant to imply that Eadward made a death-bed recommendation in favour of Harold. But I believe also that, partly through his own rhetorical turn, partly through the circumstances under which he wrote, he chose to wrap up his tale in a certain degree of obscurity of language.
With the Biographer before us, we better understand the Tapestry. Each explains the other; the two agree in the smallest points of detail. The Biographer describes four persons as being in immediate attendance on the King, and he gives us their names. They are the Lady Eadgyth, Archbishop Stigand, Earl Harold, and Robert the Staller. These four exactly answer to the four in the Tapestry. Of the two laymen no one can doubt that the one who is personally attending on the King is the court-officer, the Staller Robert. The other, who stands by the bed-side opposite to the Archbishop, is of course the Earl of the West-Saxons. To him, and to no one else, the King is stretching forth his hand. The action thus wrought in the stitch-work is actually recorded in the Life (see p. 14). And from the Life we know with what object Eadward then stretched forth his hand to Harold. It was not “simply to hid him farewell;” still less was it “to bid him to respect his oath to William” (see Planché, Journal of British Archæological Association, June 1867, p. 146). It was to commend to him his wife and his Kingdom; it was to make his last requests to the future King on behalf of his personal friends.
Such is the plain result of a comparison between the Tapestry and the Life. I do not think that any one who minutely makes the comparison will attach much importance to the sceptical remarks of Mr. Planché in the article to which I have just referred. But those who, with Mr. Planché, do not take in the difference between contemporary and secondary authorities, may, instead of the Life, use the account in Æthelred of Rievaux (X Scriptt. 400), who (or rather his guide Osbert) clearly copied from the Life.
Another smaller point may be noticed, namely the arrangement of the scenes in the Tapestry. It has been remarked by Mr. Planché and others that, at this point, the order of time is forsaken; the burial of Eadward is placed before his deathbed and death. On this Dr. Bruce (p. 75) says, very truly; “The seeming inconsistency is very easily explained. A new subject is now entered upon, and that subject is the right of succession. One important element in it is the grant of the King.” The designer of the Tapestry puts in close and pointed neighbourhood the last speech of Eadward, the death of Eadward, the offering of the Crown to Harold, the actual coronation. In this sort of picture-writing it would have disturbed the thread of the story if the burial of Eadward had been put in its right place, between the offering of the Crown and the coronation. The meaning of the order which is followed is plainly this; “Eadward left the Crown to Harold; he died; the Crown, in pursuance of his wishes, was offered to Harold; Harold was formally crowned.” It is hard to find any other explanation for the otherwise strange displacement of the funeral.
Explaining then, as we most fairly may, one contemporary witness by another, explaining the Tapestry by the Life and the Life by the Chronicles, we get a most distinct agreement of our best authorities in favour of the position that Eadward’s dying recommendation was made in favour of Harold. Some may perhaps be surprised to find the fact so distinctly set forth in the Norman Tapestry. But we shall soon see that all the earliest and best Norman writers fully admit the fact of the recommendation. What they do is to try to explain away its force as they best may. Stitch-work had so far the advantage over pen and ink that it was well nigh obliged to confine itself to facts, or at least to choose between facts and positive lies. The needle was a bad instrument for surmises and insinuations, and it is only once or twice in the story that it attempts them.
I now go on to the chain of later writers who repeat the contemporary English statement. They of course add nothing to its direct authority; still it is important and interesting to trace the existence of the two opposite traditions, side by side. Simeon of Durham (X Scriptt. 193), Ralph of Diss (479), Roger of Howden (i. 108, ed. W. Stubbs), Thomas Stubbs (X Scriptt. 1702), and the Ely historian (ii. 43, 44), all copy the words of Florence with regard to Harold’s accession, and most of them go on to copy his panegyric on Harold’s government. The account given by Peter of Langtoft is worth notice. He makes (i. 374 of the new ed., i. 53 of Robert of Brunne’s English version published by Hearne) Eadward settle the Crown on William in the days of the first Harold, immediately after the murder of Ælfred (see vol. ii. p. 302). Afterwards (i. 390, i. 61) he changed his mind, he forgot his promise to William, and settled the Crown on the Ætheling Eadward. So now on his death-bed, he again forgets both William and, I suppose, also forgets Eadward’s son Eadgar. He now makes a settlement in favour of Harold, nobody reminding him of the Duke’s claim (i. 398);
“Countes et barouns devaunt ly appelayt, A Harald fiz Godewyn sun regne devisayt, Le duk de Normendye ublyez avayt, Du covenaunt k’il ly fist nul ly mentyvayt.”
His English translator was a little puzzled at this, and thus sets forth his difficulty (i. 65);
“Þe barons before him kald, and said unto þam alle, ‘Tille Harald, Godwyn sonne, þe regne wille best falle.’ Me mervailes of my boke, I trowe, he wrote not right þat he forgate Wiliam of forward þat him hight.”
He then goes on to moralize out of Eadward’s speech (see above, p. 11), which is not given in Peter of Langtoft. Ralph Higden (284), after his manner, copies Florence, but copies other accounts as well.
To go back a good many generations, Eadmer (5) states the fact of the bequest in his own words; “In brevi post hæc obiit Edwardus. Juxta quod ille ante mortem statuerat, in regnum ei successit Haraldus.” He is followed by Walter of Hemingburgh (i. 8) in nearly the same words. Bromton (957) gives a most strange and confused account, made up from all manner of quarters, but in which the words of Eadmer are still imbedded. He says that some of the English wished to elect Eadgar; “Sed quia puer erat, et tanto oneri minùs idoneus, Haraldus Comes, filius supradicti Godwini, viribus et genere fretus, contra sacramentum quod Willielmo Duci Normanniæ præstiterat, regni diadema sinistro omine illico invasit, et sic perjurus Sancto Edwardo successit, juxta quod idem Edwardus, ut quidam aiunt, ante mortem suam statuerat.” He goes on to say that this bequest of Eadward was made “non obstante” two earlier bequests to William; he then mentions the alternative statements that Harold crowned himself and that he was crowned by Ealdred, and ends with Florence’s panegyric in a shortened form.
The writer whom we call Bromton was thus, it is plain, fairly puzzled among contradictory accounts. The compiler of the Waverley Annals found himself in yet greater straits. The early part of his history is formed by the process of translating the Peterborough Chronicle, and sticking in bits, partly from other writers, especially from Henry of Huntingdon, partly out of his own head. This process is indeed the same as that by which the early parts of most Annals are put together. But the odd thing is that this annalist should have chosen as his chief authorities two writers who, at this point, are so specially hard to reconcile as the Peterborough Chronicler and Henry of Huntingdon. This indeed puts him in difficulties. He translates the important sentence in the Chronicle fairly enough, but in the midst of it he sticks in an epithet of abuse from Henry of Huntingdon. This process gives us the following statement (188 ed. Luard). Eadward is buried; “Eodem die Consul Haraldus, Consul perjurus, sicut Rex ei concesserat, et etiam populi electione, [swa swa se Cyng hit him geuðe, and eac men hine þærto gecuron] sacratus est in Regem.” Somehow or other this did not seem satisfactory; so he states William’s three causes of offence out of Henry of Huntingdon (see p. 282), and then returns to give another account of Harold’s accession; “Mortuo itaque Edwardo, ut supra diximus, Rege Anglorum pacifico, Haraldus, perjurus filius Godwini potentissimi Consulis, invasit regnum Anglorum et diadema in perjurio; qui regnavit uno anno, et non pleno, quia propriâ injustitiâ regnum, quod injustè surripuit, Deo nolente, perdidit.” Here is a characteristic contrast between the clear statement of facts translated from the contemporary writer and the vague reviling and moralizing which seems to have been a necessary offering to the orthodoxy of the compiler’s own time.
We will now turn to the writers on the other side. William of Poitiers, in his actual narrative of Harold’s accession (p. 121 Giles), evades the subject of Eadward’s bequest; we get only the vague talk about “occupavit” and the like. But in two later passages he distinctly shows that he knew that a bequest of Eadward was asserted by Harold and his advocates. In his account of the messages sent between William and Harold before the battle (129), he makes Harold admit an earlier bequest in favour of William, but he describes him as going on to argue that this earlier bequest was cancelled by a later bequest in favour of himself. The passage is a remarkable one;
“Meminit quidem [Heraldus] quod Rex Edwardus te [Willelmum] Anglici regni hæredem fore pridem decreverit, et quod ipse in Normanniâ de hâc successione securitatem tibi firmaverit. Novit autem jure suum esse regnum idem, ejusdem Regis, domini sui, dono in extremis illius sibi concessum. Etenim ab eo tempore, quo beatus Augustinus in hanc venit regionem, communem gentis hujus fuisse consuetudinem, donationem quam in ultimo fine suo quis fecerit, eam ratam haberi.”
The historical value of these accounts of messages and answers I shall discuss in another note (see Appendix GG). The value of the passage for my present purpose is twofold. It shows that the Normans were thoroughly aware of the fact of Eadward’s recommendation of Harold. It shows also that the fact was one which they found it hard to get over. For, in the answer which William is made to give to Harold’s words just quoted, though he has much to say in the way of setting forth his own claim, he has nothing to say in answer to Harold’s fact or to the legal argument founded on it.
The other passage is to be found in the wild invective which William of Poitiers (139) pours forth over the grave of Harold; “Arguunt extrema tua quam rectè sublimatus fueris _Edwardi dono in ipsius fine_.” This is a perfectly incidental witness. It seems to imply some such story as those which I shall presently quote from Orderic and Wace.
William of Jumièges (vii. 31) slurs over the facts both of the bequest and of the election. They are lost in the usual vague talk about “regnum invasit.” William of Malmesbury, in one of those remarkable passages in which he compares two statements together (ii. 228), allows that the English version of the story asserted a bequest in favour of Harold. Harold, he tells us in the usual style, “extortâ a principibus fide, arripuit diadema.” He then adds, “quamvis Angli dicant a Rege concessum.” He then argues _à priori_ against the English statement from the imaginary ill-will of Eadward towards Harold; “Quod tamen magis benevolentiâ quam judicio allegari existimo, ut illi hæreditatem transfunderet suam cujus semper suspectam habuerat potentiam.” The expression “benevolentiâ” is of importance, as showing that, in William of Malmesbury’s time, English affection still clave to Harold’s memory, in opposition to all Norman calumnies. Indeed William himself, in that spirit of fairness which often pierces through all his prejudices, goes on to say; “quamvis, ut non celetur veritas, pro personâ quam gerebat, regnum prudentiâ et fortitudine gubernaret si legitimè suscepisset.”
As usual, the further we get from the time the more our informants know about the matter, the more new particulars they have to tell us. There is nothing in any of our three Williams to imply any death-bed nomination of the Norman Duke or to shut out a death-bed nomination of the English Earl. The latter is allowed to be at least the English version of the facts. There is nothing in any of the three to imply that the succession of William was so much as discussed by the bed-side of Eadward. The case is the reverse of the case with regard to the oath of Harold and the earlier promise to William. There the Norman writers assert a fact which the English writers do not venture to deny. Here the English writers assert a fact which the contemporary Norman writers do not venture to deny. But, as we get further away from the time, we come, first to ingenious explanations of the fact, and lastly to express denials of it.
Thus Orderic (492 B) admits the fact of the bequest to Harold, but he has a highly elaborate way of accounting for it. He connects it with the story of Harold’s oath and of his engagement to marry William’s daughter. Harold comes back to Eadward and tells him that William has made over to him his right to the Kingdom of England as the dowry of his daughter. Eadward wonders at such an arrangement, but he believes the story, and decrees the succession accordingly. The words are as follows;
“Regem Eduardum, qui morbo ingravescente jam morti proximus erat, circumvenit [Heraldus], eique transfretationis suæ et profectionis in Normanniam ac legationis seriem rettulit. Deinde fraudulentis assertionibus adjecit quod Willelmus Normanniæ sibi filiam suam in conjugium dederit, et totius Anglici regni jus, utpote genero suo, concessit. Quod audiens ægrotus princeps miratus est, tamen credidit, et concessit quod vafer tyrannus commentatus est.”
It must be this story of Orderic which formed the groundwork of the strange tale which we find in the French Life of Eadward. The subject is mentioned twice. Eadward, in the early days of the Christmas Gemót, before his final illness begins (3615–3634), calls Harold, and asks him what he means to do about the Kingdom (“Du regne queus tis purpos?”). It must be remembered that this immediately follows the legend (see vol. ii. p. 513) according to which Eadward’s days were already numbered. Harold says that the Crown belongs to William, that he has sworn to William’s succession, that he has no intention of interfering with it or of setting up any claim of his own, unless William should give him the Crown along with his daughter.
“Unc ne me vint en curage D’aver vostre heritage; Li ducs Willame de Normendie, Ki droit i a e en mei se fie L’avra, si cum il vus plest. Juré l’ai, e il seur en est; Cuvenant e leuté tendrai, Vers vus ne trespasserai; Au regne n’ai ne cleim ne dreit, Si of sa fille nel me otreit.”
Harold then swears, and the other chief men swear with him. It will be seen that, in this account, the usual story of the oath is taken for granted, though it is nowhere directly told in the French Life. And Eadward’s promise to William seems also to be taken for granted; at any rate William is said to have a right, and it is not said in what that right consists. But there is no mention of any death-bed bequest to William, Harold, or anybody else.
The subject is introduced again later in the story (3895–3922), when Eadward is on his death-bed. It is Harold who volunteers a second mention of the matter. He says of his own free will that he has sworn not to disturb the succession to the Crown. The words put into his mouth are in some respects clearer and in some respects darker than the former passage. The succession belongs to William, both by Eadward’s earlier grant (“Granté l’avez au duc Willame”), and also by right of blood. But the right of blood is strangely enough (see Mr. Luard’s Preface, p. xix.) made to belong to William’s daughter rather than to William himself. This cannot refer to the descent of William’s children from Ælfred (see p. 81, and vol. ii. p. 304), because the right is distinctly said to come through Emma. The title of Queen, given to William’s daughter, whether given to her as William’s daughter or as Harold’s possible wife, is also very strange. The words are,
“Droit a par Emme ta mère La reine ki sa fille ere.”
Still, if William does not make over the Crown to his daughter, the right belongs to William himself, and that right Harold will in no way disturb. Still he seems to imply that he has a fair hope that William will give him his daughter, and that he may reign in her right.
“Si a sa fille ne le dune, Droiz est k’il eit la curune; Kar jo si vus dire le os, De espuser la ai en purpos; A la pucele afiancé, E au duc sui alliancé.”
(vv. 3907–3912.)
To this King Eadward answers not a word, but Archbishop Stigand takes up his parable in a somewhat unexpected way. He warns Harold that, if he does not keep to this covenant, neither he, to whose office it belongs to perform the rite—it is expressly called a sacrament—nor any other Prelate of the Kingdom will ever give him the royal unction, nor will any “man of our commons”—the expression is a very singular one—put the Crown on his head.
“Pur moi le di, a ki apent A fere ceu seint sacrement, N’ert prélat en la regiun Ki fus face la enuncciun; N’ert humme de nostre commune, Ki vus mette en chef curune.”
According to this view, Harold had a fair chance of a Crown matrimonial, and his chief fault lay in not marrying William’s daughter. This leads us into questions which I shall consider in later notes.
Wace (Roman de Rou, 10872–10970) fully admits the fact of a bequest, though perhaps an unwilling one, or rather he makes Eadward leave it to the nation to decide between William and Harold. In his account Eadward is at the point of death, and is very anxious that William should succeed him.
“Mult li fust vel se il péust, Ke Guillealme sun regne éust.”
Harold gets together his kinsfolk and friends and whomsoever he thought good, and they go into the chamber of the sick man. An Englishman, whose name is not given, but who speaks by Harold’s instructions (“Si com Herout out comandé”), makes a long speech, setting forth the merits of Eadward’s government, and also how he has no son or daughter or other natural heir.
“Vielz hoem es jà, pose as vescu, E si n’as nul enfant éu; Filz u fille ne nul altre eir, Ki por tei poisse remaneir, Ki nos gart è ki nos maintienge, E par lignage Rei devienge.”
(vv. 10899–10904.)
But a King they must have; there can be no peace in the land without one, and they have no way of getting a King but through him.
“Kar jà sanz Rei paiz n’averon, Ne Rei n’aron se par tei non.”
(vv. 10909–10910.)
He prays Eadward then, while he still lives, to give them a King, who will be able to work peace and justice in the land. The speaker gradually comes nearer to the point. Eadward’s best friends are there; they have come together to ask a prayer of him, a prayer which, if he fails to grant, holy as his life has been, he will never see the face of God. There is something comforting in these words, something which one fancies that Wace must have learned from English tradition. They are words worthy of Savonarola by the death-bed of Lorenzo. It is pleasant to hear, by the bed-side of Eadward, the doctrine that to obey is better than sacrifice, that a man’s first business is to do his duty in that state of life to which it has pleased God to call him, and that no amount of ceremonial piety will avail a King who does not make the welfare of his Kingdom his first thought.
“Bien es, bien as fet, bien feras, Deus as servi è Deus auras. Ci est li mielx de tes païs, Tut li mielx de tes amis; Trestuit te sunt venu preïer, E tu lor deiz bien otreïr, Ço poise nos ke jà t’en vas, Se por ço non ke Deus auras.”
(vv. 10919–10926.)
The prayer thus solemnly urged is that Eadward will agree to the unanimous wish of the nation and give them Harold for their King. As the speaker uttered the name of Harold, every Englishman in the room cried aloud that he had well spoken, and that, without Harold to her King, the land could have no peace.
“Ci tuit te viegnent hui requerre Ke Heraut seit Rei de la terre; Ne te savom mielx cunseillier, Ne tu ne poz mielx espleitier. Dez ke cil out Heraut nomé, Par la chambre ont Engleiz crié Ke bien parlout è bien diseit, E li Reis creire le debveit: Sire, dient-il, se tu nel’ faiz, Jà en noz vies n’aron paiz.”
(vv. 10927–10936.)
The King hesitates; he sits up in his bed, and reminds the English lords that he had promised his Crown to the Duke of the Normans, and that some of themselves had sworn to that settlement. Harold then himself steps forward; he seems to use the same argument which is put into his mouth by William of Poitiers (see p. 587), namely the force of the last will and testament to revoke all former wills.
“Donc dist Heraut, ki fu en piez; ‘Ki ke vos, sire, fet aiez, Otréiez mei ke jo Rei seie, E ke vostre terre seit meie; Jo ne quier ne maiz vostre dreit, Jà mar plus por mei en fereit.’”
(vv. 10945–10950.)
The King then says that Harold shall have the Crown (“Heraut, dist li Reis, tu l’auras”); but he knows that he will die for it. He knows the Duke and his Barons and all the folk that will come at his bidding; God alone can guard Harold against them. Harold is ready to run the risk; he fears neither Norman nor anybody else. Eadward then turns himself, and says—whether of his free will or no the poet will not warrant—that the English may choose either Harold or William as they will.
“Dunc se turna li Reis, si dist, Ne sai se par boen cuer le fist: Ore facent Engleis Duc u Rei, Herault u altre, jo l’otrei.”
(vv. 10961–10964.)
Such a licence was the same as a nomination of Harold. The poet calls it making Harold his heir, and he seems to excuse the act on the ground that the land must have some King, and that William was not at hand. Eadward therefore let his Barons have their own will.
“Issi a fet Heraut sun eir Quant Willame ne pout aveir. Rei à regne aveir estuet, Regne sanz Rei estre ne puet. A sez Barunz a graanté K’il en facent lor volenté.”
(vv. 10965–10970.)
This account does, as most of his accounts do, high honour to the honest and enquiring spirit of Master Wace. When he wrote, calumny was a hundred years old yet he is throughout far less influenced by it than party writers at the time, who had better means than he of learning the exact truth. Here is no reviling of Harold, no gross misrepresentation of facts. In opposition to the talk of William of Poitiers, and even to that of Orderic, Wace clearly understands and honestly sets forth how thoroughly Harold had the heart of England on his side. The story is well conceived and well told, and it is quite possible that it may rest to some extent on trustworthy tradition. Yet a certain amount of misconception runs through Wace’s story. He implies throughout that Eadward’s own wishes were still in favour of William, and he adds the common Norman misstatement, that the settlement in favour of William was confirmed by the Witan or, at any rate, by some of the chief Earls.
One or two smaller points may be noticed. The speaker in Wace mentions Eadward’s lack of children as a misfortune to himself and his country, not at all as the unavoidable result of a religious vow. Again, both he and the writer of the French Life evidently look on female succession as a possibility. Eadward, says the speaker, has neither son nor daughter, as if a daughter could possibly have succeeded. The French Biographer treats it as not unlikely that William will deal with England as Philip the Second did with the Low Countries, that he will make the whole Kingdom over to his daughter and her husband. He indeed almost seems, though his language is very strange and dark, to recognize some right by blood in William’s daughter which did not exist in William himself. This notion of passing crowns by the spindle-side was strange to Englishmen, and even to Normans, in the eleventh century. The nearest approach to it is William’s own half-claim, not exactly as heir, but as next of kin through Emma. But, at the courts of the Henries, no doctrine could be more orthodox and acceptable. Henry the First actually did something very like what is here spoken of as likely to be done by his father. He endeavoured to settle, though not indeed in his lifetime, his whole dominion on his daughter. When both Wace and the French Biographer wrote, the descendants of that daughter, by male descent mere Counts of Anjou—more truly (see p. 181) mere Counts of the Gatinois—but scions through her both of Rolf and of Ælfred, reigned over England, reigned over or claimed Normandy, as their inheritance by female succession. The Angevin Kings had no dislike to be complimented on their descent from the old royal stock of England. Æthelred of Rievaux (Gen. Regg. X Scriptt. 350), tracing by the spindle-side only, addresses Henry the Second as the son of Matilda, the daughter of Matilda, the daughter of Margaret, the daughter of Eadmund, and so on—Normans and Angevins being kept out of sight—to Ælfred, Cerdic, Woden, and Adam. The vision of Eadward, as explained by Æthelred and others (see above, p. 12), implies the unlawfulness of the rule of Harold and both Williams, and gives Henry the First only a Crown matrimonial, which he hands on to the grandson of Eadgyth-Matilda. On all this Æthelred, an English flatterer of Henry the Second, would naturally dwell. The French Biographer, writing to Henry the Third, would find the same general doctrine acceptable. Still the conception of William, as the founder of the existing dynasty, held too firm a possession of men’s minds for his pretensions to be openly denied. The direct assertion of the rights of Eadgar belongs to a later stage still, to which we shall come presently. As for Wace, he was a Norman born, and was not likely to dwell by choice on any of these points. As a subject of Henry the Second, he was bound to admit female succession both for England and for Normandy, but he had no special temptation to enlarge on it.
A still more wonderful view of the Crown matrimonial is to be found in Gervase of Tilbury (Otia Imperialia, ii. 20, ap. Leibnitz, Scriptt. Rer. Brunsw. i. 945); but I reserve the passage for later quotation, as it is altogether the most amazing account on record of the whole matter between William and Harold.
From honest Wace it is unpleasant to turn to the author of the Brevis Relatio (Giles, 4). In his version Harold, during Eadward’s illness, asks him for a grant of the Crown. The King, mindful of his promise to William, refuses it. This however he mentions only as a report.
“Dicunt autem quidam tunc quod Heraldus, quasi oblitus sacramentorum quæ Willelmo Comiti in Normanniâ fecerat, antequam Rex Edwardus obiret, ad eum pervenit, eumque rogavit ut ei coronam regni Angliæ concederet. Quo audito, Rex Edwardus, non immemor quod Willelmo Comiti Normannorum, cognato suo, regnum Angliæ jamdudum concessisse, respondit Heraldo nullo modo hoc se posse facere, quia Willelmum Comitem Normannorum idem hæredem fecerat.”
Lastly, the Hyde writer (p. 290) goes one step further, and makes Eadward bequeath the Crown to William by his last will; “Regnum moriens Willelmo Comiti consobrino suo reliquit.”
Among the Northern writers the only one who has anything to say about the bequest is Snorro. It could hardly be looked for in Saxo (203), who makes Harold murder Eadward. Adam of Bremen (iii. 51) has only Norman-sounding talk about “sceptrum invasit.” Harold’s one Norwegian admirer, whom I shall have to quote again, the Biographer of Olaf Tryggwesson, speaks of his election by the people, but has nothing to say about any bequest by the King. But Snorro knew more about the matter than almost anybody else. His account (Laing, iii. 77; Johnstone, 192) is short, but remarkable. It must be remembered that it is connected with Snorro’s notion about Harold being the youngest son of Godwine and the personal favourite of Eadward, and with his notion that Tostig was still in England and seeking the Kingdom by fair means. Just before Eadward’s last moments, Harold and a few other men are by him. Harold leans over the King; then he turns to his companions, and calls them to witness that the King has given him the Kingdom of England (“Þá laut Haralldr ysir Konung oc mællti; ‘því skírskota ec undir alla ydor, at Konungrinn gaf mer nu Konungdóminn, oc allt ríki í Englandi’”). The same day a meeting is held to choose a King; Harold appears with his witnesses and claims the Crown by virtue of Eadward’s dying bequest. The issue is that he is chosen King (“Þann sama dag var þar höfdingia-stefna, var þá rætt um Konungs-tekio, let þá Haralldr bera fram vitni sín þau, er Játvardr Konungr gaf hönom ríkit á deyianda degi; lauk sva þeirri stefno, at Haralldr var til Konungs tekinn”). It will be seen that, though there is some colouring here, there is no gross misrepresentation of fact. Snorro writes in the interest of Tostig, not in the interest of William. Of a bequest to William, of an oath of homage from Harold to William, he knows nothing. With him (Laing, iii. 94; Johnstone, 216) William’s claim is derived wholly from his kindred to Eadward, his wrath being embittered by Harold’s breach of his promise to marry his daughter.
I think then that there is no fact in history better attested than the fact of Eadward’s dying recommendation in favour of Harold. The best informed contemporary writers assert it. The most careful and judicious compilers of later days, from Florence and Simeon onwards, accept their statement. The hostile contemporary writers never distinctly deny the fact. They either slur the matter over, or wrap it up in vague and declamatory words, or else admit the fact, while they explain and colour it after their own fashion. The fact then I hold to be undoubted. Whatever constitutional influence a King of the English had in the appointment of his successor, that influence was exercised on behalf of Harold. But we must beware of attaching any undue importance to Eadward’s nomination. It was of real constitutional value, but it was not everything. It was, after all, a mere recommendation to the Witan, and Harold’s real title to the Crown was that the Witan accepted that recommendation. Writers who, either at the time or afterwards, did not fully understand the English Constitution, were apt to lay too much stress on the bequest to either candidate. Men who wrote either in times or in countries where the idea of elective kingship was not familiar, did not take in how completely the kingship of England was simply the highest office in the land, an office which the people gave and which the people could take away. To them a kingdom seemed like a private estate, which, in ordinary cases, would pass according to the laws of succession, and which, in case of the failure of heirs, the owner could bequeath or even sell. These notions of succeeding to kingdoms and of bequeathing and selling kingdoms like private estates gradually took root, and many of the dynastic wars of the later middle age arose out of bequests or purchases of this kind. How foreign they were to the ideas of Englishmen in the eleventh century I need not again set forth. The main value of the proofs which I have collected is as an _argumentum ad hominem_ against William and the supporters of his claims. Against them the argument is perfect. Whatever right William might have by virtue of an earlier bequest was taken away by the later bequest in favour of Harold. Eadward then made Harold his successor as far as he could constitutionally make any one his successor; but this nomination was only a very small part of Harold’s right. The far more important examination of the evidence on the great question of Harold’s election by the Witan of all England will form the subject of my next note.
NOTE C. p. 21.
THE ELECTION OF HAROLD.
The passage of Florence which I took as my text in my last note will serve as my text in the present note also. Harold was, according to that passage, “a totius Angliæ primatibus ad regale culmen electus.” According to the Peterborough Chronicle he took the Kingdom, not only as the King granted it to him, but as men chose him thereto (“swa swa se Cyng hit him geuðe, _and eac men hine þærto gecuron_”). That this means a regular election by the Witan there can be no reasonable doubt. The Peterborough Chronicler, writing at the moment, without any thought of possible controversies, used the vague word “men.” Expressions of the like sort are not uncommon to express the action of a Gemót. Florence, writing when calumny was rife, and wishing to answer all misstatements of every kind, uses the most emphatic words that he could find. Harold was chosen “a totius Angliæ primatibus.” He was chosen then, and did not simply seize the Crown by force or fraud. He was chosen, not by some small or packed assembly, but by the chief men of the land. And he was chosen, not by this or that shire or Earldom, but by the chief men of the whole land. However small might be the number of Northumbrians actually present in the Assembly, Northumberland was constitutionally bound by their vote, no less than Wessex and East-Anglia. All this is implied in the weighty and carefully chosen words of Florence. Harold was elected by the only power which had a right to dispose of the Crown, by that Great Council of the Nation, which made and repealed laws, which laid on and took off taxes, which declared war and made peace, which elected and deposed Earls, Bishops, and Kings. Such is the undoubted meaning of the words of the two highest of all the authorities which mention the matter. That the Abingdon and Worcester Chroniclers, while they assert the bequest and the coronation, are silent about the election, is in no way wonderful. They do not at any time take that pleasure in putting forth the popular side of our Constitution which was clearly felt by Florence, and by the Peterborough writer still more keenly. The Peterborough Chronicler wrote at the moment in the fulness of his heart; Florence wrote as a grave and judicial harmonizer many years later. Both tell the same story.
These two authorities are to my mind quite enough to establish the fact of Harold’s legal and regular election; still I will go on, as before, to trace out such subsidiary evidence as we have in its favour, before we see what is said on the other side.
The Biographer, who formed so important a part of our evidence for establishing the bequest of Eadward, now fails us altogether. As I have before said, he does not directly record any event after Eadward’s death.
The Tapestry (pl. 7) contains a scene, of which I have made much use in the text (p. 22), in which the Crown is offered to Harold by two persons. This scene is highly important. It is of itself an answer to all the vague Norman talk about Harold seizing the Crown by fraud or force—all the declamation about “invasit,” “arripuit,” and the like. The Crown is offered to him very quietly, and he is evidently represented as still doubting whether to take it or no. The scene too is put (see p. 584) in a position which is evidently meant to connect it with Eadward’s death-bed bequest. But in this scene in the Tapestry, though there is nothing to exclude, there is nothing to assert any formal election. The Crown is evidently brought from the chamber of the dead King, and the story would run just as well if it were brought simply in obedience to his dying orders, without reference to the choice of any one else. One can easily understand that, without the least intention to falsify the story, the designers of the Tapestry, just like the Abingdon and Worcester Chroniclers, might not feel specially called upon to dwell on the actual election, a scene, one may add, which it would be by no means easy to represent in worsted work. But, interpreting one authority by another, we are fully justified in taking the scene in the Tapestry to be the result of the election spoken of by the Peterborough Chronicler and by Florence. The Crown was offered to Harold; that fact is represented in the Tapestry. Our other authorities enable us to add that it was offered to Harold in pursuance of a vote of the Witan.
The election of Harold being thus admitted, the question follows, Was that election absolutely unanimous? Were any votes given, any speeches made, any feelers thrown out, on behalf of William, Eadgar, or any other possible candidate? It is quite possible that such was the case, but the contemporary writers who mention the election do not go minutely enough into details to prove anything either way. Something like a candidature on the part both of William and of Eadgar is implied by several later writers, but not in terms which make us feel very positive about it. In any case Harold must have had a triumphant majority.
It is not so easy to put together a catena of later writers in favour of Harold’s election as it is to do so in favour of Eadward’s recommendation on his behalf. Two or three hundred years after the time, the idea of bequest was more familiar than the idea of election. We have indeed the string of writers, beginning with Simeon, who copy the whole passage from Florence in full. But we have no independent witnesses to the tradition of the election answering to Eadmer and Walter of Hemingburgh, who assert the bequest in words of their own, not borrowed from Florence (p. 586). The entry in the Waverley Annals I have already quoted (ib.). There the first entry, translated from the Peterborough Chronicle, asserts the election in the strongest terms, but it is immediately qualified by the strange Normannizing passage which follows. We should remember also that such an expression as that of Eadmer, who simply says that Harold “succeeded according to Eadward’s will,” though it does not assert the election, yet in no way excludes it. And the use of a word like “successit” is of itself important, in the teeth of words like “invasit” and “arripuit,” which we shall presently come to.
It was, as we might have expected, in Harold’s own College at Waltham that the tradition of the popular election of its great Founder lasted longest. There, down into the thirteenth century, it was still a thing to be remembered and gloried in. And, what we might have been less prepared for, it comes out very strongly in at least one Scandinavian writer.
Of the two Waltham books, the De Inventione (c. 20) asserts the election in the strongest terms;
“Post obitum itaque sanctissimi Regis, Comes Haroldus _unanimi omnium consensu in Regem eligitur_, quia non erat eo prudentior in terrâ, armis strenuus magis, legum terræ sagacior, in omni genere probitatis cultior, ita ut huic electioni non possent contradicere, qui eum summo odio persequuti fuissent usque ad tempora illa, quoniam tanto operi adeò insignem in omnibus non genuerit Anglia.”
I do not quite understand the last part of the passage, which is perhaps purposely obscure. It may mean that Eadwine and Morkere consented to the election; when we remember what the writer had said about “Normanni et Gallici” in c. 14 (see vol. ii. p. 39), we may perhaps rather think that the allusion is to the Norman favourites. At any rate an unanimous election is asserted as strongly as words can put it.
The romantic biographer of Harold may be fairly quoted on such a matter as this, because he carries on the local tradition which we find in the writer De Inventione. He twice mentions the accession of his hero. The first time it is spoken of merely in general terms (Chron. Ang. Norm. ii. 167); “Ubique fere terrarum celebri sermone vulgatum est quemadmodùm, Edwardo sanctissimo ad cœleste translato, in regno terreno successerit Haroldus.” The second passage (ii. 187, 188) is very remarkable, whether anybody chooses to believe the story or not. The writer asserts an unanimous election of Harold, and that under very singular circumstances. He records Harold’s oath, and argues at great length that it was an oath which ought not to be kept. He then says that, as soon as Harold came back from Normandy, he laid the case before the Witan, who declared the oath not binding, and with one consent elected him King. This would almost seem to be during Eadward’s lifetime; at least the heading of the Chapter (manifestly corrupt) contains these words, “Domino favente et faveto [sic] convivente Edwardo ipsum regnâsse affirmant.” This I do not profess to explain, unless the writer supposed some settlement in Harold’s favour to have been made during Eadward’s life-time (cf. vol. ii. p. 421 et seqq.). The actual passage in the text runs as follows;
“Haroldus ... suis demum redditus, quid pertulerit, quid egerit, cunctis palam exponit. Exponentem ut audit, universitas in irâ excandescit, initam mediante sacramento pactionem improbat, ne observeretur vehementer reclamat. ‘Absit,’ inquiunt, ‘absit ut serviamus Normannis. Absit ut fastûs Normannici jugo barbarico nobilitatis Anglicæ urbana libertas nullatenùs substernatur.’ Quid multa?
Conclamant omnes, sedet hæc sententia cunctis.
Posthabitoque juramenti, quod nullum esse credebatur, periculo, Haroldus demum unanimi omnium consensu sublimatur in Regem.”
I do not rely on this as history, though possibly the statement is not to be cast aside without thought. The main value of the passage is to show how strong and enduring the local tradition was. This account, asserting Harold’s popular election in the strongest terms, is not very many years older than the French Life of Eadward.
Later still, we have Peter of Langtoft (i. 398) distinctly asserting both the fact and the lawfulness of Harold’s election;
“Après la mort Eduuarde, Harald est elu Ray par la commune, la coroune ad resceu; En drayture et ley leaus est-il tenu.”
Again Robert of Brunne (i. 66) is puzzled, and adds a comment of his own;
“After Saẏnt Edward, Harald Kẏng þei ches, Þorgh conseile of þam alle, and he þe scheld les Right and in lawe, þe barons held him trewe. _Neverles his falshed brought us sorowe alle newe._”
Of the two Scandinavian writers of whom I have here to speak, I have already quoted the passage from Snorro (see above, p. 595). He distinctly asserts an election, though he makes the election be obtained through an alleged will of Eadward, on which he seems inclined to throw some doubt. The other Northern writer is the Biographer of Olaf Tryggwesson, whom I have already quoted (vol. ii. p. 542) as the only writer who seems anxious to canonize Harold. He says distinctly (263) that “after Eadward, Harold the son of Godwine, whom some call a saint, took the Kingdom by the will of all the folk in the land” (“Eptir Jatvard Kong toc riki, af vild alz landfolksins, Haraldur Gudina son, er sumir kallan helgan vera”). I shall have to quote this writer again at another stage.
I now turn to the writers who are more or less decidedly hostile to Harold. These sometimes deny the fact of the election, sometimes they wrap up the fact, just as they do the fact of Eadward’s recommendation, in vague and declamatory phrases. I will quote first the purely Norman writers, and then those who represent a certain mixture of Norman and English traditions.
First comes William of Poitiers (Giles, p. 121), who denies that there was any election at all;
“Verus namque rumor insperatò venit, Anglicam terram Rege Edwardo orbatam esse, et ejus coronâ Heraldum ornatum. _Nec sustinuit vesanus Anglus, quid electio publica statueret consulere_; sed in die lugubri, quo optimus ille humatus est, quum gens universa plangeret, perjurus regium solium _cum plausu occupavit_, quibusdam iniquis faventibus. Ordinatus est non sanctâ consecratione Stigando, justo zelo Apostolici et anathemate ministerio sacerdotum privati.”
William of Jumièges (vii. 31) is shorter and still vaguer, but, by complaining that Harold beguiled away the whole English nation from their allegiance to Duke William, he admits that Harold had the hearts of the nation with him, and does in effect imply the election. His words are,
“Cujus [Edwardi] regnum Heraldus _continuò invasit_, ex fidelitate pejeratus, quam juraverat Duci. Ad quem Dux protinùs legatos direxit, hortans ut ab hâc insaniâ resipisceret, et fidem quam juramento spoponderat condignâ subjectione servaret. At ille non solùm hoc audire contempsit, verùm omnem Anglorum gentem ab illo infideliter avertit.”
Orderic (492 C), who, higher up in the same page (see vol. ii. p. 541), showed some signs of generous feeling towards Harold, becomes at this point more savage against him than anybody else. He affirms, in apparent contradiction to William of Jumièges, that Harold’s accession was against the will of a large part of the English nation. This I believe to be a confused account of the temporary refusal of Northumberland to acknowledge Harold. Orderic mentions Eadward’s death and burial, and then goes on;
“Tunc Heraldus, ipso tumulationis die, dum plebs in exsequiis dilecti Regis adhuc maderet fletibus, à solo Stigando Archiepiscopo (quem Romanus Papa suspenderat a divinis officiis pro quibusdam criminibus) _sine communi consensu aliorum Præsulum et Comitum procerumque consecratus, furtim præripuit diadematis et purpuræ decus_. Audientes autem [_Angli_, I presume] _temerariam invasionem_ quam Heraldus fecerat, irati sunt; et potentiorum nonnulli fortiter obsistere parati a subjectione ejus omnino abstinuerunt. Alii verò, nescientes qualiter tyrannidem ejus, quæ jam super eos nimis excreverat, evaderent, et è contra considerantes quòd nec illum dejicere, nec alium Regem, ipso regnante, ad utilitatem regni substituere valerent, colla ejus jugo submiserunt, viresque facinori quod inchoaverat auxerunt. Mox ipse regnum, quod nequiter invaserat, horrendis sceleribus maculavit.”
To these we may add, as speaking in the same spirit, the Verdun Chronicle of Abbot Hugh (Labbé, i. 194);
“Etuuardus Anglorum Rex obiit, qui, quia sine filiis fuit, consanguineum suum Wilelmum Normannorum Comitem post se regnare instituit. Sed Heroldus, contra sacramentum quod Willelmo fecerat, regnum invasit.”
Of the poetical writers, Wace (10977) speaks of a coronation and of homage received by Harold. He says nothing of election; but, as usual, there is nothing in him of the brutal violence so common in the other Norman writers.
“Dez ke li Reis Ewart fu morz, Heraut ki ert manant è forz Se fist énoindre è coroner; Unkes al Duc n’en volt parler, Homages prist è féeltez Des plus riches è des ainz nez.”
Benoît (36656) is characteristically much fiercer; he distinctly denies both all election and all ecclesiastical consecration, and mixes up the supposed wrongs of Tostig with those of William.
“Heraut, de coveitise espris, Senz autre conseil qui’n fust pris, Saisi le reigne demaneis; Parjurez e faus se fist reis Eissi, senz icele unction E senz cele sacration Qu’en deit faire à rei saintement Le jor de son coronement. Eissi, senz nule autre devise, Parjur, faus, pleins de coveitise, Se fist coroner à grant tort: Por c’en fu puis destruit e mort. Ne tint envers le duc fiance Ne ostage ne covenance, De son frere ne li sovint; Eissi out le reaume e tint.”
We now come to the other class of writers, those who wrote in England under more or less of Norman influence, and who contrast remarkably with those who, like Simeon and Roger of Howden, are content to follow Florence. First comes William of Malmesbury, who gives two accounts in different parts of his work. The former passage (ii. 228) I have already quoted (see above, p. 588). At a later stage (iii. 238) he comes back to the subject again and gives quite a different account. The English were divided between Harold, William, and Eadgar; but it is now neither Harold nor William, but Eadgar, in whose favour Eadward had made his final bequest. Notwithstanding this bequest, notwithstanding a real diversity of sentiment among themselves, all give Harold an outward support, and he obtains the Crown. This is very vague and obscure. It may possibly mean that Harold was elected by a large majority, though some votes were given for other candidates. The words are,
“Rex Edwardus fato functus fuerat. Anglia dubio favore nutabat, cui se rectori committeret incerta, an Haroldo an Willelmo an Edgaro; nam et illum, pro genere proximum regno, proceribus Rex commendaverat, tacito scilicet mentis judicio, sed prono in clementiam animo. Quarè, ut prædixi, Angli diversis votis ferebantur, _quamvis palàm cuncti bona Haroldo imprecarentur_: et ille quidem, diademate fastigiatus, nihil de pactis inter se et Willelmum cogitabat.”
This passage of William of Malmesbury is our first distinct mention of the rights of Eadgar. It is the first hint of a doctrine whose partizans were, as time went on, largely to increase. According to this account, Eadward’s wishes are in favour of Eadgar, and his wishes are supported by a party among the Witan. This is the first setting forth of Eadgar as an actual candidate; but there is a passage of Orderic (598 A), in which he seems to think it necessary to explain why William came to the Crown rather than any one of the English royal family; “Guillelmus Dux Normannorum, _deficiente stirpe Regis Edgari quæ idonea esset ad tenendum sceptrum regale_, cum multis millibus armatorum ad Anglos transfretavit, et in campo Senlac invasorem regni Albionis Heraldum bello peremit.” Here we clearly see the first glimmering of the new view, which gets a little plainer in William of Malmesbury, and much plainer in those who came after him. William’s two accounts became stock passages, which were copied by the inferior writers who followed him, just as Florence’s description was copied by Simeon and other more judicious compilers. For instance, William’s description is taken as the groundwork of that given by Roger of Wendover (i. 513), which however is well worthy of notice. The hereditary right of Eadgar is now put much more prominently forward than it was a hundred years earlier.
“Defuncto, ut prædictum est, Eadwardo, Anglorum Rege sanctissimo, fluctuabant proceres regni, quem sibi Regem præficerent et rectorem. Quidam enim Willelmo Normannorum Duci, quidam Comiti Haroldo filio Godwini, alii autem favebant Eadgaro filio Eadwardi. Eadmundus verò Latus-Ferreum, _Rex naturalis de stirpe Regum_, genuit Eadwardum, Eadwardus Eadgarum, _cui de jure regnum debebatur Anglorum_. Sed Haroldus, vir callidus et astutus, intelligens quia ‘nocuit semper differre paratis,’ in die Epiphaniæ, quâ Rex Eadwardus sepultus est, extortâ fide a majoribus, capiti proprio imposuit diadema.”
This account of Roger of Wendover is followed in nearly the same words by Matthew Paris (2 ed. Wats), and in the Winchester History by Thomas Rudborne (Ang. Sacr. i. 241), who makes some most singular comments which I shall consider in another note. It implies more distinctly than William of Malmesbury does that the Duke was supported by a party—whether of native Englishmen or not—who had influence in England. But the rights of William are now much less dwelt on than the rights of Eadgar. Indeed there is another version, which leaves out William altogether, and dwells wholly on the rights of Eadgar. The nation, or a part of it, is in favour of the Ætheling, but Harold, by his wealth, his popularity, his vigour and energy, by some means of some sort, good or bad, contrives to supplant him. We first find this view where we should hardly have looked for it, namely in Henry of Huntingdon (M. H. B. 761 D), whom we elsewhere see (vol. i. p. 332) firmly believing in the hereditary rights of William. His account is very short, but it has become, like those of Florence and William of Malmesbury, one of the stock passages for later writers to copy. The West Minster is hallowed, Eadward dies and is buried; then
“Quidam Anglorum Eadgar Atheling promovere volebant in Regem. Haraldus verò, viribus et genere fretus, regni diadema invasit.”
This is followed in one of the alternative accounts in Bromton and R. Higden (see above, p. 586), but they add a very sound reason why Eadgar was passed by, namely “quia puer erat, et tanto oneri minùs idoneus.” The means of Harold’s influence is described in different words by different copyists, but the fullest is that into which it swells in Knighton (2339). He had Higden before him, and Higden gave, as an alternative statement, Florence’s account of the recommendation of Eadward and the election of Harold. “Tradit tamen Marianus,” says Higden (284), after giving the other account, “quod Rex Edwardus ante obitum suum _designaverit_ Haraldum Regem futurum, quem proceres mox in Regem erexerunt.” The unlucky use of the doubtful word “designaverit” instead of Florence’s “elegerat” led Knighton astray, and he turned the recommendation into a prophecy. He kept however the distinct statement of the election by the “proceres,” but mixed it up with the usual talk about “occupavit” and with the mention of Eadgar, out of Henry of Huntingdon. The result is worth giving in full;
“Tradunt quidam quod Rex Edwardus, ante obitum suum, Haroldum _prædixit_ futurum Regem post se, quem proceres mox in Regem erexerunt. Mox Haroldus regnum occupavit, quod per novem menses circiter tenuit. Quidam enim Edgarum Adelyng, filium Edwardi filii Edmundi Ferrei Lateris, Regem constituere moliebantur, sed quia puer erat tanto regimini inidoneus et in bursâ minus refertus, Haraldus Comes, cui erat mens astutior, crumena fecundior, et miles copiosior et pompis gloriosior, sinistro omine regnum occupavit.”
This is a good specimen of the way in which later compilers put together those accounts which we often see quoted in modern books as if they were of equal authority with the Chronicles. It is amusing to see how Eadward’s recommendation of Harold, the best political act of his life, is changed, through the stages of “elegerat,” “designaverit,” “prædixit,” into an exercise of the prophetic powers of the saint. Still it is some comfort to see, standing forth in the midst of all this, the bit of true history which is set forth in the words, “quem proceres in Regem erexerunt.”
I have gone on uninterruptedly through the Latin writers, but I must now go back some generations to quote the very curious account given by Robert of Gloucester (i. 354 Hearne). He is all loyalty towards the Ætheling, and admiration towards those who supported his cause.
“Harald þẏs false erl, þo Seynt Edwarde dede laẏ, Hẏm sulue he let crounẏ kẏng þulke sulue daẏ, Falslẏche; vor Seẏnt Edward so wel to hẏm truste, þat he bẏtot hẏm Engelond, þat he ẏt well wuste To Wyllammes byof þe bastard, duc of Normandẏe. Ac hẏm sulf he made kẏng mẏd such trecherẏe. _Ac þe gode tryw men of þe lond wolde abbe ẏmade kẏng_ _þe kunde eẏr, þe ȝonge chẏld, Edgar Aþelyng._ Wo so were next kẏng bẏkunde, me clupeþ hẏm Aþelyng. þervor me clupede hẏm so, vor bẏkunde he was next kyng. Ac Harald made hẏs weẏ bẏvore, as mẏd suykedom, Mẏd ȝẏftẏs and myd vayre byheste, and avong þe kẏnedom. _So þat somme hẏm chose alout, and somme hem hulde stẏlle_, And soffrede as hii noeȝt ne mẏȝte al oþeres wẏlle. So þat Harald was kẏng, to wom þe hele þe kẏnedom. And Seẏnt Edwardes sẏȝte bẏ hẏm to soþe come. Vor þo bẏgan þe wow vorst, as me mẏȝte ẏse, þat ssolde, as Seẏnt Edward seẏde, bẏ þre kẏnges day be.”
Loyalty to Eadgar and the orthodox interpretation of Eadward’s vision of course go together.
Lastly, one step only remains to be taken, namely to make the oath and perjury of Harold a sin, not against William but against Eadgar. We get the first glimmering of this in a Flemish writer of the thirteenth century, Hariulf, the author of the Chronicon Centulense or Chronicle of Saint Riquier in the second volume of D’Achery’s Spicilegium. He died in 1143. His account (p. 345) is as follows;
“Postquam autem mortuus est Rex Ethguardus, Herioldus quidam Comes regnum sibi accepit contra fas, et contra fidem sacramenti quod prædicto Regi juraverat, spondens quod pronepoti ipsius Regis, nomine Elfgaro, regnum cederet absque ullo impedimento. At quum regni potestate et fascibus injustè uteretur, _expulso Ethguardi pronepote Elfgaro_, summus et super omnia potens Deus, in cujus jussu constant regna terrarum, et qui donat ei cui vult, signo mirabili è cœlo ostenso, destinavit Guillelmum Ducem Normannorum Anglorum Regem fieri; et quia veraciter Dei nutu idipsum Guillelmus appetebat rei prosperitate probatum est.”
We may mark here, First, That Harold is supposed, as indeed he is in the story of his oath to William, to have some kind of power of disposing of the Crown or influencing its disposal. Secondly, That no earthly right is recognized in William; he is expressly called to the Kingdom by a sign from heaven in the shape of the comet.
But it was reserved for an English writer of the fifteenth century finally to put the notions of Hariulf—wherever Hariulf found them—into shape, and that into a shape exactly suiting the English politics of the fifteenth century. Famous John Hardyng, living so long after the time, naturally knew things which had not been revealed to those who lived earlier. He devotes two stanzas of his Chronicle to the matter (p. 232 ed. Ellis). Eadward’s miracles have just been spoken of; then
“Sone after that he dyed and went to blysse; But fyrste he made Duke Herold protectoure Of his cousyne, to governe and to wysse, Edgar Athelyng, full yonge a governoure, Whom he ordeyned to be his successoure, As very heyre to Edmonde Ironesyde; But this Herolde then set all that asyde. ... Herolde by strength then crowned was for kynge, Forsworne that was upon the euangelystes For to crowne Edgar Athelynge, And hym protecte and defende in all wyse Unto his age, that none the realm suppryse. _This was his othe of whiche he was forswore_, All yf he made Edgar an earle therefore.”
Protectors were much more familiar in the days of John Hardyng than they were in the days of Florence and the Chroniclers. Here too is a special revelation, that the oath broken by Harold was an oath to Eadgar, and not an oath to William. We here get the history of the eleventh century as it was convenient to read it in the days of Richard of York and of Edward the Fourth. The “very heir” is wrongfully kept out by usurpers, the strictest doctrine of legitimacy only is to be acknowledged, and the rights of William, so sacred in the eyes of William of Poitiers and Henry of Huntingdon, are now (234) expressly denied. William came
“In trone royall to have the monarchye, By his conquest and his victorye, Withoute tytle of ryght to hym discente, But onely of his tryumphall entente.”
Lastly, I suppose that I ought at least to mention the words in which Harold’s accession is recorded in the Brut y Tywysogion, 1066. In the English translation the entry stands thus; “That Harold who, at first earl, _through cruelty_ after the death of King Edward unduly acquired the sovereignty of the kingdom of England, was despoiled of his kingdom and life by William the Bastard, duke of Normandy, though previously vauntingly victorious. And that William _defended_ the kingdom of England in a great battle, with an invincible hand, and his most noble army.” I am sorry that my ignorance of Welsh hinders me from judging of the accuracy of the translation of the words in Italics, which certainly have a strange sound. The whole passage is an amplification of the corresponding passage in the Annales Cambriæ, in which there is nothing answering to them.
I have thus traced out the various statements with regard to the question of Harold’s election. That it was a perfectly regular act is asserted by two of our highest original authorities, and their narrative is in no way inconsistent with the narratives of those original authorities who do not directly mention the fact. The statement of the Peterborough Chronicler and of Florence was accepted, as preferable to the counter-statements, by some of the best and most careful compilers of the next age. Even the Scandinavian writers and Harold’s own local panegyrists at Waltham are at least witnesses to a tradition. Simeon, Roger of Howden, and Ralph of Diss are something more. They deliberately preferred Florence’s statement to any other, at a time when other statements were much more acceptable to the reigning powers. As the idea of elective kingship gradually died out, the tradition of Harold’s regular election would seem stranger and stranger, so that for a later writer to accept it really implied a certain amount of critical and independent judgement. On the other hand we have, first the fact that the highest Norman authority of all, the Tapestry, though it does not directly assert the election, is quite consistent with that version, while it is quite inconsistent with the legend of Harold seizing the Crown by force or fraud. Moreover the witnesses against Harold, from the very beginning, do not agree among themselves. Some say that there was no public election; Harold, they tell us, seized the Crown by a conspiracy with a few men, and reigned against the will of the nation. Others complain that Harold beguiled away the whole English people from their allegiance to the lawful heir. All wrap up their story in vague and declamatory phrases, which may mean anything or nothing, and which contrast forcibly with the distinct and clear statement of Florence. Then, as we get a little further away from the time, all kinds of new ideas come in. Each writer, from Henry of Huntingdon to John Hardyng, tells the story according to the political theories of his own age and his own party. When the notion of hereditary right was gaining strength, when a family sat on the throne who had other claims than those of the first Norman conquerors, the supposed rights of William began to drop out of sight. From the twelfth century onwards, we hear more and more of Eadgar, less and less of William, till at last, in the fifteenth century, we are pointedly told that it was not William but Eadgar to whom the false oath of Harold was taken. Thus the true tradition of Harold’s election had to struggle with greater difficulties in each generation, as to each generation the ancient notion of popular election of Kings became less and less familiar. The Peterborough Chronicler alone, in the joy of his heart, recorded the election of the hero whom he loved at the moment when it happened. Every other writer, from Florence onwards, who asserted Harold’s lawful election, asserted it in the teeth of prevalent prejudices and prevalent misstatements. From the contemporary entry in the Chronicle to the one true jewel half hidden in the dung-heap of Knighton, the evidence in favour of Harold’s election forms a chain of evidence of the very highest kind, all the higher because every statement after the first is made in the teeth of statements on the other side.
Is then the conventional talk about Harold’s accession, the talk about “occupavit,” “invasit,” “arripuit,” and the like, mere invention, mere wanton slander? Or is it founded, as both legend and calumny generally are founded, on some truth misrepresented or misconceived? I think that in this case also the legend has a certain groundwork of truth. The origin of this kind of talk is probably to be found in the extreme haste with which the burial of Eadward, the election and the coronation of Harold, were got through. There was indeed nothing illegal or unprecedented in the matter. The first election of Eadward himself had been made, just like the election of Harold, before the burial of the King whose death had caused the vacancy. And, had Eadward been on the spot, he might perhaps have been crowned, as well as elected, with as great haste as Harold was. And the hurried election of Harold was far more regular than the hurried election of Eadward. It does not appear that, when Harthacnut died, any regular Meeting of the Witan was actually in session. The first election of Eadward must have been made only by the citizens of London and such of the other Witan as could be got together at the moment. But the death of Eadward took place during the Christmas Feast, so that Harold’s election was made by the ordinary Midwinter Gemót. The thing then was done lawfully and regularly; still it was done with a haste which might well seem strange, and it is not wonderful that men in other lands, prejudiced against Harold, prejudiced against England, ignorant of the Laws of England, should look on the matter in the worst possible light. On William and his friends the news came like a thunder-clap. They heard in the same breath that Eadward was dead and that Harold was consecrated King. Eadward was King on the morning of Thursday; before the evening of Friday, Eadward was in his grave, and Harold was King, full King, King crowned and anointed. All William’s schemes were defeated, as far as it rested with the peaceful action of the people of England to defeat them. Not a moment had been allowed him to press his claims. The thing was done, and the sword only could undo it. It was no wonder then if, in Norman eyes, the haste of Harold’s accession seemed strange, indecent, altogether wicked. That it was thoroughly good according to English Law was a point about which William of Poitiers and his fellows neither knew nor cared anything. They naturally vented their wrath in talk about “invasit” and “arripuit.” As usual, declamatory expressions got substance. Harold was rhetorically said to have “seized” the Crown; thence came a story that he physically seized it with his own hands. The burial and the coronation were performed on the same day; thence came a story that Harold seized the time of Eadward’s burial for a sham election and coronation. Lastly, the temporary refusal of Northumberland to acknowledge Harold, of which I shall have to speak a few pages on, no doubt grew into the account in Orderic, copied by some later writers, about a large part of the nation standing aloof from Harold, or being actually hostile to him.
I have now dealt with two of the three points touching Harold’s accession, namely, the recommendation of Eadward in his favour, and his actual election by the Witan. The third point which remains is the coronation. It is impossible wholly to disentangle the evidence bearing on the coronation from the evidence bearing on the election, so that some of the references belonging to the subject of the coronation have been unavoidably forestalled. There remains however more than one point to be formally discussed in another note.
NOTE D. p. 42.
THE CORONATION OF HAROLD.
There are three points for discussion with regard to the Coronation of Harold;
First, Was Harold duly consecrated with the usual ecclesiastical rites?
Second, Who was the officiating Prelate at the ceremony?
Third, What was the place of the ceremony?
The evidence on the first point is as decisive as evidence can be. The ecclesiastical consecration of Harold is asserted by all the three Chroniclers. Abingdon and Worcester, with small verbal differences, both say, “Her wearð Harold Eorl eac to Cynge _gehalgod_.” Peterborough uses another word and gives us the date; “Harold Eorl ... wæs _gebletsod_ to Cynge on Twelftan mæsse dæg.” Florence, in the passage which I have throughout taken as my text, states the same fact, and adds the name of the consecrator. Harold was “ab Aldredo Archiepiscopo Eboracensi honorificè consecratus.” I therefore have not hesitated to describe Harold in the text as consecrated by Ealdred, according to the form of consecration then in use in the English Church.
The writers whom I have already quoted as following the account of Florence with regard to the recommendation and the election, naturally follow him also with regard to the coronation. The coronation is also mentioned as an alternative statement by those writers who mention the recommendation and election as alternative statements. It is somewhat curious that Knighton, whose account is the most confused of all, seems (X Scriptt. 2339) to have no doubt about the coronation; “Nunc Haraldus ab Aldredo Eboracensi Archiepiscopo consecratus est.” This is the one position which he leaves without alternative or self-contradiction. The coronation is of course also asserted by the writer De Inventione (c. 20); “Rex igitur consecratus a Stigando Dorobernensi Archipræsule.” According to his Norwegian admirer (263), Harold was consecrated King and anointed (_smeared_) with holy chrism; “Hann var vigdr Kongr oc smurdr helgum chrisma.” Snorro also (Johnstone, 192; Laing, iii. 77) asserts that he was duly consecrated, and that on his consecration all the chiefs and people of the land submitted to him (“Haralldr var til konungs tekinn, oc vígdr konungs-vigslo inn xiii í Páls-kirkio. Gengo þá allir höfdingiar til handa hönom, oc allt fólk”).
The Norman writers nearest to the time do not deny an ecclesiastical consecration. Only they affirm that the officiating Prelate was Stigand. “Ordinatus est non sanctâ consecratione Stigandi,” says William of Poitiers (121 Giles); so Orderic in the passage already quoted (see above, p. 603), who even goes further, and says that the ceremony was performed by Stigand without the consent of the other prelates and nobles. William of Jumièges (see above, p. 602) slurs over the whole matter with the words “regnum invasit.” The Tapestry distinctly represents an ecclesiastical consecration, but the Prelate standing by the King on his throne is significantly marked “Stigant Archiep̄s.”
It is only when we get further from the time that we find any distinct denial of an ecclesiastical consecration of some sort. Wace, as we have seen (see above, p. 603), is colourless. Benoît, in the passage already quoted (ib.), distinctly denies any ecclesiastical consecration. So does the author of the French Life; he first asserts (4079–4081) that Harold caused himself to be elected and crowned, because no one dared oppose him;
“Il se fist de muz eslire E curuner; kar cuntredire Nel osa nuls.”
He presently goes on to say, more at length, that the coronation was done hastily by laymen without any ecclesiastical rite;
“De la Tephanie fu la feste, Curune mise sur sa teste; E lendemein ke rois Aedward Muruit, ke mut li fu vis tard, De seculers e lai gent, Par orgoil sudéement, Sanz sacrement de seint iglise, Fu curunez e sanz servise.”
(vv. 4095–4102.)
The story that Harold put the Crown on his own head probably comes from an expression of William of Malmesbury, in the former of his two accounts (ii. 228; see above, p. 604), “extortâ à principibus fide, diadema arripuit.” For this Roger of Wendover (see above, p. 605) substitutes the words “extortâ fide a majoribus, capiti proprio imposuit diadema.” In this he is followed, as we have seen, by Matthew Paris and Thomas Rudborne, but the latter adds an explanation which I must presently examine more at length. The Hyde writer too tells us (290), “regnum Anglorum ... usurpavit, regiumque diadema sibi imposuit.” So the author of the Annales Regum Angliæ (in the Rishanger volume, p. 427); “Haroldus filius Godwyni die sexto Januarii seipsum apud Westmonasterium coronavit.” The same words occur in Brompton (958) as an alternative. The Ramsey historian also (c. 120, p. 461) speaks to the same effect; “Haraldus ... diademate regni sese temerè insignivit.”
In all these writers the feeling against Harold is manifest, with the seeming exception of Thomas Rudborne. He first of all, as I have said, tells the story in words borrowed from Roger of Wendover, including the self-coronation of Harold, and his description as “vir callidus et astutus.” But, as he gets on, he gradually softens. He is sorry that Harold was guilty of perjury (Ang. Sac. i. 242), because, if he had not been so, he would most likely have defeated William (“utinam Haroldus non perjurus fuisset, et disciplinam Aristotelis quam dedit Alexandro Magno sequutus fuisset; fortè Dei auxilio et non dubium, ut aliquibus videtur, vicisset Willelmum”). He then goes on to explain how it came to pass that Harold was never anointed, and why he put the Crown on his own head (“Iste Haroldus, quamvis semetipsum propriis manibus coronâsset, numquam tamen Rex inunctus erat”). Harold had scruples about being crowned by Stigand, on account of his pluralities (“noluit enim inungi a Stigando Cantuariensi Archiepiscopo, quia injustè duos pontificatus, viz. Cantuariensem et Wyntoniensem, detinuit”). He wished to be anointed by Ealdred, but that Primate was very sick at the time. Harold therefore put off his unction till Ealdred’s recovery (“distulit enim recipere regiam inunctionem quousque Aldredus Eboracensis Archiepiscopus sanitati restitueretur, gravi enim infirmitate pro tunc detinebatur”). Unluckily Ealdred never recovered during Harold’s reign, and Harold therefore went without unction altogether (“Archipræsul verò Eboracensis Aldredus ab infirmitate minimè convaluit usque ad mortem seu occisionem Haroldi”). The statement of Florence and his followers or, as Rudborne says, of Ralph of Diss and some others (“quod autem Radulphus de Dyseto Londoniensis Decanus et quidam alii scribunt”), that Harold was consecrated by Ealdred, he explains as meaning that Ealdred simply consented to his consecration, not that he consecrated him in person (“hoc intelligendum est quia Aldredus Archiepiscopus sic consensit consecrationi, non quod egit seu dedit munus consecrationis in actu”). How Ealdred could be said to consent to a consecration which never took place is not very clear. For all this Rudborne refers to “Auctor de Concordantiis Historiarum Angliæ sub literâ H.” In this story I can see only an ingenious, but somewhat unlucky, attempt to reconcile contradictory statements. Still there is something remarkable in the canonical scrupulousness which it attributes to Harold, though the form which it takes is somewhat singular. If canonical disabilities affected one Primate and bodily ailments the other, one does not see why, as in some later cases, Saint Wulfstan or any other Bishop in the land might not have officiated by lawful commission.
Putting aside then the misstatements and misconceptions of other writers as well as the ingenious explanations of Thomas Rudborne, I do not hesitate to say that the ecclesiastical consecration, as asserted by the contemporary writers on both sides, must be admitted as an undoubted fact. The only question open to reasonable doubt is whether Ealdred or Stigand was the consecrator. The Chroniclers, writing at the time, before any controversy had arisen, did not mention the celebrant. Florence, after misstatements had arisen, thought it right to put on record that the celebrant was Ealdred. He is followed by the best later compilers, among whom Thomas Stubbs (X Scriptt. 1702) should specially be mentioned, for he writes as the historian of the Primates of York, and, though he adopts the words of Florence, he doubtless represents the independent tradition of the church of York. The only strictly English writer who represents Harold as crowned by Stigand is the Waltham writer De Inventione. The compilers, from Roger of Wendover onwards, seem to have been more taken with the notion of Harold’s putting the Crown on his own head. Perhaps they did not fully understand the point of the question between Ealdred and Stigand.
On the other hand, William of Poitiers and Orderic distinctly assert that Harold was crowned by Stigand (see above, pp. 602, 603); but they do it in rhetorical passages, in which they go on to enlarge on Stigand’s schismatical position. Their evident object is to represent Harold’s coronation as uncanonical and invalid. The representation in the Tapestry is singular. It does not show Stigand in the act of crowning or anointing Harold. Harold is already crowned and seated on his throne, and Stigand stands by, seemingly addressing the people. The Tapestry always seems to me the most honest and trustworthy of all Norman accounts; otherwise I could almost believe that there is here an attempt to insinuate that Stigand was the celebrant without directly asserting it.
The question is simply this, Is this Norman statement to be accepted in opposition to the statement of Florence, evidently meant in answer to it? The statement, very brief and casual, of the one Waltham writer, cannot be thought to add much to the strength of the case. His notions about Stigand are a little confused throughout his story, and he might easily take for granted that, if a King was crowned, he must have been crowned by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Leaving then the De Inventione, are we to believe William of Poitiers, supported to some extent by the Tapestry, or are we to believe Florence? I at least have no doubt as to preferring Florence to William. Each is undoubtedly the champion of one side; still the position of the two writers is widely different. The Archdeacon of Lisieux wrote as the laureate of a living sovereign, from whose favour he had everything to hope. The monk of Worcester wrote to clear the memory of a fallen hero from the calumnies which were already beginning to gather round it. William of Poitiers writes in a spirit of frantic reviling against Harold; Florence never displays any unbecoming bitterness against the Conqueror. Besides this, the assertion of William is simply an assertion; the assertion of Florence has the weight of a denial. Add to this that William writes of a transaction which happened in a foreign land of whose laws and internal affairs he clearly knew nothing. Florence, though hardly of an age at the time to say much from his own knowledge, was an Englishman and a Worcester monk, a member of a body which doubtless still watched the career of their former Bishop with interest. As far then as the comparative value of witnesses goes, it seems to me that Florence is a witness in every way more trustworthy than William of Poitiers.
The probability of the case lies the same way. We have seen that the episcopal ministrations of Stigand were at this time commonly avoided in England. Harold himself had (see vol. ii. p. 446) chosen Cynesige and not Stigand to hallow his minster at Waltham. It is therefore most unlikely that, on the occasion of this still greater ceremony, Harold should run the smallest risk of awakening scandal or objection. The custom of the time, and Harold’s own earlier conduct, show that Ealdred would be asked to perform the ceremony, almost as a matter of course.
Lastly, if the ceremony was really performed by Stigand, the assertion that it was performed by Ealdred must have been a deliberate falsehood on the part of Florence or his informants. Mere mistake or carelessness could never have led to it. But if the celebrant really was Ealdred, we can understand that the statement that it was Stigand might get abroad without any absolute lying on the part of any one. Let us suppose a rumour of Harold’s coronation reaching the Norman court. Such a rumour might well come without the name of the officiating Prelate. It would be taken for granted that the ceremony was performed by the Prelate whose proper function it was, the Metropolitan of Canterbury. The natural surmise that Harold must have been crowned by Stigand would soon grow into a rumour that he actually had been crowned by Stigand. The consecration of the perjured King by the schismatic Primate would lead to fresh invectives against both. Such a consecration would be declared to be no consecration; strict churchmen, in the vigour of their rhetoric, would say that Harold had never been consecrated at all. In the next stage those words would be taken literally, and we thus reach the point at which Benoît denies the performance of any religious ceremony. This process is exactly the same as that by which ecclesiastical writers so constantly apply the name of concubine, or sometimes harder names still, to the wives of priests or to other women to whose marriage there was any canonical objection. Lastly, the belief that Harold had no ecclesiastical consecration, mixed up with the talk about “arripuit” and “invasit,” led not unnaturally to the idea, which seems first to appear in Roger of Wendover, that Harold put the Crown on his own head.
There is then, I think, no doubt whatever that Harold was consecrated King with all the usual ecclesiastical rites. That the ceremony was performed by Ealdred may be thought one degree less certain, but that too seems to me to be a point on which scepticism is unreasonable. One point only remains, namely the place of the ceremony, whether Harold was crowned in the old minster of Saint Paul or in the new minster of Saint Peter.
Our direct evidence either way comes from quite inferior writers; those nearest the time, both Norman and English, do not mention the place. Some of the passages have been already quoted. We have seen that Snorro places the ceremony at Saint Paul’s. The list of coronations in what we may conveniently call Rishanger, followed by an alternative statement in Bromton, places it at Westminster. So does John of Peterborough, under 1066; “Successit in regnum Harold us Dux West-Saxonum, filius Godwini, in crastino obitûs Regis, id est in die Epiphaniæ, apud Westmonasterium coronatus.” On the other hand, in the Brevis Relatio (Giles 4) we read,
“Adhuc autem erat corpus ejus [Edwardi] super terram, sicut illi postea retulerunt qui hæc se videre dixerunt, quum Heraldus, quasi insanus atque postponens quidquid Willelmo Comiti de regno Angliæ juraverat, videlicet quod ei illud fideliter post mortem Regis Edwardi servaret, consentientibus sibi civibus Londoniæ, multisque aliis insaniæ ejus faventibus, apud sanctum Paulum in civitate Londoniæ, contra omnem rectitudinem, coronam regni Angliæ arripuit.”
Comparing this evidence, such as it is, the balance is distinctly in favour of Westminster. The witness of Snorro, apparently in favour of Saint Paul’s, really tells the other way. For he had just before said (Johnstone, 191; Laing, iii. 77) that Eadward was buried at Saint Paul’s, whereas there is no need at all to prove that he was buried at Westminster. Snorro most likely confounded the minsters of the brother Apostles. But his statement distinctly is that Harold was crowned in the same church in which Eadward was buried, that is, in Saint Peter’s.
The spirit of the Brevis Relatio, a bitter Norman pamphlet of the time of Henry the First, is abundantly shown in my extract. The writer professes to speak from what he has heard from those who were present. But does his statement really assert a coronation at Saint Paul’s? What he records is something which took place at Saint Paul’s before Eadward’s burial. This then could not be Harold’s coronation, for that took place after Eadward’s burial. Also he does not speak of a formal coronation; he uses one of the set phrases of Norman declamation, “coronam regni Angliæ arripuit.” Afterwards (p. 5) he makes William say how “Heraldus coronam regni Angliæ sibi imposuisset.” These are the rhetorical phrases which led to the later story of Harold crowning himself, but they do not in themselves imply any actual coronation at all. If the writer of the Brevis Relatio means an actual coronation, he is at once convicted of error by his placing the coronation before the burial. But it is just as likely that he is not talking of the coronation but of the election. Harold seizes the Crown with the consent of the citizens of London and many others. That is most likely the author’s way of putting the fact that he was elected by the citizens of London and the rest of the Witan, and it is highly probable that an Assembly in which the citizens of London were likely to take a prominent part might be held in Saint Paul’s.
It is therefore by no means clear that there is any evidence at all for Saint Paul’s. The direct evidence for Westminster, though not good, is a little better. The statement of John of Peterborough is very clear and straightforward, but the date of his Chronicle is uncertain, and it is in any case long after the time. His entry may be merely copied from Rishanger, whose statement, being found in a special list of coronations and royal burials, has a certain value, as not being a mere _obiter dictum_, but the assertion of a man who was specially enquiring into a certain subject.
But I rest the coronation of Harold at Westminster far less on these late statements than on the probability of the case and on what seems to me to be the implied evidence of earlier writers. Florence on the one hand, William of Poitiers and Orderic on the other, seem pointedly to connect the burial of Eadward and the coronation of Harold. In Florence’s narrative, Eadward dies and is buried; “Obiit Lundoniæ et in crastino sepultus regio more.... Quo tumulato,” he continues, in the passage which I have so often referred to, “Subregulus Haroldus ... die eodem ... in Regem est honorificè consecratus.” Two great ecclesiastical ceremonies, one immediately following the other, take place on the same day; in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, the presumption surely is that they took place in the same church. William of Poitiers again (see above, p. 602) and, I may add, William of Malmesbury (see above, p. 588), seems to complain of the indecency of having the coronation on the same day as the burial, but they connect the two things, and they in no way imply any difference of place. It is only Orderic (see above, p. 603), who, by the use of the word “furtim,” might possibly suggest that Harold took advantage of the funeral in Saint Peter’s to be crowned elsewhere by Stigand. But he does not distinctly say so, nor do his words necessarily imply it. It strikes me then that Florence implies Harold’s coronation in Saint Peter’s and that nobody else denies it.
In fact, there was every motive for Harold to be crowned in Saint Peter’s, there was none for him to be crowned anywhere else. Eadmund and Cnut had been crowned at Saint Paul’s, but Saint Paul’s was no traditional crowning-place of West-Saxon royalty. Kingston had been forsaken, and no other one spot had definitively taken its place. No prescription was broken through by a Westminster coronation, and the circumstances of the recent consecration of the church, the death and burial of the Founder, would draw all men’s minds to the newly hallowed temple, and cause it to be chosen before all others for the greatest of national rites. To believe that the Prelates and the other Witan buried Eadward at Saint Peter’s, and then, without any conceivable motive, marched off to Saint Paul’s to crown Harold, seems utterly preposterous. There is good reason to believe that the West Minster was, from the very beginning, designed as a national crowning-place. The assertion of the doubtful charter to that effect (see vol. ii. p. 505) is confirmed by the practice of later ages. William was crowned at Saint Peter’s. The fact that he was crowned there is in truth no slight argument that Harold was crowned there before him. William had no motive to innovate on such a point. His only reason for being crowned at Saint Peter’s must have been because Saint Peter’s had been specially designed by Eadward for Kings to be crowned in. And that motive would tell just as strongly with Harold as with William. William had every motive to connect himself in every way with the memory of Eadward, and to put himself forward in every way as the true successor of Eadward and the faithful executor of his wishes. But Harold had exactly the same motives to do exactly the same. A passage of William of Malmesbury (quoted above, p. 555) which has been pressed into the service of the other side (Stanley, Memorials of Westminster, 48) has no reference to the matter at all. All that is there said is that William favoured the Abbey of Westminster because he was crowned there, and that William’s successors, out of reverence for Saint Eadward’s tomb, were crowned there also. There is not a word, expressed or implied, to show that William’s was the first coronation in the West Minster.
I have then, in these three notes, gone, to the best of my power, through the whole of the points suggested by my text from Florence. I trust that I have shown that we have the strongest ground that history can give us for believing that Harold the son of Godwine was in every way a lawful King of the English, a King chosen, crowned, and anointed, according to the ancient use of this Church and Realm. We may quote without hesitation the words even of his own romantic biographer, when he introduces his hero (ii. 151) as “Illustrissimus Rex legitimus Haroldus, jam ritè ac legitimè coronatus.” The evidence of true history, as distinguished from the voice of calumny and misconception, sets Harold before us as recommended by the dying will of his predecessor, as chosen to the Kingdom by the consent of a full and regular Assembly of the whole nation, as consecrated to his kingly office with all the rites of the Church, at the hands of a Primate whose canonical position no man ventured to gainsay. And we may add that there is no ground for depriving the royal Abbey of Saint Peter of the choicest flower in the rich garland of its historic memories. There is no ground for doubting that the spot which beheld the royal unction of Edward and Elizabeth had already received a higher honour still, in being the spot where, for the first and last time in English history, an English King received the English Crown purely because he was the worthiest of the English people.
NOTE E. p. 43.
THE ANCIENT CORONATION OFFICE.
For the details of the coronation-rite I have gone mainly to Selden’s Titles of Honour (p. 115), to Taylor’s Glory of Regality, a very careful and accurate work devoted wholly to the subject of coronations, and to the third volume of Maskell’s Monumenta Ritualia Ecclesiæ Anglicanæ. As we know that Harold was “honorificè consecratus,” the very words in which Florence presently describes the coronation of William, I have held myself fully justified in describing him as crowned according to the office then in use in the English Church, that commonly known as the Coronation Office of Æthelred. This office is printed in full by Mr. Taylor in an Appendix. It is also printed by Mr. Maskell, but piecemeal in the notes to a later office, which makes it exceedingly difficult to follow.
It would seem from the rubric of this office that the coronation of the King was intended to follow immediately upon his election by the Witan. He was to be led by two Bishops from the meeting of the Elders to the church (“consecrandum Regem _de conventu Seniorum_ duo Episcopi per manus producant ad ecclesiam.” Taylor, 395; Maskell, 3). This office, as I have said in the text, has long been a privilege of the Bishops of the two sees of Durham and Bath and Wells. This custom, which has lasted down to our own day (see the Coronation Office of her present Majesty, Maskell, p. 88), dates from the time of Richard the First, who was led (see Roger of Howden, Scriptt. p. Bed. 374 _b_) by Hugh, Bishop of Durham, and Reginald, Bishop of Bath. But it appears from Guy of Amiens (see pp. 556, 558) that William was led by the two Archbishops. It is therefore probable that this privilege of the sees of Durham and Wells is not older than Richard’s time (Maskell, xxix.; Taylor, 321, 325, et seqq.), and that his choice of Bishops for the purpose was determined by the high descent of the Bishops of those sees at that particular time, and that from them the right passed on to their successors.
The election in the church by the clergy and people (“ab Episcopis et a plebe”) is something distinct from the earlier civil election. In my text I have simply transferred to the coronation of Harold the account which we find given of the coronation of William. The process is much the same in the later offices, down to the form for the coronation of Henry the Eighth, according to a device drawn up by that prince himself (see Maskell, 73). The hereditary doctrine is set forth in the strongest language, but the principle of election is put forth in language equally strong. Prince Henry is spoken of as “rightfull and undoubted enheritour by the lawes of God and man;” but he is also “electe, chosen, and required by all the three estates of this lande to take uppon hym the seid coronne and royall dignitie.” The assent of the people is asked in this form, “Woll ye serve at this tyme, and geve your wills and assents to the same consecration, enunction, and coronacion? Whereunto the people shall say with a grete voyce, Ye, ye, ye; So be it; Kyng Henry, King Henry.” This is perhaps the last very distinct case of election. Since that time the form has gradually shrunk up into the mere recognition which is now all that takes place. Indeed the election itself can never have been much more than a form. Such a form allows no room for the proposing and supporting of opposing candidates, such as we know to have sometimes taken place at royal elections (see vol. i. pp. 291, 534, ii. p. 9). It happens at a stage when the King is already fixed upon, and when all that is needed is his actual admission to the kingly office. The reason for going through such an empty form probably was that, as the coronation was an ecclesiastical rite, it was thought fit that there should be at least the shadow of an ecclesiastical election, an election by the clergy, and by the people in their character, not of English freemen but of baptized men. The King-elect had been already chosen to the civil office; it still needed the voice of the Church, the voice of the clergy and of all Christian people, to declare him worthy of the ecclesiastical sacrament. This ecclesiastical election outlived the civil one, and it is singular to trace the steps by which it dwindled down to the present unmeaning form.
It is a most singular thing that a prayer in the office of Æthelred, or rather in an English office older than that of Æthelred, should have been copied for a King of the French in the fourteenth century, without changing those local expressions which were suited to England only. This curious fact was first mentioned by Selden (Titles of Honour, 177, 189; see also Maskell, 14). The form in Æthelred’s office prays that the King “totius Regni Anglo-Saxonum Ecclesiam deinceps cum plebibus sibi annexis ita enutriat et doceat, muniat et instruat, contraque omnes visibiles et invisibiles hostes idem potenter regaliterque tuæ virtutis regimen administret, ut regale solium videlicet Anglorum vel Saxonum sceptro [sceptrum] non deserat.” In the later English forms the old national names are left out. But in the order for the coronation of Charles the Fifth of France in 1375 (Selden, p. 189) the latter part runs thus, “ut regale solium videlicet Saxonum, Merciorum, Nordanchimbrorum sceptra non deserat.” Maskell also (14) quotes another French office, which instead of the words “totius Regni Anglo-Saxonum Ecclesiam” reads “totius Albionis Ecclesiam.” On this he quotes Ménard as arguing that the King of the French anciently had royal rights over the Kingdom of England, and that he was crowned King of the English. He suggests that these rights arose in the person of Lewis From-beyond-Sea, who might inherit a claim to the English Crown through his mother Ogiva (Eadgifu. See vol. i. p. 208). Nothing can be plainer than that the French scribes in both cases copied English offices, and seemingly two distinct English offices, of which that used for Charles the Fifth would seem to be older than the office of Æthelred. The formula “Saxonum, Merciorum, Nordanchimbrorum” must be older than the simple form “Anglorum vel Saxonum.” The passage also suggests another question. What are the “plebes annexæ,” annexed, as it would seem, to the Kingdom of the Angles and Saxons? Surely the reference is to the dependent members of the English Empire, a reference which had much less meaning in later English offices and which had no meaning at all in the French.
With regard to the unction, it strikes me that, according to the ancient English rite, the King was simply anointed on the head. The rubric in Æthelred’s office (Maskell, 19) copied in the French office (Selden, 116) is simply “hic unguatur oleo.” In the later offices the King is anointed on the hands, breast, shoulders, and elbows, and on the head last of all. In the very ancient office printed by Maskell (p. 76) from the Pontifical of Archbishop Ecgberht, the rubric is “hic verget oleum cum cornu super caput ipsius,” but another rubric follows, “unus ex pontificibus dicat orationem et alii unguant.” This may possibly mean such a manifold unction as we find in the later offices, but at any rate the order is different.
With regard to the regalia, the Tapestry represents Harold as holding the orb, which at a modern coronation is the subject of a special ceremony and is directly connected with the investiture with the “Imperial mantle” (Maskell, 114). But I do not find any form for the delivery of the orb in Æthelred’s office. The crown represented in the Tapestry seems to be a crown of fleurs-de-lys, which is the form of the crown worn by Eadward both on his deathbed and in the earlier scenes. It differs from that which has just before been represented as offered to Harold, it differs also from that which Harold bears on his coins, and none of them seems to have the cross on the top to which Godwine alludes in his speech in the great Gemót of 1052 (see vol. ii. p. 334).
NOTE F. p. 48.
THE DATE OF THE MARRIAGE OF HAROLD AND EALDGYTH.
It did not occur to me, when writing either the text or the Appendix of my second volume, that the marriage of Harold and Ealdgyth could be placed at any date except at some time between the death of her first husband Gruffydd and Harold’s election to the Crown. See vol. ii. p. 477. The different accounts which we have, not one of them of first rate authority, all connect the death of Gruffydd and the second marriage of his widow (see vol. ii. p. 630), as if no great time had elapsed between the two events. There is however no direct statement as to the date to be found anywhere, and one or two hints, none of them perhaps of any great strength singly, but having together a sort of cumulative force, have suggested to me that it is quite as likely that the marriage may have taken place after Harold’s coronation.
1. One of the fullest of the Accounts of Ealdgyth, which I quoted in vol. ii. p. 630, is that of Benoît de Ste. More, no great authority certainly. He, it will be remembered, places the death of Gruffydd, and consequently the marriage of his widow, after Harold’s accession. As to the death of Gruffydd he is of course wrong, but it is quite possible that he may have given the right date to the marriage, and may have wrongly inferred that the death of Gruffydd must have happened a short time before it.
2. What more immediately concerns us at this point is that none of the accounts of Harold’s coronation contains any mention of Ealdgyth, unless the expression of Orderic (quoted in vol. ii. p. 630), which follows almost immediately after his account of the coronation, and which might be understood to imply that Harold was already married, be taken as an exception. The words of Orderic however do not seem decisive. Neither of course is the absence of any mention of Ealdgyth’s coronation decisive the other way, but it is worth mentioning among other hints.
3. In none of the accounts of the messages which passed between William and Harold after Harold’s coronation is there a single word implying that Harold was already married, though some mention of his marriage would have been much to the purpose. And several of the versions imply that Harold could have married William’s daughter even after his coronation. Wace (Roman de Rou, 11088) thus sums up Harold’s offences;
“Por li regne se perjura, E li regne poi li dura. A tut li regne fist damage, E en tristor mist son lignage: Ne volt mie fille el Duc prendre, Ne cunvenant tenir ne rendre.”
So again in the Cartulary of Saint Bertin, p. 197 (a passage to which I shall have again to refer), the cause of William’s expedition is said to be “eo quod filiam ipsius Wilhelmi in uxorem accipere recusaverit [Haroldus].” This is hardly the language which would be used of a man who had already taken another wife. Perhaps too the words of William of Malmesbury (iii. 238) may look the same way. He tells us that Harold on his accession “nihil de pactis inter se et Willelmum cogitabat, liberatum se sacramento asserens quod filia ejus quam desponderat citra nubiles annos obierat.” This is in answer to a message of William, which must have included a summons to marry some one of his daughters. Harold answers that the particular daughter to whom he had engaged himself was dead. This is not at all like the language of a man who was already married.
In the account given by Eadmer (5), followed by Simeon of Durham (1066), it is still more distinctly implied that Harold could have married William’s daughter, even after his coronation. When Harold refuses to comply with William’s first demands, the Duke sends a second embassy, calling upon him at any rate to marry his daughter, which Harold refuses to do (“Iterùm ei amicâ familiaritate mandavit quatenùs, aliis omissis, servatâ fidei sponsione, saltem filiam suam uxorem duceret.... At ipse nec illud quidem se facere velle ... respondit”).
The statements quoted in the last two paragraphs are of course very confused and contradictory. Their evidence as bearing on the real nature of the engagements entered into between Harold and William I shall discuss elsewhere. But it is remarkable that, among several passages where we should have naturally looked for some mention of the marriage, if it had taken place, not one mentions it, while some distinctly imply that it had not taken place.
The political motive of the marriage would be much the same, whatever was its date. Whether it happened before or after Harold’s accession, it was most likely an attempt to secure the fidelity of Eadwine and Morkere. If it happened after the coronation, an obvious time for it would be the time of Harold’s recognition by the Northumbrians (see Note I).
I do not pretend positively to decide the question, as there is no direct testimony either way, but I think it right to mention that I have found what are at least hints favouring a view of the matter which had not occurred to me when I spoke of it in my former volume.
NOTE G. p. 51.
THE CHARACTER OF HAROLD’S GOVERNMENT.
I mentioned in a former note (vol. ii. p. 538) that Florence of Worcester, while showing a deep admiration for Harold throughout his career, keeps back his formal panegyric till he records his election to the Crown. Immediately after the passage on which I have commented in three successive notes, he draws a picture describing Harold as in every respect the model of a just, pious, and patriotic King.
“Haroldus ... ut regni gubernacula susceperat, leges iniquas destruere, æquas cœpit condere, ecclesiarum et monasteriorum patronus fieri, episcopos, abbates, monachos, clericos colere simul ac venerari, pium, humilem, affabilemque se bonis omnibus exhibere, malefactore exosos habere, nam ducibus, satrapis, vicecomitibus et suis in commune præcepit ministris, fures, raptores, regni disturbatores comprehendere et pro patriæ defensione ipsemet terrâ marique desudare.”
This of course is in some sense an ideal picture. That is to say, it does not refer only to Harold’s short reign as King. What Florence really means is that the just and vigorous government of Harold’s earlier days was continued by him after his royal election. Florence’s panegyric of Harold the King is in short identical in all its main features with the Biographer’s earlier panegyric of Harold the Earl. The words of Florence are copied by most of the writers who copy his account of the election and coronation, such as Simeon of Durham (1066), Roger of Howden (256 B), Ralph Higden (284), and the Ely History (ii. 44). It seems in short to have become a sort of formula with all writers who took the national side. The strangest thing is when Knighton (2337) gives it in an abridged shape, as an alternative character of Harold, after some of the most savage abuse on record, which I shall presently have to quote.
On the other hand, the abuse which the Norman writers hurl at the newly chosen King is something perfectly frantic. William of Poitiers, more careful for England than England was for herself, tells us (146, Giles) how William delivered the Kingdom which he conquered from the proud and cruel yoke of Harold (“Profectò sustulit a cervice tuâ superbum crudelemque dominatum Heraldi; abominandum tyrannum, qui te servitute calamitosâ simul et ignominiosâ premeret, interemit. Quod meritum in omni gente gratum habetur atque præclarum”). So Orderic tells us (492 A, D) how the reign which had begun in perjury and usurpation was carried on in tyranny and wickedness; “Heraldus Goduini Comitis filius regnum Anglorum usurpaverat, jamque tribus mensibus ad multorum detrimentum perjurio et crudelitate, aliisque nequitiis pollutus tenuerat.” So, directly after; “Mox ipse regnum quod nequiter invaserat, horrendis sceleribus maculavit.” He goes on to add how the righteous soul of Tostig, whom he fancies to have been in England, was vexed by the unlawful deeds of his brother (“Tosticus, Goduini Comitis filius, advertens Heraldi fratris sui prævalere facinus, et regnum Angliæ variis gravari oppressionibus, ægrè tulit”).
In the French Life of Eadward (4445 et seqq.) we begin to get details. After a little moralizing, we get a long account of Harold’s enormities, charging him with pretty nearly every vice, and telling us how he went on sinning, and how Eadward often appeared and rebuked him in vain. Then follows a further list of crimes, some of which are very curious;
“Deners cum usurer amasse, De gent reindre ne s’alasse, _Cum vescunte al eschecker_ Set pur deners acunter; Armes e chivalerie
Del tut despit e ublie; _Des hestoires n’enquert, n’en ot,_ _Ne d’anciene geste un mot._ Marchand meuz ke prince pert; K’of ses fardeus feires quert.”
(vv. 4491–4500.)
The complaint against Harold for neglect of historical study might surely be retorted on Eadward’s panegyrists and his own calumniators. But there is something very odd, something doubtless characteristic of the Sheriffs of the thirteenth century, in the picture of the King sitting “like a Sheriff” at the exchequer, counting over his money. This charge of avarice we shall come across again, and it perhaps contains a certain ground-work of truth. That is to say, the threatening aspect of the times, especially after Eadward’s lavish expenditure on ecclesiastical objects, called for a prudent economy, which was sure to be misunderstood. I do not understand what is meant by Harold’s contempt for arms and chivalry, which is repeated in an earlier and shorter revilement of him (vv. 4283–4310). It cannot mean contempt of the specially Norman chivalry, as the word is in this very passage applied to Harold’s own prowess. For the poet goes on to set forth Harold’s strength and courage in strong terms, though he adds that his frightful wickedness made his “chivalry” of no use to him.
I have already alluded to Knighton’s portrait of Harold’s kingly government; here it is in full (2339). Harold has just been crowned by Ealdred;
“Iste devenit nimis elatus et cupidus in collectione auri et argenti et thesaurorum, _nec aliquam uxorem ducere voluit_, sed vi oppressit filias baronum et procerum et militum de regno, quod ipsi ægrè ferebant. Et de forestis suis tantam ferocitatem et severitatem ergo adjacentes nobiliores exercuit, quod quamplures adnihilavit et multos depauperavit. Nec mirum, quamvis ex his et ex aliis nimis odiosus devenit populis suis.”
This charge of cruel enforcement of forest laws might almost seem to have been transferred from William to Harold. It reminds one of some of the doings of Charles the First in Essex. It is a charge which Sir Francis Palgrave (Hist. Ang. Sax. 346) has not scrupled to repeat, but, as Mr. C. H. Pearson (i. 362) truly says, there is not a shadow of evidence for it except the assertion of this writer of the fifteenth century. On the words in Italics I shall have to speak again. In those which follow Knighton might seem to have drawn his portrait from King John, and, to carry out the analogy, as Lewis was then, so William is now implored to come over to England as a deliverer.
“Et ideo pars Comitum et Baronum adinvicem conferebant, dicentes non ipsum esse fortunæ deditum, nec verum esse Regem sed per intrusionem erectum, et ideo infaustè regere populum suum. Et mandaverunt Willielmo Duci Normanniæ, qui Bastardus vocatus est, eo quod ante celebrationem matrimonii natus sit, ut in Angliam veniret eorum consilio et auxilio jus regni prosequuturus, feceruntque ei fidelem securitatem veniendi; et consensit.” Immediately after all this comes Florence’s panegyric, cut a little short, as an alternative picture.
After these general charges against Harold, it is only right to extract three entries from Domesday, all in the same shire and page (Hampshire, p. 38), in which Harold is described as seizing the lands of two persons after his accession to the Crown.
“Leman tenuit in paragio de Rege E. Heraldus abstulit ei quando regnum invasit, et misit in firmâ suâ, et adhuc ibi est.”
“Leman tenuit de Godwino Comite. Heraldus _quando regnabat_ abstulit ei, et in suâ firmâ misit, et adhuc est ibi. Ipse Leman non potuit recedere quo voluit.”
“Godwin tenuit de Rege E. in paragio, nec alicubi poterat recedere. Heraldus abstulit ei et in firmâ suâ misit. Adhuc est ibi.”
I do not remember to have ever seen these passages quoted in illustration of the charge of private spoliation which is brought among other charges against Harold in the French Life. It is clear that they might be so used by any one who felt inclined. It is equally clear that we do not know enough about the matter to justify us in condemning Harold for dealings with his own tenants which may have been perfectly legal and honest. The entry does not even venture to call the occupation “unjust,” as it does with regard to Harold’s occupations in Herefordshire, and also with regard to many cases where Normans had taken lands from Englishmen and from one another. At any rate, if any wrong was done by Harold, it was not redressed by his successor. At the time of the Survey the lands were held, not by Leman and Godwine or by their descendants, but by King William.
I can hardly think that these entries are enough to make us set aside the portrait of Harold’s government given us by Florence in favour of that given by the French Biographer and by Knighton. And I believe it is the only corroborative evidence for that portrait that can be found. On the use of the word “regnabat” as applied to Harold, an use unique in Domesday, I shall have to speak in another volume.
NOTE H. p. 54.
THE COINAGE OF HAROLD.
Too much must not be made of the appearance of the word PAX on the coins of Harold. The word in various spellings, PAX, PACX, PAXS, appears on the coins of various Kings from Cnut to Henry the First. Still it is remarkable that the coins of Harold are singularly common, considering the shortness of his reign, and that, if I rightly understand my numismatic authorities, all his coins bear this legend, while with the other Kings it is only occasional, and with some of them, as with Cnut, very rare. I may add that Harold seems to have been the only King who could always spell the word right. Ingenious men have puzzled themselves to find out some special allusion in the word, as, in the case of the coins of Cnut, to the agreement between Cnut and Eadmund for the division of the Kingdom, and, in the case of the coins of Eadward and Harold, to the agreements made at the restoration of Godwine. I do not think that the word in any case implies anything more than the obvious religious or moral sentiment which it expresses. But it is certainly striking to find that sentiment so constantly expressed on the coins of the King who, above all others, needed peace, and who, through the aggressions of others, so utterly failed to find it.
On the whole matter see Ruding’s Annals of the Coinage, i. 137–166 (3rd ed.), and vol. iii. pl. 26. I have also to thank Mr. Leicester Warren for some private information contained in a letter to him from Mr. John Evans.
I am afraid of getting out of my depth when talking of either coins or crowns, but I cannot help noticing the marked difference between the arched crown set with pearls which appears on the coins of Harold and the singular kind of cap which is the commonest among the many head-pieces affected by Eadward. (See Ruding, iii. pl. 25, and Selden, Titles of Honour, 133, 134.) Is it possible that the monastic saint preferred the helm of the warrior, while the hero, in the same spirit which dictated the legend on the coin, chose to appear in the garb of a peaceful ruler?
NOTE I. p. 58.
THE OPPOSITION OF NORTHUMBERLAND TO HAROLD’S ACCESSION.
This story is one of the best illustrations of the way in which one authority fills up gaps in another, and also of the way in which important facts sometimes lurk in authorities which are not of the first rank. The Abingdon and Worcester Chronicles both begin their account of the year 1066 with Harold’s coming from York to Westminster for the Easter Festival (“On þissum geare com Harold cyng of Eoforwic to Westmynstre to þam Eastran”). There is not a word about his going to York or about the cause that took him there. This we learn only from the account in William of Malmesbury’s Life of Wulfstan (Angl. Sacr. ii. 253), which we thus see that we can fully trust for the main outline of the story. The jealousy of the North against the South is admirably described; only the narrative is confused by a notion that Tostig had something to do with the matter. William of Malmesbury seems never to have fully made up his mind where Tostig was at the time of Harold’s accession. His account of the whole business runs thus;
“Quinto anno collati Wlstano Episcopatûs Rex Edwardus fato functus ingens seminarium discordiæ reliquit Angliæ; hinc Haroldo, inde Willelmo Comite Normanniæ, legitimo eam jure clamantibus. Et tunc quidem Haraldus, vel favore impetratâ vel vi extortâ coronâ, regnum paullò minus totum obtinuit. Soli Northamhumbri magnum et gentile tumentes interim parere distulere, Aquilonalem cervicositatem Australi, ut dictitabant, mollitiei subjugare non dignati. Animabat eos ad tyrannidem, et insolentiâ suâ ingentes eorum alebat spiritus, Tostinus ejusdem Regis frater, nec fortitudine degener, si ardens ingenium tranquillis studiis applicare maluisset. Qui postmodum in eâdem provinciâ cum Haraldo Rege Noreganorum, quem in suffragium adsciverat, cæsus pœnas inconsultæ animositatis pependit. Sed hæc posteriùs. Tunc verò Haraldus eo profecturus, ut contumaciam eorum lenioribus curaret remediis, quandoquidem ferro frangere consilium non erat, sanctum virum secum adduxit. Sic enim fama sanctitatis ejus etiam ad abditissimas penetraverat gentes, ut nullam non arrogantiam molliturus crederetur. Nec verò citra opinionem rei fuit eventus. Namque illi populi ferro indomabiles, semper quiddam magnum a proavis spirantes, pro reverentiâ in jura Haraldi facile concesserunt. Et profectò perseverâssent, nisi eos Tostinus, ut dixi, averteret.”
This piece of history is not only valuable in itself, but it also helps us to the origin of a misrepresentation. We have seen Orderic (see above, p. 603) asserting that part of the English nation never submitted to Harold at all, while the rest submitted only unwillingly. This misstatement is clearly an exaggeration of the fact that Northumberland did for a short time refuse to acknowledge him. This same fact may quite possibly be at the bottom of those other stories about Harold’s oppression and tyranny of which we have heard so many. Orderic goes on to tell us (492 C) that, though some powerful men (“potentiorum nonnulli”) refused obedience, yet Eadwine and Morkere were zealous partizans of their brother-in-law (“Eduuinus verò et Morcarus Comites, filii Algari præcipui Consulis, Heraldo familiaritate adhæserunt, eumque juvare toto conamine nisi sunt, eò quod ipse Edgivam sororem eorum uxorem habebat”). There is no evidence that they were openly concerned in the resistance of Northumberland, though one certainly is inclined to put their names for the name of Tostig in William of Malmesbury’s account; but we know how they acted before the year was out.
It is doubtless on the strength of this passage of Orderic that Sir Francis Palgrave ventured to write (Hist. Ang. Sax. 362); “Some portions of the Anglo-Saxon dominions never seem to have submitted to Harold. In others a sullen obedience was extorted from the people, merely because they had not power enough to raise any other king to the throne.” In the page before he had said, “If our authorities are correct, Stigand, Archbishop of Canterbury, but who had been suspended by the Pope, was the only prelate who acknowledged his authority.” Now, unless Sir Francis merely meant that Harold never received the homage of Malcolm, the only ground for saying that any part of “the Anglo-Saxon dominions” refused to acknowledge Harold is the story of the resistance of Northumberland given by William of Malmesbury. But it is an essential part of that story that the resistance of Northumberland was peaceably overcome by Harold with the help of Saint Wulfstan. That is to say, instead of all the Prelates except Stigand refusing to acknowledge Harold’s authority, the holiest Prelate of the time appears as Harold’s most zealous partizan. The two parts of the story hang inseparably together. If we believe that part of England for a while refused allegiance to Harold, we must also believe that the sainted Bishop of Worcester was his most loyal subject.
I should not have enlarged on any faults in a work of Sir Francis Palgrave, written thirty years before his death, and which certainly does not represent the latest lights of that great scholar, if the worst portions of his early work had not been so injudiciously reprinted as stop-gaps between the fragments of that later work of his which every student of these times ought to have beside him.
NOTE K. pp. 67, 540.
THE POLITICAL POSITION OF THE LADY EADGYTH.
I am not aware of any mention of Eadgyth in any English writer between the death of Eadward and her own death (Chronn. Wig. Petrib. 1076; Fl. Wig. 1074). The accounts of the latter event however show that Winchester was her dwelling-place, and that she was in high honour with William.
I am now more inclined than I was in vol. i. p. 334 to look on Winchester as the actual morning-gift, first of Emma and then (by reversion or by the despoiling of Emma) of Eadgyth. It is plain that the city was the usual dwelling-place of each of the widowed Ladies in her widowhood. That Winchester was the morning-gift of Eadgyth is distinctly asserted by Guy of Amiens (see above, p. 541).
There are several indications that Eadgyth was not thoroughly loyal towards England. The only direct statements to that effect are certainly to be found only in very suspicious sources, but, weighing one thing with another, they seem not to be wholly without probability. William of Poitiers, in the midst of his savage abuse of Harold (126), adds, “Germana quoque, _illi moribus absimillima_, quum armis non valeret, votis inpugnabat et consilio.... Voluit autem _virilis prudentiæ femina_, intelligens honesta quælibet et vitâ colens, Willelmum Anglis dominari.” So the Hyde writer (290) says distinctly, “Haroldus, defuncto Edwardo, mox regnum Anglorum, contradicente Edithâ Reginâ sorore suâ, usurpavit.” I do not quite understand what the writer of the French Life means when he says (4075) that Harold
“Pur la reine Edith sa suer Fu cremuz e amez de cuer.”
When we remember Eadgyth’s preference for Tostig and her alleged complicity in one of his worst crimes, we may perhaps think it quite possible that she was no loyal subject of Harold. We may even be led to see a special meaning in the earnest request made by Eadward on his death-bed, that she should lose nothing of her rights and honours (see above, p. 15). And, when Tostig had fallen, it is even possible that she may have looked to William as being in some sort his avenger. She may also, at an earlier time, have fallen under the baneful fascination of her husband’s foreign favourites. And the Norman account, strange as it sounds, derives a certain corroboration from its very strangeness. It is the sort of thing which no one would have been likely to think of, if there had not been some real ground-work for it. And the honour shown to her by William, and the respect with which she is always treated by Norman writers, are in themselves suspicious. It was of course the obvious policy of William, representing himself as he did as the lawful successor of Eadward, to show every respect to the widow of his predecessor. But when we remember that that widow was also the sister of Harold, it is hardly honourable to her that William was able to carry out a policy of this kind. The other female members of her family found that England under William was no place for them. But while her mother, her sister, her nieces, were all in banishment, Eadgyth sat quietly at Winchester in all the honours of the Old Lady. In fact her character is a riddle from beginning to end, and her relations to her brothers are almost as mysterious as her relations to her husband.
NOTE L. p. 68.
THE AFFAIRS OF THE ABBEY OF ELY AT THE TIME OF HAROLD’S ACCESSION.
There are several points worth notice in the condition of the Abbey of Ely at the time of Harold’s election which it may be as well to speak of in the same place.
Abbot Wulfric, according to the Ely history (ii. 36), was appointed by Eadward in the year 1045, and he is described as being the King’s kinsman. “Rex Edwardus Wlfricum cognatum suum Abbatem ad jam dictum cœnobium apud Wintoniam assumpsit, ibique a Stigando Dorobernensi Archiepiscopo benedici fecit, tertio Regni sui anno, ab Incarnatione verò Domini millesimo quadragesimo quinto.” The writ then follows, which is also printed in Cod. Dipl. iv. 226, addressed, according to a common form, to the Bishops, Earls, Sheriffs, and Thegns generally of every shire where the Abbey had lands. The Abbotship is given by the King’s grant just like a Bishoprick (“Ic kýþe eów þæt ic habe geunnen Wlfríce þæt Abbotríce in Hely on eallen þingen” &c.).
This appointment made at Winchester would probably be made in the Easter Gemót of 1044, perhaps about the time when Abbot Siward was appointed Coadjutor-Archbishop to Eadsige (see vol. ii. p. 68). But there are one or two points of difficulty. That Stigand should be called Archbishop before his time by a writer living long after is not wonderful. But one does not see how he came to be performing an episcopal act over an Abbot whose church was not in either of his successive dioceses, and at a time (see vol. ii. p. 72) when it is not clear whether he was in possession of a diocese at all. There is also something puzzling in the description of Wulfric, as of several other persons, as King Eadward’s kinsman. We have seen Earl Odda so described (see vol. ii. p. 160), and Bishop Rudolf (see vol. ii. p. 120), and we also find the same name given to no less a person than Saint Eadmund of East Anglia himself. See Cod. Dipl. ii. 225, 226. Was Wulfric one of the house of Æthelwine, and was that house looked on as connected with Eadward through the first marriage of his grandmother Ælfthryth?
I infer that Wulfric died shortly before the death of Eadward from the words “mortuo nuper Wlfrico patre” in Hist. Elien. ii. 43. The historian gives two accounts of the appointment of Thurstan. In the second, in c. 43, he merely says that Harold “mox accepto regno Turstanum in Ely, mortuo nuper Wlfrico patre, ejusdem monasterii constituit Abbatem, virum probatæ virtutis et abstinentiæ, Anglicè et Latinè sufficienter a puero ipso in loco edoctum.” The earlier account in c. 41 runs thus; “Post decessum vero Abbatis Wlfrici, Stigandus Doroberniæ Archiepiscopus, Abbatiam de Ely, sed et episcopatus atque abbatias sibi assumpsit plurimas, et gratiâ utriusque Domini sui, Edwardi scilicet et Haroldi Regum, eas propriis pastoribus viduatas quamdiu voluit in suâ manu tenuit, et quibus voluit personis conferebat. Nam Wintoniensem, Glastoniensem, Sancti Albani, et Sancti Augustini, et Elyensem ante Turstanum Abbatem, abbatias in manu suâ receperat, et velut proprias possidebat. Ipso quoque suggerente, Haroldus, qui regni sceptra tenebat, ipsum Turstanum ab eodem Stigando benedici fecit.”
With this benediction of Thurstan by Stigand we may compare the benediction of Æthelsige by Stigand in 1061 (see vol. ii. p. 454). Compare also Æthelsige’s pluralities at Canterbury and Ramsey (see vol. ii. p. 455), and the strange story about Stigand himself holding the Abbey of Gloucester (see vol. ii. p. 638). Compare also the case of Ealdred at Winchcombe (see vol. ii. p. 362), and the vast pluralities of Abbot Leofric (see vol. ii. p. 349). Nevertheless I conceive that there is here a good deal of exaggeration as to Stigand’s pluralities. The Abbey of Winchester, meaning seemingly the New Minster, seems to be confounded with the bishoprick. We know the succession of Abbots of New Minster (see vol. ii. p. 644), among whom Stigand does not occur, and of Saint Swithun’s he was necessarily Abbot as Bishop of Winchester. And if Stigand ever held any of the other abbeys spoken of, it must have been for the shortest possible time. We have seen the regular succession of abbots at Glastonbury (see vol. ii. p. 361), and also at Saint Augustine’s in the person of Æthelsige, mentioned just above as blessed by Stigand himself. Neither do I find any mention of an incumbency of Stigand in the local history of Saint Alban’s.
The detention by Stigand of lands belonging to the Abbey is asserted in the local history, ii. 41; “Stigandus, quamvis substituto illic Abbate, caussas ecclesiæ agebat, sed quasdam illius optimas possessiones, sicut Liber Terrarum insinuat, ad maximum loci dispendium retinuit.” The reference to the “Liber Terrarum,” the local Domesday, should be noticed. I do not quite know what is meant by “caussas ecclesiæ agebat,” unless it be that Stigand, while robbing the house himself, defended it against other people.
The charge here brought against Stigand is the same as that which was also brought against Archbishop Ealdred and Bishop Ælfweard. See vol. ii. pp. 69, 467, 551. But there is an entry in Domesday which may perhaps suggest another view of his conduct. In fol. 40 _b_ we read of certain lands in Hampshire which “Abbatia de Ely tenuit de Stigando Archiepiscopo T. R. E.,” but which, at the time of the Survey, belonged to the see of Winchester. Is it not possible that these were the lands in question, and that Stigand’s appropriation of them was simply the resumption of a lease?
The Abbey of Ely had at this time a somewhat remarkable inmate. This was one Osmund, who had been a Bishop in Sweden, reminding one of Eadward’s kinsman Rudolf, who had been a Bishop in Norway, and whom Eadward quartered on the monks of Abingdon (see vol. ii. p. 160). The Ely historian (ii. 42) speaks of Osmund with great reverence, but Adam of Bremen (iii. 14) calls him “acephalus” and “girovagus,” and charges him with teaching false doctrine. He seems to have tried to set himself up as an independent Metropolitan of Sweden in opposition to the see of Hamburg. Refused consecration at Rome, he obtained it “a quodam Polaniæ Archiepiscopo,” that is, it would seem, from Stephen, Archbishop of Gnesen from 1038 to 1059. He came back to Sweden, professing to have been consecrated by the Pope as Archbishop of Sweden. When Papal Legates, members of the church of Bremen, came to complain, he wrought so upon King Emund and the Swedish people, that the Legates were sent away as not having proper credentials (“Solitis populum Regemque impulit dolis, ut legati repellerentur, quasi non habentes sigillum Apostolici”). At last (Adam, iii. 70) the famous Adalbert, Archbishop of Hamburg (1043–1072), the early guardian of Henry the Fourth, held a visitation of Scandinavia by authority of Pope Alexander the Second, and quietly removed (“dimisit hilaris”) several irregularly ordained Bishops, including Osmund. This must have been between 1061 and 1065. Osmund came to England and won great favour with Eadward and with all the great men of the land, but, charmed with the piety of the monks of Ely and their Abbot, he retired to their house, joined their brotherhood, and discharged episcopal functions among them—an early case, like that of Rudolf, of a Bishop _in partibus_. He died in Thurstan’s time, and was buried at Ely and afterwards translated.
NOTE M. p. 72.
THE COMET OF 1066.
This comet evidently made the deepest impression in every part of Europe. It is recorded in nearly every chronicle everywhere, and it is very generally, even by men who have no special connexion either with England or with Normandy, accepted as a presage of the Conquest of England. Our usual English and Norman authorities record it also; but I have preferred to collect a few of the more remarkable entries in the annals of more distant countries. I will give some specimens from the writers of Germany, of Southern Gaul, and of Italy.
The Chronicle of Saint Andrew at Cambray (Pertz, vii. 537) has a most remarkable entry;
“De bello in Angliâ facto. Anno autem Dei Christi 1066 ad occidentalem plagam unus ex cometis admodùm visu terribilis, crinitos radios velut flammigeras hastas emittens, vespere solem sequens per octodecim dies apparuit. Quod genus sideris quòd erunt bella aut famem aut pestilentiam portendere solet. Hoc regni etiam mutationem ipsâ suâ apparitione præsignavit. Nam Wilelmus Normannorum Comes, paratâ non parvâ classe, assumptâ magnâ militiâ, mare pertransiit.”
A short narrative of the Conquest of England follows. So the Chronicle of Ekkehard (vi. 199) also directly connects the comet with William’s expedition, of the results of which it gives a very exaggerated account;
“A.D. 1066. Cometes per totum orbem diu apparuit. Eodem anno Angliâ per Willihelmum Nortmannicum miserabiliter afflictâ tandemque subactâ, ipse Rex ejus effectus est. Qui mox omnes penè regni ejusdem præsules exsilio, nobiles verò morti, destinavit, mediocres autem suis militibus in servitutem, uxores indigenarum universorum advenis in matrimonium subjugavit.”
Abbot Hugh’s Chronicle of Verdun (Labbé, i. 194) says, “Millesimo quoque LXV. anno, Ind. iii. stella quæ cometes dicitur apparuit, et eodem anno Etuuardus Angi. Rex obiit.” (See the rest of the passage in p. 603.)
Still more distinct is the Chronicle of Saint James at Lüttich (Pertz, xvi. 639; Bouquet, xi. 294); “Cometes apparuit, quæ bellum Angliæ portendit, quam Guillelmus Normannorum Comes, ipsâ cum Rege suo Hero [sic] gravissimâ cæde mulctatâ, vi militari corripuit, regnumque victor obtinuit.”
Adam of Bremen we have almost learned to look on as a writer Scandinavian rather than German. He (iii. 50, 51) connects the comet with English affairs, but he does not give them the precedence. He first mentions the death of Godescalc (see vol. i. p. 650) and other events nearer home, and then adds,
“Et, nisi fallor, hæc mala nobis ventura significavit ille horribilis cometa qui isto apparuit anno circa dies paschæ. Eodem quoque tempore clades illa memorabilis in Angliâ facta est, cujus magnitudo, et quod Anglia Danis ex antiquo subjecta est, summam nos eventuum præterire non sinit.”
He then goes on with that short sketch of English affairs, from which I have several times had occasion to quote piecemeal.
Other German accounts which connect the comet with England will be found in the Annales Blandinienses (Pertz, v. 26), in the Annales Formoselenses (v. 36), in the Chronicle of Conrad of Ursperg (p. ccxxxiii.), and in Marianus (Pertz, v. 559), whose curious account of this year I have often had occasion to quote. See also Sigebert (vi. 361) and the Saxon Annalist (vi. 694), who oddly describes William as “filius illius Roberti quem Ricardus Comes Nortmannorum ex sorore Knut Regis Danorum genuerat.”
To these German writers I may add the Pole Dlugoss, the latest in time and also the most distant from England. He tells us (i. 260, ed. Leipzig, 1711); “Cometes stella in occidentem facem dirigens apparuit, plura mala quibus et Almaniæ et Britanniæ regiones afflictæ fuerunt designans. In Britanniâ, quæ nunc Anglia dicitur, Rex Eraldus occiditur, et in Almaniâ principes variis cædibus in se debacchantur.”
Of German writers who do not connect the comet with England I may mention Berthold (Pertz, v. 273) and Bernold (v. 428). But the most remarkable entry is that of Lambert (1066), who connects the comet with English affairs, but looks on it as presaging, not Senlac, but Stamfordbridge;
“In festis paschalibus per quatuordecim ferè noctes continuas cometa apparebat. Quo in tempore atrox et lacrimabile nimis prœlium factum est in partibus Aquilonis, in quo Rex Anglisaxonum tres Reges cum infinito eorum exercitu usque ad internecionem delevit.” (On these three Kings see Note CC.)
Turning to Southern Gaul, the Chronicle of Saint Maxentius (Labbé, ii. 211) not only connects the comet with England, but ventures to give a rash judgement in a matter of English constitutional Law. “1066. Stella cometes apparuit. Willermus Comes, filius Roberti supradicti Comitis Normanniæ, transiens mare conflixit cum Airaudo, _pseudo-Rege Anglorum_, quem devicit cum ipsâ gente, et terram eamdem in suam ditionem recepit.” Another Aquitanian Chronicler, William Godell, is less certain about the matter (Bouquet, xi. 284). “Hoc anno cometes apparuit in vigiliâ Sancti Marci, significans _fortasse_ abundantiam effusi Christiani sanguinis quam terra in regno Anglorum absorbuit.” See also the Chronicle of Saint Benignus at Dijon (Pertz, v. 42), and that of the Campanian Chalons (Labbé, i. 296). The Rheims Chronicle (Labbé, i. 360) throws its notice of the year into two hexameters, which appear in a great number of forms;
“Sexagenus erat sextus millesimus annus, Quum pereunt Angli stellâ monstrante cometâ.”
Abbot Baldric, in his verses on William (Duchèsne, Rer. Franc, iv. 257), has quite a different couplet. William is one
“Indice qui cœlo, qui præsagante cometâ Anglos innumeris stragibus obtinuit.”
Getting nearer our usual beat, the Breton Chronicle of Quimperlé on the one hand (Bouquet, xi. 372), and the Chronicle of Lambert of Saint Omer (Pertz, v. 65) on the other, both bring in the mention of English affairs, though the Breton writer mixes them up with things which to him were nearer home. Lastly, one of the Angevin Chronicles (Labbé, i. 288) looks on the comet as the sign of many woes to many nations. The Conquest of England comes first, but events which more immediately touched Anjou had also something to do with it. “In hoc anno apparuit cometa terribilis, multarum calamitatum in sequentibus annis subsequutarum, ut post patuit, portentrix. Nam in ipso anno Comes Normannorum Guillelmus Anglorum regnum magno periculo aggressus impugnare, bello publico magnâ et miserabili cæde cruento expugnavit, atque in Regem levatus coronari se fecit.” He then goes on to speak of Conan’s invasion of Anjou and his death, and of the wars between the brother Counts Geoffrey and Fulk.
Of the Italian chronicles I have already quoted one, the Annals of Beneventum (see p. 71). The Annales Cavenses (Pertz, iii. 180) connect the comet only with local affairs. But at Bari the Norman name was more familiar, and Lupus Protospatarius (Pertz, v. 59) recorded William’s victory, though he did not know his name. “1067. Et hoc anno apparuit stella cometes, et Comes Normannus Robertus fecit bellum cum Araldo Rege Anglorum, et vicit Robertus, qui et factus est Rex super gentem Anglorum.”
All our usual authorities record the appearance, and all, I think, in its proper chronological order, except William of Poitiers, who brings it in afterwards (139) at the end of his apostrophe against Harold.
The different statements as to the number of days during which the comet was visible are remarkable, and I must leave it to astronomers to reconcile them. But I cannot help thinking that the time of thirty days, spoken of in two chronicles only, one of which seems evidently to copy from the other, must be an exaggeration. The fourteen days of Wace (11462) and the fifteen of William of Jumièges (vii. 31) and Benoît (36778) doubtless mean the same thing, according to the usual French idiom. And, as the _seven_ days of the English Chronicles and Sigebert (vi. 301) would, according to the same idiom, be _eight_, I cannot but think that the _eighteen_ days of the Cambray annalist are owing to a confusion between the two accounts. If so, we have only two statements, one of a week, the other of a fortnight. The latter rests on the authority of Lambert and of William of Jumièges; the French metrical writers simply follow William.
Some notice of this comet will be found in Chambers’ Descriptive Astronomy, pp. 281–3, for sending me to which, and for some other hints, I have to thank Professor H. J. S. Smith. It seems to be that which is called Halley’s Comet, which has since appeared in 1145, 1223, 1301, 1378, 1456, 1531, 1682, 1759, and 1835. The appearance in 1145 is mentioned in the Angevin Chronicle in Labbé, i. 277, and in the Tewkesbury Annals for 1144 (Luard, Ann. Mon. i. 46), where it may possibly be connected with Stephen’s wars. The appearance of 1223 is mentioned in the Rouen Chronicle (Labbé, i. 374) under 1222; “Hoc anno visa est stella circum occasum solis Decembrilis, primæ magnitudinis, ardens velut facula, radios sursum erigens, et in acutum velut in conum colligens terræ vicina videbatur, quod aliquod prodigium portendere ferebatur. Hanc dicebant esse cometam.” It must also have appeared in 912 and 989, but I do not find those appearances mentioned in our Chronicles, though comets are mentioned in 905 or 906, 975, and 995.
Dr. Bruce (p. 86) quotes Mr. Hinde for the fact, which was also mentioned to me by Professor Smith, that the comet of 1066 is mentioned in the Chinese annals. Mr. Chambers tells us that they also mention its appearance in 1378—a year, by the way, quite memorable enough for any comet. “It was equal to the full moon in size, and its train, at first small, increased to a wonderful length.”
I have no doubt at all that the group in the Tapestry which immediately follows the representation of the comet itself represents Harold as hearing of its appearance and its interpretation. I cannot think with Mr. Planché (p. 147) and Dr. Bruce (p. 87) that Harold is receiving the news of the landing of Tostig or of anything else. There is no mention of Tostig or his invasion throughout the Tapestry, with whose subject they had indeed only an indirect connexion. It is most unlikely that an incidental and most obscure reference to Tostig’s invasion should lurk in a part of the Tapestry so completely inappropriate both as to time and subject. Nor can the figure speaking to the King represent William’s ambassador or any one directly connected with William. The story of William’s expedition begins from the very beginning in the next compartment, where the ship takes the news of Harold’s accession to Normandy. The present group ends the story of Eadward’s death and Harold’s accession. It follows immediately on the Comet, and it seems connected with it. The speaker is surely the interpreter of the sign, and that interpreter a μάντις κακῶν, a Kalchas or a Micaiah. It is quite possible that what Dr. Bruce calls “the dreamy-like flotilla” in the border may be meant darkly to set forth the nature of his interpretation, and so to act as a connecting link between this compartment and that which comes next after it.
NOTE N. p. 80.
THE MARRIAGE OF WILLIAM AND MATILDA.
That William’s marriage with Matilda was forbidden by Papal authority, and that the Papal dispensation for the marriage did not issue till some years after the marriage had been celebrated, are facts which have long been known. But the remarkable paper communicated by Mr. Stapleton in 1846 to the Archæological Journal (iii. 1) threw a new light on the whole matter. The essay, like all Mr. Stapleton’s writings, is brimful of curious learning, but, as usual, his power of arranging and making use of his facts is by no means equal to his diligence and acuteness in bringing them together.
Mr. Stapleton’s propositions, as far as I can disentangle them, are three;
First, That Matilda, before her marriage with William, was mother of two children, Gerbod and Gundrada, whose father was Gerbod, known as the Advocate of Saint Bertin.
Secondly, That the ecclesiastical opposition to the marriage of William and Matilda was not owing—at least not wholly owing—to any consanguinity or affinity between them, but to the fact that Matilda, at the time of William’s courtship, had a husband still living.
Thirdly, That the delay in the celebration of the marriage was caused by the necessity of obtaining a divorce.
Of these three propositions Mr. Stapleton has, I think, convincingly made out the first; the second and third I cannot accept.
That Gundrada, the wife of Earl William of Warren, was the daughter of Matilda, but not the daughter of King William, is manifest from the language employed by Earl William in his grant to the Priory of Lewes (Stapleton, Arch. Journ. iii. 21; Monasticon, v. 12). He makes his gifts
“Pro salute animæ meæ et animæ Gundradæ uxoris meæ et pro animâ domini mei Willelmi Regis, qui me in Angliam terram adduxit, et per cujus licentiam monachos venire feci, et qui meam priorem donationem confirmavit, et pro salute _dominæ meæ Matildis Reginæ, matris uxoris meæ_, et pro salute domini mei Willelmi Regis, filii sui, post cujus adventum in Anglicam hanc cartam feci, et qui me Comitem Surreiæ fecit.”
It is utterly inconceivable that Earl William would have used this language, if King William had been the father of his wife. In such a case he would have described his wife as the daughter of King William. He would never have drawn the pointed distinction which he does draw between Matilda his lady, the mother of his wife, and William his lord, who has done for him such and such favours. On the other hand there is the earlier charter of King William himself to the same Priory, which is granted, according to the text in the Monasticon (v. 13),
“Pro animâ domini et antecessoris mei Regis Eduuardi, et pro animâ patris mei Comitis Rotberti, et pro meâ ipsius animâ et uxoris meæ Matildis Reginæ, et filiorum atque successorum nostrorum, et pro animâ Guillelmi de Warrennâ et uxoris suæ Gondradæ _filiæ meæ_ et heredum suorum.”
Here William, according to the received text, certainly calls Gundrada his daughter. But the manuscript is said to be nearly illegible, and the reading to be very doubtful. Mr. Stapleton (p. 2) for the words after “Gondradæ” silently reads “pro me et heredibus meis.” Mrs. Green (i. 72) mentions that the words “filiæ meæ” are clearly in a different and later hand. This is admitted by Mr. Blaauw, in an article in the Archæologia (xxxii. p. 108), written expressly in answer to Mr. Stapleton, but he argues that the insertion represents the true reading, and objects to Mr. Stapleton’s reading on other grounds. But it strikes me that Mr. Blaauw’s text, if genuine, does not upset Mr. Stapleton’s position. The words “filiæ meæ,” taken by themselves, would of course prove the person spoken of to be William’s own daughter. But they must be taken in connexion with the other charter of William of Warren. It is far more likely that a man should use the words “filia mea” of his wife’s daughter—his own daughter for many purposes of law—than that a man should speak of his wife’s parents in the extraordinary way which we must attribute to William of Warren, if Gundrada really was William’s daughter.
Another Lewes charter (Monasticon, v. 14), in which Matilda is spoken of as the mother of Gundrada—“Mathildis Regina, mater Henrici Regis et Gundradæ Comitissæ”—is of course evidence for Matilda being the mother of Gundrada as well as of Henry, but it does not prove them to have been children of the same father. It is plain why those two only among Matilda’s children are spoken of. Henry was the reigning King, Gundrada was the local benefactress.
The documentary evidence then seems distinctly to show that Gundrada was the daughter of Matilda, but not the daughter of William. One charter plainly implies that she was so; the others do not imply the contrary. But this is not all. There are two passages of Orderic, both quoted by Mr. Stapleton, which imply that Gundrada had a brother Gerbod, and that neither of them was son or daughter of William. Mr. Blaauw answers that Orderic’s authority is weak on this point, as he stumbles, if he does not contradict himself, in his whole account of William’s daughters. Now certainly, if Orderic simply left out Gundrada in a list of William’s daughters, the omission would prove nothing whatever against the least direct proof that she was his daughter. But it proves much more, when Orderic speaks of her incidentally in a way in which it is quite impossible that he should have spoken of a daughter of William, and when he gives her a brother whom no man ever for a moment fancied to be William’s son. In one of these two places (522 C) Orderic tells us that William the Conqueror gave the Earldom of Surrey “Guillelmo de Guarennâ, qui Gundredam sororem Gherbodi conjugem habuit.” In the other place (522 A; cf. 598 A) Orderic recounts the adventures of “Gherbodus Flandrensis,” his investiture with the Earldom of Chester, his return to his own country, and his misfortunes there. It is clear that Orderic did not look on Gundrada as a daughter of William; she was in his eyes simply the sister of Gerbod. Gundrada and Gerbod were therefore, beyond all doubt, children of Matilda, but they were not children of William. But I do not understand Mr. Stapleton when (pp. 20, 25) he gives them another brother, and Matilda another son, named Frederick. He must have been thinking of the Frederick whose existence he had himself established in p. 3. But this Frederick, as appears from Domesday, 196 _b_, was brother, not of Gundrada, but of her husband William of Warren.
Matilda then was the mother of Gerbod and Gundrada, but who was their father? There does not seem to be any distinct proof, but the Flemish charters collected by Mr. Stapleton (pp. 17–19) show that there was a whole succession of Gerbods, holding the office of Advocate (_Advocatus_, _Avoué_) of the Abbey of Saint Bertin at Saint Omer, and who are often simply described as Gerbod the Advocate. These Gerbods range over nearly the whole of the eleventh century, from 1026 to the reign of Robert the Frisian, that is between 1071 and 1093. There is, for instance (p. 17), a charter of Baldwin the Fourth in 1026, and among the signatures is “Signum Gerbodonis Advocati.” The same signature is added to charters of Baldwin the father of Matilda in 1056 (Cartulary of Saint Bertin, p. 181) and 1067. In the later charters up to 1087 we find mention of Gerbod and his wife Ada (p. 201), and of Gerbod and his brother Arnulf. Mr. Stapleton supposes—he seems to have no evidence but that of the charters themselves—that Gerbod the husband of Ada is the Earl of Chester and son of Matilda, and that Gerbod and Arnulf were their sons. This is in every way probable, but I cannot follow him when he assumes that the signatures of 1026, 1056, and 1067 all belong to one Gerbod, the father of the Earl of Chester and, according to him, the first husband of Matilda. This assumption seems to be the only ground for the inference that Matilda’s first husband was living at the time of her marriage with William, and that therefore the delay and difficulty about the marriage was caused by the necessity of obtaining a divorce. But it is surely simpler and more obvious to take the signature of 1026 to be that of her husband, and those of 1056 and 1067 to be those of her son. With the Gerbod of 1056 or, considering how young he must have been, with those who acted in his name, the Abbey of Saint Bertin had rather fierce disputes. See the narrative in the Cartulary, p. 183, and Count Baldwin’s charter, pp. 184, 185.
I therefore accept the marriage, but the theory of the divorce seems to me quite untenable on every ground. It is remarkable enough that no hint should be found in any contemporary writer that Matilda had been married before her marriage with William, and that we are driven to infer the fact from the language of charters and from the most casual indications elsewhere. But we have more than one parallel case in Norman history. The Norman writers are absolutely silent about the marriage between Duke Robert and Estrith the sister of Cnut (see vol. i. p. 521). So again, we should never have known from the Encomiast of Emma that she ever was the wife of Æthelred. In his courtly pages the sister of Duke Richard is a virgin (see vol. i. p. 454) when she marries Cnut. So in the Norman writers Matilda is ever the daughter of Baldwin, never the widow of Gerbod. And, as Emma is called _virgo_, so Matilda is called _puella_, _pucelle_, _demoiselle_. But, if she is never called the widow of Gerbod, still less is she called his wife. In the case of Cnut and Emma, we know the real facts from the testimony of both English and Norman writers. In the case of William and Matilda, the Norman writers, in the silence of the English, have it all their own way, and we are left to the evidence of the documents. The English writers are silent through indifference; the Norman writers are silent through design. The best informed of all, William of Poitiers, leaves out the fact that there was any opposition to the marriage at all. But, if William’s marriage had been, not simply irregular or uncanonical, but a glaring act of adultery, committed in open defiance of a Papal command, it is hardly conceivable that so astounding a fact should have failed to find any chronicler.
Again, it may perhaps seem strange if William, when in search of a wife, preferred a widow with children to all the princely maidens who, we are told, were to be had for the asking. But it would be far stranger if, with so wide a field before him, his choice lighted on the married wife of another man. Would the wise men of Normandy have recommended such a step? Would Count Baldwin have consented to expose his daughter to such manifest shame? Would the Papal prohibition of the marriage have taken the form which it did take (see above, p. 89)? Would Pope Leo and the Council of Rheims have simply forbidden Count Baldwin to give his daughter in marriage to William the Norman? Would they not rather have warned William and Matilda, as later assertors of discipline warned Philip and Bertrada, against an act of shameless adultery? Can we conceive that Lanfranc would have stooped to interest himself in obtaining a dispensation for the guilty pair, or that a dispensation would ever have been granted by the most complying Pontiff? Such a dispensation could have been granted only on proof of some canonical impediment which rendered the former marriage of Gerbod and Matilda null and void. No proof of such an impediment is produced. It was a daring act on the part of William, Matilda, and Baldwin to contract an uncanonical marriage in the teeth of a direct Papal prohibition. But they would never have ventured on a step breathing such defiance to all law and morals as a marriage between a man and another man’s wife, contracted on the chance that her first marriage might be proved to be illegal.
I hold then that Gerbod was dead before 1049, and that the objection to William’s marriage with his widow was simply one of the usual canonical objections on the ground of kindred or affinity. This is asserted by all the writers who mention the subject (see above, pp. 94, 102, 106). But there is no small difficulty in making out what the nearness of kin between William and Matilda was. Mr. Stapleton (p. 22) assumes that their kindred consisted in the fact that Matilda’s “grandmother was a daughter of Duke Richard the Second of Normandy, and aunt of William the Conqueror.” If this could be made out, William and Matilda would clearly be within the prohibited degrees. But the pedigree does not seem to be at all certain. Baldwin the Bearded, Matilda’s grandfather, undoubtedly married a daughter of Richard the Good (Will. Gem. v. 13). But she could not have been the mother of Baldwin of Lisle. A daughter of Richard and Judith could not have been born before 1010 (see vol. ii. p. 586), at which time the younger Baldwin was a grown man, capable of marrying and rebelling against his father. Baldwin the Bearded must have been quite an old man when he married the daughter of Duke Richard. Moreri (art. Flandre) and the Art de Vérifier les Dates (iii. 4) both say, but without references, that she had no children, and the first wife of Baldwin the Bearded, the mother of Baldwin of Lisle and grandmother of Matilda, is called by them Ogiva of Luxemburg. This is doubtless the “Otgiva” or “Odgiva [Eadgifu?] Comitissa” who died in 1030 or 1031 (Ann. Baldinienses and Formoselenses, Pertz, v. 26, 35), only five or six years before Baldwin’s death. Oudegherst (Annales de Flandre, 63, 67, 75), who calls her Ognie and Odgona, has much to say about her, and about her son’s wonderful birth when she was fifty years old. However all this may be, it seems perfectly clear that Matilda was not the granddaughter of any daughter of Richard the Good. Failing Richard the Good, I cannot suggest any other common ancestor for William and Matilda, but it is quite possible that the marriage of William’s aunt with Matilda’s grandfather may have been held to produce some kind of affinity between William and Matilda.
Prevost, in his note on Wace (ii. 60), has a suggestion of the same kind, namely, that the canonical impediment was the affinity arising from the fact that Matilda’s mother, Adela of France, had been married, or rather betrothed, to William’s uncle, Richard the Third (cf. Palgrave, iii. 264). Again I am not canonist enough to say whether this would really have been any impediment to a marriage between Richard’s nephew and Adela’s daughter; but there seems to be no doubt that Richard the Third was married or contracted to Adela, daughter of King Robert. His marriage contract with an Adela, dated 1026, in which he endows her with large possessions, mainly in the Côtentin, is printed in D’Achery, Spicilegium, iii. 390, and Licquet, Hist. de Normandie, ii. 269 (see also Palgrave, iii. 137). M. Licquet (ii. 5) maintains that this Adela is not King Robert’s daughter, but some unknown wife of the name, whom he holds to have been the lawful mother of the monk Nicolas (see above, p. 380, and vol. i. p. 518). His chief grounds for this belief are that Adela is not described as the King’s daughter, and that the words of the deed (“annulo mihi in carnis unitate jungendam”) imply that the bride was already a grown woman, whereas Adela the daughter of King Robert was, in 1026, a babe in her cradle. Now the deed is drawn up in a rhetorical style; “Domina Adela” is once addressed in the vocative case, and that is the only mention of her name, though she is told that she is “juxta nobilitatis tuæ lineam dotata.” All this looks to me as if she was the King’s daughter, for whom the city and county of Coutances, and a good deal more, which the deed bestows upon her, would surely not be an unworthy dowry. As to her age, the statement that she was then an infant rests on the authority of William of Jumièges, which is generally very good, but which is in this case contradicted by dates. He says (vi. 6) that the elder Baldwin, at some time after the accession of Duke Robert in 1028, took away Adela as a babe from King Robert’s court, and brought her up as his son’s bride till she was marriageable (“A palatinis tricliniis adeptam tulit, et ad domum propriam in cunis asportavit, eamque usque ad annos nubiles diligenti curâ nutrivit”). But we read directly after that the younger Baldwin, puffed up by his royal connexion (“mox ut nobilis puellæ amplexibus cœpit frui”), rebelled against his father, who was restored by Duke Robert (see vol. i. p. 519). All this is said to have happened about the time of the death of King Robert (“quâ tempestate Robertus Rex Francorum moritur”), which took place in 1031. These two statements, in the same chapter, cannot be made to agree. The truth is that Adela could not possibly have been a mere baby in 1026. Her parents, Robert and Constance, were married in 998; her daughter Matilda was the mother of two children before 1049. Compare the imaginary genealogy of Herleva, vol. ii. p. 583.
Adela then, who was betrothed to Duke Richard, is the same person as Adela, daughter of King Robert, wife of Count Baldwin, and mother of Matilda. Richard’s early death seems to have hindered her actual marriage with him, but it may have been held that she had contracted an affinity with the ducal house of Rouen which made it unlawful for her daughter to marry Duke Richard’s nephew. Either then of these possible grounds of affinity, the marriage of the elder Baldwin with the daughter of Richard the Good or the marriage of the younger Baldwin with the betrothed wife of Richard the Third, seems to me far more probable than Mr. Stapleton’s theory of the divorce. It is also supported by the witness of all those writers who speak of the kindred between the parties. The expressions “cognata,” “consanguineum cubile,” &c., are indeed not strictly accurate, as the connexion was only by affinity; but it is far more likely that the writers who use them should laxly apply to affinity words which strictly refer only to kindred, than that they should speak in this way when the impediment really was that Matilda had a husband living. Mr. Stapleton’s arguments against this view seem singularly inconclusive. “The peculiarity of the birth of William the Conqueror,” he tells us (p. 22), “as being illegitimate, certainly forbids such a conclusion, coupled with the silence of the Pope at the Council of Rheims.” The Pope’s silence surely cuts one way as much as another. As for William’s bastardy, Mr. Stapleton would hardly argue that Duke Robert could have lawfully married Herleva’s mother or sister, or that William, as _nullius filius_, could have lawfully married his own mother or sister. William’s kindred with Eadward is constantly insisted on, notwithstanding his bastardy, and one cannot doubt that a marriage between him and one of the daughters of Emma would have been thought unlawful. Mr. Stapleton presently (p. 24) mentions the foundation of the Abbeys, and adds with some triumph that “no papal bull attests that this penance was enjoined merely for marrying within the degrees of kindred.” Still less does Mr. Stapleton produce any Papal bull attesting that it was enjoined for a shameless and obstinate course of adultery.
There is indeed one other view, that maintained by M. Licquet (ii. 131) and followed by Mrs. Green (English Princesses, i. 4), namely that there was no real impediment to the marriage from either kindred or affinity, but that Pope Leo simply forbade the marriage on political grounds. Leo, the firm friend of the Emperor, did not wish to strengthen so doubtful a vassal of the Empire as Baldwin (see vol. ii. p. 97) by so close a connexion with the Duke of the Normans. This is unlikely in itself and unsupported by evidence. Even Papal authority could hardly go so far as to forbid a marriage to which there was no canonical objection; and if Leo did so, a prohibition arising from a temporary political cause would not have been so rigidly maintained by so many successive Pontiffs. And the place which the prohibition holds among the Acts of the Council distinctly shows that it was aimed against a contemplated breach of the ecclesiastical law of marriage. It comes in the middle of a series of citations and excommunications all aimed at offenders of that class, and among which a merely political prohibition would be strangely out of place. M. Licquet, like Mr. Stapleton, appeals to the silence of the Pope as to the motive of the prohibition. This silence is a difficulty according to any view, but it is a greater difficulty according to M. Licquet’s view than on any other. The actual reason is not minutely specified, but the position of the prohibition in the Acts of the Council is enough to show its general nature.
William then, I hold, married the widow of Gerbod. In choosing a widow for his bride, he only acted like several other great men of his century. Eadmund, Cnut, Harold, all married widows. Cnut and Harold married the widows of Kings whom they had helped to deprive of their Kingdoms. But the case which most exactly forestalled William happened just before the beginning of the century, in the person of Matilda’s maternal grandfather, King Robert. That most devout of Kings uncanonically married his widowed cousin (see vol. i. p. 507), and allowed himself to be worried by ecclesiastical censures out of his wife, and well nigh out of his life also. William characteristically stood his ground, and gained his point in the end in the teeth of Prior, Archbishop, Pope, and Council.
The date of the marriage is not given by any of the Norman writers. They all do their best to slur over the delays and difficulties about the marriage, and they would fain have us believe that Matilda was won as soon as wooed. The date 1053 comes from the Tours Chronicle (Bouquet, xi. 348), and in default of any better authority, I do not see that we can do otherwise than accept it. It also falls in singularly well, as Mr Stapleton suggests, with the date of the captivity of Pope Leo (see above, p. 98). Another date, 1047, is given in the late Chronicle of Saint Bavon (Corp. Chron. Fland. i. 552, “Wilhelmus Dux Normanniæ, uxorem duxit Mathildem filiam Balduini comitis Flandriæ, quæ postea peperit ei Wilhelmum, postmodum Regem Angliæ”). But this date cannot be accepted, as it is clearly inconsistent with the prohibition of the marriage in 1049. It has been sometimes said (see Bouet, p. 8) that Orderic (484 C) fixes the marriage in 1063, and it has thence been inferred that the marriage was repeated after Lanfranc had come back with the dispensation. But the words of Orderic do not really fix the marriage to 1063. He has been speaking of the death of Geoffrey Martel and other matters, and places the death of Geoffrey in 1060 or 1061. He then, in his usual fashion, takes the opportunity to enlarge on the greatness and prosperity of Normandy and its Duke about this time, and goes on to tell us of his wife and children. But there is nothing bearing on the date of the marriage.
I ought to mention that the Chronicle of Tours, the only one which gives the date of the marriage, adds a most strange tale about William’s courtship;
“Tunc Guillelmus Dux Normanniæ Mathildem, filiam Balduini, Comitis Flandriæ, duxit in uxorem, in hunc modum. Quum ipsa a patre suo de sponso recipiendo sæpiùs rogaretur, eique Guillelmus Normanniæ a patre suo, _qui eum longo tempore nutrierat_, præ aliis laudaretur, respondit, numquam nothum recipere se maritum. Quo audito, Guillelmus Dux clam apud Brugis, ubi puella morabatur, cum paucis accelerat, eamque regredientem ab ecclesiâ pugnis, calcibus, et calcaribus verberat et castigat, sicque ascenso equo eum suis in patriam remeat. Quo facto, puella dolens ad lectum decubat, ad quam pater veniens, illam de sponso recipiendo interrogat et requirit, quæ respondens dicit, se nunquam habere maritum nisi Guillelmum Ducem Normanniæ quod et factum est.”—Chron. Turon. Bouquet, xi. 348.
This tale is found also in the French rhyming Chronicle of Philip de Mouskes, a writer of the thirteenth century (ii. 174, ed. Brussels, 1838). Matilda is thus described;
“... li Quens de Flandres avoit Une fille qui moult savoit, Et moult estoit biele et vallans Sage courtoise et bien parlans.”
(v. 16902.)
To the first offer of marriage her answer is thus given;
“La demoiselle vint avant Si leur respondi maintenant J’aim mious estre nonne velée Que jou soie à bastart donnée.”
(v. 16932.)
William then goes to Lille;
“Tout droit à Lille vint i jour U la _puciele_ ert a sejour.”
Matilda is throughout called “puciele” and “demoiselle.” William then kicks and beats her, much as in the story in the Tours Chronicle, and her consent is given in much the same way.
The remarkable thing about this tale is that it is evidently a myth which has fastened itself upon William in several forms, and, I suspect, on Harold also. The story of William beating or kicking his wife is, in two accounts, transferred from the beginning of their married life to the end. William of Malmesbury (iii. 273) tells, without believing it, a tale that William in his later days forsook his old chaste manner of life (“non desint qui ganniant eum _cœlibatui_ antiquo renunciâsse quum regia potestas accrevisset”—the same singular use of the word _cœlebs_ spoken of in vol. ii. pp. 383, 531), and took a concubine, the daughter of a priest. Matilda, in her jealousy, had the girl ham-strung (“per satellitem succiso poplite Matildis sustulerit”), a tale apparently taken from the story of King Eadwig’s wife or mistress—(Osbern or Eadmer, Vit. Od. Ang. Sacr. ii. 84). On this Matilda is beaten to death with a bridle (“illam ad mortem fræno equi cæsam”), whether by her husband’s own hand or not is not distinctly said. Now this story is clearly the same as Snorro’s story (Johnstone, 217; Laing, iii. 94) how, when William was setting out for England, his wife came to speak to him, perhaps to detain him, on which, being mounted, he struck her with his heel, so that the spur ran into her breast, and she died (“Enn er hann sá þat, þá laust hann til hennar med hælinom, oc setti sporan fyri brióst henni, svo at á kaf stód, fell hon vid oc feck bana”). And this again, I cannot help thinking, is the same as William of Jumièges’ story (vii. 35) of Harold kicking his mother when she implored him not to go forth to battle (see p. 436). The tale of a King kicking or beating his wife or mother was afloat, and it was easy to fill the blank with the name of either William or Harold.
One more point is suggested to me by the charge against William’s chastity brought in the last paragraph. Genealogists, local antiquaries, and romance-writers are fond of calling the well-known William Peverel of Domesday a natural son of the Conqueror. For this assertion I know of no authority, except a statement in Dugdale’s Baronage (i. 436) which is said to come “ex Coll. R. Gl. S.”—that is Robert Glover, Somerset Herald. We are there told that Ranulf Peverel “married the daughter of Ingelric, founder of the Collegiate Church of Saint Martin le Grand in the city of London, who had been a concubine to William Duke of Normandy,” and that William Peverel was “begotten on her by the same Duke before the Conquest of this realm.” The uncorroborated assertions of a herald are not materials for history.
The mention of Matilda suggests the name of her supposed sister, Judith, the wife of Tostig. I have all along (see vol. ii. p. 134) doubted whether she really was a daughter of Baldwin the Fifth. She is called his daughter by Florence (1051) and twice by Orderic. In one place (638 C) he reckons the daughters of Baldwin and Adela as “Mathildis Regina Anglorum et Juditha, Tostici Ducis uxor.” Elsewhere (492 D, see p. 303) he says of William and Tostig, “duas sorores, per quas amicitia sæpe recalescebat, in conjugio habebant.” Orderic is followed by Alberic in the thirteenth century, who gives (p. 98) Baldwin and Adela three sons, Baldwin, Robert, and Philip, and two daughters, “Judith, quam nupsit Tosticus Comes Nordanubriorum in Angliâ, et Mathildem prædictam Normannorum Ducissam.” She is also called Baldwin’s daughter by two writers of the fifteenth century, who record her second marriage with Duke Welf of Bavaria. Botho in his Picture Chronicle of Brunswick (Leibnitz, iii. 325) says of Baldwin (whom by the way he confounds with his son, marrying him to Richilda instead of Adela) that he had “eyne dochter de het Jutta, _de nam Konigh Heroden in Engelant_, dar wart se geheten Wichanda, do nam se dar na Hertoghen Wolpy den olden in Beyeren.” The honest Nether-Dutch is pleasant to read, but it is strange to make Judith the wife of Harold—degraded into Herod—instead of Tostig. But Botho repeats the statement in p. 327, nor does he stand alone in it. In Arenpeck’s Bavarian Chronicle (Leibnitz, iii. 661) we read of Welf, how “accepit Reginam Angliæ, tunc viduam, filiam scilicet Balduini nobilissimi Comitis Flandriæ, Juditham, in uxorem.” These accounts are of course simply amusing, but we shall presently see that, as for their chief blunders, they sin in decent company.
Florence then and Orderic are the only early authorities who call Judith a daughter of Baldwin the Fifth. And the authority of Orderic is lessened by a manifest error which he has fallen into with regard to Baldwin’s family. He makes him (526 C) the father of Udo, Archbishop of Trier, who was really the son of Count Eberhard of Nellenberg (Gest. Trev. ap. Pertz, viii. 183). On the other hand, the local Chronicle of the Counts of Flanders (Corp. Chron. Fland. i. 86) distinctly calls Matilda Baldwin’s only daughter. Baldwin married Adela “genuitque ex eâ duos filios, Balduinum Montensem et Robertum Frisonem, et unam filiam nomine Mathildem.” We now fall back on our own writers and remember that the Worcester Chronicle (1051) called Judith only the “mage” of Baldwin, while Eadward’s Biographer (pp. 404, 424) distinctly called her his “soror.” We now turn to the Saxon Annalist, and, among some wild stories, we find the same relationship distinctly asserted. Judith, as before, is Harold’s widow. Welf of Bavaria (Pertz, vi. 764) “duxit viduam Haroldi _Ducis Anglorum_ [see above, p. 226] Judihtam nomine.” But in an earlier passage we read (vi. 694), “Hujus Haroldi conjux, _amita Rodberti Comitis de Flandriâ_, ex cognatione beati Ethmundi Regis fuit.”
Here, comparing this passage with the Biographer, we may find the key to the whole matter. The Biographer says that Judith was Baldwin’s sister and Eadward’s niece, which last statement greatly puzzled me. The Saxon Annalist, evidently writing quite independently, calls her the aunt of Baldwin’s son Robert, and also calls her a kinswoman of Eadward (we should of course read Eth_war_di for Eth_mun_di). That is, she was a daughter of Count Baldwin the Bearded by his Norman wife, the daughter of Richard the Good. She thus exactly answers all the descriptions. She is sister of Baldwin of Lisle, aunt of Robert the Frisian, and she is, in a vague sense, niece of Eadward, that is, daughter of his first cousin. The pedigree stands thus;
Richard the Fearless. | +------+-------+ | | Æthelred = Emma. Richard the Good = Judith. | | Eadward. daughter = Baldwin = Odgiva. | | +--------+ | | | Tostig = Judith = Welf. Baldwin = Adela. | +---------+---------+ | | | Baldwin. Robert. Matilda.
Judith would thus be, not Matilda’s sister but her aunt, an aunt however possibly younger than herself. Odgiva, the first wife of Baldwin the Bearded, died in 1031. His daughter by the Norman Princess, the child of his old age, could not be born before 1032 or 1033. Matilda, the daughter of parents married in 1027, may well have been older.
We have here, I think, another proof of the accuracy of the Biographer in matters coming within his own province, and that in a case where his statement seemed, at first sight, puzzling and suspicious. I do not however know why he calls her Fausta, or why the Brunswick picture-chronicler calls her Wichanda. Judith was an obvious name for her, being that of her maternal grandmother the wife of Duke Richard. Possibly, as Miss Yonge suggests (Christian Names, ii. 345), this Hebrew name, in its form of Jutta, may have got confounded with the Northern Gytha.
NOTE O. p. 112.
THE CHILDREN OF WILLIAM AND MATILDA.
About the number and order of the sons of William and Matilda there is no doubt. They were Robert, Richard, William, and Henry. There is no doubt that Richard was second in order. He is always put so in the lists, and Orderic (573 C) expressly calls him “Ricardus, filius ejus, qui post Rodbertum natus fuerat.” Sir Francis Palgrave must have been speaking hastily when (iii. 254) he called him “the fourth son.”
But about the daughters, their number, names, and order, the statements are most contradictory. I will first of all set forth the different accounts of the early writers.
All that William of Poitiers tells us (120) is that two brother Kings of Spain sought for a daughter of William in marriage, whose name is not given, and that they greatly disputed about her. Of the promise or offer of a daughter to Harold he says nothing directly, though he alludes to it in a later passage (145).
William of Jumièges (vii. 21) only says that William had four daughters, without giving their names. His continuator (viii. 34) also enumerates four. First (“primogenita”), Cecily, Abbess of Caen. Second, Constance, wife of Alan Fergant of Britanny. Third, Adelaide [Adelidis], who was betrothed to Harold, but died unmarried (“Heraldo proditori ante bellum Anglicum sponsata, sed, illo dignâ morte mulctato, nulli nupta, virgo jam nubilis obiit”). Fourth, Adela, wife of Stephen of Blois.
Orderic gives no less than four lists. The first time (484 D) he simply gives the names of four daughters, Adeliza, Constance, Cecily, and Hadala. The second time (512 D) the number is raised to five, and the names are Agatha, Constance, Adeliza, Adela, and Cecily. The third time (573 C) he gives little biographies of four daughters. 1st, Agatha, betrothed first to Harold, then to Amfurcius [Alfonso] of Gallicia, but who died a virgin. 2nd, Adelaide [Adelidis], who lived, seemingly as a nun, under the care of Roger of Beaumont (“Adelidis pulcherrima virgo jam nubilis devotè Deo se commendavit, et sub tutelâ Rogeri de Bellomonte sancto fine quievit”). 3rd, Constance, wife of Alan Fergant [Fergannus]. 4th, Adela, wife of Stephen. The fourth time (638 D) he gives a mere list, with the same names as in the second but in a different order, Agatha, Adeliza, Constance, Adela, and Cecily. He also (511 A) says that a daughter of William, whose name he does not mention, was promised in marriage to Earl Eadwine.
William of Malmesbury (iii. 276) says expressly that William had five daughters. 1st, Cecily the Abbess, who was living when he wrote—he wrote therefore before 1126. 2nd, Constance. 3rd, Adela. Of two others he did not know the names (“duarum nomina exciderunt”), one betrothed to Harold, the second to Alfonso, but both of whom died unmarried.
Wace (9650) knows only two daughters, “Ele” and Abbess Cecily. Ele is (10821) betrothed to Harold, but afterwards married to Count Stephen.
Lastly, in Domesday (49) we find incidental mention of a daughter Matilda. Her chamberlain Geoffrey (“Goisfridus Camerarius filiæ Regis”) had lands in Hampshire, which he held “de Rege W. pro servitio quod fecit Mathildi ejus filiæ.” She is also mentioned in an Encyclic Letter of the Nuns of the Holy Trinity at Caen (Mabillon, Ann. Ord. Ben. v. 690) along with her mother Matilda and her sisters Adelaide and Constance, as one for whom the prayers of the faithful are asked.
Now of all these, Cecily, Constance, and Adela need give us no trouble here. The history of all three is well ascertained, and will come in its proper place. But about the others, the contradictions are great. The names Adelidis and Adeliza are doubtless the same. We have then these statements.
1. Adeliza was betrothed to Harold, but died unmarried. (Cont. Will. Gem.)
2. Adeliza died unmarried under the care of Roger of Beaumont. (Ord. Vit.)
3. Agatha was betrothed, first to Harold and then to Alfonso, but died unmarried. (Ib.)
4. A nameless daughter betrothed to Harold died unmarried. (Will. Malms.)
5. A nameless daughter betrothed to Alfonso died unmarried. (Ib.)
6. A nameless daughter was betrothed to Eadwine. (Ord. Vit.)
7. Matilda appears without a history. (Domesday.)
The first question is whether the daughter betrothed to Harold and the daughter betrothed to Alfonso are the same. Orderic stands alone in identifying them. On the whole, the balance of evidence seems to me to lie the other way. I am inclined to think that it was Adeliza who was betrothed to Harold, and that it was another daughter who was betrothed to the Spanish King. Indeed they cannot be the same, if we accept the statement which William of Malmesbury (iii. 238) puts into Harold’s mouth in the course of the messages which passed between him and William, namely that the maiden to whom he had been betrothed had died before his election to the Crown (“liberatum se sacramento asserens, quod filia ejus quam desponderat citra nubiles annos obierat”). I am sorry nevertheless to give up Orderic’s (573 C, D) very pretty story, which recalls (or reverses) the well-known ballad of the Spanish Lady’s Love. She had seen and loved Harold, and preferred death rather than to give herself to another and an unknown bridegroom. But there is also the difficulty of the extreme youth of any daughter of William at any time to which we can assign Harold’s visit. I cannot think, with Baron Maseres (103), that the betrothed of Harold was Cecily.
According to Wace, the Adeliza or Adelaide betrothed to Harold was the same as Adela, afterwards Countess of Chartres. The two names, both coming from the _adel_ or _æðel_ root, might easily be confounded, and it would not be difficult to suppose that Harold’s betrothed had been on the one hand mistaken for the betrothed of Alfonso, and on the other hand divided into two, Adela and Adeliza. But all the other accounts seem pointedly to distinguish between Adela and the betrothed of Harold, whether she were called Adeliza or not.
I need not discuss the theory according to which Mr. Blaauw and Mr. Thorpe (Lappenberg, Norman Kings, 215) identify the Matilda of Domesday with Gundrada; but a view put forth by Mrs. Green (Princesses, i. 16, 407), who has gone minutely into the matter, is better worth examining. She holds that Matilda and Agatha are the same, that the name of Agatha is a mistake of Orderic, that this is the daughter who was betrothed to Eadwine, and that the story of her attachment to Harold arose from confounding one English lover with another. Again, by gaining the three or four years between the visit of Harold and the betrothal to Eadwine, the difficulty as to age is got over. Mrs. Green’s suggestion is at least ingenious. I have little doubt, as I shall show in my next volume, that the daughter who was betrothed to Eadwine is the same as the daughter who was betrothed to Alfonso. But I do not see the evidence for calling her Matilda.
Abbot Baldric, in his verses addressed to Abbess Cecily (Duchèsne, Rer. Franc, iv. 274), speaks of a sister of the Abbess, who was, in some unexplained way, connected both with Bayeux and with Angers. Mrs. Green identifies her also with Matilda. The lines are,
“Audivi quamdam te detinuisse sororem, Cujus fama meas aliquando perculit aures. Nomen it elapsum, vidisse tamen reminiscor. Baiocensis erat, sed tunc erat Andegavensis, Quam, tibi si placeat, nostrâ de parte saluta, Atque mihi nomen rescribe tuumque suumque.”
As both Abbot Baldric and William of Malmesbury found it impossible to remember the names of William’s daughters, I may perhaps be forgiven if I leave the name of the betrothed of Harold undetermined.
NOTE P. p. 116.
THE REVOLT OF WILLIAM BUSAC.
There is a good deal of obscurity about William Busac and his revolt. The story is told by no one except William of Jumièges (vii. 20); and, as he seems to put it instead of the far better known story of the revolt of William of Arques, which he tells out of its place (vii. 7), one is tempted to suppose that he has fallen into some confusion between the two revolts and the two Williams. But he tells his tale so clearly and straightforwardly that it is hardly possible to doubt it, unless it can be shown distinctly to contradict some better ascertained piece of history.
The father and brothers of William Busac, as described by William of Jumièges, are all well ascertained persons. But William expresses himself inaccurately when he says (vii. 20) that Count William of Eu was an “uterinus frater” of Richard the Good. He must here use the word “uterinus” vaguely in the sense of illegitimate; for an “uterinus frater,” strictly speaking, of Richard the Good would mean, not a natural son of Richard the Fearless, but a son of Gunnor by some father other than Richard. The only question is as to the time when Count William obtained the grant of Eu, and whether it was granted by his half-brother Richard the Good or by his great-nephew Duke William. The following passages may be referred to on this point, which does not greatly concern my history. Will. Gem. iv. 18, vii. 2, viii. 37; Stapleton, i. lvi.; Roman de Rou, 6123–6215, where a romantic story is told, which is followed by Le Bœuf, Ville d’Eu, p. 28; and Palgrave, iii. 45.
The strange thing is that in none of these accounts is there any mention of William Busac as a son of Count William, though there is of his brothers Robert and Hugh. Still it seems hardly possible wholly to reject William’s existence and his investiture with the County of Soissons, which is so clearly asserted by William of Jumièges, and which, from the further details given in the _Art de Vérifier les Dates_, must, I conceive, rest on other authorities which I have not at hand. The chief difficulty in the story itself is that it seems to be implied throughout that the castle of Eu was in the possession of William Busac at the time of his revolt. If William of Jumièges did not so distinctly make William Busac the second brother—“horum medius” between Robert and Hugh—I should have been inclined to think that William Busac was the eldest brother, that he inherited the County, and that Robert succeeded to it on William’s exile. But this view seems forbidden by the words “horum medius;” and we also find Robert’s name with the title of “Comes de Ou” attached to a charter drawn up “tempore quo discordia cœpit inter ipsum [Comitem Willelmum] et Henricum Regem Francorum.” (Cart. de Saint Bertin, Paris, 1840, p. 426. The signature of “Willelmus de Ou,” attached to an earlier charter on the same page, belongs of course to the elder William.) We must suppose then that William Busac contrived to occupy his brother’s castle by some underhand means and to defend it against the Duke.
In accepting the account of this revolt given by William of Jumièges I do not profess to fix its exact date, or to add any details beyond such as are found in his narrative. From the point at which he introduces the story, it would seem to have happened between the affair of William the Warling and the marriage of Duke William, that is, between 1048 and 1053. But, as William of Jumièges puts the courtship and marriage of William together as if there had been no delay between them (see above, p. 85), it is quite possible that he means to fix the revolt to 1049 or thereabouts. At any rate, the place which I have given to it in my narrative seemed to me the natural one for it, as it is the beginning of a series of events which is carried on in the more famous revolt of William of Arques, namely insurrections in Normandy abetted by the King of the French.
The way in which the story of William Busac is treated by modern writers is curious. See Licquet, ii. 126; La Butte, Histoire des Ducs de Normandie, i. 246, 249; and the local historian of Eu, M. Le Bœuf, p. 30. A still more amazing account will be found in Mr. Roscoe’s Life of William the Conqueror, p. 89, for which it would be well to give some more definite authority than “Walsingham; Wace; Chron. Sax.; Chron. de Nor.; W. Malms.; Mazeres.”
But the aberrations of smaller writers will not seem wonderful, when we read the strange and contradictory statements made by Sir Francis Palgrave, which I feel sure would not have been found in any but a posthumous work of that great scholar. He first (p. 50) tells us of Count Robert and his services at Mortemer, and of “Robert’s son William (in France called William Busac) enriched, like his father, by the spoils of the Anglo-Saxon, and, who came to a fearful end.” William Busac is here confounded with his nephew William “de Owe,” son of Count Robert, who was blinded and mutilated by William Rufus in 1096 (see Flor. Wig. in anno, and Palgrave, iv. 420). In a later passage (iii. 224) we read, “William, surnamed Busac, second son of William, Count of Arques, now revolted against the Duke.” If Sir Francis had written or dictated in Latin, I should have thought that “Arcensis” had been substituted for “Aucensis,” by the same editorial process which took “Lagam Regis Eadwardi” to be a misprint for “legem.”
William was succeeded in the County of Soissons by his sons John and Reginald, after whom the County passed to the descendants of his daughter Ramentrude, wife of Ivo of Nesle. Another son, Manasses, was in 1092 chosen Bishop of Cambray by the citizens in opposition to the clergy, and was translated to Soissons in 1103 (see Gest. Epp. Cam. Pertz, vii. 504).
NOTE Q. p. 120.
THE REVOLT OF WILLIAM OF ARQUES.
There is a singular difference among our authorities as to the date of the revolt of Count William of Arques. William of Poitiers, Orderic, and William of Malmesbury put it at the point where I have put it in the text. But in William of Jumièges and Wace it comes much earlier, immediately after Duke William’s recovery of Falaise from Thurstan Goz (see vol. ii. p. 206), some years earlier than the battle of Val-ès-dunes. There is no doubt that the later date is the right one. In the narrative of William of Poitiers, the story comes in in what is evidently its natural order, immediately before the French invasion of 1054. The personal action of the Duke himself, now evidently in full maturity, seems inconsistent with the earlier date, as does also the prominent position of Guy-Geoffrey of Poitiers, who in 1044 (see vol. ii. p. 595) was “parvulus.” The story is also fixed to 1053 by the death of Ingelram of Ponthieu and the succession of his brother Guy. See Art de Vérifier les Dates, ii. 752. At the earlier date the elder Ingelram was reigning.
Besides this difference in date, the narratives of William of Poitiers and of Wace differ a good deal in the order of events, though I do not see any further contradiction between the two versions. I have therefore, while forming my narrative mainly on that of William of Poitiers, not scrupled to bring in some touches of detail from Wace which seemed to bear marks of authenticity.
In the order which I have followed, Duke William requires his uncle to surrender his castle, and he himself puts a garrison in it. The garrison then restore the castle to William of Arques, who openly revolts. Duke William hears the news at Valognes, he hastens to Arques, meets a party of loyalists from Rouen, fights a party of the rebels before the gates of the castle, and then blockades it. He then leaves the blockading force under Walter Giffard. King Henry comes to help William of Arques, and he falls into an ambush, where Count Ingelram is slain and Hugh Bardulf taken prisoner. The King retires; the Duke returns; William of Arques surrenders the castle, and the other posts in Normandy held by the French are surrendered also.
The accounts in William of Jumièges and in Wace leave out the occupation of the castle by the Duke and its betrayal to the Count of Arques. They say that the Duke, suspecting his uncle, summoned him to his presence, which summons he declined to obey, and openly rebelled (“Quem Dux à suâ vesaniâ nitens avellere, ad exhibendum sibi obsequium per legatos jussit eum venire. Sed ille hujusmodi legationem habens contemptui, magnâ cum fiduciâ ad resistendum se munivit et armavit.” Will. Gem. vii. 7). Wace transfers the hasty ride from the Côtentin from the first to the second appearance of Duke William before Arques. William of Poitiers again makes William reach Arques with six followers, all the others who had started from Valognes having failed to keep up with his pace. He there meets the reinforcement of three hundred from Rouen. Wace makes him reach Arques absolutely alone (v. 8699);
“Tute sa gente s’en merveilla Ke de si luing si tost vint là: Nuls ne s’en pot à li tenir, Ne nuls ne pot o li venir, De cels qui à Valuignes furent E de Valuignes od li s’esmurent.”
This is an evident exaggeration, adapted to the new order of events. Had William reached Arques absolutely alone, in the state of things conceived by William of Poitiers, he must have fallen into the hands of his enemies. But, while Wace transposes the two marches of William, Orderic (657 B) rolls the two into one. In his story William’s first appearance comes after King Henry and Count Ingelram have entered the country. He hears of them at Valognes; he sends on a picked force, and then follows himself with his main army. The former (“præcursores mei”) meet Ingelram, and defeat and kill him before William reaches Arques at all. But though I think that Wace has transposed the order of events, I have not scrupled to draw several details of the ride from him, and to accept Valognes as the starting-point. The other writers only mention the Côtentin generally. It is of course possible that Wace may have been thinking of William’s former ride from Valognes (see vol. ii. p. 247), where also the mention of Valognes is peculiar to himself. But, if William was likely to be there at one time, he was likely to be there at another.
The mention of Saint Aubin as the place of the ambush also comes from William of Jumièges, followed by Wace. (I am sorry that, when I was at Arques, I omitted to explore the spot.) I have ventured to connect this mention of Saint Aubin with that which Orderic gives (606 B, C) of Richard of Hugleville’s resistance at Saint Aubin. This comes in a genealogical passage where the campaign of Arques is spoken of only incidentally, and seems to me to be a case of quite independent testimony coinciding.
NOTE R. p. 217.
THE BEQUEST OF EADWARD TO WILLIAM AND THE OATH OF HAROLD.
The oath which, as William alleged, Harold had sworn to him, and the bequest which, as he also alleged, Eadward had made in his favour, are two subjects every detail of which is enveloped in controversy and contradiction, and two subjects moreover which cannot be kept apart from one another. I have, both in the text and elsewhere, set forth more than once what I believe to be the true history. I will now go more minutely through all the evidence which we have bearing on the matter.
I. As I have already said (see above, p. 219), there are three statements as to the object of Harold’s visit to Normandy. And two out of these statements imply different versions of the alleged bequest of Eadward to William. I have stated their substance in the text; I will now go through the evidence for and against them.
1. The first version is that of William of Poitiers. He mentions the matter twice, first in his narrative of Harold’s visit (107 et seqq.), secondly, in the account of the messages sent by William to Harold (129–30). According to this statement (129), Eadward chose William as his heir, on account of his many excellences (“quoniam omnium qui genus suum attingerent me credebat excellentissimum, qui optimè valerem vel ei, quamdiu viveret, subvenire, vel posteaquam decederet, regnum gubernare”) and as a return for the kindness which he had received from William and his predecessors during his sojourn in Normandy (“ob maximos honores et plurima beneficia quæ illi atque fratri suo, necnon hominibus eorum, ego et majores mei impendimus”). This devise of the Crown was apparently made by a decree of the Witan; at any rate it was made by the advice, and confirmed by the oaths, of Archbishop Stigand and of the three great Earls, Godwine, Leofric, and Siward (“sanè neque id absque suorum optimatum consensu, verùm consilio Stigandi Archiepiscopi, Godwini Comitis, Leurici Comitis, Sigardi Comitis”). These great leaders all agreed to accept William as Eadward’s successor on his death, and meanwhile, as the passage seems to mean, to set up no other candidate against him (“qui etiam jurejurando suis manibus confirmaverunt, quod post Edwardi decessum me reciperent dominum, nec ullatenus peterent in vitâ illius patriam hanc ullo impedimento contra me occupari”). A son and a grandson of Godwine were given by Eadward as hostages for this engagement (“obsides mihi dedit Godwini filium ac nepotem,” 130; so again, 107, “Heraldus ... cujus antea frater et fratuelis obsides fuerant accepti de successione eâdem”—Willelmi sc.). As Eadward found himself near death—it might have been added, now that the three Earls who had confirmed the devise were all dead—the King thought it good to bind Harold by the same oath which had been formerly taken by his father, with the further security that it should be taken in William’s presence, while Godwine and the rest had, on the former occasion, only bound themselves to him in his absence (“ut quod pater ejus atque cæteri supranominati hic [in England] mihi juravere absenti, is ibi [in Normandy] præsens juaret præsenti”). Eadward also, it would seem, wished to give William, before his death, a further confirmation in his own name (“graviore quam fuerat cautum pignore cavit.” 107). The importance of binding Harold to the proposed succession is strongly set forth. He alone could influence or constrain the English people, who, it is implied, were very likely to disturb the arrangement (“et eum [Haraldum] quidem prudentissimè [destinavit], ut ipsius opes et auctoritas totius Anglicæ gentis dissensum coercerent, si rem novare mallent _perfidâ mobilitate, quantâ sese agunt_”). Harold is therefore sent on this errand; he falls into the hands of Guy and is rescued by William, as I have described in the text. He makes his oath to William—its terms I shall discuss at a later stage of this note—and William looks on him as one who will most effectually win over the English to his cause (“quem inter se et Anglos, quibus à Rege secundus erat, mediatorem sperabat fidissimum.” 108).
This is the full account given by the contemporary panegyrist of William. Two things are to be noticed in it, as important admissions made by an enemy. First, the loyalty of Harold to Eadward, and the full friendship and confidence which existed between the King and the Earl, are implied throughout, in distinct contradiction of one form of Norman calumny. Secondly, there is throughout a recognition of the English people as a party likely to claim a voice in the matter, and one whose voice, it is expected, will not be given on behalf of William. The epithets of abuse which the Norman panegyrist hurls at the heads of the English nation are in truth a speaking witness to the popular character of the ancient English government.
William of Jumièges (vii. 31) tells essentially the same story. He says nothing about the counsel and the oaths of Stigand and the three Earls, but he tells us that Eadward, finding himself childless (“_disponente Deo_ successione prolis carens”), sent Archbishop Robert to announce to William his intention of making him his heir (“olim miserat Willelmo Duci Rodbertum Cantuariorum Archipræsulem, ex regno a Deo sibi attributo illum statuens hæredem”). Afterwards he sends Harold, the most powerful Earl in his Kingdom, to confirm the bequest by oath, and to plight his own faith to the Duke (“deinde Heraldum cunctorum suæ dominationis Comitem divitiis et honore ac potentiâ maximum Duci destinavit, ut ei de coronâ suâ fidelitatem faceret, ac Christiano more sacramentis firmaret”). The story then goes on as before.
Orderic (492 A) tells the same story as William of Jumièges, with the addition that the devise in favour of Duke William was made with the consent of the English nation. “Eduardus nimirùm propinquo suo Willelmo Duci Normannorum, primò per Rodbertum Cantuariorum summum Pontificem, postea per eumdem Heraldum, integram Anglici regni mandaverat concessionem, ipsumque, _concedentibus Anglis_, fecerat totius juris sui hæredem.”
Benoît (36498 et seqq.) follows William of Jumièges, except that he does not give the name of the Archbishop, and that he seems to imply that the mission of the Archbishop and the mission of Harold happened in two consecutive years.
“L’arcevesque de Cantorbire, Li plus hauz hom de son empire, Out en Normendie tramis, _Les anz avant_, si cum je vus dis, Por afermer ce qu’il li done Tot le reaume e la corone.”
(vv. 36508–36513.)
It is really needless to refute this story. Some remarks on the tale will be found in Lord Lyttelton (Henry the Second, i. 351 et seqq.) and Baron Maseres (pp. 74 et seqq., 113 et seqq.) which are far above the average criticism of their age. Both writers are hampered throughout by the supposed necessity of accepting, or at least of attaching some weight to, the accounts of the false Ingulf; otherwise their line of argument is of a high order. There are also some good remarks of Lord Lytton’s in a note to his “Harold” (iii. 385), though I cannot conceive what he means by saying (iii. 386) that “the Saxon chroniclers ... unite in relating Edward’s warnings to Harold against his visit to the Norman court.” The “Saxon” Chronicles, I need hardly repeat, are altogether silent on the matter.
No one, I think, who goes carefully through the whole circumstances of the tale as told by William of Poitiers, will hesitate to say, with Baron Maseres, “there is reason to think it is absolutely false,” or, with Lord Lytton, “this appears a fable wholly without foundation.” Here is a purely English matter, an act of the English Witan, a deed confirmed by the greatest men of the Church and State of England, which rests solely on the assertion of an interested Norman writer, and of which no English Chronicle or cartulary has preserved the slightest trace. To make us believe that Leofric, that Siward, that Stigand, that Godwine, that the whole English people, agreed to the succession of William, we should need no evidence short of the document bearing their signatures, strengthened by an entry in the Chronicles to show that the document might possibly be genuine. No statement was ever weighed down by a heavier burthen of internal improbability. An act done when Stigand was Archbishop and when Godwine and the other Earls were still living, must belong to the few months between the appointment of Stigand to the Archbishopric at the Mickle Gemót of September, 1052 and the death of Godwine at Easter, 1053. It will not do to say that the title “Archiepiscopi” is simply descriptive of the person, and that the act might have been done at a time when Stigand had not yet reached the archiepiscopal rank (cf. vol. ii. p. 420). For Stigand and the three Earls are clearly mentioned as being the four greatest men in the Kingdom, which of course would not be the case at a time when Stigand was only a presbyter, or even the Bishop of an inferior see. The devise then, if it was ever made at all, could have been made only within those few months. And, except in those later years when Harold’s succession seems to have been looked upon as a settled thing (see vol. ii. p. 634), no time can be found so unlikely as those few months for any act in favour of William. No wilder assertion was ever made than that which represents the Witan of England, with Godwine at their head, as agreeing to, and even advising, the succession of the Norman Duke to the English Crown at the very moment of their great triumph over Norman favourites and Norman influence in England.
So much for William of Poitiers. William of Jumièges and Orderic, who evidently follows him, do not greatly mend matters by leaving out Stigand and the Earls, and seemingly putting Stigand’s predecessor Robert in his stead. Archbishop Robert is made to cross from England into Normandy. They doubtless had in their minds the time when Robert really did cross from England into Normandy. But that perilous passage was not made on the King’s errand or on any errand at all; it was the hurried flight of a public enemy, hastening to save himself from the vengeance of the English people (see vol. ii. p. 331). The story as regards Stigand, Godwine, Leofric, and Siward is manifestly impossible; it is no less impossible as regards Harold. We have already seen that during the whole time that Harold answered the description given of him by the Norman writers as the richest and most powerful Earl in England, the succession was, practically if not formally, determined in favour, first of the Ætheling Eadward and then of Harold himself. The tale that Eadward sent Harold, or that Harold consented to go, on an errand which shut out himself and every other Englishman from all hope of succession to the Crown, is simply absurd and impossible.
2. The second version, that in which Harold goes, not to guarantee the succession to William, but to bring back the supposed hostages, his brother and nephew, involves quite another view of the alleged bequest to William. In this account, there is no mention of any formal act of the Witan, none of any oaths of Bishops and Earls, none even of any act of the King himself, after he became King. It comes out incidentally that Eadward is said to have, years before, privately promised the Crown to William. And the only evidence for this private conversation between Eadward and William is another alleged private conversation between William and Harold. Yet this story is, as I have before said (see vol. ii. p. 302), less grotesquely absurd than the former one, and it rests on better authority. It is the version followed by two most valuable English writers of the next generation, namely Eadmer and Simeon of Durham. The narrative of Simeon, we cannot doubt, was borrowed from the narrative of Eadmer, whose exact words he follows through a great part of the story. And the appearance of the story at all in Simeon’s History is remarkable. Simeon had copied from Florence, with the change or addition of two or three words only, the narrative of the election of Harold, of the two invasions, of the two battles, of the death of Harold and the coronation of William. It then perhaps occurred to him that Florence’s narrative contained no statement whatever of any motive for William’s invasion. Simeon therefore (1066) starts as it were afresh, with the introduction, “Ut autem sciatur origo caussae quâ Willelmus Angliam bello appetiit, breviter quæ paullò ante gesta sunt repetantur.” He then goes on to the same effect as Eadmer. The hostages, Wulfnoth and Hakon (“Wlnothus filius Godwini et Hacun filius Suani filii sui”), are given by Godwine to Eadward at their reconciliation, and they are given by Eadward to Duke William for safe-keeping. Some time after Godwine’s death, Harold, now in possession of his father’s Earldom (“Godwinus ... malâ morte”—Eadmer, 4. Simeon says only “quum esset mortuus”—“post breve tempus interiit, et Haraldus filius ejus comitatum _Cantiæ_ patri succedens obtinuit. Is, elapso modico tempore,” &c.), asks leave of the King to go over to Normandy and bring back the hostages. Eadward says that he may go, but warns him against going. He is sure that, if he goes, some harm and shame will happen to him and to England. He knows Duke William well enough to be sure that he will never let the hostages go, unless he can get some gain by so doing (“Hoc non fiet per me; verumtamen ne videar te velle impedire, permitto ut eas quo vis ac experiare quid possis. Præsentio tamen te in nihil aliud tendere nisi in detrimentum totius Anglici regni et opprobrium tui. Nec enim ita novi Comitem mentis expertem ut eos aliquatenus velit concedere tibi si non præscierit in hoc magnum proficuum sui”). Harold however thinks himself wiser than the King (“suo quam Regis consilio credens”), and sets out. He is shipwrecked, imprisoned by Guy (“pro ritu loci, captivitati addicitur”), and delivered and honourably received by William. He presently sets forth to the Duke the cause of his journey. William tells him that it will be his own fault if the matter does not turn out well (“bene quidem rem processuram si in ipso non remaneret”). After a few days, the Duke sets forth his own mind to the Englishman. When he and Eadward were living together as youths in Normandy, Eadward promised him that, if he should ever obtain the Crown of England, he would make it over to him as his heir (“Regem Edwardum, quando secum juvene olim juvenis in Normanniâ demoraretur, sibi, interpositâ fide suâ pollicitum fuisse, quia, si Rex Angliæ foret, jus regni in illum jure hæreditario post se transferret”). If Harold would swear to support this disposal of the Crown, and would bind himself by other engagements which I shall presently discuss, Hakon should be released at once and Wulfnoth as soon as William had mounted the English throne (“tunc et modò nepotem tuum, et quum in Angliam regnaturus venero, fratrem tuum incolumem recipies”). Harold, feeling himself in a strait from which he knows not how to escape, swears to all that was required of him (“sensit Haraldus in his periculum undique, nec intellexit quà evaderet, nisi in omnibus istis voluntati Willelmi adquiesceret. Adquievit itaque” &c.). He returns to England with Hakon, and tells the whole story to Eadward, who reminds him of his own warning (“nonne dixi tibi, ait, me Willelmum nôsse, et in illo itinere tuo plurima mala huic regno contingere posse”). Eadward soon afterwards dies, and Harold, according to Eadward’s own wishes, succeeds him. See above, p. 586.
I have already (see above, p. 219, and vol. ii. p. 302) made some remarks on this story, a story which is plainly of English invention. Eadward’s intentions in favour of William are cut down to a rash promise in his youth, of which no one seems to know anything except Eadward and William themselves. Eadward’s present intentions are plainly in favour of Harold, and perfect confidence and cordiality are implied as reigning between the King and the Earl. But, as I have already said, this view of Eadward’s promise will not stand the test of chronology. There was no time when Eadward and William lived together as youths of equal age. When Eadward left Normandy in 1041, William was thirteen or fourteen years old, Eadward perhaps thirty-eight. A private promise of this kind seems most unlikely to have happened between them, though, as I have already said (see vol. ii. p. 523), William’s counsellors may have been already reckoning the chances of William’s succession. The story of Wulfnoth and Hakon being given as hostages for Godwine’s good behaviour on Godwine’s triumphant return is quite inconsistent (see above, p. 221) with the true narrative of that return. Still less can we accept the story of William of Poitiers (see above, p. 668) that Wulfnoth and Hakon were given as hostages, not for Godwine’s good behaviour towards Eadward, but for the carrying out of the imaginary act of the English Witan in favour of William. My own belief is that there were no English hostages at all in the hands of William at the time when Harold came into Normandy. But I think it is not hard to see how the story of the hostages arose. It is certain that Wulfnoth was kept as a prisoner by William, and that his imprisonment began early in life. William, on his death-bed (see Florence, 1087), set free various prisoners, both English and Norman, and among them “Wlnothum Regis Haroldi germanum, quern a pueritiâ tenuerat in custodiâ.” This of course might only mean that Wulfnoth was imprisoned after William’s coming to England, as must have been the case with Harold’s son Wulf, whom Florence speaks of directly after. But it is also quite consistent with the statement that he was left behind as a hostage by Harold. That he was so left is affirmed by Eadmer and Simeon in the passage just quoted. It is also implied by William of Poitiers, when he says (111) that, of his two supposed hostages, one, namely Hakon, was allowed to return with his uncle (“quinetiam fratruelis ejus, alter obses, cum ipso redux propter ipsum redditus est”). But moreover William of Jumièges, who says nothing about Hakon or about any earlier giving of hostages, says (vii. 31) that Wulfnoth was left as a hostage; “Postremò ipsum [Heraldum] cum multis muneribus Regi remisit [Willelmus], et pulcrum adolescentem Wlnotum fratrem ejus obsidem retinuit.” In this he is followed by Benoît (36640);
“Heraut out un frere danzel, Que n’estoveit querre plus bel; Vuilnoth out non, corteis e sage; Cel laissa au Duc en ostage.”
One would certainly understand this as meaning that Wulfnoth had accompanied Harold on his voyage and that he was left by him as a hostage for his own good faith. Why should not this have been the case? If, as I have suggested, Harold was accompanied on his voyage by both Wulfnoth and Hakon, if he brought Hakon back and left Wulfnoth behind as a hostage, one can easily see how the story arose about Hakon and Wulfnoth having both originally been hostages. The Norman version would represent them, as William of Poitiers does, as hostages given for William’s succession to the Crown. English writers, knowing that this at least never happened, would find some more possible occasion for the handing over of a son and a grandson of Godwine to the keeping of the Norman Duke. Such an occasion would be found in the reconciliation between Godwine and Eadward. The interchange of hostages is mentioned more than once in the course of the story, so that the notion that hostages were given by Godwine at the final conclusion of peace, though an unfounded idea, was not an unnatural one.
These then are the two views, according to both of which Harold is made to set out for Normandy with some settled purpose, either to confirm the bequest of the Crown to William or to obtain the release of his brother and nephew. The two accounts are utterly contradictory to one another, and I do not think that either will stand the test of criticism. But before I go on to the third version, I must mention the accounts given in the Roman de Rou and in the Tapestry. Honest Wace, after his manner, knowing that there were two or three stories, allows his readers to choose between them. He first tells the story of Godwine’s return, according to his notion of it. Godwine is in banishment, and the King will not let him come back unless he gives hostages for his good behaviour. He sends his son and grandson, whom Eadward sends over to William, and Godwine then returns.
“Goigne ne l’osa néer; Tant por li Reis asséurer, Tant por sez parenz maintenir, Tant por sez homes garantir, Un soen nevo et un soen filz, K’il aveit ensemble norriz, A en ostage el Rei bailliez. E li Reis les a envéiez Al Duc Willame en Normendie Come à cil ù mult se fie: Mandé li a k’il les gart tant Ke il méisme li demant.”
(vv. 10579–10590.)
He then adds the significant remark, which seems to show that he had the version of William of Poitiers and William of Jumièges in his eye, that this looked very much as if Eadward intended the hostages who were nominally given for the good behaviour of Godwine to act practically as hostages for the succession of William.
“Ço fut semblant k’il voulsist Ke toz tems cil les retenist, Ço distrent genz, ke il péust Sun regne aveir s’il ainz morust.”
(vv. 10591–10594.)
He then goes on to describe Godwine’s death (see vol. ii. p. 612), Eadward’s vow of pilgrimage, the foundation of Westminster, and Eadward’s intention to bequeath his Crown to William, which last he describes in language which is evidently taken from the statement put into William’s own mouth by William of Poitiers (129; see above, p. 667). He then gives a description of Harold, on whose virtues, power, and favour with the King he becomes somewhat eloquent, and fully realizes his position as the practical ruler of the whole kingdom.
“En la terre out un senescal Heraut out nom, noble vassal; Por sun pris è por sa bunté Out el regne grant poesté, Li plus fort hom fu del païs Fort fu d’homes, fort fu d’amis, _Engleterre out en sa baillie_ _Com home ki a senechaucie_.”
(vv. 10709–10716.)
So directly after;
“Héraut fu ben de son seignior, Ki à feme aveit sa seror.”
(vv. 10725–10726.)
The story then goes on in much the same shape as in Eadmer. Harold’s wish to release the hostages and the warnings of Eadward are given in much the same way, with the further piece of advice from the King, that, if Harold wishes for the hostages, he should send some other messenger and not go himself. Wace then adds that he has also read another story, that namely of William of Poitiers and William of Jumièges, and that he does not profess to know which is the true one.
“Issi l’ai jo trové escrit, Et un altre livre me dist Ke li Reis li rova aler Por li réalme asséurer Al Duc Willame sun cosin, Ke il l’éust emprez sa fin; Ne sai mie ceste achoisin, Mais l’un è l’altre escrit trovon.”
(vv. 10741–10748.)
So much for Wace. The Tapestry plainly shows (pl. 1) an interview between Eadward and Harold before Harold sets sail from Bosham, and another interview (pl. 7) after Harold’s return. Of these two scenes the earlier must be interpreted by the later. In that scene Harold is represented as recounting his adventures to the King with a very strange look and strange gestures, quite different from anything shown in the first interview. But Dr. Bruce’s imagination surely carries him a little too far when he says (p. 27) that “Harold comes into the presence of the Confessor like a guilty person, deploring his misdeeds and craving pardon. An axe, carried by an attendant on the left of the King, is turned towards him, apparently betokening that he has committed an offence worthy of death. The King is evidently reproving him sharply, but the attendant on the right of the King having the edge of his axe turned away from Harold, shows that the result of the interview was a pardon.” Unluckily for this ingenious theory, one of the persons who in this very plate offer the Crown to Harold carries an axe with its edge no less threateningly turned towards the person of the King-elect. Still there is no doubt that Harold enters the King’s presence with the air of one who is by no means proud of the success of his errand. His neck is stretched out in a most amazing fashion, and the whole expression is that of one whose position is exceedingly awkward. This seems to me to fit in exactly with the version of Eadmer, and I do not see how it can be made to fit in with the version of William of Poitiers. According to that version, Harold had done nothing to be afraid or ashamed of. He had simply pledged himself in a solemn way to carry out the King’s intentions. But, on Eadmer’s view of the matter, he had utterly failed, except so far as he had brought back Hakon; he had involved himself and his country in great danger, and he must have gone to the King with the unpleasant feeling that one so much his intellectual inferior had for once proved wiser than himself. This seems to me to be plainly enough expressed in the representation of the second interview in the Tapestry; I therefore accept the Tapestry as, so far, a witness in favour of Eadmer’s version, or at least in favour of some version according to which Harold went into Normandy on an errand which failed. A certain amount of confirmation is thus given to Eadmer’s statement, but I can hardly think that it is enough to counterbalance its inherent improbability in other respects.
3. I now come to the third version, that which makes Harold’s presence in Normandy wholly the result of accident. William of Malmesbury was fully aware of the version of William of Poitiers. He (ii. 228) distinctly refers to it (“ferunt quidam ipsum Haroldum a Rege in hoc”—namely to announce to William the bequest of Eadward—“Normanniam missum”), but he deliberately rejects it. The story which he prefers as nearer to the truth (“quia propius vero videtur”), and as told by those who were better informed (“alii secretioris consilii conscii”), represented Harold’s presence in Normandy or in any part of Gaul as simply caused by his being carried thither by stress of weather (“invitum, venti violentiâ illuc actum”). He set out from Bosham purely on a voyage of pleasure and for the purpose of fishing (“ut animum oblectaret suum, piscatorium conscendit navigium”). Some cause or other led him to venture to an unusual distance from land (“interim quidem longiusculo ludo in altum proceditur”), and a storm drove him to the coast of Ponthieu. According to Henry of Huntingdon, Harold was not thus merely yachting, but was going, for some cause which is not mentioned, to Flanders (“Haraldus verò transiens in Flandriam tempestate compulsus est in Ponticam provinciam,” M. H. B. 760 E). Matthew Paris (p. 1), whom I shall again have to quote, tells the tale in what, for my purpose, is the same way. Harold, still a young man, but looking forward to the Crown (“dum adhuc juvenis esset, adspirans ad regnum Angliæ”), is sailing about, and is driven by the winds to a land which he takes to be Flanders, but which proves to be Ponthieu (“sponte spatiatus, navigando raptus est vi ventorum, et dum Flandriam credidit se attigisse, compulsus venit in Pontinam provinciam”). Snorro (Johnstone, 190; Laing, iii. 75) makes Harold to have been sailing, not to Flanders, but to Wales. He seemingly looks on the voyage as part of Harold’s warfare against Gruffydd. A storm drives his ships, not to Ponthieu, but to the coast of Normandy (“þat var á eino sumri, at Haralldr Gudinason átti ferd til Brettlandz, oc fór á skipi, enn er þeir komo í hafit, þá tók þá andvidri, oc rák út í haf. Þeir tóko land vestr í Nordmandi, oc höfdo fengit storm mann-hættan”). These accounts seem independent, and of course they cannot be reconciled in detail. The important point which they have in common is that they all represent Harold’s presence in Normandy as unintentional. He is not going thither on any errand either of his own or of the King’s; he is carried either directly to Normandy, or first to Ponthieu, by a storm. If this were the true tradition, we can easily understand that various versions would soon arise as to the direction and object of his journey. Snorro’s notion, for instance, of a voyage into Wales is hardly consistent with the remarkable agreement of several versions that it was from Bosham that Harold set sail. But it is of little moment whether he was sailing to Wales or Flanders or nowhere in particular, provided he was not purposely sailing to Normandy. And that this story is the right one will, I think, appear, if we consider the way in which tales grow. They improve, they add details, they give new and fuller reasons for everything; but they seldom lop off. The fact of Harold’s presence in Normandy would call forth a thousand conjectures and speculations as to the cause of his being there. The purely negative version, which said that all these speculations were at fault, which asserted that Harold’s presence in Normandy was a mere accident, is, of all the versions, that which least bears the impress of legendary invention or adornment.
This general position is not affected by William of Malmesbury’s evident attempt to reconcile this version with that of William of Poitiers. Harold, in Guy’s dungeon, begins to devise some means of escape (“astuto pectore volvens casûs remedium”). It seems to be taken for granted that such means could come only through the help of the Duke of the Normans. He accordingly sends a man won over by great promises (“hominem promissis ingentibus sollicitatum”) with a message to Duke William. It is hard to see how a prisoner who was kept not only in ward but in fetters could have had the chance of winning over any one in this way, unless indeed the man so won over were one of his own keepers. The message is to the effect that Harold has been sent by Eadward to confirm in a more solemn way the King’s intentions in favour of William. It is assumed that Eadward had made such a disposition (see vol. ii. p. 371), and that it had been made known to William by messengers of inferior dignity; it is only the character of an ambassador which Harold is made falsely to assume for the nonce (“missum se Normanniam a Rege, ut quod minores nuntii balbutierant ipse potissimùm suâ confirmaret præsentiâ”). So Matthew Paris makes Harold falsely pretend that he was coming on an errand to the Duke’s Court, though he gives that errand a different turn from that which it takes in William of Malmesbury, one which I shall have to discuss hereafter. This is a most awkwardly devised story, even as a story, and it is of course inconsistent with the evidence by which I have shown that no disposition in William’s favour at this time can be admitted. It can only be an attempt to piece together the two versions, that of Harold’s embassy and that of his accidental presence in Normandy. He was not really an ambassador, but he pretended to be one. The attempt at joining the two stories was an awkward one, but perhaps no other attempt could have succeeded better.
The two other writers who follow a version essentially the same as that of William of Malmesbury, namely Snorro and Henry of Huntingdon, give no details of Harold’s deliverance from his prison in Ponthieu. Snorro leaves out the sojourn in Ponthieu altogether, and Henry only says, “quem [Haraldum] captum Consul Ponticus Willielmo Duci Normanniæ reddidit.” So Matthew Paris, making the act still more voluntary on Guy’s part, says, “quem captum Consul Ponticus Willielmo Normannorum Duci præsentavit.” Snorro, as I have said in the text, gives some curious details of Harold’s sojourn at Rouen; he also makes him get there in the summer, stay through the winter, and go back to England in the spring.
II. It will be seen that two distinct views as to the devise of the Crown in favour of William are involved in the first two of these three versions. According to one of them, the bequest was simply a private promise made by Eadward, when he was not yet King, that, if he ever should become King, William should succeed him. This is in itself not impossible, though it is not possible in the particular shape in which it is told us, namely as the promise of one young man to another young man. It is hardly necessary to show that such a promise as this could have no kind of force, according to the laws of England or of any other kingdom. According to the other story, the devise of the Crown took the form of an Act of Settlement, of a regular vote of the King and his Witan, confirmed by the signatures and the oaths of the four greatest men in the land. Such an act would doubtless have been valid, and it would have given William as good a claim as George the First. At the same time it must not be forgotten that all such attempts at an election before the vacancy seem to have been unpopular, and that they were very seldom carried out in practice (see vol. i. pp. 118, 533). But beyond the assertion of William’s own laureate, there is not a scrap of evidence or of probability in favour of this story, and the particular form in which it is told is chronologically impossible (see above, p. 673). William of Malmesbury, or those whom he followed, probably saw this, and therefore changed the date from some time before the death of Godwine to some time after the death of the Ætheling (see vol. ii. p. 371). He also leaves out all mention of the consent of the Witan or of the Earls, and seems to make it a purely personal act of the King. Here we get something which is barely possible, but which has no evidence and no probability in its favour. In fact neither of these statements as to the bequest to William rest on the slightest tenable ground. The third statement, that of a strictly testamentary disposal, a bequest of Eadward on his death-bed, does not appear in any writer at all near the time. The fact of the death-bed nomination of Harold was too notorious to be denied, and the adverse party generally contented themselves with asserting that the nomination was wrung from the dying King against his will. The first appearance of the notion of a death-bed bequest to William is to be found in the passage of the Hyde writer which I have already quoted (see above, p. 595), where it is said that Eadward “Regnum moriens Willelmo Comiti consobrino suo reliquit.” So the Annals of Margam (p. 3 Luard), “quia virgo decessit ... quum potiorem hæredem non haberet, Willelmo Duci Normannorum, consobrino suo, Regnum Angliæ testamento tradidit.” So Thomas Wykes, the partizan of Henry the Third, consistently enough asserts the rights of William in their fulness. He tells us (p. 22 Gale) how Eadward, “prævidens dum adhuc viveret Regnum Angliæ post mortem suam periculis et turbationibus exponendum, nobilissimum Ducem Normanniæ Willielmum le Bastard hæredem suum constituit, et Regni sui successorem, tamquam ex testamento dum adhuc viveret, assignavit ipsum.” M. Francisque Michel, in his note to Benoît (iii. 162), has collected several passages from unpublished writers taking the Norman side, which he very fairly contrasts with the genuine statements of the English writers. One only, the Chronicle of Peter of Ickham, a writer of the fourteenth century, seems worth quoting because he attempts rather ingeniously to combine two versions.
“Iste autem Edwardus, aliquando exsulatus in Normanniam, Willielmo, cognomento Bastard, Duci Normannorum, præstitit sacramentum quod si Rex, annuente Deo, foret, nullum alium præter ipsum haberet hæredem.
“Iste Edwardus, sanctus Dei confessor, absque liberis decessit quia virgo permanserat: et quum hæredem de se non haberet, Willielmo Duci Normanniæ consanguineo suo, sicut ei priùs juramento promiserat, regnum testamento dedit.”
These passages seem quite enough to show that the notion of a last will and testament in favour of William is one which was quite unknown till a later generation. I must quote one more passage in which this view is set forth, because it brings in another expression which deserves some notice. In the Chronicle of Battle Abbey (p. 2) we read, “Interea Anglicæ Regnum monarchiæ eidem Duci Willelmo, a suo consanguineo Rege Edwardo e mundo migrante, hæreditario jure delegatum relinquitur.” The expression to be noticed is that of “hæreditario jure,” which is here applied to William’s succession to the Crown. We find it also in charters of William himself and of his son William Rufus. There is one in Rymer (p. 3), where William describes himself as “Ego Willelmus Dei gratia Rex Anglorum hæreditario jure factus;” and one of William Rufus (p. 5), where he describes himself as “Ego Willelmus Dei gratia Rex Anglorum filius magni Regis Willelmi qui Regi Edwardo hæreditario jure successit.” The words “jus hæreditarium” have more than one meaning. It is possible that the Battle writer really meant to assert an hereditary right in the modern sense. He had just before said that William, “principatum proprium”—that is of course the Duchy of Normandy—“hæreditario sibi jure a patre relictum feliciter obtinuit.” And there is no doubt that William’s kindred with Eadward really was looked on by zealots in his cause as giving him some kind of hereditary claim upon England. This was certainly the belief of Henry of Huntingdon. See vol. i. p. 332. Otherwise the words “hæreditario jure” may be taken simply to mean that William was the heir of Eadward in the sense of being adopted by him. So two of the manuscript chronicles quoted by M. Francisque Michel (Benoît, iii. 163) say that Eadward “adoptavit in regnum”—“adoptavit hæredem—Willielmum Ducem Normannorum.” The words “hæreditario jure” are also used to express something which a man holds by a right which is not derived from his forefathers, but which is to be passed on to his descendants. It is even applied, as in the Cartulary of the Holy Trinity at Rouen (pp. 449 et seqq.), to property held by a corporation in absolute freehold, which will therefore pass to the official heirs, so to speak, of the existing members.
There is one more Norman version of the bequest of Eadward, which, though it rests on no early authority, is worth referring to, on account of the detail at which it is given, and because it brings in a name which we have already had occasion to mention with honour. It will be found in the History of Colchester Abbey in the Monasticon, iv. 607 (cf. Ellis, i. 415). The “internuntius” between William and Eadward was Hubert of Rye (see vol. ii. p. 249), the father of Odo, the founder of the Abbey. Eadward, finding himself sick and without heirs (“quum eò maximè cruciaretur, quod in se regium genus deficere videret”)—Eadgar is seemingly forgotten—sends Goscelin, a merchant of Winchester, who was in the habit of going on long voyages in the way of trade, on a message to Duke William. Goscelin, by his name, must have been a Norman or Frenchman, and the mention of a French merchant as settled at Winchester in Eadward’s time is worth notice. The Duke is asked to send some confidential agent (“ut aliquem dirigeret à suo latere”) to receive the King’s message for the Duke. In an assembly of Norman Barons (“facto magno procerum conventu”), the Duke seeks for some one who will go on an embassy to England. But all refuse to trust themselves among the barbarians who had wrought the death of Ælfred (“omnes recusant barbaram expetere gentem, propter illa quæ audierant facta apud Geldefordiam”). Hubert at last volunteers to go, and is thereon much praised and rewarded. He goes over in wonderful state (“cum grandi apparatu, cum pompâ magnâ, equis phaleratis et fremitu terribilibus, hominibus serico indutis et colore vestium spectabilibus”). Eadward receives him honourably, and of course gives him a grant of land (“ei primæ in Angliâ suæ mansionis villa quæ Esce dicitur, perpetuò possidenda conceditur.” The place is Ashe in Hampshire, which appears in Domesday, 47, as held by Hubert’s son Odo, but which was held T. R. E. by a tenant of Earl Harold). The business is done satisfactorily, and Hubert goes back to Normandy with the promise of the Kingdom and tokens confirming the promise (“insignia quibus Willielmus declarabatur hæres Edwardi Regis Anglorum, spatam scilicet cum capulo in quo erant inclusæ sanctorum relliquiæ, cornu de auro venatorium, et caput ingens cervinum”).
The story goes on to say that Hubert did not come with William into England because disturbances were looked for in Maine, which he was sent to quell or to hinder (“veniente Willielmo in Angliam accipere sibi regnum, quoniam a Cenomanicâ regione suspicabatur tumultus, Hubertus, quia erat promptus manu et consilio bonus, missus est illic prætendere et servare pacem”). I did not venture, without better authority, to mention this in my text at p. 384, but it is worth comparing with the seeming disloyalty of the Cenomannian knight at Senlac mentioned in p. 486.
Now, after going through all these accounts, what is the real state of the evidence with regard to the alleged promise of Eadward to William? A death-bed bequest, as we have seen, was not alleged by William or by his contemporaries. Such a bequest would be inconsistent with any of the versions of the story of Harold’s oath, all of which conceive William as asserting some right to the succession before Eadward’s last sickness. A promise made in earlier times, before Eadward’s accession, is possible, but it is by no means likely, and such a promise could not be of any legal force. An act of the King and his Witan in William’s favour is impossible in itself and is confirmed by no kind of evidence. But that there was some promise I think cannot be doubted. When I believe that promise to have been made I have already said (see vol. ii. p. 303). Here is another fact which looks the same way. In one of the manuscripts quoted by M. Francisque Michel (Benoît, iii. 164), William tells us how he reigned, “devicto Haroldo Rege cum suis complicibus, qui mihi regnum prudentiâ Domini destinatum et _beneficio_ concessionis _domini_ et cognati mei gloriosi Regis Edwardi concessum conati sunt auferre.” This is vague enough, but it suggests one hint. The feudal language employed, the words “beneficium” and “dominus”—the latter of which is applied by William to Eadward in other documents (see above, pp. 249, 555, and cf. ii. 18)—might suggest that, when the promise was made, William did homage to King Eadward as his lord and adopted father. There is but one time when this could have happened. We have here another confirmation of the view, supported by no direct evidence, but the only view which is not upset by opposing evidence, that the promise was made by Eadward, and that the homage, if there was any, was performed by William, at the time of William’s visit to England in 1051.
III. The next point is as to the time, the place, and the matter of Harold’s oath. As to the time, William of Poitiers (108) distinctly places the oath, as well as the knighthood, before the expedition into Britanny. Such seems also to be the account of Orderic (492 A-B), though his way of telling the story in the pluperfect tense takes off somewhat from the clearness of his narrative; “Heraldus ... sacramentum fecerat, ... tunc etiam Dux eumdem Heraldum in expeditione secum contra Conanum Comitem Britonum duxerat, armisque fulgentibus et equis aliisque insigniis cum commilitonibus suis spectabiliter ornaverat.” The other accounts seem to place both the knighthood and the oath after that expedition. In the Tapestry (pl. 6) we read immediately after the taking of Dinan, “Hic Willelm dedit Haroldo arma,” on this follow the words, “Hic Willelm venit Bagias, ubi Harold sacramentum fecit Willelmo Duci.” So William of Jumièges (vii. 31) and Wace (Roman de Rou, 10816) place the oath immediately after the return from Britanny, though Wace (10812; see above, pp. 228, 240) seems to place the knighthood before the expedition. As to the place, there is yet more difference than as to the time. The Tapestry clearly means to place the event in its own city, for “Bagias,” curious as the form is, can mean no place but Bayeux. So does Wace, a Canon of Bayeux (Roman de Rou, 10826). But William of Poitiers (108) places it at Bonneville (“coadunato ad Bonamvillam concilio”), in which he is followed by Benoît (36594);
“Si josta li dux son concile, Ce sui lisant, à Bone-Vile. Là fu li serremenz jurez, Que Heraut meisme a devisez.”
But Orderic (492 A) places the scene of the oath at Rouen (“ipse Heraldus apud Rotomagum Willelmo Duci coram optimatibus Normanniæ sacramentum fecerat”). It is also placed at Rouen by the romantic Biographer of Harold (Chron. Angl. Norm. ii. 184 et seqq.), who adds that the oath was sworn under a very large and aged oak, which, as soon as the oath was broken, immediately lost its bark, which, as he truly adds, was “dictu mirum” and “res digna spectaculo.” He adds that he himself saw it an hundred and forty years after the event, which fixes his own date to about the year 1205.
As to the form of the oath, William of Poitiers (108) simply says, “Heraldus ei fidelitatem sancto ritu Christianorum juravit.” But, according to his manner, he implies in a later passage (131; see p. 463, note 4) that the oath was made upon relics. So Orderic (492 A); “Homo ejus factus, omnia quæ ab illo requisita fuerant super sanctissimas reliquias juraverat.” The “phylactery called ‘the bull’s-eye’” is found in the Brevis Relatio (4); “Ei, sicut multi dicunt, super filacterium quod vocabant oculum bovis quod ei fidem et promissionem quam ei faciebat bene custodiret.” The Hyde writer (290) tells us why it was called the bull’s-eye; “Infinitam sanctarum multitudinem reliquiarum deferri jussit, superque eas filacterium gloriosi martyris Pancratii, quod oculum bovis vocant, eo quod gemmam tam speciosam quam spatiosam in medio sui contineat, collocavit, certissimè sciens tantum martyrem nullâ temeritate posse deludi.” In the Tapestry (pl. 6) Harold is shown swearing between two chests or phylacteries (see Ducange in voce) of different shapes, one of which has something on the top which might fairly pass for the “gemma speciosa et spatiosa” of the Hyde writer. But in none of these accounts do we find anything about the trick played upon Harold by William. Whatever Harold swears upon, it is not at all implied that he was otherwise than fully aware of what he was doing. The tale according to which Harold is made unwittingly to take an oath of a more solemn kind than he supposed comes from Wace;
“Toz li corz sainz fist demander, Et un liu tuz asembler; Tut une cuve en fist emplir, Pois d’un paele les fist covrir, Ke Heraut ne sont ne ne vit, Ne ne li fust mostré ne dit De suz out une filatire, Tut li meillor k’il pout eslire, E li plus chier k’l pout trover: Oil de boef l’ai oï nomer.”
(vv. 10828–10837.)
So again, after the oath has been taken;
“Quant Heraut out li sainz beisiez Et il fu suz levez en piez, Verz la cuve li Dus le trait, E lez la cuve ester le fait: De la cuve a le paesle osté, Ki tut aveit acoveté; A Heraut a dedenz monstré, Sor kels cors sainz il a juré. Heraut forment s’espoanta Des relikes k’il li monstra.”
(vv. 10850–10859.)
I leave the reader to judge which of these two versions is the older. It is quite possible that the striking circumstance of the hidden relics, which is peculiar to Wace, may be merely an instance of the usual growth of legend. But it is no less possible that Wace, a very honest writer, may have preserved a fact which, as tending to the discredit of William and in some measure lessening the crime of Harold, was left out by two violent partizans. I leave the point in the same uncertainty in which I must leave all the other details of the story.
We now come to the matter of the oath said to have been taken by Harold. The fullest accounts of its terms are those which are given by William of Poitiers (108) and by Eadmer (5). I have in the text (p. 241) given its terms according to the accounts of these two writers. The oath, as given by William of Poitiers, runs as follows;
“Se in curiâ domini sui Edwardi Regis, quamdiu superesset, Ducis Willelmi vicarium fore; enisurum, quanto consilio valeret aut opibus, ut Anglica monarchia post Edwardi decessum in ejus manu confirmaretur; traditurum interim ipsius militum custodiæ castrum Doveram, studio atque sumptu suo communitum; item per diversa loca illius terræ alia castra, ubi voluntas Ducis ea firmari juberet; abunde quoque alimonias daturum custodibus.”
The terms in Eadmer take the form of a speech addressed by William to Harold. William mentions Eadward’s promise of the Crown to him, and goes on thus;
“Tu quoque, si mihi te in hoc ipso [the succession to the Crown] adminiculaturum spoponderis, et insuper castellum Dofris cum puteo aquæ ad opus meum te facturum, sororemque tuam quam uni de principibus meis dein in uxorem te ad me, tempore quo nobis conveniet, destinaturum, necne [necnon?] filiam meam te in conjugem accepturum fore promiseris, tunc et modò nepotem tuum, et quum in Angliam regnaturus venero, fratrem tuum incolumem recipies.”
In both these versions Harold binds himself in different terms to do all that he can to bring about William’s succession to the Crown; but William of Poitiers makes no mention of the engagements as to the two marriages, the marriage of Harold to a daughter of William and the marriage of Harold’s sister to one of William’s nobles. In a later passage however (p. 145), which I shall quote in another note (see Appendix U), he takes for granted both the marriage of Harold with William’s daughter, and also another stipulation of which we hear more distinctly in William of Jumièges (vii. 31). This is the important addition that Harold should have half the Kingdom as the portion of Adeliza (“deinde Dux postquam Heraldus fidelitatem sibi de regno pluribus sacramentis firmavit, Adelizam filiam suam cum medietate Anglici regni se daturum eidem spopondit”). William of Malmesbury (ii. 228) gives much the same account as Eadmer, but with the strange addition that Harold offered the oath of his own accord. His words are; “Ibi Haroldus, et ingenio et manu probatus, Normannum in sui amorem convertit; atque, ut se magis commendaret, ultro illi tunc quidem castellum Doroberniæ quod ad jus suum pertineret, et post mortem Edwardi Regnum Anglicum, sacramento firmavit: quare et filiæ, adhuc impubis, desponsione, _et totius patrimonii amplitudine donatus_, familiarium partium habebatur.” The words in Italics would seem to refer to some sort of commendation of Harold’s lands to William, and something of the same kind seems implied in the words with which William of Poitiers goes on with his story (109); “Dux ei [Heraldo] jam satelliti”—a common equivalent for “miles” or vassal—“suo accepto per manus ante jusjurandum terras ejus cunctumque potentatum dedit petenti.”
Wace says nothing about the castle of Dover, still less does he stoop to Eadmer’s detail about the well, but he mentions the two engagements to marry William’s daughter and to make over the Kingdom to him at Eadward’s death. He gives these terms twice;
“Entretant a li Dus parlé Tant ke Heraut li a graé, Ke Engleterre li liverra Tres ke li Reis Ewart morra; Et à moillier s’il velt prendra Ele une fille ke il a: Co se li plaist li jurera, Et Willame le graanta.”
(vv. 10816–10823.)
And again in describing the actual taking of the oath;
“Poiz a juré et a prami Si come home ki eschari: Ele, la fille al Duc prendra, Et Engleterre al Duc rendra; De ço il fera son poeir Sulunc sa force e son saveir Emprès la mort Ewart, s’il vit; Si veirement Dex li aït, E li corz sainz ki iloc sont.”
(vv. 10840–10848.)
I have discussed in the text the chief points connected with the terms of the oath, and I have put forth the view which, on the whole, seems to me the least improbable. I will now get together several passages in which the promise to marry William’s daughter becomes the chief, or even the only, engagement taken by Harold. They come from writers who had not such good means of information as William of Poitiers, but who were much less likely to misrepresent or colour the story. They show what aspect of the tale most struck those who were not immediately interested in the matter. Let us begin with Snorro. The only engagement he knows of on Harold’s part is his engagement to marry William’s daughter. The proposal, as far as William is concerned, comes from Harold himself, but seemingly from Harold talked over by Matilda. The Duke does not altogether approve of the long evening talks between Harold and his wife. Matilda tells Harold that her husband is anxious to know the subject of their discourse, so it is agreed that Harold shall tell the Duke the next day. Harold accordingly asks William for his daughter in marriage, saying that he has fully talked the matter over with the Duchess, who favours his suit (“þat er at segia ydr, Jarl, atfleira býrr í hingat-komo minni, enn þat er ec hefir enn upp borit fyrir ydr. Ec vill bidia dóttr þinnar til eigin-kono mer, hefir oc þetta máll rætt fyri módor hennar optliga, oc hefir hon mer því heitit, at lidfinna þetta mál vid ydr.” Johnstone, 191; Laing, iii. 76). The suit is accepted; Harold is betrothed to the princess, but, on account of her youth, the marriage is to be put off for a time. Harold then goes to England, and comes back no more to _Welshland_ to marry the girl (“oc kom eige sídan til _Vallandz_, at vitia þessa ráds”). When Harold is elected King, William indeed bethinks himself that his kindred with Eadward gives him a better right to the Crown than Harold (“enn Vilhiálmr þóttiz betr tilkominn ríkis í Englandi, en Haralldr, fyrír frændsemis sakir þeírra Játvardar Konungs.” Johnstone, 216; Laing, iii. 94), but it is not made to appear that there was any breach of faith on this score on Harold’s part. William invades England, partly to assert his hereditary right to the Crown, partly to punish Harold for not marrying his daughter (“þat var oc med, at hann þóttiz eiga at giallda Haralldi svívirding, er hann hafdi slitit festamálom vid dóttur hans”).
So in the Cartulary of Saint Bertin, in a passage already quoted, we read (p. 197) how “Willelmus, Comes Nortmanniæ.... Angliam petiit, ac Haroldo ipsius terræ [Rege?] occiso, _eo quod filiam ipsius Wilhelmi in uxorem recipere recusaverit_, Anglos gravi prœlio, multorum sanguine fuso, sibi subjugavit, et utrique populo Anglico et Nortmannico regnavit.” Here the only reason given for William’s attacking England is Harold’s neglect to marry his daughter. No other was known to the author of the Chronicle of Saint Andrew’s at Cambray, who wrote in 1133. Here (Pertz, vii. 537) William is described as invading England without any apparent reason, till we reach the words “Rex Anglorum Heroldus, olim contra prædictum Comitem Willelmum perjurus, nam filiam ejus se accepturum juraverat.” The Waltham writer “De Inventione” (cap. 20) is in the like case; “Insidiantibus ei perfidis Normannorum versutiis, quia filiam Willelmi Ducis Normannorum nuptui traditam contempsit.” These “versutiæ” exactly describe the sort of constraint under which I conceive Harold to have made the whole engagement.
These accounts mention no ground at all for the invasion except Harold’s refusal to marry William’s daughter. Other accounts, without going so far as this, put the question of marriage forward in a very remarkable way, as if everything else was incidental. This is the case in the version of the messages between William and Harold which is given by Eadmer and Simeon. William’s main object is to demand Harold’s sister and to require Harold to marry his daughter. Other matters are quite secondary. “Venit nuntius in Angliam a præfato Willelmo directus, expetens sororem Haroldi, juxta quod convenerat Willelmo et illi. _Alia etiam quæ, violato sacramento, servata non erant, calumniatus est_” (Eadmer, 5). And afterwards, “iterum ei amicâ familiaritate mandavit quatenus, aliis omissis, servatâ fidei sponsione, saltem filiam suam uxorem duceret.” (Simeon reads, “ut quamvis violatâ fide cætera non servâsset, si tamen filiam suam duceret uxorem, _leviter ferret_.”) Harold, in his answer, does undoubtedly speak of the Kingdom and of the castle of Dover, but these subjects are thrust in between his answers about the two marriages, how his sister is dead—does the Duke wish for her corpse?—and how he cannot marry a foreign wife without the consent of the Witan. Throughout this story William is made much more anxious to find a husband for his daughter than to find a Kingdom for himself. This must surely come from some account like that of Snorro and the other writers quoted above, which spoke of the marriage only, and which has been mixed up with the account given by William of Poitiers.
It will be remembered that, in the wild account of Eadward’s death-bed given in the French Life (see above, p. 589), everything is made to turn on an expected marriage between Harold and William’s daughter. It is on that marriage that he is made to ground his hopes of the Crown. In the account in Matthew Paris (p. 1) again, the marriage comes first. Harold, carried to Ponthieu by accident, and handed over by Guy to William, pretends that he is come secretly into Normandy to make a league with the Duke and to marry his daughter (“Haraldus asserebat se hæc omnia sponte fecisse, ut clam veniens in Normanniam confœderaretur Duci, filiam ejus in sponsam accepturus”). This he swears to do on the relics of the saints (“quod et juravit super sanctorum multorum reliquias se fideliter ad quemdam terminum completurum”). Harold and William, hitherto enemies, now become great friends, all the more so because Harold has come secretly (“tantò igitur majori honore susceptus est quantò secretiùs adventâsset; fuerant enim ante inimici ad invicem”). Then, as something quite secondary, comes the oath about the Kingdom; “Juravit insuper se post mortem Regis Edwardi, qui jam senuit sine liberis, regnum Angliæ Duci, qui in regnum jus habuit, fideliter conservaturum.” There is no explanation of the alleged right of William, no mention of any bequest by Eadward. Matthew had surely read some account which mentioned the promise of marriage only, and he added the bit about the Kingdom in deference to the more usual statement.
Lastly, we have that most singular account in the Hyde writer (288–90), to which I have already (see above, p. 686, and vol. ii. p. 519) had to refer. According to this version, hostages, one of them a son of Godwine, were given to William for the safety of Eadward, when the English embassy came to offer him the Crown on the death of Harthacnut. If any one chooses to accept this statement, here is a ready way of accounting for the other stories about the hostages. And though I do not think it likely that a son of Godwine was given as a hostage to William at that time, it is distinctly less unlikely than that he should have been so given at the time of Godwine’s return. But in this account the hostages are not spoken of again. Harold, sailing to some place not mentioned (“quibusdam caussis navem ingressus”), is driven by adverse winds to Ponthieu; he is imprisoned by Guy, and set free at the prayer (“precibus”) of Duke William. The Earl and the Duke, according to this account, appear, not as the old enemies which Matthew Paris calls them, but as old friends (“ab eodem [Willelmo] optimè cognitus [Haroldus] in multis familiariter est habitus”). They agree at last that, as William’s cousin King Eadward has no heir, Harold shall receive the Kingdom of England on condition of marrying William’s daughter and, it would seem, of holding the Kingdom as a fief of his father-in-law. Such seems to be the meaning of the words, “Ad hoc inter eos sermo progressus est, ut quia Edwardus Rex Anglorum, consobrinus Comitis Willelmi, hæredem non habebat, regnum Anglorum Willelmus Haroldo concederet eo tenore, ut filiam ipsius matrimonio acciperet, eique per omnia fideliter [fidelis?] exsisteret.” Harold agrees so readily that William, who did not easily trust Englishmen, becomes suspicious, and binds him by an oath (“quod quum promptissimè annueret, ab eodem _Anglorum fidem suspectam habente_ ad districta sacramenta est coactus”). The phylactery of Saint Pancras, already spoken of, is accordingly brought, and Harold swears on it “se omnia, scilicet sicut fuerat postulatus, constantissimè se servaturum et Normannis fidelem affuturum.”
Now it is singular when, after this, we read in the same account (see above, p. 595) that Eadward on his death-bed left the Crown to William, and that Harold usurped it. This hardly fits in with an agreement between Harold and William that Harold should have the Crown on certain conditions. But the account which this writer (291) gives of the messages between the two princes exactly fits in with his account of the oath. William calls on Harold to do what he has promised to do (“ut sacramentorum in Normanniâ gestorum reminiscens, fœdus quod juraverat persolveret”), that is, doubtless, to marry his daughter and do homage for the Kingdom. Harold’s answer is that he has no need of any kind of connexion or intercourse with the Normans, and will therefore not perform his oath (“remandat Haroldus Normannorum societatem non esse Anglis necessariam, et ideò nullum ei juramentum persolvere, nullum cum eo consortium habere”). Of resigning the Kingdom there is not a word.
The reader will by this time know the peculiar position of the Hyde writer. His accounts are often strange and incredible, and contradicted by better authorities. But they are always independent. The writer is no servile copyist. He followed independent traditions and exercised an independent judgement of his own. His statements therefore have a certain value. And in this case they have more value than usual, as, though his prejudices are strongly Norman, his story points to a tradition quite different from the received Norman version.
Putting then together the hints of these various writers, combined with the probability of the case, I am led to the view which I have suggested in the text. Harold’s oath was primarily an oath to marry William’s daughter, and this oath, or perhaps his knighthood, was accompanied by an act of homage to William. He became his “satelles” in the language of William of Poitiers, his “homo” in the language of Orderic. I have shown in the text how vague and lax were the obligations thereby incurred. But such an act obviously lay open to many interpretations. Harold would doubtless hold that whatever obligations were imposed either by gratitude or by formal vassalage would be amply fulfilled by his services in the Breton war and by continued friendly relations with Normandy. But nothing would be easier than for William to magnify the simple obligation of homage into a promise to hold the English Crown in fief or to make it over to William himself. Out of such a groundwork as this the elaborate Norman story could easily grow up. But if Harold expressly promised all that William of Poitiers makes him promise, it is not easy to see how the engagement to marry William’s daughter could ever, in so many versions of the tale, including some distinctly favourable to the Norman side, have usurped the place which would have properly belonged to the more important engagements about the Kingdom.
I will now, by way of relaxation, wind up this part of my subject with the most wonderful tale of all, that with which Gervase of Tilbury amused the Imperial leisure of Otto the Fourth. I will give only a summary, referring the reader to the original of the “Otia Imperialia,” Decisio Secunda, cap. xx., which will be found in Leibnitz’ collection of Brunswick historians, vol. i. p. 945.
The holy King Eadward left as his heir his nephew Harold, a prince whose virtues are set forth in the most glowing terms. In his boyhood he had been sent by his uncle for education to Normandy, according to the use of the English nobles, who commonly sent their sons into France, to learn the use of arms, and to lay aside the barbarism of their native tongue. The reigning Duke had a bastard son named William, who was brought up as his heir. The two lads formed a boyish friendship, and promised to marry each other’s sisters. King Eadward and the unnamed Norman Duke die about the same time; Harold succeeds his uncle in England, and William, after some opposition, succeeds his father in Normandy. The new Duke sends a message to the new King, calling on him to fulfil his promise by an exchange of sisters. Harold has now no mind for either marriage, but his own marriage with William’s sister is brought about by an accident. The King of the English sets out with a few companions on a yachting expedition. Stress of weather drives him to Flanders—we should surely read that, intending to go to Flanders, he was driven to Normandy—there he pretends that he is come to carry out his promise as to both marriages. He does marry the Duke’s sister, and takes her with him to England, and again promises to send his own sister to the Duke. Once at home again, he neglects his promise, and, puffed up with pride, he invades Scotland and defeats the Scots in a stoutly contested battle. Directly after this, he hears that William has landed in the south of England, and hastens to attack him. The Normans, few in number and fearing Harold’s prowess, defend themselves with a dyke. But God, who can conquer by few as well as by many, overthrows the proud English, whose King is either killed or escapes by flight. William then marches on London, marries Harold’s sister, and reigns over England by virtue of the marriage.
This is altogether the wildest of all the tales that I have come across. I need not stop to point out all its blunders, anachronisms, and confusions. The most amusing perhaps is the story of Harold’s youthful sojourn in Normandy. This is evidently a confusion between Harold and Eadward, and the reason which is given must be one which belonged to Gervase’s own day rather than to Eadward’s. But even this amazing fable is worth a moment’s thought, as it shows how strong the tradition was that some question about a marriage of some kind or other was the primary ground of quarrel between Harold and William.
IV. I have given in the text as the probable date of Harold’s visit to Normandy the only date which seems possible, namely 1064. Mr. St. John (ii. 226 et seqq.), who rejects the story altogether, enlarges on the varying statements as to the date. The earliest accounts give no date; some seem to place it very soon after the death of Godwine, others, sometimes indeed the same, place it very soon before the death of Eadward. The writers seem not to have stopped to think that these two events were thirteen years apart. Mr. St. John says, very truly, though with a curious confusion of the respective dates and values of his authors,
“Bromton, p. 947, places it in the fourteenth year of Edward, that is, A.D. 1056; Matthew of Westminster and Roger of Wendover in A.D. 1059; Henry of Huntingdon A.D. 1063; Ranulph Higden, iii. 283, in 1064; Hoveden, Malmesbury, Hemingford, Wace, Simeon of Durham, run through the whole gamut of chronology from the period immediately succeeding the death of Godwin to the period immediately preceding the death of Edward, so little possible did they find it to give any stability or coherence to their fable.”
He then goes on;
“Modern historians, discovering insuperable objections to all the earlier dates, imagine there are fewer obstacles in the way of adjudging the voyage to the last year of Edward’s reign. The selection seems unfortunate. At the time of the expedition against Conan the corn is said to have been almost ripe in the fields, which in Bretagne is never the case till towards the end of August or the beginning of September. Now from the most unimpeachable of all testimonies, we know that Harold was in Wales during the summer of A.D. 1065, overlooking the erection of the hunting-palace which he undertook to build for the pleasure of his brother-in-law. We may infer, though it is not stated, that Harold left Wales sometime before the end of August, because on the 24th of that month Caradoc, son of the murdered king Griffith, whose widow Harold had married, exterminated the earl’s workmen, and put a period to the construction of the palace. Immediately after this, that is, early in September, the insurrection took place in Northumbria, when Harold was at hand, ready at the King’s request to negotiate with the rebels at Northampton.
“From this view of the occurrences of A.D. 1065, it seems difficult, if not impossible, to imagine an unoccupied interval lying between midsummer and autumn long enough to admit of our crowding into it all the events which are said to have occurred during Harold’s imprisonment at Ponthieu and forced detention in Normandy.”
These arguments are, I think, decisive against 1065. Mr. St. John places the Northumbrian revolt in September instead of in October; still the English events of the autumn of 1065 hardly leave time for Harold’s captivity at Beaurain, his sojourn at Rouen, and his warfare in Britanny. But Higden’s date of 1064 seems open to no objection. Florence (see vol. ii. p. 474) certainly carries the Welsh war into that year; but the Chronicles leave it an absolute blank. At the same time, as I have already said, I do not commit myself to the date or to anything else. Mr. St. John’s arguments, though often expressed with needless violence, have throughout great weight as against the details of the story. But I still think that the story must have had some groundwork of truth, and I have tried to show what that groundwork may have been.
V. It would be an interesting question, how far Harold’s obligations to William, whatever they were, were known in England either before or after Eadward’s death. But this is a point on which we have absolutely nothing to guide us. I know of no writer who has anything to say on the subject, except the romantic Biographer of Harold, whom I have quoted in p. 601.
I have thus done what I could to throw light on the most perplexing question in my history, one of the most perplexing questions in all history. I shall not be surprised if I am thought to have only made what was before dark darker still. But no one can conceive how thick the darkness really is except by groping in it, as I have done, in his own person.
NOTE S. p. 221.
THE ÆLFGYVA OF THE BAYEUX TAPESTRY.
There is no representation in the whole of the Tapestry which is more thoroughly puzzling than the one referred to in the text (pl. 4), with its legend “Ubi unus clericus et Ælfgyva.” Who is the lady, bearing a purely English name, who is thus suddenly introduced, seemingly at the gate of William’s palace, with no apparent reference to anything before or after? One would naturally look for the figure of William’s wife or daughter in such a position, rather than for that of any other woman. Harold’s promise to marry William’s daughter, which is so prominently dwelt upon in every other version of the story, is not once alluded to in the Tapestry, unless this place has reference to it. But how could William’s wife or William’s daughter be described by the familiar English proper name Ælfgifu? On the other hand, what chance is there that any Englishwoman, really bearing the name of Ælfgifu, could be present in Duke William’s palace at such a moment? And if any such Ælfgifu really was there, what bearing had her presence on the general course of the story, so as to account for the prominent position thus given to her?
Some of these difficulties naturally struck the very earliest commentators on the Tapestry, and from their days to ours a series of the wildest conjectures have been poured forth with regard to the “Ælfgyva” in question. The matter is treated of by Lancelot (Mémoires de l’Académie, viii. 612), by De la Rue and his translator Mr. Douce (Archæologia, xvii. 100), by Mr. Amyot (Archæologia, xix. 199), by De la Rue again in his Appendix of 1824 (Recherches sur la Tapisserie, p. 53), by Mr. Bolton Corney (p. 19), by Dr. Bruce (p. 53), and lastly by Mr. Planché (Journal of Archæological Association, 1867, p. 142). The strange thing is that several of these writers seem not to have understood that Ælfgifu is simply a very common English name, but to have fancied that it was a sort of title, meaning Queen or Princess. Their stumbling-block was the double name of Eadward’s mother, “Ælfgifu-Emma,” in which formula Lancelot argued that _Ælfgifu_ was equivalent to _Hlæfdige_. Any one who turns to the passages which I have referred to will find a great number of guesses, some of which refute themselves, while others are refuted by other writers in the dispute. “Ælfgyva” has been identified with the Duchess Matilda, with her daughter Adeliza, with Harold’s sister Eadgyth and his wife Ealdgyth, while some have taken the trouble to show that she cannot be either Ælfgifu-Emma or “the other Ælfgifu” (see vol. i. p. 453). What it is that Ælfgyva and the clerk are doing no one seems to know for certain, neither can I throw any light on the matter. Out of all this mass I will only, by way of relaxation, quote Mr. Bolton Corney’s remarks, as at once the most curious and the least generally accessible.
“William promised to bestow one of his daughters on Harold. She is represented beneath the inscription ÆLFGYVA—but Elfgiva was not her name. Emma, daughter of Richard I. of Normandy, and mother of Edward the Confessor, is sometimes called by the Saxon annalists _Elfgiva_ Emma. _Elfgiva therefore, whatever we read in Florence of Worcester, seems to have been an appellation of honour_, and may have been understood as such by the _Saxons Bayeusains_. If so, why was the name of the betrothed omitted? Could it not be ascertained, or was it deemed superfluous? I apprehend the latter to have been the case; she was the DAME _par excellence_—she was _buried_ and was _annually commemorated_ at Bayeux.”
We may infer then, First, that the Saxon language was spoken at Bayeux in the thirteenth century, the date to which Mr. Corney assigns the Tapestry; Secondly, that in the Saxon language of Bayeux _Ælfgyva_ meant “Lady;” Thirdly, that one particular daughter of William was known, distinctively and familiarly, as “_the_ Ælfgyva;” Fourthly, that Mr. Bolton Corney understood Old-English better than Florence of Worcester.
Now leaving all wild conjectures, let us try and see what really suggests itself about this obscure matter. The Tapestry represents a woman named Ælfgifu as being in Duke William’s palace at the moment of Harold’s coming thither. Who was she? We may put aside Matilda and all other women who never were, or could have been, called Ælfgifu. We may put aside all those women who were named Ælfgifu but who were dead and buried at the time. But of all the women named Ælfgifu who were living at the time, which could have been in William’s palace at that particular moment? Several guesses have occurred to me at different times. They are mere guesses, of no more value than the guesses of other writers. They are all, I allow, improbable guesses, but I think that they have the advantage over some other guesses of not being absolutely impossible.
1. In my second volume (p. 629) I threw out, half in jest, the suggestion that Ælfgifu, the name assumed by Emma on her marriage with Æthelred, was the name usually assumed by foreign women who married English husbands. Is it possible that there is really something in this? Is it possible that William’s daughter, if she had married Harold, would have had to change her name to Ælfgifu? Is it possible that she is here called Ælfgifu proleptically, perhaps sarcastically? This is, I grant, very far-fetched and unlikely, but it is perhaps not absolutely impossible. We should certainly expect the Tapestry to contain some reference to the intended marriage between Harold and William’s daughter. We should certainly expect to find William’s daughter, rather than any other girl or woman, represented where we find Ælfgifu represented. And here is a way, however far-fetched, in which it is just possible she might be called Ælfgifu.
2. Ælfgifu was (see vol. ii. p. 629) the name of the widow of Ælfgar, the mother of Harold’s wife Ealdgyth. According to some accounts, she was of Norman birth. Could she have been living or visiting in Normandy at this time? And can her introduction have any reference to Harold’s marriage with her daughter?
3. I have mentioned in my second volume (p. 554) the probability that Harold had a sister of the name of Ælfgifu, and that she must have been the sister whom Harold (Eadmer, p. 5; Sim. Dun. 1066) promised, as part of his oath, to give in marriage to one of William’s nobles. Is it possible that she was in Normandy at this time? If Harold’s voyage really was, as I believe it to have been, a mere yachting expedition, he may very well have been accompanied by his sister, as well as by his brother and his nephew. If it should be asked how Ælfgifu came to be in William’s palace while her brother was still a captive at Beaurain, it may be answered that even Guy may not have pressed his right of wreck so far as to imprison a woman, and that it is certain that one or more of Harold’s party escaped Guy’s clutches, if only to carry the news of his imprisonment to William (see above, p. 224). If therefore Harold was accompanied by his sister, it is quite possible she might find her way to Rouen before he did. I throw this out as a mere conjecture, and it certainly has its difficulties about it, but every explanation of this puzzling group must be mere conjecture, and it certainly strikes me that this conjecture has less of difficulty about it than some of the others.
Whomever we fix upon as the Ælfgifu of the Tapestry, it is still by no means clear what is happening between her and the clerk, or why the incident should receive so prominent a place in the pictured story. Like the introduction of Turold, Vital, and Wadard, there is evidently an allusion to some fact which was perfectly well known at the time, but of which no other record has been preserved. As such, it is another witness to the contemporary date, and thereby to the authority, of the Tapestry.
NOTE T. p. 229.
THE BRETON CAMPAIGN OF WILLIAM AND HAROLD.
Our only detailed accounts of this campaign come from William of Poitiers and the Tapestry. Between these two both Lord Lyttelton (i. 354) and Mr. Planché (145) see a distinct contradiction; only Lord Lyttelton assumes that the Tapestry must be wrong because it contradicts William of Poitiers, while Mr. Planché assumes that William of Poitiers must be wrong because he contradicts the Tapestry. But there is really no distinct contradiction between the two authorities; their accounts may easily be reconciled, if we only suppose a somewhat remarkable omission on the part of William of Poitiers.
William tells us that the object of the expedition was to deliver Dol, which was held on Duke William’s behalf by Rhiwallon, and that Conan fled on the approach of the Norman army. He gives no details of any further progress of William and Harold in Britanny, though he has a good deal to tell us as to what passed between William and Rhiwallon. He makes no mention of Rennes or of Dinan, the two other places represented in the Tapestry.
There is nothing in the Tapestry (pl. 5) which at all contradicts this account of what happened at Dol. William’s approach to the city is clearly not a hostile approach. The Duke himself and those immediately about him are not even in armour. There are no defenders on the walls, such as we presently see at Dinan. The legend is simply “Venerunt ad Dol,” while in the other case it is “Pugnant contra Dinantes.” But on the other side Conan and his host are running away—“Conan fugâ vertit.” I do not profess to explain the intentions of the man who is letting himself down by a rope from the wall.
Thus far the Tapestry and the Archdeacon exactly agree. The Tapestry also does not, as Mr. Planché understands it, make William pursue Conan to Rennes. Rennes—“Rednes”—is indeed introduced in the Tapestry, but it forms no part of the story; the city is represented on a smaller scale than the other subjects, and certainly no one is made to pursue the flying Bretons. Rennes is simply brought in as a kind of indication of the point to which Conan fled.
The story of the siege of Dinan belongs wholly to the Tapestry. It is certainly strange that William of Poitiers should leave out all mention of so considerable an exploit, but the difficulty is a good deal lessened if we accept Wace’s statement (see p. 230) that Harold accompanied William on more than one raid into Britanny. That a siege of Dinan really is intended, and not a siege of Rennes, I have no doubt at all.
NOTE U. p. 259.
THE EMBASSIES EXCHANGED BETWEEN WILLIAM AND HAROLD.
The different statements as to Harold’s oath naturally lead to statements equally different as to the messages which, after Harold’s election, were exchanged between him and William. Whatever Harold had promised, that William demanded, and whatever William demanded, that Harold refused. We thus get a set of statements differing exactly as the other set of statements differ. I have already had occasion to refer incidentally to several of them. I will now try to put them together in order.
Of the purely Norman authorities, the Tapestry is silent. William of Poitiers does not directly speak of any messages between the rivals till after William’s landing in England (128–131; see above, p. 430). But there is a passage further on which seems to imply an earlier message. This is when the Archdeacon breaks forth into that wonderful panegyric on his master (145) which follows his account of William’s coronation;
“Hic [Willelmus] ne Heraldum vellet occubuisse. Immò voluit patris Godwini potentiam illi ampliare, et natam suam, Imperatoris thalamo dignissimam, in matrimonium, _ut fuerat pollicitus_, tradere.”
This clearly implies that an offer of the Earldom of the West-Saxons, perhaps of something greater, together with the hand of William’s daughter, had been twice made by William to Harold. The first time is of course at the taking of the oath; the second time must be in some message sent before the expedition. For the messages exchanged after William’s landing are given at length, and they contain no such terms. And an offer of William’s daughter could then at least have been nothing but sheer mockery. By that time, at all events, Harold was married to Ealdgyth.
William of Jumièges (vii. 31) has an account which exactly agrees with the implied narrative of William of Poitiers. The Duke, as soon as he hears the news of Harold’s election, sends messengers to remind him to keep his oath. The terms of the oath, according to him, were that William should be King, Harold having half the Kingdom and William’s daughter. His words are,
“Ad quem [Heraldum] Dux protinùs legatos direxit, hortans ut ab hâc insaniâ resipisceret, et fidem quam juramento spoponderat condignâ subjectione servaret. At ille non solùm hoc audire contempsit, verùm omnem Anglorum gentem ab illo infideliter avertit.”
He then goes on with the account of Gruffydd and Ealdgyth which I quoted in vol. ii. p. 630.
Orderic does not mention the message. The Roman de Rou (vv. 11066–11075) speaks of several messages;
“Willame li manda sovent, K’il li tenist sun serement, E Heraut li manda vilment, K’il ne fereit por li néient, Ne il sa fille ne prendreit, Ne il terre ne li rendreit, Et Willéalme le desfia, E desfiance li manda; E Heraut toz tems reponeit Ke nule rien mez ne creimeit.”
Here the terms of William’s messages are not given, but they may be inferred from the terms of Harold’s answer. These terms, and also the mention of more messages than one, seem on the whole to fall in with the account given by Eadmer and Simeon, which I have already mentioned (see above, p. 671). Harold there makes this answer, of which I do not fully understand the clause about the castle and well of Dover;
“Soror mea, quam juxta condictum expetis, mortua est. Quod si corpus ejus, quale nunc est, vult Comes habere, mittam, ne judicer sacramentum violâsse quod feci. Castellum Dofris et in eo puteum aquæ, licet nesciam cui, ut vobis convenit, explevi.”
He then goes on with the passages which I have already quoted (pp. 262, 264), in which Harold declares his inability either to decline the Kingdom which was offered to him or to marry a foreign woman without the consent of the Witan. William then sends a second message (see above, p. 260), of which the tone is greatly lowered. He now only asks that, if Harold will do nothing else that he has promised to do, he will at least marry his daughter. “Alioquin,” he continues, “se promissam regni successionem armis sibi vindicaturum proculdubiò sciret. At ipse [Haroldus] nec illud quidem se facere velle, nec hoc formidare respondit.”
It will be easily seen how completely this agrees with the account in the Roman de Rou, except in the prominence given to the engagement about Harold’s sister, which Wace does not mention at all. The statement about her death seems to me to bear the stamp of genuineness, as it is not a thing which anybody would take the trouble to invent. And it has sometimes struck me that this explains the statement of William of Malmesbury, where he makes Harold say that the daughter of William whom he had promised to marry was dead (see above, p. 660). In this statement he stands quite alone, and it seems not unlikely that he confounded the two marriage engagements, and that the death of William’s daughter is really a reproduction of the death of Harold’s sister. The rest of William of Malmesbury’s story, and the constitutional doctrine put into the mouth of Harold, I have mentioned already in the text and notes. See above, pp. 262–265.
The version of the Hyde writer I have already given at p. 692.
In Benoît’s account (36732–36757) the Kingdom alone is dwelt upon. He had mentioned the marriage (36622 et seqq.), but he seems to look on the marriage of Adeliza as something volunteered by William after the oath, not as part of the oath itself.
I do not know that there is any need to quote the accounts of any later writer.
NOTE W. p. 286.
WILLIAM’S COUNCILS AND NEGOTIATIONS.
Two points of some difficulty meet us here. We have no trustworthy guide to the chronology of the different embassies and assemblies which William used to put forward his claim; doubts may also be raised as to the nature of the Norman Assemblies which he consulted. To fix the exact chronology seems hopeless; as I said in the text, several negotiations were most likely going on at the same time. And the writer who ought to be our best authority, William of Poitiers, is now, as usual, very careless about the order of events, arranging them not so much according to the almanac as according to any arrangement which may best suit his rhetoric. Two distinct questions however arise. First, Did the Assembly which William of Malmesbury places at Lillebonne meet before or after the gift of the consecrated banner by the Pope? Secondly, Was the English expedition discussed in one or in two Norman Assemblies?
On the first point, William of Malmesbury (iii. 238) distinctly puts the Lillebonne Assembly after the receipt of the banner; “Perpensis apud se utrimque partibus, Papa vexillum in omen regni Willelmo contradidit; quo ille accepto, conventum magnatum apud Lillebona fecit, super negotio singulorum sententias sciscitatus.” Wace, on the other hand (11436), places the embassy to the Pope last of all, after all the other negotiations.
On the second point, Wace (11120 et seqq.) is the only writer who distinctly marks the two assemblies, first, a small body of select counsellors who recommend the gathering of a larger assembly, and secondly, the larger assembly of the whole baronage of Normandy which is gathered according to their recommendation. The words of William of Malmesbury would seem to imply one assembly only.
Let us see whether anything can be got out of William of Poitiers to strengthen either view. Having recorded (p. 121) Harold’s accession after his own fashion, he tells us of a council held by William, in which many of his chief men dissuaded him from the undertaking as being one too great for the power of Normandy (“Dux Willelmus, habitâ cum suis consultatione, armis injuriam ulcisci, armis hæreditatem reposcere decrevit; tametsi complures majorum id ingeniosè dissuaderent, ut rem nimis arduam, Normanniæ viribus longè majorem”). He then enlarges on the number of wise and illustrious men whom Normandy then contained, and gives a list of them, which differs in one or two names only from the list which Wace gives of the former and smaller council. Then comes an account of the preparation of the ships, the pouring in of foreign soldiers, the delay at the mouth of the Dive. Then, and not before, we read of the embassies to the German King, the Pope, and the King of the Danes. Then comes the tale about Harold’s spies, which is followed by a great number of arguments against the expedition, which read very much like Wace’s account of the assembly of Lillebonne, and which I have not scrupled (see p. 294) to transfer to that gathering. One of them is that the ships, though seemingly already collected at the mouth of the Dive, could not be got together or supplied with crews within the appointed space of a year. The Duke then makes a speech in answer, and the fleet, which had been waiting in vain for the south wind at the Dive, sails for Saint Valery.
In a tale told in this way there is clearly no regard paid to chronology. The facts are much the same as the facts in Wace, but as to their order nothing can be made out. It will be remembered that several other incidents in the history, as the comet and some points in the engagements between William and Harold, are (see pp. 643, 687, 701) recorded or alluded to by William of Poitiers in places still more distant from their chronological order. The short account in William of Jumièges (vii. 31–34) proves hardly anything. The events which he records come in this order; the message to Harold; the coming of Tostig; the death of Conan; the preparation and voyage of William. Orderic (492–494) is fuller. He begins with the coming of Tostig, to whose suggestion he seems to attribute the gathering of the Assembly (see p. 303). His list of persons consulted is the list in William of Poitiers, with a few names added. Then comes the embassy to Rome and the gift of the banner. Then comes the unsuccessful enterprise of Tostig against England, followed by William’s own preparations. Orderic then, after his custom, leaves the subject to talk about quite other matters. He comes back to it after some while (499, 500), to tell of the Norwegian invasion of England, of the delay of the Norman ships at the Dive, of William’s final voyage and all that followed it.
The short and inadequate account in Henry of Huntingdon (M. H. B. 761, 762) is of some importance, because part of it is clearly drawn from the same sources as the account in Wace. He tells us that William held an Assembly, and that his fleet afterwards met at Saint Valery. He says nothing about any embassies at all. But he is the only writer besides Wace who makes any special mention of William Fitz-Osbern, though the way in which he tells the story is not exactly the same as that in which it is told in the Roman de Rou. See p. 297.
The evidence being in this state, I thought that I might safely follow Wace. His account of the two assemblies is full and clear, and it derives a sort of incidental support from William of Poitiers and Henry of Huntingdon. The former seems in a manner to imply that there were two assemblies, though he puts the second out of its place. Following Wace thus far, I have also followed him in placing the Assembly at Lillebonne before the receipt of the banner from Rome, though William of Malmesbury asserts the exact contrary. The reader must judge for himself which order he thinks the more probable. The approval of the Pope would of course be likely to tell with great effect on the mind of the Assembly. On the other hand, it would be a great point for William to be sure of the support of his own Duchy before he applied to the Pope. It would be hardly like the wisdom of William to ask, or like the wisdom of Hildebrand to grant, a blessing on an undertaking which might easily fall through altogether. And the religious excitement would probably tell less on William’s own subjects than on the mixed multitude of Crusaders who flocked to him from all parts. But the question—not one of any great importance—must be left an open one.
As to the embassies to foreign powers, the application to the Pope is mentioned in every account which tells the story in any detail. It is in fact the centre and soul of the whole business. All accounts again agree as to the influx of foreign soldiers of all kinds. But as to the particular potentates applied to, our two fullest accounts differ. William of Poitiers speaks of the applications to Germany and Denmark, Wace of those to France and Flanders. There is here no contradiction. The object of William of Poitiers was to exalt his hero, and his own mind was deeply impressed with Imperial ideas. The distant embassies, above all the embassy to the future Emperor, were those which tended most to set forth the greatness of the Norman Duke; they were those therefore on which the loyal Archdeacon was most inclined to dwell. It was equally natural that Wace, writing at a later time, should think most of those nearer embassies which ordinary Norman tradition would be most likely to understand and to remember. His account of the dealings of William with the King of the French is straightforward and probable enough, except in the omission of all mention of Baldwin of Flanders in his character of Regent. I have therefore followed it in the text. But of the intercourse between William and Baldwin in his character of sovereign of Flanders, Wace has (11390–11432) a tale which strikes me as so purely legendary that I did not venture to introduce it into the text. The Duke sends to Baldwin, who is spoken of as his brother-in-law, not as his father-in-law (“cum od serorge”—_sororius_—“et od ami” in v. 11392; and again, “vostre seror et vos nevoz” in vv. 11424, 11425), and asks his help. Baldwin answers that he must first know what share of England he is to have for his pains. William, who seems to be conceived as talking with Baldwin face to face, says that he must go home and consult his Barons, and that he will then send word by letter what the result is.
“E li Dus dist k’il s’en ireit, A sez Barunz en parlereit, Et a els s’en cunseillereit, E ço ke l’en li loerreit Par son bref li remandereit.”
(vv. 11399–11403.)
No consultation with the Barons seems to follow, but the Duke does a thing which nobody had ever done before (“poiz fist ço, ke ainz ne fist nus”). He takes a small piece of parchment on which nothing is written, then seals it up with wax, and causes to be written on the outside that the Count shall have such part of England as is stated in the inside of the letter.
“De parchemin prist un petit K’il ni out leitre ne escrit, Tot voi le séela en cire, Et en la coe fist escrire, Ke d’Engleterre tant areit Comme li brief dedenz diseit.”
(vv. 11406–11411.)
The packet is sent to Baldwin by a cunning varlet (“vaslet enloçonez”); the Count breaks the seal, looks inside—seemingly he could read—finds nothing, and shows it to the varlet. The varlet then says that there is nothing there and that Baldwin shall have nothing. The honours which the Duke was seeking would belong to Baldwin’s sister and nephews. If Baldwin had joined in the enterprise no one would have gained more by it than himself. As it was, William would with God’s help conquer England for himself without help from Baldwin. Wace adds, as he so often does, that he does not know what answer the Count made.
The sort of practical joke described in this story would be quite in keeping with one side of William’s character (see p. 162) if one could only see the point of the joke. But that point is, to say the least, not very obvious, and the whole story seems quite inconsistent with the real relations between William and Baldwin. See the note of Prevost, ii. 137, and Taylor, 110.
NOTE X. p. 300.
THE MOVEMENTS OF TOSTIG AFTER HIS BANISHMENT.
The presence of Tostig in Normandy is asserted by Orderic in the passages which I have quoted in the text, and it is implied in the short narrative of William of Jumièges (vii. 32), who simply says, after describing Harold’s accession, “Porro Dux Tosticum Comitem in Angliam misit, sed militia Heraldi mare servans eum armis abegit” (see p. 304). William of Poitiers and Wace make no mention of any visit of Tostig to Normandy; they do not speak of him at all till they come to their almost incidental mention of Harold Hardrada’s invasion of England. The English writers also make no mention of any visit to Normandy on Tostig’s part. He goes to Flanders and comes on his vain expedition to England in May “from beyond sea” (see p. 324), which of course leaves the matter open between Normandy and Flanders. Snorro again knows nothing of a visit to Normandy, but takes Tostig (see p. 329) from Flanders to Denmark by way of Friesland. I do not however wholly reject the account of Orderic. The omission of Tostig’s visit both by William of Poitiers and the English writers is not at all hard to understand, while it is not easy to see why William of Jumièges or Orderic should have invented it. Its omission by Snorro is still less surprising; it is hard indeed to reconcile his version with that in the English Chronicles even on those points which are the very life of his story.
Orderic’s story however cannot be accepted in its details. First of all, it involves (see vol. ii. p. 626) the central mistake of making Tostig’s banishment follow the accession of Harold. Secondly, as a necessary consequence of this mistake, it greatly hurries Tostig’s movements, making him go to Flanders, leave his wife there, and hasten to Normandy, whereas we know that he left England on November 1st, 1065, and stayed with Baldwin the whole winter (see vol. ii. p. 501). Thirdly, it represents Tostig’s first expedition as not reaching England at all, whereas we know that he landed and harried the coast at several places (see p. 326). But, except the first mistake, which we know how to account for and to correct, these are not very fatal difficulties. Tostig did reach England, but he did nothing there of any moment, and a foreign writer might easily speak of an expedition which so utterly missed its mark, as if it had never touched English ground at all. And, small as the point is, it is worth noticing as an undesigned coincidence that Orderic makes Tostig set sail from the Côtentin, while the English Chronicler makes him land in the Isle of Wight. I have therefore not hesitated to accept the main outline of Orderic’s story, and to represent Tostig’s first expedition, in May, 1066, as undertaken with at least the connivance of William. Tostig must have had some force, Norman or Flemish, adhering to him during the whole time. The presence of Flemings at Stamfordbridge is beyond doubt. See p. 371.
What follows next in Orderic and William of Jumièges is far harder to reconcile with our own Chronicles. They both make Tostig, after struggling in vain against many winds (“Zephyro Notoque aliisque ventis alternatim impellentibus angores multos pertulit,” Orel. Vit. 593 C), make his way at last to Harold Hardrada in Norway. “Post plurimos labores ad Heraldum Regem Nortwigenarum, qui Harafagh cognominabatur, accessit,” says Orderic. So William of Jumièges (vii. 32); “At ille non valens salubriter Angliam introïre, neque Normanniam, quia ventus obstabat, redire, Heraldum Herfagam, Northwegæ Regem, adiit.” There is nothing about his going to Scotland or to Denmark. Wace indeed takes him to Denmark, but seemingly only through confounding Denmark and Norway.
“Tosti, ki mult s’en coroça, En Danemarche trespassa, Daneiz è Norreiz amena, Deverz Euroïc ariva.”
(vv. 11803.)
So Benoît, who carries Tostig to Norway in v. 36842 (“vers Northwege l’estut sigler Par merveilles orrible mer”), calls the force which he brought into England “ceus de Norwege” in v. 37065, and “Daneis” in 37103. None of these writers know anything of the double negotiation, first with Swend, then with Harold, which is so prominent in Snorro. Again, the Norman accounts take Tostig and Harold Hardrada straight from Norway to Yorkshire. The “erroneus exsul” pleads his cause before the tyrant, as Orderic (493 D) himself calls Harold, though Tostig is made to address him by many respectful titles (“Sublimitatem vestram, magnifice Rex”—see vol. i. pp. 63, 286—“supplex adeo, et me servitiumque meum Majestati vestræ fideliter offero”). He tells how his younger brother has risen against him and deprived him of the honours—whether the Earldom of the West-Saxons or the Empire of Britain—which were due to him by hereditary right (“ut possim restitui per vestrum suffragium honori ex paternâ successione debito. Nam Heraldus frater meus, qui jure mihi, utpote primogenito, debuisset parere, fraudulenter insurrexit contra me”). He goes on to enlarge on his brother’s perjury (“regnum Angliæ perjuriis præsumpsit usurpare”), an argument which, however telling with William, sounds strangely out of place when addressed to Harold Hardrada. He proposes to Harold of Norway to overthrow Harold of England, and to occupy his Kingdom, granting half of it to Tostig in fief (“proterviam perfidi fratris bello proterite, medietatem Angliæ vobis retinete, aliamque mihi, qui vobis inde fideliter serviam dum advixero, retinete”). Harold consents, he occupies six months in preparations, and sets sail in August. Orderic therefore conceived that Tostig’s banishment, his journeys to Flanders and Normandy, his attempt on England, and his escape to Norway, all took place in the course of January and February. In August then Harold and Tostig set sail together and sail straight for Yorkshire (“mense Augusto Heraldus Noricorum Rex cum Tostico et ingenti classe immensum pelagus intravit, et, Aparciate seu Boreâ flante, ad Angliam applicuit et Eboracensem provinciam primitùs invasit,” 499 D, 500 A).
It is clear that this account differs in some respects from that of Snorro, which I have given in the text. Snorro makes Tostig leave Harold in the spring (see p. 333) and go and collect English and Flemish troops in Flanders, with whom he meets Harold at some point of his voyage. The stoppage in Orkney again (see p. 344) is left out by Orderic, which is not very wonderful.
When we turn to our own Chronicles, we see that whatever amount of truth the stories of Orderic and Snorro may contain, their chronology at least is wholly wrong. Tostig’s first expedition to England, which Snorro leaves out, and which Orderic places at some time in January or February, did not happen till May (see above, p. 708). After its failure, Tostig went, not to Denmark or Norway, but to Scotland, and stayed there all the summer (see p. 327). The question now comes, which I left doubtful in the text, whether he ever went to Norway at all. Let us look at the different accounts.
The Abingdon Chronicle, which is followed by Florence, having mentioned the summer sojourn of Tostig in Scotland, the preparations of Harold of England in the south, and the return of his fleet to London (see p. 338), goes on; “þa ða scipu ham coman, þa com Harold cyning of Norwegan norð into Tínan on unwaran ... and Tostig eorl him com to mid eallum þam þe he begiten hæfde, _eallswa hy ær gesprecen hæfdon_” (“ut priùs condixerant,” Fl. Wig.).
The Worcester and Peterborough Chronicles record the flight of Tostig to Scotland, and at once connect it with the Norwegian invasion. “And he [Tostig] for to Scotlande mid xii. snaccum, and hine gemette [hine gemette þær. Wig.] Harold se Norrena cyng [cyng of Norwegon. Wig.] mid ccc. scipum; and Tostig him to beah [him to beah and his man wearð. Wig.], and hi bægen foran into Humbran oð þæt hi coman to Eoferwíc.”
This version is followed by William of Malmesbury (ii. 228); “Tostinus ... versus Scotiam vela convertit: ibi Regi Noricorum, Haroldo Harvagre, obvio manus dedit, qui cum ccc. navibus Angliam _aggredi meditabatur_. Ambo ergo consertis umbonibus terram Transhumbranam populabantur.”
These two accounts are clearly independent. Abingdon puts the meeting of Harold and Tostig in the Tyne. Worcester and Peterborough seem to put it in Scotland. But their words might be taken as leaving the place uncertain. Nor is there any contradiction in the more important question whether the expedition had been already planned between Harold and Tostig. This is directly asserted by the Abingdon Chronicle. The two others would certainly, taken by themselves, be understood to imply that Harold Hardrada had already set out on his own account, and that his meeting with Tostig was not the result of any agreement. This appearance becomes still stronger in William of Malmesbury, from his use of the verb “meditabatur.” But there is no word exactly answering to this in the Chronicles, and the difference in the two accounts may be simply one of omission. The words “eallswa hy ær gesprecen hæfdon” may in themselves mean anything, from a mere agreement to join forces in the Tyne made after an unexpected meeting in Scotland up to the voyage to Norway spoken of by Snorro and Orderic. The question is whether the chronology will admit of that voyage. Snorro and Orderic, as we have seen, place it early in the year. If we give up the story of Tostig’s journey to Normandy and his concert with William, it would be easy to take Tostig into Norway before his first attack on England, at any time between January and May. But it is plain that he did not go to Norway immediately on the failure of that expedition, for he went to Scotland and stayed there all the summer. And it is hard to find room between the end of summer and September 25th for a voyage of Tostig to Norway, for the preparations of Harold Hardrada, and for his voyage. A communication by messengers is more possible, as that may be spread over all the time from May to September. But, if we make Tostig visit Norway so late in the year, it could not have been his visit which first suggested to Harold to invade England. Indeed the invasion could hardly have been first suggested by letters or messages sent so late as May.
We must then either reject the partnership between William and Tostig in the May expedition and carry Tostig into Norway early in the year, or else we must suppose that Harold Hardrada was already planning an attack on England, and that all that any visit or message of Tostig did was to strengthen and hasten a purpose already formed. On the whole I incline to this last view, because I cannot see why any Norman writer should have invented a connexion between Tostig and William, if it never happened. But if we reject the Norman story, we can accept nearly the whole tale in Snorro. Tostig goes to Denmark and Norway early in the year; he then returns to Flanders and collects a force. Snorro does not say what he did with it till he met Harold in the autumn. The gap will thus be filled by the May voyage to England and the summer in Scotland. I am quite content to leave the point open, but I would remark that it is at least as hard to reconcile the Norman and Norwegian accounts with one another as to reconcile either with the English account.
The Hyde writer, as usual, gives (292) an independent account which is worth a passing notice.
“Frater ejus [Haroldi], nomine Tostius, genere et animo temerarius, mox ut fratrem regium honorem usurpâsse vidit, nutu Domini, qui perjurium undique persequebatur, quâdam simultate inter eos ortâ, Angliâ discessit, atque cum multâ manu et thesaurorum suorum copiâ multitudinem Flandriam ad Sanctum Odmarum, ut aiunt, devenit, ubi commendatâ thesaurorum suorum copiâ navem ascendens insulam Norweiam, quondam Scanciam dictam, et ut Gothorum historia testatur, multarum gentium officinam, petivit; quam ingressus, Regem ejus Haroldum, cognomento Hervard [Harfragi], id est, crine formosum, erat enim et staturâ corporis et formâ decorus, tum precibus tum promissionibus ita illexit, ut congregato exercitu et classe paratâ, cum eodem Angliam ad debellandum Regem Haroldum festinus adveniret. Denique Angliam ingressi, Eboracam opulentissimam civitatem et archiepiscopatûs sedem obsidione cingunt.”
We have already (see vol. ii. p. 231) seen this writer talking about the “Isle of Norway,” when, by the way, he really meant Denmark. We here see where he found it, namely in the opening chapters of Jornandes, especially the well-known passage in c. iv. (Muratori, i. 193); “Ex hâc igitur Scanziâ insulâ, quasi _officinâ gentium_, aut certè velut vaginâ nationum, cum Rege suo nomine Berig, Gothi quondam memorantur egressi.”
NOTE Y. p. 313.
ARNOLD OF ARDRES.
I get the account of these adventurers from the “Historia Comitum Ardensium” in Bouquet, xi. 305. The office held is described as the “villicatura sive præpositura Sancti Bertini in terrâ Ghisnensi,” which had been held “hæreditario jure” for some generations. Arnold came “opitulante Boloniensi Comite Eustachio,” and Geoffrey seems to follow him at William’s own summons—“vocatus ab eodem Rege Willelmo.” Their rewards are thus described; “Servientes igitur ambo fratres, Arnoldus videlicet et Gaufridus, jam dicto Regi, tantam ejus adepti sunt gratiam quod, præter quotidiana stippendia et munuscula, quæ ipsis contulit innumerabilia, contulit etiam eis et in perpetuitatis concessit feodum, Stebintoniam et pertinentias ejus, Dokeswordiam, Tropintoniam, Ledefordiam, Toleshondiam, et Hoilandiam.” All these, as far as I can identify them in Domesday, are possessions of Eustace, but in two cases only do I find Arnold as under tenant. These are at “Dokeswordia,” in Domesday “Dochesuuorde” (196), and Trumpington (ib.), both in Cambridgeshire. In the former we read, “hanc terram tenet Hernulfus de comite Eustachio,” and under Trumpington we have still more distinctly, “tenet Ernulfus de Ardâ sub Comite.” Stebingtonia, in Domesday (205) Stebintune, is held of Count Eustace by Lunen, and the lands in Essex, Selefordia, Hoilandia, and Toleshondia, in Domesday Toleshunta, now Tolleshunt, are held of Eustace (Domesday, ii. 32, 33) by Adelolfus. This may be an English Æthelwulf; but, as the name also occurs in Flanders (see Cart. S. Bertin, 142, 153 et al.), he may equally well be a foreign follower of Eustace. Arnold however appears again as Ernulfus de Arde, as a tenant under Count Eustace of various places in Bedfordshire (211), and one might almost guess that he is the same as Arnulfus de Hesding (no doubt Hesdin in Ponthieu) who holds (205 _b_) Upford in Huntingdonshire of the King. Arnold and Arnulf are, I need not say, names whose various forms are often and easily confounded. This is a fair specimen of the way in which men came to William from all parts of the world for whatever they could get.
NOTE Z. p. 315.
THE DEATH OF CONAN.
The only place that I know of where William is directly charged with poisoning Conan is in the speech (Ord. Vit. 534 B) at the bride-ale of 1076, where the charge is coupled with the kindred charge of poisoning Walter and Biota (see p. 207). The revellers are made to say, “Conanum quoque, strenuissimum Consulem, veneno infecit, quem mortuum Britannia tota pro ingenti probitate ineffabili luctu deflevit.”
The text of William of Jumièges (vii. 33) is as follows;
“Tempore quo Willelmus Dux disponebat Angliam adire, et armis eam sibi vendicare, audax Chunanus Comes Britanniæ nisus est eum, missâ legatione hujusmodi, terrere: Audio te, inquit, nunc velle trans mare proficisci, et Angliæ tibi regnum nancisci. Inde multum gaudeo, sed ut mihi Normanniam reddas obsecro. Robertas autem Dux Normannorum, quem tu fingis esse patrem tuum, iturus in Hierusalem, Alanno patri meo, consobrino scilicet suo, commendavit omnem suam hæreditatem. Tu autem cum complicibus tuis Alannum patrem meum apud Winmusterium in Normanniâ veneno peremisti, et terram ejus, quam ego quia puer eram possidere nequibam, invasisti; et contra fas, cum sis nothus, hucusque tenuisti. Nunc igitur aut mihi debitam redde Normanniam, aut ego tibi totis viribus bellum inferam. His auditis, Willelmus Dux aliquantulum territus est. Sed mox eum Deus, frustratis inimici minis, eripere dignatus est. Unus enim ex proceribus Britonum, qui utrique Comiti juraverat fidelitatem, et hujusmodi legationem inter eos ferebat, lituum Chuningi, et habenas, atque chirothecas intrinsecus livit veneno. Erat quippe cubicularius Chuningi. Tunc idem Comes Britonum in Andegavensi Comitatu Castellum-Guntherii obsederat, et oppidanis militibus sese illi dedentibus suos intromittebat. Interea Chuningus chirothecas suas incautè induit, tactisque habenis, manum ad os levavit. Cujus tactu veneno infectus est, et paullò post omnibus suis lugentibus defunctus est. Hic multum sagax fuit et probus, ac amator justitiæ. Qui si diu vixisset, multa bona ut fertur fecisset, ac ad regendum honorem utilis fuisset. Proditor autem conscius sui reatûs, mox de expeditione aufugit, et mortem Chuningi Willelmo Duci mandavit.”
This story, in the way in which it is brought in, looks very like an interpolation, and the message of Conan sounds very like a romance. And it is certainly most remarkable that it seems to be a purely Norman story. At least I have not been able to find it in such Breton and Angevin chronicles as I know anything of. The Breton and Angevin writers record Conan’s war with Anjou and also his death, and they place both in 1066. But they say nothing which at all lays his death to the charge of William. Of three Breton chronicles in the collection of Morice (Mémoires pour servir de Preuves à l’Histoire de Bretagne), the first in the collection says merely, “1066. Cometa apparuit. Obiit Conanus Dux Britanniæ filius Alani. Normanni Angliam ceperunt.” Another, the Chronicle of Saint Brieuc (p. 36), mentions the war with Anjou. Conan “quum territorium Andegavense devastâsset, in eodem territorio, paullò ante destructionem Heraldi Anglorum Regis, sine liberis morte præventus est anno Domini 1066.” A third Chronicle (p. 102) tells us how, in “1066, Comes Britannorum Conanus juvenis et malitiosus, Andegavorum terram adorsus, superbæ pervasioni suæ in ipsâ Andegavorum terrâ _morte subitâ_ præreptus est.” The Angevin Chronicle which I have quoted at p. 642, after its account of the Comet and of the invasion of England, mentions the death of Conan in nearly the same words as the third Breton Chronicle just quoted. These accounts connect the death of Conan in some way, if only by way of coincidence, with the Conquest of England, yet not one of them breathes the least suspicion against William. Conan’s death was sudden; but a sudden death need not be a death by poison, and a death by poison need not have been brought about by the devices of William. I cannot think that we have evidence enough to charge the great Duke with so infamous a crime.
NOTE AA. p. 338.
THE OPERATIONS OF THE ENGLISH FLEET IN 1066.
Did the English fleet, or any part of it, ever encounter the Norman fleet or any part of it? The general run of our narrative would lead us to say, No; but there are some passages which look the other way. Thus the Peterborough Chronicler, immediately after describing Harold’s election, says, “And þy ylcan geare þe he cyng wæs, he for út mid sciphere togeanes Willelme, and þá hwile com Tostig eorl into Humbran míd lx. scipum.” And this seems to be followed by Henry of Huntingdon (M. H. B. 762 A); “Quod audiens Rex Haraldus, vir bellis acerrimus, cum navali exercitu contra Willielmum Ducem in mare profectus est.” These expressions do not necessarily imply a battle, but they seem to point to some operations beyond merely watching the coast.
Of the entries in Domesday referred to in the text, one, that about Æthelric of Kelvedon, distinctly asserts a battle, but without mentioning its date. It occurs under Essex, ii. 14 _b_. Æthelric held Kelvedon T. R. E. The Survey adds, “Hic supradictus Ailricus abiit in navale prœlium contra Willelmum Regem.” This seems to imply an actual engagement, though of course it need not have been a general engagement between the whole of the two fleets, which seems quite impossible. The entry goes on to say that Æthelric on his return—when the fleet returned to London in September?—fell sick, perhaps from a wound, and left his lands at Kelvedon to Saint Peter at Westminster. “Quum rediit, cecidit in infirmitate, tunc dedit Sancto Petro istud manerium.” The words which follow in Domesday have an importance of another kind, which I shall discuss in a future volume.
The other Domesday entry referred to is less distinct than that of Æthelric, but it looks the same way. In Norfolk, ii. 200, we find mention of one Eadric, described as “Rector navis Regis Edwardi.” On William’s accession he was outlawed and fled to Denmark (“postquam Rex W. venit in Angliam fuit iste Edricus exlex in Daciam”). One may guess that Eadric commanded in the engagement or skirmish in which Æthelric was concerned. And in connexion with this East-Anglian entry, we may take the statement of John of Oxenedes (293), about Ælfwold, Abbot of Saint Benet’s; “Huic a Rege Haraldo marina committebatur custodia.”
There are some other passages which might seem to imply naval operations at a later time. Of the losses of William’s fleet during the voyage, and of the affair of Romney, whenever it happened, I have spoken in the text, pp. 410, 534. A deed in the Cartulary of the Holy Trinity at Rouen (pp. 453, 454) looks the same way. One Roger, the son of Turold, who was going to join William’s expedition (“ultra mare cum Willelmo Comite navigaturus”), gave lands to the monastery, but died on the voyage before the gift was complete (“in eâdem navigatione morte præventus, hoc confirmare non valuit”). We must also remember the account given by William of Poitiers (131), where he describes Harold’s march into Sussex, and says that an English fleet of seven hundred ships was sent somewhere or other to cut off the Norman retreat (“ne perfugio abirent, classe armatâ ad septingentas naves in mari opposuerat insidias”). Guy of Amiens (319) puts nearly the same statement into the mouth of one of the messengers between William and Harold;
“Per mare, per terram, prœlia magna parat. In mare quingentas fertur misisse carinas, Ut nostri reditûs præpediatur iter.”
But there is no sign of this great fleet doing anything, and William and Guy are so careless of chronology that they are quite capable of meaning the fleet which went back to London in September. As for the affair of Romney, it is not likely that Thegns from Norfolk and Essex would be concerned in an action so purely local. And the story of Æthelric would seem to imply that he died before the end of Harold’s reign.
NOTE BB. p. 357.
THE MARCH OF HAROLD TO YORK.
The words of some of the Chroniclers, taken literally, might imply that the first news of the landing of the Northmen was brought to Harold of England after the Battle of Fulford. The Peterborough Chronicle describes that battle, and adds “and se Norrena cyng ahte siges geweald.” It then goes on, “And man cydde Harolde cyng hu hit wæs þær gedón and geworden, and he com mid mycclum here Engliscra manna, and gemette hine æt Stængfordes brycge.” So too the Worcester Chronicle describes the battle, and adds “ac þa Normen ahte sige.” It then goes on in the same way; “Man cyðde þa Harolde Engla cynge þæt þis wæs þus gefaren; and þis gefeoht wæs on Vigilia Sc̃i. Mathei. Ða com Harold ure cyng on unwær on þa Normenn, and hytte hi begeondan Eoforwic æt Steinford brygge, mid micclan here Englisces folces.”
The literal meaning of these accounts would certainly be that the news of the defeat of Fulford was the first news of the Norwegian invasion which reached Harold, and that he started for his Northern march on hearing it. But this is simply impossible. The Battle of Fulford was fought on Wednesday, and the Battle of Stamfordbridge was fought on the Monday following. As the Worcester Chronicler emphatically says, “þas twa folcgefeoht wæron gefremmede binnan fif nihtan.” Now for news of a battle fought close to York to reach London, for an army, including men from distant shires, to be collected and to march to Stamfordbridge, and all in the space of five days, would need an age of railways and telegraphs. The news must have been brought, and the march must have begun, before the Battle of Fulford was fought. In fact our remaining Chronicle gives us a hint that that battle was fought while Harold was already on his march. The Abingdon narrative runs thus;
“And foran þa begen [Tostig and Harold Hardrada] mid eallum þam liðe andlang Use up to Eoferwic ward. Ða cydde man Harolde cynge be suðan, þa he of scipe cumen wæs, þæt Harold cyng on Norwegan and Tostig eorl wæron up cumene neh Eoferwic, þa for he norðweard dæges and nilites, swa hraðe swa he his fyrde gegaderian mihte. Þa ær þam þe se cyning Harold þyder cuman mihte, þa gegaderode Eadwine eorl and Morkere eorl of heora eorldome swa mycel werod swa hi begitan mihton.”
Then follows the Battle of Fulford. The same account is followed by Florence;
“In loco qui Richale dicitur applicuerunt. Quod ubi Regi Haroldo innotuit, versus Northhymbriam expeditionem properè movit. Sed priusquam Rex illuc veniret, duo germani Comites,” &c.
Here it is not the news of the Battle of Fulford, but the news of the landing at Riccall, on hearing of which Harold sets forth. This is at least possible, as we have no distinct statement how long a time passed between the landing and the battle. But the story certainly reads as if the battle followed very fast upon the landing, and as if Harold must have been on his march, not only before the battle but before the landing. And indeed some news must have reached him of the approach of the Norwegian fleet, of the muster in the Tyne, and of the ravage of the Yorkshire coast. One cannot help thinking that the Chroniclers, even the Abingdon Chronicler, have fallen into a certain inaccuracy of expression, and that Harold must have known of the approach of the Northern enemy at a much earlier time than their words would imply. And yet, after all, the inaccuracy is hardly a literal one. News both of the landing and of the battle would reach the King on his march and would stir up him and his army to still greater exertions. The great march of Harold is in itself one of the most wonderful things in our wonderful history. But, if we take the words of the Worcester and Peterborough Chronicles in their literal and grammatical sense, the march becomes not only wonderful but miraculous.
NOTE CC. p. 363.
THE DETAILS OF THE BATTLE OF STAMFORDBRIDGE.
Years ago, when I first began these studies, one of my greatest difficulties was that Harold of England is described, in all the ordinary histories, as furnished with a strong force of cavalry and archers at Stamfordbridge, while he was utterly destitute of both arms at Senlac. The haste of his march southwards would not of itself account for the difference; for if he could have collected cavalry and archers for the one campaign, he could doubtless have collected them again for the other. I soon saw that the only authority for the usual description of the fight at Stamfordbridge was the Saga of Harold Hardrada, and I gradually came to the conclusion that that part of the Saga was mythical. The whole conception of the English army was clearly taken from an English army of Snorro’s own age, of which horsemen and archers undoubtedly formed the most important part. That is to say, the English had by that time adopted the Norman tactics. Indeed some of the incidents in Snorro’s account of Stamfordbridge seem very much as if they had been transferred thither from Senlac. The defeat of the Norwegian army, just like that of the English army at Senlac, is owing to their breaking the line of the shield-wall, and Harold the son of Sigurd is killed by the chance shot of an arrow, just like Harold the son of Godwine. But though the account of the Battle of Stamfordbridge is clearly mythical, the like is not the case with the whole of the story. The writer shows a knowledge of the Yorkshire coast, and his narrative seems quite trustworthy up to the Battle of Fulford. His account of that battle quite agrees with the appearance of the site (see p. 350). He seemingly confounds Waltheof with Eadwine (see p. 351), but then he utterly confounds all English genealogies and personalities (see vol. ii. p. 553). It is only when he gets to Stamfordbridge that he begins wholly to break down. For instance (see p. 354) he fancies that place to be close under the walls of York, whereas it really is eight miles off. May not the difference in value between these two parts of his narrative be explained by the circumstances of the case? A division of the army remained at Riccall (see p. 348), and never went to Stamfordbridge at all. All the men of this division (see p. 375) went back safe to Norway, while hardly any fugitives escaped from Stamfordbridge. It was therefore only natural that the story of the former part of the campaign, taking in the Battle of Fulford, should be much better known in Norway than the details of the greater battle itself. The Saga-maker therefore had trustworthy tradition to go by for one part of his story, while for the other he had to draw largely on his imagination.
I have drawn my own ideas of this, as of other battles, from an examination of the ground compared with the accounts of the original writers. I have twice visited the field of Stamfordbridge, in July and in December 1867, the former time in company with Archdeacon Jones and Mr. J. R. Green, when I also examined the site of Fulford with the Archdeacon. In December I also visited Aldby and the ground between Aldby and Stamfordbridge. I have compared the impressions thus formed with the short accounts in the Chronicles, and with those in Henry of Huntingdon and William of Malmesbury. The narrative of Henry has a special value. As soon as he reaches the actual fight, his narrative, hitherto meagre and inaccurate, suddenly lights up, and becomes minute, poetical, and evidently founded on an accurate knowledge of the spot. That is to say, his description here, as in so many other cases, is founded on contemporary and local ballads, of whose words distinct traces may be recognized in his narrative. An English ballad of Stamfordbridge must have been absolutely contemporary with the event—made perhaps to be sung at King Harold’s feast of victory. Such a relic, did we possess it in full, would be almost more precious than the songs of Brunanburh and Maldon.
The accounts in Lappenberg, Thierry, and St. John seem to have been written without any knowledge of the ground. Lappenberg puts the single-handed defence of the bridge quite at the end of the battle. This is perhaps merely an attempt to patch on this incident to the account in the Saga, or it is perhaps because the story comes at the end of the Abingdon Chronicle. But it comes at the end of the Chronicle, simply because it is an addition by another hand, and the words in which the anecdote is told show that it did not take place at the end of the battle. Any one who compares the ground with the account in Henry of Huntingdon will easily see that the defence of the bridge was more than a mere incident after the battle was decided. It is, I feel sure, the central point of the whole fight. Henry’s account begins (M. H. B. 762 B);
“Pugna igitur incepta est, quâ gravior non fuerat. Coeuntes namque a summo mane usque ad meridiem, quum horribiliter ruentes utrimque perseverarent, maximus numerus Anglorum Norwagenses cedere sed non fugere compulit. Ultra flumen igitur repulsi, vivis super mortuos transeuntibus, magnanimiter restiterunt.”
Then follows the defence of the bridge, as I have quoted the account in p. 370, and the narrative goes on thus;
“Transeuntes igitur Angli Haroldum Regem et Tosti occiderunt, et totam Norwagensium aciem vel armis straverunt vel igne deprehensos combusserunt.”
Here are two distinct acts of the battle, fought on opposite sides of the Derwent. As the English were coming from York, the first act must have been on the right bank of the river, and the second on the left. The crossing of the Derwent is the main point, and the crossing of the Derwent was for a while hindered by the valour of this single Northman. And the most hard-fought and decisive part of the battle is clearly placed on the left bank, after the defender of the bridge was slain. Up to that time the Northmen, in Henry’s words, “gave way, but did not fly.” It was after the crossing of the river that the great slaughter took place; but this was not a mere slaughter of flying men, but the most stoutly contested part of the battle. For it was then that Tostig and Harold Hardrada were slain, and they assuredly were not slain flying. There was fighting then on both sides of the river, but the great and decisive struggle took place on the left side, the further side from York. We must here take into account the statements of so many writers, from the Chroniclers onwards, that the English came on the Northmen “unawares,” that the Northmen were without their breast-plates, and the like (see p. 369). This has to be reconciled with the fact of the hard fight which was kept on for so many hours. When we once understand the topography, the explanation is easy. The events naturally arrange themselves as I have given them in the text. The Norwegian army is spread abroad on both sides of the river, Harold Hardrada and Tostig with their main strength being on the further side. The English come “unawares” on the unprepared division on the right side, and drive them back. The single hero defends the bridge, and gives time for the main army beyond it to form. Then comes the great fight in which the two leaders are slain and the whole Norwegian army is at last cut to pieces.
The only point on which I have any doubt is as to the hours of the day. Henry of Huntingdon makes the battle begin in the early morning, “summo mane;” the first fight lasts till noon; the defender of the bridge withstands the passage of the English till three in the afternoon. Then comes the second fight, and, after all this day’s work, Harold of England is back at York the same evening, and the same evening hears at dinner—or rather supper—of the landing of William (see p. 376). The reckoning of time is in itself suspicious, and it is clearly not without a reference to the sacred hours of the Church. The first and last reckonings can be shown to be wrong. It is possible that Harold may have returned to York on the night of the battle. But he certainly did not hear that evening of William’s landing, because William had not yet landed (see p. 400). Neither could the battle have begun very early in the morning. The English army got no further than Tadcaster on the Sunday evening (“com Harold ... on ðone Sunnandæg to Táða” Chron. Ab.). On Monday morning they marched from Tadcaster, through York, to Stamfordbridge (“fór þa on Monandæg þurh ut Eoferwic”). A march of about seventeen miles, with doubtless some, though not a very long, halt in the city, could not be accomplished so as to make the battle begin very early on a September morning. Then it is quite inconceivable that the resistance on the right side lasted from early morning till noon, and the defence of the bridge from noon till three o’clock. A three hours’ defence of the bridge by one man is impossible. The affair was probably an affair of minutes, though at such a moment minutes would seem like hours. Most likely the hours have got into the wrong places. From noon till three would be a very likely amount of time for the whole of the actual fighting. The march and the pursuit have to be added at each end to make up the whole day’s work.
But this mistake as to the mere reckoning of hours need not throw any doubt as to the main facts of the one intelligible and consistent account of the battle. Henry’s account also exactly agrees with the two accounts in the Abingdon Chronicle. These two accounts must not be read as a consecutive narrative. They come from two different hands (see p. 369), and they contain an apparent, though not a real, contradiction. The first tells the story in general terms;
“Ða com Harold Engla cyning heom ongean _on unwaran begeondan þære brycge_, and hi þær togædere fengon, and swyðe heardlice lange on ðæg feohtende wæron. And þær wæs Harold cyning of Norwegan and Tostig eorl ofslagen, and ungerim folces mid heom, ægðer ge Normana ge Englisca, and þa Normen flugon þa Englisca.”
This is a complete story by itself; then comes the supplement;
“Ða wæs þer an of Norwegan þe widstod þet Englisce folc, þet hí ne micte þa brigge oferstigan _ne sige gerechen_. Þa seite an Englisce mid anre flan, ac hít nactes ne widstod. And þa com an oþer under þere brigge, end hine þurðstang en únder þere brunie; þa com Harold Engla chinge ofer þere brigge, and hys furde forð mid hine, and þere michel wel geslogon, ge Norweis ge Flæming, and þes cyninges sunu Hetmundus let Harold faran ham to Norwéie mid alle þá scípe.”
This story is clearly the same as that of Henry of Huntingdon, and it even more distinctly sets forth that the victory was still uncertain when the single Northman defended the bridge. Up to that time the English had the better, but the victory was not complete, and the defence of the bridge hindered them for a while from making it complete (“ne sige gerechen”). That the fighting began on the York side, and ended on the further side, is manifest. But it might be thought from the words of the first account, “com Harold ... heom ongean on unwaran begeondan þære brycge,” that the surprise was made on the further side of the bridge; but this, in the case of an army coming from York, is impossible. We must therefore look on the expression as elliptical and in some measure inaccurate. The English came upon them unawares on the York side of the bridge, but the main fight took place “begeondan þære brycge.” In the brief language of the Chronicler these two ideas are run together.
The other accounts throw little light on the matter. The Worcester and Peterborough Chroniclers give no account of the details of the battle, though the Worcester writer becomes rather minute as to the fate of the Northmen after the battle (see p. 375). Florence follows Worcester. William of Malmesbury (ii. 228) gives no details except in his account of the defence of the bridge, which he introduces with the words, “Angli superiorem manum nacti, Noricos in fugam egerunt; sed tantorum et tot virorum victoriam (quod forsitan posteritas difficile credat) unus Noricus multâ horâ interpolavit.” This almost sounds as if William had read the two accounts in the Abingdon Chronicle as a consecutive narrative; his “in fugam egerunt” seems to come from the “Normen flugon þa Englisca,” followed by the account of the defence of the bridge. It is clear that it is from this account of William of Malmesbury that the idea arose that the defence of the bridge took place in the very last stage of the battle.
The three Kings whom Lambert (see above, p. 641) conceived to have been killed at Stamfordbridge must be Harold Hardrada, the Irish King (see p. 372), and, I suppose, Tostig, mistaken for a King.
I have in the text (see p. 354) suggested that the neighbourhood of Aldby may have been one of the attractions which led Harold Hardrada to Stamfordbridge. It may however be thought an objection that Aldby is on the York side of the river, while I conceive the main strength of the Norwegian army to have been on the other side. If however the bridge which now crosses the river at Aldby had a predecessor in those days, this difficulty is got rid of. But in any case I do not insist on the connexion with Aldby as any essential part of the story. It seems to me to have been a probable motive, but if it is thought inconsistent with the one intelligible view of the battle, it must be given up.
Let us now see how the great victory of Stamfordbridge looked in the eyes of Norman and Normannizing writers. It is universally looked on as a wicked fratricide. William of Poitiers (126) refers to the Northumbrian campaign only in an incidental way. William landed easily, because Harold “in Eboracensem pagum recesserat, cum fratre suo Tostillo et Heraldo, Noricorum Rege, dimicaturus.” This was a first-rate opportunity for reviling Harold, and he accordingly goes on with a fierce declamation, to some of the particular expressions of which I have already had to call attention (see above, p. 635, and vol. ii. p. 540);
“Nec mirere quod germanus permotus injuriis, invasi honoris æmulus, arma externa adduxit in Heraldum, quem germana quoque, illi moribus absimillima, quum armis non valeret, votis impugnabat et consilio, luxuriâ fœdum, truculentum homicidam, divite rapinâ superbum, adversarium æqui et boni.”
William of Jumièges (vii. 34) thus speaks of the battle, to which by the way he gives quite a wrong date;
“In quo conflictu prædictum fratrem suum peremit ac Heraldum regem Northwegæ qui Tosticum juvare venerat. Hæc pugna nonis Octobris in die Sabbati facta est in quâ penè totus Northwigenarum exercitus ab Anglis cæsus est. Inde victor Heraldus Lundoniam rediit, sed de fratricidio diu gaudere vel securus esse non potuit, quia legatus ei Normannos adesse mox nuntiavit.”
Two chapters on (vii. 36), when he describes the battle of Senlac, he says;
“In die Sabbati mulctavit [Omnipotens Deus] multa millia Anglorum, qui longè ante innocentem Aluredum injustè necaverunt, ac præcedenti Sabbato Heraldum Regem et Tosticum Comitem aliosque multos absque pietate trucidaverunt.”
Orderic too tells us (500 C) how “Anglicus Tyrannus, effuso fratris et hostis sanguine, lætus intumuit, et peractâ multiplici strage victor Lundoniam rediit.” Presently he uses the exact words of William of Jumièges about the “fratricidium.”
Guy of Amiens also (Giles, 129) makes his elegiacs as fierce as he can. I have already (p. 373) quoted two lines of him; the whole passage runs thus;
“Rex Heraldus enim sceleratus ad ultima terræ, Fratris ad exitium perfida tela parat. Non modicam regni partem nam frater adeptus, Tecta dabat flammis et gladiis populum. Marte sub opposito currens Heraldus in hostes, Non timuit fratris tradere membra neci. Alter in alterutrum plus quam civile peregit Bellum; sed victor, proh dolor, ipse fuit. Invidus ille Caïn fratris caput amputat ense, Et caput et corpus sic sepelivit humo. Hæc tibi providit qui debita regna subegit, Criminis infesti quatenus ultor eas.”
The Hyde writer has also his stone to fling at the fratricide. First we read (p. 291), “Haroldus, Rex Anglorum, in borealibus Angliæ partibus constitutus, atque apud Eboracum civitatem contra fratrem dimicans, fratricida infeliciter evasit.” Again (p. 293), “Haroldo itaque apud Eboracum constituto, et post multum laborem detestandumque fratricidium modicum respirante, fama Normannorum advolat.” Lastly, William of Malmesbury, who in his account of Stamfordbridge had spoken as an Englishman, turns about and muses in this fashion (iii. 239); “Interea Haroldus de pugnâ Noricorum revertebatur, suâ æstimatione felix quod vicerat; meo judicio contra, quod parricidio victoriam comparârat.”
The force of party prejudice can really not go further than this kind of talk. We can better forgive the Welsh writer who (Brut y Tywysogion, 1066) tells us how “Harold, King of Denmark, meditated the subjection of the Saxons; whom another Harold, the son of Earl Godwin, who was then King in England, surprised, unwarned and unarmed, and by sudden attack, aided by national treachery, struck to the ground and caused his death.” Still the Welshman’s notions of national treachery must have been strange, and this lament or invective is oddly thrust into the colourless narrative of the Annales Cambriæ. On the other hand Snorro is never carried away in this sort. His mythical details represent Harold as offering quarter to his brother and to his enemies over and over again. Thus even fable bears witness to the general character of our great King, and William of Malmesbury had himself once (ii. 228) praised Harold’s clemency in his dealings with his conquered enemies; “Rex Harvagre et Tostinus interempti; Regis filius cum omnibus navibus domum clementer remissus.”
And now, for the last time, we come back for a moment to our old companion, the Biographer of Eadward. His direct narrative has long since failed us, but in one of his poetical flights (p. 426) he has a very distinct allusion to the fight of Stamfordbridge. He thinks the whole thing very wicked, but the subject of William and laureate of Eadgyth takes care not to commit himself between Harold and Tostig personally. He spares the Lady’s feelings the details of the warfare between her brothers, but one or two of his expressions are remarkable;
“Quis canet æquoreo vastum fervore tumentem Humbram congressum Regibus æquivocis? Sanguine barbarico per millia multa marinos Tinxisse fluctus, flente polo facinus, Quis demum scribet? quo mens languescit et horret Auditus, tanti fama pudet sceleris.”
Presently (p. 427) the Muse warns him;
“Si non describis hostilia bella Griphini, Vel busam vetitum corporibus fluere.”
The idea that the _busses_ or keels could not pass for the dead bodies is the same poetical common-place which we have met with several times. See pp. 351, 369. We find it also, of all places, in Arrian, ii. II. 11; Λέγει Πτολεμαῖος ὁ Λάγου, ξυνεπισπόμενος τότε Ἀλεξάνδρῳ, τοὺς μετὰ σφῶν διώκοντας Δαρεῖον, ὡς ἐπὶ φάραγγί τινι ἐν τῇ διώξει ἐγένοντο, ἐπὶ τῶν νεκρῶν διαβῆναι τὴν φάραγγα. Cf. Polybios, xii. 20, where there is something like a discussion of the subject. Grote, Hist. Greece, xii. 167.
NOTE DD. p. 411.
WILLIAM’S RAVAGES IN SUSSEX.
The ravages of William’s army in Sussex stand confessed in the Norman writers, and there can be little doubt that they were systematic ravages done with the settled object of bringing Harold to a battle. The lasting nature of the destruction wrought at this time is shown by the large number of places round about Hastings which are returned in Domesday as “wasta.” As many of these as can be identified I have marked in the map.
On the other hand Mr. Hayley, a South-Saxon antiquary, who is quoted by Sir Henry Ellis (i. 314) and Mr. Taylor (Wace, 262), strangely attributes the harrying of those places which lie at all near the line of Harold’s march to the English, and not to the Norman army. This notion would hardly have needed any answer except from the sort of sanction given to it by the two writers who quote Mr. Hayley. I do not suppose that any army of any age ever passed through a district without doing some damage, but to suppose that Harold systematically harried his own Kingdom, and not only his own Kingdom, but a shire specially attached to his house and which contained a large portion of his private estates, does seem to me the height of absurdity. A King who was, as William of Poitiers tells us (see p. 412), hastening to save the country from ravage, who, as Wace tells us (see p. 437), indignantly refused to inflict the slightest unavoidable damage on any of his people, was certainly not likely to mark his course by systematic devastation. And, what is more, on such a hasty march as Harold’s evidently was, Swend himself could not have done the sort of permanent damage which is implied in the lands being returned as “wasta” twenty years after. The ravaging must have been something complete and systematic, like the ravaging of Northumberland a few years later. Such ravaging could only have been done by an army permanently encamped in the country, as William’s was at Hastings. Also if Harold had ravaged, he would have ravaged along his whole line of march, and not have waited till he was within a few miles of Senlac. But Mr. Hayley does not produce a single instance of a return of “wasta” along the early part of Harold’s march; all the points are near either to Hastings or to Senlac. I have no doubt that all these entries record ravages inflicted by the army of William.
NOTE EE. p. 425.
NAMES OF ENGLISHMEN AT SENLAC.
I have risked the conjecture that the Ansgardus of Guy of Amiens (690 et seq.) is no other than Esegar the Staller, the well-known grandson of Tofig the Proud. In this conjecture I find that I have been forestalled by M. de Bonnechose (ii. 287). At least I presume that he means Esegar by “le riche personnage dont le nom est accompagné du titre de Stellarius [sic] (_Comes stabuli_) ou connétable dans le Domesday book.” Thierry, in the second note to his fourth book, takes Ansgardus for the name of an office, the _Hansward_, which he fancies to be the title of some magistrate, seemingly the chief magistrate of the City of London. But I know of no municipal magistrate bearing the name of _Hansward_, and the chief magistrate of London in these times is always called the Port-Reeve. Ansgardus is clearly a proper name, and Esegar, who was evidently a man of great importance at the time, bears a name which comes nearer to the form used by Guy than that of any other eminent Englishman. Indeed in Domesday, 129 _b_, he appears as “Ansgarus.” Esegar moreover was Sheriff of Middlesex, which makes it still more likely that he should have been in command of the forces of London. He is addressed (Cod. Dipl. iv. 211) in a writ of Eadward for Middlesex along with Bishop William, Earl Harold, and all the Thegns of the shire. In another writ (iv. 221) his connexion with London is still more distinctly marked. “Eadward King gret Ælfwold Bisceop and Esgár Stallere and alle mine burhðegnes on Lundne freóndlíce.” He was therefore Staller, and seemingly Sheriff, as early as 1045. See vol. ii. p. 63.
The other names which I have introduced come from entries in Domesday. These entries are of course quite incidental, but, like the mention of Æthelric (see above, p. 717), they have another kind of importance which I shall discuss in another volume. Most of the men spoken of were tenants of religious houses, but this does not seem to have been the case with the two nameless Hampshire freemen, whose land at the time of the Survey was in the hands of a King’s Thegn, an Englishman named Ælfwig. The entry, as far as we are now concerned with it, runs thus (Domesday, 50); “Alwi filius Turber tenet de Rege Tederlec. Tres liberi homines tenerunt in alodium de Rege E.... Duo ex his qui tenuerunt occisi fuerunt in bello de Hastinges.”
The case of Ælfric of Huntingdonshire (Domesday, 208) is very clear; the entry is as follows; “Terram Alurici de Gellinge et Emingeforde testantur fuisse Sancti Benedicti.... Ipse autem Aluricus occisus fuit in bello apud Hastinges.” The nameless Norfolk man (Domesday, ii. 275 _b_) seems to have been a case of the same kind. But Breme of Suffolk was a freeman of King Eadward, and there is no mention of any connexion of his with any religious house. The entry (Domesday, ii. 409 _b_) is as follows; “In Dagaworda tenuit Breme liber homo regis E. qui fuit occisus in bello Hastingensi.”
Godric the Sheriff and Thurkill of Berkshire are better ascertained persons. Their deaths are recorded in the history of Abingdon (vol. i. p. 484, and again p. 490). Of Thurkill we read, “Quidam dives Thurkillus nomine, sub Haroldi Comitis testimonio et consultu, de se cum suâ terrâ quæ Kingestun dicitur, ecclesiæ Abbendonensi et Abbati Ordrico homagium fecit” (see vol. ii. p. 42, and on _commendation_ vol. i. p. 129). The place is Kingston Bagpuze in Berkshire, of which we read in Domesday (60 _b_), “Stanchill tenuit T. R. E.,” whom Sir Henry Ellis (ii. 227) is no doubt right in identifying with Thurkill. It is singular that Thurkill should also have held of the King another lordship of the name of Kingston in the same shire (see Domesday, 61). Godric the Sheriff held various possessions in Berkshire, partly of the King, partly of the Abbey (see Domesday, 60 _b_, where he appears as “Godricus Vice-Comes”). He is also addressed in a writ of Eadward for Berkshire (Cod. Dipl. iv. 200) along with Bishop Hermann and Earl Harold and all the Thegns of the shire. The possession specially spoken of in the Abingdon History is Fifhide or Fifield, near Abingdon, where an ancient manor-house of the fourteenth century no doubt marks the site of Godric’s dwelling. Fifield was granted to the Abbey by King Eadgar (see the charter in Hist. Ab. i. 323), and was held by Godric on the common tenure for three lives. Domesday says (60 _b_), “Godricus Vice-Comes tenuit de Abbate et non potuit ire quolibet cum istâ terrâ.” As Thurkill had another Kingston, so Godric had another Fifhide, held of the King. Of another Berkshire Godric (60 _b_), “Godricus unus liber homo,” probably the Sheriff’s son, I shall have to speak elsewhere.
The mention of Eadric the Deacon comes from Domesday, ii. 449; “In Kanavadisc [Cavendish in Suffolk] tenet Radulfus de Limesi, unus liber homo Heroldi, quam tenuit Edricus Diaconus, qui fuit mortuus cum eo in bello.” Surely the words “unus liber homo Heroldi” ought to be transposed so as to apply to Eadric.
The presence of the Abbots Leofric and Ælfwig is well known. The following is the local account (Mon. ii. 437) of the coming of Ælfwig and his twelve monks. The first words I have quoted already in vol. ii. p. 644.
“Rex Haraldus habuit avunculum, nomine Godwynum, qui adduxit secum contra Willielmum Bastard in suo adventu in Angliam in subsidio nepotis sui Haraldi, de domo suâ duodecim monachos et viginti milites, pro servitio; quibus occisis et spoliatis, inventi sunt memorati Abbas et monachi sub armis militaribus in habitu monachili, et de Novo Wintoniæ Monasterio, videlicet de Hidâ, cœnobitas esse.”
NOTE FF. pp. 400, 437.
THE DATES OF THE EVENTS BETWEEN THE TWO GREAT BATTLES.
The day of William’s landing seems distinctly fixed by the testimony of the Worcester and Peterborough Chronicles. The former says, “Ða com Wyllelm eorl of Normandige into Pefnesea on Sc̃e Michaeles mæsse æfen, and sona þæs hi fere wæron, worhton castel æt Hæstinga port.” That is, they landed on the morning of Thursday, September 28th, and, as we may suppose, reached Hastings the next day. This becomes still clearer from the words of the Peterborough Chronicler, who says, “And þa hwile com Willelm eorl upp æt Hestingan, on sc̃e Michaeles mæssedæg.” That is, he leaves out the landing at Pevensey, but brings William to Hastings on the day when he must have come there according to the other account. Orderic is therefore wrong when he says (500 B), “Normannicus itaque exercitus iii. Kal. Octobr. mare transfretavit, nocte quâ memoriam Sancti Michaelis Archangeli Catholica Ecclesia festivè peragit.” The mistake arose from some confusion between Saint Michael’s mass-day and Saint Michael’s eve.
On the other hand, there is no doubt as to the day of the Battle of Senlac. The Worcester Chronicle says expressly, “þis gefeoht wæs gedon on þone dæg Calesti pape.” So Orderic (501 A), “Bellum secundo Idus Octobr. horâ tertiâ commissum est.” It is strange that so accurate a writer as Florence should have given a wrong date, placing the battle on the 21st or 22nd, “xi. Kal. Novembris Sabbato.” William of Jumièges (vii. 36) gives the right date, “Pridie Idus Octobris.” But he makes (vii. 34) the strange mistake of placing the Battle of Stamfordbridge only one week before the Battle of Senlac (“Hæc pugna Nonis Octobris in die Sabbati facta est”). I have no doubt that Harold reached Senlac the day before the battle, that is on Friday, October 13th (see p. 446). William was thus a fortnight at Hastings, which agrees with the “quindecim dies” of William of Malmesbury (iii. 238).
Of the dates of Harold’s movements during this time our accounts are much less certain. We are told on authority which is not first rate that Harold spent five or six days in London whilst his troops were coming in. “Deinde per sex dies innumeram multitudinem Anglorum contraxit,” says William of Jumièges (vii. 35). So Gaimar (5257), “Cinc jurs i mist al asembler.” The statement however is probable enough, and, in default of any better authority, we may accept it. We have then to arrange the other events accordingly. We may give two days to the march from London to Senlac, making Harold leave London on Thursday the 12th. He would thus have reached London on the 5th. This puts Harold’s arrival in London exactly a week after William’s landing at Pevensey, allowing three days for the messenger’s hasty ride from Pevensey to York, and four days for the King’s somewhat slower march from York to London. Sunday, October 1, would seem to have been the day on which Harold heard the news of William’s landing. The speed with which events followed one another is almost miraculous, but that is the main characteristic of these two wonderful campaigns.
The following may serve as an approximate calendar of these events;
Wednesday, Sept. 20. Battle of Fulford. Sunday, ” 24. Surrender of York. Monday, ” 25. Battle of Stamfordbridge. Wednesday, ” 27. William sets sail. Thursday, ” 28. William at Pevensey. Friday, ” 29. William at Hastings. Sunday, October 1. News brought to York. Thursday, ” 5. Harold in London. Wednesday, ” 11. Harold leaves London. Friday, ” 13. Harold at Senlac. Saturday, ” 14. Battle of Senlac.
NOTE GG. p. 431.
THE MESSAGES BETWEEN HAROLD AND WILLIAM.
I have spoken in the text of the extraordinary confusions and contradictions which are found in the accounts of the messages which are said to have passed between Harold and William before the arrival of the English army at Senlac.
According to William of Poitiers (128), a monk, sent as an ambassador from Harold, reached William’s camp at Hastings while the Duke was inspecting his ships (“Dum custodiam navium viseret Dux, indicatum est fortè spatianti prope navalia monachum Heraldi legatum adesse”), which therefore, it is plain, were not burned. William talks with him, and pretends to be the Duke’s seneschal, saying that the messenger cannot obtain an interview with the Duke except through him. He bids the monk tell his story to him, promising to bring it to his master’s ears. The monk obeys, and is hospitably received and lodged that night. The next day the monk is brought before a gathering of the Norman chiefs, among whom he finds the supposed seneschal of yesterday to be no other than the Duke himself. William bids him (“In crastino discumbens in medio primatum suorum, cucullato advocato dixit”) tell his story to the whole company. He then delivers Harold’s message, which is much the same as I have given in p. 432. Now, this message of Harold is obviously out of place as the first of a series. Harold would never put arguments into William’s mouth in the way in which he is made to do in this account. But it is equally obvious that the latter part of the speech is thoroughly in place as an answer to a great part of the Norman case. It is clear that the order of the messages has been transposed, and that the first message was sent by William to Harold, and not by Harold to William. And indeed, to say nothing of the particular arguments in either message, it was far more natural for the claimant to send a first message to the actual possessor than for the actual possessor to send a first message to the claimant. And this is actually the order in which the story is told in Wace, whom I have therefore not scrupled to follow. In his account (11891 et seqq.), as soon as William hears that Harold has reached London, he sends the monk of Fécamp, Hugh Margot, of whose speech I have given the substance in p. 431. Harold is represented as being kindled almost to madness at the message, and as being kept back from personal violence to the messenger only by the interference of Gyrth. This is doubtless a mere piece of Norman scandal akin to the other stories which I have mentioned in p. 436. The alleged violence is quite out of character with all that we know of Harold, and the introduction of Gyrth, to whose exaltation Wace is so strangely devoted, casts a further doubt on the story. But these mythical details in no way affect the probability of the order which Wace gives to the messages. When Hugh Margot is gone, Harold sends his own messenger, an Englishman who could speak French (11949);
“Donc a Heraut pris un message Ki de France sont li langage.”
The speech put into his mouth is an answer to the Norman claims, but it takes a rather different line from the speech in William of Poitiers. While the latter chiefly deals with the respective claims of William and Harold to the Crown, the speech in Wace chiefly deals with the question of the oath, which Harold maintains to be of no force, as having been obtained by compulsion (11956);
“Se jo li ait fet folement, Se jo unkes rien li pramis, Por ma délivrance le fis; Por mei délivrer li jurai, Quant k’il me quist li otréai. Ne me deit estre reprocé, Quer nel’ fist nient de mon graé; La force ert soe, si cremeie, Se sa volonté ne faseie, Ke jo jamaiz ne revertisse, Et toz tems là remainsisse.”
The message winds up with the challenge for the battle on Saturday. It is added that William treated the messenger well, and gave him a horse and garments (“cheval è dras li fist doner,” 12026), on which Harold regretted his own ill-treatment of Hugh Margot.
I ought however to mention that Guy of Amiens (197 et seqq.) gives a version of these messages in which their substance differs altogether from the version either of William of Poitiers or of Wace, but which agrees in its order with William of Poitiers. Harold’s messenger is sent from York. At the meeting of the English captains, which I have described in p. 420, the King determines, as the first step, to send a messenger to William. An eloquent monk is chosen by the common voice of the assembly (203);
“Æquo consultu majorum necne minorum Providus eloquio monachus eligitur.”
The message which he carries is simply a rhetorical demand that William shall leave the country. Peace is offered if he will go quietly, and restore his captives and plunder; otherwise Harold threatens war. The last words enlarge on the vast numbers at Harold’s disposal, which he could not, if he would, keep back from battle. England contained six hundred thousand fighting men (221), all eager for fight.
“Militiam vix ipse suam populumque coercet: Gens est quæ nullum novit habere modum. Nam, Dominum testor, bis sex sibi millia centum Sunt pugnatorum, prœlia qui sitiunt.”
William’s answer is also little more than a rhetorical statement of his own right, and of Harold’s perjury, but it contains one expression which is worth notice. William thus (231) sets forth his rights;
“Excessi puerum, leviter nec regna petivi Defunctis patribus debita jure mihi.”
This strong expression of William’s hereditary right may perhaps be taken in connexion with the strange boast which the poet afterwards puts into the mouth of another messenger of William (331);
“Normannos proavus superavit, avusque Britannos; Anglorum genitor sub juga colla dedit.”
William’s answer winds up by offering mercy to Harold if he will repent and submit, and promising him his father’s Earldom on his again becoming William’s man (243);
“Si quærit pacem, si vult delicta fateri, Indulgens culpæ parcere promptus ero; Terram quam pridem tenuit pater, hanc sibi reddam, Ut meus ante fuit si meus esse velit.”
Now Wace clearly distinguishes between these messages, which he describes as being exchanged while Harold was still in London, and other messages, which he describes as being exchanged after Harold had already encamped on Senlac. It is probable that messages would be interchanged at both stages; when William of Poitiers rolls the two stages into one, he only displays his usual disregard of chronology, while Guy seems equally careless of geography. Harold is first at York and then at Senlac, without a word about the march or the sojourn in London. The Archdeacon makes his monk, who is evidently the same as Wace’s Hugh Margot, go to Harold, with the statement of William’s rights which I have given in vol. ii. p. 302, and with the offer which I have given in p. 431. But he also offers, in the interests of humanity, a decision of the quarrel by single combat (“at si conditionem hanc repudiaverit, non duco justum ut homines mei vel sui concidant prœliando, quorum in lite nostrâ culpa nulla est. Ecce paratus ego sum capite meo contra caput illius asserere, quod mihi potiùs quam illi jure cedat regnum Anglicum”). The Archdeacon now bursts forth into a panegyric on his master’s skill in argument and on his hatred of bloodshed; he then gives us Harold’s answer. His description is certainly graphic. For a while Harold cannot speak (“stupore expalluit, atque diu ut elinguis obticuit”); when he does speak, the monk, to repeated questions, gets no answer beyond threats of immediate battle (“pergimus continenter,” “pergimus ad prœlium”). At the final offer of the single combat, Harold lifts up his face to heaven, and says that God shall judge between him and William (“tum levato Heraldus in cœlum vultu, ait: Dominus inter me et Willelmum hodie quod justum est decernat”). All this happens while Harold is not far off from Hastings (“mandata Heraldo appropinquanti per monachum sunt relata”), and the battle seems to begin almost directly after.
The same kind of confusion prevails in Guy’s account. The message which I have already quoted is sent by Harold from York; but immediately on the departure of its bearer we find a state of things implying that the English army has already reached Senlac. When the monk is gone, William makes a speech to his followers, whom he addresses (250) as
“Francia quos genuit nobilitate cluens.”
And among them, besides Apulians and Calabrians (see p. 305), he does not forget (258) the men of his great continental conquest;
“Viribus illustres Cenomanni, gloria quorum Bello monstratur per probitatis opem.”
He expects a sudden attack of the English upon his camp, it being, according to this account, the custom of the victor of Stamfordbridge to conquer, not by force, but by fraud (264);
“Ejus enim mos est non vi, sed vincere fraude, Spondendoque fidem porrigit ore necem. Ergo cavere decet ne decipiamur ab illo, Ni simus risus ludus et in populo. Mandamus vobis quapropter castra tueri, Irruat in castris ne malus ille latro.”
He therefore sends a monk, seemingly half as spy, half as ambassador, who reaches the English camp just as Harold was setting out for a night attack on the camp of William (281);
“Rex acies armare jubet, Ducis atque latenter Mandat ut invadant agmina, si valeant. Æstimat in vigiles prosternere fraudibus hostes Fallere dum quærit, fallitur atque ruit.”
The monk now once more sets forth to Harold how William had been appointed heir to the Crown by Eadward with the assent of the Witan, and how Harold had himself been the bearer to William of a sword and a ring as witnesses of William’s election by King and people (291);
“Hoc quia perplures testantur, et asserit idem Assensu populi, consilio procerum, Etguardus quod rex ut ei succederet hæres Annuit, et fecit teque favente sibi. Annulus est illi testis concessus et ensis, Quæ per te nôsti missa fuisse sibi.”
Harold not unnaturally returns (301) an answer as indignant as that which Wace puts into his mouth on the earlier occasion. God shall judge between him and William on the morrow. All this is therefore conceived as happening on the night of Friday, October 13th;
“Heraldus vultu distorto colla retorquens, Legato dixit, ‘Vade retro, stolide. Judice cras Domino, regni pars justa patebit, Dividet ex æquo sacra manus Domini.’”
The monk goes back to his master and gives him a report of what he had seen in the English camp, some expressions of which I have already quoted here and there. It is remarkable also (323) for speaking of the English in a contemptuous way of which there is no trace when Guy comes to the actual battle, and which oddly enough forestalls the description which we have of Norman fashions in the next generation (see Ord. Vit. 701 A; Eadmer, 23);
“Fors numerum metues: numerus sed viribus expers Plurimus a minimo sæpe repulsus abit. Est sibi milities unctis depexa capillis, Fœminei juvenes Martis in arte pigri; Et quot sunt, ovibus totidem sunt æquiparandi, Ut vulpes pavidi fulguris ad sonitum.”
These two descriptions of the final message and the final answer of Harold are evidently the same as those which Wace (12254 et seqq.) describes as taking place after the English were encamped on the hill. The accounts are essentially the same; both contain the same offer of single combat, which seems more appropriate now than before. I have therefore followed Wace in making two sets of messages, one exchanged in London, the other (see p. 447) on the day before the battle. William of Malmesbury also (iii. 239–240) brings in a message and an answer at this stage. But he also brings in here the proposal of Gyrth that Harold should fall back on London (see p. 434). He adds also, like Guy, some expressions borrowed from the earlier message in William of Poitiers, the talk namely about the grant of the Crown by Eadward with the consent of the Earls, and also the story of the hostages. Both Wace and William make the Duke offer Harold a choice of three things, the single combat being the last alternative. The only difference is that in Wace the offer that Harold should hold the Kingdom under William (“ut [regnum] sub eo regnaturus teneret”) is made at a second and final message, after Harold had refused any of the three alternatives. The division of the Kingdom between Harold and Gyrth, as I have described it in p. 448, is clearly marked in Wace, 12340;
“E li Dus à Heraut manda, Se son covenant li teneit, Northonblonde tut li donreit, E kank ultre le Humbre aureit, Ki à cel regne aparteneit; E poiz donreit à Guert son frere La terre Gwigne lor pere.”
In both accounts there is a mention of the Pope and his clergy, but with the very important difference which I have noted in pp. 449–450.
With all these contradictions before me, I do not pretend to have reached any certainty as to details; but I think that we may safely accept two sets of messages, and I hope that I have fairly given their general tenor.
NOTE HH. pp. 423, 438, 445.
THE ENGLISH NUMBERS AT SENLAC.
The two passages which I have quoted at p. 445 from the Worcester Chronicle and from Florence distinctly charge Harold with fighting a battle with insufficient numbers. The passage from the Worcester Chronicle follows immediately on the words “Wyllelm him com ongean on unwær, ær his folc gefylced wære.” So the Peterborough writer, “Harold com norðan, and him wið gefeaht éar þan þe his here com eall.” Florence is still fuller;
“Licet ... bene sciret ... mediam partem sui exercitûs nondum convenisse, quam citiùs tamen potuit, in Suth-Saxoniâ suis hostibus occurrere non formidavit, et novem milliariis ab Hæstinga ubi sibi castellum firmaverant, priusquam tertia pars sui exercitûs ordinaretur ... cum eis prœlium commisit.”
So William of Malmesbury, as quoted at p. 423 (ii. 228), says that Harold had with him very few troops except the Housecarls. Presently he adds, “pauci et manu promptissimi fuere, qui, caritati corporum renuntiantes, pro patriâ animas posuere.” And again in iii. 2393 “Haroldus ... paucissimo stipatus milite, Hastingas protendit.” So the writer De Inventione, c. 20;
“Modico stipatus agmine Rex properat ad expugnandas gentes exteras, heu nimis animosus, minùs quidem quam expediret circumspectus, propriis quidem magis quam suorum confidens viribus.... Non potuit de pari contendere, qui modico stipatus agmine, quadruplo congressus exercitui, sorti se dedit ancipiti.”
The Norman writers, on the other hand, can hardly find words strong enough to set forth the countless numbers of the English host. William of Poitiers (132) rises, as might have been expected, to one of his grandest flights; “Scribens Heraldi agmen illud veterum aliquis in ejus transitu flumina epotata, silvas in planum redactas fuisse memoraret. Maximæ enim ex omnibus undique regionibus copiæ Anglorum convenerant.” A little way on (133) he talks of their “ingens numerositas.” Guy enlarges throughout on the numbers of the English. He makes William’s monk say (321),
“Quo graditur, silvas planis deducit adesse, Et per quæ transit flumina sicca facit.”
And afterwards (441) we read,
“Anglorum populus, numero superante, repellit Hostes.”
But I presume that the twelve hundred thousand men of whom the English monk is made to speak (223) means the whole military population of England and not the host actually encamped on Senlac;
“Nam Dominum testor, bis sex sibi millia centum Sunt pugnatorum, prœlia qui sitiunt.”
So Orderic (500 D) and William of Jumièges (vii. 35) speak of an “innumera multitude.”
Wace makes Harold boast (12999) that he has four hundred thousand men;
“Ke chevaliers ke paisanz Par quatre foiz chent mil armez.”
But when he speaks in his own person (12913) he speaks with his usual good sense;
“Heraut out grant pople è estult, De totes parz en i vint mult; Maiz multitude petit vaut Se la virtu du ciel i faut. Plusor è plusor unt poiz dit Ke Heraut aveit gent petit, Por ço ke à li meschaï; Maiz plusors dient è jel di, Ke cuntre un home altre envéia, La gent al Duc poi foisonna, Maiz li Dus aveit veirement Plusors baronz è meillor gent.”
Wace here rebukes the English exaggerations; so William of Malmesbury (ii. 228) rebukes the Norman exaggerations; “Sed mihi videntur errare qui Anglorum numerum accumulant et fortitudinem extenuant; ita Normannos, dum laudare intendunt, infamiâ respergunt.”
My own ideas I have set forth pretty plainly in the text. It is very likely that Harold, by waiting longer, might have gathered a larger army, but, as far as a civilian may venture to judge of such a matter, it seems to me that a larger army would not have been of any use. Harold clearly had men enough to defend the hill. If indeed he could have exchanged his irregular levies for the Thegns and Housecarls of Eadwine and Morkere, that might have made a difference, but that is not a question of numbers. We must allow for obvious exaggeration on both sides, and perhaps Wace strikes as good a balance between the two as any. It is impossible to go over the battle-field with the Norman accounts in one’s hand and not to feel the consummate generalship which led Harold to the choice and defence of the post which he chose. And this time I venture to appeal from Harold’s admirers and censurers to Harold himself.
NOTE II. p. 428.
THE MIRACULOUS WARNING GIVEN TO HAROLD BEFORE THE BATTLE.
I have given in the text the legend of the miraculous warning given to Harold by the Holy Rood at Waltham, because there is probably thus much of truth in the story, that Harold really visited Waltham in the interval between the two battles. But when the notion of a miraculous interposition had once got afloat, the story, as usual, took various forms. According to the legend preserved by the Hyde writer (p. 293), Harold, on his march from London to Senlac, entered a church to pray. As soon as he left the building, the tower fell; this of course portended the fall of Harold’s Kingdom (“fertur etiam quod in ipso itinere, ecclesiam illo introeunte orandi gratiâ, turris ejusdem post exeuntem solo tenus corruit, regnumque Anglorum quam citiùs corruere designaverit”). There is nothing to remark in this story, unless it be that the notion of Harold entering a church on his journey may be taken from the picture of his entering Bosham church on his earlier journey (Tapestry, plate 1), where the church is, strangely enough, represented without a tower.
The other version is found in the anonymous continuation of Wace’s Brut (Chroniques Anglo-Normandes, i. 70, quoted also in Taylor’s Wace, 289). The two armies are encamped near Hastings;
“A Hastinges sunt encontré Li rois e li dux par grant fierté.”
Harold rises in the morning, and goes to hear mass in a church near the battle-field (“assez près à un moster”). The priests have consecrated the host and sung the _Pater Noster_, when a cry comes, “The Duke is upon us!” The King at once leaves the church, and rushes to the battle. If, the poet adds, he had waited for the _Agnus Dei_ and the _Pax_, he would have vanquished the Duke in battle or would have held his Kingdom in peace.
“Si le _Agnus Dei_ eust atendu E la pais eust recéu, Par pais eust la terre tenu U par bataille le dux vencu.”
This story seems to come from the account of the battle of Ashdown in Asser (M. H. B. 476 C, copied also by Florence, 871), where the Danes attack the English while Æthelred and his brother Ælfred are hearing mass. Ælfred rushes out at once to the battle, while Æthelred waits for the end of the service. But the myth-maker now goes on to add the Waltham legend itself, strangely translated from its natural place. After the King has left the church—seemingly the church near Senlac—the stone cross gives the same marvellous sign which it gives in the Waltham story; and to confirm our faith in the tale, we are bidden to go to Waltham and see the cross behind the high altar, and Harold lying in the choir;
“Quant il issit del moster, La croiz, ke fu fait de père, Après le rois ad encliné C’onques puis la teste levé. Ki ke volt ceo saver, A Walteham, ultre le halt auter, Meimes cel croiz purra trover E roi Haraud gisant en quer.”
The two stories are here very awkwardly joined together, and there cannot be the least doubt that the version in the De Inventione gives the legend in its earliest and genuine form.
NOTE KK. pp. 442 et seqq.
THE DETAILS OF THE BATTLE OF SENLAC.
I had hoped to deal with the great battle as I have dealt with the other great points of my history, that is to give a narrative of the events as I conceive them, uninterrupted by foot-notes, and to discuss all details in a separate essay. But I found this course impossible. My view of the battle is founded on so many minute hints in so many different writers that I found that, if I separated my particular statements from the evidence on which they rest, I should be practically calling on the reader to accept the statements without full means of testing them. To every statement therefore which seemed open to any possibility of question, I have added the authority on which I ground it. Each reader can therefore judge for himself how far my narrative is borne out by my authorities. At the same time I think that no one will be justified either in confidently accepting or in confidently rejecting my version, unless he has himself gone over the ground with the original accounts fresh in his memory. I have myself visited Battle four times. The first time was as long ago as 1853, when I was already deeply interested in the subject, but when I had not yet planned the present work. I went more carefully over the ground, with a special reference to this history, in July 1866, and again in December 1868. This third time I had the advantage of the company of Mr. J. R. Green, who has a much keener eye than I have for topography, especially for military topography. But I am happy to say that his observations had mainly the effect of explaining and confirming the conclusions to which I had come two years before. Lastly, in the same month I walked specially from Hastings to Battle, a part of the process almost as needful as the survey of the actual battle-ground.
Most of the accounts of the battle, ancient and modern, show very little understanding of the site. Of the primary authorities, William of Poitiers and Guy of Amiens both show by several touches that they understood it. But Guy alone bears the position in mind throughout his story. William begins with an excellent description, but his topography is soon lost in his rhetoric. The local historian, the author of the Chronicon de Bello, is still more distinct; so is the author of the Brevis Relatio. The Tapestry gives but little idea of the general site, though some particular incidents are displayed with wonderful vividness. Wace, I think, could not have seen the ground. The English contemporary writers give no details of any kind; the later writers, as William of Malmesbury and Henry of Huntingdon, give incidental help, which is sometimes very valuable, but they seem to have had very little notion of the general position. Henry of Huntingdon is the most remarkable case. The latter part of his account contains a great deal that is very much to the purpose, and we owe to him the admirable comparison of Harold’s camp to a castle (see p. 442). Yet this follows on a statement so grotesquely inaccurate as that Harold “aciem suam construxit _in planis Hastinges_” (M. H. B. 762 C). It will be easily seen that my narrative is mainly drawn from the Tapestry, William of Poitiers, and Guy, using the other writers, Wace at their head, as subsidiary. In no part of the enquiry does the paramount value of the Tapestry come out more strongly. There is little contradiction among the primary authorities as to the main facts, though they often differ as to their order. In these cases I have had to choose according to the best of my discretion; the reader must judge with what success.
The modern accounts, including those of Thierry, Lappenberg, M. de Bonnechose, and Mr. St. John, seem to have been written with little or no attention to the ground. If we learn from them that Harold’s position was on a hill, it is as much as we do. Sir Francis Palgrave, in his early work (Hist. Ang. Sax. 385), so completely misunderstood the battle as to say that Harold, when struck by the arrow, “dropped _from his steed_ in agony,” and this is actually reprinted in his posthumous third volume, p. 317. Lord Lytton, in his romance, shows a better understanding of the site than anybody else; he had at least seen it; but he has unfortunately encumbered his picture of the battle with many incidents which are imaginary and impossible. An intelligent local antiquary of the district, Mr. M. A. Lower, has done more to explain matters than any professed historian. His account (see Sussex Archæological Collections, vol. vi. p. 15, and Lower’s Contributions to Literature, p. 36) is very carefully done, and it brings out several points which had never been brought out before. Mr. Lower evidently knows the ground well, and he has made good use of Guy of Amiens, to whose full value no earlier writer seems to have been alive. Mr. Lower’s paper is on the whole very satisfactory as far as it goes, and I shall not have to speak of many points of difference between his views and mine. I may however mention that Mr. Lower has been misled as to the site of the Standard. The point commonly shown as such is plainly the site of the altar of the Lady Chapel; the site of the Standard was marked by the high altar, which of course stood further to the west.
Having thus, much against my will, encumbered my text with a cloud of references, I have now only to discuss a few points which seem to call for explanation or to be open to controversy.
1. The name of Senlac for the hill on which Harold encamped rests, as far as I know, solely on the authority of Orderic, who seems to take a kind of pleasure in repeating it. The spot was anciently called Senlac (501 A); the battle was fought “in campo Senlac” (598 A); “in epitumo Senlac” (659 B)—whatever “epitumo” may mean; the Abbey was founded on Senlac (505 B); the battle is the battle of Senlac (“Senlacium bellum” 502 D, 504 A, “certamen Senlacium” 523 A). I do not profess to know the etymology of the name, and Orderic’s form may possibly be corrupt. But he cannot have invented the word, which evidently survives in “Santlaches,” “Saintlake,” &c. (in various spellings), “the Lake,” “Battle Lake,” and so forth, the local names for the south-eastern part of the town. (See Lower, p. 70.) “Sanglac” or “Sanguelac” I take to be simply a French pun on the name. On the authority of Orderic then, I have not scrupled systematically to use the word, especially as a name for the spot is wanted. In Domesday and elsewhere the battle is “bellum Hastingense,” “bellum apud Hastinges,” but that is simply as Stamfordbridge is “bellum apud Eboracum.”
2. The story of Harold and Gyrth going by night to spy out the Norman camp (see p. 447) comes from Wace, 12120–12217. Like a good deal that is said about Gyrth, it rests on no sufficient evidence. The tendency to exalt Gyrth is common to several of the Norman writers, but it comes out more strongly in Wace than anywhere else. In fact this part of his poem is little short of a Gyrthiad. The English Earl is perhaps less prominent than the Norman Duke, but he is more prominent than any one else. Wace evidently takes a special pleasure in talking of him; the conception of his character is well drawn, and his story is wrought up with a good deal of epic skill, till he is cut down at the very end of the battle by the hand of William himself. We may accept the valour and wisdom of Gyrth on the witness of his enemies; but there must be some reason for the special favour which he enjoys. Perhaps it was felt to be necessary to the greatness of William that he should be matched with a worthy adversary. Harold’s skill and valour are not disputed, but the perjurer and usurper could not be painted as a hero in the higher sense. The place was open for Gyrth, and it doubtless suited his traditional character. But all this makes me somewhat suspicious of the details of any story in which he is prominent.
3. William of Poitiers (132) has a strange statement that there were Danish auxiliaries at Senlac; “Copiosa quoque auxilia miserat eis [Anglis] cognata terra Danorum.” There is not a word more about them in his narrative, nor, as far as I know, anywhere else. By Danes is possibly meant Northumbrians. The few Yorkshire volunteers who followed Harold (see p. 424) may have got magnified into an army fresh from Denmark. I do not understand what Lappenberg (549) means, when he says, “die Dänen wurden unbrauchbar, da sie nicht gegen Herzog Wilhelm selbst fechten zu wollen erklärten.” Does this come from the words which immediately follow in William of Poitiers? “Non tamen audentes cum Willelmo ex æquo confligere, plus eum quam Regem Noricorum extimentes, locum editiorem præoccupavere, montem silvæ per quam advenere vicinum.” But this simply means the occupation of Senlac by the English army in general.
4. The order of events (see p. 482) as to the real and the feigned flight of the Normans differs a good deal in our authorities. William of Poitiers gives the order which I have followed. The feigned flight is suggested to William by the fortunate result of the real flight. See p. 489, note 1. But in Guy’s version (423 et seqq.) the feigned flight at first succeeds; the fugitives turn and slay ten thousand of the accursed Englishmen;
“Pars ibi magna perit, pars et densata resistit; Millia namque decem sunt ibi passa necem. Ut pereunt mites bacchante leone bidentes, Sic compulsa mori gens maledicta ruit.”
(vv. 435–438.)
But the superior numbers of the English give them the advantage, and the Normans are driven to fly in earnest;
“Anglorum populus, numero superante, repellit Hostes, inque retro compulit ora dari; Et fuga ficta priùs fit tunc virtute coacta; Normanni fugiunt, dorsa tegunt clipei.”
(vv. 441–444.)
Then William recalls the fugitives; another attack is made on the English, and Gyrth is killed. The account of William of Poitiers seems much more natural and probable; but that of Guy may be thought to be confirmed by the Tapestry, which places (pl. 15) the scene of William and Odo recalling the troops both after the death of Gyrth and Leofwine (pl. 14) and after the incidents of the ravine and the little hill (p. 490). On the whole I look on the Tapestry as the highest authority of the three, but in the nature of things exact chronological order is not its strongest point. See for instance the awkward shifts to which the designer is driven in pl. 14 to express the attack of the Normans on several points of the English position at once.
5. As to the part of Eustace in the battle (see p. 483) our accounts are somewhat contradictory. William of Poitiers mentions only his advice to Duke William in the pursuit after the battle (see p. 503), but he tells us elsewhere (157) that Eustace had given his son to William as a hostage (“filium de fide ante bellum in Normanniâ obsidem dederat”). This may possibly imply some suspicion either of his courage or of his good faith. Guy tells us of his giving his horse to William (see p. 487) and of his share in the butchery of Harold (see p. 499). In the Tapestry (pl. 15) Eustace is shown giving some piece of advice to William at the very moment of the Duke recalling the fugitives, and William certainly does not seem to be giving him much attention. The nature of his advice, as I have given it in the text, comes from Benoît (37414–37421). William has just spoken to the fugitives;
“Dunc vint poignant Quens Eustace, Qui le Duc effreie e manace, E dit: ‘Morz est, por veir, senz faille, S’il ne se part de la bataille: Nul recovrer n’a mais és suens.’ Ci pout grant ponte aveir li Quens, Qu’à trop mauvaise e à trop fole Fu puis tenue la parole.”
On the other hand, the local chronicler of Battle (p. 4) seems to claim for Eustace, the only man besides the Duke and William Faber whom he mentions by name, the main credit of the device of the feigned flight; “Strenuissimus Boloniæ Comes Eustachius clam callidâ præmeditatâ arte, fugam cum exercitu Duce simulante, super Anglos sparsim agiliter insequentes cum manu validâ a tergo irruit.” This picking out of Eustace as a special hero is significant. It is plainly meant as a contradiction; but what is the value of the contradiction? The passage from Benoît seems to fit in admirably with the scene in the Tapestry; still it is possible that Eustace is giving some other advice, and that Benoît transferred to this point the advice given in the later pursuit.
6. The death of Gyrth is told as I have told it (see p. 485) by Guy (471–480). William kills him with his own hand;
“Nam velox juvenem sequitur veluti leo frendens, Membratim perimens, hæc sibi verba dedit: ‘Accipe promeritam nostri de parte coronam, Si periit sonipes hanc tibi reddo pedes.’”
In the Tapestry (pl. 14) Gyrth and Leofwine are killed at this stage of the battle or earlier, but seemingly not by the hand of William. Wace (13947 et seqq.) makes the fall of Gyrth the last act of the battle, after Harold is dead; the deed is wrought by William’s own hand;
“Guert vit Engleiz amenuisier, Vit k’il n’i out nul recovrier, Vit son lignage dechaeir: De sei garir n’out nul espeir, Fuir s’en volt, maiz ne poeit, Ke la presse toz tems creisseit. A tant puinst li Dus, si l’ateint, Par grant aïr avant l’empeint, Ne sai se de cel colp morut, Maiz ço fu dit ke pose jut.”
Wace, it will be seen, does not commit himself to Gyrth’s death, no doubt with an eye to a legend which I shall speak of in a later note.
Of these three accounts I follow that of Guy, as the clearest in itself, and as drawing a certain amount of support from each of the other versions. It agrees with the Tapestry in placing the death of Gyrth early in the battle; it agrees with Wace in making him die by the hand of William.
The group in the Tapestry (pl. 14) representing the deaths of Gyrth and Leofwine is well worth study. Five Englishmen are shown, two of whom are falling dead. Of the other three, one is manfully wielding his axe, another his spear; a third rushes up, sword in hand. Can these be the five _Wulfnothingas_, Ælfwig, Harold, Gyrth, Leofwine, and Hakon? Might not the Abbot, a man of a past generation, use the sword rather than the axe? It should be noticed that it is only here, and again in the group immediately round Harold in pl. 16, that we see the round shield with the boss, spoken of in p. 473, either in the main picture or in the border.
7. The part in the battle played by the small detached hill (see p. 490) has, as far as I know, never been mentioned by any modern writer. I must leave it to the reader to judge whether the words of William of Malmesbury and the representation in the Tapestry, when taken together, bear out the meaning which I have put upon them. The hill is very distinctly marked in the Tapestry, and it seems impossible that the words “occupato tumulo” in William’s account can mean the general occupation of the hill of Senlac itself by the English army.
8. It will be seen that I make (pp. 490, 503) two occasions when the Normans suffered from an attack of English fugitives in marshy ground. The scene described by William of Malmesbury, and represented in the Tapestry as happening comparatively early in the battle, cannot be the same as that which William of Poitiers, Orderic, and the Battle Chronicler place at the very end of the battle. The order in the Tapestry may not always be quite exact, but it could not go so far wrong as this. The ground also supplies places which exactly suit both occasions. Mr. Lower (Contributions to Literature, 54) identifies the account in William of Malmesbury with the account in the Battle Chronicler. But this last seems very well to describe, with some exaggeration, the steep ground north of the hill (Chron. de Bello, 5);
“Siquidem et inter hostiles gladios miserabile quoddam, in proximo spatiosè protentum, ex naturali telluris hiatu vel forsan ex procellarum concavatione, præcipitium vastè patens, licet uti in vastitate dumis vel tribulis obsitum, oculis minùs prævideretur, innumeros et maximè Normannorum Anglos persequentium, suffocavit. Nam dum inscii cum impetu dissilirent ibidem in præceps acti, flebiliter contriti necabantur. Quod quidem baratrum, sortito ex accidenti vocabulo, _Malfosse_ hodieque nuncupatur.”
This is evidently the scene of the slaughter of Normans which took place in the dark, after Harold’s death, when the light-armed English were flying. It lies in the natural direction for their flight; but it does not at all suit the circumstances of the first slaughter, which must have happened somewhere to the south or south-west of the hill. The small ravine to the south-west seems exactly what is wanted.
9. The time at which Harold died (see p. 498) seems clear from Florence, and with his statement most of the other accounts agree. It is clear from the Tapestry that Harold was cut down by the four knights almost immediately after he received the wound in the eye. Wace (13299 compared with 13932) seems—perhaps only seems—to make a long time pass between Harold’s first wound and his death. I need hardly stop to refute the strange mistake of William of Jumièges (vii. 36) followed by Orderic (501 D); “Heraldus ipse in primo militum progressu (“congressu,” Ord.) vulneribus letaliter confossus occubuit.” Orderic puts the death of Leofwine soon after (“deinde”), but this time he does not name Gyrth.
The battle of Senlac seems in several points to have borne much likeness to the battle of Aghrim, described by Macaulay, iv. 90. It is the last battle of Saint Ruth.
“The spot on which he had determined to bring the fate of Ireland to issue seems to have been chosen with great judgment. His army was drawn up on the slope of a hill, which was almost surrounded by red bog. In front, near the edge of the morass, were some fences out of which a breastwork was without difficulty constructed.”
We read of the great difficulties which the English found in crossing the muddy ground and attacking the hill. “Again and again the assailants were driven back. Again and again they returned to the struggle. Once they were broken, and chased across the morass: but Talmash rallied them, and forced the pursuers to retire.” The battle is decided, as evening is closing in, by Saint Ruth’s death by a cannon-ball. The Irish breastwork is carried, and most of its defenders slain, either on the hill or in the pursuit. “The number of the slain was, in proportion to the number engaged, greater than in any other battle of that age.”
I am sorry that I have not seen the ground, but when I was in Ireland some years back, the likeness between the two battles had not struck me.
NOTE LL. p. 459.
RALPH OF NORFOLK.
I believe that I have gradually felt my way to the true history and position of a somewhat mysterious person of whom we get glimpses in the reign of Eadward, and who becomes prominent under William. This is Ralph, called of Gael or of Wader, afterwards Earl of Norfolk or of the East Angles (Fl. Wig. 1074), whom I believe to have been of English birth, and whom I therefore have not scrupled to speak of in the text as an English traitor. This I do on the express authority of the Abingdon and Peterborough Chronicles (1075–1076). In recording the famous bride-ale which led to the death of Waltheof, both Chroniclers, with slight verbal difference, expressly say that Ralph Earl of Norfolk was Breton indeed on his mother’s side, but that his father was an Englishman of the same name, born in Norfolk (“se ylca Raulf wæs Brittisc on his modor healfe, and Rawulf his fæder wæs Englisc, and wæs geboren on Norðfolce”). William of Malmesbury indeed (iii. 255), seemingly with the Chronicle before him, calls Ralph “Brito ex patre.” This may be either a mistake or an intended correction, but it can hardly outweigh the testimony of the two Chroniclers. We have another indication of Ralph’s English origin, in an entry in the Norfolk Domesday (131), where we find mention of “Goduinus avunculus Radulphi Comitis.” In classical Latin the word “avunculus” would rather show that Ralph’s connexion with England was only on the mother’s side, but, as I have before shown (vol. ii. p. 644), “avunculus” had now got the general sense of “uncle.” A man named Godwine must have been an Englishman; and we thus find two brothers, Ralph and Godwine, both of them Norfolk landowners, one the father and the other the uncle of Ralph the Earl. Ralph as the name of an Englishman is certainly puzzling, but as we find in England a solitary Lothar (see vol. i. p. 334), a solitary Frederick (see p. 555), and a nearly solitary Carl, a solitary Ralph does not seem impossible. Or if any one pleases, Ralph may have been English in the sense of being an English-born son of one of the French followers of Emma, which would account for one of his two sons bearing a French name and the other an English one.
The English birth of Ralph thus seems plain from the Chronicles, and it is not set aside by the passages which, like William of Malmesbury quoted above, speak of him as a “Breton.” He is “genere Brito” in William of Jumièges (vii. 25; viii. 15). So Wace, 11512 and 13627, in which latter place the words are, “Bret esteit è Bretonz menout.” He was the son of a Breton mother; he held the castles of Wader and Montfort (Ord. Vit. 535 C) in his mother’s country, and he appeared at Senlac in command of a body of his mother’s countrymen. That he should therefore be spoken of as a Breton is really not wonderful.
The evidence of Domesday also no less distinctly gives us two Ralphs in Norfolk, father and son. The elder Ralph is clearly the same as Ralph the Staller of Eadward’s time (see vol. ii. p. 347, and Taylor’s Wace, 226). The number of entries T. R. E. in his name is very great, especially in Norfolk and Suffolk. He also signs many charters. In Cod. Dipl. iv. 121, of 1055, he signs as “Minister,” and is distinguished from “Radulfus Dux.” In 1060 (iv. 143) he signs as “Regis Dapifer,” in 1061 (iv. 151) as “Minister,” in 1062 (iv. 159) as “Regis Aulicus,” and in the charter of Abbot Ælfwig, quoted in vol. ii. p. 347, he appears as “Steallere” along with Esegar and Bondig. But we can go a little further. The signatures and the entries in Domesday belonging to Ralph the Staller must not be confounded with those of Earl Ralph of Hereford, King Eadward’s nephew, from whom we find him pointedly distinguished, both in the charter just quoted, and in Domesday, 337, where both Earl and Staller appear in the same entry. Yet the elder Ralph of Norfolk seems to have borne the title of Earl. The many entries of “Radulfus Comes” in the East-Anglian Domesday generally belong to the younger Ralph, for in several of them the forfeiture of his lands to William is mentioned. But Ralph the father is clearly distinguished in two entries (128 _b_ and 129) as “Comes R. vetus;” and in 194 we find “Radulfus Comes” holding land T. R. E., after which the entry goes on to say, “postea tenuit Radulfus Comes, filius ejus, postea Ailmarus Episcopus de utroque, postea Arfastus Episcopus.” Lastly, in 409 _b_ we read of land in Suffolk; “Hanc habuit Radulfus Stalra in vadimonio de vicecomite Toli [the Sheriff who appears in Cod. Dipl. iv. 208, and in many other writs of Eadward] ... et tenebat die quâ Rex E. fuit mortuus, et postea Radulfus filius ejus.”
This evidence seems quite distinct. There were two Ralphs in Norfolk, father and son, the younger being the son of a Breton mother. The elder was Staller, and is also called Earl; he must have held some subordinate government under Gyrth. He was in possession of his lands at the time of Eadward’s death, and he was succeeded in them by his son. The elder Ralph must therefore have died early in the reign of Harold. But as we find his son fighting among his mother’s countrymen on William’s side at Senlac, it is plain that the younger Ralph must have been outlawed by Harold for some unrecorded treason or other crime. He then evidently migrated to his mother’s country and joined himself to the Breton followers of William. One of the entries in Domesday would almost seem to show that part of his lands were granted by Harold or Gyrth to the East Anglian Bishoprick. Of his career in William’s reign we shall hear in my next volume.
I can only regret that I had not fully worked out these facts sooner, as some of them throw light on Harold’s character and position. Whether Ralph was a partizan of William or of Tostig, or what other crime may have led to his outlawry, I do not venture to guess.
NOTE MM. p. 512.
THE BURIAL OF HAROLD.
I have quoted in the text those passages of the contemporary writers which distinctly assert a burial of Harold on the rocks at Hastings. I will now quote the authorities which assert a burial at Waltham. The full story is given in the De Inventione (c. 21). The two Canons, Osgod and Æthelric, go to the Duke and ask for the body. William answers that Harold, notwithstanding his crimes, shall not be deprived of burial (“Rex vester fidei suæ religionis immemor, etsi dignas transgressionis ad præsens exsolverit pœnas, non meruit sepulturæ beneficio privari”). He adds that it is his design to found a church, to be served by a body of an hundred monks, who are to pray for the soul of Harold and of all others who died in the battle. In that church Harold shall be buried with all honour (“paratus sum ... ipsum Regem vestrum in ecclesiâ eâdem debito cum honore præ cæteris sublimare”). The Canons offer William ten marks of gold that their founder may be buried in his own church where he wished to be buried (“corpus ad locum quem instituit ipse remittere”). William grants their prayer, but refuses the money. They strive in vain to find the body. Osgod then goes home and brings Eadgyth, by whom it is found. The body is then taken to Waltham amidst a vast concourse both of Englishmen and Normans (“multis heroum Normanniæ comitatûs honorem corpori exhibentibus”).
The story however does not rest only on the authority of the Waltham writer. William of Malmesbury (iii. 247), after saying that the body was given to Gytha (see p. 512), adds, “acceptum itaque apud Waltham sepelivit, quam ipse ecclesiam ex proprio constructam in honore Sanctæ Crucis canonicis impleverat.” Wace (14093) had evidently heard two or three stories, and with his usual discretion he avoided committing himself, but he distinctly asserts a burial at Waltham;
“Li Reis Heraut fu emportez, E à Varham fu enterrez; Maiz jo ne sai ki l’emporta, Ne jo ne sai ki l’enterra.”
The continuator of Wace’s Brut, in the passage which I have already quoted (see above, p. 743), buries Harold in the choir at Waltham. The French Biographer of Eadward (4631) tells the same story;
“Le cors le roi Haraud unt quis, E truvé entre les ocis: E pur co ke il rois esteit, Granté est k’enterrez seit Par la prière sa mère. Portez fu le cors en bère, A Wautham est mis en carcu, Kar de la maisun fundur fu.”
Now, in harmonizing these accounts, it is impossible to escape the strong contemporary evidence which asserts that Harold’s body really was buried on the coast of Sussex. The statements of William of Poitiers and Guy, though they may differ in one or two trifling details, must be admitted as to the main fact. But the evidence for a burial at Waltham is almost equally strong. If it were not so, how did the tale arise? A tomb of Harold was one which there was very little temptation to forge. Harold was not an acknowledged saint, whose burial-place would be a profitable object of pilgrimage. A burial-place of the penitent at Chester might indeed become such an object, but hardly that of the fallen hero at Waltham. The only writer who shows any disposition to canonize Harold distinctly removes his sepulchre from Waltham (see below, p. 759). If the Waltham tomb was a forgery, it was a forgery older than the days of William of Malmesbury; it was a forgery which must have been owing to motives strongly tinged with political feelings, political feelings any such expression of which would, we may be pretty sure, have been put down at once by the strong hand of the Norman King. The statement of William of Malmesbury distinctly proves that it was currently believed, not only at Waltham but generally, that Waltham was Harold’s burying-place. And I need not say that William of Malmesbury does not write in the interest of Waltham or of England. He is a thoroughly independent witness; so is Wace, who, after his manner, honestly confesses his ignorance of some details, while he distinctly asserts the burial at Waltham. So early and so extensive a fabrication as their narratives would imply seems quite out of the question.
The unavoidable inference therefore is that Harold was first buried on the rocks of Hastings under a heap of stones, and afterwards was translated for more solemn interment in the minster at Waltham. This view I worked out for myself in 1857 (see vol. ii. p. 428), but I afterwards found that I had been forestalled in it by M. de Bonnechose (ii. 283), who takes this theory for granted, without reference or argument. On this supposition, we can easily account for all the reports. William of Poitiers and Guy of Amiens, in recording the fight of Senlac, recorded that burial of Harold which formed part of their story; a later translation had no interest for them. The Waltham writers, on the other hand, naturally dwelt only on that burial which formed a part of their own local history. The cairn-burial was something which they would naturally seek to slur over, and to throw out of remembrance. In a short time it would be forgotten; the date of the funeral at Waltham would be shifted back two or three months, and would be held to have immediately followed the battle. Even writers who had no connexion with Waltham, writers like William of Malmesbury and Wace, would naturally think most of that burial which had left a visible witness before the eyes of men, and would have no temptation to dwell upon the hurried ceremony performed by William Malet upon the rocks of Sussex.
And lastly, as to the details of the Waltham story, as to the share in the transaction taken by the two Canons and by Eadgyth Swanneshals. The story, as it stands, cannot be made to agree with the contemporary statement as to Harold’s first burial at Hastings. But the contradiction is little more than a contradiction as to time. The Waltham story implies that the body was found and was buried at Waltham within a few days after the battle. The finding and the burial are placed, if not while William was still on the hill of Senlac, yet at any rate before he left Hastings for Romney. This is of course distinctly contradicted by William of Poitiers and Guy of Amiens. But if we believe that Harold’s body was translated to Waltham at the time of William’s coronation or later, the only error of the Waltham writer would be that he has transposed events and given them wrong dates. The body was found, as he states, on the morrow of the battle, or within a few days after it, but the burial at Waltham did not take place till two or three months later. Two petitions to William seem to be rolled into one. The first, made on Senlac or at Hastings, was followed by the search for the body. The second, made at a later time, was followed by Harold’s translation to Waltham. It was then doubtless that William offered a burial in his own Battle Abbey instead. It is on this view that I have ventured to ground the narrative in the text. And I am strengthened in doing so by the fact that there are several small touches in which all accounts agree. William of Poitiers, William of Malmesbury, and the Waltham writer all agree in making the Duke refuse the offered gold of Gytha and of the Canons. So again the statement of William of Poitiers that Harold’s body was recognized by certain marks exactly falls in with the Waltham story. The Archdeacon of Lisieux tells us that certain persons—to him it was quite indifferent who they were—found Harold’s body in a particular way. The Canon of Waltham tells us who those persons were, and how they came to be there. Just so William of Malmesbury, recording the second burial only, and placing it at the date of the first, speaks of Gytha only, just as William of Poitiers speaks of William Malet only. If Gytha and the Chapter of Waltham joined in a petition for the removal of the body, it is not wonderful that a writer at Malmesbury thought chiefly of the interposition of Gytha. Osgod, Æthelric, Eadgyth, were persons of no interest or importance to either of our Williams; in the local history of Waltham they doubtless filled a great place. I believe therefore that the only mistake in the Waltham story is a mistake of date, the mistake, natural under the circumstances, of thinking that the charitable work of Eadgyth and the two Canons was at once followed by the burial at Waltham. I cannot believe that their story is mere invention; it has all that local and personal character about it which seems to imply a ground-work of truth. The introduction of Eadgyth is an especial mark of truth. The Waltham writers, both the writer De Inventione and the Biographer, are clearly a little puzzled how to describe her position. It is most unlikely that Harold’s clerical panegyrists would either have invented an imaginary mistress for their hero or have exalted a real one into an imaginary prominence. To Eadgyth herself, and to the few hints that we have as to her personal existence, I give another note.
I must quote one writer more. Benoît (37627) follows the story of the first burial up to the point where Harold’s body is given to William Malet, but he declines to say where William buried him.
“Li reis Herault fu seveliz; Et si me retrait li escriz. Que sa mère por lui aveir Vout au duc doner grant aveir; Mais n’en vout unques dener prendre Ne por riens nule le cors rendre: Mais à un Guillaume Malet, Qui n’ert tosel pas ne vaslet Mais chevaliers durs e vaillanz. Icist l’en fu tant depreianz Qu’il li dona à enfoïr Là où il vendreit à _plaisir_.”
I now turn to the legend according to which Harold did not die at Senlac. Of this doctrine Harold’s own romantic biographer is the great prophet. But however much he may have embellished the story, he is not to be charged with inventing it. It is found in several other writers, some of whom are earlier than himself. Thus in Giraldus, Itin. Kamb. ii. 11 (p. 140 Dimock), after a story that the Emperor Henry the Fifth had died as a hermit at Chester, we read as follows;
“Similiter et Haroldum Regem se habere testantur: qui, ultimus de gente Saxonicâ [_Cambrensis_ is speaking] Rex in Angliâ, publico apud Hastinges bello cum Normannis congrediens, pœnas succumbendo perjurii luit; multisque, ut aiunt, confossus vulneribus, oculoque sinistro sagittâ perdito ac perforato, ad partes istas victus evasit: ubi sanctâ conversatione cujusdam urbis ecclesiæ jugis et assiduus contemplator adhærens, vitamque tamquam anachoriticam ducens, viæ ac vitæ cursum, ut creditur, feliciter consummavit. Ex utriusque, ut fertur, ultimi articuli confessione, veritas antea non comperta demum prodiit publicata.”
So Æthelred of Rievaux (X Scriptt. 394), evidently alluding to the same story, says of Harold, “aut miserè occubuit aut, ut quidam putant, pœnitentiæ tantum reservatus evasit.” So Gervase of Tilbury, in the strange story which I have already analysed (see above, p. 693), leaves Harold’s death and escape as alternative stories. “Heraldus utrum fugâ sibi consuluerit, an in prœlio ceciderit, adhuc dubium reliquit.”
Ralph of Coggeshall (Martene and Durand, Ampliss. Coll. v. 801) records Harold’s defeat and death, and adds, “quamvis quidam contendant ipsum Haroldum inter occisos delituisse, nocturnâque fugâ lapsum post multas peregrinationes apud Cestriam eremiticam vitam duxisse, et usque ad ultima tempora Regis Henrici Secundi in sancto proposito durâsse.” The age of Harold in 1189 would be about 168 years.
Ralph Higden (lib. vi. p. 286, Gale) quotes William of Malmesbury’s account of the burial at Waltham, as also the alternative statements of Giraldus and Æthelred. To that of Giraldus he very properly, as a Chester man, adds a bit of local detail. The scene of Harold’s penance was “cella Sancti Jacobi, juxta ecclesiam Sancti Johannis.”
Bromton (961) quotes the accounts of William of Malmesbury and Giraldus, without naming either. He prefers William’s account, but he adds some details to the other story; “Cujus tumba in ecclesiâ Sancti Johannis Cestriæ, ad dorsum crucis in medio areæ crebrò ostenditur. Cum quo etiam, dum adhuc vixit, ut quidam volunt, Henricus Primus Rex Angliæ de Walliâ rediens, apud Cestriam colloquium habuit. Sed quia inde a multis dubitari solet, eâ facilitate contemnitur quâ dicitur.” The discourse with Henry the First would be either in 1112 or in 1121, in which latter year Harold would be about a hundred years old.
Knighton (2342) quotes William of Malmesbury, without naming him, and Giraldus by name, with Higden’s addition about the cell of Saint James. He adds; “De istâ opinione fiat qualiter poterit, hoc unum scio, quod tumulatio ejus cum imagine superpositâ in ecclesiâ Abbathiæ de Waltham videre adhuc volentibus ostenditur, ubi dicitur Haraldum humatum fuisse.”
But this Chester story is not the only one. According to another account, Harold escaped alive from the battle, but died soon after. We find this story in the Liber de Castro Ambasiæ (D’Achery, iii. 276); “Hæroldus vincitur, et vulneratur graviter, non multùm post mortuus est.” So too Harold’s great Scandinavian admirer, the biographer of Olaf Tryggwesson, whom I have already had twice to quote (see above, pp. 601, 613, and vol. ii. p. 542), gives the story of Harold’s escape in great detail (p. 263). On the night after the battle, a churl (“þorpkarl”) comes to rob the dead bodies; a man lying among the dead bodies rebukes him sharply for so shameful a deed. He goes home and tells his wife, who at once insists on going to the battle-field with a horse and cart. When she has got there, she asks whether there is any living man among the bodies who can speak to her. A voice answers that there is one who can, and one only. With much trouble she finds the speaker among the bodies; she and her husband put him on the cart and take him home. They wish to know who he is, but he never tells them; they infer however from his face and from his rich garb that he must be a man of the highest rank. The writer explains that this man was King Harold, that he had fallen through weariness and loss of blood, having received many wounds, though none of them were mortal. But the weight of the dead bodies that were heaped upon him hindered him from getting away. He is taken to the churl’s house, and there recovers. The next day the enemy come to seek for his body, and are greatly surprised not to find it. Harold, having recovered, determines, by the example, we are told, of Olaf Tryggwesson, to forsake the world, and to give himself to heavenly contemplation. He makes himself a dwelling-place under a rock, and abides there some while. On his death King William has his body taken to London and buried among the former Kings (“Vilhialmur Kongur let færa lik hans i Lunduner, oc grafa veglega hia odrum Kongum”).
In this last rather unlucky statement, the Scandinavian writer, like Guy of Amiens (see above, p. 542), overrates the antiquity of Westminster, which is doubtless meant by London, as a royal residence and burying-place.
Both these versions, or one which took in both, were known to the writer De Inventione, who indignantly rejects both (c. 21). “Quidquid fabulentur homines quod in rupe manserit Doroberniæ, et _nuper_ defunctus sepultus sit Cestriæ, pro certo quiescit Walthamiæ.” There are parts of the De Inventione which must have been written after 1177. Can this have been written so late? May not the first sketch of the work have been made earlier?
The other Waltham writer, the biographer of Harold, had the difficult task of forcing the legend of Harold’s escape into agreement with the fact that Harold’s tomb existed in Waltham minster, and with the local tradition of the finding of the body by Eadgyth. He is driven to the very awkward shift of saying that Eadgyth found, and that the Canons of Waltham solemnly buried, a wrong body (Chron. Angl. Norm. ii. 209–212). Eadgyth reaches the field; the Normans boast of Harold’s death; those who had saved him also spread abroad the same rumour for their own ends. “Inter hæc mulieris errorem non mirandum, quæ desecti, cruentati, jam denigrati, jam fœtentis corporis speciem minùs discernere valens, pro æstimatione publicâ truncatum cadaver, quum aliud non inveniret quod certiùs agnosceret Regis proprium, rapuit et secum attulit alienum.” The Canons of Waltham are equally undiscerning. “Quod [cadaver] a canonicis reverenter exceptum, indiscussâ rei veritate, honestè in ecclesiâ Sanctæ Crucis sepulturæ est traditum.”
This, I need not say, is neither history nor legend nor romance, but a patched up story of the poorest kind. Of the writer’s own story I have given a sketch in the text. The journey into Denmark is by no means ill conceived, when we remember how important the intervention of Swend Estrithson in English affairs soon became. The German journey also falls in with the fact that William’s name was dreaded on the Rhine as well as on the Thames, and that men feared that he would come as the invader of the continental, as well as of the insular Saxony (see Lambert, 1074). When his hopes of foreign aid are blighted, Harold first takes up his abode on the cliff at Dover (“in quâdam rupe secus Dovram,” p. 198), where he abides ten years. Then he goes into Shropshire on the borders of Wales (pp. 199, 215), where, as in a land where he was very well known, he covers his face with a cloth (200), and calls himself by no name but Christian. He suffers much from the “homines bestiales,” the “infidi ferinique homunculi” (202) of those parts, and at last, under the guidance of an angel (“ductu comitatûs angelico,” 204), he takes up his abode at Chester, in Saint James’s chapel by Saint John’s church (220). He is often asked whether he had been in the battle in which Harold fell, and he always answers that he was. Sometimes he is asked whether he is not Harold himself, and he then makes an evasive answer; “Quando apud Hastingas dimicatum est, nullus Haroldo me carior habebatur” (206). After living several years at Chester (220), he reveals himself, when at the point of death, to Andrew, a priest of Saint John’s (221), from whom and from one Moses (220), who had been Harold’s servant both in Shropshire and at Chester, the writer heard the story. As the book was written (185) after 1206, we here again find Harold living to a patriarchal age.
I have already spoken of the utter worthlessness of these stories as professed matters of history. As for their details, the notion of Harold taking up his abode on a rock at Dover or elsewhere seems to have been suggested by his burial on the rock at Hastings by William Malet. The way in which Harold is said to have escaped falls in exactly with the remarkable passage of Wace which I quoted in p. 508, and it was most likely suggested by the real escape of Esegar and Leofric, and no doubt of others also.
According to Harold’s Biographer (211), Gyrth too escaped as well as his brother. This tale was clearly known to Wace, who, it will be remembered (see above, p. 749), carefully avoids committing himself to Gyrth’s death. According to the legend, Gyrth was seen very publicly in the days of Henry the Second (“visus est tam ab ipso Rege quam a magnatibus terræ et populo”). He was then, as is not wonderful, very old (“erat jam tunc grandævus valdè”), but, as those who had seen him told the writer, very tall and handsome (“sicut eâ tempestate a multis accepimus qui eum viderant, venustus adspectu, facie decorus, proceritate corporis admodum longus”). Walter, the first Abbot of the new foundation at Waltham, with certain of his brethren, met him at the King’s court at Woodstock, and inquired most particularly whether they were right in believing that the bones of Harold lay at Waltham (“diligenter sciscitari studuit utrum reverà cineres germani sui in suo, ut credebatur, monasterio servarentur”). Gyrth answered in English that they might have the body of some churl, but not that of Harold (“Anglicè respondit, ‘Rusticum,’ ait, ‘quemlibet habere potestis; Haroldum non habetis’”). He even went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Cross of Waltham, and, being shown his brother’s tomb, he again distinctly affirmed that Harold was not there (“obliquè illud intuitus, ‘non,’ ait, ‘homo scit’—sic enim jurabat—‘non hic jacet Haroldus’”). This is told on the authority of Michael, Chamberlain of the Church of Waltham, who heard Gyrth say it. Here we find Gyrth, as well as Harold, living to an age which might justify the chronology of Ivanhoe.
Lastly, the savage way in which this writer attacks William of Malmesbury (207) is worth noticing. He remarks how the “facundissimus Meldunensis Willelmus” professes impartiality in his judgements (“promittit se medium inter obtrectantium necnon et commendantium partes incessurum”). But mark how this impartial writer treats Harold (208);
“Cæterum in aliis quæ de meritis Haroldi vel moribus, prout ani mus tulit aut fama suggessit, aureo nunc, nunc verò piceo commentatus est stilo, venaliùs fortè exorbitaverit a tramite veri, in ipsum verò christum Deum [Dei?] truculentiùs deliquit. Tres enim lanceas in ipsum violentus intorsit, quibus non tam illius personam quam ipsam contigit impeti veritatem. Dixit enim ictu sagittæ capite vulnerato oppetisse, dixit militem qui Regi mortuo femur inciderat Ducis censurâ victoris ab exercitu pulsum, rettulit a matre funus regium oblatâ pecuniâ a Triumphatore Willelmo postulatum, sed receptum absque pecuniâ, apud Waltham tumulatum. Sic in femur, sic in caput, sic in omne hominis corpus, lingua licentiùs debacchatur oratoris clanculò scriptitantis quam militis armata manus in propatulo dimicantis.”
Literary controversy was at least as bitter in the thirteenth century as it is in the nineteenth. But in contrast to the wicked monk of Malmesbury, the Biographer gives us the praises of another writer who left the question of Harold’s death undecided; “Temperantiùs scripsit hujus ipsius scriptoris contemporaneus, venerabilis admodum Abbas Edelredus.”
NOTE NN. p. 514.
EADGYTH SWANNESHALS.
Our direct notices of Harold’s mistress Eadgyth come from the two Waltham writers, who plainly describe her as a concubine, or at most as a Danish wife, though they evidently try to veil her position under a mist of words. In the De Inventione, c. 21, we read, “Placuit ... mulierem quam ante sumptum Anglorum regimen dilexerat, Editham cognomento Swanneshals, quod Gallicè sonat _collum cygni_, secum adducere, quæ Domini Regis quandoque cubicularia secretiora in eo signa noverat cæteris ampliùs, ad ulteriora intima secretorum admissa.” With the _cubicularia_ of this writer we may compare Sir John Maundevile, c. ix.; “And Abraham had another son Ysmael, that he gat upon Agar his _Chambrere_.” The Biographer of Harold (p. 210) brings in “quamdam sagacis animi feminam nomine Editham ... hæc enim præ cæteris femina commodiùs videbatur ad hoc destinanda, quæ inter millia mortuorum illius quem inquirebat eo quoque faciliùs decerneret, eo quod benevolentiùs tractaret exuvias, quo eum arctiùs amaverat et pleniùs noverat, utpote quam thalami ipsius secretis liberiùs interfuisse constaret.”
A mistress of Harold (“quædam concubina Heraldi”) is mentioned in Domesday, 2, as holding three houses at Canterbury T. R. E. See Ellis, i. 316; ii. 81.
An Eadgyth or Eadgifu—the two names are hopelessly confounded—of the Swan’s Neck, “Edgyve Swanneshals,” occurs in the Chronicle of John of Oxenedes, p. 292 (cf. Ellis, ii. 81). She is mentioned in the driest way, without reference to Harold or to anything else, in a list of benefactors to the Abbey of Saint Benet of Holm, to which she gave Thurgarton in Norfolk (cf. Domesday, ii. 216 _a_). Along with her are found the names of Earl Ralph and Ralph the Staller, who are carefully distinguished (see above, p. 753). The gifts of all these, and of many other persons, were confirmed by King Eadward in 1046.
John of Oxenedes wrote after 1292. His authority therefore for an historical fact would be nowhere; but when he is plainly copying an earlier list of benefactors without any special object, his witness is nearly equal to that of a contemporary.
I am certainly inclined to identify the swan-necked lady of the Waltham story with the swan-necked lady of the Saint Benet’s catalogue. And in default of evidence to the contrary, we may also identify her with Harold’s Canterbury mistress. Eadgyth was clearly a Norfolk woman by birth, but there is nothing wonderful in her having property within her lover’s later Earldom. But if she was a benefactress of Saint Benet’s in or before 1046, she was no longer young in 1066. That is to say, Harold’s connexion with her began during his East-Anglian government, between 1045 and 1053. This also makes it likely that she was the mother of all Harold’s children, except Wulf, who was doubtless the son of Ealdgyth (see p. 511). We hear nothing of any earlier wife of Harold, and the incidental way in which Harold’s sons are first mentioned some time after their father’s death, falls in with the notion of their illegitimacy.
Another question is whether Eadgyth Swanneshals is the same as “Eddeva pulcra,” “faira,” or “dives,” who appears in Domesday as holding lands in various parts of England, East-Anglia among them. Sharon Turner (Hist. Eng. i. 53) makes them the same, but the identity is disputed by Sir Henry Ellis (ii. 79) and Lappenberg (556). Sir H. Ellis further identifies Eddeva Pulcra with the Lady Ealdgyth. This last does not seem to me at all likely; as to the identification of Eddeva Pulcra with Eadgyth Swanneshals, there is absolutely no evidence either way. There is also another East-Anglian Eadgyth, “Edied quædam libera femina” (Domesday, ii. 286), who is clearly distinct from Eddeva Pulcra, but who may or may not be Eadgyth Swanneshals. And I cannot help noticing the will of an East-Anglian lady named Wulfgyth (Cod. Dipl. iv. 106), in which a female name, which is evidently corrupt, but which must be meant for Eadgyth or Ealdgyth, comes into dangerous neighbourhood with the name of Harold. Wulfgyth leaves land to two daughters and to various churches; then follows, “And ic ge-an Ælgyðe mínre déhter ðæs landes æt Certæcere and æt Essetesforde and ðæs wuda ðe ic legde ðǽrto; and ic ge-an Godwine Eorle and Haralde Eorle Friðtúnes.” I cannot identify these places. The date is 1046. Is it possible that Eadgyth Swanneshals was Wulfgyth’s daughter, and that her mother’s bequest formed her benefaction to Saint Benet’s?
As to the relation between Harold and Eadgyth, it looks very much as if it was a case of the Danish marriage. Eadgyth and Ealdgyth very likely answered to the two Ælfgifus in the life of Cnut, and to Sprota and Liutgardis in the life of William Longsword. Anyhow the connexion was “ante sumptum Anglorum regimen.”
There are one or two other passages which look as if Harold’s relations with women were known to be a weak point in his character, in opposition to the good example set in this respect by both William and Tostig. Thus William of Poitiers (see vol. ii. p. 540) calls him “luxuriâ fœdus;” Guy (261) calls him “perjurus Rex et adulter,” where however the union of the two charges makes it possible that “adulter” is meant to stigmatize the marriage contracted with Ealdgyth by one who was betrothed to the daughter of William. The French Biographer of Eadward, in one of his great revilings of Harold (4460), says that he
“Gentilz femmes enbastardist; Pur aver veut mariage.”
The former line may refer to Eadgyth, as the latter clearly implies a political marriage with Ealdgyth; but the passage seems to have been oddly misunderstood by Knighton (2339); “Nec aliquam uxorem ducere voluit, sed vi oppressit filias baronum et procerum et militum de regno, quod ipsi ægrè ferebant.” All this has most likely arisen out of our one Eadgyth, but it seems to point to her as a woman of position, possibly as “Eddeva pulcra et dives.”
NOTE OO. p. 531.
THE ÆTHELING EADGAR.
I do not know that there is any distinct evidence to fix the age of Eadgar. I have not come across any distinct statement either as to the date of his birth or as to the date of his parents’ marriage. His father died in 1057; so he must have been nine years old at least in 1066, and of course he may have been much older. We have seen several passages (see pp. 526, 527) where he is spoken of as a boy (“puer”) and as being too young to reign. On the other hand he was able (see Chron. Wig. in anno) to exercise a certain will of his own with regard to the marriage of his sister Margaret in 1067. He was alive, but old, at some time between 1106 and 1125, when William of Malmesbury wrote his third book. See Mr. Hardy’s note, iii. 251, and Ellis, i. 409. The former date is forty-nine, the latter sixty-eight, years after Eadgar’s coming to England. We have therefore no certain data at all; but, on the whole, it seems most likely that, though young, he was not a mere child, at the time of his election in October. It was probably not so much mere lack of years, as his incapacity, his foreign birth, his lack of the technical position of a King’s son, which shut him out in January, especially when put into competition with the overwhelming merits of Harold. In October he had no competitor better than Eadwine. Perhaps those who spoke of him as a mere child were deceived by the ambiguous description, “Eadgar _cild_,” which is given to him in the Chronicles, and by which he was probably known.
Hardyng (see above, p. 608) makes Harold invest Eadgar with an Earldom. Lappenberg (532; Thorpe, ii. 274) gives him the Earldom of Oxford. No authority is quoted, and the statement can hardly be reconciled with the known position of Gyrth (see vol. ii. p. 561). Indeed the evidence is against Eadgar’s holding any Earldom. All the undoubted Earls are scrupulously called Earls in the Chronicles; Eadgar is always either “cild” or “Æðeling.”
Our reckoning as to Eadgar’s age is further perplexed by the appearance of a person described as “Edgar Adeling” so late as 1158 and 1167. See Mag. Rot. Pip. Northumberland, in Hodgson’s History of Northumberland, part iii. vol. iii. pp. 3, 11. This entry gives us a choice of three difficulties, any one of which is somewhat alarming. Either the person so called is Eadgar himself, in which case, like Harold and Gyrth in the legend, he must have lived to the age of 110 at the very least. Or it is a son of Eadgar; but we hear nothing of any wife, mistress, or children of his; and a lawful son of Eadgar would, like Eadgar himself, have stood awkwardly in the way of Henry the Second’s claim to represent the Old-English royal house. Failing these two unlikely alternatives, we have one equally unlikely, that some person not of royal descent was spoken of as “Adeling.”
NOTE PP. p. 544.
THE SUBMISSION AT BERKHAMPSTEAD.
For once I venture to set aside the authority of the Chronicles. I do not think that Eadwine and Morkere could have been at Berkhampstead. Their presence there is asserted by the Worcester Chronicle and also by Florence, but it is hard to see how it can be reconciled with Florence’s own account of their movements just before (see p. 531). They are not mentioned by William of Poitiers, who makes them submit to William at Barking after his coronation (147, 148). The Archdeacon is capable of any disregard of chronology, but he is not likely to have cut the Berkhampstead submission into two or to have imagined a submission at Barking which did not take place. A submission of Eadwine and Morkere after the coronation falls in much better with the rest of the story than a submission before. And it is less violent to suppose that their names have got into the Chronicle in a wrong place—a process which the likeness of the names Barking and Berkhampstead would make specially easy—than to suppose that the story in William of Poitiers is an invention without a motive.
Had Stigand a share in the submission of Berkhampstead? William of Poitiers specially introduces him; indeed he is the only person whom he mentions by name (141); but he brings him to Wallingford; “Adveniens eodem [Wallingford] Stigandus, Pontifex Metropolitanus, manibus ei sese dedit, fidem sacramento confirmavit, abrogans Athelinum, quem leviter elegerat.” But the whole story is a model of geographical confusion; Berkhampstead is not mentioned; the request of the English that William will accept the Crown, the debate on the question, and the speech of Hamon of Thouars, are all placed “statim ut Lundonia conspectui patebat.” I have ventured to transfer all these events to Berkhampstead, where it is plain from Florence and the Worcester Chronicle that the chief act of submission took place. But the presence or absence of Stigand is a knotty point. He is not mentioned in the Chronicle, nor in the fuller list in Florence, which seems to be specially meant as a complete list of the Bishops present. On the other hand, he is the only person named by William of Poitiers, and it is certain that he must have submitted before the coronation. Is it possible that, when submission was unavoidable, he was the first to submit, and that he met William at Wallingford before the others met him at Berkhampstead? The two English writers leave Wallingford out altogether, but William must have crossed the Thames somewhere, and there seems no reason to reject William of Poitiers’ statement that he crossed it at Wallingford.
Sir Henry Ellis (ii. 267) quotes a story which is said to be in William of Poitiers, but which I cannot find there, how one Wigod of Wallingford received and entertained William at Wallingford, till Stigand and others came there to make their submission. Of this I can say nothing, but Wigod of Wallingford is a real man, occurring in Domesday (62, 150) and elsewhere. “Wigod Minster” signs a doubtful charter in Cod. Dipl. iv. 189, and “Wigodus Regis pincerna” signs the Waltham charter (iv. 159). In the writ (Cod. Dipl. iv. 215) addressed to Bishop Wulfsige and Earl Gyrth and the Thegns of Oxfordshire, dating therefore between 1058 and 1066, the King also greets “mínne léfne may _Mygod_ on Walingeforde,” and gives him instructions which show that he was high in the royal confidence. We should surely read “Wygod.” The kinsfolk of Eadward are endless. Do “mage” and “consanguineous” really mean no more than “well-beloved Cousin” when addressed by a modern Sovereign to a modern Earl?
END OF VOLUME THE THIRD.
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Footnote 1
The authorities for this Chapter and for the whole of this volume may be dealt with in a single summary. For the most part they are the same as those which we have been using all along; but they must now be looked at in a somewhat different way. Hitherto, except in the Chapters specially devoted to Norman affairs, our use of the Norman writers has been for the most part incidental. But, through the whole of the controversies of the year 1066, we must place English and Norman writers in a certain sense on a level. The writers of each nation—I speak of course mainly of contemporary writers—tell the tale from their own national points of view and in the way which is most favourable to their own national heroes. At no time must their statements be more carefully compared with one another, as no full or accurate narrative could be drawn from either side by itself. The English writers maintain a sort of sullen silence on those points on which the Normans are naturally the most full. The Normans, on the other hand, through ignorance, through prejudice, sometimes through direct disregard to truth, grossly misrepresent all English affairs.
At this stage we lose the Biographer of Eadward, who ends his story in a most significant way at Eadward’s death, and who has nothing beyond one or two dark allusions to anything later. On the Norman side we gain one most valuable source of help in the Tapestry of Bayeux, whose origin and importance I shall discuss in a separate note. (See Appendix A.) The Saga of Harold Hardrada in Snorro must also be carefully studied. Wild as it is in many parts, it is our most detailed account, and our only Scandinavian account, of the campaign of Stamfordbridge, and it also shows us the way in which English and Norman affairs were looked on in Northern Europe.
Later writers, down to as late a time as any one pleases, are, at this time, worthy of more than usual attention. Though for the most part of very little value in themselves, they tell us, what it is most important to learn, the way in which different ages looked at the greatest events in English history.
Footnote 2
See vol. ii. pp. 424, 634.
Footnote 3
Æthel. Riev. X Scriptt. 399. “Peractis itaque omnibus pro tantâ sollennitate, quasi diceret Rex ‘Consummatum est,’ inclinat in lectulo caput, et exhinc cœpit gravi dolore fatigari.”
Footnote 4
Ib. “Tunc mœror et luctus omnium, una vox plangentium.” This we can well believe; but the hagiographer is plainly writing with the help of his own fuller knowledge, when he goes on to say; “Præsentiebant plures ejus in morte desolationem patriæ, plebis exterminium, totius Anglicæ nobilitatis excidium, finem libertatis, honoris ruinam.” The moment was an anxious one, but no one who had not Eadward’s own gift of prophecy could foresee all this.
Footnote 5
Vita Eadw. 430. “Biduo vel ampliùs adeò eum languor fatigaverat, ut vix quum loqueretur quid diceret intelligi posset.” These details should be compared throughout with the account in Æthelred, who developes and improves upon every touch.
Footnote 6
The Biographer (p. 431) describes those present as “Regina terræ assidens ejusque pedes super gremium suum fovens, ejusque germanus Dux Haroldus, et Rodbertus regalis palatii stabilitor et ejusdem Regis propinquus (?), Stigandus quoque Archiepiscopus.” Æthelred (400) gives the same list, but stops to abuse Stigand. The four will be seen in the Tapestry (pl. vii. Bruce, p. 74) as I have described them.
Footnote 7
In this account of Eadward’s death-bed I follow the contemporary Life, which is closely followed by William of Malmesbury, ii. 226. Æthelred, or Osbert whom he copied, evidently had the Life before him, but he thought it his duty to expand every speech and incident. The reader must form what judgement he pleases as to the prediction put into Eadward’s mouth. Perhaps most modern readers will be inclined to be of the same opinion as Stigand. But I did not think myself justified in wholly leaving out what I find in a contemporary writer, who affirms that he had his information from eye-witnesses (“sicut testantur hi qui aderant præsentes,” Vita Eadw. p. 430), that is, very probably from Eadgyth herself. In fact the contemptuous incredulity attributed to Stigand is of itself a strong argument that something professing to be a prophecy was actually uttered by Eadward on his death-bed. Of course I do not pledge myself to the historical accuracy of the exact words. Eadward would speak English, or more probably French, and his words would gain a good deal in the course of their translation into rhetorical Latin.
Footnote 8
Vita Eadw. 431. “Cum paucis aliis quos idem beatus Rex a somno excitatus advocari jusserat.”
Footnote 9
Ib. 430. “Tantâ usus est loquendi copiâ ut cuivis sanissimo nihil opus esset suprà.”
Footnote 10
The Biographer records this last famous prediction or similitude without any attempt at an explanation. When he wrote, in the early years of William, a Prometheus after the fact might well put into Eadward’s mouth a prophecy of the Conquest of England and of the general misfortunes of the country. But he could not put into his mouth a prophecy in honour of Henry the Second. Either then the passage is a later interpolation, of which the Editor gives no hint, or else Eadward really uttered some allegory, quoted some proverb, or, as Stigand thought, simply talked nonsense, on which people began to put a meaning forty years later. The orthodox explanation is that the tree removed from the root for the space of three furlongs (the words are “trium _jugerum_ spatio,” but one can hardly make _acres_ a measure of length) means the Crown transferred to usurpers during three reigns, those of Harold and the two Williams (the descent of William Rufus from Ælfred is forgotten, see vol. ii. p. 304). The tree returns to the root when Henry the First marries Eadgyth or Matilda the daughter of Margaret; it bears leaves at the birth of her children. William of Malmesbury (v. 419) witnesses that the birth of the Ætheling William (c. 1101) was looked on as the fulfilment of the prophecy, which shows that it had already attracted attention, most likely at the marriage of William’s parents. The death of the Ætheling in 1119 cut off all such hopes, but at the same time it opened the way for a more elaborate fulfilment in the persons of his sister and her son. The tree now brings forth leaves at the birth of the Empress Matilda and fruit at the birth of Henry the Second. See Æthelred 401, and the French Life, 3805 et seqq. The writer seems in v. 3846 to confound Henry the Second and Henry the Third.
Footnote 11
Vita Eadw. 431. “Cunctisque stupentibus et terrore agente tacentibus, ipse Archiepiscopus, qui debuerat vel primus pavere vel verbum consilii dare, infatuato corde _submurmurat in aurem Ducis_ senio confectum et morbo quid diceret nescire.” He had just before said that Harold, Robert, and Eadgyth were all frightened—“terrentur nimium.” Æthelred (400) leaves out Harold’s fears, and also leaves out the characteristic and trustworthy little touch of the Archbishop whispering in the Earl’s ear, which, as they stood (see the Tapestry) on different sides of the bed, involved leaning over the dying man. In his account the details of the contemporary writer evaporate in this fashion; “Is [Stigandus] ad vocem narrantis obduruit, nec terretur oraculo, nec fidem habuit prophetanti, sed potius Regem confectum senio delirare submurmurans, ridere maluit quam lugere.”
Footnote 12
The meaning of the Biographer (431–432) is perfectly plain; “Cognoscebant enim per sacri ordinis personas Christiani cultûs religionem maximè violatam, hocque frequentiùs declamâsse [declarâsse?] tum per legatos et epistolas suas Romanum Papam, tum in frequentibus monitis ipsum Regem et Reginam; sed divitiis et mundanâ gloriâ irrecuperabiliter quidam diabolo allecti, vitæ adeò neglexerant disciplinam ut non horrerent jam tunc imminentem incidere in Dei iram.” That is, the Pope, the King, and the Lady had before this time rebuked the English, but they were stiff-necked and would not hearken; hence the divine threatenings. Æthelred (400) clearly means the same; “Recordantur hæc ipsa summo sæpiùs narrata Pontifici, ipsumque persæpe, tum per legatos, tum per epistolas, eorum vesaniam increpâsse, Regemque ac Reginam his malis curandis diligentiam adhibuisse, sed profecisse nihil.” But his first clause was liable to be misunderstood, and the writer of the French Life did misunderstand it. He mistakes the letters written by the Pope for letters written to the Pope to announce Eadward’s vision;
“Mais li prudem li plus sené Unt ses dits mut meuz noté; E curaument unt entendu L’ordres des motz, e retenu; En escrit unt tuz les motz mis, E a l’Apostoille tramis, Par epistre, e par legat.”
Vv. 3787 et seqq.
Footnote 13
Vita Eadw. 430. “Funeribus exsequiis attitulat se commendatione et precibus summorum Dei fidelium.” As might be expected, he recurs more than once to the subject. See pp. 433, 434.
Footnote 14
See vol. ii. p. 531.
Footnote 15
I think, comparing the evidently cautious expression of the Biographer with the outspoken words of the Chronicles and Florence, that I am justified in putting this meaning on the words (433), “Porrectâ manu [the very gesture is shown in the Tapestry] ad prædictum nutricium suum fratrem Haroldum, ‘Hanc,’ inquit, ‘_cum omni regno_ tutandam commendo.’” See Appendix B.
Footnote 16
See Appendix I.
Footnote 17
Vita Eadw. 433. “Hanc ... tutandam commendo, ut pro Dominâ et sorore, ut est, fideli serves et honores obsequio, ut, quo advixerit, a me adepto non privetur honore debito.” _Fideli_ must agree with _obsequio_, not with _sorore_.
Footnote 18
Ib. “Commendo pariter etiam eos qui nativam terram suam reliquerunt caussâ amoris mei, mihique hactenus fideliter sunt obsequuti.”
Footnote 19
Ib. “Ut, susceptâ ab eis, si ita volunt, fidelitate, eos tuearis et retineas, aut tuâ defensione conductos, cum omnibus quæ sub me adquisierunt, cum salute ad propria transfretari facias.”
Footnote 20
Vita Eadw. 434. “Fossa sepulcri mei in monasterio paretur, in eo loco quo vobis assignabitur.”
Footnote 21
Ib. “Mortem meam quæso ne celetis [the plural is used in these general directions, while the political requests are addressed in the singular to Harold], sed celeriùs circumquaque annuncietis, ut quique fideles pro me peccatore deprecentur clementiam Dei Omnipotentis.” Compare the excitement caused by the suspicion that the death of Edward the Sixth was concealed. Froude, Hist. Eng. v. 514.
Footnote 22
Ib. “Ne timeas; non moriar modo, sed bene convalescam propitiante Deo.”
Footnote 23
Ib. “Sumpto a cœlesti mensâ vitæ viatico.” There is no mention whether the Communion was in one kind only. Communion in both kinds was certainly usual at this time (see Will. Pict. 113, 131), but it is not likely in the case of a dying man.
Footnote 24
Vita Eadw. 434. “Erat tunc videre in defuncto corpore gloriam migrantis ad Deum animæ, quum scilicet caro faciei ut rosa ruberet, subjecta barba ut lilium canderet, manus suo ordine directæ albescerent, totumque corpus non morti sed fausto sopori traditum signarent.”
Footnote 25
See vol. ii. p. 70.
Footnote 26
See vol. ii. p. 382.
Footnote 27
Chronn. Ab. Wig. 1065.
Footnote 28
Ib.
“Þah he langa ǽr, Landes bereafod, Wunoda wreclastum Wide geond eorðan, Seoðþan Knut ofercom Cynn Æðelredes, And Deona weoldon Deore rice Englalandes xxviii. Wintra gerimes Weolan brytnodon.”
Footnote 29
Ib.
“Wæs á bliðe mod, Bealeleas King.”
See vol. ii. p. 531.
Footnote 30
Chronn. Ab. Wig. 1066.
“Weold wel geðungæn Walum and Scottum, And Bryttum eac, Byre Æðelredes. Englum and Sæxum Oret mægcum. Swa ymbclyppaþ Cealda brymmas, Þæt eall Eadwardæ Æþelum Kinge Hyrdan holdelice Hagestalde menn.”
The Welsh, who are thus coupled with Scots, and distinguished from the Britons, can mean only the Welsh of Strathclyde.
Footnote 31
See Appendix B. and vol. ii. p. 537.
Footnote 32
“Le Roi est mort; vive le Roi”—the exact opposite to old Teutonic feelings.
Footnote 33
Hen. Hunt. M. H. B. 761 D. “Quidam Anglorum Eadgar Atheling promovere volebant in Regem.” Will. Malms. iii. 238. “Anglia dubio favore nutabat, cui se rectori committeret incerta, an Haroldo an Willelmo an Edgaro ... Angli diversis votis ferebantur, _quamvis palam cuncti bona Haroldo imprecarentur_.” This is an important admission.
Footnote 34
Would the course of the election have been in any way different, if the Gemót had been held in Oxford?
Footnote 35
Fl. Wig. 1066. “A totius Angliæ primatibus ad regale culmen electus.” See Appendix C.
Footnote 36
See the Waltham writer’s character of Harold, vol. ii. p. 540.
Footnote 37
See vol. ii. p. 334.
Footnote 38
Tapestry, pl. 7. Bruce, p. 80. “Hic dederunt Haroldo Coronam Regis.” It is worth remark that the crown which is here represented as offered to Harold is of a different and simpler form from that with which Harold is represented as being crowned the next day. This last is the same as that which Eadward is always drawn as wearing, even when supported in the arms of Robert on his death-bed. This last representation is of course merely symbolical; it is simply as much as to say, “This is the King.” This latter crown is doubtless the crown used at the actual coronation, and also on the great days when the King “wore his Crown” publicly. On its form cf. vol. ii. p. 334. But this simpler crown, borne, it would seem, immediately from the chamber of the dead King, suggests that such a crown was commonly kept at hand near the King’s person. Compare the well-known story of Henry the Fifth trying on the crown which was kept by his father’s bed-side (Monstrelet, i. 163 _b_), a story which may pass as authority for the custom, whether true or not as to the fact. This crown, as easier of access, would be the one symbolically offered to the King-elect, while the crown of greater ceremony would of course be used in the great rite of the morrow.
Footnote 39
The Danish Kings, though not of royal English blood, were of royal blood in their own land. With the exception of them, the Crown of Wessex, and of England as the developement and continuation of Wessex, had never gone out of the West-Saxon royal house. I cannot answer for all the momentary Kings in Northumberland or in the last days of Mercia.
Footnote 40
See below, Chapter xii. § 4, and Appendix R.
Footnote 41
See vol. ii. p. 190.
Footnote 42
“Die quâ Edwardus Rex vivus fuit et mortuus” is a common form in Domesday. So in Cod. Dipl. iv. 233; “To þám timan ðe Eádward cing was cucu and deád.”
Footnote 43
This is well put by Dr. Bruce, p. 79.
Footnote 44
The Tapestry (pl. 7) significantly puts together, in one compartment, one over the other, the nomination of Harold by Eadward (“Hic Eadwardus Rex in lecto alloquit fideles”) and the preparation of Eadward’s body for burial (“Hic defunctus est”). Now the churchman in attendance on the death-bed must surely be the same as the churchman who is helping at the preparation for burial. Now the former can only be Stigand, and the latter is still more distinctly marked with the archiepiscopal pallium, the unlucky gift of Benedict.
Footnote 45
Bayeux Tapestry, pl. 7. Bruce, p. 74.
Footnote 46
In the coronation-offices of different ages, mention is often made of the weariness of the sovereign, caused, according to Mr. Maskell, by his obligation to receive the Communion fasting. In this case therefore, when the burial had to take place before the coronation, it would be specially necessary to begin the ceremony early in the day.
Footnote 47
Vita Eadw. 434. “Coram altare beati Petri Apostoli conditur corpus.” The Chronicles simply mention the burial in the minster; “He forðferde on Twelftan æfen, and hyne man bebyrigde on Twelftan dæig on þam ylcan mynstre” (Ab. Wig. 1065)—“innan þære niwa halgodre circean on Westmynstre” (Petrib. 1066).
Footnote 48
The general sorrow has quite witness enough in the Life, 434, 435. Æthelred (402) uses stronger expressions, but which still perhaps do not go beyond the facts of the case; “Dici non potest quantus mox omnes timor invaserit, occupaverit mœror, quomodo totam quoque insulam tenebrosus quidam horror impleverit.”
Footnote 49
See the Poem in the Chronicles, above, p. 18.
Footnote 50
Vita Eadw. 434. “Totum quoque a primo die tricesimum celebratione missarum, decantatione prosequuntur psalmorum, expensis pro redemptione ipsius animæ multis auri libris in sublevatione diversi ordinis pauperum.”
Footnote 51
Ib. 435. “Ibi illuminantur cæci, in gressum solidantur claudi, infirmi curantur, mœrentes consolatione Dei reparantur.”
Footnote 52
At this point we lose the contemporary Life of Eadward. He speaks of no event later than the funeral, except in an allusion to the Battle of Stamfordbridge (426);
“Quis canet æquoreo vastum fervore tumentem Humbram congressum _Regibus æquivocis_?”
He declines entering on the subject for fear of wounding the feelings of Eadgyth. Except from this one place, and from the dying recommendation of Eadward, which last he makes as dark as possible (see Appendix B), we should never learn from him that Harold ever reigned at all. William is never mentioned or alluded to. It is clear that, writing as he did for Eadgyth, under William, he could not write as he would, and, courtier as he was, he was not willing to write in the way that might have been most acceptable.
Footnote 53
“Gillebertus cognomento Crispyn,” says Æthelred (408), who calls this examination “prima translatio.” His appointment by Lanfranc is mentioned in the Tract on the Crispin Family, Lanfranc, ed. Giles, i. 343.
Footnote 54
Æthel. u.s. “Non tamen conatum hunc meum præsumptioni deputes sed devotioni, quum relliquiarum ejus vel modicam portionem, si mihi copia præstaretur, Crœsi opibus prætulissem.”
Footnote 55
See Hardy’s Catalogue of English History, vol. i. part 2. p. 642. Several letters on the subject will be found among the letters of Osbert published (along with those of Herbert Lozinga) by Colonel Anstruther (Brussels 1846), numbered 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 in the series. Osbert writes on behalf of the canonization to the Pope’s Legate, Alberic Bishop of Ostia, and to Henry, Bishop of Winchester, whose somewhat remote kindred to the saint is enlarged on. Bishop Henry, the Chapter (Conventus) of Saint Paul’s, and lastly King Stephen, write letters which Osbert carries to the Pope. Lastly comes Innocent’s answer to the Convent of Westminster, asking for further proof of Eadward’s miracles, &c. There is nothing of special interest in the whole series.
Footnote 56
See the opening of Æthelred’s Life of Eadward (370. Cf. Geneal. Regg. 350); he calls Henry “lapidem angularem Anglici generis et Normannici.”
Footnote 57
See Dart, Westmonasterium, p. 53. He quotes from a seemingly unpublished manuscript.
Footnote 58
Edward the First was baptized on the day of the Translation of his earlier namesake the “Martyr.” See Matt. Paris, 488. But it is distinctly said that his name was given him in honour of the Confessor. Flores Hist. 1239; “Est Eadwardus vocitatus. Qui denominationem accepit a glorioso Rege et Confessore Eadwardo, cujus corpus gloriosum in basilicâ S. Petri Westmonasterii requiescit.” So N. Trivet, in anno (p. 225 ed. Hog); “In honorem gloriosissimi Confessoris et Regis Edwardi Edwardum vocavit.” But Matthew Paris (u.s.) seems, oddly enough, to make him be called Ed_ward_ after the contemporary Archbishop Saint Ed_mund_; “Archiepiscopus Ædmundus Cantuariensis ipsum confirmavit, et, Rege sic volente, aptatum est ei nomen, scilicet Ædwardus.” The important point is the re-appearance, from any cause, of the royal English name.
Footnote 59
Matt. Paris, 661. “Eodem anno [1245] Dominus Rex, devotione quam habuit adversus sanctum Ædwardum submonente, ecclesiam Sancti Petri Westmonasteriensem jussit ampliari. Et, dirutis antiquis cum turri muris partis orientalis, præcepit novos, videlicet decentiores ... construi.”
Footnote 60
T. Wikes, 1269 (Gale, ii. 89). “Ecclesiam ... Rex opere sumptuosissimo fabricatam, _amotâ prorsus veteri_ [this is not true, see M. Paris, u.s.] _quæ nullius omnino valoris exstiterat_, de propriis fisci regalis exitibus [Simon and the Parliament had something to say on that head], a fundamentis construxit, quæ quidem sumptibus pariter et decore sic cæteris per orbem ecclesiis præponi decernitur, ut videatur comparem non habere.”
Footnote 61
Marmion, ii. 10.
Footnote 62
Matt. Paris, 2. “Ecclesia, quam ... post multi ecclesias construentes, exemplum adepti, opus illud expensis æmulabantur sumptuosis.” See vol. ii. p. 508 for the passage of William of Malmesbury on which this is founded.
Footnote 63
I know of no other English church of the thirteenth century which exhibits the French arrangement of the apse and surrounding chapels. It may be seen at an earlier date at Norwich and in the ground-plan of the destroyed monastic church at Leominster, and at a later date at Tewkesbury, the example most like Westminster, though on a much smaller scale.
Footnote 64
John’s submission to Rome was more ignominious in point of form than anything done by Eadward or Henry, but it was not in the same way the act of his own free will.
Footnote 65
T. Wikes, p. 88. Henry moved the body “non patiens ulteriùs venerabiles relliquias beatissimi Regis Edwardi Confessoris, quem præ cæteris sanctis speciali quâdam veneratione dilexit, locello quodam humili recubare.” The ceremony was done “convocatis universis Angliæ prælatis et magnatibus, necnon cunctarum regni sui civitatum pariter et burgorum potentioribus.” The Witan, in short, buried him and the Witan translated him. Then follows the list of the Kings, Princes, and nobles who bore the body.
Footnote 66
T. Wikes, p. 89. “Quotquot manus apponere poterant ad onus tam nobile supportandum in adjutorium evocatis.”
Footnote 67
See vol. i. pp. 58, 63.
Footnote 68
See vol. i. pp. 60, 611.
Footnote 69
See vol. i. p. 440.
Footnote 70
Fl. Wig. 1074.
Footnote 71
Ord. Vit. 843 B. “Mathildis Regina, quæ in baptismate Edit dicta fuit, Kal. Maii [1118] obiit, et in basilicâ sancti Petri Westmonasterio tumulata quiescit.”
Footnote 72
Charter of Henry, printed in Stanley’s Memorials, p. 504. “Ob reverentiam gloriosissimi Regis Eadwardi, cujus corpus in monasterio Westmonasterii requiescit, nostri corporis sepulturam ... eligimus in eodem.”
Footnote 73
One would have inferred from the account in Dart, Westmonasterium (i. 56), that the body of Eadward was never disturbed. But the testimony of Henry Machyn seems explicit; “The xx day of Marche [1556–7] was taken up at Westmynster agayn with a hondered lyghtes King Edward the confessor ... it was a godly shyte to have seen yt how reverently he was cared [carried] from the plasse that he was taken up wher he was led [laid] when that the abbay was spowlyd and robbed” (p. 130, Camd. Soc. ed.). The shrine was set up on the 5th of January 1555. Chronicle of Grey Friars, p. 94, Camd. Soc. ed., where the day is called Saint Edward’s day. Stanley, Memorials of Westminster, p. 412.
Footnote 74
I discuss the circumstances of Harold’s coronation at length in Appendix D. But all that is needed is expressed in the decisive words of Florence, “Ab Aldredo Archiepiscopo Eboracensi honorificè consecratus,” and in the picture in the Tapestry, pl. 7, erring only in making Stigand the consecrator.
Footnote 75
See Maskell, p. xv. Some canonists seem even to have held, with a special reference to the Emperor John Tzimiskês, that the unction, like baptism, washed out all earlier sin.
Footnote 76
See vol. ii. p. 437.
Footnote 77
See Appendix E.
Footnote 78
Maskell, 3, 5. “Chorus decantet antiphonam ‘Firmetur manus tua et exaltetur dextera tua; justitia et judicium præparatio sedis tuæ, misericordia et veritas præcedent faciem tuam.’”
Footnote 79
Ib. 5. “Perveniens Rex ad ecclesiam, prosternat se coram altare, et hymnizetur, ‘Te Deum laudamus, Te Dominum confitemur.’ Quo fini tenùs hymnizato, Rex erigatur de solo.”
Footnote 80
See Appendix E.
Footnote 81
See the Prayer, Maskell, p. 6, note.
Footnote 82
See Appendix E.
Footnote 83
“Totius regni _Anglo-Saxonum_ ecclesiam cum plebibus sibi annexis.” (Selden, 116.) This is one of the rare cases in which this word is used; but it will be easily seen how completely its use agrees with the rule given in vol. i. p. 608. “Anglo-Saxonum” is simply an abbreviation of the form “Anglorum vel [= et] Saxonum” used before and after.
Footnote 84
Marmion, ii. 28.
Footnote 85
On the unction, whether on the head only, see Appendix E.
Footnote 86
Selden, 116. “Hic unguatur oleo, et hæc cantetur antiphona, ‘Unxerunt Salomonem Sadoch sacerdos et Nathan propheta Regem in Gion, et accedentes dixerunt, Vivat Rex in æternum.’”
Footnote 87
Selden, 117. “Sacratissima unctio super caput ejus defluat, atque ad interiora descendat, et cordis illius intima penetret.”
Footnote 88
On the royal vestments, see Taylor, 79 et seqq.
Footnote 89
Maskell, p. 27. “In quo per virtutem Sancti Spiritûs resistere et ejicere omnes inimicos tuos valeas, et cunctos sanctæ Dei Ecclesiæ adversarios, regnumque tibi commissum tutari, atque protegere castra Dei.”
Footnote 90
On the Crown and the other regalia used, including the orb, see Appendix E.
Footnote 91
Maskell, pp. 33, 34.
Footnote 92
Ib. 35. “Sanctæ Mariæ ac beati Petri Apostolorum Principis, Sanctique Gregorii Anglorum Apostoli atque omnium sanctorum intercedentibus meritis.”
Footnote 93
See Taylor, p. 70, and Appendix E.
Footnote 94
See the Tapestry, pl. 7.
Footnote 95
Chronn. Ab. Wig. 1065. “And her wærð Harold eorl eac to cynge gehalgod, and he lytle stilnesse þæron gehad, þa hwile þe he rices weold.”
Footnote 96
See the form, Selden, 117. Maskell, 51. Taylor, 307 et seqq. and 403.
Footnote 97
See Appendix F.
Footnote 98
Maskell, p. 39. Taylor, 404.
Footnote 99
See vol. i. p. 470; ii. p. 355.
Footnote 100
On these charges, see Appendix G.
Footnote 101
Roman de Rou, 11076;
“Normanz ki el païz maneient Ki fames et enfanz aveient, Ke Ewart i aveit menéz, Et granz chastels è fieux dunez, Fist Heraut del païz chacier, N’en i volt un soul lessier.”
But he does not speak of their expulsion till after William had challenged the Crown and defied Harold.
Footnote 102
See above, p. 15.
Footnote 103
See vol. ii. p. 358.
Footnote 104
We shall find him in Sussex at the moment of the landing at Pevensey. See below, Chapter xv. Robert the son of Wymarc must be distinguished from another Robert who was also high in Eadward’s favour, namely Robert of Rhuddlan, sister’s son to Hugh of Grantmesnil (Ord. Vit. 669 C); “Hic Eduardi Regis armiger fuit [a sinecure office, one would think], et ab illo cingulum militiæ accepit.”
Footnote 105
See vol. ii. p. 347.
Footnote 106
See vol. ii. p. 359. Reginbald signs many charters.
Footnote 107
There were several Stallers at a time. Besides Robert and Ralph, we find under Eadward, Esegar (see vol. ii. p. 63, and Hist. Elien. ii. 39, where he seems to be confounded with Earl Ælfgar), Lyfing (Cod. Dipl. iv. 291; vi. 198), Eadgar (iv. 148), Ælfstan (Thorpe, Dipl. Ang. 356), Harold (Domesday, 337), and Bondig (Cod. Dipl. iv. 172, 281; Domesday, 148 _b_, 218 _b_). The deposition or banishment of Ralph is more likely than that of any other favourite of Eadward. On the other hand his foreign birth is less certain.
Footnote 108
See below, Chapp. xiv. xv.
Footnote 109
Fl. Wig. 1066. See Appendix G.
Footnote 110
Florence mentions his orders as given “Ducibus, Satrapis, Vicecomitibus, et suis in commune Ministris.” What were the exact functions of the “Satraps,” put thus in a marked way between Earls and Sheriffs?
Footnote 111
See vol. i. pp. 244, 463; vol. ii. pp. 336, 481, 499.
Footnote 112
See vol. ii. pp. 34, 40.
Footnote 113
On the coinage of Harold, see Appendix H.
Footnote 114
Plat. Phæd. c. xxxviii. ἀλλὰ πρὸς δύο λέγεται οὐδ’ ὁ Ἡρακλῆς οἷός τε εἶναι.
Footnote 115
De Inv. c. 20. “Rex ... quod prius dilexerat non potuit odisse. Verumtamen ecclesiam Walthamensem, amplori quam priùs amplexatus dilectione, multâ donariorum venustate cœpit eam ampliare, ita ut postea nullatenus sine multorum munerum oblatione vellet etiam illam sedem visitare.”
Footnote 116
Cod. Dipl. iv. 305, perhaps the only surviving writ of Harold’s reign. It is addressed to Æthelnoth, Abbot of Glastonbury (see vol. ii. p. 361) and the Sheriff Tovid or Tofig. See vol. i. p. 590.
Footnote 117
See vol. ii. p. 639.
Footnote 118
See vol. ii. p. 467.
Footnote 119
See vol. ii. p. 350.
Footnote 120
See vol. ii. p. 42.
Footnote 121
See vol. ii. p. 438. Cf. p. 462.
Footnote 122
Hist. Eves. 88. “Defuncto nempe Rege isto [Æduuardo] et Haraldo regnum accipiente, quidquid volebat ab eo impetravit [Ageluuius].”
Footnote 123
Harold was “a _totius Angliæ_ Primatibus ad regale culmen electus.” Fl. Wig. 166.
Footnote 124
See Hist. Fed. Gov. pp. 211, 270.
Footnote 125
I except of course the irregular Gemót of Northampton in 1065. See vol. ii. pp. 491, 492.
Footnote 126
See Appendix H.
Footnote 127
Will. Malms. Vit. S. Wlst., ap. Ang. Sacr. ii. 253.
Footnote 128
See vol. ii. p. 495.
Footnote 129
Domesday, 321.
Footnote 130
See vol. i. p. 499.
Footnote 131
See vol. ii. p. 484. Eadward, born at Islip, is said (Hist. Eli. ii. 33) to have been presented by his parents on the altar at Ely; I know not whether he ever repeated the visit.
Footnote 132
Vit. Wlst. 254. “Illi populi ferro indomabiles, semper quiddam magnum à proavis spirantes.”
Footnote 133
The matter could only have been decided in a Gemót, and Harold’s presence at York is implied in the Chronicles.
Footnote 134
See vol. i. p. 67.
Footnote 135
On the possibility that Harold’s marriage with Ealdgyth took place at this point, see Appendix F.
Footnote 136
Vit. Wlst. 254. “Multa et illo itinere et aliàs crebrò præscita et prænuntiata sunt. Denique Haraldo palàm testificatus est, quanto detrimento et sibi et Angliæ foret, nisi nequitias morum correctum ire cogitaret. Vivebatur enim tunc penè ubique in Angliâ perditis moribus, et pro pacis affluentiâ deliciarum fervebat luxus.”
Footnote 137
Chronn. Ab. Wig. 1066. “On þisum geare com Harold kyng of Eoforwic to Westmynstre, to þam Eastran, þe wæron æfter þam middanwintran þe se kyng forðferde.”
Footnote 138
See vol. ii. p. 62.
Footnote 139
See Appendix K.
Footnote 140
See vol. ii. p. 42.
Footnote 141
Hist. Ab. i. 482. Cf. the writs in Cod. Dipl. iv. 200, 228. On the affairs of Ely, see Appendix L.
Footnote 142
See Hist. Ab. 482 et seqq. There is something singular in the way in which the local writer couples the advancement of the new Abbot with that of Harold—his own local Earl. “Tunc duo subrogati sunt, Haroldus comes scilicet in Regem Anglorum; et Ealdredus, hactenus exteriorum præposituram Abbendoniæ agens, inibi in abbatem monachorum.” He had (p. 486) two names (binomius erat) Ealdred and “Brichwinus.”
Footnote 143
See vol. ii. p. 454.
Footnote 144
Hist. Elien. ii. 41. See Appendix L.
Footnote 145
Ib. 40. “Citiùs [before the death of Guthmund] Normannis regnum obtinentibus, miles illorum quidam Hugo de Mumford easdem terras invasit, et hactenus ecclesiæ detenuit.” I cannot however identify the lands in Domesday.
Footnote 146
I know of no authority for the date of William’s first message, except the assertion in Bromton (958) that it was on the tenth day after the death of Eadward. I cannot look on this as enough. I shall therefore treat of the message in connexion with those events to which it belongs in order of subject, if not of time.
Footnote 147
Annales Benevent. ap. Pertz, iii. 180. “Sexto decimo Kalendas Maii apparuit stella comet_i_s [the Greek κομητής]. Tertio die stante mense Februarii factæ sunt tenebræ horâ nonâ et permanserunt horæ tres; postea subsequuta est pluvia rapida nimium.... Et Nortmanni bella crudelissima fecerunt cum Britannis in terrâ Anglorum et Saxonum.”
Footnote 148
Chronn. Ab. Wig. 1066. “Þa wearð geond eall Englaland swylc tacen on heofenum gesewen swylce nan man ǽr ne geseh.”
Footnote 149
Flor. Wig. “Stella cometes non solùm in Angliâ, sed etiam, ut fertur, per totum mundum visa, per vii. dies splendore nimio fulgebat.”
Footnote 150
Chronn. u. s. “Sume menn cwædon þæt hyt cométa steorra wære, þone sume menn hatað þone fexedon steorran. And he æteowde ærest on þone æfen Letania Major, þæt ys viii. Kal. Mai.” [Monday, April 24.]
Footnote 151
See Appendix M.
Footnote 152
Ann. S. Germani, Pertz, iv. 4. “A vespere usque ad gallicinium.”
Footnote 153
Tapestry, pl. 7. “Isti mirant stellam.” See Appendix M.
Footnote 154
Will. Malms. ii. 225. Alberic of Trois-Fontaines, 1066. Æthelmær, it seems, was a man of mechanical skill, who in his youth had attempted to make himself wings like Daidalos, but who had been hardly more successful than Ikaros, though from another cause. “Ipse ferebat caussam ruinæ suæ quod caudam in posteriori parte oblitus fuerat adaptare.” He remained lame for life.
Footnote 155
Will. Malms. ii. 225. “Venisti, inquit, venisti, multis matribus lugende; dudum est quod te vidi; sed nunc multò terribiliorem intueor patriæ hujus excidiùm minitantem.”
Footnote 156
Chronn. Wig. Petrib. Cant. 975.
Footnote 157
See vol. i. pp. 296–319.
Footnote 158
Alb. Trium Font. 51. “Anno 1017. Cometes solito mirabilior in modum trabis maximæ per quatuor menses apparuit.” He then goes on to speak of the reign of Cnut.
Footnote 159
There is nothing special to remark on the authorities for this Chapter, which consist mainly of the Norman writers whose names and whose relative importance must be by this time familiar to the reader. I will only remark that it is somewhat vexatious that we have to trust almost wholly to authorities on one side. While we have full narratives from the Norman writers, we have only the most fragmentary statements from any French, Angevin, or Breton source to set against them. And, to an English writer, this is specially vexatious when we draw near to the end of the period, when we have to deal with those personal relations between William and Harold on which the Norman writers are so full, while the contemporary English writers are so completely, no doubt significantly, silent.
Footnote 160
See vol. ii. p. 293.
Footnote 161
See St. John, ii. 225 et seqq. But I would not, as I shall presently show, be thought to share Mr. St. John’s extreme scepticism on the whole matter.
Footnote 162
It is indeed quite possible that the mass of people in England knew nothing about the matter. The only statement implying that they did is that of Harold’s romantic biographer (Chron. Ang. Norm. ii. 187, 188) which I have quoted and discussed in Appendix C.
Footnote 163
See vol. ii. p. 293.
Footnote 164
Ib. p. 289.
Footnote 165
Will. Pict. 90. “Reges de longinquo suas unicè caras filias huic marito voluntariè locarent.”
Footnote 166
Ib. 89. “Adeo ut et ejus sobolem, quam solâ tum spe fovebant, dominum sibi concordi votorum electione creare certarent.” He goes on to speak of the debates on the subject, “res ponderosa” as he calls it, and how it was discussed “in frequenti curiâ.” So Will. Gem. vii. 21 “Jam Duce juvenili robore vigente, transcensis annis adolescentiæ, cœperunt optimates ejus de successione prolis cum eo attentiùs tractare.”
Footnote 167
Will. Malms. iii. 273. “Præter cæteras virtutes, præcipuè in primâ adolescentiâ castitatem suspexit, in tantum ut publicè sereretur nihil illum in feminâ posse. Verumtamen ex procerum sententiâ matrimonio addictus, ita se egit ut pluribus annis nullius probri suspicione notaretur.” He then goes on to mention, without believing, an absurd story which I shall have to speak of elsewhere. I do not know on what authority genealogists and antiquaries call the famous William Peverel of Domesday a natural son of William: I know of nothing to that effect in any ancient writer. See Appendix N.
Footnote 168
Will. Pict. 90. “Consiliis itaque de matrimonio discrepatur ... ac affines habere quos confines potissimùm placuit.”
Footnote 169
See vol. ii. p. 304.
Footnote 170
Among the many foreign brothers-in-law of Æthelstan, it is certain that the two most prominent, Otto the Great and Duke Hugh of Paris, left no posterity by their English wives. But a search among the princes of the time might have revealed some descendants of Eadgifu and the other sisters. The line of the Karlings of Laôn was not extinct.
Footnote 171
Will. Pict. 90. “Uti à Satrapis Morinorum, quos moderni Flandros appellant,” &c. This is somewhat in the style of Richer, our classical companion in my first volume.
Footnote 172
See vol. i. 278. Cf. ii. 272, 273.
Footnote 173
The first Count Baldwin married Judith, daughter of Charles the Bald, widow of our Æthelwulf; Baldwin the Second married Ælfthryth, daughter of Ælfred; Arnulf the Old married Adela of the Carolingian house of Vermandois; his son Baldwin married Matilda, daughter of King Conrad of Burgundy; Arnulf the Young married Susanna, daughter of King Berengar of Italy; but the mother of the reigning Count, though of princely, was not of royal birth. William of Poitiers (90) is therefore justified when he says that Baldwin “à Regibus Galliæ atque Germaniæ natales deducebat;” but I cannot follow him when he goes on to add, “nobilitatis etiam Constantinopolitanæ lineam attingentes.”
Footnote 174
Will. Pict. 90. “Stupuerunt mirantes eum Comites, Marchiones, Duces, tum Archipræsulum alta dignitas, si quando præsentiam ejus, rari hospitis, Imperatoria cura promeruit ... nomine siquidem Romani Imperii miles fuit, re decus et gloria summa consiliorum in summâ necessitudine. Reges quoque magnitudinem ejus et venerati sunt et veriti.”
Footnote 175
In the Annales Blandinienses and Formoselenses (Pertz, v. 26, 36), the Count of Flanders appears as “Balduinus potentissimus,” “potentissimus Marchisus.”
Footnote 176
Will. Pict. 90. “Vigebat eo tempore Teutonibus collimitans ac Francis, eminensque potentiâ, præcipuus eorum, Flandrensis Marchio Baldwinus.”
Footnote 177
The Free Cities of Germany obtained a higher degree of independence than those of Flanders, and those of them which became members of the Swiss League of course became more independent still. Yet, except the Hanseatic towns, none of them rested their greatness so purely on commerce as the Flemish cities, and the Flemish cities were distinctly more democratic in their spirit than any others. Ghent is something quite different either from the Teutonic Rome at Bern or from the Teutonic Carthage at Lübeck.
Footnote 178
See vol. i. p. 227. Cf. 548.
Footnote 179
In the Chronicle of Lambert of Saint Omer, 1067 (Pertz, v. 66) he is distinguished as “Baldwinus Comes Insulanus” from his son “Baldwinus Montensis.” So in the Continuation of Sigebert, vi. 433.
Footnote 180
See vol. i. p. 519.
Footnote 181
See vol. ii. p. 97 et seqq.
Footnote 182
See the passage quoted in vol. ii. p. 99.
Footnote 183
He rebelled again in 1054 (Herm. Cont. in anno, Pertz, v. 133. Bernold, ib. 427). On the War, see Annales Elnonenses Majores (Pertz, v. 13). The reconciliation by the agency of Pope Victor is asserted in the Chronicles of Sigebert (Pertz, vi. 360) and Ekkehard (vi. 198); on the terms see Art de Vérifier les Dates, iii. 4.
Footnote 184
See vol. i. pp. 519, 562. I shall have to speak of this marriage again.
Footnote 185
See Will. Pict. 90, and below, § 3.
Footnote 186
On their history see Lambert, 1071 (Pertz, v. 181). Will. Malms. iii. 256; iv. 373.
Footnote 187
See vol. ii. p. 134, and Appendix N.
Footnote 188
“Corpore valdè elegantem animoque liberalem,” says William of Jumièges (vii. 21). So Wace, who wrongly calls her mother Constance (9640–9642); “Mahelt out non, mult bele è gente.” William of Poitiers attributes her excellences to the good training which she had received from her mother Adela; “Enutrierat autem prudens et sancta mater in filiâ quod muneribus paternis multuplo præponderaret.” He then goes on to extol the royal family of France, to which he is not always so loyal, and he commits the blunder of calling Robert “filius et _nepos_ Regum.”
Footnote 189
See vol. i. p. 454.
Footnote 190
On this discovery of Mr. Stapleton and on other points connected with the marriage, see Appendix N.
Footnote 191
William of Poitiers indeed would almost make one think that Baldwin set off with his daughter to meet William as soon as he heard that William wanted a wife, and that they were married without more ado. William of Jumièges (vii. 21) seems to make the marriage follow immediately on the embassy, though he afterwards mentions the objections made on the ground of kindred, on which William of Poitiers holds his peace.
Footnote 192
See the tale in the Continuator of Wace, ap. Ellis, ii. 55. The only groundwork for the story seems to be the fact that Matilda held certain lands which had belonged to a Brihtric—there were several of the name.
Footnote 193
Ord. Vit. 522 A, 598 A. His description is “Gherbodus Flandrensis.”
Footnote 194
See Ellis, i. 507. The inscription beginning “Stirps Gundrada Ducum,” has often been copied, and has no doubt misled many. The “Duces” are of course the Counts of Flanders, not those of Normandy.
Footnote 195
She is assumed to be such even by Sir Francis Palgrave (iii. 254), after the appearance of Mr. Stapleton’s paper.
Footnote 196
See Appendix N.
Footnote 197
Her parents, Baldwin and Adela, were married about 1027. See Appendix N.
Footnote 198
See vol. ii. p. 112.
Footnote 199
Ib. p. 113.
Footnote 200
Ib. p. 184.
Footnote 201
Ann. Divionenses, ap. Pertz, v. 41. Labbé, Concilia, xi. 1407 et seqq. Chron. of Auxerre, ap. Labbé, Biblioth. i. 293.
Footnote 202
Labbé, Concilia, xi. 1412. The two canons run; “xi. Ne quis incestuosæ conjunctioni se copularet. xii. Ne quis, legitimâ uxore derelictâ, aliam duceret.” Presently comes the passage quoted by Mr. Stapleton; “Excommunicavit etiam Comites Engelrannum et Eustachium propter incestum, et Hugonem de Brainâ, qui legitimam uxorem dimiserat et aliam sibi in matrimonio sociaverat. _Interdixit et Balduino Comiti Flandrensi ne filiam suam Willelmo Nortmanno nuptui daret, et illi ne eam acciperet._ Vocavit etiam Comitem Tetbaldum, quoniam suam dimiserat uxorem.” I do not know what were the offences of Ingelram (who was not yet Count) or of Eustace. Theobald had put away Gersendis, daughter of Herbert Wake-the-Dog of Maine, of whom we shall hear more anon. In the Art de Vérifier les Dates, ii. 615, Theobald’s wife Gersendis seems to be confounded with his sister the wife of Hugh son of Herbert.
Footnote 203
See Appendix N.
Footnote 204
The whole story is given in the hexameters of William of Apulia, Muratori, v. 259 et seqq. Cf. Milman, iii. 35 et seqq.
Footnote 205
William’s lines on the stature of the Germans are well known as being quoted by Gibbon (x. 257 ed. Milman). His description of their swords and manner of fighting is less familiar, and is worth quoting, as showing how much the Teutonic warfare was the same everywhere (p. 260, C, D);
“Nam nec equus doctè manibus giratur eorum, Nec validos ictus dat lancea, præminet ensis, Sunt etenim longi specialiter et peracuti Illorum gladii, percussum à vertice corpus Scindere sæpe solent, et firmo stant pede postquam Deponuntur equis, potiùs certando perire Quam dare terga volunt, magis hoc sunt Marte timendi. Quam dum sunt equites; tanta est audacia gentis.”
This exactly describes an English army before Cnut introduced the axe instead of the sword (see vol. i. pp. 300, 430, 577), and the implied panegyric of William is the parallel of the implied panegyric of Guy of Amiens. See vol. ii. p. 128.
Footnote 206
See vol. i. p. 171. So Will. App. 261 D;
“Robertus et ingeniosus Semper celsa petens, et laudis amans et honoris. Si contingebat sibi palma vel arte vel armis, Æquè ducebat, quia quod violentia sæpe Non explere potest, explet versutia mentis.”
Compare the wild account of Robert Wiscard in Benedict of Peterborough (ii. 200 Stubbs), where he is transferred to the reign of Henry the First.
Footnote 207
See vol. i. p. 171.
Footnote 208
On the Counts of Eu, see below, p. 117.
Footnote 209
Thirty-six years if we count from the death of William’s grandmother Judith in 1017; twenty-seven if we count from the death of Richard the Good in 1026. The question turns on the position of Richard’s second wife Papia. See vol. ii. p. 181.
Footnote 210
See vol. ii. p. 210.
Footnote 211
Will. Malms. iii. 267. “Ferunt quidam esse arcanam depositionis caussam; Matildem, quam Willelmus acceperat, proximam sibi sanguine fuisse. Id, Christianæ fidei zelo, Malgerium non tulisse, ut consanguineo cubili fruerentur, sed in nepotem et comparem excommunicationis jaculum intentâsse.”
Footnote 212
William, or Orderic, in the death-bed narrative (657 B), puts the two together; “Non multò post alia mihi gravissima adversitas oborta est. Patrui namque mei, Malgerius Rothomagensis Archiepiscopus et Guillelmus frater ejus ... me velut nothum contempserunt,” etc.
Footnote 213
See the passage of William of Malmesbury just cited.
Footnote 214
Will. Malms. iii. 267. “Is erat litteris quidem non mediocriter cultus.” This is admitted even by William of Poitiers, 116; “Scripturarum arcana intelligentiæ literalis oculo colligere non indoctus fuit.”
Footnote 215
Ib. “Pro natalium conscientiâ professionis oblitus, venationibus et avium certaminibus sæpiùs justo intendebat.”
Footnote 216
Ib. “Gazas ecclesiasticas conviviis profusioribus insumebat.” So Will. Pict. 116; “Mensas equidem nimiùm sufficientes, nimiùm nitidas, præbere.”
Footnote 217
Will. Pict. 116. “Quam pietas plurimorum ornando ditavit, ille spoliando attenuavit ecclesiam; non sponsus ejus vel pater dicendus, sed gravissimus dominus vel rapacissimus prædo.... Largiendo laudem emere amabat, specie liberalitatis prodigus.... Nec enim modum posuit largitioni donec sedes metropolitana omni fere ornamento caruit et thesauro.”
Footnote 218
Ord. Vit. 566 D. Michael was, when Orderic wrote, an old man in great honour with Henry the First. He was “probus miles et legitimus.” Wace (9707) gives him several children, and seems to make them born after his deposition. Michael is “hom mult énorez, Michiel de Baines [al. Bayeux] apelez.”
Footnote 219
Will. Pict. 116. “Sæpenumero monitus atque castigatus privatim atque publicè domini sui, juvenis et laici, sapiente diligentia.” So Will. Malms. iii. 267; “Crebrò conventus, expostulante nepote patruelis [patrui?] offensas.”
Footnote 220
Ib. “Sequuntur multoties largitionem rapinæ. Præterea molestus infamiæ ejus odor diffundebatur ob alia crimina. Sed a ratione alienum ducimus in vitiis publicandis immorari,” etc.
Footnote 221
Ib. “Pallio numquam est insignitus quod ... manus Romani Pontificis, mittere [?] solita, ei denegavit ut minus idoneo.” So Will. Malms. u. s.
Footnote 222
Ib. 117. “Apostolici mandato sæpiùs ad Romanum concilium accitus, renuit ire.” William is just now very zealous for the Holy See, quite unlike the Gallicanism of Rudolf Glaber. See vol. ii. p. 275.
Footnote 223
Ib. “Sane pigebat Rotomagum, pigebat cunctam Normanniam, archipræsulis.”
Footnote 224
Will. Malms. iii. 267. “Quum iræ adolescentis uxoriæ querelæ accederent, excogitatas occasiones quibus persequutor peccati sede pelleretur.” It is clear that Malger had partizans.
Footnote 225
William of Poitiers (117) does not name the Legate. He says only “Princeps ... deposuit patruum in publico sanctæ synodi, Apostolici vicario cunctisque Normanniæ episcopis, juxta canonum auctoritatem, sententiam dantibus unanimi consensus.” The List in Mabillon (Analecta, ii. 439) names Ermenfred (see vol. ii. p. 461), and mentions the place, Lisieux. William of Jumièges (vii. 24) makes Malger resign his see; “Eo tempore Malgerius Archipræsul Rotomagensis desipere cœpit, et insipientiâ ductus Archipræsulatum Duci reddidit.” The strong _regale_, or rather _ducale_, of all our accounts should be noticed. See vol. ii. p. 209.
Footnote 226
William of Poitiers does not mention the banishment of Malger, but it is spoken of by most of our other authorities. Will. Gem. vii. 24. “Dux autem Malgerium in insulâ quæ dicitur Ghernervia retrusit.” The list in Mabillon (ii. 439) says, “Dedit postea illi quamdam insulam in Constantiniensi pago in mari sitam.” Roman de Rou, 9703;
“Es isles vint de Costentin, Là fu è vist tresqu’ è la fin.”
On the “Isles of the Côtentin” see vol. i. p. 211 et seqq.
Footnote 227
Mabillon, u. s. “In quâ [insulâ] pluribus annis, non quidem ut decuit, vixit.” Wace, as a Jersey man, is much fuller on this part of the story.
Footnote 228
Roman de Rou, 9714 et seqq. He has “un deable privé” called Toret or Toreit, who was always at his beck and call. What is Toret? Pluquet makes it a diminutive from Thor. Sir F. Palgrave (iii. 276, 277) speaks of French antiquaries “who discover in the name Thoreit the exclamation Thor-aie, an invocation of Thor the Hammerer.” Pluquet at least does not. (On Thor-aie see vol. ii. p. 257.) Sir Francis goes on, “But the vocable is pure _hoch deutsch_, and however gained or bestowed, simply signifies Folly.” Of two improbable explanations Pluquet’s seems to me the less improbable. See Mr. Thorpe’s amazing note to Lappenberg, Norman Kings, p. 86, where he mixes up Malger’s familiar spirit with Ralph of Tesson’s war-cry. See vol. ii. p. 257, and Taylor’s Wace, p. 20.
Footnote 229
Histoire des Archevesques de Rouen (Rouen, 1667), p. 253. The author, a Benedictine father, is disposed to let Malger off more easily than most people.
Footnote 230
Mabillon, ii. 439. “Postea verò, quo autem divino judicio ignoratur, in mari submersus est.” Wace tells the story at length, 9727 et seqq. But there must, as Prevost says, be some mistake in the name Winçant, which suggests the Picard Witsand rather than any haven of the Côtentin.
Footnote 231
See vol. i. p. 170. Will. Malms. iii. 246. “Omnium gentium benignissimi advenas æquali secum honore colunt.”
Footnote 232
Mabillon, ii. 439. “Nobili prosapiâ ex Remensi pago exortus, et in ejusdem civitatis ecclesiâ educatus, inde in Leodicensi ecclesiâ omni liberalium artium peritiâ imbutus.” Orderic (567 C) calls him “genere Maguntinus.” He must have confounded the birthplace of Maurilius with the place of his preferment, Halberstadt being, at all events, in the province of Mainz.
Footnote 233
Mabillon, ii. 440. “Halverstatensis [mark the Low-Dutch form] ecclesiæ Scholasticus effectus est, qui locus in Saxoniâ ditissimus habetur.” On the office of the Scholasticus, compare Adelard at Waltham, vol. ii. p. 443.
Footnote 234
This first profession at Fécamp rests on the authority of the list in Mabillon. Orderic (u. s.) mentions only his second sojourn there. But does not a profession at Fécamp under the Italian Abbot William form a kind of transition between Halberstadt and the Italian hermitage?
Footnote 235
I reserve some notice of the history of Fécamp (see vol. i. p. 218), and of the connexion of the monastery with England, for a more appropriate place in the fourth volume.
Footnote 236
The profession of Maurilius at Fécamp would naturally come within the time of Abbot William, 1001–1031. After so varied a career, we can hardly fancy him less than fifty at the time of his appointment to the Archbishoprick, and we want several years for each of his metamorphoses between Halberstadt and Rouen. His first sojourn at Fécamp, his hermit life, his Abbacy at Florence, his second sojourn at Fécamp, might well take up twenty-four years among them.
Footnote 237
See vol. ii. p. 226.
Footnote 238
Mabillon, ii. 440. “Eremi cultor solitariam vitam ducens opere manuum vixit.”
Footnote 239
Mabillon, u. s. So Ord. Vit. 567 C, who adds a characteristic Italian trait; “In urbe Florentiâ monachili cœnobio Abbatis jure præfuit, et exosus transgressoribus pro rigore disciplinæ venenum in potu sibi propinato deprehendit.”
Footnote 240
Ord. Vit. u. s. “Tempore Johannis Abbatis _compatriotæ sui_ Fiscannum venit.” But the local accounts make John a Lombard. Orderic might have assumed that an Abbot at Florence must be an Italian, but how could this be reconciled with his description of Maurilius as “Maguntinus”? Cf. Neustria Pia, 223.
Footnote 241
Bessin, 47–49. Pommeraye, 71. Mabillon, ii. 441. “Adstante Willelmo Normannorum Duce, postea Anglorum Rege, cum omnibus suffraganeis suis, concilium in Rothomagensi ecclesiâ de castitate conservandâ et cæteris sanctorum patrum institutionibus, pastorum incuriâ negligenter postpositis, viriliter restituendis religiose celebravit.” Everything bears witness alike to the ecclesiastical supremacy of the Norman Dukes and of the personal zeal of William in all ecclesiastical matters.
Footnote 242
See vol. ii. p. 181.
Footnote 243
See vol. ii. pp. 213, 214.
Footnote 244
Vit. Lanfr. ap. Giles, i. 287. “Ad administranda quoque totius patriæ negotia summus ab ipso Normannorum Duce Willelmo consiliarius assumitur.” Allowing for the natural exaggeration of a panegyrist, there seems enough to imply a very close relation between William and Lanfranc. See vol. ii. p. 227.
Footnote 245
Vit. Lanfr. i. 288. “Hujus tam improvidæ jussionis caussam agunt, quod idem Lanfrancus contradicebat nuptiis filiæ Comitis Flandriæ, quam ipse sibi Dux copulaverat in matrimonio, quia proximâ carnis consanguinitate jungebatur.” So Chron. Becc. 198.
Footnote 246
Ib. “Unde auctoritate Romani Papæ tota Neustria fuerat ab officio Christianitatis suspensa et interdicta.” So Chron. Becc. u. s. Wace (9659) makes Malger pronounce the interdict;
“Maugier ki tint l’Arceveskie Mist Normendie tute en uie Sor Willame è sor sa moillier. Andui les fist escumengier.”
Footnote 247
See vol. ii. p. 169.
Footnote 248
See vol. ii. p. 287.
Footnote 249
Vit. Lanfr. 287. “Quorumdam etiam accusationibus delatorum Dux in eo vehementer amaricatus.”
Footnote 250
See vol. ii. pp. 218, 236.
Footnote 251
Vit. Lanfr. 287. “Mandat ut monasterio exturbetur, patriâ discedat, Lanfrancus. Nec motus animi sui hâc vindictâ sedare valens, mandavit juris monasterii villam, quæ Parcus dicitur, flammis excidi.” On the word _Park_, see Earle, Parallel Chronicles, p. 323.
Footnote 252
In the story in Lanfranc’s Life (287 Giles), the banished Prior sets out on a horse which went on three legs, because the house had none that was better (“quia melior non habebatur, tripes equus quarto pede inutili illi tribuitur”), and accompanied by one servant. He meets the Duke; “Protinus quà ille discedebat Duci obvius venienti appropinquans.” The meeting may have been accidental, or Lanfranc may have gone by a way where he was likely to meet William, but I cannot think, with Dr. Hook (ii. 93), that “Lanfranc directed his steps to Rouen, where he probably had been summoned to appear before the duke.” The lame horse—the narrator quite enters into the joke—bows its head, and his rider salutes the Prince; “Equo per singulos passus caput ad terram submittente, dominum salutat.” William at first turns away, but presently listens. Lanfranc begins with a joke; he is obeying William by going out of his dominions as fast as he could; he would go faster, if the Duke would give him a better horse. William laughs, and asks whether any criminal before had ever ventured to ask a present of his judge. The Duke is fairly won over, Lanfranc makes his speech, and all is soon settled.
Footnote 253
Vit. Lanfr. 287. “Gratissimi mox succedunt amplexus et oscula.”
Footnote 254
Vit. Lanfr. 287. “Multo etiam cum augmento restituenda promittuntur quæ Dux nuperrimè devastari jusserat.”
Footnote 255
See this point discussed by Dr. Hook, ii. 94. A quite different account of the reconciliation of Lanfranc to the Duke, or rather of his first introduction to him, is given in two passages of William of Malmesbury, De Gest. Pont. 116 _b_ and 136, one in the Life of Lanfranc himself, the other in that of Herfast, afterwards Bishop of Thetford. William’s Chaplains excite him against Lanfranc, because he had mocked the ignorance of one of their number. The Duke orders him to leave Normandy, but he goes to Court, obtains an interview with the Duke, and speedily wins his favour. In the second account it appears that the Chaplain mocked at was Herfast himself, who came to Lanfranc’s school with great pomp. Lanfranc then makes a mock of his ignorance; “Ex primâ colloquutione intelligens quàm prope nihil sciret, abecedarium ipsi expediendum apposuit, ferociam hominis Italicâ facetiâ illudens.” The order for banishment then follows. Lanfranc, somewhat oddly, goes to court to ask for provisions for his journey (“Quum ad curiam commeatum petiturus venisset”). Then comes the story of the lame horse, and the Duke is won over to Lanfranc, mainly through the intercession of William Fitz-Osbern. There is no mention of Lanfranc’s opposition to the marriage.
This story about the Chaplain may be true; but it can hardly be doubted, first that Lanfranc was already known to the Duke, secondly that the main ground of offence was the opposition to the marriage.
Footnote 256
Vit. Lanfr. 289. “Lanfrancus ... Romam venerat ... ut ageret pro Duce Normannorum et uxore ejus apud Apostolicum.”
Footnote 257
See vol. ii. p. 458.
Footnote 258
Ib. 431.
Footnote 259
Ib. 116.
Footnote 260
He however retracted back again. Vit. Lanfr. 289. See Milman, iii. 51.
Footnote 261
See vol. ii. pp. 116, 227.
Footnote 262
Vit. Lanfr. 289. “Nam Dux puellam [Gerbod is, as usual, forgotten] quam acceperat nullo pacto dimittere vellet.”
Footnote 263
Ib. “Loquutus cum Papâ Nicolao ostendit quia ejus sententia illos tantùm gravabat, qui eos nec conjunxerant nec separare poterant.”
Footnote 264
Will. Gem. vii. 26. “Willelmus Dux, dum à quibusdam religiosis [no mention of Lanfranc personally] sæpiùs redargueretur, eò quod cognatam suam sibi in matrimonium copulâsset, missis legatis, Romanum Papam super hâc re consuluit. At ille sagaciter considerans quòd, si divortium fieri juberet, fortè inter Flandrenses et Normannos grave bellum exsurgeret, maritum et conjugem à reatu absolvit.” Vit. Lanfr. 289. “Hoc audiens et verum esse advertens summus Pontifex, dispensatione habitâ, conjugium concessit.”
Footnote 265
Will. Gem. u.s. “Eis pœnitentiam injunxit. Mandavit enim, ut ab eis duo cœnobia conderentur, in quibus pro ipsis ab utroque sexu Deo sedulò preces offerentur.” Vit. Lanfr. 289. “Eo tamen modo quatenùs Dux et uxor ejus duo monasteria construerent, in quibus singulas congregationes virorum ac mulierum coadunarent, qui ibi sub normâ sanctæ relligionis, die noctuque Deo deservirent et pro salute eorum supplicarent.” William of Malmesbury (iii. 267) would almost seem to have looked on the foundations as a voluntary expiation, like the pilgrimage of Swegen; “Postmodùm, provectioribus annis, pro expiatione sceleris, illum sancto Stephano Cadomis monasterium ædificâsse, illam beatæ Trinitati in eodem vico idem fecisse, utroque pro sexu suo personas habitantium eligente.”
On the history of Saint Stephen’s, I must refer to two excellent local works, “L’Abbaye de Saint-Etienne de Caen, par C. Hippeau,” Caen, 1855 (M. Hippeau is also known as the editor of the first complete edition of Garnier’s Life of Saint Thomas), and “Analyse Architecturale de l’Abbaye de Saint-Etienne de Caen, par G. Bouet,” Caen, 1867, a book distinguished by the writer’s characteristic caution and minute accuracy.
Footnote 266
Roman de Rou, 9665;
“Li Dus por satisfacion, Ke Deus l’en face veir pardon, E ke l’Apostoile cunsente Ke tenir poisse sa parente, Fist cent provendes establir A cent povres paistre è vestir, As meshaigniez, as non poanz, As langoros, as non véanz, A Chiéresborc et à Roem, A Baieues et à Caem; Encore i sunt et encor durent Issi come establies furent.”
On the blind hospital at Caen, see Hippeau, p. 4. Were persons admissible whose eyes had been put out by the Duke’s own authority?
Footnote 267
In William’s charter of 1066 (Gallia Christiana, xi. 59–61. I have to thank M. Châtel, the Archivist of the Department of Calvados, for the reference), he distinctly says that “honestissima conjux mea Mathildis, nobilissimi Ducis Flandrensis Balduini filiam ... construxit basilicam,” and goes on to record its consecration on June 18th. The charter in Neustria Pia, 658–661, is of 1082. He there says “ecclesiam ... coædificavimus.” Either it was still unfinished, or the nave has been rebuilt. It is only the eastern part which can be Matilda’s work.
Footnote 268
This was the great year of consecrations in Normandy. See vol. ii. pp. 212, 222. The consecration of Saint Stephen’s is distinctly placed in this year by Orderic, 548 D. At Bec Lanfranc himself officiated (Will. Gem. vi. 9), but at Caen the ceremony was performed by the Metropolitan John. I gather from what goes before in Orderic that William was present at Caen, though he was not at Bec. But the Chronicle of Saint Stephen itself (Duchèsne, 1018) places the ceremony in 1073. Other dates given are 1081 and 1086 (see Neustria Pia, 625, Bouet, 15, 16). One cannot doubt that 1077 is right date for the main consecration, and that the other dates, if correct, refer to some smaller ceremony. The western towers (of course not the upper portions) must have been added soon after the church was finished. Their style is that of the church, and the masonry shows that they were designed from the first, though not built at the same time as the nave. This would quite agree with the date of 1086. For the consecration of a steeple see vol. ii. p. 437.
Footnote 269
See vol. ii. p. 222, and the verse of Abbot Baldwin in Duchèsne, Rer. Franc. ii. 257; “Qui Dux Normannis, qui Cæsar præfuit Anglis.”
Footnote 270
Allowing, of course, for the reconstruction of the clerestory and the addition of the vault.
Footnote 271
See vol. ii. p. 442.
Footnote 272
Will. Gem. vi 9. “Tam domini quam Normanniæ primatum supplicatione coactus.” I accept Orderic’s date, but the Chronicle of Bec (Giles, 197) places the appointment in 1062.
Footnote 273
Chron. Bec, 197 Giles.
Footnote 274
Will. Malms. iii. 273. “Tulit ex Matilde liberos multos, quæ, et marito morigera et prole fecunda, nobilis viri animum in sui amoris incitabat aculeum.” He then goes on with the story of the bridle (see Appendix N) and the account of the difference about Robert and of William’s grief at her death.
Footnote 275
On William’s children see Appendix O.
Footnote 276
Chron. Petrib. 1135.
Footnote 277
See Appendix O.
Footnote 278
Monstrelet, i. 324 _b_ (ed. Paris 1595). “Vous charge,” says Henry the Fifth, “sur tant que vous povez mesprendre, que tant que vous vivrez, ne souffrez à faire traicté avecques nostre adversaire Charles de Vallois, ne autres pour chose qu’il advienne, que la Duché de Normandie ne luy [to his son] demeure franchement.”
Footnote 279
Phil. Comines, i. 15 (vol. i. p. 71, ed. Godefroy 1723). “La chose du monde qu’il desiroit le plus, c’estoit de voir un Duc en Normandie; car par ce moyen il luy sembloit le Roy estre affoibly de la tierce partié.” See the whole history of the grant and reconquest of Normandy, cap. xii-xv, and Kirk, Charles the Bold, ii. 338 et seqq.
Footnote 280
Ib. i. 13 (vol. i. p. 64). “Et a tousjours bien semblé aux Normands, et fait encores, que si grand’ Duché, comme la leur, requiert bien un Duc; et, à dire la verité, elle est de grand’ estime, et s’y leve de grands deniers.” So, in the same chapter, Lewis says, “que de son conseulement n’eust jamais baillé tel partage à son frère, mais puis que d’eux mesmes les Normands en avoient fait cette nouvelleté, il en estoit content.”
Footnote 281
Phil. Comines, ii. 9, 15 (vol. i. pp. 116, 137). Kirk, i. 272, 334, 525.
Footnote 282
Arist. Rhet. iii. 10. Καὶ Περικλῆς τῆν Αἴγιναν ἀφελεῖν ἐκέλευσε, τὴν λήμην τοῦ Πειραιέως.
Footnote 283
See Hist. Fed. Gov. i. 621.
Footnote 284
See Appendix P.
Footnote 285
See vol. ii. p. 290.
Footnote 286
See vol. i. p. 198.
Footnote 287
See the charter in Neustria Pia, 694.
Footnote 288
See above, p. 92.
Footnote 289
Will. Gem. vii. 22. Neustria Pia, 496.
Footnote 290
Will. Gem. vii. 22. “Monasterium Sancti Michaelis Ulterioris Portûs ædificavit.” See the charter in Neustria Pia, 587.
Footnote 291
Will. Pict. 118. The Archdeacon of Lisieux is longer and louder in the praise of his own diocesan than in the praise of any one except the Duke himself.
Footnote 292
Ib. 119. “Ipse profectò, quum deponeretur Archipræsul Malgerius, vox justitiæ sonora fuit, constanter permanens in parte Dei, propter Deum damnans filium patrui.”
Footnote 293
Will. Gem. vii. 20. “Ducatum sibi volens vendicare, cœpit contra Ducem minis et infestationibus cervicem erigere.”
Footnote 294
Ib. “Fortis Princeps, nolens ei cedere, exercitum congregarit, et castrum Oucis, donec illud caperet, obsedit.”
Footnote 295
Ib. “At ille Henricum Regem Francorum expetiit, cui quid sibi contigisset flebiliter retexit. Rex verò ipsum, utpote nobilem genere et formâ militem, benignè suscepit, et infortunio ejus condolens Comitatum Suessionis ei cum quâdam nobili conjuge tribuit.” The Vermandois family was descended from King Bernard of Italy, son of Pippin, son of Charles. See Art de Vérifier les Dates, ii. 700, 727. The supposed treason of Bernard seems to have shut out his descendants from the Imperial and royal succession.
Footnote 296
See Appendix P.
Footnote 297
See vol. ii. pp. 243, 244.
Footnote 298
See vol. ii. p. 181.
Footnote 299
See vol. ii. pp. 242, 243.
Footnote 300
Ord. Vit. 657 B (in the death-bed speech). “Patrui mei Malgerius Rothomagensis Archepiscopus, et Guillelmus frater ejus, cui Archas et comitatum Calogii gratis dederam, me velut nothum contempserunt.” So Roman de Rou, 8565;
“Ki clamout dreit en l’éritage; Pur ke il esteit nez de muillier.”
And 8583;
“Jamez li Dus ne servireit; Normendie à grant tort teneit, Bastart esteit, n’i aveit dreit.”
Footnote 301
Orderic (657 B) adds, after the words last quoted about Malger and William of Arques; “Henricus Regem et Engelrannum Comitem Pontivi contra me accerserunt.”
Footnote 302
Will. Pict. 91. “Is ab ineunte pueri principatu infidus ei et adversus, quamquam fidelitatem juratus et obsequium, hostilia agitabat, modò temeritate non latente resistens, clandestinis interdum dolis.”
Footnote 303
Ib. 92. “In supradicti Danfronti oppugnatione quasi desertoris furtivo more discessit, nequaquam petitâ missione; satellitii debitum, cujus antea nomine hostilitatem utcumque velabat, jam omne detrectans.” This can hardly mean that he openly renounced his allegiance so early as the siege of Domfront.
Footnote 304
Ib. “Ob hæc et alia tot ejus et tanta ausa, Dux uti res monuit, suspiciens plura et majora ausurum, receptaculi, quo plurimum confidebat, editius firmamentum occupavit, custodiam immittens, in nullo ampliùs tamen jus ejus imminuens.”
Footnote 305
On the history of Arques and Talou, see M. Deville’s Histoire du Chateau d’Arques, Rouen 1829; Stapleton, i. cxxiii.
Footnote 306
See vol. i. p. 240 et seqq.; Flodoard, 944; Richer, ii. 42.
Footnote 307
See above, p. 117.
Footnote 308
Will. Gem. viii. 36. “Haud procul ab oppido Arcarum, villâ quæ dicitur Schechevilla (Equiqueville).” See vol. i. p. 279.
Footnote 309
On the Viscounts of Arques, see Deville, pp. 9, 13, 19, 87; Stapleton, i. cxxiii.; Will. Gem. viii. 36. See the lands of Willelmus de Arcis in Suffolk, Domesday, 431 _b_. An Osbern de Arcis also occurs in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire.
Footnote 310
Ord. Vit. 657 B (see last page). So Roman de Rou, 8568;
“Pur honur de sun parenté, E pur aveir sa féelté Li ad li Dus en fieu duné Arches è Taillou li cunté.”
Footnote 311
Will. Pict. 92. “Nempe eas latebras, id munimentum initæ elationis atque dementiæ ipse primus fundavit, et quam operossissimè extruxit in præalti montis Arcarum cacumine.” Will. Gem. vii. 7. “Nobilitate verò generis elatus, castrum Archarum in cacumine ipsius montis condidit.” So the Chronicle of Saint Wandrille in D’Achery, ii. 288. “Willelmus videlicet qui postea Arcas castrum in pago Tellau primus statuit.” The building was clearly something novel, and it struck people in Normandy almost as the building of Richard’s Castle (see vol. ii. pp. 138–143) struck people in England. I see no reason to doubt that the ruined keep is part of the original work. As to the gate, and the other parts assigned to the same date by M. Deville, I am not quite so certain.
Footnote 312
See vol. ii. p. 191.
Footnote 313
See vol. ii. pp. 176, 177.
Footnote 314
His admirers however need not have carved him in bas-relief over a gate which may belong to the days of William, and which is at any rate much older than the days of Henry.
Footnote 315
All these points are gone into minutely by M. Deville. I went over the castle minutely in May, 1868, with M. Deville’s book in hand, and I can bear witness to the accuracy of his description, though I cannot always accept his inferences.
Footnote 316
Both William of Poitiers (92) and Orderic (657 B) place William “in Constantino pago.” The special mention of Valognes (see vol. ii. p. 247) comes from the Roman de Rou, 8698 et seqq.
Footnote 317
Will. Pict. u.s. “Malefidi custodes non multo post castri potestatem conditori reddunt, munerum pollicitatione, et impensiùs imminente variâ sollicitatione fatigati subactique.”
Footnote 318
On the order of events in this revolt, see Appendix Q.
Footnote 319
Will. Pict. 92. “Nam festinantem ut contrairet injuriæ suæ ampliùs incitaverunt audita mala provinciæ suæ. Ecclesiarum bona, agrestium labores, negotiatorum lucra militum prædam injustè fieri dolebat. Miserando planctu imbellis vulgi, _qui multus tempore belli aut seditionum oriri solet_, advocari se cogitabat.” The mention of merchants as a numerous and important class marks the growing civilization of Normandy under its great ruler.
Footnote 320
See vol. ii. p. 249.
Footnote 321
Odo could not have been now above seventeen years old (see vol. ii. p. 210), nor William himself above twenty-six.
Footnote 322
See vol. ii. p. 240.
Footnote 323
Caudebec = Cold Beck. The arms of the town are appropriately three fish.
Footnote 324
See Appendix Q.
Footnote 325
I here follow the narrative of William of Poitiers (93), trying to make it intelligible by borrowing some hints from William of Malmesbury.
Footnote 326
Will. Pict. 93. “Nihil quidem rebelles in se, quum præsentem conspexerint, ausuros.”
Footnote 327
See the spirited illustration in Deville, p. 282.
Footnote 328
Will. Pict. 93. “Dein potiri volens munitione, jussu propere contracto exercitu circumsedit. Fuit difficillimum quos ea natura loci maximè defensabat expugnare. Sanè more suo illo optimo, rem optans absque cruore confectum iri, efferatos et contumaces obice castelli ad montis pedem exstructi ciausit.”
Footnote 329
See vol. ii. p. 264.
Footnote 330
Roman de Rou, 8610;
“Li mielx de la chevalerie I mist de tute Normendie.”
Footnote 331
The presence of Walter Giffard comes only from a late Chronicle (Bouquet, xi. 330), where he is prematurely called Count. But, as his lordship of Longueville lay hard by, nothing is more likely than that he should be there. He was the son of Osbern of Bolbec—a little town at the foot of a hill on the way to the more famous Lillebonne—by Avelina, one of the sisters of Gunnor (Will. Gem. viii. 37). A brother of Osbern was Godfrey, “pater Willelmi de Archis,” that is, of the Viscount. See Deville, p. 19. On Walter Giffard, afterwards Earl of Buckingham, see Ellis, i. 424, and Taylor, Wace, 169.
Footnote 332
This tower, doubtless of wood, is described as a “munitio” in the extract from William of Poitiers given above. So Will. Gem. vii. 7; “Erectis aggeribus ad radicem montis castrum stabilivit, quod fortium virorum robore inexpugnabile reddidit, et sic inde abiens vallatum alimoniis reliquit.” So Will. Malms. iii. 232; “Obfirmato contra Archas castello.” Wace (Roman de Rou, 8600) says that the Duke
“De fossez è de heriçun E de pel fist un chasteillun, El pié del teltre en la vallée, Ki garde tute la cuntrée; Ne pristrent paiz cels del chastel Ne bués ne vache ne véel; Li Dus tel chastelet i fist, Tant chevaliers è tel i mist, Ki bien le porreient desfendre Ke Reis ne Quens ne porreit prendre.”
Cf. vol. ii. pp. 139, 264.
Footnote 333
Will. Pict. 94. “Præsidio imposito, aliis postea negotiis invitantibus, ipse recessit; ut, dum ferro parceret, fame vinceret.” So Wace, 8612;
“Le Dus s’en est parti atant, Sez busuignes ailleurs quérant.”
This is by no means clear. William of Malmesbury (u. s.) is rather more definite; “Obfirmato contra Archas castello, ad alia quæ magis urgebant bella conversus est.” It was therefore a military operation in another direction which called William off. We shall see directly why he avoided personally conducting the blockade.
Footnote 334
This feudal scruple, which really seems the only intelligible explanation of William’s conduct in leaving the most important operations to others, comes from William of Malmesbury (u. s.); “Simul quia sciebat Regem Francorum, jampridem, nescio quâ simultate, sibi infensum, ad opem obsesso ferendam adventare; namque prædicandi moderaminis consilio, quamvis justiorem caussam habere videretur, cum eo decernere ferro cavebat, cui et pro sacramento et pro suffragio obnoxius erat.” Henry the Second felt the like scruple at the siege of Toulouse in 1159, but Thomas of London, then the worldly Chancellor, thought otherwise; “Vanâ superstitione et reverentiâ Rex tentus consilio aliorum, super urbem, in quâ esset dominus suus Rex Franciæ, irruere noluit; dicente in contrarium Cancellario, quod personam domini Rex Francorum ibi deposuisset, cò quod supra pacta conventa hostem se ei opposuisset.” (Will. Fil. Steph. p. 200, ed. Giles.)
Footnote 335
We learn the spot of the combat from Wace, Roman de Rou, 8622 et seqq.;
“Jà ert li Rei à Saint-Albin,” &c.
And this agrees with the description of Richard of Hugleville given by Orderic (606 B), where he sets forth the pedigree of the family; “Tempore Guillelmi juvenis filii Rodberti Ducis, Guillelmus de Archis contra Ducem rebellavit, et penè omnium Calogiensium parilis defectus nothum principem deseruit; solus Ricardus contra rebelles in castello suo secus ecclesiam Sancti Albini perstitit, et pro fidelitate Ducis contra discursus Archacensium provinciam circumjacentem defensare curavit.”
Footnote 336
See Ord. Vit. 606 D. It is with a thrill of sympathy alike for the hero and for his chronicler that an Englishman reads the passage, which I shall have to refer to again.
Footnote 337
Ord. Vit. 606 C. “Hugonem cum omnibus suis Archacenses apud Moriummontem repente circumdederunt, seseque viriliter defendentem interemerunt.”
Footnote 338
See vol. ii. p. 246.
Footnote 339
Ord. Vit. u. s.
Footnote 340
Roman de Rou, 8620;
“La sur d’Arches voleit garnir, Kar li blé lur debvait faillir, Jà ert li Rei à Saint-Albin, Asez portout è blé è vin; Là les fist li Rei arester, E lur garnisun aprester Sumiers ki lur herneis portassent, E chevaliers k’il convéiassent.”
So Will. Gem. vii. 7. “Exercitum castra metari apud Sanctum Albinum jussit.”
Footnote 341
See Appendix Q.
Footnote 342
Roman de Rou, 8628;
“Cil del chastel oïrent tost La garnisun è li grant ost.”
The “tur” is the castle of Arques; the “chastel” is the wooden castle of the besiegers.
Footnote 343
Will. Gem. vii. 7. “Cujus [Regis] adventum milites Ducis comperientes, de suis miserunt, si quos fortè hostium à regio cœtu abstraherent, quos illi in latibulis degentes incautos exciperent. Quò dum venissent, non minimam exercitûs partem inde protraxerunt, et fugientes in insidias induxerunt. Statim verò qui videbantur fugere, versâ facie cœperunt eos acriter cædere.” So Roman de Rou, 8632 et seqq. Less fully Will. Pict. 94; “Adducti in spem memorandi facinoris quidam ex eo numero qui in præsidio Ducis relicti custodiunt, Francorum adventantium itinera explorata insidunt. Et ecce numerosa pars minus cauti excipiuntur.”
Footnote 344
Will. Malms, iii. 232. “Quorum astutiâ insidiis exceptus, Isembardum Pontivi comitem coram se obtruncari, Hugonem Bardulfum capi, meritò ingemuit.”
Footnote 345
All our accounts speak of the capture of Hugh Bardulf as of an event of at least equal importance with the death of the Count of Ponthieu. William of Poitiers (u. s.) says, “Hugo Bardulfus ipse item, vir magnus, capitur.”
Footnote 346
“In the roll of Norman fees in the red book of the Exchequer, we find Doon Bardulf returned as one of those ‘qui non venerunt, nec miserunt, nec aliquid dixerunt.’” I copy this from Taylor’s Wace, p. 44. The name of Bardulf, including several Doun Bardulfs, occurs constantly in the Exchequer Records both of Normandy and of England (see the Indexes to Madox and Stapleton), but I have not lighted on the particular story referred to by Mr. Taylor.
Footnote 347
See vol. i. p. 227 et pass.
Footnote 348
Chron. Centul. iv. 21 (ap. D’Achery, ii. 343). “Attamen huic numquam Comitis nomen accessit, sed erat illi insigne quod Sancti Richarii vocabatur Advocatus.” On Saint Riquier see vol. ii. p. 535.
Footnote 349
Ib. “Ablatis monasterio Centulo tribus oppidis, Abbatis-villâ, Sancto Medardo, et Incrâ, et his castellis effectis, in eorumque stippendia multis aliis Sancti Richarii villis et reditibus ab Hugone Rege prærogatis.” Cf. iv. 12.
Footnote 350
See Chron. Centul. ii. 7. Sir Francis Palgrave (iii. 226), by one of the slips so natural in a chapter not revised by the author, confounds father and son.
Footnote 351
I find that in my second volume I have written this name Ingelram in the text (p. 217) and Enguerrand in the Appendix (p. 587). Such accidents will happen, especially with foreign names. Ingelram (whence Ingram) is certainly the English form, though the name was never common in England; I therefore prefer it, as does Sir F. Palgrave.
Footnote 352
Hariulf (Chron. Cent. iv. 21) calls the elder Hugh “Hugo Abbatensis,” and the Ingelram slain at Saint Aubin is by William of Jumièges (vii. 7) called “Abbatis-villæ Comes.” Ingelram, according to Hariulf, took the title of Count (“Dei gratia Comes”) on slaying Baldwin Count of Boulogne and marrying his widow Adelaide. Chron. Cent. iv. 12.
Footnote 353
See vol. ii. p. 217.
Footnote 354
William of Jumièges (vii. 7) calls the wife of William of Arques “soror Widonis Comitis Pontivi.” That is a daughter of Hugh. Why is Ingelram called “Comes Abbatisvillæ,” and his brother “Comes Pontivi,” in the same chapter?
Footnote 355
See vol. ii. p. 587.
Footnote 356
The death of Ingelram is mentioned in all our accounts, like the capture of Hugh Bardulf.
Footnote 357
This is Guy who imprisoned Harold. His uncle, another Guy, son of Ingelram the First, was Bishop of Amiens (see Chron. Cent. iv. 36. p. 355), and wrote the famous poem “De Bello Hastingensi.” See Will. Gem. vii. 44.
Footnote 358
The other daughter married Odo of Champagne. See vol. ii. p. 588, and below, p. 142.
Footnote 359
William of Poitiers (94) calls him “nobilitate notus ac fortudine,” and William (or Orderic) in the death-bed speech (657 B) says “præcursores mei præoccupaverunt Engelrannum Comitem in castrum intrare festinantem, ipsumque fortiter pugnantem, quia miles erat asperrimus, occiderunt, et agmina ejus fugaverunt.” Hariulf, in the Chronicle of Saint Riquier (iv. 21), calls him “homo formæ mirabilis.”
Footnote 360
Will. Pict. (u. s.) “Perveniens tamen quo ire intenderat, Rex exacerbatissimis animis summâ vi præsidium attentavit: Willelmum ab ærumnis uti eriperet, pariter decrementum sui, stragem suorum vindicaret. Sed ubi negotium difficile animadvertit, quippe inimicos impetus facilè toleraverunt castelli munimenta et militum virtus æque validæ ... abire maturavit.”
Footnote 361
So I understand the not very clear statement of William of Poitiers that the King went away.
Footnote 362
Will. Pict. 96. “In ipsâ morâ obsidionali Normannorum aliquanti potentiores ab Duce ad Regem defecerunt, quos jam antea conspirationis rebellantium occultique fuisse adjutores opinabile erat. Malevolentiam, quâ olim contra infantem fuerant inflati nondum evomuere totam. Eorum eo consortio Guimundus præsidens munitioni quam Molendinas appellant in manus Regis eam dedit.” William of Malmesbury seems to make the movement a popular one; “Hujusce obsidionis intervallo populus castri quod Molendinis dicitur, exolescens, ad partes Regis incentore quodam Galterio transiit.” Is this Walter the same as the Wimund of the other William?
Footnote 363
See Stapleton, i. cxxxiii. et al.
Footnote 364
Will. Pict. 96. “Guido frater Comitis Pictavensis Willelmi atque Romanæ Imperatricis.” So Will. Malms. This Guy (see Art de Vérifier les Dates, ii. 356) is the same as the Geoffrey whom Geoffrey Martel established in Gascony. See vol. ii. p. 595.
Footnote 365
Chron. Maxent. 1058 (Labbé, ii. 210). “Willermus, qui et Petrus cognomento Acer.”
Footnote 366
See vol. ii. p. 373.
Footnote 367
In the Chronicle of Saint Maxentius he is called Geoffrey in 1044, 1058, 1060, 1061, 1062, Guy and Geoffrey in 1068, William in 1071, lastly in 1086, “Guido qui et Goffredus.” This is certainly the way to confuse genealogists.
Footnote 368
Will. Pict. 95. “Rex denuò accitus multo et miserè supplici nuncio venire abnuit.” The Archdeacon now gets very eloquent, and gives us all the inner workings of the mind of one whom he calls “Papiæ partus.” It takes a minute or two to see that by this odd description he means the Count of Arques.
Footnote 369
This ceremony was gone through by the Count-Bishop Hugh (see vol. i. p. 514) to Richard the Good; “Equestrem sellam ferens humeris, provolutus genibus Richardi,” &c. Will. Gem. v. 16. Palgrave, iii. 133. Cf. Will. Malms. iii. 235. So we now read in William of Poitiers; “Pars ocreis et calcaribus ornati [why?], insolito comitatu incedentes, et eorum plerique sellam equestrem incurvo languidoque dorso, nonnulli solum se nutabundi vix eportantes.”
Footnote 370
Will. Pict. 95. “Erat item cernere calamitatem levis armatura egredientis fœdam ac variam.”
Footnote 371
Ib. 96. “Verum et ii, et quiqui aliàs relicti sunt a Francis, quum deditas esse comperissent Archarum latebras, sese nostris fugâ furati sunt.”
Footnote 372
Ib. 95. “Noluit extorrem et inopem casu magis pudendo cruciari; sed cum gratiâ et possessionibus quibusdam amplis atque multorum redituum, patriam ei concessit.”
Footnote 373
Will. Gem. vii. 7. See Deville, p. 78 et seqq. I see no difficulty in reconciling the two accounts.
Footnote 374
See Deville, p. 89.
Footnote 375
See above, p. 92.
Footnote 376
See above, pp. 93, 101.
Footnote 377
See above, p. 94.
Footnote 378
See vol. i. p. 189; vol. ii. p. 202.
Footnote 379
Will. Pict. 96. “Normanniam, quæ sub Regibus Francorum egit ex antiquo, prope in regnum evectam.” What would our old friend Dudo (see vol. i. pp. 193, 209, 247) have said to the “prope”?
Footnote 380
Ib. “Quum Imperatorem Romanum, quo majus potentiæ sive dignitatis nomen in orbe terrarum aliud non est, amicum et socium haberet.”
Footnote 381
Ib. “Quum provinciis multis præsideret potentibus, quarum domini aut rectores militiæ suæ essent administri, Comitem Willelmum suum nec amicum nec militem, sed hostem esse.”
Footnote 382
See above, p. 116.
Footnote 383
Art de Vérifier les Dates, ii. 614.
Footnote 384
Ib. But it must be borne in mind that the kinswoman of William’s whom Odo married was not Adelaide, the Duke’s sister, but the younger Adelaide, her daughter by Ingelram of Ponthieu. See vol. ii. p. 588.
Footnote 385
Will. Pict. 97. “Condolentes in eâdem Theobaldus, Pictavorum Comes, Gaufredus, item reliqui summates, quâdam insuper indignatione privatâ intolerandum ducebant sese Regis, quocumque prævia vocarent, signis parere; Willelmum Normannorum nequaquam pro Rege, sed confidenter atque indesinenter ad ejus magnitudinem, quam aliquantùm attrivit, ulteriùs atterendam, vel si quâ viâ valeant, conterendam, in armis agitare.”
Footnote 386
Will. Pict. 97. “Præterea concupiebant Normanniam, aut ejus partem, quidam Regis proximi.”
Footnote 387
Ib. “Julium Cæsarem, vel bellandi peritiorem aliquem, si fuerit peritior, exercitûs Romani ducem (ex mille nationibus coacti olim, dum Roma florentissima mille provinciis imperitâsset) hujus agminis immanitate terreri potuisse affirmares.”
Footnote 388
Ib. “Burgundiam, Arverniam, atque Wasconiam properare videres horribiles ferro: imo vires tanti regni, quantùm in climata mundi quatuor patent, cunctas, Franciam tamen et Britanniam, quantò nobis viciniores, tantò ardentius infestas.” As he speaks of the “regnum,” he clearly means by Burgundy only the Duchy which held of the French Crown. His use of “Francia” along with the rest, as the name of one part of Gaul, should be noticed. Compare the use of the word by Flodoard; see vol. i. p. 199.
Footnote 389
Will. Pict. 98. “Guido, Pontivi Comes, ad vindicandum fratrem Ingelrannum nimis avidus.” Will. Malms. iii. 233. “Guido Pontivi Comes studiosiùs ultionis fratris intendit.”
Footnote 390
I find no mention of Geoffrey as present, except in William of Jumièges (vii. 24), who makes him accompany the King. This account is followed by Benoît of Saint More, 35245;
“Li quens d’Anjou Gefrei Martel, Qui del ovraigne esteit mult bel, I vint od riche compaignie E od ses archers de valie.”
But it is strange that William of Poitiers and the other writers should have left out so important a person, had he really been there, and his absence, hard as it is to account for it, agrees better with what follows.
Footnote 391
Ord. Vit. 657 D (cf. 638 D). “Aliam [phalangem] Odoni fratri suo ac Rainaldo de Claro Monte, et duobus Consulibus, Radulfo de Monte-Desiderii atque Widoni de Pontivo, commendavit.” William of Poitiers, like Richer of old (see vol. i. p. 223, note 3, cf. 237, note 2), is strong in his antiquated geography. He tells us (98) about “Quantus miles inter Sequanam et Garonnam fluvios colligeretur (quas gentes multas uno nomine Celtigallos appellant);” then about those who were “inter flumen Rhenum [Henry the Frank’s notions about the Rhine frontier were doubtless different] et Sequanam collecti, quæ Gallia Belgica nuncupatur.” Lastly, “Regem insuper comitabatur Aquitania pars Galliæ tertia.” Reginald of Clermont is “Rainaldus familiarissimus.” Was he commissioned to supply the incapacity of Odo? See vol. i. p. 520.
Footnote 392
Roman de Rou, 9919;
“La gent de dous parz a mandée Si come Saine l’a devisée.”
Footnote 393
Ord. Vit. 657 D. “Ut per vada Eptæ Neustriam citò introirent, Braium et Calcegium totumque Rothomagensem pagum invaderent ferro et flammâ, nec ne rapinis usque ad mare penitus devastarent.”
Footnote 394
See above, p. 119.
Footnote 395
Hugh Capet was crowned at Noyon. Richer, iv. 12. See vol. i. p. 268.
Footnote 396
Roman de Rou, 9923. “Cels de Melant è de Vermendeiz.” See above, p. 120. The reigning Count was Herbert the Fourth.
Footnote 397
Guy, Bishop of Amiens, the author of the poem “De Bello Hastingensi” (see Will. Gem. vii. 44), was a son of Ingelram the First and uncle of Guy and of Ingelram the Second. He succeeded to the see about 1058.
Footnote 398
See above, pp. 136, 139.
Footnote 399
Wace, 9925, says “Cels de _Flandres_ è de Belmont,” and Benoît (35255) “La furent _Flamenc_ e Poher.” But the presence of subjects of Baldwin is exceedingly unlikely, and Benoît in some sort confutes himself by adding “E Braibençon e Hainuer,” thus getting beyond the borders of the Western realm within which the others strictly confine themselves. He was most likely misled, as others have been since, by the grand talk about the Rhine.
Footnote 400
That is, if Provins roses, brought from the East by pilgrims or Crusaders, had reached Europe so soon.
Footnote 401
Isaiah xlvii. 7.
Footnote 402
Roman de Rou, 9943. “De Bourges è de Berri.” As usual, the names of the city and of the district are both slightly varying forms of the old Gaulish name; but it is curious to see them distinguished in such a marked way, which seems not to be done in any other part of the catalogue.
Footnote 403
Livy, v. 34. “Celtarum quæ pars Galliæ tertia est penes Bituriges summa imperii fuit; ii Regem Celtico dabant, Ambigatus is fuit,” etc. Then follows the account of his sending forth the Colonies under his sister’s sons Bellovesus and Sigovesus. Did the special sanctity of a sister’s son (see vol. ii. p. 368) extend to the Celts?
Footnote 404
Cæsar, B. G. vii. 18, 19. Merivale, Roman Empire, ii. 14.
Footnote 405
Livy, v. 35. “Senones recentissimi advenarum.” They alone seem to have been concerned in the taking of Rome.
Footnote 406
Roman de Rou, 9941;
“Cels de Perche è del Chartrain, Cels del boscage è cels del plain.”
Footnote 407
See vol. i. p. 189.
Footnote 408
See vol. i. p. 260.
Footnote 409
See Ord. Vit. 655 C. He gives Fulk Bishop of Amiens, the predecessor of Guy, as a third son of Drogo and Godgifu besides Walter and Ralph.
Footnote 410
Roman de Rou, 9948;
“Normanz manace, mult se vante K’il destruireit Evrecin, Rosmeis destruira è Lievin Tres k’à la mer chevalchera, E par Auge s’en reveindra.”
Footnote 411
Ord. Vit. 657 D. “Ego è contra non segnis processi, contra Regis mapalia per litus Sequanæ cum meis me semper opposui.” So Roman de Rou, 9965;
“L’altre ont li Dus od sei, Ki remaindrant cuntre li Rei.”
He then goes on with the catalogue.
Footnote 412
See vol. ii. p. 257.
Footnote 413
Ib. p. 260.
Footnote 414
Ib. p. 268.
Footnote 415
Roman de Rou, 9967;
“Venir fist cels de Beessin E li Barunz de Costentin.”
Footnote 416
See vol. ii. p. 258.
Footnote 417
See vol. ii. p. 290 et seqq.
Footnote 418
Roman de Rou, 9968;
“E cels del val de Moretoing E d’Avrenches ki est plus loing.”
Footnote 419
Ib. 9975;
“Mult prez sereit, ço dist, del Rei, Prez del Rei se herbergereit, E des forriers garde prendreit: N’ireient mie luing en forage, K’il ni’aient, s’il poet, damage. La viande fist tresturner De la ù li Reis dut passer: Li bestes fist as bois mener Et as vilains les fist garder.”
Footnote 420
Will. Malms. iii. 233. “Juxta Regis castra sensim obambulans, ... ut nec cominùs pugnandi copiam faceret, nec provinciam coram se vastari sineret.”
Footnote 421
Roman de Rou, 9960. “Et de Gornai li viel Huon.” Old indeed, as Mr. Taylor (Wace, 217) truly says, if he had found his bride at the court of King Pippin. Yet he lived to fight at Senlac. The name survives at Barrow Gurney in Somersetshire and elsewhere.
Footnote 422
See Taylor’s Wace, 171. De Crisp. Gen. Giles 342.
Footnote 423
See above, p. 129. To these four William of Poitiers adds Hugh of Montfort.
Footnote 424
Roman de Rou, 9983–9989. Cf. Benoît, 35325. William of Poitiers rather slurs this part over, in order to bring in the carnage of Mortemer at once.
Footnote 425
Benoît, 35339;
“Si ce fuissent genz Sarrazine, Ne fiessent teu descepline.”
Footnote 426
Roman de Rou, 10007. “Vilains pernent, fames porgiesent.” Benoît goes more into detail.
Footnote 427
Benoît, 35341;
“N’i espairnent à riens vivanz, N’as vielles genz ne as enfanz.”
Footnote 428
Roman de Rou, 9990;
“A Mortemer se herbergierent; Par l’aesement des ostelz.”
And again, 10010;
“Asez truverent biax ostelz.”
So Benoît, 35353;
“Mais la nuit aiment les deliz Des bons mangers e les bons liz.”
Footnote 429
Will. Gem. vii. 24. “In incendiis et mulierum ludibriis occupati.”
Footnote 430
Roman de Rou, 10031 (cf. Benoît, 35394 et seqq.);
“Tel kuide son cheval munter, Ki el frein ne poet assener, Tel kuide de l’ostel issir Ki à l’us ne poet avenir.”
Footnote 431
Roman de Rou, 10035;
“Normanz gardouent les iessues, E li trepas as chiefs des rues.”
So Benoît, 35404. He tells us (35399);
“E li mortel brait sunt si grant Que l’om n’i oïst Deu tonant.”
Compare Giovanni Villani’s (xii. 66. Murat. xiii. 948) description of the bombards at Crecy; “Che facieno si grande tremuoto e romore, che parea che Iddio tonasse.”
Footnote 432
Will. Gem. vii. 24. “Mane commissum bellum in continuâ cæde occumbentium ad usque nonam ab utrisque est protractis.” So Roman de Rou, 10039;
“Dez li matin soleil levant Tresk’a none del jur passant.”
The war “in hieme ante Quadragesimam” (Ord. Vit. 658 A).
Footnote 433
Roman de Rou, 10051;
“N’i out gaires si vil garçon Ki n’enmenast Franceiz prison, E bels destriers n’out dous u treis, Od tut l’altre menu herneis. N’out chartre en tute Normendie, Ki de Franceiz ne fust emplie.”
Footnote 434
“Equorum velocitate saluti consulunt,” says William of Poitiers (98), whose account is confused, and who seems anxious to pass off the surprise as a regular battle. Orderic (658 A) says “velocitate pedum viguerunt.” He also calls it “terribile prœlium,” &c., but I do not see that this contradicts Wace’s account, grounded on William of Jumièges.
Footnote 435
Roman de Rou, 10049, after recording the captivity of Guy;
“Maiz Valeran, sun frere, unt mort, Chevalier mult vaillant è fort.”
Footnote 436
Ord. Vit. 658 A. “Post duos annos hominium ab eo tali tenore recepi, ut exinde mihi semper fidelis exsisteret, et militare servitium, ubi jussissem, cum centum militibus mihi singulis annis exhiberet.”
Footnote 437
Ib. “Hominium enim jamdudum illi fecerat.”
Footnote 438
Ib. “In tali ergo necessitate pulcrum illi et competens servitium impendit, dum in castro suo illum triduo protexit et postea salvum ad sua perduxit.”
Footnote 439
Ord. Vit. 658 A. “Castrum tamen Mortui-maris, in quo inimicum meum salvavit, illi _jure, ut reor_ [it is curious to see the Conqueror on his defence], abstuli, sed Guillelmo de Guarennâ, consanguineo ejus, tironi legitimo, dedi.” All about William of Warren and his family will be found in Mr. Stapleton’s paper in the Archæological Journal, iii. 8, 14.
Footnote 440
Stapleton, Arch. Journal, p. 6.
Footnote 441
William of Warren and Roger of Mortemer were both descended from Herfast, a brother of the Duchess Gunnor. Will. Gem. viii. 37.
Footnote 442
See above, p. 86.
Footnote 443
For the famous answer of John Earl of Warren (a descendant of William in the female line) to the Commissioners “Quo Warranto” in Edward the First’s time, see Walter of Hemingburgh, ii. 6.
Footnote 444
Roman de Rou, 10063;
“Cele nuit méisme asez tost Vint la novele al Duc en l’ost.”
Footnote 445
Benoît gets eloquent on this head, and gives us (35469 et seqq.) a picture of William at his devotions; “ses mains jointes,” “od lermes de pieté.”
Footnote 446
Benoît, 35493;
“Logée fu en teu maniere Par son l’eve d’une riviere: E sor eus fu grant la faleise.”
Footnote 447
See vol. i. p. 514; ii. p. 199. That the messenger was Ralph of Toesny is affirmed by William of Jumièges (vii. 24), Orderic (658 B, where of course it is put into William’s own mouth), and Benoît (35479). William of Poitiers (99) says only “cautè instructum quemdam,” and Wace (10074) says expressly,
“Fist un home tost envéier, Ne sai varlet u esquier.”
Footnote 448
See Roman de Rou, 12718.
Footnote 449
See Orderic, 576 B, 687 D. On this Elizabeth or Isabel, see Palgrave, iv. 249, 259.
Footnote 450
Will. Gem. vii. 25.
Footnote 451
Ord. Vit. 813 D.
Footnote 452
William of Poitiers (99) and Wace (10077), who do not call the messenger Ralph of Toesny, make him mount a tree. Orderic does not mention his position, and William of Jumièges (vii. 24) and Benoît (35406) make him climb the high rock—“in quodam proximo monte,” according to William—already spoken of. To climb a tree was seemingly below the dignity of a descendant of Malahulc.
Footnote 453
William of Jumièges, followed by Benoît, makes Ralph say who he is, and describe the event of the battle at some length—at greater length of course in Benoît than in William. This, I think, quite takes away from the startling and spectral effect of the scene in Wace, 10077;
“En un arbre le fist munter, E tute nuit en haut crier: ‘Franceiz, Franceiz, levez, levez, Tenez vos veies, trop dormez; Alez vos amis enterrer, Ki sunt occiz à Mortemer.’ Li Reis oï ke cil cria Merveilla sei, mult s’esmaia.”
William of Poitiers says only, “Dux Willelmus nocte intempestâ cautè instructum quemdam direxit, qui tristem Regi victoriam propiùs castra ipsius ab alto arboris per singula inclamavit.” Orderic (658 B) is still shorter; “Per Radulfum de Toëniâ quæ trans Sequanam contigerant Regi Francorum mandavi.”
Footnote 454
So I understand Wace (10089);
“Endementres k’al Rei parloent, E de noveles demandoent, Eis vus la novele venue E par tute terre espandue, Ke tut li mielx de lor amiz Esteit à Mortemer occiz.”
He had just before said (10067);
“C’est une chose, ke novele, Ki mult est errant et isnele, E ki bone novele porte Séurement bute à la porte.”
So Will. Pict. 100. “Famâ referente, quæ tam falsi quam veri nuntia volat.” Compare Mr. Grote’s remarks and quotations on the φήμη. Hist. of Greece, v. 260.
Footnote 455
Will. Pict. 99. “Rex attonitus inopinato nuntio, procul omni cunctatione signo antelucano suos in fugam excitavit; summè necessarium ratus quàm maximâ celeritate Normanniæ finibus discedere.”
Footnote 456
Plutarch, Moralia, ii. 51 (ed. Tauchnitz) “Πρὸς δὲ τοὺς φέγοντας αὐτὸν ἐπὶ τῷ δι’ ἀπάτης πολλὰ πράσσειν, ὡς ἀνάξιον τοῦ Ἡρακλέους, ἔλεγεν [ὁ Λύσανδρος], Ὅπου μὴ ἐφικνεῖται ἡ λεοντῆ, προςραπτέον ἐκεῖ τὴν ἀλωπεκῆν.”
Footnote 457
See vol. ii. p. 261.
Footnote 458
Ib. p. 279.
Footnote 459
See above, p. 126.
Footnote 460
Will. Pict. 99. “Multa dehinc hostilia utrimque acta sunt, qualia præter belli conflictum inter tantos hostes fieri solent.”
Footnote 461
See vol. ii. pp. 203–205.
Footnote 462
Will. Gem. vii. 25. “Postea Dux contra Tegulense castrum, quod Rex illi dudum abstulerat, aliud oppidum non deterius, quod Bretolium usque hodie vocatur, instaurat.”
Footnote 463
Will. Gem. vii. 25. So Benoît, 35553, who takes the opportunity to give the life of William Fitz-Osbern at length.
Footnote 464
Roman de Rou, 10133;
“Maiz li herneiz unt tut lessié A cels ki l’orent gaaingnié.”
Footnote 465
Will. Pict. 99. “Ejus [Regis] vero assensu et quasi dono quodam Dux jure perpetuo retineret quod Gaufrido Andegavorum Comiti abstulerat, quodque valeret auferre.” Will. Malms. iii. 233. “Conventum ut ... Comes erepta vel eripienda Martello jure vendicaret legitimo.”
Footnote 466
See vol. ii. pp. 281–289.
Footnote 467
I see no reason to doubt that the present ruined tower is that taken by William in 1049.
Footnote 468
See vol. ii. p. 289. The fortification of Ambrières in 1049 is distinctly asserted in the passage of William of Jumièges there referred to; but William of Poitiers certainly speaks now as if the castle had to be built rather than merely to be strengthened.
Footnote 469
Will. Pict. 99. “In ipso conventu principes militiæ suæ jussu commonuit Dux _intra terminos Martelli Andegavensis_ ad Ambreras _construendas_ maturè adesse paratos.”
Footnote 470
Ib. “Et quem hujus incœpti diem eis ipse, eumdem Martello per legatos præfinivit.” The Archdeacon here bursts into a torrent of admiration. Compare William’s earlier challenge to Geoffrey. See vol. ii. p. 285.
Footnote 471
See below, p. 208 et seqq.
Footnote 472
Will. Pict. 99. “Cui tyrannus Martellus, ut erat elatus animo, grandia præsumere et loqui solitus, ‘Meum,’ inquit, ‘sicut vilis et pudendi domini, omninò abnuas dominium, si, patiente me, patrari videas quod metuis.’”
Footnote 473
Ib. 100. “Die præfinito, Cenomannicum solum ingressus, Normannorum rector, dum castrum, quod minatus est, erigit.”
Footnote 474
Cf. vol. i. p. 326; vol. ii. p. 398.
Footnote 475
Will. Pict. 100. “Quem [Gaufredum] ubi ampliùs opinione morari videt, et jam de cibariorum penuriâ plebeii pariter ac proceres conqueruntur, ne milite minùs prompto in futurum utatur, modò dimittere statuit, castro viris et alimoniis munito, jubens tamen ut, quum nuntium ejus acceperint, quantociùs eodem redeant cuncti.” Compare Harold’s orders in the Welsh war at about the same time, vol. ii. p. 394.
Footnote 476
Will. Pict. 100. “Exercitûs nostri mox divulgato discessu.”
Footnote 477
Ib. “Willelmo, Pictavorum Comite, Domino suo.” See vol. ii. p. 594.
Footnote 478
See above, p. 138.
Footnote 479
See above, p. 139.
Footnote 480
Will. Pict. 100. “Eudone, Britannorum Comite.” He was however rather Regent for his nephew. See Art de Vérifier les Dates, ii. 896.
Footnote 481
Will. Pict. u. s. “Missilia, saxa, libriles sudes, item lanceæ desuper feriunt. Iis plerique interemti cadunt, alii repelluntur. Sic, audaci molimine cassato, aliud incipiunt. Tentant murum ariete, qui percussus in virgâ castellanorum frangitur.”
Footnote 482
Ib. “Willelmus, omnis moræ impatiens, evocat exercitum, subventum ire quam maximè properat.”
Footnote 483
Will. Pict. 100. “Quem postquam inimici, tres adeò nominati Comites, adequitare percipiunt mirâ celeritate, ne dicam trepidâ fugâ, cum immanibus exercitibus dilabuntur.”
Footnote 484
Ib. “Victor Gaufredum Meduanensem ... intra exiguum tempus eousque compulit, ut in remotissimis Normanniæ partibus sibi manus perdomitas daret, fidelitatem quam satelles domino debet jurans.” William of Jumièges (vii. 27), followed by Wace (10189) and Benoît (35627), places here the conquest of Le Mans and the taking of Mayenne. The source of the confusion is obvious.
Footnote 485
See above, p. 164.
Footnote 486
See vol. ii. p. 286.
Footnote 487
On Roca Mabiliæ or Roche Mabille, see Stapleton, i. lxxiii.
Footnote 488
See above, p. 96.
Footnote 489
See above, p. 104.
Footnote 490
Will. Pict. 101. “Martellus Andegavensis, nondum tot sinistris casibus fractus, minimè defuit, quantum ullatenùs virium colligere potuit adducens. Vix enim hujus inimici odium et rabiem Normanniæ tellus penitus contusa vel excisa satiaret.” So Roman de Rou, 10271; “Par li cunseil Giffrei Martel.” So Benoît, 35855.
Footnote 491
Roman de Rou, 10272;
“Encuntre aost, el blé novel.”
Footnote 492
Will. Pict. 101. “Per Oximensem comitatum ad fluvium Divam pervenere.” So Will. Gem. vii. 28; Roman de Rou, 10278; Benoît, 35866.
Footnote 493
Roman de Rou, 10303;
“Li Roiz son ovre apareilla, Vers Baieues, ço dist, ira, Béessin tot essillera, E quant d’iluec repairera, Par Varaville passera, Auge è Lievin vastera.”
Footnote 494
Ib. 10289;
“Li Dus out sa gent à Faleise; Noveles out dont mult li peise, Tort li fet li Reis, ço li semble, Ses chevaliers mande et asemble, Ses castiaz fist tost enforcier, Fossez parer, murs redrecier. Li plain païs laira gaster, S’il ses castiax puet bien garder. Bien porra, ço dit, recovrer, Et as plaines terres amender.”
Footnote 495
See above, p. 117.
Footnote 496
Roman de Rou, 10313;
“Encore ert Caem sanz chastel, N’i aveit fet mur ne quesnel.”
Footnote 497
See vol. i. p. 243.
Footnote 498
Wace alone (Roman de Rou, 10319 et al.) speaks, throughout his narrative, of a bridge. All the other writers (Will. Pict. 101; Will. Gem. vii. 28; Will. Malms. iii. 234; Benoît, 35899) speak only of a ford—“vadum Divæ”—or, as Benoît calls it,
“As guez où la grant mer parfonde C’estent e espant e sorunde.”
This is plainly one of Benoît’s exaggerations. The spot is perfectly well marked by the causeway mentioned by Wace (10351), which is still in use, and leads to the present bridge over the tidal stream. The two accounts may be easily reconciled, if we suppose that a bridge was first thrown across between the time of the battle and the time of Wace, and that Wace naturally described the place as it was in his own time. Benoît is therefore, for once, more accurate in his narrative than Wace; but his accuracy is quite accidental; Benoît simply dressed up the tale as he found it in the Latin writers; Wace, as ever, used his own powers of local observation.
Footnote 499
Roman de Rou, 10405;
“Munté fu de suz Basteborc, Vit Varavile è vit Caborc, Vit les marez, vit les valées De plusors païs lunges è lées.”
Wace alone mentions the names Varaville and Bastebourg. I visited the battle-field in May 1868 in company with my friend M. Le Gost of Caen, and I can, as at Val-ès-Dunes and everywhere else, bear witness to the accuracy of Wace’s local description.
Footnote 500
Will. Pict. 101. “Nam, dum ad vadum Divæ morarentur, supervenit ipse alacer cum exiguâ manu virorum felici horâ.”
Footnote 501
Will. Gem. vii. 28. “Quod [vadum] Rege transeunte, media exercitûs pars substitit, mare eructuante, ob redundationem fluminis non valens transmeare.” So Benoit, 35904. This explains the “morarentur” of William of Poitiers, who himself says afterwards (102), “Ne vero jure sæviens [Willelmi] gladius in adversam ripam insequeretur, rheuma maris obstabat alveum Divæ insuperabili mole occupantis.”
Footnote 502
Roman de Rou, 10345;
“La véissiez fiere medlée, Mainte colp de lance è maint d’espée; Des lances fierent chevaliers, _Et o les ars traient archiers_.”
Footnote 503
Ib. 10357;
“Mult lor anuie la cauchie, K’il truvent lunge et empirie.”
Footnote 504
Roman de Rou, 10377;
“Mult véssiez herneiz floter, Homes plungier et affondrer.”
Cf. Virg. Æn. i. 100;
“Ubi tot Simoeis correpta sub undis Scuta virôm galeasque et fortia corpora volvit.”
Wace, it must be remembered, conceiving the bridge to have been there, attributes to its breaking what was really owing to the coming in of the tide.
Footnote 505
Roman de Rou, 10410;
“Vit sa grant gent ki a duil vait, Prendre vit les uns è loier, Li altres vit en mer néier; Ciax ki neient ne pot secorre, Ne les prisons ne puet rescorre.”
Footnote 506
Roman de Rou, 10415;
“De mautalent soufle è suspire, De pesance ne set ke dire; Mult véissiez sun cors desfrire; E sun viaire taindre d’ire. Volentiers, ço dist, retornast S’il arière passer kuidast, Si les barnages li loast, Maiz nus ne loe k’il i past.”
Footnote 507
Will. Gem. vii. 28. “Amicitiam quoque Ducis, consideratâ ejus probitate, requisivit, et Tegulense castrum, quod dudum abstulerat, illi tradidit.”
Footnote 508
Ib. “Caussâ corporeæ salutis a Johanne medicorum peritissimo potionem accepit. Sed, veneno nimiam sitim inferente, jussum archiatri sprevit et a cubiculario potum accipiens dum medicus abesset, ante purgationem bibit. Unde nimis infirmatus, eodem die post perceptionem sacræ eucharistiæ obiit.”
Footnote 509
See vol. i. p. 507.
Footnote 510
Will. Gem. vii. 28. “Mathildem, Juliusclodii Regis Rugorum filiam, in matrimonio habuit.” So the fragment in Duchèsne, iv. 150. But her name was Anne, and William of Jumièges has confounded her with a former wife Matilda. See Duchèsne, iv. 153. Chron. S. Maxent. 1050 (Labbé, ii. 209). “Ainricus Rex Francorum duxit uxorem Scythicam et Rusam.” On this marriage see more at length Karamsin, Histoire de Russie, ii. 38. 404.
Footnote 511
Anne, daughter of Rômanos and Theophanô and sister of Basil the Second, married Vladimir of Russia. See Ducange, Hist. Byz. 144.
Footnote 512
Const. Porph. de Cerem. i. 96, and the commentary of Reiske, vol. ii. p. 450, ed. Bonn. Finlay, Byz. Emp. i. 238, 272.
Footnote 513
He was crowned at Pentecost 1059. Chron. Rem. ap. Labbé, i. 360, and the fragment in Duchèsne, iv. 150.
Footnote 514
See above, p. 82.
Footnote 515
Will. Pict. 90. “Monarchia post Franciæ, cum puero monarchâ, ipsius, consiliosissimi viri, tutelæ, _dictaturæ_, atque administrationi cessit.” Ord. Vit. 480 D. “Balduino Flandrensium Duci puerum cum regno ad tutandum commendavit.” Will. Gem. vii. 28. “Philippum filium suum in regimine Francorum hæredem constituit, et tutelæ Balduini Flandrensis Satrapæ commendavit.” Will. Malms. ii. 188. “Defuncto Rege Henrico, qui Philippum parvum reliquerat filium, regnum Francorum nobiliter aliquantis annis rexit, fideliterque adulto (nam ejus amitam uxorem habebat) restituit.” Ann. Elnonenses Minores (Pertz, v. 20), 1061. “Henricus Rex obiit, et Balduinus Comes Flandriæ, quasi _Interrex_ in regno judicat, salvâ fidelitate Philippi pueri Regis. Huic verò magnum decus intervenit gloriæ. Nam Comes Tietbaldus, Andegavensis Comes, et omnes Galliæ optimates, salvâ fide Philippi Regis, juraverunt fidelitatem et honorem regni. Quod autem regni erat, sapienter et honestè disponebat.” The Chronicle of the Counts of Flanders (Corp. Chron. Flandr. i. 86) adds, to nearly the same account, that it was done “salvâ tamen fidelitate Philippi pueri, si viveret. Si autem non, ipse Balduinus Comes Rex existeret, ut pote justus hæres per Athelam uxorem Regis Henrici sororem.” Ann. Blandinienses (Pertz, v. 26), 1061. “Baldwinus Marchisus regni Francorum _magistratus_ efficitur.” The variety of words used to express Baldwin’s functions is remarkable. A regency was something new.
Footnote 516
Chron. S. Maxent. 1057. “Eodem anno civitas Namnetica Gaufredo Comiti ab Hoel Comite reddita est, qui non bonâ usus fide auferre eam illi tentavit.”
Footnote 517
Chron. S. Maxent. 1058. “Willermus, qui et Petrus, cognomento Acer, adunato exercitu vallavit castrum Salmurum simul et Gaufredum Martellum inclusit in eo.”
Footnote 518
Ib. “Ubi inhiando dum aptaret ad bellum exercitum, dolore dysenteriæ morbis percussus reversus est infirmus. Ex quâ infirmitate mortuus est relinquens terrenum _regnum_.” Directly after we read, “Successit in _regno_ Gosfredus.” So that “regnum” in the former entry is not a mere figure of speech, strange as is the application of the word to the dominions of a Duke of Aquitaine.
Footnote 519
Ib. 1060. “Monachali habitu priùs suscepto ab Airaudo abbate Sancti Nicolai.” So Chron. And. ap. Labbé, i. 287. Fulk. ap. D’Achery, ii. 233.
Footnote 520
Ord. Vit. 532 B. Chron. S. Maxent. 1060. Gest. Cons. 258.
Footnote 521
See vol. ii. pp. 40, 430, 635–637.
Footnote 522
See vol. ii. pp. 636, 637.
Footnote 523
See above, p. 139.
Footnote 524
Chron. S. Maxent. 1061–1062 (Labbé, ii. 210). The war with Anjou rose out of the old question about Saintogne. The Spanish expedition is thus described; “Inde [from Saintes after its surrender by the Angevins] abiens in Hispaniam cum multis Normannis, Barbastam civitatem nomini Christiano, cunctis qui in eâ erant priùs perditis, adquisivit.”
Footnote 525
Gest. Cons. c. 10 (ap. D’Achery, iii. 258). The abbey had hitherto remained in the patronage of the King, a position quite different from that of the Norman and Aquitanian Prelates. See vol. ii. p. 209. This illustrates the inferior position of the Counts of Anjou, as originally holders under the Duchy of France.
Footnote 526
Gest. Cons. c. 11. p. 259, and Fulk’s own story in p. 238.
Footnote 527
William of Poitiers (102) says of him, as compared with his uncle; “Nomine proprio idem, probitate absimilis ei, cœlestem regem timere, et pro comparando externo honore bona actitare cœpit.” Ord. Vit. 532 C. “Goisfredus, qui simplex et tractabilis moribus erat.”
Footnote 528
See vol. ii. p. 169.
Footnote 529
See vol. ii. p. 413.
Footnote 530
Will. Gem. vii. 29. “Tunc quibusdam maledicis vicinos comparesque suos accusantibus ex invidiâ, Dux Willelmus exasperatus ingenti furiâ Barones suos, scilicet Rodulfum de Toeniâ, Hugonem de Grentemaisnilio, et Ernaldum Willelmi Geroiani filium ejecit de Normanniâ.” Ord. Vit. 481 A. He tells us how the chief men “cupiditate furente unus alium supplantare conabatur.” He specially mentions the agency of Roger and Mabel, who “exortâ simultate gaudebant et blandis adulationibus sibi Ducem alliciebant.” He goes on to say that “animosus Dux plus æquo iræ frena relaxans præcipuos milites ... sine probabilibus culpis diu exsulare coegit.”
Footnote 531
See above, p. 159.
Footnote 532
See vol. ii. p. 232.
Footnote 533
Orderic tells this story twice with slight differences. The first time (464 D) he makes Robert’s death happen while he is besieged by the Duke; “Pomo venenato, quod conjugi suæ vi rapuerat, comesto post quinque dies mortuus est.” The second time (478 C) he tells the story as I have given it in the text, but without any mention of the siege, and with the important addition “uxore contradicente comedit.” The important point of course is how far Adelaide, and how far through her her kinsman the Duke, contemplated the death of Robert or of any one else.
Footnote 534
Ord. Vit. 481 D.
Footnote 535
Ib. 485 A.
Footnote 536
Orderic tells the tale at length, 488, 489.
Footnote 537
See vol. ii. p. 234. See Will. Gem. vii. 29. Orderic has much to say about the matter. Some readers may perhaps think that the story, as told by him in p. 479, hardly bears out his own statement in p. 481 B, that he was “falsò accusatus.” The Duke is said to have designed his mutilation in some way (“damna membrorum inferre”), on which, at the advice of Hugh Bishop of Lisieux, he took to flight. I confess to putting more confidence in the Duke than in the Abbot.
Footnote 538
Will. Gem. vii. 29. “Sine reatu et judicio synodi de Normanniâ expulit.”
Footnote 539
Ib. “Quia de audaci Geroicorum prosapiâ prodierat.”
Footnote 540
Bessin. Conc. Rot. Prov. 48. Pommeraye, 72. “Ut quotidie serò signi pulsu ad preces Deo fundendas quisque invitaretur, atque occlusis foribus domorum ultra vagari ampliùs vetitum admoneretur.” Cf. Palgrave, iii. 274. The reason given by the commentator is “ut furtis nocturnis caveretur.” The Fathers of this Synod are overflowing in their loyalty to their Duke, “qui quantâlibet locorum intercapedine a se invicem dissiti essent, quasi urbis unius concives sub Principe suo, non secus ac sub amantissimo patre-familias victuros invicem spoponderunt.”
Footnote 541
As usual, the Gaulish name of the tribe appears in slightly different forms in the present names of the city and of the county. The original name of the city, which does not appear in Cæsar, was Subdinnum. See Dict. Geog. art. Cenomani.
Footnote 542
Livy, v. 35. Polyb. ii. 17, 32. The Greek form is Γονομάνοι.
Footnote 543
Polyb. ii. 23–24.
Footnote 544
Cæs. Bell. Gall. vii. 75. They appear as “Aulerci Cenomani.” The name Aulerci is common to them with several other tribes.
Footnote 545
The legend of Saint Julian is given at length in the Acts of the Bishops of Le Mans, in Mabillon’s Vetera Analecta, iii. 50–59. On this, and on Cenomannian legend generally, I would refer to “Les Cenomans Anciens et Modernes” by the Abbé Voisin (Paris and Le Mans 1852). But the good Abbé’s faith is strong and his criticism is weak.
Footnote 546
On the Defensores Civitatum see the legislation in the Code, lib. i. tit. 55. (From Valentinian and Valens in 365 to Theodosius and Valentinian in 441.) But a more remarkable mention of the Defensor occurs in the Veteres Formulæ Andegavenses in Mabillon, Vet. An. iv. 234. I leave the passage in the Latin of King Childebert; “Cum juxta consuetudinem Andicavis civetate, curia puplica resederet in foro, ibique vir magnificus illi prosecutor dixit: Rogo te, vir laudabilis illi Defensor, illi Curator, illi Magister militum, vel reliquum curia puplica, utique obticis puplicis patere jobeatis, quia habeo quid apud acta prosevere debiam. Defensor principalis simul et omnis Curia puplica dixerunt: Patent tibi cotecis puplici, prosequere quæ optas.” What was law at Angers was not unlikely to be law at Le Mans.
Footnote 547
We shall come in my next volume to the “Conspiratio quam communionem vocabant” in the days of Bishop Arnold. Vet. Ann. iii. *315.
Footnote 548
See the “Dissertation sur les Incursions Normandes dans Le Maine,” by M. Lestang (Le Mans 1855).
Footnote 549
Local tradition places no less a person than the famous Roland among the local heroes. See Voisin, i. 271. This falls in with his description in Eginhard, Vita Car. c. ix., as “Hruodlandus Brittannici limitis præfectus.”
Footnote 550
See vol. i. pp. 199, 200.
Footnote 551
Flod. 924. “Nortmanni cum Francis pacem ineunt sacramentis per Hugonem et Heribertum Comites, Seulfum quoque Archiepiscopum; absente Rege Rodulfo, ejus tamen consensu, terra illis aucta, Cinomannis et Baiocæ pacto pacis eis concessæ.” This grant is doubtless alluded to by William of Poitiers when he says (p. 104), “Nam et olim egit sub Normannorum Ducum ditione regio Cenomanica.”
Footnote 552
Flod. 924. “Rex [Rodulfus] ... Heriberto denique Peronam, et Hugoni filio Rotberti Cinomannis dedit.”
Footnote 553
See the note of Pertz, iii. 623, on Richer, iii. 77. The invasion of Otto (see vol. i. p. 265) and the exploits of Geoffrey (see vol. ii. pp. 274, 591) are transferred to the reign of Robert, “Robertus filius Ducis”—a confusion, one would almost think, between Robert the son of Hugh Capet and the elder Robert the son of Robert the Strong.
Footnote 554
M. Voisin (i. 332 et seq.) makes his Hugh-David reign from 922 to 970, when he is succeeded by Hugh the Second, father of Herbert Wake-the-Dog. The Art de Vérifier les Dates (ii. 830) seems to know only one Hugh, who begins to reign 955 “ou environ.” Hugh the father of Herbert is perfectly well ascertained, the only question is whether he is the same as the Hugh and the Hugh-David whose charters are printed by M. Voisin (i. 341). A Count David appears in Robert de Monte (Pertz, vi. 518) as a rebel against King Robert, in punishment for which rebellion, “dedit Rex Gaufrido Grisagonella homagium illus, et ipsam civitatem, et quidquid habebat in episcopatu Cenomannensi.” This is of course the same story that we have just had before. As the Counts of the tenth century do not immediately concern my subject, I do not feel called on to decide between the disagreeing doctors, ancient or modern.
Footnote 555
He was probably married; at least there was a personage in his house whom the Biographer of the Bishops (Vet. An. iii. *298), sarcastically perhaps rather than reverentially, speaks of as “Episcopissa.” He is also charged with fraudulently suppressing a college of Canons, in order to enrich his children with their possessions.
Footnote 556
Vet. An. iii. *297. “Venit ad Burgardum Vindocinensem Comitem,” then follows the list of the property alienated to the Count, but I do not find any account of this matter in the life of Burchard in Duchèsne, iv. 116.
Footnote 557
Ord. Vit. 532 B. Herbert is introduced “post mortem Hugonis patris sui quem Fulko senior sibi violenter subjugârat.”
Footnote 558
See the story in Will. Gem. v. 10.
Footnote 559
Vet. An. iii. *299. “Sepulto Segenfrido ... domnus Avesgaudus nepos ipsius sedem episcopalem suscepit.” The elder William of Belesme was his brother. Like Archbishop Malger (see above, p. 94), he was fond of hunting, and, as a punishment for his breach of canonical rule, he had a fall from his horse, which damaged his nose for life. We have however heard something (see vol. ii. p. 139) of his good works in the way of building.
Footnote 560
See vol. ii. pp. 230, 231.
Footnote 561
Vet. An. iii. *300. “Constituit castellum, nomine Firmitatem, super fluvium Idoneæ ut esset ibi in refugium.”
Footnote 562
Ib. “Habuit [comes] Alanum fortissimum Comitem Britannorum sibi in adjutorium, et venit ad castellum, et obsedit illud. Ex unâ enim parte vallaverunt illud Britanni, ex alterâ Cenomannici.”
Footnote 563
Fulbert, we are told (Vet. An. u. s.; see vol. i. p. 488), “tunc temporis sapientiâ et sanctitate inter Galliarum Episcopos, velut Lucifer inter cetera astra cœli, resplendebat.” Fulbert is to excommunicate him “auctoritate divinâ, nisi resipisceret.” Fulbert’s divine authority seems to have reached beyond his own diocese. He wrote a letter “sale satis conditam,” and afterwards sat in judgement in person between the Count and the Bishop in the city of Le Mans. Mabillon seems to identify the letter with the one which is printed in Duchèsne, iv. 173, denouncing the crimes of “Præcursor Antichristi Herbertus Comes Cenomanis” and denouncing excommunication against him. But this letter is addressed to Ebalus, who, in p. 181, appears as Archbishop, not, as one would have expected, of Tours, but of Rheims.
Footnote 564
See vol. ii. p. 280. Orderic (532 A) thinks it necessary to apologize for the name; “Vulgò, sed parum Latine, cognominari _Evigilans-Canem_ pro ingenti probitate promeruit.” Geoffrey’s title of Martel seems to be the only name of the kind in this generation which is used familiarly and without scruple.
Footnote 565
Ord. Vit. 532 A. “In eumdem [Fulconem] arma levans nocturnas expeditiones crebrò agebat, et Andegavenses homines et canes in ipsâ urbe, vel in munitioribus oppidis terrebat, et horrendis assultibus pavidos vigilare cogebat.” Yet elsewhere (487 C) he tells us, “Vulgò _Evigilans-canem_ cognominabatur, propter gravissimas infestationes, quas à perfidis affinibus suis Andegavensibus incessanter patiebatur.”
Footnote 566
See vol. ii. p. 274.
Footnote 567
See Count Fulk in D’Achery, iii. 233, and Gest. Cons. ib. 353. Herbert is “miles acerrimus,” and his Cenomannian soldiers deal “ferocissimos ictus.”
Footnote 568
See vol. ii. pp. 276, 278.
Footnote 569
Will. Pict. 103. “Ut enim alia plurima omittam, novissimè nostrâ memoriâ Fulco Andegavensis Herbertum Cenomannicum majorem Santonas illexit, sponsione urbis ipsius. Ibi, vinctum in medio colloquio, ad pactiones, quas avarè concupierat, carcere ac tormentis coëgit.” So William of Malmesbury (iii. 235), who seems to think this act the only stain on the otherwise perfect character of Fulk; “Unum omnino est quo eum notari audierim, Sanctonas sponsione urbis illectum, in medio colloquio ab apparitoribus arctari, et quibus placuit conditionibus irretiri fecit. Cætera sanctus et integer,” &c. The length of the imprisonment comes from the fragment in Duchèsne, iv. 81; “Tunc Comes Fulco supradictus dolo accersitum secum adduxit Sanctonas Arbertum nobilissimum Comitem Cenomannis, et primâ quadragesimæ dominicâ post cœnam nocte intempestâ eum traditione cepit, et in vinculis secum duxit, tenuitque in carcere biennio. Unde eripere eum Dominus dignatus est. Sequenti anno propter ipsum scelus combusta est ipsa civitas [Saintes?] cum sede episcopali, et dein mansit deserta basilica.”
Footnote 570
Ord. Vit. 487 D, 655 C. See vol. i. p. 584; ii. p. 130.
Footnote 571
Vet. An. iii. *304. “Herbertus Comes, cognomine Bacco, avunculus Herberti, qui fuit temporibus Avesgaudi episcopi.”
Footnote 572
Ib. “Sedem Avesgaudi avunculi sui gaudenter suscepit.” The succession to the see of Le Mans had come to follow much the same law as the succession to the see of Czetinje.
Footnote 573
Herbert Bacco kept him out of the Bishoprick for two years. Vet. An. u. s.
Footnote 574
Compare the relations of Normandy to the Capetian Kings, vol. i. p. 272.
Footnote 575
See vol. ii. p. 209.
Footnote 576
Vet. An. iii. 305*. “Videns vero Præsul suum episcopatum nec per Regem nec per seipsum à Baccone posse defendi, petivit quiddam à, Rege Henrico, quod utinam non petiisset, scilicet ut daret episcopatum Gaufrido Andegavorum Comiti, solummodò dum viveret, ut liberiùs à, Comite Cenomannico illum defenderet, illo etenim mortuo in regiam manum rediret.” The somewhat startling phrase of the grant of the Bishoprick to the Count of Anjou (even though the Count of Anjou was an hereditary Canon of Saint Martin’s at Tours) can only mean the grant of the lay rights and duties of _Advocatio_.
Footnote 577
Ib. 306*. “Consilium iniit cum parochianis et heroibus terræ.” “Heros” was a favourite word with Orderic, but this biographer seems to use it as if it were a sort of standing title of the citizens of Le Mans. Several Spanish cities, I believe,are officially styled “heroic,” like “fidelis civitas” and the like among ourselves.
Footnote 578
Ord. Vit. 532 B.
Footnote 579
See vol. ii. p. 195. The writer in Vet. An. iii. 306 calls her “nobilissima femina” and “uxor fortissima.”
Footnote 580
Vet. An. iii. 306*. “Sperans se pro hoc castrum Lit habiturum. Sed nihil ei profecit, quia illud bene custodierunt milites castellani.” Yet we had just before read how “Gaufridus castellum Lit igne cremavit.”
Footnote 581
Labbé and Cossart, Conc. ix. 1042.
Footnote 582
Vet. An. iii. 307*. “Cives verò Cenomannici uxorem Hugonis cum infantibus plorantem per unam portam projecerunt, et Gaufridum Comitem gaudentem intrare fecerunt.”
Footnote 583
Ib. “Quum autem audiisset præsul Gervasius in vinculis quæ fecissent _heroes Cenomannici_ [see last page; it can hardly be satire] vitæ diffidens, non habuit aliquam spem ultra vivendi; venit Annolit, castellum Lit reddidit. Dum hæc agerentur, Comes Gaufridus Gervasium de carcere exire permisit, tali videlicet sacramento, ut quamdiu ipse Gaufridus adviveret, intra civitatem Cenomannicam Gervasius non intraret.”
Footnote 584
Ib. “Quum verò videret præsul quod neque in urbem neque in castellum suum posset intrare, abiit ad Willelmum Normanniæ Comitem, ac quidquid ei Gaufridus fecit vel quomodò eum tradidit, illi mœrens rettulit.”
Footnote 585
Chron. Rem. 1059. Labbé, i. 360. See above, p. 178.
Footnote 586
I am here following the Norman accounts; the Angevin version in the Gesta Consulum is very different. We there read (D’Achery, iii. 258), “In diebus illis Willelmus Dux Normannorum Herbertum Cenomannicum Consulem nimis impugnabat, cui Martellus auxiliator et tutor fuit, et idcirco Willelmus Dux, qui postea Angliâ acquisitâ Rex Anglorum exstitit, multa à Martello mala perpessus est.”
Footnote 587
This German sojourn is mentioned incidentally by William of Poitiers (105), where Herbert’s sister, afterwards to be spoken of, is brought “ex partibus Teutonum.”
Footnote 588
Vet. An. iii. *315. “Erat autem uxor ejusdem Marchisii Gersendis nomine, filia Herberti Cenomannorum illustrissimi Comitis, qui vocatus est Evigila-canem: quæ primò quidem Theobaldo Duci Campaniæ in matrimonium tradita, sed ab eo, repudio interveniente, discedens, præfati Athonis postmodum fuerat copulata conjugio.” See also Ord. Vit. 532 B.
Footnote 589
See above, p. 89. Yet a fairer ground of consanguinity than usual might have been alleged.
Footnote 590
See the life of Albert Azo in Gibbon’s Miscellaneous Works, iii. 409. We shall hear of him again at Le Mans.
Footnote 591
Ord. Vit. 532 B. “Tertia vero Johanni Domino castri quod Flecchia dicitur nupsit, quæ marito suo tres liberos, Goisbertum, Heliam et Enoch peperit.” Helias will hardly come within the limits of my central history, but he was a memorable man in the days of William Rufus.
Footnote 592
William of Poitiers calls Margaret the daughter of Herbert (103), but he afterwards (105) corrects the mistake and calls her “germana.” It is plain from Orderic (u. s.) that she was the daughter of Hugh and sister of Herbert. Benoît (35790) erroneously makes her only his half-sister;
“Herbert aveit une soror Devers sa mere; esteit Tieise.”
The “Tieise” comes from some misunderstanding of the “Teutonum partes” in William of Poitiers. William has much to say about her virtues and early death; “Hæc generosa virgo, nomine Margarita, insigni specie, decentior fuit omni margaritâ.” This seems to be an earlier use of the name than I had thought in vol. i. p. 522, as this Margaret could hardly have been called after the daughter of the Ætheling Eadward.
Footnote 593
See above, p. 169.
Footnote 594
See vol. ii. p. 180.
Footnote 595
Will. Pict. 103. “Hugo ... Gaufredi tyrannide metuens omnino deleri, Normanniæ Ducem Willelmum, sub quo tutus foret, supplex adiit, manibus ei sese dedit, cuncta sua ab eo, ut miles a domino, recepit.” Ord. Vit. 487 C. “Præfatus nimirum juvenis, post obitum Herberti senioris patris [it should of course be Hugh] ... consilio matris suæ se suumque patrimonium fortissimo Duci Normannorum commendaverat.” This is an excellent example of the process of _commendation_ described in vol. i. p. 129.
Footnote 596
See above, p. 188.
Footnote 597
Will. Pict. 103. “Cunctorum singulariter eum statuens heredem si non gigneret alium.”
Footnote 598
Ib. “Præterea ut conjunctiùs attingeret tantum virum ipse et posteritas ipsius Ducis, ei filia [see above, p. 197] petita atque pacta est.” Ord. Vit. 532 B. “Alia, nomine Margarita, Rodberto filio Guillelmi Ducis Neustriæ desponsata est.” And again (487 C); “Margaritam sororem suam Rodberto ejusdem Ducis filio in conjugium dederat, cum quâ hereditatem suam, comitatum scilicet Cenomanensem, si sine liberis obiret, concesserat.”
Footnote 599
Will. Pict. 105. “Germanam Hereberti ... nato suo conjugare decrevit [Willelmus], ut per eam ipse et progeniti ex ipso, jure quod nullâ controversiâ convelli posset vel infirmari, Hereberti hæreditatem possiderent sororius et nepotes.”
Footnote 600
Ib. 103. “Ne quærerent alium, præter quem ipse dominum eis, hæredem sibi, relinqueret. Cui si volentes pareant, leve servitium toleraturos fore, si vi subacti, forsitan grave.” See vol. ii. p. 169.
Footnote 601
Ord. Vit. 487 D. “Quia Normannicum jugum his quibus imminet gravissimum est, subire nimis formidabant.”
Footnote 602
Ord. Vit. 487 D. “Walterius ... totum comitatum Cenomanensem calumniabatur, et ex parte possidebat. Nam ipsam urbem, quæ caput est provinciæ, Goisfridus de Meduanâ et Hubertus de Sanctâ Susannâ, aliique potentes in fidelitate Walterii acriter tenebant.” William of Poitiers says only (104), “At homines malefidi Galterium Medantinum Comitem, cui soror Hugonis nupserat, receperunt invasorem desertores.” But he presently mentions Geoffrey of Mayenne. On Geoffrey, see above, p. 167.
Footnote 603
He was a native of Vendôme, who had been a knight (“miles quidam primùm”), then a monk of Marmoutiers. He became Prior, and was “Prior bonus, ædificator nimis.” Geoffrey Martel then removed him to Angers, and made him Abbot of Saint Sergius and Bacchus, a decaying monastery, which he restored (“destructum valdéque redactum ad nihilum, magnum ex novo constituit”). None of his work remains there. He was then chosen Bishop of Le Mans by the clergy and people under a _congé d’elire_ and letter missive from Count Geoffrey (“Gaufridus ... congregavit populum terræ suæ et omnem clerum, ut Cenomannensi ecclesiæ eligerent Episcopum.” Vet. An. iii. *311). It will be remembered that the Count of Anjou had stepped into the position of the King with regard to the Bishoprick. See above, p. 193.
Footnote 604
Vet. Ann. iii. 312*. “Quamvis pauperior et humilior antecessoribus Episcopis fuerit, tamen majora opera exercere tentavit. Quinto namque ordinationis suæ anno fundamenta matris ecclesiæ ampliora quam fuerant inchoavit, sed morte inopinâ superveniente perficere non potuit.” It illustrates the character of Vulgrin that this is the only event of the year 1063 that the episcopal chronicler finds to record. The conquest of Maine by William is mentioned only incidentally in the life of the next Bishop, p. 314*.
Footnote 605
See above, p. 183.
Footnote 606
Ib.
Footnote 607
Will. Pict. 104. “Incendium confestim injicere, aut urbem totam exscindere, ausos iniqua trucidare, quantùm ingenio abundavit et viribus, potuisset. Sed hominum sanguini, quamquam nocentissimo, parcere maluit solita illa temperantia.”
Footnote 608
Ib. “Maluit ... validissimam urbem relinquere incolumem, _caput atque munimentum terræ_ quam in manu habebat.”
Footnote 609
This seems to be taken for granted throughout the story, and it is implied in such expressions as that just quoted and others elsewhere. William of Jumièges, in his shorter account (vii. 27), which, it will be remembered (see at p. 169), is put out of place, speaks in the same way; “Ad urbem Cenomannicam per aliquot annos arma convertit ... Ad postremum victi Cenomanni, jam castellis per cunctum comitatum subactis, dextras Duci dederant.”
Footnote 610
Will. Pict. 104. “Cenomannici ... anxii trepidique ... accito sæpiùs Gaufredo, quem præses eorum Galterius dominum sibi ac tutorem præfecit, prœlio decernere minati sunt nonnumquam, sed ausi numquam.”
Footnote 611
Will. Pict. 104. “Præsidia, ubi res postulavit, imponens.”
Footnote 612
Ib. “Perdomitis tandem castellis jam per totum comitatum subactis, reddunt civitatem prævalenti.”
Footnote 613
We have seen (see above, p. 201) that Vulgrin began to rebuild the church in the fifth year of his episcopate, that is this very year 1063. The only question is whether any part of his work still exists. I will not enlarge on this purely architectural question, but will simply refer to the account in the Vetera Analecta. The expression in p. *313 might imply that the next Bishop Arnold destroyed every trace of what Vulgrin began; but, as (p. 314*) it appears that Arnold’s own work was confined to the choir and transepts, it is possible that Vulgrin’s nave (or possibly a still earlier nave) may have survived. The western portal of the church has a very ancient look.
Footnote 614
William of Poitiers (104) becomes eloquent on the “_joyeuse entrée_.” Of the ecclesiastical part of the ceremony he tells us, “Templa summoperè, quemadmodùm processiones, adornata effulgent, redolent thymiamata, resonant sacra cantica.” So Orderic (488 A), with a curious confusion between Bishop Vulgrin and his successor; “Cœnomannicam urbem, civibus ultro sese dedentibus, cum ingenti tripudio recepit, eique Domnus Ernaldus, ejusdem urbis Præsul cum clericis et monachis revestitis textus crucesque ferentibus honorabiliter obviam processit.” Of the laity William tells us, “Studium est summis, mediis, infimis, placare infensum. Occurrunt, clamant dominum suum, procidunt et inclinantur ejus dignitati; fingunt hilares vultus, lætas voces, plausus congratulantes.”
Footnote 615
See the story of Bishop Hildebert, Vet. An. iii. 308.
Footnote 616
The building of the castle seems implied in Will. Pict. 104–105; “Victori sufficiens pœna fuit perdomitos in potestatem suam venisse, et urbis firmamentum suâ in reliquum custodiâ occupari.” So Roman de Rou, 10211;
“Et il fist cax è pierre atraire; Illoec fist une tur faire.”
This castle, “regia turris,” must be distinguished from the buildings spoken of by William of Jumièges (vii. 27) and Benoît (35735); “In quorum medio ad domandum eorum insolentiam, duo municipia (“deus chasteaus” in Benoît) in Ponte Barbato, seu Barbello, stabilivit suisque militibus custodienda commisit.” Orderic (773 A) expressly distinguishes them; “Regia turris [elsewhere “turris principalis, turris Cenomannica”], et Mons-Barbatus atque Barbatulus, Regi [Guillelmo Rufo] subjiciuntur, et meritò, quia à patre ejus condita noscuntur.”
Footnote 617
The conquest of Maine is recorded in a Latin entry in our own Peterborough Chronicle, 1062; “Hoc anno subjugata est Cynomannia Comiti Normanniæ Willielmo.”
Footnote 618
Will. Pict. 105. “Voluntariè Gualterus deditioni consensit, ne, invasa protegens, hæreditaria amitteret. Clades a Normannis illata vicinitati Medanti et Calvimontis metum ei faciebat de majori.”
Footnote 619
The direct charge against William is found only, as far as I know, in the harangue which Orderic puts into the mouths of the conspirators at the bride-ale of 1076 (534 B); “Gualterium Pontesii Comitem, Eduardi Regis nepotem, cum Biotâ uxore suâ, Falesiæ hospitavit, et nefariâ potione simul ambos unâ nocte peremit.” This one would suppose to be after the surrender of Le Mans. But in the account which Orderic elsewhere gives in his own person, William is not distinctly accused, and the death of Walter and Biota is made to happen while the war is going on (487 D); “Dum magnanimus Dux frequenti expeditione rebelles impeteret ... prædictus Comes Walterius et Biota conjux ejus per inimicorum machinamenta simul, ut ferunt, letali veneno fraudulenter infecti obierunt. Quibus defunctis, securior Dux ... rebelles expetiit.” But it is plain from the narrative of William of Poitiers that Walter survived the surrender of Le Mans, and it is not likely that he would be at Falaise while the war was going on. This contradiction throws a good deal of doubt on the whole story. See vol. ii. pp. 413–414. No one, as far as I know, ever charged William with the death of Herbert, who died even more opportunely for him than Walter.
Footnote 620
Will. Pict. 106. “Per legatos iterum iterumque monitus ad obsequendum, mentem obstinatam non omisit.” William waxes very eloquent in abuse of the “versutus homo, Gaufredus Meduanensis.” At this distance of time he looks very like a loyal vassal, perhaps even like a true patriot.
Footnote 621
Orderic (488 A) makes William take Ambrières, for whose capture we have already had two dates, on the road; “Ambreras oppidum ejus [Gaufredi] cepit,” &c.
Footnote 622
The river side, according to William of Poitiers (106), “nullâ vi, nullo ingenio vel arte humanâ, attentari potest.” The land side was not quite so impossible; “Alteri vero [lateri] munimenta lapidea, pariterque difficillimus aditus propugnant.”
Footnote 623
See vol. ii. p. 206.
Footnote 624
See vol. ii. p. 286.
Footnote 625
Will. Pict. 106. “Hujus castri latus alterum ... alluitur scopuloso rapidoque flumine, nam supra Meduanæ ripam in præruptâ montis rupe situm est.”
Footnote 626
At Angers the cathedral crowns the hill, the castle commands the river; the great monastery of the Holy Trinity lies on the other side, in what was originally a mere suburb. But neither Angers nor Le Mans has the steep double slope of Mayenne.
Footnote 627
See vol. ii. p. 264.
Footnote 628
Will. Pict. 106. “Gladiis, lanceis, missilibus, nihil geritur, nihil gerendum speratur. Item neque ariete, neque tormento cæterisve instrumentis bellicis. Siquidem locus omnino machinamentis importunus erat.”
Footnote 629
Ib. “Equitum ac peditum copias tantas incassum fatigari cuncti ferè opinantur, multi conqueruntur, nullâ spe animos eorum erigente, nisi fortè morâ annuâ vel ampliore fames expugnet.”
Footnote 630
Ib. “En sollerti consilio ipsius [Willelmi] injecti ignes castrum corripiunt.”
Footnote 631
Ib. 107. “Citissimè diffunduntur [ignes] more suo, sævius omni ferro quæque obvia vastantes.”
Footnote 632
Ib. “Quae, sicut alibi capta plerumque grandia, militum potiùs quam sua esse voluit continentissimus ac liberalissimus princeps.”
Footnote 633
William of Jumièges, as I have already said (see above, p. 169), puts the taking of Mayenne, as a sequel to that of Le Mans, out of place. He also makes the fire accidental (vii. 27); “Meduanum verò, castellum cujusdam opulenti militis nomine Goiffredi, adhuc restiterat, quod Dux exercitibus applicitis aliquamdiù oppugnans cepit, igneque injecto per duos pueros, qui clam ad ludendum cum oppidanis infantibus intraverant, combussit.” Wace (10250) says, “Li bores esprit et aluma.” Ord. Vit. 488 A. “Meduanam post diutinam obsidionem combussit.”
Footnote 634
I infer this, not only from the absence of any mention of his name during the siege, and from the unlikelihood that such a man would have yielded to what seems to have been a mere panic, but from the expressions of William of Poitiers a little before (106); “Fuga, astutia, validæque munitiones non modicum fiduciæ ministraverunt. Statuit ergo prudentia repudiati domini latibulum carissimum abalienare ei castrum Meduanum, æstimans multò satius ac dignius hâc pœnâ ferire, quam fugitantem persequi, et victoriam levem ex eo capto insignibus titulis addere.”
Footnote 635
See Vet. An. iii. *315; Ord. Vit. 706 C, 707 A, 771 D.
Footnote 636
Will. Pict. 107. “Restauratis quæ flamma corruperat, præsidioque providenter disposito.” So Will. Gem. vii. 27. “Quod iterum restauravit et custodibus suis mancipavit.” So Benoît, 35770. But Wace (10253) says,
“_Lung tems aprez_ quant son leu vit Le restora sainz cuntredit. Gardes i mist ki l’atornerent, Ki paiz tindrent e paiz garderent.”
Footnote 637
Will. Pict, u. s. “Insolitum triumphum, quasi de naturâ superatâ, domum revexit cum immenso gaudio exercitûs.”
Footnote 638
Ord. Vit. 488 A. “Quo superato, penè omnes illius complices et ad rebellandum fautores terrore curvati sunt, et Willelmum Principem, quem divina manus protegebat, timere eique obsecundare coacti sunt.”
Footnote 639
Vet. An. iii. 314*. “Willelmus Princeps Normanorum ... Cenomannensem comitatum, exstinctis atque omninò deletis ejusdem comitatûs hæredibus, adquisierat.” Is this meant as a charge against William? If so, it extends beyond Walter and Biota, and seems to prove too much.
Footnote 640
Will. Pict. 105. “Quoniam pueri ætas nondum fuit matura conjugio [Robert must have been four years younger than Margaret, whose father died in 1051, two years before William’s marriage], in locis tutis illam, prope nubilem, magno cum honore custodiri fecit, nobilium atque sapientium virorum ac matronarum curæ commissam.” Orderic (488 A) says she was entrusted “Stigaudo potenti viro de mansione Odonis.” Compare the entrusting of William’s own daughter to Roger of Beaumont; Orderic, 573 D.
Footnote 641
Ord. Vit. u. s. “Priusquam nubiles annos attingeret seculi ludibriis erepta feliciter obiit.”
Footnote 642
Will. Pict. u. s. He enlarges on this at length.
Footnote 643
Will. Pict. u. s.
Footnote 644
Will. Pict. and Ord. Vit. u. s.
Footnote 645
See vol. ii. pp. 415, 420.
Footnote 646
See vol. ii. pp. 475, 476, 634.
Footnote 647
See vol. ii. p. 299 et seqq.
Footnote 648
See vol. ii. pp. 303, 421.
Footnote 649
See vol. ii. pp. 367 et seqq., 422.
Footnote 650
See Appendix R.
Footnote 651
See Appendix R.
Footnote 652
See vol. ii. pp. 537, 543.
Footnote 653
See vol. ii. p. 329, and cf. pp. 147, 149, 580.
Footnote 654
See vol. ii. p. 335.
Footnote 655
See Appendix R.
Footnote 656
See Appendices R. and S.
Footnote 657
Bayeux Tapestry, pl. 1.
Footnote 658
So Eadmer (4) makes him go “cum ditioribus et honestioribus hominibus suis [his own Thegns or personal _Comitatus_], auro et argento vesteque pretiosâ nobiliter instructis.”
Footnote 659
See vol. ii. p. 151.
Footnote 660
Tapestry, pl. 1. It is singular however that, though a large part of Bosham Church is as old as Harold’s time, or older, the picture in the Tapestry is in no way like it—or indeed like any other human erection.
Footnote 661
Tapestry, pl. 1.
Footnote 662
See above, p. 157.
Footnote 663
Will. Pict. 108. “Docuit enim avaritiæ calliditas Galliarum quasdam nationes exsecrandam consuetudinem, barbaram, et longissimè ab omni æquitate Christianâ alienam. Illaqueant potentes aut locupletes: trusos in ergastula afficiunt contumeliis, tormentis. Sic variâ miseriâ prope ad necem usque contritos ejiciunt sæpissimè venditos magno.” So Will. Malms. ii. 228. “Barbarum et effrænatum morem regionis esse ut qui evaserant in mari naufragium in terrâ invenirent periculum.”
Footnote 664
I infer as much from the use of the word “illaqueant” in the last quotation from William of Poitiers.
Footnote 665
Roman de Rou, 10765 et seqq. The sums of money are thus given (10776);
“Doint li vint livres solement, Il l’en fera gaaigner cent, Kar tel prison li liverra, Ki cent livres u plus donra.”
Footnote 666
Bayeux Tapestry, plate 2. “Hic apprehendit Wido Haroldum.” Benoît de Ste. Maure (36540) adds the odd comment, that those who were seized in this fashion might have wished themselves in Sicily; “Mieuz vousissent estre en Sezile.” Yet, when Benoît wrote, Sicily was a settled Norman monarchy.
Footnote 667
So at least says William of Malmesbury (ii. 228); “Manus manicis, pedes compedibus, præbuere.”
Footnote 668
This is quite plain from the Tapestry, plate 2. “Duxit eum ad Belrem et ibi eum tenuit.” Wace (10784) says, “A Abevile l’ont mené,” and makes Guy take him to Beaurain only after the news has reached William (v. 10798);
“A Belrem le fist envéier Por fere del Duc esluingnier.”
This I conceive to arise from a misconception of the words of William of Jumièges, vii. 31; “In manus Widonis Abbatisvillæ Comitis incidit. Quem idem Comes captum cum suis confestim in custodiâ trusit.” But this does not imply that Abbeville was the place of imprisonment. William of Poitiers, William of Malmesbury, and Benoît do not mention any particular place. Anyhow it was not Saint Valery. See below, Chapter xv. § 2.
Footnote 669
Roman de Rou, 10785;
“E Heraut a par un privé En Normendie el Duc mandé.”
Eadmer (5) says, “Constrictus igitur Haraldus quemlibet ex vulgo, promissâ mercede illectum, clam ad Comitem Normanniæ dirigit;” but that the messenger was an Englishman appears from his moustache in the Tapestry, plate 3. “Hic venit nuntius ad Wilgelmum Ducem.” William of Malmesbury, ii. 228, gives another turn to the message, of which I shall have to speak elsewhere. One expression is very odd; “Si pecuniis exuenda captivitas esset, libens daret Willelmo Comiti, non _semiviro_ Guidoni.” I do not know the meaning of this strange epithet and spondaic cadence.
Footnote 670
Wace understood this. Roman de Rou, 10800;
“Li Dus pensa s’il le teneit, K’il en fereit bien son espleit.”
Footnote 671
Will. Pict. 108. “Properè missis legatis.” The speed at which they ride in the Tapestry (pl. 3) is beyond anything of the kind represented in the whole story, except in the very thick of the battle.
Footnote 672
Ib. “Precatu simul ac minis extortum.” William of Jumièges (vii. 31) puts this still more strongly; “Dux autem ut hoc comperit, missis legatis violenter illum extorsit.” But the other narratives do not bear this out.
Eadmer (5) makes two messages, the latter stronger than the former; “Ille [Willelmus] festinatò per nuncios mandat Domino Pontivi, Haraldum cum suis ab omni calumniâ liberum sibi quantociùs mitti, si pristinâ amicitiâ suo amodò vellet ex more potiri. Sed quum ille hominem dimittere nollet, iterum in mandato accepit se necessariò Haraldum missurum, alioquin certissimè sciret Willelmum Normanniæ Ducem armatum pro eo Pontivum iturum.”
Footnote 673
Eadmer however makes him still plunder his captives; “Mittit igitur virum cum sociis, primò tamen eis quæ meliora detulerant simul ablatis.”
Footnote 674
See above, p. 116. That Eu was the place appears from Will. Pict. 108. “Ipse [Guido] adducens apud Aucense castrum sibi præsentavit.” So Benoît, 36572. “Li amena à Ou tot quite.”
Footnote 675
Will. Pict. 108. “Guidoni bene merito, qui, nec pretio nec violentiâ compulsus, virum quem torquere, necare, vendere potuisset pro libitu ipse ... sibi præsentavit, grates rettulit condignas, terras tradidit amplas ac multum opimas, addidit insuper in pecuniis maxima dona.” The position of the lands comes from the Roman de Rou, 10806;
“E li Dus li a fet aveir Lez l’ewe d’Alne un bel maneir.”
Footnote 676
“Harold Dux Anglorum” in the Tapestry, pl. 1. He bears the same title in the Saxon Annalist (Pertz, vi. 764). See vol. i. pp. 289, 470; cf. 179, and ii. 635.
Footnote 677
In the Tapestry, plate 4, we merely read, “Hic Dux Wilgelm cum Haroldo venit ad palatium suum.” It is here that the mysterious “unus clericus et Ælfgyva” (see Appendix S.) are seen standing at the door of the Palace. William of Poitiers (108) says more distinctly, “In urbem sui principatûs caput Rothomagum introduxit.” So Benoît, 36577;
“Tot dreit à Roem la citè L’en amena li Dux od sei.”
Footnote 678
Roman de Rou, 10810;
“A maint rice torneiement Le fit aler mult noblement.”
Footnote 679
Snorro (Johnston, 190; Laing, iii. 76). “Sat Haralldr í hássæti à adra hönd Jarli, enn til annarar handar kona Jarls, hon var hverri kono frídari, er menn höfdo sed ... Jarl geck optazt snemma at sofa, enn Haralldr sat lengi à kvölldom, oc taladi vid kono Jarls.” This is an exact picture of old Norwegian, if not of Norman life. See Keyser’s Private Life of the Old Northmen, pp. 72, 143; “The guests ... were shown to the beds appointed for them. But even after they had retired for the night, they often had to quaff off a horn or two, which the hostess, or one of the women of the house, would bring them, while she seated herself the while by their bed-side and entertained them by her conversation.”
Footnote 680
See Appendix R.
Footnote 681
See Appendix F.
Footnote 682
Namely that of William of Poitiers. See Appendix R.
Footnote 683
Harold (see vol. ii. p. 555) could hardly have been born before 1021, but, as he became Earl in 1045 (see vol. ii. pp. 36, 37, 43), he is not likely to have been born many years later. William (see vol. ii. pp. 585–587) was born in 1027 or 1028.
Footnote 684
See Appendix O.
Footnote 685
See Appendix R.
Footnote 686
William of Poitiers (109), who puts the knighthood before the Breton expedition, seems to extend it to Harold’s followers; “Qui venerant cum ipso”—possibly Wulfnoth and Hakon—“armis _militaribus_ et equis delectissimis instructos secum in bellum Britannicum duxit.” “Militaribus” is doubtless to be taken in the technical sense. The Tapestry (pl. 6) places the knighthood after the Breton war; “Hic Willelm dedit Haroldo arma.” Wace follows William of Poitiers (10812). Mr. Planché (Arch. Ass. June 1867, p. 145) says that Wace lays the scene at Avranches. He probably refers to the Roman de Rou, 13723, but the knighthood is not there spoken of.
Footnote 687
William of Malmesbury (iii. 236) attributes the opposite motive to William. He takes Harold, “volens ejus manum explorare; simul et strictiori consilio, apparatum ostentans suum, conspicaturo quantùm præstaret Anglicis bipennibus ensis Normannicus.” If Harold was set to fight on horseback with his Danish axe in his hand, it might very likely be so.
Footnote 688
The fullest accounts are in William of Poitiers (109) and the Tapestry (pll. 4–6), but it is not easy to reconcile the two. The other accounts are very short. Wace (10814) makes Harold accompany William in three or four expeditions;
“Ne sai de veir treiz feiz u quatre, Quant as Bretuns se dut combatre.”
This, as we shall see, is quite possible. See Appendix T.
Footnote 689
See vol. ii. p. 193.
Footnote 690
Conan was the grandson of Hadwisa, daughter of Richard the Fearless. See vol. i. p. 508.
Footnote 691
See vol. ii. p. 181; cf. i. pp. 518, 526. William of Poitiers (109) is inclined to dwell on these earlier wars, rather than on the later guardianship of Alan. His son Conan is “paternæ rebellionis renovator.”
Footnote 692
See above, p. 168.
Footnote 693
Will. Pict. 109. “Is [Conanus] in virum ferocissimum adultus, a tutelâ diu toleratâ liber, capto Eudone patruo suo, atque vinculis ergastularibus mancipato, provinciæ, quam dono paterno accepit, magnâ cum truculentiâ dominari cœpit.” William of Malmesbury (iii. 236) looks on him with more favour; “Viridis juventâ et præcellens robore, Eudonem patruum vinxerat, multa egregia fecerat.”
Footnote 694
See Art de Vérifier les Dates, ii. 896.
Footnote 695
William of Poitiers goes back to the grant of Charles the Simple, who gave Britanny to Rolf “in servitium perpetuum.” (See vol. i. p. 191.) But he allows the constant revolts of the Breton Counts; “Comites Britannici e jugo Normannicæ dominationis cervicem omnino solvere numquam valuerunt, etsi multoties id conati totâ vi obluctando.” So William of Malmesbury (iii. 236) speaks of William as “Britanniam ut hæreditarium solum calumnians.”
Footnote 696
Will. Pict. 111. See below, p. 238.
Footnote 697
See vol. ii. p. 592.
Footnote 698
Will. Pict. 110. Britanny is “regio longè latèque diffusa, milite, magis quam credibile sit, referta.” He goes on to say; “Partibus e quidem in illis miles unus quinquaginta genuerat, sortitus more barbaro denas aut ampliùs uxores; quod de Mauris veteribus refertur, legis divinæ atque pudici ritûs ignaris. Ad hoc populositas ipsa armis et equis maximè, arvorum culturæ aut morum minimè student.” The word “denas” seems to show that this patriarchal state of things was not confined to one particular knight. One hardly sees why the ancient Moors should have been picked out as the horrid example, rather than the modern Saracens or any other polygamous people.
The Chronicle of St. Michael’s Mount (Labbé, i. 350), under the year 1056, says of Conan’s uncle, “Hic Eudo multos habuit filios.” Was he the “miles” whom William of Poitiers had specially in his eye?
Footnote 699
Will. Pict. 110. “Uberrimo lacte, parcissimo pane, sese transigunt. Pinguia pabula gignunt pecoribus loca vasta et fermè nescia segetum.”
Footnote 700
Ib. “Prœlia cum ardenti alacritate ineunt: dum prœliantur, furibundi sæviunt. Pellere soliti, difficilè cedunt.”
Footnote 701
Ib. “Quum vacant a bello, rapinis, latrociniis, cædibus domesticis, aluntur sive exercentur.”
Footnote 702
See above, p. 166, and vol. ii. 284.
Footnote 703
Will. Pict. 109. “Conani in tantum jam temeritas crevit, ut quo die terminos Normanniæ aggrederetur denuntiare non formidaret.” This sort of bravado was chivalrous heroism in William; it is mere rashness and insolence in Conan.
Footnote 704
Ib. “Dominus ejus [Conani] antiquo jure, sicuti Normannorum, Willelmus, castellum quod Sancti Jacobi appellatum est interim opposuit in confinio, ne famelici prædones ecclesiis inermibus, aut ultimo terræ suæ vulgo, excursionibus latrocinantibus nocerent.” The castle and town are still always known as Saint-James, never as Saint-Jaques.
Footnote 705
Will. Pict. 110. “Nihili pendens terribilitatem hanc Dux Willelmus, in quem diem adventum Conani meminit denuntiatum, eo ipse intra fines ejus occurrit.”
Footnote 706
I presume that the “Ruallus” of William of Poitiers represents the name Rhiwallon.
Footnote 707
See vol. ii. p. 476.
Footnote 708
See vol. i. p. 240. For the special mention of Dol, see Flodoard, 944.
Footnote 709
See vol. i. p. 510.
Footnote 710
Will. Pict. 110. Conan is engaged in “castri terræ suæ Doli oppugnatione.”
Footnote 711
Unless possibly a larger proportion of beggars and of way-side crosses than is usual in Normandy.
Footnote 712
The time of the invasion was autumn. “Stabant in aristis fruges immaturæ.” They missed therefore the snowy bloom of a Breton, Norman, or West-Saxon land in the time of spring. Snorro also (see above, p. 227) makes Harold’s visit in the autumn, but he makes him stay all the winter.
Footnote 713
See vol. i. p. 330.
Footnote 714
Bayeux Tapestry, pll. 4, 5. “Hic Willelm Dux et exercitus ejus venerunt ad Montem Michaelis.”
Footnote 715
Bayeux Tapestry, pl. 5. “Hic Harold Dux trahebat eos de arenâ.” See vol. ii. p. 38.
Footnote 716
See vol. i. p. 526.
Footnote 717
Will. Pict. 110. “Sistere tentat Conanum castri præses Ruallus, revocat illudens, morari biduum precatur, sufficiens huic moræ stippendium ab ipso sumpturum.”
Footnote 718
Ib. “Homo miserè exterritus, pavorem potiùs audiens, cursu instituto longiùs profugit.” So the Tapestry, pl. 5; “Venerunt ad Dol et Conan fugâ vertit.” On the mention of Rennes, see Appendix T.
Footnote 719
Will. Pict. 111. “Nec penes agricolas interesse, Normannico an Britannico exercitu consumpti anni laborem amiserint.”
Footnote 720
Ib. “Sibi modo ad famam valuisse, non ad conservationem rerum, Conani depulsionem.”
Footnote 721
Will. Pict. 110, 111. “Menstruâ penuriâ fatigatum exercitum reducebat.” The Archdeacon’s minute setting forth of the workings of the Duke’s mind is too long to copy.
Footnote 722
Ib. 111. “Excedenti jam Britanniæ limitem repente indicatur Gaufredum Andegavensem cum ingentibus copiis Conano fuisse conjunctum, et ambos postero die prœliatum affuturos.”
Footnote 723
See Appendix T.
Footnote 724
See vol. ii. pp. 220, 233.
Footnote 725
Bayeux Tapestry, pl. 5.
Footnote 726
Bayeux Tapestry, pl. 5.
Footnote 727
Ib. pl. 6. Cf. the legend of the death of Malcolm at Alnwick. See Robertson, i. 147.
Footnote 728
See the Angevin Chronicle in Labbé, i. 276.
Footnote 729
Bayeux Tapestry, pl. 6.
Footnote 730
Cf. vol. i. pp. 436, 585; ii. 384.
Footnote 731
Bayeux Tapestry, pl. 6.
Footnote 732
See above, p. 227.
Footnote 733
Ord. Vit. 492 A. “Omnia quæ ab illo requisita fuerant super sanctissimas reliquias juraverat.”
Footnote 734
Wace, 10828. See Appendix R.
Footnote 735
Ib. 10838;
“Quant Heraut suz sa main tendi, La main trembla, la char frémi.”
Footnote 736
Ib. 10858;
“Heraut forment s’espoanta Des relikes k’il li monstra.”
Footnote 737
See Appendix R.
Footnote 738
See vol. ii. p. 300.
Footnote 739
See Appendix F.
Footnote 740
See vol. ii. pp. 431, 434.
Footnote 741
So say most of the accounts. See Appendix R.
Footnote 742
Will. Malms, iii. 238. “Liberatum se sacramento asserens, quod filia ejus quam desponderat citrà nubiles annos obierat.”
Footnote 743
See vol. ii. pp. 43, 494.
Footnote 744
The apology put into Harold’s mouth by William of Malmesbury (iii. 238) is that he was “necessitate temporis coactus.” Wace (11965) puts it more clearly still. Harold’s Biographer (Chron. Ang. Norm. ii. 187) argues the point at length. See Appendix U.
Footnote 745
See Appendix R.
Footnote 746
Compare the homage done by Richard the Fearless to Hugh the Great on promising to marry his daughter. See vol. i. p. 248.
Footnote 747
See Appendix R.
Footnote 748
See above, p. 157.
Footnote 749
See vol. ii. pp. 365, 384, 385, 460.
Footnote 750
See the speech of Philip, Lord Wharton, on the Abjuration Bill of 1690. Macaulay, iii. 574.
Footnote 751
See the stories of the fidelity of Geroy and his son William to their several feudal lords, vol. ii. pp. 230–232. On the other hand it is constantly made an aggravation of the imprisonment of William of Aquitaine by Geoffrey Martel, that it was a wrong done against his lord. See vol. ii. p. 594. So the Peterborough Chronicle (1087) says of the last expedition of William himself, that he “hergode uppan his agenne hlaford Philippe þam cynge.”
Footnote 752
The authorities for this Chapter are essentially the same as those for the last.
Footnote 753
Will. Pict. 109. “Non enim in longum sperabatur Edwardi ægrotantis vita.”
Footnote 754
William of Poitiers (145–146) gets very eloquent on this head; I have quoted the passage in Appendix G.
Footnote 755
The suddenness of the news is marked by William of Poitiers (121); “Verus rumor insperatò venit Anglicam terram Rege Edwardo orbatam esse et ejus coronâ Heraldum ornatum.”
Footnote 756
See above, p. 52, and vol. ii. pp. 336, 346, 358.
Footnote 757
In the Tapestry (pl. 8) we see the ship; “Hic navis Anglica venit in terram Willelmi Ducis.” See Bruce, p. 87. The language of Wace (10991) seems to imply a special messenger;
... “Un Serjant Ki d’Engleterre vint errant, Al Duc vint dreit.”
Footnote 758
Roman de Rou, 10983.
Footnote 759
See Prevost’s note, ii. 120.
Footnote 760
Ib. 10989;
“Mult aveit od li chevaliers E dameisels et esquiers.”
On “dameisels,” “domicelli,” a diminutive of “dominus,” which now survives both in French and English in the feminine only, see Ducange in voc. Benoît (36640) applies the name, in the form “danzel,” to Wulfnoth. In the pretended Laws of Eadward, it translates “Æðeling,” with the comment, “Nos de pluribus, quia filios baronum vocamus domicellos, Angli autem nullum præter filios Regum vocant” (Schmid, 516).
Footnote 761
Will. Malms. iii. 279. “Fuit ... roboris ingentis in lacertis, ut magno sæpe spectaculo fuerit quod nemo ejus arcum tenderet, quem ipse admisso equo pedibus nervo extento sinuaret.”
Footnote 762
Roman de Rou, 10995;
“Ke li Reis Ewart ert finez, E Heraut ert à Rei levez.”
Footnote 763
Ib. 10997;
“Quant li Dus ot bien escolté, E tute sout la vérité ... Semblant fist d’home corocié. L’ovre del boiz a tut lessié, Sovant a sun mantel lacié, E sovent l’a destachié; Ne il à home ne parla, Ne home à il parler n’osa.”
All these graphic details are peculiar to Wace. Benoît (36672) is much shorter.
Footnote 764
Roman de Rou, 11012; “Sor un pécol sun chief a mis.” I suppose this means, as Mr. Taylor translates it, _against_ a pillar. Wace’s description is so perfect, that it is impossible to do anything but simply repeat it. Otherwise this would be a good opportunity to call up the image of the ancient pillared hall, as at Oakham and Winchester, and once at Westminster, the one great apartment of the palace, as of any other house, and seemingly open to all comers.
Footnote 765
Wace (11017) here says simply, “Li seneschal,” but from v. 11051 we see who this seneschal was.
Footnote 766
Roman de Rou, 11020; “Par la sale ala chantusant.” “Fredonnant, chantant légèrement,” says Pluquet; “humming a tune” in Mr. Taylor’s version.
Footnote 767
Roman de Rou, 11051. “Li filz Osber el cuer hardi.”
Footnote 768
See Appendix U.
Footnote 769
See above, p. 70.
Footnote 770
See vol. i. p. 224.
Footnote 771
I leave it to canon lawyers to determine whether Harold’s precontract to the daughter of William would in any way invalidate his marriage with the widow of Gruffydd. However this may be, William could not seriously expect that Harold would, on any such grounds, put away his wife, especially when his wife was the sister of the two Northern Earls. The question of course remains whether Harold really was married at the time.
Footnote 772
So Eadmer and those who copy from him. See Appendix U.
Footnote 773
Will. Malms, iii. 238. See Appendix U.
Footnote 774
Eadmer, 5. “Si de filiâ suâ, quam debui in uxorem, ut asserit, ducere, agit, super regnum Angliæ mulierem extraneam, inconsultis principibus, me nec debere nec sine grandi injuriâ posse adducere noverit.”
Footnote 775
Will. Malms. iii. 238. “Præsumptuosum fuisse quod, _absque generali senatûs et populi conventu et edicto_, alienam illi hæreditatem juraverit; proinde stultum sacramentum frangendum.” This is less forcibly put by Eadmer (5); “Regnum quod necdum fuerat meum quo jure potui dare vel permittere.”
Footnote 776
Numbers xxx. 3–5.
Footnote 777
Will. Malms. iii. 238. “Quantò magis quod ille, sub Regis virgâ constitutus, nesciente omni Angliâ, de toto regno, necessitate temporis coactus, impegerit, videatur non esse ratum.”
Footnote 778
Ib. “Præterea iniquum postulat ut imperio decedat, quod tanto favore civium regendum susceperit; hoc nec provincialibus gratum, _nec militibus tutum_.” I do not fully understand this last clause. Would Harold’s Thegns and Housecarls have been specially exposed to danger in case of William’s peaceful accession? Or does the historian write by the light of his own time and of Domesday, remembering how much more heavily William’s confiscations fell on the “milites” than on the “provinciales.”
Footnote 779
Ib. “Ita revertebantur inanes nuntii, vel veris vel verisimilibus argumentis præstricti.”
Footnote 780
Will. Malms. iii. 238. “Alter [Willelmus] interea illum [Haroldum] per nuntios leniter convenire, de rupto fœdere expostulare, precibus minas insuere: sciret se ante annum emensum ferro debitum vindicaturum, _illuc iturum quo Haroldus tutiores se pedes habere putaret_.” Is this last not very intelligible clause a scoff at the English tactics of fighting on foot?
Footnote 781
See vol. i. p. 524 et seqq.
Footnote 782
Æsch. Ag. 1653. οἶδ’ ἐγὼ φεύγοντας ἅνδρας ἐλπίδας σιτουμένους.
Footnote 783
See above, p. 90.
Footnote 784
See vol. ii. p. 241.
Footnote 785
Will. Pict. 113. “Caussam viduæ, inopis, pupilli, ipse humiliter audiebat, misericorditer agebat, rectissimè definiebat. Ejus æquitate reprimente iniquam cupiditatem, vicini minùs valentis aut limitem agri movere, aut rem ullam usurpare, nec potens audebat quisquam nec familiaris.” Cf. vol. ii. p. 172.
Footnote 786
Ib. “Accipere solitus est avido auditu suavique gustu sacræ paginæ sermones, iis, ut animæ epulum sumeret, delectari desiderans, castigari, atque edoceri. Sumebat et honorabat condecenti reverentiâ hostiam salutarem, Dominicum sanguinem.” I do not know that the word “auditu” absolutely proves that William could not read, but it looks like it. He was however fully aware of the advantages of learning, even in laymen. See vol. ii. p. 274. This passage is also to be noticed as one among several which show that communion in both kinds was still allowed. The Archdeacon goes on to extol his sovereign’s orthodoxy in the matter of Transubstantiation, and to tell how he drove from his dominions the heresy which thought otherwise—“aliter sentientem pravitatem”—that is doubtless the teaching of Berengar. See vol. ii. pp. 116, 227.
Footnote 787
Ib. 114. “Ejus liberi pietatem Christianam infantes didicere diligenti provisione ipsius.” This pious care answered better with his daughters than with his sons.
Footnote 788
Ib. “Quoties ejus edicto et hortatu convenere Præsules, Metropolitanus cum suffraganeis, de statu relligionis, clericorum, monachorum, atque laicorum acturi. Synodis his arbitrum se deesse nolebat.” The advantages of the prince’s presence are then dwelt upon.
Footnote 789
Ib. “Delato forte suas ad aures immani alicujus crimine, quod Episcopus aut Archidiaconus _justo dementiùs_ vindicaverit, reum majestatis æternæ teneri jussit incarceratum, quousque caussa domini æquitate districta decerneretur, Episcopum aut Archidiaconum, veluti adversarios divinæ partis, criminans in judicium devocandos, feriendos gravi sententiâ.” The obscure words “justo dementiùs” mean, I conceive, not that the ecclesiastical judges were too strict, but that they let off offenders for money. On the doings of Archdeacons see vol. ii. p. 230, and the passage of John of Salisbury there referred to.
Footnote 790
Will. Pict. 115. “Lanfrancum ... intimâ familiaritate colebat; ut patrem venerans, verens ut præceptorem, diligens ut germanum aut prolem. Illi consulta animæ suæ, illi speculam quamdam, unde ordinibus ecclesiasticis per omnem Normanniam prospiceretur, commisit.”
Footnote 791
See vol. ii. p. 224.
Footnote 792
See the great anathema in Paul of Bernried’s Life of Gregory, cap. lxxvi. (ap. Murat. iii. 336); “Henrico Regi, filio Henrici Imperatoris, ... totius Regni Teutonicorum et Italiæ gubernacula contradico.” Mark how, as constantly in Lambert, while Italy has a name, Germany has none. See vol. i. pp. 172, 176.
Footnote 793
Compare Lord Macaulay’s remarks (ii. 624) on the different clauses of the resolution by which the Crown was declared vacant after the flight of James the Second.
Footnote 794
See above, p. 178, and vol. i. pp. 268, 519.
Footnote 795
See vol. i. p. 175. In the passage of Bruno there referred to, Philip gets no higher title than “Latinæ Franciæ Rector.” Yet he is better off that Charles the Bald, who, in the Annales Fuldenses under 875 (Pertz, i. 389), is only “Galliæ Tyrannus.”
Footnote 796
See vol. ii. p. 373.
Footnote 797
I hold, it may be remembered (see vol. i. p. 646), that the balance of evidence is against Godwine’s churlish birth; but, if such a rumour, true or false, were afloat, it would be enough. I do not however find the point brought forward by any contemporary Norman writer.
Footnote 798
See vol. i. p. 230.
Footnote 799
See vol. ii. pp. 277, 593.
Footnote 800
Henry of Huntingdon, as we have seen (see vol. i. p. 332), seriously believed in William’s hereditary right. So elsewhere (761 E) he speaks of his “jus cognationis.” The Ramsey Historian also (cap. cxx.) says that William sought “regnum aviti propinquitate sanguinis debitum.” But perhaps still more remarkable is the way in which William of Poitiers (143), after describing William’s election and coronation at Christmas, adds, “Et, si ratio sanguinis poscitur, pernotum est quam proximâ consanguinitate Regem Edwardum attigerit filius Ducis Rodberti, cujus amita, Richardi Secundi soror, filia Primi, Emina, genitrix fuit Edwardi.”
Footnote 801
Compare the passage from Orderic (598 A) quoted in Appendix C.
Footnote 802
Liber de Hydâ, 291. “Dei etenim nutu multorum fit concursus populorum, ultro se navibus ingerentium, qui audierant Angliam argenti et auri omnibus opulentam, cibi et potûs omniumque frugum uberrimam, omnibus præterea bonis esse refertam.” So Orderic (494 A) speaks of William’s foreign followers as “Anglicæ prædæ inhiantes.”
Footnote 803
Will. Pict. 124. “Non eo animi viget [Heraldus] robore, quo vel minimum quid meorum polliceri audeat. At arbitrio meo pariter quæ mea sunt, quæque dicuntur illius, promittentur atque dabuntur.” To any man but William one might have quoted the fable about the bear and his skin.
Footnote 804
See vol. i. pp. 330, 633.
Footnote 805
Ib. p. 525, and above, p. 266.
Footnote 806
This comes among the three causes for William’s invasion given by Henry of Huntingdon (761 D); “Primò, quia Alfredum cognatum suum Godwinus _et filii sui_ dehonestaverant et peremerant: Secundò, quia Robertum Episcopum et Odonem Consulem [see vol. ii. p. 564] et omnes Francos Godwinus et filii sui arte suâ ab Angliâ exsulaverant: Tertiò, quod Haraldus, in perjurium prolapsus, regnum, quod jure cognationis [see above, p. 278] suum esse debuerat, sine aliquo jure invaserat.”
Footnote 807
See vol. ii. p. 70.
Footnote 808
William of Poitiers (124) is emphatic on this head; William “non tantùm ditionem suam et gloriam augere, quantùm ritus Christianos partibus in illis corrigere intendit.”
Footnote 809
See vol. ii. p. 458.
Footnote 810
See Appendix W.
Footnote 811
See above, p. 151.
Footnote 812
See vol. ii. p. 291.
Footnote 813
See above, p. 258, and vol. ii. p. 198.
Footnote 814
See vol. ii. p. 211.
Footnote 815
See vol. ii. p. 589.
Footnote 816
See vol. ii. p. 210.
Footnote 817
See above, p. 116.
Footnote 818
See above, p. 118.
Footnote 819
See vol. ii. p. 199.
Footnote 820
See above, p. 159.
Footnote 821
See above, pp. 183, 201; vol. ii. 232.
Footnote 822
See vol. ii. pp. 185, 186.
Footnote 823
See above, pp. 129, 153.
Footnote 824
See above, p. 155.
Footnote 825
See above, p. 158.
Footnote 826
I get the details of this meeting and of the larger meeting at Lillebonne from the Roman de Rou (11118 et seqq.), the only account which carefully distinguishes the two. See Appendix W.
Footnote 827
Roman de Rou, 11156;
“S’il s’en voleient bien pener Od la gent k’il poeit mander, E Dex le volsist graanter, Bien porreit sun dreit recovrer.”
Footnote 828
Ib. 11165. “Maiz sez homes è sez clers creie.” It is curious to find the wealth of the Church pointed to so early as among possible ways and means.
Footnote 829
Ib. 11171;
“Ceste parole lor mostrez, Bien deivent al cunseil venir, Ki el travail deibvent partir.”
This good constitutional doctrine almost forestalls the teaching of our great constitutional poet of the thirteenth century;
“Igitur communitas regni consulatur, Et quid universitas sentiat sciatur.”
Political Songs (Camden Soc.), p. 110. But, instead of “communitas regni,” Normandy had only “grant barnage.”
Footnote 830
See vol. ii. p. 332.
Footnote 831
See vol. i. p. 197.
Footnote 832
See Ord. Vit. 493 A, B.
Footnote 833
Orderic twice stops to discuss the Roman origin of Lillebonne (554 C and 864 B, C). It was founded by Caius Julius Cæsar on the site of a Gaulish town called Caletum, which he had destroyed. It was called Julia after his daughter. In Orderic’s own time it was barbarously called “Illebona.” William of Malmesbury (iii. 238), from whom we learn that Lillebonne was the place of meeting, calls it “Lillebona.”
Footnote 834
These points in the history of Lillebonne are said to have been made out by the researches of M. Deville. But I am sorry to say that I know those researches only through M. Joanne’s excellent Guide to Normandy, p. 243. Lillebonne however is a place which speaks for itself.
Footnote 835
See the view in Cotman’s Architectural Antiquities of Normandy, p. 75.
Footnote 836
William kept his court (“curia”) at Lillebonne in 1063. See Orderic, 482 A. A synod was also held there in 1080. See vol. ii. p. 241.
Footnote 837
Compare the Diets of Poland, at once the most aristocratic and the most democratic of all assemblies. Compare also the whole history of the States of Britanny, so well traced out by the Count of Carné, in his _États de Bretagne_. The second order, the _Noblesse_, was always more independent than either the Clergy or the Burghers, and its internal constitution was that of a Landesgemeinde.
Footnote 838
This is implied in the words of William of Poitiers (124), “Quis enim juxta præstitutum naves perfici, aut perfectis remiges inveniri, annuo spatio posse speraret?”
Footnote 839
Roman de Rou, 11182;
“Ne pot mie sanz lor aïe Aveir grant gent è grant navie: Die chescun ke il li fera, Kels genz è quantes nés merra.”
Footnote 840
Roman de Rou, 11186;
“Cil dient k’il en parlereient, E par cunseil l’en respondreient, E li Dus lor a graanté.”
Footnote 841
Ib. 11196;
“Mult se vont entrels dementant, Par tropeax se vunt cunseillant, Ci vint, ci quinze, ci quarante, Ci trente, ci cent, ci seisante.”
Footnote 842
Ib. 11202;
“Li altres dient ke pas n’iront, Kar mult deibvent è povres sont.”
Footnote 843
Will. Pict. 124. “Quis novâ hac expeditione pulcherrimum statum patriæ in omnem redigi miseriam non timeret?”
Footnote 844
Ib. “Quis Romani Imperatoris opes eâ vinci difficultate non affirmaret?” The ideas of Caius Julius Cæsar and of King Henry the Fourth were perhaps a little intermingled in the mind of the Archdeacon of Lisieux.
Footnote 845
Ib. 123. “Thesauris illum abundare, quibus partis suæ Duces et Reges præpotentes conducantur.”
Footnote 846
Ord. Vit. 493. “Normannorum paucitatem non posse vincere Anglorum multitudinem asserebant.”
Footnote 847
Will. Pict. 124. “Classem [Heraldum] habere plurimam, homines in ministeriis nauticis peritissimos, qui sæpiùs pericula et prœlia maritima sint experti; terrâ illius, uti divitiis, ita militis copiâ, hanc multipliciter superari.”
Footnote 848
See the passage quoted in p. 293.
Footnote 849
Roman de Rou, 11214;
“N’atendez mie k’il vos priet, Ne ne demandez nul respiet, Alez avant, si li offrez Mult plus ke faire ne poez.”
Footnote 850
Ib. 11220;
“Se la busuigne remaneit, Par adventure tost direit, A ço k’il est achoisonos, Ke tut areit perdu par nos; Fetes li tant ke il ne die Ke s’erre seit par vos faillie.”
Footnote 851
Roman de Rou, 11228;
“Parlez por nos, ço vos préion, La parole sor vos meton: Vos direz ço ke vos voldrez, Nos feron ço ke vos direz.”
Footnote 852
Ib. 11226;
“Sire, font il, la mer doton, Ultre mer servir ne devon.”
Footnote 853
Ib. 11244;
“Por vos, ço dient, avancier, Se lerreient en mer néier, U en feu ardent geter.”
Cf. Psalm lxvi. 12.
Footnote 854
Roman de Rou, 11251;
“Se bien l’ont fet, mielx le feront; Ensemble o vos mer passeront, Vostre servise dobleront. Ki solt mener vint chevaliers, Quarante en merra volentiers, E ki de trente servir deit, De sesante servir vos velt, E cil ki solt servir de cent, Dous cent en merra bonement.”
Footnote 855
Roman de Rou, 11260;
“E jo merrai en boen amor En la busoigne mon Seignor Sesante nés apareillies De homes cumbatanz chargies.”
Footnote 856
Ib. 11264;
“Li Barunz tuit se merveillierent, Mult fremirent é grondillierent Des paroles ke cil diseit, E des pramesses k’il faseit, Dunc il ne aveit nul garant.”
Footnote 857
Ib. 11272;
“Li servise ki est doblez Creiment k’il seit en feu tornez, Et en costume seit tenu, Et par costume seit rendu.”
See Taylor’s note, p. 108.
Footnote 858
Roman de Rou, 11278;
“Nus hoem ne poeit altre entendre Parole oïr ne raison rendre.”
Henry of Huntingdon (M. H. B. 761 E), in his abridged narrative, cuts the matter far too short. I do not remember any other writer who mentions the trick of William Fitz-Osbern.
Footnote 859
So William of Malmesbury, iii. 238. “Super negotio singulorum sententias sciscitatus.” But he perhaps goes too far when he speaks of “omnes ejus voluntatem plausibus excipientes.”
Footnote 860
Roman de Rou, 11290;
“Ne ke jamez d’ore en avant, Ço lor a miz en convenant, N’ierent de servise requis, Forz tel ke solt estre al païz, E tel come lor ancessor Soleient fere a lor Seignor.”
Footnote 861
Roman de Rou, 11298;
“E li Dus fist tot enbrever, Nés fist è chevaliers nombrer.”
Footnote 862
I have read, in some peerage or book of genealogy, the pedigree of some one who professes to be descended from one of the English knights who went over to ask William to come and deliver them from the tyranny of Harold. Truly pedigree-makers will say anything.
Footnote 863
See the account of Robert the son of Wymarc in William of Poitiers, 128.
Footnote 864
By the second I mean Ralph of Norfolk, of whose origin I shall speak elsewhere. See Appendix LL.
Footnote 865
On the movements of Tostig see Appendix X.
Footnote 866
See vol. ii. p. 319.
Footnote 867
See vol. ii. p. 387.
Footnote 868
Ib. p. 434.
Footnote 869
See vol. ii. p. 501, and Appendix X.
Footnote 870
Ord. Vit. 492 D. “Tosticus ... festinus Normanniam adiit, et Willelmum Ducem cur perjurum suum regnare sineret fortiter redarguit.” The phrase “perjurus _suus_” is like the common phrase of “the King’s rebels” and such like.
Footnote 871
Ib. “Seque fideliter, si ipse cum Normannicis viribus in Angliam transfretaret, regni decus obtenturum illi spopondit.”
Footnote 872
Ord. Vit. 493 A. “Ejus exhortationibus animatus Normanniæ proceres convocavit.”
Footnote 873
Ib. 492 D. See Appendix N.
Footnote 874
Ord. Vit. 493 C. “Interea Tosticus in Angliam remeandi licentiam a Duce accepit; eique auxilium suum, tam per se quàm per omnes amicos suos, firmiter spopondit. Sed, sicut scriptum est, ‘Homo cogitat, Deus ordinat,’ evenit multò aliter quam sperabat. Nam de Constantino pelagus intravit, sed Angliam attingere nullatenus potuit. Heraldus enim mare navium militumque copiâ munierat, ne quis hostium sine gravi conflictu introiret in regnum quod fraudulenter invaserat. Tosticus itaque magnis undique premebatur angustiis, utpote qui nec Angliam per bellum cum paucis contra in numeros invadere, nec Normanniam propter contrarietatem ventorum poterat repetere.” It is wonderful how many undertakings in this age were thwarted by stress of weather.
Footnote 875
See the next Chapter.
Footnote 876
Ord. Vit. 494 A. “Galli namque et Britones, Pictavini et Burgundiones, aliique populi Cisalpini ad bellum transmarinum convolârunt, et Anglicæ prædæ inhiantes variis eventibus et periculis terræ marique sese obtulerunt.” Lappenberg (543), and Mr. Thorpe (ii. 286) more distinctly, hints that it was from mistaking the meaning of the word “Cisalpini” that Thierry got his Piedmontese. We have already seen something of the use of the word as well as of “transmarinus.” See vol. i. pp. 181, 210 (note 1), 230, 627.
Footnote 877
Guy of Amiens (v. 259. M. H. B. 861 C, Giles 34) makes William count up French, Bretons, Cenomannians, and adds,
“Appulus et Calaber, Siculus quibus jacula fervet; Normanni faciles actibus egregiis.”
Footnote 878
Will. Pict. 122. “Convenit etiam externus miles in auxilium copiosus, quos ex parte notissima Ducis liberalitas, _verum omnes justæ caussæ fiducia contraxit_.”
Footnote 879
See Appendix W.
Footnote 880
See the story in Lambert and Berthold (ap. Pertz, v. 272) under the year 1062. Milman, Latin Christianity, iii. 74.
Footnote 881
Lambert, 1063. “Adalbertus Premensis Archiepiscopus ... sæpiùs colloquendo, obsequendo etiam atque adsentando, ita sibi Regem brevi devinxerat, ut, cæteris episcopis posthabitis, totus in eum inclinaretur, et ipse in regno communi penè monarchiam usurpare videretur.” Milman, iii. 77.
Footnote 882
Lambert, 1065. “Per concessionem ejusdem Archiepiscopi [Adalberti sc.] primùm se Rex arma bellica succinxit.”
Footnote 883
Ib. 1066. Milman, iii. 81.
Footnote 884
It was Stamfordbridge, not Senlac, which attracted the attention of Lambert. See Appendix M.
Footnote 885
Henry, in his own troubles, sent an embassy to William (Bruno de Bello Saxonico, c. 36, ap. Pertz, v. 342). See also the amazing account of “Willehelmus Bostar” in Lambert, 1074. See vol. ii. p. 582.
Footnote 886
William of Poitiers says first, at an earlier time (120), “Admirabatur, laudabat, ac venerabatur eum supra nomina Regum Imperii Romani majestas, cujus olim gloriosissimus moderator Henricus, Conradi Imperatoris Augusti filius, cum ipso etiam tum puero, veluti cum nominatissimo Rege, amicitiam junxit ac societatem.” He now (123) says, “Et Romanorum Imperatori [he was not yet Emperor] Henrico, Henrici Imperatoris filio, nepoti Imperatoris Chounradi, noviter junctus fuit in amicitiâ.” After the former passage the Archdeacon adds, what is yet more amazing, that the Eastern Emperor wished for William as a neighbour to help him to withstand the advance of the Mahometans; “Optabat hunc vicinum et amicum nobilis et ampla, multisque Regibus dominans Constantinopolis, quo propugnatore sperneret gravem potentiam Babylonis.” The wise proverb τὸν Φραγκὸν φίλον ἔχῃς γείτουα οὐκ ἔχῃς (Eginh. Vita K. 16) must have been forgotten.
Footnote 887
See vol. ii. pp. 276, 373.
Footnote 888
Will. Pict. 123. “Cujus [Henrici] edicto in quemlibet hostem Germania ei, postularet, veniret adjutrix.”
Footnote 889
Ib. “Rex quoque Danorum Suenus fidem legationibus ei spopondit, sed inimicis ejus amicum exhibebat se fidelem, sicut in sequentibus legendo ipsius detrimenta, spectabis.” This of course takes in the help which Swend gave to the English insurgents after William’s coronation, but it must be connected also with William’s assertion (p. 132) that there were Danish troops at Senlac.
Footnote 890
See vol. ii. pp. 92, 93.
Footnote 891
Roman de Rou, 11326;
“En Belveisin, à Saint-Girmer Ala li Dus el Rei parler.”
I fancy that the splendid church of this monastery is less known than it should be to travellers and architectural students. It contains nothing so old as the days of William and Philip, but, among other magnificent portions, it has a Lady Chapel which reminds one at once of the Chapel of Henry the Seventh at Westminster and of that of Saint Lewis at Paris.
Footnote 892
Roman de Rou, 11330;
“Ke se tant aidier li voleit, Ke par s’aïe éust son dreit, Engleterre de li prendreit, E volentiers l’en servireit.”
Footnote 893
Ib. 11362;
“Quant Engleterre ara cunquise, Poiz jà n’areiz de li servise; Petit sert, maiz meins servira, Quant plus ara, meins vos fera.”
Footnote 894
See vol. i. pp. 96, 129–131, 247–250.
Footnote 895
Roman de Rou, 11368;
“Li Reis el Duc aidier ne vout, Ainz le destorba quant il pout.”
Footnote 896
See Roman de Rou, 11390–11433, and Appendix W.
Footnote 897
See above, p. 86, and Appendix N.
Footnote 898
See Dugdale, Baronage, i. 400; Mon. Angl. v. 491; Ellis, i. 422. The charter there quoted (later than 1274), by an amazing piece of genealogy, makes Gilbert a son of Count Baldwin and a nephew of William. “Giselbertus de Gaunt, filius Baldwini Comitis de Flandriâ venit cum Willelmo Conquæstore avunculo suo in Angliam.”
Footnote 899
Dugdale, i. 425; Mon. Angl. vi. 959; Ellis, i. 420, 504. “Walterus Bec ... venit cum Conquæstore et habuit hæreditatem suam in Flandriâ.” He appears in Domesday as “Walterus Flandrensis.”
Footnote 900
See vol. ii. p. 136.
Footnote 901
See Appendix Y.
Footnote 902
See above, pp. 231, 233.
Footnote 903
On Odo, see above, pp. 168, 231. This Alan Fergant must be carefully distinguished from his cousin Alan Fergant, who was afterwards Count of Britanny, and who married William’s daughter Constance. See the pedigree drawn out by Mrs. Green, Princesses, i. 25. So Roman de Rou, 11508;
“Alain Felgan vint el passage, Ki des Bretunz out grant barnage.”
Footnote 904
Roman de Rou, 11511; “E li Sire i vint de Dinan.”
Footnote 905
Ib. 11505;
“Le visquens i vint de Toarz, Haimon de bien grant poéir, E ki poeit grant gent aveir.”
Cf. Will. Pict. 142, where his name is written “Haimerius.”
Footnote 906
Roman de Rou, 11312;
“Poiz a requis ses boens veizins, Bretunz, Mansels et Angevins, Cels de Pontif è de Boloigne, K’od li viegnent en sa besoigne.”
Footnote 907
Liber de Castro Ambasiæ, c. iv., ap. D’Achery, iii. 276. He joined William when he was “omnem militiæ valetudinem quam invenire potuit in arma commovens,” and when “ex diversis regionibus optimi milites et bellicosi gregatim convenirent.” After a fitting panegyric we read, “Statim ut a Guillermo Duce fuit agnitus, super omnes ei familiarior est habitus.”
Footnote 908
See the account of this war in the Gesta Consulum, D’Achery, iii. 259, where Fulk’s conduct to his brother is called a “persequutio,” while Fulk himself (p. 233) speaks of his own “tribulatio” and the “invasio” of his brother.
Footnote 909
Gest. Cons. 259, where we hear of “proditio” and “proditores,” while Fulk (u. s.) speaks only of a “campestre prœlium in quo eum [Geoffrey] Dei gratiâ superavi,” and adds delicately, “proinde accepi civitatem Andegavæ.” See also the two Angevin Chronicles in Labbé, i. 276, and, more fully, 288. These troubles were among the effects of the comet.
Footnote 910
Gest. Con. 260. “Fulco Richin Barbatum fratrem suum captum tenuit et in vinculis Chainoni castro posuit.”
Footnote 911
See Appendix Z.
Footnote 912
Will. Gem. vii. 33. He is followed by Benoît, 36866–36963.
Footnote 913
See above, p. 207.
Footnote 914
See vol. ii. p. 412.
Footnote 915
The famous application of Pippin as to the lawfulness of deposing Childebert was rather a case of conscience.
Footnote 916
See the very remarkable account of these struggles in Lambert, 1064. Milman, iii. 83. With the high-minded comments of the impartial Lambert it is well to compare the panegyric of the partizan William of Poitiers (122). He at least had good reason to say that Alexander “responsa edebat justa salutariaque.” So Benoît, 36787;
“A Rome ert donc pape Alixandre, Jusz hoem, saintismes e verais, Qui mult tint sainte Iglise en pais.”
He goes on, prematurely enough, to say,
“A lui tramist li _Reis_ Guillaume Por mostrer l’ovre deu reaume.”
Footnote 917
Will. Malms. iii. 238. “Ne justam caussam temeritas decoloraret, ad Apostolicum ... misit, justitiam suscepti belli quantis potuit facundiæ nervis allegans.” The name of this eloquent ambassador comes from Orderic, 493 B.
Footnote 918
Roman de Rou, 11446;
“E se ço ert ke Deus volsist K’il Engleterre conquésist, De Saint Pierre la recevreit, Altre fors Dex n’en servireit.”
Footnote 919
William of Malmesbury (iii. 238) discusses the point; “Haroldus id facere supersedit, vel quod turgidus naturâ esset, vel quod caussæ diffideret, vel quod nuntios suos a Willelmo et ejus complicibus, qui omnes portus obsidebant, impediri timeret.” There was clearly no record or received tradition about the matter.
Footnote 920
I find no suggestion of the possibility of any hearing of the English side anywhere but in the passage of William of Malmesbury just quoted.
Footnote 921
William of Malmesbury (u. s.) says that the Pope gave judgement, “perpensis apud se utrimque partibus.” But it is from a letter written long after to William by Hildebrand, then Gregory the Seventh, that we learn how strong an opposition was made to William’s claims. The letter is dated April 24th, 1080, and has chiefly to do with the affairs of the see of Le Mans. Gregory says to William; “Notum esse tibi credo, excellentissime fili, priusquam ad pontificale culmen ascenderem, quanto semper te sinceræ dilectionis affectu amavi, qualem etiam me tuis negotiis et quam efficacem exhibui, insuper ut ad regale fastigium cresceres quanto studio laboravi. _Quâ pro re a quibusdam fratribus magnam penè infamiam pertuli, submurmurantibus quod ad tanta homicidia perpetranda, tanto favore meam operam impendissem._ Deus verò in meâ conscientiâ testis erat, quàm recto id animo feceram, sperans per gratiam Dei et non inaniter confidens de virtutibus bonis quæ in te erant, quia quantò ad sublimiora proficeres, tantò te apud Deum et sanctam ecclesiam (sicut et nunc, Deo gratias, res est) ex bono meliorem exhiberes.” Ep. Greg. VII. cxxxvi., ap. Bouquet, xiv. 648.
Footnote 922
See above, p. 89 et seqq.
Footnote 923
Orderic (482 B) tells a story how, at one stage of the endless negotiations about Abbot Robert of Saint Evroul (see above, p. 184), Robert came with certain Papal Legates to claim his Abbey; “Audiens verò Dux ... vehementer iratus dixit se quidem Legatos Papæ de fide et relligione Christianâ, ut communis patris, libenter suscepturum; sed si quis monachorum de terrâ suâ calumniam sibi contrariam inferret, ad altiorem quercum vicinæ silvæ per capitium irreverenter suspensurum.” This was in 1063. William plainly recognized no Benefit of Clergy, and when the witnesses are liable to be hanged, the proceedings of the Court can hardly be called free.
Footnote 924
So at least Wace (12353) makes William say after he is landed in England;
“E si saunt Engleiz de veir, A tuz le velt fere saveir, Ke cil sunt escumengié De l’Apostoile è del clergié.”
Footnote 925
We may infer this last object from the care with which William (see Will. Pict. 144) took, after his coronation, to send to Rome “Sancti Petri pecuniam,” and also from his famous correspondence with Gregory. See Lanfranc, ep. 10 (Giles, i. 32).
Footnote 926
Roman de Rou, 11452;
“Un gonfanon e un anel Mult precios è riche è bel; Si come il dit, de soz la pierre Aveit un des cheveuls Saint Pierre.”
For a hair another reading has a tooth.
Footnote 927
The banner is mentioned by most writers. Will. Pict. 123. “Vexillum accepit [Willelmus] ejus [Alexandri] benignitate, velut suffragium Sancti Petri; quo primo confidentiùs ac tutiùs invaderet adversarium.” Ord. Vit. 493 C. “Vexillum Sancti Petri Apostoli, cujus meritis ab omni periculo defenderetur, transmisit.” Will. Malms. iii. 238. “Papa vexillum in omen regni Willelmo contradidit.” So Wace, u. s., and Benoît, 36807. Wace calls it “gonfanon,” Benoît “enseigne.”
Footnote 928
In this Chapter we of course return to English authorities, to the Chronicles and Florence, the latter now distinctly assuming the character of an independent authority. These we have to compare throughout with the great Norwegian account, the Saga of Harold Hardrada in Snorro, many of the details of which are manifestly mythical. A few scattered hints may also be picked up from German, Norman, and other sources.
Footnote 929
Chronn. Ab. Wig. 1066. “And sona þaræfter [after the appearance of the comet] com Tostig eorl fram begeondan sǽ into Wiht mid swa myclum liðe swa he begytan mihte. And him man geald þar æigðer ge feoh ge metsunge.” So Florence; “Non multò post, Comes Tostius _de Flandriâ_ [on this point see Appendix Z] rediens, ad Vectam insulam applicuit, et postquam insulanos sibi tributum et stippendium solvere coegerat, discessit.” The Peterborough Chronicler, followed, as he so often is, by William of Malmesbury (ii. 228), as also by Henry of Huntingdon (M. H. B. 762 A), takes no notice of Tostig’s movements till he appears in the Humber. The Norman account, it will be remembered (see above, p. 304), makes him not land in England at all till he comes with Harold Hardrada.
Footnote 930
Chron. Ab. 1066. “And fór þa þanon, and hearmas dyde ægwar be þam sæ riman þa he tó mihte, oð he becom to Sandwic.” Flor. Wig. “Circa ripas maris, donec ad Sandicum portum veniret, prædas exercuit.”
Footnote 931
Will. Malms. iii. 238. “Præterea, qui [Haroldus] putaret minas Willelmi numquam ad factum erupturas, quod ille conterminorum Ducum bellis implicaretur, totum animum otio cum subjectis indulserat; nam profectò, nisi quod Noricorum Regem adventare didicit, nec militem convocare nec aciem dirigere dignatus fuisset.”
Footnote 932
Flor. Wig. 1066. “Mox, ut regni gubernacula susceperat, ... cœpit ... pro patriæ defensione ipsemet terrâ marique desudare.”
Footnote 933
Chronn. Wig. Ab. “And Harold cyng his [Tostiges] broðor gegædrade swa micelne sciphere and eac landhere, swa nan cyng her on lande ær ne dyde forþam þe him wæs gecyðd þæt Wyllelm Bastard [“Willelm eorll fram Normandige, Eadwardes cingces mæg,” Chron. Ab. and Fl. Wig.] wolde hiðer [“cuman,” Ab.] and ðis land gewinnen, eallswa hit syððan aeóde.”
Footnote 934
Chron. Ab. and Fl. Wig. “Ða cydde man Harolde kynge þe on Lundene wæs.”
Footnote 935
Chron. Ab. 1066. “Þa Tostig þaet geaxode þaet Harold cing wæs toward Sandwic, þa for he of Sandwic, and nam of þam butsekarlon sume mid him, sume þances, sume unþances.” So Florence; “De butsecarlis quosdam volentes, quosdam nolentes, secum assumens.”
Footnote 936
See vol. ii. p. 323.
Footnote 937
Chron. Ab. “And gewende þa norð into [Humbran] and þær hergode on Lindesege.” So Florence; “Recessit, et cursum ad Lindesegiam direxit.” Chronn. Wig. Petrib. “And þá hwile com Tostig eorl into Humbran mid sixtigum scipum.” So William of Malmesbury, ii. 228; “Eodem anno Tostinus, a Flandriâ in Humbram navigio sexaginta navium delatus, ea quæ circa oram fluminis erant piraticis excursionibus infestabat.”
Footnote 938
Chronn. Wig. Petrib. 1066. “And Eadwine eorl com mid landferde, and adraf hine út.” The Abingdon Chronicler and Florence add Morkere; so William of Malmesbury (ii. 228); “Ab Edwino et Morchardo, _concordis potentiæ fratribus_, impigrè de provinciâ pulsus.”
Footnote 939
Chronn. Wig. Petrib. “And þa butsecarlas hine forsocan.”
Footnote 940
Ib. “And he for to Scotlande mid xii. snaccum.”
Footnote 941
See vol. ii. pp. 384, 452.
Footnote 942
Snorro, ap. Laing, iii. 70. The peace was made on the terms of the _status in quo_.
Footnote 943
See the quotation from Adam of Bremen in vol. ii. p. 121.
Footnote 944
See Appendix X.
Footnote 945
See vol. ii. p. 627.
Footnote 946
See vol. ii. 90, 106, 151.
Footnote 947
Snorro, ap. Johnstone, 193; Laing, iii. 78. See Appendix BB.
Footnote 948
“Enn Gamli Knútr konungr eignadiz at erfd Dana-ríki, en med hernadi oc orrosto England” (Johnstone, 194). But England was Cnut’s first Kingdom; he did not succeed to Denmark till the death or deposition of his brother Harold. (See vol. i. pp. 403, 465.) This is another proof how utterly the short reign of Harold was forgotten.
Footnote 949
Johnstone, p. 195. “Mæla menn þat, segir hann, at þer hinir Ensko se eigi alltrúir.”
Footnote 950
Orderic (493 D) makes Tostig make this proposal to Harold; “Medietatem Angliæ vobis retinete, aliamque mihi, qui vobis inde fideliter serviam, retinete.” The proposal is quite in the spirit of any one who represented, or claimed to represent, Northumberland. Compare William’s alleged offer to Harold of England in the next Chapter.
Footnote 951
Snorro, ap. Johnstone, 195. “Því eignadiz Magnús Konungr Danmórk, at þar landz höfdingiar veitto hönom; enn því feckt þú eigi at allt landz-folk stód i múti þer. Því bardiz Magnús Konungr eigi til Englandz, at allr landz-lydr villdi hafa Játvard at Konungi.” It would almost seem as if, both in England and in Denmark, a distinction was drawn between the chiefs and the mass of the people. The people seem to be conceived as being, always and everywhere, patriotic; but it was possible that some of the chief men in both countries might be won over to the cause of the invader. This is eminently true of England in the reign of Æthelred. The people, the land-folk, of Denmark, says Tostig, resisted Harold; the people of England were unanimous for Eadward. None but the Danish chiefs are spoken of as supporting Magnus, and it is only from the chiefs in England that Tostig looks for the means of fulfilling his promise to Harold.
Footnote 952
See vol. ii. pp. 91–93.
Footnote 953
See above, p. 289.
Footnote 954
Snorro, ap. Laing, iii. 101;
“Severe was Harald, but we call That just which was alike to all.”
Compare the discriminating comparison between him and his brother Saint Olaf; Johnstone, 225; Laing, iii. 102.
Footnote 955
Snorro, ap. Johnstone, 197; Laing, iii. 80. “Enn sumir sögdo, at England mundi verda torsott, mann-folk ofa-mikit á, oc þat lid er kallat er þínga-manna-lid, þeir voro menn sva fræknir, at betra var lid eins þeirra enn II Harallds manna hinna besto.” Harold’s Staller Ulf is scandalized at the comparison.
Footnote 956
Chron. Ab. 1066. “þa com Harold cyning of Norwegan norð into Tínan on unwaran.”
Footnote 957
See the quotation from the Worcester Chronicle in p. 325.
Footnote 958
See vol. i. pp. 426, 427.
Footnote 959
See above, p. 325, note 4. The Abingdon Chronicle speaks of “scip_fyrde_ and eac land_fyrde_,” that of Worcester of “scip_here_ and eac land_here_.” No doubt both kinds of force were called out. The preparations of Harold are also strongly set forth by Orderic, 500 A; “Hastingas et Penevesellum aliosque portus maris Neustriæ oppositos.... toto anno illo cum multis navibus et militibus callide servaverat.” Compare also his account of Tostig’s expedition, see above, p. 304. And, after all, no one does more justice to Harold in this respect than the most hostile of all writers, William of Poitiers (123); “Heraldus interea promptus ad decernendum prœlio, sive terrestri sive navali, plerumque cum immani exercitu ad littus marinum opperiens.”
Footnote 960
Chron. Ab. “Þa hit wæs to Nativitas Sanctæ Mariæ, þa wæs manna metsung agán, and hig nan man þar na leng gehealdan ne mihte.” This last expressive clause is left out by Florence, who says merely “victu deficiente.” Cf. above, p. 167. Compare also the preparations made for the defence of the southern coast in 1337, and the writ of Edward the Third commanding the dispersion of the levies which are described as “Hujusmodi onera importabilia sustinere non valentes.” Rymer, vol. ii. part ii. p. 996; Longman, Edward III. i. 121.
Footnote 961
Chron. Ab. “And man draf þa scypu to Lundene, and manega forwurdon ær hi þyder cómon.”
Footnote 962
See Appendix AA.
Footnote 963
See above, p. 65.
Footnote 964
Snorro, Johnstone, 196; Laing, iii. 80. “Sendi Haralldr konungr ord um allan Noreg, oc baud út leidángri, hálfom almenningi.”
Footnote 965
Snorro gives him about two hundred ships of war, besides transports and other smaller craft (“Haralldr konungr hefdi nær cc. skipa, oc umfram vista-byrdingar oc smá-skútor.” Johnstone, 198; Laing, iii. 81); the three Chronicles, William of Malmesbury, and the Scholiast of Adam of Bremen (iii. 51) give him three hundred, Florence five hundred, while in Marianus Scotus (ap. Pertz, v. 559) the number rises to “minùs mille.”
Footnote 966
Marianus, u. s. “Araldus, qui et _Arbach_ vocabatur, Rex Nordmandorum, minùs mille navibus venit mense Septembri, Anglicam terram regnaturus.” “Arbach” is an odd corruption of Hardrada. I ought to have mentioned before that the English writers all transfer to him the surname “Harfagra,” which belongs to the famous Harold of the ninth century. A Flemish chronicler (Chron. S. Bavo. Corp. Chron. Fland. i. 459), who copies Marianus, turns him into “Haricnuth, Rex Nordanhymbrorum.”
Footnote 967
See vol. i. p. 204.
Footnote 968
Snorro, ap. Laing, iii. 30, 37.
Footnote 969
Snorro, ap. Johnstone, 200; Laing, iii. 82. “Haralldr konungr, ádr hann fór af Þrándheimi, hafdi þar látit taka til Konungs Magnus son sinn, oc setti hann til ríkis í Noregi, er konungi fór í braut.” Thora is simply called “Þora Þórbergs dóttir,” while Elizabeth is “Ellisif drottning.”
Footnote 970
See vol. i. pp. 453, 475, 531, 533.
Footnote 971
Schol. ad Ad. Brem. iii. 51. “Insuper massa auri, quam Haroldus a Græciâ duxit, ad Bastardum tali fortunâ pervenit. Erat autem pondus auri quod vix bisseni juvenes cervice levarent.”
Footnote 972
This however Orderic seems to wish us to believe. William makes his preparations (494 A), while still “nescius infortunii quod præoccupârat suum præcursorem [Tosticum sc.] et extra statutum cursum longè propulerat ad septemtrionem.”
Footnote 973
See Flor. Wig. 1098. Will. Malms. iv. 379. Ord. Vit. 768. The expedition of Harold, Cnut, and Osbiorn in 1069 (see Florence in anno) was undertaken directly for the deliverance of England. Magnus in 1098 said expressly that he came not against England, but against Ireland and the Isles.
Footnote 974
Snorro, ap. Johnstone, 198; Laing, iii. 81. The name should be noticed. Had every Harold his Gyrth?
Footnote 975
The “witch-wife” of Laing’s translation is a “tröll-kona” in the original.
Footnote 976
On the career of Thorfinn, see Orkneyinga Saga, ap. Johnstone, Ant. Celt. Scand. 176 et seqq.; Torfæi Orcades, i. 16 (p. 63 et seqq.); also Robertson, Scotland under Early Kings, i. 111–129.
Footnote 977
The Orkneyinga Saga (Johnstone, p. 181) attributes to him an expedition into England in the reign of Harthacnut, of which I find no trace in English history.
Footnote 978
Mark the prevalence among the Northern nations of scriptural names, when they were all but unknown in England. We have already had James, King of the Swedes (see vol. i. p. 455); now we have Mary and Paul, besides the Russian Elizabeth.
Footnote 979
Snorro, ap. Johnstone, 200; Laing, iii. 83. So the Scholiast on Adam of Bremen, iv. 31; “Haraldus, frater Olaph nequissimus, Orchadas suo adduxit _Imperio_, _regnum_que suum dilatavit usque ad Riphæos montes et Island.” Is the Kingdom of Norway, with Iceland for a part of it, distinguished from the Empire of Britain? Adam is here discussing the geography of the Riphæan mountains, but they are a familiar flourish. See the extracts in vol. i. p. 208, where they are placed somewhere in Britain.
Footnote 980
Chron. Wig. 1066. “Tostig him to beah and his man wearð.” Will. Malms, ii. 228. “Ibi Regi Noricorum ... obvio manus dedit.” See Appendix X.
Footnote 981
Adam Brem. iii. 51. “Tosti ... Regem Nordmannorum auxilio ducit Haroldum, Regemque Scotorum, et occisus est ipse Tosti et Rex Hiberniæ et Haroldus cum toto exercitu eorum a Rege Anglorum.” The “Rex Scotorum” and the “Rex Hiberniæ” can hardly be the same person, and Tostig was just now on the best terms with Malcolm.
Footnote 982
See the last quotation.
Footnote 983
Chron. Manniæ, 1047 (1066), p. 3 Munch. “De quâ fugâ [apud Stamfordbrige] quidam Godredus cognomento Crouan, filius Haraldi nigri, de Ysland fugiens venit ad Godredum filium Sytric qui tunc regnavit in Manniâ, et honorificè susceptus est ab eo.” See Munch’s note, pp. 50, 51. He however takes “Ysland” to mean not Iceland, but Isla.
Footnote 984
Flor. Wig. 1066. “Citato cursu ostium Humbræ fluminis intraverunt.”
Footnote 985
For these accounts of the harrying of “Kliflönd,” “Skardaborg,” and “Hellornes,” see Snorro, Johnstone, 201; Laing, iii. 83.
Footnote 986
Scarborough, unluckily, is not mentioned in Domesday, otherwise the name of its lord might perhaps help us to recover the personality of a man who must have been worth remembering.
Footnote 987
We read some way further on in the Abingdon Chronicle how Harold of England found the fleet at Tadcaster.
Footnote 988
Flor. Wig. 1066. “In loco qui Richale dicitur applicuerunt.”
Footnote 989
The carelessness of Eadwine and Morkere is strongly set forth by William of Malmesbury, ii. 228; “Ambo ergo [Harald Hardrada and Tostig] consertis umbonibus terram Transhumbranam populabantur; germanos recenti victoria feriatos, qui nihil minus quam talia latrocinia metuerent, aggressi, victos inter Eboracum includunt.”
Footnote 990
See vol. i. p. 317.
Footnote 991
Marianus (Pertz, v. 559), describing the Battle of Fulford, mentions the slaughter of a hundred priests; “Eburaci in auctumno plus quam mille laicorum centosque [sic] presbyterorum bello occidit de Anglis.” The Chronicle of Saint Bavon (see above, p. 340) cuts down the number of priests killed to ten. The Hyde writer (292) mistakes the battle for a storm and massacre at York, with a grievous slaughter of priests; “Eboracam ... tandem ... capientes tantâ in eâ cæde debacchati sunt, ut ex numero presbyterorum qui in eâ interfecti sunt, quantus fuit cæterorum morientium numerus, utrumque conjici potest undecies enim xx. [220?] presbyteri feruntur ibi occidisse.”
Footnote 992
The earlier writers do not give the name of the place; they are satisfied with saying that it was near York. The Worcester and Peterborough Chronicles say that the Northmen “comon to Eoforwic and heom þær wið fuhton Eadwine Eorl,” etc. So Florence says “juxta Eboracum,” and Marianus “Eburaci.” Henry of Huntingdon (M. H. B. 762 A), after saying that the fight was “juxta urbem,” adds, “cujus locus pugnæ in australi parte urbis adhuc ostenditur.” But to the local knowledge of Simeon a still more exact account seemed needful. He copies Florence as usual, but after the words “juxta Eboracum” he inserts the words “apud Fulford.” The matter is elaborately discussed by a writer in the Gentleman’s Magazine, August, 1863, p. 216 (cf. p. 347), who is very busy with Snorro, Rapin, Thierry, and Drake’s Eboracum, but who unluckily did not “possess a copy of Simeon.”
Footnote 993
See Snorro, ap. Johnstone, 202; Laing, iii. 84.
Footnote 994
Ib. “Þat var fen diúpt oc breitt oc fultt af vatni.”
Footnote 995
Snorro, ap. Johnstone, 202; Laing, iii. 84. “For þar fram merki Mauro-kara Jarls.” Snorro does not speak of any exploits of Eadwine, nor indeed does he mention his name. I am not sure that he does not confound him with Waltheof, whom he describes as present in the battle, calling him, as elsewhere, a brother of Morkere. (See vol. ii. p. 553.) He gives him however his proper title as Earl of Huntingdon. (See vol. ii. p. 560.) The presence of Waltheof is not mentioned by any other writer. It was perhaps suggested by his later exploits at York.
Footnote 996
Ib. 203; Laing, iii. 84. “Lá þar sva þyckt valrinn, at Nordmenn mátto gánga þurfaetis yfir fenit.” He goes on to kill Morkere both in prose and verse, but he lived at least till 1087. Cf. Chron. Ab. “And þær wæs þæs Engliscan folces mycel ofslagen and adrenct and on fleam bedrifen.” So Florence; “Multo plures ex illis in fluvio demersi fuere quam in acie cecidere.”
Footnote 997
Snorro, Johnstone, 203; Laing, iii. 85. “Valþiófr Jarl [meaning most likely Eadwine] oc þat lid er undan komz, flýdi upp til borgarinnar í Jorvik, vard þar it mesta mannfall.”
Footnote 998
The details come from Snorro (Johnstone, 205; Laing, iii. 85), but the capitulation is clear from the English writers. Chron. Ab. “And þa æfter þam gefeohte, for Harold cyningc of Norwegan and Tostig eorl into Eoferwic.” So Simeon, who, after the landing at Riccall, inserts the words “et Eboracum gravi pugnâ obtinuerunt.” Snorro, who understood the geography of the coast, gets all wrong in the interior. He fancies that both Riccall and Stamfordbridge were close to York.
Footnote 999
Chron. Ab. “And to fullan friðe gespræcon, þæt hig ealle mid him suð faran woldon and þis land gegan.” Cf. vol. i. p. 394.
Footnote 1000
Chron. Ab. and Florence. Snorro does not mention the hostages given by Harold.
Footnote 1001
Chron. Ab. “And Harold cyningc of Norwegan and Tostig eorl and heora gefylce wæron afaren of scipe begeondan Eoferwic to Stanfordbrycge; forþam þe him wæron behaten to gewissan þæt him man þær of ealre þære scire ongean by gislas bringan wolde.”
Footnote 1002
Bæda, ii. 9.
Footnote 1003
The confusion made by Snorro must be constantly borne in mind. The army was at Stamfordbridge; the ships were left at Riccall; these points are several miles distant from York and from one another. Snorro fancies that they were all three close together; he makes Harold Hardrada go to Stamfordbridge as a convenient post for attacking the city, and he makes him also go back to his ships on the Sunday evening. He no doubt thought that Stamfordbridge was on the Ouse. So the Hyde writer (292) turns the fight of Stamfordbridge into a siege of York; “Haroldus .... eis occurrit apud Eboracum et totis viribus civitatem oppugnat.” Cf. the passage from Domesday, below, p. 361. Stamfordbridge was the Battle of York, as Senlac was the Battle of Hastings.
Footnote 1004
Æthelred (405) says, “In loco qui tunc Steinfordebrigge, nunc autem ex rei eventu etiam Pons Belli dicitur.” So the De Inventione, cap. 20; “Rediens a Ponte Belli, quod a bello cognomen.” The older name is now the only one known, but the battle is by no means forgotten on the spot.
Footnote 1005
On the details, see Appendix CC.
Footnote 1006
See Appendix BB.
Footnote 1007
The story is told in the Ramsey History, c. 120, by Æthelred of Rievaux, 404, in the Vita Haroldi, p. 188. The Ramsey writer does not mention Harold’s sickness; the vision comes “quum Haraldus, propter imparitatem forsitan copiæ militaris, obviare [Tostino] dissimularet.” The vision itself too is cut much shorter. Æthelred tells us of Harold’s sickness, but does not describe its nature. From his own biographer’s account it would seem to have been gout; “Tybies ubito unius [“tibia subitò cruris” or “tibia cruris unius”?] vehementissimo cœpit dolore constringi.”
Footnote 1008
Æthelred, u. s. “Nocte quidem præteritâ, quum dolore torqueretur, licet eum non parùm urgeret molestia imminens, siluit tamen, reputans apud se, si publicaret languorem, quod et suis futurus esset contemptui et hostibus irrisioni.”
Footnote 1009
Vita Haroldi, u. s. “Qui ex suo tali compede plus subditorum discrimini quam suo congemiscens dolori, noctem penè totam suspiriis et precibus agentes [agens?] insomnem, familiarem Sanctæ Crucis expetierat subventionem.” The scene can hardly be meant to be laid at Waltham. The Holy Cross, it will be remembered, had wrought one cure on Harold already. See vol. ii. p. 443.
Footnote 1010
“Ailsius,” “Elsinus,” “Alxi,” the pluralist Abbot of Ramsey and Saint Augustine’s, who had not refused the ministrations of Stigand. See vol. ii. p. 454. We shall hear of him yet again.
Footnote 1011
Vita Haroldi, p. 188. “Rex itaque ... divinis curatur beneficiis, exhilaratur oraculis.”
Footnote 1012
The presence of Gyrth and Leofwine might be taken for granted. That of Bondig appears from a very confused, and probably corrupt, passage of the De Inventione, c. 20. The army disperses after the victory at Stamfordbridge, and “Tostinus, Gerth, et Bundinus” are mentioned among those who had been there. For “Tostinum” we should doubtless read “Leofwinum,” and the whole history is greatly misconceived, but the passage seems evidence enough to prove the presence of Bondig, to whom I owe some amends for my note at vol. ii. p. 359. See above, p. 53.
Footnote 1013
Chron. Ab. “Þa for he norðweard dæges and nihtes, swa hraðe swa he his fyrde gegaderian mihte.”
Footnote 1014
Domesday, ii. 15. Pachesham was a possession of the church of Westminster. The Survey adds, “hanc terram dedit unus teignus ecclesiæ quum ivit ad bellum in Eurewic cum Haroldo.”
Footnote 1015
In Domesday (177 _b_) we read of certain lands which one Wulfgeat had given to the church of Evesham in the fifth year of King Eadward, on the occasion of his son Ælfgeat becoming a monk of the house. The account then goes on; “Postea præstitit abbas Æluuinus hanc terram suo avunculo quamdiu ipse homo viveret. Qui postea mortuus fuit in bello Heraldi contra Norrenses.” It is worth notice that the Church of Evesham found means to take possession of the land in the short space of time between the two great battles; for the Survey continues, “ecclesia recepit terram suam antequam Rex W. in Anglia venisset.”
Footnote 1016
Marianus Scotus, ap. Pertz, v. 559. “Araldus vero Rex Anglorum cum septem aciebus belli statim pervenit.”
Footnote 1017
See vol. ii. p. 500.
Footnote 1018
See the Abingdon Chronicle quoted in the last page.
Footnote 1019
See above, p. 61.
Footnote 1020
I need hardly quote the well-known passage of Gildas (§ 23) telling how our forefathers, “grex catulorum de cubili leænæ barbariæ” as he calls us, came “tribus, ut lingua ejus exprimitur, cyulis, nostrâ linguâ longis navibus.” Cf. Bæda, i. 15. The Englishman however does not use the English word preserved to us by the Briton.
Footnote 1021
Chron. Ab. 1066. “Þa ámang þissan com Harald Engla cyninge mid ealre his fyrde on ðone Sunnandæg to Táða and þær his lið fylcade.” See above, p. 347.
Footnote 1022
Snorro, ap. Johnstone, 205; Laing, iii. 86. “Þat sama kvelld, éptir sólarfall kom sunnan at borginni Haralldr konungr Gudenason med óvigan her reid hann í borgina at villd oe þocka allra borgar-manna.” He is wrong however in making Harold reach York on the Sunday evening and pass the night in the city.
Footnote 1023
Chron. Ab. 1066. “Harold Engla Cyningc ... for þa on Monandæg _þurh ut_ Eoferwic.”
Footnote 1024
See Appendix CC.
Footnote 1025
Snorro, Johnstone, 206; Laing, iii. 87. “Þeir gördo sva, oc var lidit því meira, er náligarr fór, oc allt at siá, sem á eina ís-möl sæi, er vapnin glóado.”
Footnote 1026
This famous saying is proverbial. We find it applied to William in the Peterborough Chronicle, 1087; “Se þe wæs ærur rice cyng and maniges landes hlaford, he næfde þa ealles landes buton seofon fot mæl.” It was also long after applied to Charles the Bold by the Bernese historian Valerius Anshelm (i. 143); “Der Herzog ... ward von verachter Macht mit sieben Schuh Erdrychs zu Ruw gesetzt und vernügt.” It is the same general idea as the Æschylean lines,
χθόνα ναίειν διαπήλας, ὁπόσαν καὶ φθιμένοισι κατέχειν, τῶν μεγάλων πεδίων ἀμοίρους.
Sept. c. Theb. 713.
Footnote 1027
The moment of Tostig’s death is, oddly enough, not mentioned in the Saga. But the construction of the story clearly requires it to be placed here. Tostig takes Harold’s place by the standard. Afterwards Eystein takes it. Tostig is clearly killed between these two points.
Footnote 1028
Chron. Ab. “Ða com Harold Engla cyning heom ongean on unwaran begeondan þære brycge.” Chron. Wig. “Ða com Harold ure cyng on unwær on þa Normenn.”
Footnote 1029
Chron. Ab. “Swyðe heardlice lange on dæg feohtende wæron.” Chron. Wig. “And þær wærð on dæg swiðe stranglic gefeoht on bá halfe.” Flor. Wig. “Rex Anglorum Haroldus ... plenam victoriam, licet acerrimè pugnatum fuisset, habuit.”
Footnote 1030
This appears not only in the Saga, but also in Marianus (Pertz, v. 559); “Araldus Rex Anglorum, ... quum Araldum imparatum absque loricis et ceteris ejusdem rei invenisset, bello occidit.” So Saxo (207), where however there is a good deal of exaggeration; “[Haraldi] cunctationem Norwagienses timori consentaneam rati, _neglectis corporum munimentis_, perinde ac securi periculum validiùs prædæ incubuerunt. Sed dum incautiùs ruunt sparsi palantesque ab Anglis nullo negotio (!) trucidati sunt.”
Footnote 1031
Hen. Hunt. M. H. B. 762 B. “Maximus numerus Anglorum Norwagenses cedere sed non fugere compulit.”
Footnote 1032
Ib. “Ultra flumen igitur repulsi, vivis super mortuos transeuntibus, magnanimiter restiterunt.” See the use of the same proverbial expression above, p. 351.
Footnote 1033
See vol. i. p. 299. This story is found in the Abingdon Chronicle, being the last entry, added in another hand, and, according to Mr. Earle, in the Northumbrian dialect. Mr. Earle (Parallel Chronicles, p. xxxviii.) ingeniously conceives that the account of the battle in this Chronicle, so much fuller than in any of the others, is due to some Northumbrian visitor, who at last took up the pen and wrote a little himself. The story is not told by Florence, but it is found in William of Malmesbury and Henry of Huntingdon, with some variations.
Footnote 1034
Will. Malms, ii. 228. “Uno et altero et pluribus nostræ partis [William for once writes as an Englishman] interemtis.” Henry of Huntingdon (M. H. B. 762 B) is more precise or more romantic; “Plus xl. viris Anglorum securi cædens electâ.”
Footnote 1035
Chron. Ab. “þa seite an Englisce mid anre flan, ac hít nactes ne widstod.” The shooting of one arrow seems looked on as an exploit on the English side. William of Malmesbury has confounded this shot with the death-blow; “Unus ex collateralibus Regis jaculum ferreum in eum eminùs vibrat, quo ille, dum gloriabundus proludit ipsâ securitate incautior, terebratus, victoriam Anglis concessit.”
Footnote 1036
Chron. Ab. “And þa com an oþer under þere brigge, and hine þurðstang en únder þere brunie.” Hen. Hunt. u. s. “Quidam navim ingressus per foramina pontis in celandis eum percussit jaculo.” Compare the death of Eadmund Ironside, vol. i. p. 438. On the “foramina pontis” compare a bridge described by Richer (iv. 50) which “tantis enim et tot hiatibus patebat,” &c. At Boroughbridge in 1321 Humfrey Earl of Hereford was pierced in exactly the same way. See Chron. Galfredi le Baker, p. 65. The memory of the English exploit is kept up on the spot by a yearly baking of pies of pears, made in the shape of a boat—“pear-boat pies”—at the feast held on (I think) the Monday after the day of the battle.
Footnote 1037
The presence of Flemings, followers no doubt of Tostig, is attested in the addition to the Abingdon Chronicle; “And þere michel wel geslogon, ge Norweis ge Flæming.”
Footnote 1038
Chron. Wig. “And Engle ahton wælstowe geweald;” the old formula.
Footnote 1039
Chron. Wig. “Oðþ hig sume to scype coman.”
Footnote 1040
See above, p. 346.
Footnote 1041
The Worcester Chronicle says emphatically, “þaer waes lyt to lafe.” So the Abingdon writer; “þaer waes Harold cyning of Norwegan and Tostig eorl ofslagen and ungerim folces mid heom, ægðer ge Normana ge Englisca.” Cf. Orderic (500 A); “Nimius sanguis ex utrâque parte effusus est et innumerabilis [ungerím] hominum bestiali rabie furentium multitudo trucidata est.”
Footnote 1042
Chron. Wig. “Sume adruncen and sume eae forbærnde, and swa mislice fórfarene.” So Henry of Huntingdon (M. H. B. 762 B); “Angli ... totam Norwagensium aciem vel armis straverunt vel igne deprehensos combusserunt.” Compare the story in the Saga (Laing, iii. 95) of Waltheof burning the Normans after Senlac.
Footnote 1043
Liber de Hydâ, p. 292. “Haroldus ... et Tostius ... victi occubuerunt, sectaque eorum capita Regi Haroldo sunt deportata.” So Guy of Amiens, 37;
“Invidus ille Caïn fratris caput amputat ense, Et caput et corpus sic sepelivit humo.”
Footnote 1044
Will. Malms. iii. 252. “Cadaver ejus, indicio verrucæ inter duas scapulas agnitum.” Can this account be reconciled with the other?
Footnote 1045
The Hyde writer (u. s.) sends him to be buried in Norway; “Corpus defuncti Regis his qui remanserant deportandum in proprium regnum Rex Haroldus concessit.”
Footnote 1046
Will. Malms. u. s. “Cadaver ... sepulturam Eboraci meruit.”
Footnote 1047
Ord. Vit. 500 A. “Locus etiam belli pertranseuntibus evidenter patet, ubi magna congeries ossium mortuorum usque hodie jacet, et indicium ruinæ multiplicis utriusque gentis exhibet.”
Footnote 1048
Flor. Wig. “Licet de totâ Angliâ fortiores quosque in prœliis duobus benè sciret jam cecidisse.”
Footnote 1049
The death of Harold Hardrada was followed by a time of unusual quiet in the North. He was succeeded by his sons Olaf and Magnus, of whom Magnus died in 1069, after which Olaf reigned alone till 1093. He was succeeded by his son Magnus Barefoot, who figures in English history as the invader of Anglesey in 1098 (see above, p. 342). Snorro (Johnstone, 221; Laing, iii. 98) says that Harold Hardrada’s daughter Mary (see above, pp. 340, 344, 367) died suddenly in Orkney on the same day that her father and her lover Eystein died at Stamfordbridge.
Tostig left two sons by Judith, Skule and Ketil. They returned to Norway with Olaf (Snorro, ap. Johnstone, 222; Laing, iii. 97–99), from whom they both received grants of land in Norway, where they became founders of families—representatives of the male line of Earl Godwine. Skule especially was in high honour with Olaf. Their mother Judith remarried with Welf, Duke of Bavaria, son of the Marquess Azo (see above, p. 197), and was thus an ancestress of the House of Brunswick. Some of the German historians mistake her for the widow of Harold instead of the widow of Tostig. See Appendix N, where I have also spoken of her degree of kindred to Baldwin the Fifth (see vol. ii. p. 134). She was undoubtedly his sister, and not his daughter, and she might be called, in a wide sense, the niece of Eadward.
Footnote 1050
Chron. Wig. “Se kyng þa geaf gryð Olafe þæs Norna cynges suna, and heora Biscope and þan eorle of Orcanége, and eallon þan þe on þam scypum to lafe wæron.” Florence gives the Orkney Earl his name Paul, and the addition to the Abingdon Chronicle strangely calls Olaf “Hetmundus.”
Footnote 1051
Chron. Wig. “Hi foron þa upp to uran kyninge.”
Footnote 1052
Compare the auxiliaries sent by Swend, of whom more in the next volume, and the Danes and Swedes who came with William the Third. Macaulay, ii. 489; iii. 625.
Footnote 1053
I accept this incident, as one likely to be remembered, from Henry of Huntingdon (M. H. B. 762 C) and the Ramsey History (cap. cxx.), though they absurdly represent the feast as held, and the message as brought, on the day of the battle, when William had not yet landed. So Wace says of his Thegn who brought the news from Sussex;
“Ultre le Humbre l’a trové: En une ville aveit disné.”
The writer of the De Inventione (c. xx.) most strangely makes Harold go, after the battle, to Waltham, and hear the news there; “Waltham rediit, ubi de applicatione Normannorum nimis veridicâ narration e nuntium suscepit.”
Footnote 1054
See the next Chapter, § 2.
Footnote 1055
Throughout this Chapter, the Norman and English accounts have carefully to be compared, but it is from the Norman authorities that we have to draw most of our details. The English writers seem to have shrunk from dwelling at length on the great “memory of sorrow,” so that all their accounts are comparatively meagre. At this point also we lose the Abingdon Chronicle altogether, which ends with the Battle of Stamfordbridge. Among the Norman accounts, the first places belong to the Tapestry and to William of Poitiers. The Tapestry, which gave us no help during the period of negotiation, begins to be most minute as soon as we get to the beginning of actual military preparations, and it continues to be of primary importance down to the end of the Battle of Senlac. The high authority of William of Poitiers, as a contemporary and seemingly an eyewitness, is somewhat balanced by his constant strain of panegyric on William and by his no less constant sacrifice of chronological order to the demands of his rhetoric. Wace, the honest and painstaking inquirer of the next century, has been valuable before, and he becomes still more valuable now. We are now also reinforced by another important narrative on the Norman side, the “Carmen de Bello Hastingensi” by Guy, Bishop of Amiens (see above, p. 136), printed in Giles’ Scriptores Rerum Gestarum Willelmi Conquestoris, in the Chroniques Anglo-Normandes, and in the Monumenta Historica Britannica. This poem is referred to, and coupled with William of Poitiers, by William of Jumièges, or rather by his continuator (vii. 44); “Si quis verò pleniùs illa nôsse desiderat, librum Willelmi Pictavensis, Luxoviorum Archidiaconi, eadem gesta, sicut copiosè, ita eloquenti sermone affatim continentem, legat. Edidit præterea de eâdem materiâ opus non contemnendum Guido Episcopus Ambianensis, heroico metro exaratum.” Guy’s work is useful for the details of the voyage and the battle, and for some of the events after the battle. With these Norman accounts we have of course to compare the short narratives in our own Chronicles and in Florence; some particular facts of importance may also be gleaned from William of Malmesbury, from the Waltham writer _De Inventione_, and from others of the subsidiary authors.
Footnote 1056
See above, p. 325.
Footnote 1057
The cutting down of the trees is graphically shown in the Tapestry, pl. 8. This beginning at the beginning reminds one of Odysseus when about to leave Kalypsô’s island; αὐτὰρ ὁ τάμνετο δοῦρα κ.τ.λ. (Od. v. 243), and seemingly we may add, θοῶς δέ οἱ ἤνυτο ἔργον.
Footnote 1058
They may be seen at work in the Tapestry. Wace too (11473) gives a vivid account;
“Fevres è charpentiers manda; Dunc véissiez à granz esforz Par Normendie à toz li porz, Mairrien atraire è fust porter, Cheviles fere et boiz doler, Nés et esquiz apareillier, Veiles estendre, mast drecier A grant entente et à grant cost.”
Cf. the great speech of Dikaiopolis in the Acharnians, 471 et seqq., especially 526 et seqq.; τὸ νεώριον δ’ αὖ κωπέωυ πλατουμέυωυ, κ.τ.λ.
Footnote 1059
Ord. Vit. 494 A. “In Neustriâ multæ naves cum utensilibus diligenter paratæ sunt, quibus fabricandis clerici et laici studiis et sumptibus adhibitis pariter intenderunt.” Wace (11304) names some of the contributors, and a fuller list is printed in Lord Lyttelton’s Appendix, i. 463, and in Giles, Scriptt. Will. Conq. 21.
Footnote 1060
I cannot identify Fulk the Lame, who seems not to occur in Domesday. A Fulk of Parmes signs a charter in the Cartulary of the Holy Trinity at Rouen (p. 465), and a Fulk of Caldri was a benefactor of the same house in 1084 (p. 466). As his charter is confirmed by King Philip and not by William, he was doubtless a Frenchman. Gerald the Seneschal (“Dapifer,” “Senescallus”) signs a charter of Robert of Montgomery (p. 442) in this very year (“anno dominicæ incarnationis MLXV, tunc scilicet quando Normannorum Dux Guillelmus cum classico apparatu ultra mare erat profecturus”). He is perhaps the same as Gerald the Marshal (Marescalcus) who appears in the Suffolk Domesday (438 _b_) as holding a former possession of Earl Ælfgar.
Footnote 1061
Roman de Rou, 11309. “Mult voleit li Dus avancier.”
Footnote 1062
So the list in Lyttelton; Wace (11305) cuts down Odo’s gift to forty.
Footnote 1063
“Extra has naves ... habuit Dux a quibusdam suis hominibus, secundùm possibilitatem unius navis cujusque, multas alias naves.”
Footnote 1064
“A Romo vel Rumi eleemosynario Fescanni, postea Episcopo Lincolniensi, unam navem cum xx. militibus.”
Footnote 1065
Plut. Cæs. 38. Ἴθι, ἔφη, γενναῖε, τόλμα καὶ δέδιθι μηδέν· Καίσαρα φέρεις καὶ τὴν Καίσαρος τύχην συμπλέουσαν.
Footnote 1066
Lyttelton, i. 464. “Matildis, postea Regina, ejusdem Ducis uxor, ad honorem Ducis fecit effici navem quæ vocabatur Mora, in quâ ipse Dux vectus est. In prorâ ejusdem navis fecit fieri eadem Matildis infantulum de auro, dextro indice monstrantem Angliam, et sinistrâ manu imprimentem cornu eburneum ori.” Wace’s account (11594) is somewhat different;
“Sor li chief de la nef devant, Ke marinier apelent brant, Out de coivre fet un enfant, Saete et arc tendu portant, Verz Engleterre out son viaire, Et là faseit semblant de traire, Ki kel part ke la nef coreit, Semblant de traire avant faseit.”
In the Tapestry, pl. 9, the child with his horn is plain enough, and he looks towards England; but he is at the stern of the ship, and not at the prow, and in his left hand he bears a pennon.
Footnote 1067
The most exact account is that of Wace (11564), who heard the number from his father;
“Maiz jo oï dire à mon pere, Bien m’en sovint, maiz varlet ere, Ke set cenz nés, quatre meins, furent, Quant de Saint-Valeri s’esmurent, Ke nés, ke batels, ke esqueis A porter armes è herneis. E jo en escript ai trové, Ne sai dire s’est verité, Ke il i out treis miles nés Ki porterent veiles è trés.”
This exactness reminds one of Æschylus’ reckoning in the Persians, 333–335. William of Poitiers (125) naturally has his head full of Agamemnon; “Memorat antiqua Græcia Atridem Agamemnona fraternos thalamos ultum ivisse mille navibus: protestamur nos Willelmum diadema regium requisisse pluribus.” William of Jumièges (vii. 34) makes the number “ad tria millia.” Benoit (37004) slightly improves on this;
“Si out treis mile nefs au meins; De ce nos fait l’autor certains.” Gaimar (5248) goes beyond all of them. The French, as he calls them, have “bien unze mil nefs.” Another reading makes it only nine thousand.
Footnote 1068
See vol. i. p. 349 for the “yð-hengestas.” Cf. the Chronicles, 1003.
Footnote 1069
Ord. Vit. 494 B. “Denique hortatu Hugonis Episcopi aliorumque sapientum Mainerium Priorem elegit, eique per pastoralem baculum exteriorem curam tradidit, et prædicto antistiti ut ea quæ sibi de spirituali curâ competebant suppleret præcepit.” Here again we get a good illustration of the relations between Church and State in Normandy, and no bad comment on our own thirty-seventh Article.
Footnote 1070
Ib. “Eodem die Dux Domnum Lanfrancum Beccensium Priorem coram se adesse imperavit, eique Abbatiam quam ipse Dux in honore Sancti Stephani protomartyris apud Cadomum honorabiliter fundaverat commendavit.”
Footnote 1071
See the charter of Roger of Montgomery quoted above, p. 379.
Footnote 1072
See above, p. 108.
Footnote 1073
The charter in Gallia Christiana, xi. 61, gives the account of her dedication; “Præfatus comes gloriossissimus et uxor ejus cum filiis suis Domino eodem die [14 Kal. Jul. 1066] obtulerunt filiam suam Cæciliam nomine, favente Archiepiscopo Rothomagensi cum cæteris præsulibus, quatenus in eodem loco, Deificæ videlicet Trinitatis, Ipsi in habitu religionis perenniter serviret.” See Mrs. Green’s Princesses, i. 5.
Footnote 1074
Ord. Vit. 548 B.
Footnote 1075
See above, p. 69.
Footnote 1076
As they were delayed a month at the Dive, and a further time at Saint Valery, the time of the first assembling of the fleet is carried back to the month of August, and not to the last days of the month. See p. 394.
Footnote 1077
Will. Pict. 155. “Illius [Matildis] prudentiam viri adjuvere consilio utilissimi; in quibus locum dignitatis primum tenebat Rogerus de Bellomonte ... ob maturitatem ævi liberior ad negotia quæ domi geruntur; filio adolescente ... officio militari tradito.” On Roger, see above, p. 287, and vol. ii. p. 199.
Footnote 1078
See above, pp. 174, 176.
Footnote 1079
Judges v. 21.
Footnote 1080
See vol. ii. p. 263.
Footnote 1081
See Macaulay, ii. 465.
Footnote 1082
Will. Pict. 122. “Ventorum incommoditas ad Portum Divæ detinebat morâ menstruâ.” Ord. Vit. 500 A. “Classis Normannorum spatio ... unius mensis in ostio Divæ vicinisque portubus Nothum [Notum, sc.] præstolata est.”
Footnote 1083
Will. Pict. u. s. “Rapinâ omni interdictâ, stippendio ipsius millia militum quinquaginta alebantur ... ea illius temperantia fuit ac prudentia.”
Footnote 1084
Ib. “Homo imbecillis aut inermis equo cantans quà libuit vectabatur, turmas militum cernens, non exhorrescens.”
Footnote 1085
Will. Pict. 122. “Militibus et hospitibus abunde sumptus ministrabatur, nemini rapere quippiam concedebatur. Provincialium tutò armenta vel greges pascebantur seu per campestria, seu per tesqua. Segetes falcem cultoris intactæ expectabant, quas nec attrivit superba equitum effusio, nec demessuit pabulator.”
Footnote 1086
The Chronicle of Saint Maxentius (Labbé, ii. 211) says, “Fertur habuisse in exercitu suo quatuordecim millia hominum.” But William of Poitiers, in the passage just quoted, speaks of “millia militum quinquaginta;” and afterwards he makes William (128) say that he will fight Harold, “tametsi decem sola millia virorum haberem, quales ad sexaginta millia adduxi.” Lastly, Orderic (500 B) gives him “quinquaginta millia militum cum copiâ peditum.” A good deal turns on the ambiguous word “miles.”
Footnote 1087
See above, p. 325.
Footnote 1088
It is now that William of Poitiers (123) gives that notice of Harold’s preparations which I referred to above, p. 337; “Heraldus ... callidè subornatos transmisit exploratores.” This sort of expression, and some of the words presently put into William’s mouth (“Non indiget Heraldus auri sui vel argenti jacturâ tuam aliorumque fidem atque sollertiam emere”), might lead one to fancy that these spies were Norman subjects won over by English gold. But the word “transmisit” seems to forbid this notion. The truth is that William’s panegyrist cannot understand the position of an Englishman faithfully serving the English King.
Footnote 1089
Herod. vii. 146.
Footnote 1090
Will. Pict. u. s. “Quorum deprehenso uni, caussamque sui adventûs quâ præceptum est specie obtegere conato, Dux animi sui magnitudinem prodidit.”
Footnote 1091
Will. Pict. 123. “Quid consulatur, quid apparetur apud nos, certior eum quam velit, et opinione ejus citior, index, quippe mea præsentia, docebit.” This “index” is exactly the αὐτὸς ἄγγελος of Herodotus.
It is here that William of Poitiers brings in those fears and hesitations among the Normans, which, as I have said elsewhere (see above, pp. 293, 294, and Appendix W), clearly belong to another part of the story. William is made to tell the spy that he will be in England within a year, and the Normans say that it is impossible that a fleet should be got ready within the year. This language could not have been used at a moment when the fleet was ready to sail, and was simply waiting for a fair wind.
Footnote 1092
See above, p. 282.
Footnote 1093
Will. Pict. 124. “Præterea, ne rapinam amittat ille pugnabit; nos quæ dono accepimus, beneficiis comparavimus, requirimus.”
Footnote 1094
Ib. “Virtute meliùs quam numero militum bella geruntur.”
Footnote 1095
Ord. Vit. 500. “Spatio unius mensis.”
Footnote 1096
See above, p. 338.
Footnote 1097
Will. Pict. 124. “Jam tota classis providentissimè exornata ab ostio Divæ vicinisque portubus, ubi Notum quo transmitterent diutiùs exspectavere, Zephyri flatu in stationem Sancti Walerici delata est.” So Ord. Vit. 500 A.
Footnote 1098
On the homage of Guy to William for Ponthieu see above, p. 157. He now also held lands in Normandy itself. See p. 226.
Footnote 1099
The position is well marked by Guy of Amiens, 52;
“Desuper est castrum quoddam sancti Walarici.”
Footnote 1100
Something about the early history of Saint Valery may be gleaned from the work of M. Lefils, _Histoire Civile, Politique et Religieuse de Saint-Valery et du Comté du Vimeu_ (Abbeville, 1858), but the book is vastly inferior to the excellent local works which have helped me so much in Norman matters. On Saint Walaric or Valery himself, see p. 21.
Footnote 1101
As the story appears in the Life of Burchard of Vendôme (Duchèsne, Rer. Franc. iv. 121), the Count of Flanders concerned is the younger Arnulf, and the restoration is brought about by the influence of King Robert and the personal agency of Count Burchard. But this account is very confused. The body was really carried off by the elder Arnulf, and the restoration was effected in 981 by Hugh Capet, who also changed the secular canons of Saint Valery into monks. See the Relatio in Mabillon, Act. Ord. Ben. vii. 546.
Footnote 1102
See above, p. 131.
Footnote 1103
See Lefils, p. 64. I will not enter into any controversy as to the date of the so-called Tower of Harold, or as to the origin of its name. It may be called after some other Harold, or the name may be, as M. Lefils suggests, a corruption of something quite different. But in any case it was not, what the legend makes it, the place of the imprisonment of Harold the son of Godwine, which was undoubtedly at Beaurain. See above, p. 223.
Footnote 1104
Will. Pict. 125. “Princeps, quem neque mora sive contrarietas venti, neque terribilia naufragia, neque pavida fuga multorum qui fidem spoponderant, frangere prævalent.”
Footnote 1105
See above, p. 338. I am by no means clear that some trace of these engagements, probably of no great importance, may not lurk in the “pavida fuga” of William of Poitiers. See Appendix AA.
Footnote 1106
Herod. viii. 24.
Footnote 1107
Will. Pict. 125. “Quin et consilio adversitatibus obvius, submersorum interitus quantùm poterat occultavit, latentiùs tumulando.”
Footnote 1108
Ib. “Commeatum indies augendo inopiam lenivit.”
Footnote 1109
Ib. “Ad hoc hortamine diverso retraxit exterritos, animavit paventes.”
Footnote 1110
Guid. Amb. 54;
“Nam ter quinque dies complêsti finibus illis, Exspectans summi Judicis auxilium. Ecclesiam sancti devotâ mente frequentans, Illi pura dabas ingeminando preces. Inspicis et templi gallus quâ vertitur aurâ; Auster si spirat, lætus abinde redis: Si subitò Boreas Austrum divertit et arcet, Effusis lacrimis fletibus ora rigas. Desolatus eras: frigus faciebat et imber, Et polus obtectus nubibus et pluviis.”
The edition in the Monumenta Historica Britannica has “ter quinque dies,” while those of Giles and Michel have “tum quinque.” The former reading is obviously right, as explaining the expression in v. 53 of “longa difficilisque mora.” With William’s looking at the weathercock, compare the passage of Macaulay referred to in p. 386.
Footnote 1111
These last details come from Wace, 11579;
“Poiz unt tant li covent préié Ke la chasse Saint-Valeri Mistrent as chams sor un tapi. Als cors saint vinrent tuit orer Cil ki debveient mer passer; Tant i ont tuit deniers offert, Tot li cors saint en ont covert.”
The bringing out of the body of the saint, which evidently made a deep impression, is also recorded by William of Poitiers (125), Orderic (500 B), and William of Malmesbury (iii. 238). Guy of Amiens, whom we should have expected to be eloquent on the subject, holds his peace.
Footnote 1112
William of Poitiers has his head full of Agamemnôn and of Xerxês, but this obvious analogy does not seem to have occurred to him. Yet who can help thinking of the northern blasts, the πνοαὶ ἀπὸ Στρύμονος μολοῦσαι (Æsch. Ag. 185 et seqq.), which delayed the fleet of the Achaians, and of the sacrifice by which alone help could be gained?
Footnote 1113
All our accounts directly connect the favourable wind with the religious ceremony which had just been performed. William of Poitiers (125) describes the rite, and immediately adds, “Spirante dein aurâ exspectatâ.” So Orderic (500 B); “Denique dum prosper ventus multorum votis optatus, Deo volente, subitò spiravit.” William of Malmesbury (iii. 238) is, if possible, still more emphatic; “Nec mora intercessit, quin prosper flatus carbasa impleret.” Guy of Amiens (70), not mentioning the special ceremony, attributes the change of weather to William’s prayers generally;
“Velle tuum tandem pius ut Deus est miseratus, Pro votoque tibi suppeditavit opus.”
Footnote 1114
Will. Pict. 125. “Voces cum manibus in cœlum gratificantes, ac simul tumultus invicem incitans tollitur.” Both this writer and Guy of Amiens give very full and vivid accounts of the voyage.
Footnote 1115
Ib. “Increpat atque urget in puppes ardens vehementia Ducis, si quos ullatenus moram nectere notat.”
Footnote 1116
See above, p. 294.
Footnote 1117
Will. Pict. u. s. “Terra quam properantissimè deseritur, dubium iter quam cupientissimè initur.” So Guy of Amiens, 78;
“Protinus una fuit mens omnibus, æqua voluntas, Jam bene pacato credere se pelago. Quamquam diversi tamen adsunt lætificati; Nec mora, quisque suum currit ad officium.”
Footnote 1118
Will. Pict. 125. “Eo celeritatis motu impelluntur, ut quum armigerum hic, socium inclamet ille, plerique immemores clientum, aut sociorum, aut rerum necessariarum, id solum, ne relinquantur, cogitant et festinant.”
Footnote 1119
Tapestry, pl. 9. “Isti portant armas ad naves, et hic trahunt carrum cum vino et armis.” We shall hear presently of the nature of the drink, at least on board the ducal ship. William either despised or knew not of the wine of Gloucestershire. See vol. ii. p. 145.
Footnote 1120
Wid. Amb. 82;
“Sublimant alii malos, aliique laborant Erectis malis addere vela super.”
Footnote 1121
Ib. 84; “Plurima cogit equos equitum pars scandere naves.”
Footnote 1122
Ib. 90;
“Hinc resonando tubæ varios dant mille boatus, Fistula cum calamis, et fidibus cithara; Tympana taurinis implent mugitibus auras; Alternant modulos cymbala clara suos.”
Footnote 1123
Ib. 98;
“Sed tu templa petis sancti supra memorati, Muneribusque datis curris adire ratem.”
Footnote 1124
Wid. Amb. 106;
“Nox ubi cæca polum tenebrosis occupat umbris, Et negat obsequium Cynthia tecta tibi, Imples non aliter facibus rutilantibus undas, Sidera quam cœlum, sole ruente, replent. Quot fuerant naves, totidem tu lumina spargis.”
Footnote 1125
Will. Pict. 125. “Dat præconis voce edictum, ut, quum in altum sint deductæ, paullulum noctis conquiescant non longè à suâ rates cunctæ in ancoris fluitantes, donec, in ejus mali summo lampade conspectâ, extemplò buccinæ clangorem cursûs accipiant signum.” So Roman de Rou, 11588;
“Une lanterne fist li Dus Metre en sa nef el mast de sus.”
The lantern on the Duke’s mast is shown plainly enough in the Tapestry, pl. 9; but there is no mention of it in Guy, unless it lurks in the more general words (111),
“Impositæ malis permultâ luce laternæ Tramite directo per mare vela regunt.”
He then goes on to mention the order for the mid-sea halt, much as in William of Poitiers.
Compare the description of the voyage of Scipio in Livy, xxix. 25; “Lumina in navibus singula rostratæ, bina onerariæ haberent; in prætoriâ nave insigne nocturnum trium luminum fore.” See also the description of the voyage of the other William, Macaulay, ii. 477.
Footnote 1126
Will. Pict. 126. “Solutis noctu post quietem navibus, vehens Ducem retrò ceteras agillimè reliquit.”
Footnote 1127
Od. viii. 557;
οὐ γὰρ Φαιήκεσσι κυβερνητῆρες ἔασιν, οὐδέ τι πηδάλι’ ἐστὶ, τά τ’ ἄλλαι νῆες ἔχουσιν, ἀλλ’ αὐταὶ ἴσασι νοήματα καὶ φρένας ἀνδρῶν.
Footnote 1128
Will. Pict. 126. “[Navis] ardentiùs ad victoriam properantis imperio suæ velocitatis parilitate quasi obtemperans.”
Footnote 1129
In the Tapestry, pll. 9, 10, horses are seen in all the ships except in the Duke’s own and in one other near to it.
Footnote 1130
Will. Pict. u. s. “Jussus manè remex mali ab alto num quæ veniant consequæ speculari, præter pelagus et aëra prospectui suo aliud nihil comparere indicat.”
Footnote 1131
Ib. “Confestim ancorâ jacta, ne metus atque mœror comitem turbam confunderet, abundans prandium, _nec Baccho pigmentato carens_, animosissimus Dux, acsi in cœnaculo domestico, memorabili cum hilaritate accepit, cunctos actutum affore promittens, Deo cujus eos tutelæ credidit adducente.”
Footnote 1132
Ib. “Inquisitus denuò speculator, naves quattuor advenire, tertiò tantas exclamat ut arborum veliferarum uberrima densitas nemoris præstet similitudinem.”
Footnote 1133
Will. Pict. 126. “Quam ex intimo corde divinam glorificaverit pietatem conjiciendum cuivis relinquimus.” The beholders of William’s devotions were admitted into the Palace of Truth.
Footnote 1134
Will. Malms. iii. 238. “Omnibus itaque ad prætoriæ puppis vermiculatum velum convolantibus.” The epithet would apply to the sails of all the ships as shown in the Tapestry; but the sails of the Duke’s ship, and of those of two others near him—perhaps those of his two brothers—have the colours arranged in a different way from any of the others.
Footnote 1135
Wid. Amb. 123;
“Tertia telluri supereminet hora diei, Quum mare postponens littora tuta tenes.”
On the date, see Appendix FF.
Footnote 1136
“Venit ad Pevenesæ,” says the Tapestry, pl. 9. So William of Poitiers (126) and William of Jumièges (vii. 34). William of Malmesbury (iii. 238) says carelessly, “Placido cursu Hastingas appulerunt.” So Wace (11618), who altogether reverses the geography, making the army land at Hastings and go to Pevensey afterwards.
Footnote 1137
On the true meaning of this formula see vol. i. p. 11.
Footnote 1138
The question as to the site of Anderida may be looked on as decided by a paper by Mr. Arthur Hussey in the Sussex Archæological Collections, vi. 90. See also Mr. T. Wright, Wanderings of an Antiquary, p. 137. Their views are confirmed by Dr. Guest, Salisbury Proceedings, p. 55.
Footnote 1139
Domesday, 20 _b_, where the usual account of the town dues is given.
Footnote 1140
Cissanceaster or Chichester, the English name of the Roman Regnum. On the whole settlement, see Guest, Salisbury Proceedings, p. 54. I must beg pardon for having in the map in my first volume followed Dr. Spruner in giving a wrong position to the site of Cymenes-óra.
Footnote 1141
Chronn. 491. “Her Ælle and Cissa ymbsæton Andredes ceaster, and ofslogon ealle þa þær inne eardedon; ne wearð þær forþon an Bret to lafe.” This is the passage which Gibbon (cap. xxxviii. note 142, vol. vi. p. 372 Milman), quoting it in the Latin version, calls “an expression more dreadful in its simplicity, than all the vague and tedious lamentations of the British Jeremiah [Gildas].”
Footnote 1142
See vol. i. pp. 23, 151.
Footnote 1143
Henry of Huntingdon, who gives (M. H. B. 710 C, D) a fuller account of the siege, evidently taken from ballads, winds up his account thus; “Quia tot ibi damna toleraverant extranei, ita urbem destruxerunt quod numquam postea reædificata est; locus tantum, quasi nobilissimæ urbis, transeuntibus ostenditur desolatus.”
Footnote 1144
Ord. Vit. 500 A. “Heraldus ... Hastingas et Penevesellum, aliosque portus maris Neustriæ oppositos, ... toto anno illo cum multis navibus et militibus callidè servaverat.”
Footnote 1145
See above, p. 338.
Footnote 1146
I look with great suspicion on the statement of William of Poitiers and Guy of Amiens about Harold sending a vast naval force to hinder William’s landing. See Appendix AA. At all events no English ships were near at the time.
Footnote 1147
Will. Pict. 126. “Liberè naves egreditur, pugnâ nullâ obstante.” Ord. Vit. 500 B. “Nemine resistente littus maris gaudens arripuit.” So Guy of Amiens, 127;
“Debita terra tibi, pavidis nudata colonis, Læta sinu placido teque tuosque capit.”
Footnote 1148
It is plain that the ships were brought to shore as near together as might be. Wace (11619) distinctly asserts this; “L’une nef à l’altre acosterent.” There is no ground for the notion of Mr. Hayley, quoted by Sir Henry Ellis (i. 316), “That William did not land his army at any one particular spot, at Bulverhithe or Hastings, as is supposed; but at all the several proper places for landing along the coast from Bexelei to Winchelsea.”
Footnote 1149
This process is graphically shown in the Tapestry, pl. 10; “Hic exeunt caballi de navibus.”
Footnote 1150
Roman de Rou, 11711;
“Quant li Dus primes fors issi, Sor sez dous palmes fors chaï; Sempres i out levé grant cri E distrent tuit: mal signe est ci; Et il lor a en haut crié; Seignors, par la resplendor Dé, La terre ai as dous mainz seizie; Sans chalenge n’iert maiz guerpie; Tote est nostre quant qu’il i a; Or verrai ki hardi serra.”
William of Malmesbury (iii. 238) seems to mix up this saying of the Duke’s with the saying of the soldier quoted directly afterwards; “In egressu navis pede lapsus, eventum in melius commutavit, acclamante sibi proximo milite, ‘Tenes,’ inquit, ‘Angliam, Comes, Rex futurus.’” Mr. Hardy in his note suspects, perhaps with reason, the whole story, on account of its likeness to the story of Cæsar (Suet. Julius, 59); “Prolapsus in egressu navis, verso ad melius omine, ‘Teneo te,’ inquit, ‘Africa.’”
Footnote 1151
Roman de Rou, 11725;
“Sire, dist-il, avant venez, Ceste saisine recevez; De ceste terre vos saisis, Vostre est sainz dote li païs. E li Dus respont: Jo l’otrei, E Dex i seit ensemle od mei.”
Footnote 1152
Ib. 11636.
“Li rivage unt tuit porcacé, Nul hoem armé n’i ont trové.”
Footnote 1153
Ib. 11642.
“Ensemble vindrent al gravier, Chescun armé sor son destrier. Tuit orent ceintes les espées, Et plain vindrent lances _levées_.”
The last word expresses the way of bearing the lance, not in the rest, but used overhand.
Footnote 1154
William of Poitiers (127) says of the forts both at Pevensey and at Hastings, that they were “quæ sibi receptaculo, navibus propagnaculo forent.” So Guy (141);
“Littora custodis, metuens amittere naves, Mœnibus et munis, castraque ponis ibi.”
This shows the falsehood of the story of William burning his ships, of which the first traces appear in Wace, 11731;
“Dunc fist à toz dire è crier, Et as mariniers comander Ke li nés fussent despécies, A terre traites è percies, Ke li coarz ne revertissent Ne par li nés ne s’enfoïssent.”
William of Jumièges (vii. 34) certainly makes the most of the fort at Pevensey; “Statim firmissimo vallo castrum condidit, probisque militibus commisit.” The notion that some part of the Roman walls was made use of is suggested by the words of Guy (143);
“Diruta quæ fuerant dudum castella reformas; Ponis custodes ut tueantur ea.”
Footnote 1155
See the Tapestry, pl. 10. “Festinaverunt Hastinga ut cibum raperentur.” They are going as fast as the messengers sent to Guy of Ponthieu (see above, p. 225), but they are not bare-headed.
Footnote 1156
See Appendix KK.
Footnote 1157
The French Biographer of Eadward (4333) gives an amusing origin for the name. William
“Une tur ferme e renuvele, Ke li Ducs Hastinges apele, _Hastivement_ ke fu fermée, E pur co fu si appelée.”
Footnote 1158
See vol. i. p. 382.
Footnote 1159
See vol. ii. p. 106.
Footnote 1160
See above, p. 404.
Footnote 1161
Chron. Wig. “Hi ... worhton castel æt Hæstingaport.”
Footnote 1162
William of Poitiers mentions the fortifications at Pevensey and at Hastings in the same breath. See above, p. 407. William of Jumièges, having mentioned that of Pevensey, goes on (vii. 34) to say, “_Festinus_ Hastingas venit, ibique _cito opere_ aliud firmavit.” (It must be this passage, or some other to the same effect, which suggested the grotesque bit of etymology which I have just quoted from the French Life of Eadward.) In the Tapestry (pl. 11) we see the Duke in consultation with his brothers; then follows, “Iste jussit ut _foderetur_ castellum at Hastingaceastra.” The pickaxe and spade are being largely used, the “agger” is rising, and the buildings seem to be of wood. So Wace (11656);
“Par cunseil firent esgarder Boen lieu à fort chastel garder. Donc out des nés mairrien geté, A la terre l’ont traïné, Trestui percié i tut dolé; Li cheviles tutes dolées Orent en granz bariz portées; Ainz ke il fust bien avespré, En ont ut chastelet fermé.”
Wace’s confusion of geographical order must not be forgotten, but no doubt the description of one fort would do equally well for the other.
Footnote 1163
Will. Fil. Steph. 193.
Footnote 1164
Roman de Rou, 11602;
“De la flote ki fu si grant E de la gent dont i out tant N’i out ke dui nés perillies, Ne sai s’el furent trop chargies.”
Footnote 1165
Ib. 11697;
“En mer esteit, ço dist, néiéz Et en un nef perilliéz.”
Footnote 1166
Wace, 11697. William does not—as an invader, he could not—rise to the full greatness of the saying of Hektôr.
Footnote 1167
Will. Pict. 139. “Illuc errore appulsos fera gens adorta prœlio, cum utriusque partis maximo detrimento, fuderat.” Benoît, 37682;
“Qu’arivé i out de sa gent, Je ne sai par quel achaison; Mais li Engleis pesme e felon Les li ocistrent par pecchié.”
All we can see is that the encounter, however caused, happened before the great battle.
Footnote 1168
See Appendix AA.
Footnote 1169
On these systematic ravages, see Appendix DD.
Footnote 1170
Wid. Amb. 147;
“Nec mirum, Regem quia te plebs stulta negabat, Ergo perit justè, vadit et ad nihilum.”
We find the same sentiment in William of Poitiers’ account of the battle (134); “Stravit adversam gentem, quæ sibi, Regi suo, rebellans commeruit mortem.”
Footnote 1171
See the graphic picture in pl. 10, where we find our friend Wadard. See Appendix A.
Footnote 1172
Tapestry, pl. 11. “Hic domus incenditur.” So Guy of Amiens, 152; “Vulcano flammis depopulante domos.”
Footnote 1173
Roman de Rou, 11751;
“Donc véissiez Engleiz foïr, Bestes chacier, mezons guerpir; As cemetieres tot atraient, Et encor là forment s’esmaient.”
Footnote 1174
Will. Pict. 131. “Accelerabat enim eò magis Rex furibundus, quod propinqua castris Normannorum vastari audierat.”
Footnote 1175
See above, p. 9.
Footnote 1176
William of Poitiers (128) introduces him as, “Dives quidam finium illorum inquilinus, natione Normannus, Rotbertus filius Wimaræ _nobilis mulieris_.” (Without this one would not have taken Wymarc for a female name.) Wace (11849) does not know his name;
“En la terre aveit un baron, Maiz jo ne sai dire son non, Ki mult aveit li Dus amé, E se faiseit de li privé.”
So Benoît, 37050;
“Un produem riche e assazez Qui de Normendie esteit nez, Mais en cele terre maneit, Ou richement se conteneit.”
There is nothing in the earlier narrative to imply that Robert had held any disloyal correspondence with William.
I cannot find that Robert held any lands in Sussex. See Ellis, ii. 206.
Footnote 1177
Yet, if we place the message somewhat late in William’s stay at Hastings, the presence of Robert at Stamfordbridge is just possible.
Footnote 1178
I suppose he is represented in the Tapestry, pl. 11; “Hic nuntiatum est Willelmo de Harold.”
Footnote 1179
Will. Pict. 128. “Hastingas Duci, domino suo et _consanguineo_, nuntium destinavit.” The kinsfolk both of William and of Eadward are endless.
Footnote 1180
Benoît, 37064;
“Coment Heraut s’ert combatuz Qui ceus de Norwege out vencuz Et ocis son frere e le rei, E ceus qu’il amena od sei, Où plus aveit de vint milliers.”
William of Poitiers (u. s.) only says “ingentes eorum exercitus delevit.”
Footnote 1181
Benoît, 37070;
“Od plus a de cent mile armez.”
William again says only, “Animatus eo successu festinus redit in te, numerosissimum populum ducens ac robustissimum.”
Footnote 1182
Will. Pict. u. s. “Prœliatus cum fratre proprio Rex Heraldus et cum Rege Noricorum, quo fortiorem sub cœlo nullum vivere opinio fuit.”
Footnote 1183
Will. Pict. 128. “Adversus quem non ampliùs tuos quam totidem despectabiles canes æstimo valere.” See above, p. 334, for the reputation of the English Housecarls in Norway.
Footnote 1184
Ib. “Prudens vir computaris, domi militiæque cuncta hactenus prudenter egisti.” The tone seems patronizing, but it perhaps expresses the general opinion of William up to this time. He had certainly been mainly remarkable for amazing prudence and amazing good luck, rather than for the winning of great battles.
Footnote 1185
Ib. “Suadeo, inter munitiones mane, manu ad præsens confligere noli.”
Footnote 1186
There are few cases in which we can better apply the familiar words of Thucydides (v. 105), μακαρίσαντες ὑμῶν τὸ άπειρόκακον οὐ ζηλοῦμεν τὸ ἄφρον.
Footnote 1187
St. Luke xiv. 31.
Footnote 1188
Will. Pict. 128. “Non me tutarer valli aut mœnium latebris, sed confligerem quamprimùm cum Heraldo.” He then goes on to make the statement about his numbers which I have quoted in p. 387.
Footnote 1189
Ib. “‘Pro mandato,’ inquit, ‘quo mihi dominus tuus vult esse cautum, quamquam sine contumeliâ suadere decuerit, gratias ipsi et hæc refer.’”
Footnote 1190
See above, p. 375.
Footnote 1191
Roman de Rou, 11831;
“Un chastel i ont fermé De bretesches è de fossé.”
Footnote 1192
Ib. 11755;
“Un chevalier de la cuntrée Oï la noise è la criée Ke païsant è vilain firent, Ki la grant flote arriver virent.”
Footnote 1193
Ib. 11761;
“En dreit un tertre s’arestut, Ke alquanz d’els ne l’aparçut; Iloc s’estut, si esgarda Coment la grant flote ariva.”
Wace’s account is of course confused by his primary blunder of reversing the geographical order, by making William land at Hastings, and thence go to Pevensey (see above, p. 400). His Thegn is therefore made to set out from Hastings, and the scene is apparently laid at Hastings. For Wace makes the Thegn hide himself behind a hill (“tertre”), which it would be easy to do at Hastings, but hard at Pevensey, as the mound of the later castle, then close to the landing-place, would hardly serve the purpose. The expression is clearly borrowed from Guy of Amiens’ description of his messenger from Hastings (149);
“Ex Anglis unus, latitans sub rupe marinâ.”
But a man who saw the actual landing, and at once started for York, must have started from Pevensey, and the fort which he saw thrown up must have been the fort at Pevensey, not the fort at Hastings. No doubt a messenger from Hastings, the messenger described by Guy of Amiens, would soon follow the messenger from Pevensey, and Wace, in his geographical confusion, rolled the two into one.
The words of Florence also would imply that news was brought straight from Pevensey; “Nuntiatum est ei Willelmum Comitem gentis Normannicæ ... advenisse ... et in loco qui Pefnesea dicitur suam classem adpulisse.”
Footnote 1194
Roman de Rou, 11770;
“Vit li chastel fere è fermer; Vit li fossé envirun faire.”
Footnote 1195
Roman de Rou, 11774;
“S’espée ceint è prist sa lance.”
Wace perhaps arms his English Thegn a little too much in continental fashion. For Wace’s “lance,” I have therefore substituted the English javelin. But for such a ride the sword would be a more convenient weapon than the axe. Sword and javelin are the equipment of Harold when riding round his camp, in the Tapestry, pl. 13.
Footnote 1196
Ib. 11777;
“Astant se mist cil el chemin, Tart se colcha, leva matin; Tant a erré ke noit ke jor Por Heraut querre son Seignor.”
Footnote 1197
Flor. Wig. 1066. “Cum innumerâ multitudine equitum, fundibaliorum, sagittariorum, peditumque ... utpote qui de totâ Galliâ sibi fortes auxiliarios conduxerat.”
Footnote 1198
See p. 407.
Footnote 1199
I get my second messenger from Guy of Amiens (149–167). He is “rusticus;” the other, “chevalier.” As the Thegn saw and describes the actual landing, the Churl saw and describes the later ravaging. Wid. Amb. 150;
“Cernit ut effusas innumeras acies, Et quod agri fulgent pleni radiantibus armis, Vulcano flammis depopulante domos. Perfidiæ gentem ferro bacchante perire, Quasque dabant lacrimas cæde patrum pueri.”
Footnote 1200
Wid. Amb. 159;
“Dux Normannorum cum Gallis atque Britannis Invasit terram, vastat et igne cremat. Millia si quæris, tibi dicere nemo valebit: Quod mare fert pisces, tot sibi sunt equites; Et veluti stellas cœli numerare nequires, Ejus sic acies nec numerare vales.”
“French,” “Franci” in the Tapestry, is the only name which takes in the whole of William’s army as thus described.
Footnote 1201
Ib. 165;
“Captivos ducit pueros captasque puellas, Insuper et viduas et simul omne pecus.”
Footnote 1202
Roman de Rou, 11836;
“Mielx me venist aveir perdu Quant ke Tosti out demandé.”
Footnote 1203
Ib. 11838;
“Ke jo n’éusse el port esté, Quant Willame vint el rivage; Bien defendisse li passage. Tant en féisse en mer plungier, E tant en féisse néier, Jà à la terre ne venissent, Jà nient del nostre ne préissent; Jà de morir garant n’éussent, Se la mer tote ne béussent; Maiz issi plout el Rei celeste, Jo ne poiz mie par tut estre.”
Footnote 1204
Wid. Amb. 169. “Advocat ipse Duces, Comites, terraeque potentes.”
Footnote 1205
See vol. ii. pp. 104, 141.
Footnote 1206
Wid. Amb. 185;
“Quantus erit luctus, quantus dolor et pudor ingens, Regni quanta lues, quam tenebrosa dies, Si quod quærit habet, si regni sceptra tenebit? Hoc omnes fugiant vivere qui cupiunt.”
Footnote 1207
Wid. Amb. 191;
“Nascitur extemplò clamor qui perculit astra, Et vox communis omnibus una fuit; ‘Bella magis cupimus quam sub juga colla reponi Alterius Regis, vel magis inde mori.’”
Footnote 1208
Roman de Rou, 11879;
“Heraut vint à Lundres puignant, De totes parz Engleiz mandant, Ke tuit viengent delivrement E mult apareilliement, El terme k’il lor out mandé, Sainz esoigne forz d’enferté.”
Footnote 1209
Gaimar, 5255 (M. H. B. 827);
“Marleswain donc i lessat; Pur ost mander en suth alad.”
See Ellis, ii. 185. Merlswegen held lands in various parts from Cornwall to Yorkshire: it was of Lincolnshire that he was Sheriff. See Domesday, 376.
Footnote 1210
Fl. Wig. 1066. “Comites Edwinus et Morkarus, _qui se cum suis certamini subtraxere_.” These are words which no ingenuity can get over.
Footnote 1211
We shall presently come to the list of shires whence men did come.
Footnote 1212
The general zeal of Englishmen is allowed even by their enemies. Will. Pict. 132; “Studium pars Heraldo, cuncti patriæ præstabant, quam contra extraneos, _tametsi non justè_, defensare volebant.”
Footnote 1213
Will. Malms, ii. 228. “Haroldus, triumphali eventu superbus, nullis partibus prædæ commilitones dignatus est: quapropter multi, quo quisque poterat dilapsi, Regem ad bellum Hastingense proficiscentem destituere.” So again, iii. 239.
Footnote 1214
Gaimar, 5251 (M. H. B. 827);
“Li reis Harald, quant il oi, L’évesque Aldret a donc saisi Del grant aveir e del herneis K’il out conquis sur les Norreis.”
Footnote 1215
See Appendix G.
Footnote 1216
Will. Malms. ii. 228. “Præter stippendiarios et mercenarios milites, paucos admodum ex provincialibus habuit.” See Appendix HH.
Footnote 1217
The list of shires in Wace (12848) might seem at first sight to be simply names set down at random; but, on a careful examination, it has a deep significance. The list runs thus; London, Kent, Hertford, Essex, Surrey, Sussex, Saint Eadmund’s and Suffolk, Norwich and Norfolk, Canterbury and Stamford, Bedford (mentioned twice), Huntingdon, Northampton, York, Buckingham, Nottingham, Lindesey and Lincoln, Salisbury, Dorset, Bath and Somerset, Gloucester, Worcester, Winchester and Hampshire, Berkshire. This list exactly answers to the geographical division which I have given in the text, with the single exception that we find Worcester where we should rather have looked for Hereford. The shires mentioned are those which make up the Earldoms of Harold, Gyrth, Leofwine, and Waltheof, together with the shires through which Harold marched. This accounts for what at first seems a contradiction, namely that we find York on the list and yet read afterwards (12877) “D’ultre li Humbre n’i vint gaires.” No doubt some volunteers followed the King from York, but the main force of Northumberland was kept back by Morkere. Why are Canterbury and Stamford joined? One or other name must surely be wrong.
Footnote 1218
Roman de Rou, 12957;
“Kar ço dient ke cil de Kent Deivent férir primierement; U ke li Reis auge en estor, Li primier colp deit estre lor. Cil de Lundres, par dreite fei, Deivent garder li cors li Rei, Tut entur li deivent ester, E l’estandart deivent garder.”
Footnote 1219
The Ansgardus of Guy. For all these names see Appendix EE.
Footnote 1220
See vol. ii. pp. 63, 441.
Footnote 1221
Bondig (see above, p. 53) is mentioned in a very confused passage in the De Inventione, c. 20; “Ab omnibus consultum est ei Tostinum [Leofwinum?], Gerth, et Bundinum, et reliquos qui secesserant, exspectare.” I do not understand the “secession” of Gyrth; so Bondig may have been at Senlac also.
Footnote 1222
See vol. ii. pp. 467, 644.
Footnote 1223
See Appendix EE.
Footnote 1224
See vol. ii. p. 349.
Footnote 1225
Chron. Petrib. 1066. “And þa wæs Leofric Abbot of Burh æt þæt ilca feord, and sæclode þær, and com ham, and wæs dæd sone þæræfter, on ælre halgan mæsse niht; God are his saule.”
Footnote 1226
See Appendix EE.
Footnote 1227
On the chronology of these events, see Appendix FF.
Footnote 1228
See above, p. 31.
Footnote 1229
The Waltham writer (De Inv. 20), as I have already said (see above, p. 375), conceives the King as hearing the news of William’s landing at Waltham. This we know to be wrong: but we may surely accept a journey from London to Waltham.
As for the miraculous narrative, see Professor Stubbs, De Inv. xxviii. For other mere legendary versions, see Appendix II.
Footnote 1230
De Inv. 20. “Mane facto ecclesiam Sanctæ Crucis ingrediens, et relliquias quas apud se habebat in capellâ suâ repositas altari superponens.”
Footnote 1231
De Inv. 20. “Votum vovit, quod si successus prosperos sub eventu belli præstaret ei Dominus, copiam prædiorum et multitudinem clericorum Deo ibidem serviturorum ecclesiæ conferret, _et se Deo serviturum amodo quasi servum emptitium sponderet_.”
Footnote 1232
Over the west door seems a strange place for the great relic of a church; yet I cannot otherwise understand the words of the Waltham writer (De Inv. 20). Harold makes his offerings on the altar; then, “Clero eum comitante et processione præcedente, veniunt ad valvas templi, ubi conversus ad Crucifixum Rex ille Sanctæ Cruci devotus, ad terram in modum crucis prosternens se, pronus oravit.”
Footnote 1233
De Inv. 20. “Imago Crucifixi, quæ priùs erecta ad superiora respiciebat, quum se Rex humiliaret in terram, demisit vultum quasi tristis, lignum quidem præscium futurorum.” The writer then goes on to mention Thurkill, from whom he himself heard the story.
Footnote 1234
See Appendix GG.
Footnote 1235
Roman de Rou, 11935. See Appendix GG.
Footnote 1236
Will. Pict. 129.
Footnote 1237
Roman de Rou, 11975.
Footnote 1238
De Inventione, 20. “Nimis præceps, et de virtute suâ præsumens, credebat se invalidos et impræniunitos Normannos expugnare, antequam a Normannis gens subsequutiva in præsidium eorum succresceret.” This last reason is borne out by the testimony of the Worcester Chronicles, which I shall quote hereafter, that reinforcements did come to William either before the battle or very soon after.
Footnote 1239
See p. 412, note 4.
Footnote 1240
The interposition of Gyrth is mentioned, not only by his special admirer Wace (12041 et seqq.), but by William of Jumièges (vii. 35), Orderic (500 C, who nearly copies William of Jumièges), William of Malmesbury (iii. 239), and Benoît (37129). The speech is much to the same effect in all. Here it is that William of Malmesbury makes the odd mistake about Gyrth’s age which I mentioned in vol. ii. p. 555.
Footnote 1241
Will. Gem. vii. 35. “Quiesce, quæso, prudenter tractare tecum velis, quid cum sacramentis Consuli Normanniæ promiseris. Cave ne perjurium incurras, et pro tanto scelere tu cum viribus nostræ gentis corruas nostræ-que progeniei permansurum dedecus exinde fias.” The expression “cave ne perjurium incurras,” so late in the day, is remarkable. William of Malmesbury (iii. 239) softens matters a little; “Nec enim ibis in inficias quin illi sacramentum vel invitus vel voluntarius feceris; proinde consultiùs ages si, instanti necessitati te subtrahens, nostro periculo colludium pugnæ tentaveris.”
Footnote 1242
Will. Gem. u. s. “Ego, liber ab omni sacramento, Willelmo Comiti nihil debeo. Audacter igitur contra illum pro natali solo certare paratus sum.” So William of Malmesbury (u. s.); “Nos, omni juramento expediti, justè ferrum pro patriâ stringemus.”
Footnote 1243
Will. Gem. u. s. “Ne _clara libertas Anglorum_ pereat in tuâ pernicie.”
Footnote 1244
Will. Malms, iii. 239. “Nobis solis prœliantibus, caussa tua utrobique in portu navigabit: quia et fugientes restituere et mortuos ulcisci poteris.” Wace (12057) adds the alternatives of his own captivity and of an agreement between Harold and William;
“Mais se jo suis veincu u pris, Vos, se Dex plaist, ki serez vis, Vos maisnies rasemblerez, E cumbatre vos i porrez, U tel parole el Duc prendrez, Ke vostre régné en paiz tendrez.”
Footnote 1245
This advice comes from Wace (12065);
“Alez par cest païz, ardant Maizons è viles destruiant; Pernez la robe è la vitaille, Pors et oeilles et aumaille, Ke Normanz vitaille ne truissent Ne nule rien donc vivre puissent. Fetes la vitaille esluingnier, Ke il ne truissent ke mengier, Si les porrez mult esmaier E faire ariere repairier; Li Dus meisme s’en ira, Quant la vitaille li faldra.”
Footnote 1246
Ord. Vit. 500 C. “Quæ interitu Tostici filii sui valde erat lugubris.”
Footnote 1247
Will. Gem. vii. 35. “Consilium istud, quod amicis ejus salubre videbatur sprevit, et germanum suum, qui fideliter ei consiliabatur, conviciis irritavit, matremque suam, quæ nimis ipsum retinere secum satagebat, pede procaciter percussit.” So Ord. Vit. 500 D. Wace, whose good taste and dramatic feeling places him high above all the other Norman writers, passes by this absurd tale, but it reappears in Benoît (37197);
“Vers sa mere fu mult eschis, Qui chèrement fust à plaisir Deu remaindre, deu retenir, E tant l’en fist longe preiere Qu’enverse la bota arière; Tel il dona del pié el ventre.”
Footnote 1248
See Appendix N.
Footnote 1249
Roman de Rou, 12086;
“A cest cunseil tuit se teneient, Et issi fere le voleient.”
Footnote 1250
Roman de Rou, 12090;
“Ke jà en champ sanz li n’iront, Ne sanz li ne se cumbatront. Por coart, ço dist, le teindreient E plusors li reprovereient, Ke sis boens amiz envéiout, En lieu ù aler il n’osout.”
Footnote 1251
See vol. ii. p. 319.
Footnote 1252
Roman de Rou, 12080;
“Maisonz è viles n’en ardra, Ne sis homes ne robera. ‘Coment,’ dist-il, ‘dei-jo grever La gent ke jo dei governer? Destruire ne grever ne dei La gent ki det garir soz mei.’”
Compare the advice given by Memnôn to Arsitês in Arrian (i. 12. 17) and Arsitês’ answer; Παρῄνει ... προϊόντας ... τόν τε χιλὸν ἀφανίζειν καταπατοῦντας τῇ ἵππῳ, καὶ τὸν ἐν τῇ γῇ καρπὸν ἐμπιμπράναι, μηδὲ τῶν πόλεων αὐτῶν φειδομένους· οὐ γὰρ μενεῖν ἐν τῇ χώρᾳ Ἀλέξανδρον ἀπορίᾳ τῶν ἐπιτηδείων. Ἀρσίτην δὲ λέγεται εἰπεῖν ἐν τῷ συλλόγῳ τῶν Περσῶν, ὅτι οὐκ ἂν περιΐδοι μήτ’ οἰκίαν μίαν ἐμπρησθεῖσαν τῶν ὑπό οἱ τεταγμένων ἀνθρώπων. Contrast the conduct of William in ravaging the English coast when an invasion from Denmark was looked for; Chron. Petrib. 1085.
Footnote 1253
See Appendix FF.
Footnote 1254
See Appendix HH.
Footnote 1255
Will. Pict. 131. “Accelerabat ... Rex furibundus ... nocturno etiam incursu aut repentino minùs cautos opprimere cogitabat.” He then goes on to tell of the seven hundred ships. See Appendix AA. So Will. Gem. vii. 35, 36; “Ducem incautum accelerans præoccupare, totâ nocte equitans [Heraldus] in campo belli apparuit manè. Dux verò nocturnos præcavens excursus hostis, inchoantibus tenebris ad gratissimam usque lucem exercitum jussit esse in armis.” William of Poitiers makes the fight begin directly on the approach of the English army, and William of Jumièges puts it the same day. The last messages between William and Harold are thus cut out, and William of Poitiers leaves no room for the two different ways of spending the night. But William of Poitiers is always careless of chronology, and William of Jumièges is here ignorant of it (see Appendix GG). Wace makes the English reach Senlac on Thursday night, and a day is spent in the messages. He says (12110) of Thursday night,
“Normanz cele nuit se gaitierent, E tote nuit armé veillierent; Tote nuit furent en suspeiz, Kar dit lor fu ke li Engleiz Cele nuit tresk’à els vendreient E cele nuit les assaldreient. Ço meismes les Engleiz cremeient Ke Normanz la nuit les guerreient; Issi unt tote nuit veillié, Li uns por li altres gaitié.”
All this proves the existence of a very natural expectation on both sides, but it proves nothing as to Harold’s real intentions. An examination of the ground is enough to show what Harold’s plan really was.
Footnote 1256
See Appendix KK.
Footnote 1257
See Appendix KK.
Footnote 1258
Hen. Hunt. M. H. B. 763 B. “Quum ergo Haraldus totam gentem suam in unâ acie strictissimè locâsset, _et quasi castellum inde construxisset_, impenetrabiles erant Normannis.”
Footnote 1259
On the name Senlac, see Appendix KK.
Footnote 1260
The position is well described by Guy of Amiens (365);
“Mons silvæ vicinus erat, vicinaque vallis, Et non cultus ager asperitate suâ.”
Footnote 1261
Chron. Wig. 1066. “He [Harold] com him tógenes æt þære háran apuldran.” The name is not uncommon in the description of boundaries in the Charters.
Footnote 1262
See above, p. 124.
Footnote 1263
Roman de Rou, 12106;
“Héraut a li lieu esgardé, Clore l’a fet de boen fossé; De treiz parz leissa treiz entrées Ki à garder sunt comandées.”
Footnote 1264
See above, p. 438.
Footnote 1265
Flor. Wig. 1066. “Quia arto in loco constituti fuerant Angli, de acie se multi subtraxere, et cum eo [Haroldo] perpauci constantes corde remansere.” Something of the same kind may be thought to be implied in the words of the Worcester Chronicler; “Ac se kyng þeah him swiðe heardlice wið feaht, mid þam mannum þe him gelæstan woldon.” See Appendix HH.
Footnote 1266
This, to say nothing of the best evidence of all, the circumstances of the battle itself, is implied in the language of those who speak of the insufficient numbers of the army. See the extract from the Worcester Chronicle, p. 445.
Footnote 1267
Tapestry, plates 12, 13. We shall hear of them again.
Footnote 1268
Will. Malms. iii. 239. Harold’s spies, as in the former case (see above, p. 388), are well received and shown everything. They then make their report, and “serio addiderunt, penè omnes in exercitu illo presbyteros videri, quod totam faciem cum utroque labio rasam haberent.... Subrisit Rex fatuitatem referentium, lepido insequutus cachinno, quia non essent presbyteri, sed milites armis validi, animis invicti.” So Roman de Rou, 12238–12253. William of Malmesbury here comments on the English custom of wearing the moustache (see vol. ii. p. 27), which he oddly connects with Cæsar’s account of the Welsh of his day.
Footnote 1269
See Appendix KK.
Footnote 1270
Roman de Rou, 12254 et seqq. See Appendix GG.
Footnote 1271
Cf. Roman de Rou, 12290, with William of Malmesbury, iii. 240; and see Appendix GG.
Footnote 1272
Roman de Rou, 12262;
“U se mist al boen jugement De l’Apostoile è de sa gent.”
And see Appendix GG.
Footnote 1273
See Roman de Rou, 12437.
Footnote 1274
Will. Malms. iii. 241. “Angli, ut accepimus, totam noctem insomnem cantibus potibusque ducentes.” So Wace, 12465, who gives us some curious bits of English;
“Quant la bataille dut joster, La nuit avant, ço oï conter, Furent Engleiz forment haitiez, Mult riant è mult enveisiez; Tote nuit mangierent è burent Unkes la nuit et lit ne jurent. Mult les véissiez demener, Treper, è saillir è chanter; _Bublie_ crient è _weissel_ E _laticome_ è _drincheheil_, _Drinc Hindrewart_ è _Drintome_, _Drinc Helf_ è _drinc Tome_.”
Footnote 1275
Will. Malms. iii. 242. “Contra Normanni, nocte totâ confessioni peccatorum vacantes, mane Dominico Corpore communicârunt.”
Footnote 1276
Will. Pict. 131. “Aderant comitati e Normanniâ duo Pontifices, Odo Baiocensis et Goisfredus Constantinus; unà multus clerus et monachi nonnulli. Id collegium _precibus pugnare_ disponitur.” So Ord. Vit. 501 A. Of Odo at least the Tapestry tells another story. Compare the English Prelates at Assandun, vol. i. p. 432.
Footnote 1277
On Geoffrey of Mowbray (Bishop 1048–1093) and his vast possessions in England, see Ellis, i. 400.
Footnote 1278
Chron. Petrib. 1087. “He wæs swiðe ríce bisceop on Normandige; on Baius wæs his bisceopstol ... and he hæfde eorldom on Englelande.” Cf. 1088.
Footnote 1279
Wace (12478–12522) is very full on the ministrations of the two Bishops, and on the devotions of the army, both during the night and on the morning before the battle. The vow is thus described (12485–12490);
“Por ço ke samedi esteit, Ke la bataille estre debveit, Unt Normanz pramis è voé, Si com li cler l’orent loé, Ke à cet jor mez s’il veskeient, Char ne saunc ne maingereint.”
Footnote 1280
The piety of the English on the night before Azincourt is insisted on in some of our accounts. Take Elmham for instance (479);
“Nox pluvialis ibi plebem sine pane madebat: Ad Dominum vigiles quique dedere preces.”
So Walsingham, ii. 310, ed. Riley; Monstrelet, vol. i. c. 146, p. 227 _b_. What the French are chiefly charged with is playing at dice for English ransoms. See Redman, p. 45, ed. Cole. This is the point chiefly brought out by Shakespeare, Henry V, Act iv. Chorus. Compare also the accounts of the night before Lewes, the piety of the patriots and the foul excesses of the royalists. Rishanger, Chron. p. 25; Chron. Lanercost, 75; Political Songs (Camden Soc.), p. 80.
Footnote 1281
See the legend in Appendix II.
Footnote 1282
See above, p. 19.
Footnote 1283
Will. Pict. 131. “Ipse mysterio missæ quam maximâ cum devotione assistens, Corporis ac Sanguinis Dominici communicatione suum et corpus et animam munivit.”
Footnote 1284
We have the speech in William of Poitiers (132), Henry of Huntingdon (M. H. B. 762, 763), and Wace (12531 et seqq.). William candidly says, “Exhortationem, quâ pro tempore breviter militum virtuti plurimum alacritatis addidit, egregiam fuisse non dubitamus, etsi nobis non ex totâ dignitate suâ relatam.” The two chief points in his summary are the glories of the Normans in earlier warfare (“Commonuit Normannos quod in multis atque magnis periculis victores tamen se duce semper exstiterint. Commonuit omnes patriæ suæ, nobilium gestorum magnique nominis”) and the small renown of the English (“Sæpenumerò Anglos hostili ferro dejectos cecidisse, plerumque superatos in hostis venisse deditionem, numquam gloriâ militiæ laudatos”). Henry of Huntingdon, allowably enough, has worked up these two points into an elaborate harangue, which amounts to a sort of panegyrical history of Normandy. Wace enlarges chiefly on the sins of the English, the massacre of Saint Brice, the fate of Ælfred, and such like. I have briefly worked in the chief points of all three versions.
Footnote 1285
Hen. Hunt. 762 D. “Nonne patres vestri Regem Francorum in Rotomago cœperunt, et tenuerunt donec Ricardo puero, Duci vestro, Normanniam reddidit eo pacto, quòd in omni colloquutione Regis Franciæ et Ducis Normanniæ gladio Dux accingeretur, Regem verò nec gladium nec etiam cultellum ferre liceret.” See vol. i. pp. 244, 247, and especially Palgrave, ii. 495. I do not pledge myself to the terms of the peace.
Footnote 1286
Henry enlarges only on Mortemer, and says nothing about Varaville. But William would hardly leave out his own special exploit. About Val-ès-dunes, a victory won over his own people, he might well hold his peace.
I leave out one or two purely legendary stories in Henry’s version.
Footnote 1287
Wace is rather lavish of this word; William comes (12545)
“Por vengier li fèlunies Li traïsuns, li feiz menties, Ki li homes de cest païs Unt fet à notre gent toz dis.”
And again, 12575;
“Teles felunies è plusors K’il unt fete à nos ancessors Et à nos amis ensement, Ki se contindrent noblement.”
Footnote 1288
In the rhetoric of the Archdeacon of Huntingdon (M. H. B. 763 A, B), “Erigite vexilla, viri, nec sit iræ promeritæ modus vel modestia. Ab Oriente ad Occidentem videatur fulmen gloriæ vestræ, audiatur tonitruum impetus vestri, vindicesque generosissimi sanguinis.”
Footnote 1289
Roman de Rou, 12527; “En un tertre s’estut li Dus.” In the Tapestry (pl. 13), William is shown on horseback addressing his soldiers; “Hic Wilelm Dux alloquitur suis militibus ut prepararent se viriliter et sapienter ad prelium contra Anglorum exercitum.” But as the word “sapienter” alone might almost show, this scene comes later in the day.
Footnote 1290
Ib. 12627;
“Vint Willame li filz Osber, _Son cheval tot covert de fer_; Sire, dist-il, trop demoron.”
Wace is here guilty of an anachronism, as the horses in the Tapestry are not covered with armour. See Taylor’s note, 163.
Footnote 1291
I think there can be no doubt that the famous scene of the hauberk must be placed on the height of Telham. Wace probably did not know the ground, and did not realize the distance between Hastings and Battle. William and his knights would hardly ride so far in their full armour, and the real site is clearly marked in two other writers. The Chronicler of Battle Abbey (p. 3) is very distinct; “Perveniens ad locum collis qui Hechelande dicitur, a parte Hastingarum situm, dum sese invicem armis munire contendunt, ac eidem Duci lorica ad induendum porrigitur, ex improviso inversa ipsi oblata est.” The Brevis Relatio (7) is even more precise; “Pervenientes itaque usque ad unum collem qui erat a parte Hastingarum contra illum collem in quo erat Heraldus et exercitus ejus, ibi ut, erant armati, paullisper substiterunt, intuentes Anglorum exercitum.” It is just possible that Wace, by his “tertre,” meant the hill of Telham, only without any idea of its distance from Hastings. Cf. Guy of Amiens (343);
“Haud procul hostiles cuneos nam cernit adesse, Et plenum telis irradiare nemus.”
On the identity of Telham and Heathland see Lower, Contributions to Literature, 40; Sussex Archæological Collections, vi. 20.
Footnote 1292
Will. Pict. 131. “Terreret alium loricæ, dum vestiretur, sinistra conversio. Hanc conversionem risit ille ut casum, non ut mali prodigium expavit.” Roman de Rou, 12647;
“Cil en furent espoenté, Ki li haubert unt esgardé.”
Footnote 1293
See above, p. 405.
Footnote 1294
Will. Malms. iii. 242. “Ministrorum tumultu loricam inversam indutus, casum risu correxit, ‘Vertetur,’ inquiens, ‘fortitudo comitatûs mei in regnum.’” So Roman de Rou, 12665;
“Li nom ki ert de Duché Veneiz de Duc a Rei torné; Reis serai ki Duc ai esté, N’en aiez mie altre pensé.”
The Battle Chronicler attributes the witty saying to William Fitz-Osbern.
Footnote 1295
Roman de Rou, 12673;
“Sun boen cheval fist demander, Ne poeit l’en meillor trover; De l’Espaingne li out envéié, Un Reis par mult grant amistié.”
On Alfonso see above, p. 112, and Appendix O.
Footnote 1296
Roman de Rou, 12679;
“Galtier Giffart l’out amené, Ki à Saint Jame aveit esté.”
Footnote 1297
See above, p. 314.
Footnote 1298
Roman de Rou, 12685;
“Li visquens de Toarz guarda Coment li Dus armes porta; A sa gent a entor sei dit: Hom mez si bel armé ne vit, ... Soz ciel tel chevalier n’en a Beau quens è beau Rei sera.”
Footnote 1299
Brevis Relatio (7). “Armatus itaque, et se et totum exercitum suum Domino commendans, cœpit inquirere a quodam milite qui juxta eum erat, ubi Heraldum putaret esse. Respondit autem ille quod putabat eum esse in illo spisso agmine quod erat ante eos in montis summitate, nam, sicut putabat, Heraldi standarium ibi videbat.” This is a good instance of the way in which one authority fits into another. This scene is evidently the same as that which is represented in the Tapestry (plate 12); “Willelm Dux interrogat Vital si vidisset exercitum Haroldi.” This Vital, it will be remembered (see Appendix A), was a dependant of Odo, and the mention of a person otherwise unknown, but who held much land in Kent under his patron, is one of the proofs of the connexion of the Tapestry with the Bishop of Bayeux.
Footnote 1300
The vow comes from the Battle Chronicle (3), where it immediately follows the story of the hauberk; “Unde et nunc, de ejus [Creatoris] auxilio securus, ad vestras qui mei gratiâ hoc initis certamen corroborandas manus ac mentes votum facio, me in hoc certaminis loco pro salute cunctorum, et hic nominatim occumbentium ad honorem Dei et sanctorum ejus, quo servi Dei adjuventur congruum, _cum dignâ libertate_ fundaturum monasterium.” The words in Italics come, I suspect, from the chronicler, not from the Duke. The vow at such a moment is in every way probable, but William was hardly already thinking of the exemption of the Abbey of Battle from the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Chichester.
Footnote 1301
He was (Chron. Bell. 4) surnamed Faber, “quod cum sodalibus venatum aliquando profectus, sagittis fortè deficientibus, quum quemdam fabrum hujuscemodi operis ignarum adissent, ipse malleis arreptis mox sagittam artificioso ingenio compegit.” His reason for being where he was is characteristic; “Divulgato ipsius Ducis in Angliam adventu, _gratiâ commodi ecclesiæ suæ_, cum reliquis exercitui sese immiscuerat.”
Footnote 1302
Chron. Bell. u. s. “Idem monasterium in venerationem beati pontificis Martini nominatim fundaretur suggessit.”
Footnote 1303
Wid. Amb. 413;
“Sed lævam Galli, dextram petiere Britanni, Dux cum Normannis dimicat in medio.”
That is, the French were on the right, the Bretons on the left, of the Normans.
Footnote 1304
Will. Pict. 133. “Britanni et quotquot auxiliares erant in sinistro cornu.” Roman de Rou, 12795;
“De l’altre part Alain Fergant Et Aimeri li cumbatant, Poitevinz meront è Bretons E del Maine toz li Barons.”
Cf. Wid. Amb. 255;
“Gensque Britannorum quorum decus exstat in armis, Tellus ni fugiat est fuga nulla quibus; Viribus illustres Cenomanni, gloria quorum Bello monstratur per probitatis opem.”
Footnote 1305
See vol. i. p. 208.
Footnote 1306
Roman de Rou, 13625;
“Joste la cumpaigne Néel Chevalcha Raol de Gael; Bret esteit è Bretonz menout, Por terre serveit ke il out.”
See Appendix LL.
Footnote 1307
See vol. ii. p. 196.
Footnote 1308
Roman de Rou, 12784;
“Venir a fet avant Rogier Ke l’en dist de Montgomeri: Forment, dist-il, en vos me fi; ... E Guillame un seneschal, Li filz Osber un boen vassal, Ensemble od vos chevalchera Et ovec vos les assaldra. Li Boilogneiz è li Pohiers Aureiz è toz mes soldéiers.”
“Soldéiers,” “soldarii,” are of course mercenaries.
Footnote 1309
See vol. ii. p. 197.
Footnote 1310
See above, pp. 258, 295.
Footnote 1311
See vol. ii. p. 132. Eustace stands first on the list in William of Poitiers, 135.
Footnote 1312
Will. Pict. 132. “Ipse fuit in medio cum firmissimo robore, unde in omnem partem consuleret manu et voce.”
Footnote 1313
See vol. ii. pp. 245, 267. So Roman de Rou, 13486;
“Bien firent cel de Béessin, E li baronz de Costentin, E Néel de Saint Salvéor, Mult s’entremet d’aveir l’amor E li boen gré de son seignor.”
But Neal’s presence is called in question by Prevost (Wace, ii. 231), Taylor (207), and Delisle (Saint-Sauveur, 21). I do not see that they at all upset Wace.
Footnote 1314
Roman de Rou, 13636;
“Li archier du Val de Roil, Ensemle od els cels de Bretoil, A maint Engleiz creverent l’oil.”
Footnote 1315
A single ἱπποτοξότης appears in the Tapestry at the very end of the battle, pl. 16. I get my details of costume from the Tapestry, pl. 13 and onwards.
Footnote 1316
See above, p. 455.
Footnote 1317
See above, p. 257.
Footnote 1318
Il. vii. 140.
Footnote 1319
In the Tapestry William appears armed only with the mace. That it is the mace I have no doubt. In pl. 13, where William is addressing his army, it might be a mere baton of command (see vol. ii. p. 255), but in pl. 15 he is shown wielding the same weapon in the very thickest of the battle. William’s weapon is also exactly the same as the “baculus” (Tapestry, pl. 15) or “baston” (Roman de Rou 13259) of Odo. William of Poitiers arms William with the sword (“fulminans ense”—like Eadmund at Assandun, see vol. i. p. 430—“stravit adversam gentem” 134), so does Guy (469 “abstracto gladio,” 483 “devorat ense”). The point is that all agree in arming him with a weapon of close conflict, not with the lance, which, as we shall see, he uses only for quite another purpose. He may very well have carried both mace and sword, but the sword does not appear in the Tapestry.
Footnote 1320
Will. Pict. 131. “Appendit etiam _humili_ collo suo relliquias, quarum favorem Heraldus abalienaverat sibi, violatâ fide quam super eas jurando sanxerat.”
Footnote 1321
Roman de Rou, 13765;
“Li Quens Robert de Moretoing Ne se tint mie del Duc loing; Frere ert li Dus de par sa mere, Grant aïe fist à son frere.”
Footnote 1322
See above, p. 151.
Footnote 1323
See Ellis, i. 455. He held the very first-fruits of the Conquest as possessor of the town of Pevensey. Domesday, 20 _b_.
Footnote 1324
Ord. Vit. 501 B. “Turstinus filius Rollonis vexillum Normannorum portavit.” Roman de Rou, 12773;
“Tosteins filz Rou le Blanc out non, Al Bec en Caux aveit meison.”
William of Poitiers (132) says only, “Vexillo prævio quod Apostolicus transmiserat,” without mentioning the bearer. I cannot see the banner in the Tapestry.
Footnote 1325
See vol. i. p. 514.
Footnote 1326
See above, p. 159.
Footnote 1327
Roman de Rou, 12719;
“Portez, dist-il, mon gonfanon, Ne vos voil fere se dreit non; Par dreit è par anceissorie Deivent estre de Normendie Vostre parent gonfanonier, Mult furent tuit boen chevalier.”
Footnote 1328
Ib. 12731;
“D’altre chose vos servirai; En la bataille od vos irai, Et as Engleiz me combatrai Tant ke jo vis estre porrai; Saciez ke ma main plus valdra Ke tels vint homes i aura.”
Footnote 1329
See above, p. 129.
Footnote 1330
Roman de Rou, 12743;
“Véiez mon chief blanc è chanu, Empeirié sui de ma vertu, Ma vertu m’est afébliée, E m’aleine mult empeiriée. L’ensuigne estuet à tel tenir, Ki lonc travail poisse soffrir, E jo serai en la bataille; N’aveiz home ki mielx i vaille, Tant i kuid ferit od m’espée, Ke tot en iert ensanglantée.”
The dialogue which follows between the Duke and the old warrior is very curious.
Footnote 1331
Of the long list given by Wace (13462 et seqq.) I only choose a few of the more remarkable. Wace’s account, with Mr. Taylor’s notes, is a perfect _nobiliaire_ of the Conquest.
Footnote 1332
Roman de Rou, 13715;
“Willame Patric de la Lande Li Reis Heraut forment demande; Co diseit, se il ne véeit, De perjure l’apellereit.”
On Harold’s visit to William Patry, see Prevost’s note, ii. 261; Taylor, 238.
Footnote 1333
See vol. ii. p. 291. Roger is described by Wace (13677) only as “l’ancestre Hue li Bigot.” See Prevost’s note, ii. 256; Taylor, 234.
Footnote 1334
Roman de Rou, 13472;
“Guillame ke l’en dit Mallet Hardiement entrels se met.”
Footnote 1335
The connexion between William Malet and Harold is not easy to make out. He is clearly the person described by Guy of Amiens (588) as
“... Quidam partim Normannus et Anglus, Compater Heraldi.”
(On the reading see M. H. B. 867 D.) The obvious meaning of this would be that William’s mother was an Englishwoman, and that he and Harold had contracted spiritual brotherhood by standing godfathers to the same child. There was a William Malet, whose mother’s name was Hesilia of the family of Crispin (De Genere Crispinorum, Giles, Lanfranc, i. 341), but he died a monk at Bec, and was doubtless a different person. I can make nothing of the pedigrees given by Sir Alexander Malet in his Translation of Wace, pp. 268, 9. Sir Alexander makes out William Malet to be uncle to the Lady Ealdgyth, calling her mother Ælfgifu a sister of William Malet; but I know no authority for this, and, if true, it would not make William “partim Normannus et Anglus.”
Footnote 1336
Will. Pict. 132. “Pedites in fronte locavit, sagittis armatos et balistis, item pedites in ordine secundo firmiores et loricatos; ultimò turmas equitum.”
Footnote 1337
Roman de Rou, 12885;
“Par matin les fist toz armer Et la bataille conréer.”
Footnote 1338
Harold’s speech comes from Wace, 12889 et seqq.
Footnote 1339
Roman de Rou, 12905;
“Lungues lances unt et espées, Ke de lor terres unt aportées, E vos avez lances agües E granz gisarmes esmolues. Cuntre vos armes ki bien taillent Ke kuid les lor gaires ne vaillent.”
The respective weapons of the two nations could hardly be better described.
Footnote 1340
Tapestry, plate 13. “Iste nuntiat Haroldum Regem de exercitu Willelmi Ducis.” The very striking figure of Harold on his horse is clearly shown under the tree, and the messenger and the host which he has been spying out seem to be shown crossing the broken ground between Telham and Senlac.
Footnote 1341
Roman de Rou, 12967;
“Quant Heraut out tot apresté, E ço k’il volt out comandé, Emmi les Engleiz est venu, Lez l’estendart est _descendu_.”
This is almost a translation of the lines in the song of Maldon, quoted in vol. i. p. 298, note 3. So again, 13103;
“Miz se sunt juste l’estandart; Chescun prie ke Dex le gart.”
Footnote 1342
The Hyde writer (293) preserves a strange legend indeed. He puts at this point the advice which Gyrth gave before the army left London. Both armies are marshalled; Harold has made his speech (“Haroldus quoque exercitum suum nunc vultu, nunc voce, nunc patriâ oratione, hortatur”). Then Gyrth counsels his brother to withdraw, while he himself leads on the army. Then comes this marvellous tale; “Denique quum omnimodo Haroldus obsisteret, et numquam se Normannorum timore fugam inire responderet, principes Anglorum equum cui solus infidebat [insidebat?] enervaverunt, dicentes debere eum participem esse pœnarum qui tantum malum Angliæ solus intulerit.” This is one way indeed to account for the national tactics.
Footnote 1343
Roman de Rou, 12985–12999. Harold is here (see Appendix HH) made to say that he has four hundred thousand men of all kinds.
Footnote 1344
Ib. 13054;
“Guert, dist Heraut, por bien le fis; Jor li assis à samedi, Por ço ke samedi naski; Ma mere dire me soleit Ke à cel jor bien m’aveindreit.”
Compare the memorable Tuesdays in the life of Saint Thomas. Herbert, vii. 164 (Giles); Robertson’s “Becket,” 339.
Footnote 1345
Roman de Rou, 13093;
“Li quens de Flandres m’a traï; Mult fis ke fol ke jel’ créï, Kar par son brief m’aveit mandé, Et par messaige asséuré Ke Willame ne porreit mie Aveir si grant chevalerie.”
I can throw no more light on these dealings of Baldwin with Harold than I can upon his other no less mysterious dealings with William. See above, p. 312, and Appendix W.
Footnote 1346
See above, p. 457, &c.
Footnote 1347
Herod. vi. 112. Μανίην τε τοῖσι Ἀθηναίοισι ἐπέφερον καὶ πάγχυ ὀλεθρίην, ὁρέωντες αὐτοὺς ὀλίγους, καὶ τούτους δρόμῳ ἐπειγομένους, οὔτε ἵππου ὑπαρχούσης σφι οὔτε τοξευμάτων. Here however it was no case of δρόμῳ ἐπείγεσθαι.
Footnote 1348
Roman de Rou, 12929;
“Fet orent devant els escuz De fenestres è d’altres fuz, Devant els les orent levez Come cleies joinz è serrez; N’i lessierent nule jointure, Fet en orent devant closture. Par ù Normanz entrels venist, Ki descunfire les volsist. D’escuz è d’aiz s’avironerent, Issi desfendre se kuiderent; Et s’il se fussent bien tenu, Jà ne fussent li jor veincu.”
Will. Malms. iii. 241. “Pedites omnes cum bipennibus, consertâ ante se scutorum testudine, impenetrabilem cuneum faciunt; quod profectò illis eâ die saluti fuisset, nisi Normanni simulatâ fugâ more suo confertos manipulos laxâssent.” On the shield-wall, see vol. i. p. 300. Cf. the γέῤῥα of the Persians at Plataia, Herod. ix. 61 (see Blakesley’s note), and the palisade at Mykalê, ix. 97.
Footnote 1349
See vol. i. p. 298. Will. Pict. 133. “Protinùs, equorum ope relictâ, cuncti pedites constitere densiùs conglobati.” So Guy, 369;
“Nescia gens belli solamina spernit equorum, Viribus et fidens hæret humo pedibus, _Et decus esse mori summum dijudicat armis,_ _Sub juga ne tellus transeat alterius_.”
(The Peterborough Chronicler himself could not have asked for a nobler panegyric on his countrymen than these two lines.) He presently adds (377);
“Omnes descendunt et equos post terga relinquunt, Affixique solo bella ciere tubis.”
Footnote 1350
See the quotation from William of Malmesbury at vol. i. p. 299.
Footnote 1351
Only one English archer is represented in the Tapestry, pl. 14. He is a small man without armour, crouching under the shield of a tall Housecarl, like Teukros under that of Aias; Il. viii. 267. Compare the remarks on the use of the bow at Stamfordbridge, p. 370.
Footnote 1352
The heavy-armed English in the Tapestry are largely armed with the axe, which one only of the light-armed in plate 15 seems to carry. Wace therefore is hardly accurate when he says (12927),
“_Geldons_ Engleiz haches portoent, E gisarmes ki bien trenchoent.”
“Geldons” being said to mean peasants. He had before said (12839),
“Li vilain des viles aplouent, Tels armes portent com ils trovent, Machues portent è granz pels, Forches ferrées è tinels.”
The “lignis imposita saxa” of William of Poitiers (133) can hardly mean engines for hurling stones, but rather such rude weapons as are described in the text. Perhaps we may recognize them in the odd-looking clubs which are borne by the flying English in the Tapestry, pl. 16, and one of which is shown as hurled in pl. 14. Otherwise the light-armed are mainly armed with javelins, as in pl. 15. I follow the Tapestry throughout as to the equipment of the two classes of English.
Footnote 1353
Will. Malms. iii. 243. “Haroldus ... sæpe hostem cominùs venientem ferire, ut nullus impune accederet quin statim uno ictu equus et eques prociderent.” So the description in Wace (13400) of the exploits of an English warrior;
“A un Normant s’en vint tot dreit, Ki armé fu sor un destrier; Od la hache ki fu d’acier, El helme férir le kuida, Maiz li colp ultre escolorja; Par devant l’arcon glacéia La hache ki mult bien trencha; Li col del cheval en travers Colpa k’a terre vint li fers, E li cheval chaï avant Od tot son mestre à terre jus.”
Many groups in the Tapestry fully bear out this description. Does the special mention of “acier” imply that the Danish axe was, so late as this time, ever made of bronze? I believe that, vividly as the great axes of the eleventh century live in description and in stitch-work, no antiquary has ever lighted on a specimen. The clashing of axe and lance at Senlac can hardly fail to remind one of the saying of Sperthias and Boulis (Herod. vii. 135); εἰ γὰρ αὐτῆς [ἐλευθερίης] πειρήσαιο, οὐκ ἂν δόρασι συμβουλύοις ἡμῖν περὶ αὐτῆς μάχεσθαι, ἀλλὰ καὶ πελέκεσι.
Footnote 1354
Roman de Rou, 13733;
“Engleiz ne saveient joster, Ne à cheval armes porter; Haches è gisarmes teneient, Od tals armes se cumbateient. Hoem ki od hache volt férir, Od sez dous mainz l’estuet tenir, Ne pot entendre à sei covrir, S’il velt férir de grant aïr; Bien férir è covrir ensemble Ne pot l’en faire, ço me semble.”
This remark of Wace is well illustrated by many of the figures in the Tapestry.
Footnote 1355
Wid. Amb. 375;
“In summo montis vexillum vertice fixit, Affigique jubet cætera signa sibi.”
This seems a dark allusion to the double ensign.
Footnote 1356
See vol. i. p. 429. The passage of Henry of Huntingdon there quoted gives us just the explanation which is needed. The Tapestry (pl. 16) very distinctly shows the Dragon, and the other writers describe the Standard. Whether the Standard itself is shown in the Tapestry, pl. 14, I do not feel certain. If so, the Fighting Man is not discernible.
Footnote 1357
Æsch. Sept. c. Theb. 447;
ἐσχημάτισται δ’ ἀσπὶς οὐ σμικρὸν τρόπον’ ἀνὴρ δ’ ὁπλίτης, κ.τ.λ.
Footnote 1358
Will. Pict. 144. “Memorabile vexillum Heraldi, hominis armati imaginem intextam habens ex auro purissimo.” Will. Malms. iii. 241. “Vexillum ... erat in hominis pugnantis figurâ, auro et lapidibus arte sumptuosâ intextum.” So Roman de Rou, 12975;
“Li gonfanon fu mult vaillanz, D’or è de pierres reluisanz.”
Footnote 1359
Wid. Amb. 374. “Nobilibusque viris munit utrumque latus.” So Roman de Rou, 12973;
“Asez out entur li Baronz. Heraut fu lez si gonfanonz.”
Footnote 1360
Will. Malms, iii. 241. “Rex ipse pedes juxta vexillum stabat cum fratribus.” So William of Poitiers by implication (138); “Propius Regem fratres ejus duo reperti sunt.” Wace says (12971);
“Lewine è Guert furent od lui, Frere Heraut furent andui.”
And afterwards (13105), “Envirun els _lor parenz_ furent.” On the strength of this I have ventured to introduce Hakon, as well as Ælfwig. The Abbot undoubtedly was there (see vol. ii. p. 644); and, if Harold had brought Hakon back from Normandy (see above, p. 242), he would hardly be away. I may perhaps have been somewhat influenced by the part which Hakon plays in Lord Lytton’s romance, where however he somewhat usurps the traditional functions of Gyrth.
Footnote 1361
“Granz haches tindrent en lor cols,” says Wace (13111), but none appears in the Tapestry with the axe hanging from the neck. Can “en lor cols” mean “on their shoulders”? In the Tapestry, pl. 14, an Englishman is distinctly shown resting his axe on his shoulder while he uses his spear.
Footnote 1362
See above, p. 444.
Footnote 1363
Flor. Wig. 1066. “Ab horâ diei tertiâ.” So Roman de Rou, 13265;
“Dez ke tierce del jor entra, Ke la bataille comença, De si ke none trespassa Fust si de si, fust si de là, Ke nus ne sout lequel veincreit, Ne ki la terre cunquerreit.”
But I cannot help noticing the tendency to make the hours of battles and of other great events coincide with the hours of the Church.
Footnote 1364
Roman de Rou, 13215;
“En la champaigne out un fossé; Normanz l’aveient adossé; En belliant l’orent passé, Ne l’aveient mie esgardé.”
Footnote 1365
Od. ix. 156;
Αὐτίκα καμπύλα τόξα καὶ αἰγανέας δολιχαύλους εἰλόμεθ’ ἐκ νηῶν· διὰ δὲ τρίχα κοσμηθέντες βάλλομεν.
Footnote 1366
Wace (13149 et seqq.) introduces him as “Taillefer ki mult bien cantout.” Guy of Amiens first calls him (391)
“Histrio, cor audax nimium quem nobilitabat;”
and afterwards (399)
“Incisor-ferri mimus cognomine dictus.”
Footnote 1367
Roman de Rou, 13151;
“Devant li Dus alout cantant De Karlemaine è de Rollant, E d’Oliver è des vassals Ki morurent en Renchevals.”
Will. Malms, iii. 242. “Tunc cantilenâ Rollandi inchoatâ, ut martium viri exemplum pugnaturos accenderet.” So in the Ludwigslied;
“Sang was gesungen, Wig was bigunnen.”
After the profanation of the name of the great Emperor, it is refreshing to turn to a word or two of his own speech.
Footnote 1368
I should hardly have ventured to accept this juggling trick on the sole authority of Henry of Huntington (M. H. B. 763 B), but we find it also in Guy, 393;
“Hortatur Gallos verbis, et territat Anglos; Altè projiciens ludit et ense suo.”
Footnote 1369
Will. Pict. 133. “Iis [the English missiles, see above, p. 473], veluti mole letiferâ, statim nostros obrui putares.”
Footnote 1370
Ib. “Altissimus clamor, hinc Normannicus, illinc barbaricus, armorum sonitu et gemitu morientium superatur.”
Footnote 1371
Roman de Rou, 13193;
“Normanz escrient; Dex aïe; La gent englesche, _Ut_ s’escrie.”
Compare the dying words of Lewis the Pious in the Astronomer’s Life (64, Pertz, ii. 648); “Bis dixit, _Hutz, hutz_, quod significat _foras_. Unde patet quia malignum spiritum vidit,” &c. The English had to drive out less ghostly foes.
Footnote 1372
As we have two ensigns, a national and a personal one, so we evidently have a national and a personal war-cry. As, besides the Standard, Harold’s own Standard, we have the national Dragon, so we have the cry of “Holy Cross,” which cannot fail to be an invocation of Harold’s own Holy Cross of Waltham, and we have also another cry of “God Almighty,” which we must infer to be more strictly a national cry. We may fancy that the irregular levies shouted “God Almighty,” while the King’s Thegns and Housecarls shouted “Holy Cross.”
Footnote 1373
Compare the description of a widely different warfare;
“And one enormous shout of ‘Allah!’ rose In the same moment, loud as even the roar Of war’s most mortal engines, to their foes Hurling defiance: city, stream, and shore Resounded ‘Allah!’ and the clouds which close With thickening canopy the conflict o’er, Vibrate to the Eternal name. Hark through All sounds it pierceth, ‘Allah! Allah! Hu!’”
Don Juan, viii. 8.
Footnote 1374
We here get some more of Wace’s English. Roman de Rou, 13119;
“_Olicrosse_ sovent crioent, E _Godemite_ reclamoent; _Olicrosse_ est en engleiz Ke _Saints Croix_ est en franceiz, Et _Godemite_ altretant Com en frenceiz _Dex tot poissant_.”
Footnote 1375
Will. Pict. 133. “Subveniunt equites, et qui posteriores fuere fiunt primi. Pudet eminùs pugnare; gladiis rem gerere audent.”
Footnote 1376
Ib. “Angli nimium adjuvantur superioris loci opportunitate, quem sine procursu tenent, et maximè conferti; atque ingenti quoque numerositate suâ atque validissimâ corpulentiâ; præterea pugnæ instrumentis, quæ facile per scuta vel alia tegmina viam inveniunt.” “Corpulentia” doubtless means height and general bigness. The English in the Tapestry are decidedly taller than the Normans. Compare the same remark on our continental kinsfolk, p. 90.
Footnote 1377
Will. Pict. 133. “Vulnerant et eos qui eminùs in se jacula conjiciunt.” So Wid. Amb. 415;
“Anglorum stat fixa solo densissima turba, Tela dat et telis et gladios gladiis.”
Footnote 1378
Will. Pict. u. s. “Fortissimè itaque sustinent vel propellunt ausos in se districtum ensibus impetum facere.” Cf. Il. xv. 708;
οὐδ’ ἄρα τοίγε τόξων ἀϊκὰς ἀμφὶς μένον οὐδέ τ’ ἀκόντων, ἀλλ’ οἵγ’ ἐγγύθεν ἱστάμενοι, ἕνα θυμὸν ἔχοντες, ὀξέσι δὴ πελέκεσσι καὶ ἀξίνῃσι μάχοντο, καὶ ξίφεσιν μεγάλοισι καὶ ἔγχεσιν ἀμφιγύοισι.
Footnote 1379
Will. Pict. 133. “Ecce igitur hâc sævitiâ perterriti avertuntur pedites pariter atque equites Britanni et quotquot auxiliares erant in sinistro cornu; cedit ferè cuncta Ducis acies; quod cum pace dictum sit Normannorum invictissimæ nationis.” So Guy, 444;
“Normanni fugiunt, dorsa tegunt clipei.”
(On the difference in the order of events between William and Guy see Appendix KK.) Cf. Eadmer (5, 6, copied by Roger of Howden, Bromton, and others); “De quo prœlio testantur adhuc Franci qui interfuerant, quoniam, licèt varius casus hic inde exstiterit, tamen tanta strages ac fuga Normannorum fuit, ut victoria quâ potiti sunt verè et absque dubio solo miraculo Dei adseribenda sit.”
Footnote 1380
See vol. i. p. 301.
Footnote 1381
Ib. p. 424.
Footnote 1382
Will. Pict. u. s. “Credidere Normanni Ducem ac dominum suum cecidisse.”
Footnote 1383
Will. Pict. 134. “Nudato insuper capite detractâque galeâ.” So Guy, 448; “Iratus galeâ nudat et ipse caput.” In the Tapestry, pl. 15, he simply raises his nose-piece. This was perhaps the real action, which it was hard to describe in an heroic fashion.
Footnote 1384
Wid. Amb. 449. “Vultum Normannis dat, verba precantia Gallis.”
Footnote 1385
Will. Pict. u. s. “Me, inquit, circumspicite. Vivo, et vincam, opitulante Deo. Quæ vobis dementia fugam suadet?” &c. The exact words are of course given differently in different accounts.
Footnote 1386
Ib. “Fugientibus occurrit et obstitit, verberans aut minans hastâ.” So Guy, 445;
“Dux ubi perspexit quod gens sua victa recedit, Occurrens illi signa ferendo manu, Increpat et cædit, retinet, constringit et hastâ.”
Yet it is at this moment that the Tapestry (pl. 15, “Hic est Willelm Dux”) shows him in the most marked way with his mace.
Footnote 1387
On the part taken by Eustace in the battle, see Appendix KK.
Footnote 1388
In the Tapestry, pl. 15, all William’s immediate comrades at this point, except Eustace, are shown with drawn swords.
Footnote 1389
Roman de Rou, 13243;
“Quant Odes li boen corunez, Ki de Baieues ert sacrez, Poinst, si lor dist, Estez, estez; Séiez en paiz, ne vos movez; N’aiez poor de nule rien, Kar se Dex plaist nos veincron bien. Issi furent asséuré, Ne se sunt mie remué. Odes revint puignant arière U la bataille esteit plus fière, Forment i a li jor valu.”
He is very plainly shown in the Tapestry, pl. 15; “Hic Odo Episcopus, baculum tenens, confortat pueros.” Odo is most prominent in the two authorities connected with his own church.
Footnote 1390
Will. Pict. 134. “Exardentes Normanni, et circumvenientes millia aliquot insequuta se, momento deleverunt ea, ut ne quidem unus superesset.” But Guy (463) seems to include other parts of the army also;
“Post illum reliqui feriunt ad corda reversi; Vires assumunt rejiciendo metum. Ut stipulæ flammis pereunt spirantibus auris, Sic a Francigenis, Anglica turba, ruis.”
Footnote 1391
I need hardly refer to the story of the Horatii and Curiatii in Livy (i. 24); “Forte in duobus tum exercitibus erant trigemini fratres, nec ætate nec viribus dispares.”
Footnote 1392
See above, p. 434.
Footnote 1393
Wid. Amb. 471;
“Heraldi frater, non territus ore leonis, Nomine Gernt, Regis traduce progenitus, Librando telum celeri volitante lacerto, Eminus emisso cuspide corpus equi Vulnerat, atque Ducem peditem bellare coegit; Sed pedes effectus dimicat et meliùs.”
So Will. Pict. 136. “Equi tres ceciderunt sub eo confossi. Ter ille desiluit intrepidus, nec diu mors vectoris inulta remansit.” So Will. Malms. iii. 244. “Dum ubique sævit, ubique infrendet, tres equos lectissimos sub se confossos eâ die amisit.” I find no account of the third unhorsing.
Footnote 1394
Od. ix. 49:
Ἤπειρον ναίοντες, ἐπιστάμενοι μὲν ἀφ’ ἵππων ἀνδράσι μάρνασθαι, καὶ ὅθι χρὴ πεζὸν ἐόντα.
Footnote 1395
On the different accounts of the death of Gyrth, see Appendix KK.
Footnote 1396
The death of Leofwine as well as of Gyrth is placed at this point in the Tapestry, pl. 14.
Footnote 1397
Liv. xxvii. 49. “Ibi, ut patre Hamilcare et Hannibale fratre dignum erat, pugnans cecidit.” Compare the reception of the news by Hannibal in c. 51.
Footnote 1398
Roman de Rou, 13874;
“Là ù la presse ert plus espesse, Là cil de Kent è cil d’Essesse A merveille se cumbateient, E li Normanz ruser faiseient, En sus les faiseient retraire, Ne lor poeient grant mal faire.”
Footnote 1399
Wid. Amb. 489;
“Ille timens cædem negat illi ferre salutem; Nam pavitat mortem, ceu lepus ante canem.”
But the other motive is just as likely in one “ex Cenomannorum progenitus genere.”
Footnote 1400
Ib. 491;
“Dux memor, ut miles subitò se vertit ad illum, Per nasum galeæ concitus accipiens, Vultum telluri, plantas ad sidera volvit; Sic sibi concessum scandere currit equum.”
Mark the mention of the _nose-piece_, so conspicuous in the Tapestry.
Footnote 1401
Ib. 501;
“Postquam factus eques Dux est, mox acriùs hostes Vulnerat, aggreditur, fulminat, insequitur.”
Footnote 1402
Ib. 503–518. The Englishman is described as
“Filius Hellocis, vir celer et facilis.”
I wish I knew how to identify him.
Footnote 1403
Ib. 525;
“Talibus auspiciis Comes et Dux associati, Quo magis arma micant, bella simul repetunt.”
Footnote 1404
Will. Pict. 134. “Patuerunt tamen in eos viæ incisæ per diversas partes fortissimorum militum ferro.”
Footnote 1405
Ib. “Tiro quidam Normannus Robertus, Rogerii de Bello-Monte filius ... prœlium illo die primum experiens, egit quod æternandum esset laude, cum legione quam in dextro cornu duxit irruens ac sternens magnâ cum audaciâ.” Wace (13462) seemingly confounds Robert with his father Roger, who was not there. See Prevost’s note, ii. 229, and above, p. 384. Mark how the allies and mercenaries are put under Norman officers.
Footnote 1406
Roman de Rou, 12941;
“Jà Normant ne s’i embastist, Ke l’alme à hunte ne perdist, Fust par hache, fust par gisarme, U par machue u par altre arme.”
Footnote 1407
See above, p. 161.
Footnote 1408
Wid. Amb. 421;
“Nec penetrare valent spissum nemus Angligenarum, Ni tribuat vires viribus ingenium.”
(The metaphor of the “nemus” or “silva” runs throughout Guy’s description.) So William of Malmesbury (ii. 228) speaks of Harold as being “astutiâ Willelmi circumventus.”
Footnote 1409
Will. Pict. 135. “Meminerunt quam optatæ rei paullò ante fuga dederit occasionem.”
Footnote 1410
The Brevis Relatio however (7) calls them “cuneus Normannorum fere usque ad mille equites.” But he adds that they were “ex alterâ parte” from the Duke’s own post.
Footnote 1411
Will. Pict. u. s. “Animadvertentes Normanni, sociaque turba, non absque nimio sui incommodo hostem tantum simul resistentem superari posse, terga dederunt, fugam ex industriâ simulantes.”
Footnote 1412
Guy of Amiens (425) marks clearly what troops they were who broke their order;
“Rustica lætatur gens et superâsse putabat, Post tergum nudis insequitur gladiis.”
William of Poitiers (135) is here very graphic; “Barbaris cum spe victoriæ ingens lætitia exorta est. Sese cohortantes exsultantè clamore nostros maledictis increpabant, et minabantur cunctos illicò ruituros esse.”
Footnote 1413
Will. Pict. 135. “Normanni repente regirati equis interceptos et inclusos undique mactaverunt, nullum relinquentes.” Brevis Relatio, 8. “Normanni, qui erant cautiores bello quam Angli, mox redierunt, atque inter illos et agmen a quo se disjunxerant, se immiserunt.” Wid. Amb. 433;
“Quique fugam simulant instantibus ora retorquent, Constrictos cogunt vertere dorsa neci. Pars ibi magna perit, pars et densata resistit, _Millia namque decem sunt ibi passa necem_.”
Footnote 1414
Will. Malms. iii. 242. “Ita ingenio circumventi, pulcram mortem pro patriæ ultione meruere: nec tamen ultioni suæ defuere, quin crebrò consistentes, de insequentibus insignes cladis acervos facerent; nam, occupato tumulo, Normannos, calore succensos acriter ad superiora nitentes, in vallem dejiciunt, levique negotio in subjectos tela torquentes, lapides rotantes, omnes ad unum fundunt.” The scene is vividly shown in the Tapestry, pl. 15, and the defenders of the little hill are all light-armed.
Footnote 1415
Will. Malms. iii. 242. “Item fossatum quoddam præruptum, compendiario et noto sibi transitu evadentes, tot ibi inimicorum conculcavere, ut cumulo cadaverum planitiem campi æquarent.” On this last proverbial saying, see above, pp. 351, 369, and Appendix CC. This scene is most vividly shown in the Tapestry, pl. 15; “Hic ceciderunt simul Angli et Franci in prœlio.” It must not be confounded with the similar event later in the day on the other side of the hill. See Appendix KK.
Footnote 1416
Wid. Amb; 427;
“Amotis sanis labuntur dilacerati, Silvaque spissa priùs rarior efficitur.”
Footnote 1417
This was evidently the case, and this is, I suppose, what Guy of Amiens means in his somewhat difficult lines (429);
“Conspicit ut campum cornu tenuare sinistrum, Intrandi dextrum quod via larga patet.”
“Dextrum” would thus mean the _English_ right.
Footnote 1418
Will. Pict. 135. “Fit deinde insoliti generis pugna, quam altera pars incursibus et diversis motibus agit, altera, velut humo adfixa, tolerat.... Mortui plus dum cadunt, quam vivi moveri videntur. Leviter sauciatos non permittit evadere, sed comprimendo necat, sociorum densitas.” He had before said (134), “Ob nimiam densitatem eorum labi vix potuerunt interempti.” So Guy, 417;
“Spiritibus nequeunt frustrata cadavera sterni, Nec cedunt vivis corpora militibus: Omne cadaver enim, vitâ licet evacuatam, Stat velut illæsum, possidet atque locum.”
Footnote 1419
Will. Pict. u. s. “Reliquos majori cum alacritate aggressi sunt, aciem adhuc horrendam et quam difficillimum erat circumvenire.”
Footnote 1420
See above, p. 477. Wace makes three o’clock the time when William gave the order to shoot up into the air. I cannot help thinking that it must have been much nearer sunset when that order was given, and that the hour of vespers rather marks the time when the Normans first got on the hill.
Footnote 1421
Of the long list of stories of this kind given by Wace (13387 et seqq.) I pick out a few of the more remarkable.
Footnote 1422
See above, p. 474, note 1.
Footnote 1423
Will. Malms, iii. 242–244. “Emicuit ibi virtus amborum ducum. Haroldus, non contentus munere imperatorio ut hortaretur alios, militis officium sedulò exequebatur.... Item Willelmus suos clamore et præsentiâ hortari, ipse primus procurrere, confertos hostes invadere.” Cf. vol. i. p. 424.
Footnote 1424
Will. Pict. 136. “Cum Heraldo, tali qualem poëmata dicunt Hectorem vel Turnum, non minùs auderet Willelmus congredi singulari certamine quam Achilles cum Hectore vel Æneas cum Turno.”
Footnote 1425
Roman de Rou, 13845–13872.
Footnote 1426
Ib. 13910–13915.
Footnote 1427
Ib. 13388;
“Quant un Engleiz vint acorant; En sa cumpaigne out chent armez, De plusors armes atornez. Hache noresche out mult bele.”
It has been suggested that this centurion may have been a hundred-man or _centenarius_.
Footnote 1428
Roman de Rou, 13428–13461. The sworn brotherhood is thus described;
“Ki s’esteient acumpaignié Por ço ke bien erent preisié. Ensemble debveient aler, Li uns debveit l’altre garder.”
Of their axes we read, as of that of Harold;
“En lors cols aveient levées Dui gisarmes lunges è lées; As Normanz feseient granz mals, Homes tuoent è chevals.”
It is hard to identify any of these stories with the particular groups in the Tapestry, but in plates 15 and 16 several single combats of this kind may be seen, which well illustrate the deadly effect of the English axes.
Footnote 1429
Roman de Rou, 13751–13764. This story is told with great spirit. The four last lines run;
“Maiz li Engleiz l’avironerent, Od lor gisarmes le tuerent: Là fu trové quant il fu quis, Lez l’estandart mort et occis.”
On his kindred to Ralph of Tesson (see vol. ii. p. 256) see Prevost’s note, ii. 265.
Footnote 1430
Roman de Rou, 13395;
“En la bataille el primer front, La ù Normanz plus espez sont, En vint saillant plus tost ke cers.”
This encounter (described by Wace, 13387–13423) is worth notice on several grounds. I have quoted some lines above, p. 494. The Englishman is at last killed by Roger of Montgomery, who exclaims, “Ferez, Franceiz.” M. Pluquet (ii. 227) here comments on the Norman Roger calling his men “French.” The name of “Franci” (see above, p. 419) would take in all William’s followers, but Roger of Montgomery was (see above, p. 459) in the immediate command of the distinctly French contingent.
Footnote 1431
Will. Pict. 135. “Languent Angli, et quasi reatum ipso defectu confitentes vindictam patiuntur.” So Guy, 527;
“Amborum gladiis campus rarescit ab Anglis, Defluit et numerus, nutat et atteritur, Corruit appositâ ceu silva minuta securi, Sic nemus Angligentûm ducitur ad nihilum.”
Footnote 1432
Wid. Amb. 533;
“... Dux prospexit Regem super ardua montis Acriter instantes dilacerare suos.”
Will. Malms. iii. 242. “Valuit hæc vicissitudo, modò illis modò istis vincentibus, quantùm Haroldi vita moram fecit.”
Footnote 1433
Flor. Wig. 1066. “Ab horâ diei tertiâ usque noctis crepusculum suis adversariis restitit fortissimè, et seipsum pugnando tam fortiter defendit et tam strenuè ut vix ab hostili interimi posset agmine.” Od. ix. 56;
ὄφρα μὲν ἠὼς ἦν καὶ ἀέξετο ἱερὸν ἦμαρ, τόφρα δ’ ἀλεξάμενοι μένομεν πλέονάς περ ἐόντας· ἦμος δ’ ἠέλιος μετενίσσετο βουλυτόνδε, καὶ τότε δὴ Κίκονες κλῖναν δαμάσαντες Ἀχαιούς.
Footnote 1434
See the full account in the Roman de Rou, 13275–13296. So Henry of Huntingdon (M. H. B. 763); “Docuit igitur Dux Willielmus viros sagittarios ut non in hostem directè, sed in aëra sursum sagittas emitterent, cuneum hostilem sagittis cæcarent, quod Anglis magno fuit detrimento.” Henry is copied by Ralph of Diss, X Scriptt. 480, and Bromton, 960.
Footnote 1435
Roman de Rou, 13287;
“Quant li saetes reveneient, De sor les testes lor chaeient, Chiés è viaires lor perçoent, Et à plusors les oilz crevoent; Ne n’osoent les oilz ovrir, Ne lor viaires descovrir.”
Footnote 1436
Ib. 13293;
“Saetes plus espessement Voloent ke pluie par vent.”
So Henry of Huntingdon (u. s.), who is again followed by Ralph and Bromton; “Interea totus imber sagittariorum cecidit circa Regem Haraldum, et ipse in oculo percussus corruit.”
Footnote 1437
Wid. Amb. 543;
“Per nimias cædes nam bellica jura tenentes Heraldus cogit pergere carnis iter.”
Footnote 1438
Roman de Rou, 13297;
“Issi avint k’une saete Ki de verz li ciel ert chaete, Féri Heraut de sus l’oil dreit, Ki l’un des oilz li a toleit; E Heraut l’a par aïr traite, Getée a les mains, si l’a fraite. Por li chief ki l’a dolu S’est apuié sor son escu.”
This scene, the turning-point of all English history, is vividly shown in the Tapestry, pl. 16. Wace places it too early in the battle. William of Poitiers and the English writers do not mention the manner of the King’s death. All that Florence can utter is “heu, ipsemet cecidit crepusculi tempore.” William of Malmesbury (iii. 242) says, “Jactu sagittæ violato cerebro procubuit,” and in the next chapter, after describing Harold’s exploits (see above, p. 474), how every Norman who came near him was cut down, adds the remarkable expression, “_quapropter_, ut dixi, eminùs letali arundine ictus mortem implevit.” Compare—if any comparison be not sacrilege—the death of Richard, son of Richard King of the Romans, at the siege of Berwick in 1296 (Walt. Hem. ii. 98); “Ibi corruit frater Comitis Cornubiæ, miles strenuissimus [Harold’s own epithet], qui quum ad hostes caput in altum erigeret, in ipsum oculari aperturâ galeæ percussus telo, confestim cecidit et expiravit.” Between 1066 and 1296 the nose-piece had been exchanged for the vizor.
Footnote 1439
Hen. Hunt. M. H. B. 763 C. “Viginti autem equites strenuissimi fidem suam dederunt invicem quod Anglorum catervam perrumpentes signum regium quod vocatur Standard arriperent. Quod dum facerent, plures eorum occisi sunt; pars autem eorum, viâ gladiis factâ, Standard asportavit.” But it would seem from Wace that it was rather the Dragon which was carried off (13956);
“L’estendart unt à terre mis, Et li Reis Heraut unt occis E li meillor de ses amis; Li gonfanon à or unt pris.”
So directly after (13965); “E l’estendart out abatu.” And so again, 14013.
Footnote 1440
Hen. Hunt. M. H. B. 763 C. “Irrumpens autem multitudo equitum Regem vulneratum interfecit.”
Footnote 1441
Guy of Amiens (537) gives their names. Eustace has been already mentioned;
“Alter ut Hectorides, Pontivi nobilishæres; Hos comitatur Hugo promptus in officio; Quartus Gilfardus patris a cognomine dictus; Regis ad exitium quattuor arma ferunt.”
Footnote 1442
Compare the four murderers of Saint Thomas, who however needed a fifth, and that a clerical hand, to imitate this particular act of brutality. Will. Fil. Steph. 303. “Quidam Hugo de Horsea, cognomento Malus Clericus, sancti martyris procumbentis collum pede comprimens, a concavitate coronæ amputatæ, cum mucrone cruorem et cerebrum extrahebat.” Cf. Edw. Grim, 77; Reg. Pont. 168.
Guy leaves out all mention of the wound from the arrow.
Footnote 1443
Wid. Amb. 549;
“Abscidit coxam quartus procul egit ademptam; Taliter occisum terra cadaver habet.”
This action is very clearly shown in the Tapestry, pl. 16. So Wace, 13942.
Footnote 1444
Will. Malms. iii. 243. “Jacentis femur unus militum gladio proscidit; unde a Willelmo ignominiæ notatus, quod rem ignavam et pudendam fecisset, militiâ pulsus est.” But I certainly cannot identify the one among the four mentioned by Guy who was punished in this way by William.
The death of Harold reminds one of the death of Patroklos (Il. xvi. 818);
Ἔκτωρ δ’, ὡς εἶδεν Πατροκλῆα μεγάθυμον ἂψ ἀνάχαζόμενον, βεβλημένον ὀξέϊ χαλκῷ, ἀγχίμολόν ῥά οἱ ἦλθε κατὰ στίχας, οὖτα δὲ δουρὶ νείατον ἐς κενεῶνα· διὰ πρὸ δὲ χαλκὸν ἔλασσε.
Footnote 1445
The resistance of the heavy-armed English after the death of Harold is shown most distinctly in the Tapestry, pl. 16; but it is confined to the heavy-armed.
Footnote 1446
Will. Pict. 137. “Viderunt Normannos non multum decrevisse peremptorum casu, et quasi virium incrementa pugnando sumerent, acriùs quam in principio imminere.”
Footnote 1447
Flor. Wig. 1066. “Comites etiam Gyrth et Leofwinus fratres illius cecidere, et fere nobilitas totius Angliæ.” This is an enlargement of the Worcester Chronicle; “Ðær wearð ofslægen Harold Kyng and Leofwine Eorl his broðor and Gyrð Eorl his broðor and fela godra manna.”
Footnote 1448
Guy indeed says (553), “Bella negant Angli; veniam poscunt superati,” but nothing of the sort is implied either in William of Poitiers or in the Tapestry. William (137) speaks of “Ducis eam sævitiam quæ nulli contra stanti parceret,” and the Tapestry (pl. 16) shows all the heavy-armed English lying dead.
Footnote 1449
See above, p. 427.
Footnote 1450
See below, p. 508.
Footnote 1451
Chron. Petrib. 1066. “And þa wæs Leofric Abbot of Burh æt þæt ilca feord, and sæclode þær, and com ham, and wæs dæd sone þæræfter on ælre halgan mæsse-niht.”
Footnote 1452
Wid. Amb. 681;
“Intus erat quidam contractus debilitate Renum, sicque pedum segnis ab officio; Vulnera pro patriâ quoniam numerosa recepit; Lecticâ vehitur mobilitate carens.”
This is said of “Ansgardus,” whom I hold to be the same as Esegar. See above, p. 424, and Appendix EE.
Footnote 1453
Wid. Amb. 557;
“Vesper erat, jam cardo diem volvebat ad umbras, Victorem fecit quum Deus esse Ducem. Solum devictis nox et fuga profuit Anglis, Densi per latebras et tegimen nemoris.”
Footnote 1454
Tapestry, pl. 16. “Fugâ vertunt Angli.” The fliers are all light-armed.
Footnote 1455
See vol. i. p. 301.
Footnote 1456
Will. Pict. 137. “In fugam itaque conversi quantociùs abierunt, alii raptis equis, nonnulli pedites.”
Footnote 1457
This adventure of Eustace is described at length by William of Poitiers (137). William seems now to be armed with a broken lance; “Terribilior cum parte hastæ quam grandia spicula vibrantes.” He calls back Eustace from his flight; “Eustachium Comitem cum militibus quinquaginta aversum et receptui signa canere volentem ne abiret virili voce compellavit.” The blow given to Eustace is thus described (138); “Hæc inter verba percussus Eustachius inter scapulas ictu sonoro, cujus gravitatem statim sanguis demonstrabat naribus et ore.”
Footnote 1458
This last scene of the battle is left out by Wace and Guy of Amiens, but it comes out very strongly in William of Poitiers, 137; “Rediit tamen fugientibus confidentia, nactis ad renovandum certamen maximam opportunitatem, prærupti _vallis_ [valli?] et frequentium fossarum.” Orderic (501 D), who partly follows William of Jumièges (vii. 36), is fuller; “Nam crescentes herbæ antiquum aggerem tegebant, ubi summopere currentes Normanni cum equis et armis ruebant; ac sese, dum unus super alterum repente cadebat, vicissim exstinguebant. Ibi nimirum fugientibus Anglis rediit confidentia. Cernentes enim opportunitatem prærupti _valli_ et frequentium fossarum, inopinatò restiterunt, in unum collecti sunt, et Normannis magnam stragem fortiter intulerunt.” He says that fifteen thousand of the Normans were killed at this point, which must surely be the number of the slain in the whole battle. He mentions one only by name, “Eginulfus Aquilensis oppidanus.” The name of _Malfosse_ comes from the Chronicon de Bello, 5. See Appendix KK.
I do not feel at all clear about the reading of the words in Italics. There is a “prærupta vallis,” but the palisade could hardly be called a “vallum,” and I greatly doubt about Orderic’s “antiquus agger.” The gender of “vallis” however in William of Poitiers is odd.
Footnote 1459
Will. Malms. iii. 245. “Illa fuit dies fatalis Angliæ, funestum excidium dulcis patriæ, pro novorum dominorum commutatione.”
Footnote 1460
Hen. Hunt. lib. vi.; Scriptt. p. Bed. 212. “Quum jam Domini justam voluntatem super Anglorum gentem Normanni complêssent, nec jam vix aliquis princeps de progenie Anglorum esset in Angliâ, sed omnes ad servitutem et ad mœrorem redacti essent; ita etiam ut Anglicum vocari esset opprobrio.”
Footnote 1461
Ib. lib. vii.; Scriptt. p. Bed. 213. “Declaratum constat quomodò Dominus salutem et honorem genti Anglorum pro meritis abstulerit et jam populum non esse jusserit.”
Footnote 1462
See the quotation from Eadmer in p. 482.
Footnote 1463
Will. Pict. 138. “Sic victoriâ consummatâ, ad aream belli regressus, repperit stragem, quam non absque miseratione conspexit, tametsi factam in impios, tametsi tyrannum occidere sit pulcrum, famâ gloriosum, beneficio gratum.” Cf. vol. ii. p. 285, note 3.
Footnote 1464
Chron. Wig. 1066. “And þa Frencyscan ahton wælstowe geweald, eallswa heom God uðe for folces synnon.”
Footnote 1465
Will. Pict. 138. “Latè solum operuit sordidatus in cruore flos Anglicæ nobilitatis atque juventutis.”
Footnote 1466
Roman de Rou, 14026;
“Ki par noit kuident relever, Et par noit kuident escaper; Maiz mult se kuident ainz vengier, Et mult se kuident vendre chier. Ne chaut chescun de sa vie, Ne li chaut poiz ki l’ocie, Mais ke il ait un Normant mort.”
This remarkable passage throws light on the escape of Esegar and Leofric.
Footnote 1467
Ib. 14055;
“Li colps virent granz en l’escu E li helme out quassé véu.”
Will. Malms, iii. 244. “Et proculdubio divina ilium manus protexit, ut nihil sanguinis ex ejus corpore hostis hauriret, quamquam ilium tot jaculis impeteret.” If we can believe Guy of Amiens (555), William had killed two thousand Englishmen with his own hand;
“Dux ibi per numerum duo millia misit ad Orcum, Exceptis aliis millibus innumeris.”
Footnote 1468
Roman de Rou, 14073;
“A la champaigne la nuit jut, Entre li morz mainga è but. Diemaine fu el demain.”
Footnote 1469
Wid. Amb. 561;
“Inter defunctos noctem pausando peregit Victor, et exspectat Lucifer ut redeat.”
Footnote 1470
Ib. 567;
“Illuxit postquam Phœbi clarissima lampas Et mundum furvis expiat à tenebris, Lustravit campum, tollens et cæsa suorum Corpora, Dux terræ condidit in gremio.”
Footnote 1471
Will. Pict. 139. “Par fuisset Anglorum, qui sese per injuriam tantam pessumdederunt in mortem, carnes gulâ vulturis lupique devorari, ossibus insepultis campos fore sepultos. Cæterum illi crudele visu est tale supplicium. Volentibus ad humandum eos colligere liberam concessit potestatem.” So more at length, Roman de Rou, 14083–14092. Guy however (571) says,
“Vermibus atque lupis, avibus canibusque voranda, Deserit Anglorum corpora strata solo.”
The easiest way to reconcile the statements is that William did not order the burial of the English; he allowed the bodies which were claimed to be carried away, but those which were unclaimed remained unburied.
Footnote 1472
Of William’s dealings with the New Minster I shall have to speak in my next volume.
Footnote 1473
William of Poitiers (138) simply says, “Propiùs Regem fratres ejus duo reperti sunt.”
Footnote 1474
Roman de Rou, 14083;
“Li nobles dames de la terre Sunt alées lor maris querre; Li unes vunt quérant lor peres, U lor espos u filz u freres; A lor villes les emporterent, E as mostiers les en terrerent.”
Footnote 1475
See Appendix K.
Footnote 1476
See vol. ii. p. 630.
Footnote 1477
Ulf the son of Harold (see Flor. Wig. 1087) can hardly fail to have been a child of Ealdgyth. See Lappenberg, p. 557 (vol. ii. p. 304, Thorpe). If Harold’s marriage with Ealdgyth took place after his election (see Appendix F), Ulf must have been a posthumous child.
Footnote 1478
Flor. Wig. 1066. “Cujus [Haroldi] morte auditâ, Comites Edwinus et Morkarus ... Lundoniam venere, et sororem suam Aldgitham Reginam sumptam ad Civitatem Legionum misere.”
Footnote 1479
De Inv. c. 20. “Viso hoc infausto auspicio, multo dolore correpti, duos fratres de ecclesiâ præcipuos et majores natu, Osegodum Cnoppe et Ailricum Childemaister, in comitatu Regis miserunt ad prœlium, ut, cognitis rei eventibus, de corpore Regis et suorum ecclesiæ devotorum curam agerent, et, si fortuna sic daret, cadavera reportarent.” Was Æthelric “Magister Scholarum” between Adelard and his son? See vol. ii. p. 444.
Footnote 1480
Ib. c. 21. “Fatales hos Regis eventus sequuti fuerant a longè ut viderent finem.”
Footnote 1481
Wid. Amb. 577;
“Heraldi mater, nimio constricta dolore, Misit adusque Ducem, postulat et precibus Orbatæ miseræ natis tribus et viduatæ, Pro tribus unius reddat ut ossa sibi, Si placet, aut corpus puro præponderet auro.”
Will. Malms. iii. 247. “Corpus Haroldi matri repetenti sine pretio misit, licet illa multum per legatos obtulisset.” (On the difference between these two accounts, see Appendix MM.) Both these versions make Gytha simply send; but the words of William of Poitiers (138) seem to me rather to imply that she came personally; “Tumulandum eum Willelmo agnomine Maletto concessit, non matri pro corpore dilectæ prolis auri par pondus offerenti.” So Orderic (502 C); “Mœsta igitur mater Guillelmo Duci pro corpore Heraldi par auri pondus obtulit.”
Footnote 1482
Il. xxii. 351:
οὐδ’ εἴ κεν σ’ αὐτὸν χρυσῷ ἐρύσασθαι ἀνώγοι Δαρδανίδης Πρίαμος· οὐδ’ ὥς σέ γε πότνια μήτηρ ἐνθεμένη λεχέεσσι γοήσεται, ὃν τέκεν αὐτὴ, ἀλλὰ κύνες τε καὶ οἰωνοὶ κατὰ πάντα δάσονται.
He afterwards (Il. xxiv. 578) receives the gifts of Priam; that is, he does not refuse them; but they seem to have no share in bringing about his change of purpose.
Footnote 1483
Will. Pict. 138. “Scivit non decere tali commercio aurum accipi. Æstimavit indignum fore ad matris libitum sepeliri, cujus ob nimiam cupiditatem insepulti remanerent innumerabiles. Dictum est illudendo, oportere situm esse custodem littoris et pelagi, quæ cum armis ante vesanus insedit.” So directly after “in littoreo tumulo jaces.”
Footnote 1484
Wid. Amb. 582;
“Sed Dux iratus prorsùs utrumque negat; Jurans quod potiùs præsentis littora portûs Illi committet aggere sub lapidum. Ergo velut fuerat testatus, rupis in alto Præcepit claudi vertice corpus humi.”
Cf. Il. vii. 86;
σῆμά τέ οἱ χεύσωσιν ἐπὶ πλατεῖ Ἑλληςπόντῳ κ.τ.λ.
Footnote 1485
De Inv. 21. “Fratres ... currunt ad cadavera, et vertentes ea huc et illuc, Domini Regis corpus agnoscere non valentes.” It will be easily seen that I am blending two stories. See Appendix MM.
Footnote 1486
See Appendix NN.
Footnote 1487
De Inv. c. 21. “Secretiora in eo signa noverat ceteris ampliùs, ad ulteriora intima secretorum admissa, quatinus ipsius notitiâ certificarentur secretis indiciis qui exterioribus non poterant.” So Will. Pict. 138. “Ipse, carens omni decore, quibusdam signis, nequaquam facie, recognitus est.” Compare the finding of Tostig, p. 373. A story of the same sort is told by Rudolf Glaber (lib. iii. c. 9; Duchèsne, iv. 38) of Odo of Champagne.
Footnote 1488
See Hist. Fed. Gov. vol. i. p. 451.
Footnote 1489
Wid. Amb. 573;
“Heraldi corpus collegit dilaceratum, Collectum texit sindone purpureâ, Detulit et secum repetens sua castra marina, Expleat ut solitas funeris exsequias.”
Footnote 1490
Ib. 587;
“Extemplo quidam partim Normannus et Anglus, Compater Heraldi, jussa libenter agit: Corpus enim Regis citò sustulit et sepelivit, Imponens lapidem, scripsit et in titulo: ‘Per mandata Ducis, Rex, hic, Heralde, quiescis, Ut custos maneas littoris et pelagi.’”
See the quotation from William of Poitiers, p. 512. So Ord. Vit. 502 B.
Footnote 1491
See Appendix MM.
Footnote 1492
This tale is the main subject of the Vita Haroldi in the Chroniques Anglo-Normandes, vol. ii. See especially pp. 173–184, 194–222.
Footnote 1493
Vit. Har. 173. “A duobus, ut fertur, mediocribus viris, quos francalanos sive agricolas vocant, agnitus et callidè occultatus.”
Footnote 1494
Ib. 174. “Transfretavit igitur in Germaniam, generis sui genitricem aditurus Saxoniam ... cognatos ad ferenda propriæ stirpi suffragia instanter sollicitat.” He goes to Denmark in p. 175.
Footnote 1495
See vol. i. p. 68.
Footnote 1496
A false—Matthew Paris thinks a true—Baldwin, was hanged in Flanders in 1224. See Mat. Par. 322 Wats. On the false Sebastians, see the work of M. d’Antas, “Les Faux Don Sébastien,” Paris, 1866.
Footnote 1497
Fuller, History of Waltham Abbey, p. 259. Cf. Knighton, 2343.
Footnote 1498
There was a twofold translation of Waltheof (see Ord. Vit. 537 A, 543 A), and seemingly of Harold also.
Footnote 1499
De Inv. c. 21. “Cujus corporis translationi, quum sic se habebat status ecclesiæ fabricandi, vel devotio fratrum reverentiam corpori exhibentium, nunc extremè memini me tertiò adfuisse, et sicut vulgò celebre est, et attestationes antiquorum audivimus, plagas ipsis ossibus impressas oculis corporeis et vidisse et manibus contrectâsse.” He could probably just remember the translation in the dim way that a child remembers things, but his recollection was strengthened by hearing the story from older members of the house.
Footnote 1500
Il. xxiv. 804.
Footnote 1501
Walt. Hem. ii. 266–267. “Ordinaverunt de corpore Regis quod ... maneret in ecclesiâ religiosorum de Waltham, donec ... vacaret eis intendere sepulturæ; factumque est ita.”
Footnote 1502
The wonderful analogy between the two great Edwards, the son of Ælfred and the son of Henry the Third, strikes us at every stage of the history of the two. See above, p. 38.
Footnote 1503
The authorities for this Chapter are the same as for the last, except that the Bayeux Tapestry now fails us.
Footnote 1504
Guy of Amiens (595) says, after mentioning Harold’s burial,
“Nomine postposito Ducis, et sic Rege locato, Hinc regale sibi nomen adeptus abit.”
Footnote 1505
Will. Malms. ii. 228. “Quasi cum Haroldo omne robur deciderit Angliæ.”
Footnote 1506
Chron. Wig. 1066. “And Wyllelm eorl for eft ongean to Hæstingan, and geanbidode þær hwæðer man him to bugan wolde.”
Footnote 1507
Ib. “Ac þa he ongeat þæt man him to cuman nolde.”
Footnote 1508
Will. Pict. 141. “Erat videlicet eorum voti summa non habere dominum quem non habuere compatriotam.”
Transcriber’s Note: This footnote was cut short in the original printing, at “Will. Pict. 141. “Erat videlicet eorum voti summa non habere domi-”; the rest of the sentence has been completed by comparison with another edition of the book.
Footnote 1509
Roman de Rou, 13986;
“Engleiz ki del champ eschaperent, De si à Lundres ne finerent: Ço diseient è so creimeient Ke li Normanz prez les sueient.”
He goes on to say that many were drowned through their eagerness to cross the bridge into the city.
Footnote 1510
See above, p. 501.
Footnote 1511
Flor. Wig. 1066. “Cujus [Haroldi] morte auditâ, Comites Edwinus et Morkarus ... Londoniam venere.” William of Malmesbury, less probably (iii. 247), makes them hear the news in London, “apud Londoniam audito interitûs Haroldi nuntio.”
Footnote 1512
See above, p. 511.
Footnote 1513
Will. Pict. 141. “Tum verò confluxerat ad ipsam hospes turba propugnatorum, quam, licet ambitu nimis ampla, non facilè capiebat.” So Guy of Amiens, 641;
“Hanc bello superata petit gens improba, sperans Vivere per longum libera tempus in hâc.”
Footnote 1514
Flor. Wig. “Aldredus autem Eboracensis Archiepiscopus, et iidem Comites [Edwinus et Morkarus], cum civibus Lundoniensibus et butsecarlis, Clitonem Eadgarum, Eadmundi Ferrei Lateris nepotem, in Regem levare voluere.”
Footnote 1515
See Appendix NN.
Footnote 1516
Guy of Amiens (645) has here a very singular statement;
“Unà, postremùm rectores atque potentes Tali consilio consuluere sibi: Scilicet ut puerum _natum de traduce Regis_ Hi Regem sacrent, ne sine Rege forent.”
“Tradux Regis” must mean either Godwine or Harold. In an earlier passage (472) it means Godwine. The passage then implies that either a brother or a son of Harold was chosen. I do not however take this as showing that there really was any movement in favour of one of Harold’s sons, but rather that Guy fancied that Eadgar was a son or brother of Harold.
Footnote 1517
As I before said, there is no trustworthy evidence as to Waltheof’s presence or absence at Senlac. _A priori_, it is about equally strange if he stayed away and if, being there, he came back alive. Snorro, who still calls Waltheof Harold’s brother, unhesitatingly takes him to the battle; “Þar voró þá med Haralldi brædor hans Sveinn (!) oc Gyrdir oc Valþiófr Jarl.” (Johnstone, p. 218; Laing, iii. 95.) But he goes on to give an account of an exploit of Waltheof after the battle, the burning of a hundred Normans who had taken shelter in a wood, which seems to be transferred from Waltheof’s doings at York in 1068. See above, p. 372.
Footnote 1518
Will. Malms, iii. 247. “Edwinus et Morcardus, amplæ spei fratres, ... urbanos sollicitaverant ut alterutrum in regnum sublevarent.”
Footnote 1519
See the quotation from Florence in p. 526. So Will. Pict. 140. “Regem statuerant Edgarum Athelinum, ex Edwardi Regis nobilitate, annis puerum.” Ord. Vit. 502 D. “Interemto Heraldo, Stigandus Cantuariensis Archiepiscopus, et præclari Comites Eduinus et Morcarus, aliique primates Anglorum qui Senlacio bello non interfuerunt, Edgarum Clitonem filium Eduardi Regis Hunorum [see vol. ii. p. 622], filii Edmundi Irnesidæ, id est Ferrei-Lateris, Regem statuerunt.” Benoît (37742), translating William of Poitiers (see above, p. 525), says;
“Esleu unt e fait seignor D’un chevalier mult jent meschin Qui ert apelé Addelin, De la lignée au bon Ewart; Fust od dutance ou à regart, En firent rei: kar por morir Ne porreient-il-ce soffrir Qu’eussent rei en Engleterre Qu’estraiz e nez fut d’autre terre.”
Yet young Eadgar was hardly more than an Englishman by courtesy.
Footnote 1520
This is implied in the quotation from Florence in p. 526.
Footnote 1521
Will. Malms. iii. 247. “Cæteri proceres Edgarum eligerent, si Episcopos assertores haberent.” The “cæteri proceres” are opposed to Eadwine and Morkere. “Sed proximo urgente periculo et domesticæ litis dissidio, nec illud quidem effectum.” The apparent discrepancies in the several accounts may, I think, be reconciled by assuming the course of events to have been as I have given it in the text. Men hardly knew how to describe an election which was followed by an abdication of the King-elect before the day of coronation came.
Footnote 1522
Ealdred, as we have seen, is mentioned by Florence, who, as a Worcester man, traces his career with special interest; the Norman writers mention Stigand, naturally the more prominent of the two Primates in their eyes. So Will. Pict. 140 (followed by Benoît, 37731); “Interea Stigandus Cantuariensis Archipræsul, qui, sicut excellebat opibus atque dignitate, ita consultis plurimùm apud Anglos poterat, cum filiis Algardi aliisque præpotentibus, prœlium minantur.”
Footnote 1523
They are mentioned a little later by Florence among the Bishops and others who submitted to William at Berkhampstead.
Footnote 1524
The Worcester Chronicler, after describing the submission of Berkhampstead, adds; “And þæt wæs micel unræd þæt man æror swa ne dyde, þa hit God betan nolde for urum synnum.”
Footnote 1525
See above, p. 501.
Footnote 1526
Chron. Petrib. 1066. “Da cusan þa, munecas to abbot Brand prouost, forðan þæt he wæs swiðe god man, and swiðe wis; and senden him þa to Ædgar Aðeling, _forðan þet þe landfolc wendon þœt he sceolde cyng wurðen_.” These words certainly seem to me to imply that Eadgar was not “full King,” that he was not crowned. Thierry places the story of Brand later, after William’s coronation, perhaps because the Chronicler goes on to speak of “cyng Willelm.” But that entry was evidently made later than 1066, perhaps after the sad events of 1070.
Footnote 1527
Ib. “And se Æðeling hit him geatte þa bliþolice.”
Footnote 1528
Flor. Wig. 1066. “Ad pugnam descendere multi se paravere.” He had just before spoken of the citizens and the “butsecarls.” Cf. Guy of Amiens, 653;
“Sparsit fama volans quod habet Londonia Regem; Gaudet et Anglorum qui superest populus.”
Footnote 1529
On the age of Eadgar see Appendix OO.
Footnote 1530
Flor. Wig. 1066. “Iidem Comites ... cum eo se pugnam inituros promisere, sed ... suum auxilium ab eis retraxere et cum suo exercitu domum redierunt.” So William of Malmesbury, iii. 247; “Quod [their own election] frustra conati, Northanhimbriam discesserant, ex suo conjectantes ingenio numquam illuc Willelmum esse venturum.” The two accounts fill up gaps in each other, but there is no essential contradiction.
Footnote 1531
Will. Malms. u. s. “Ita Angli, qui, in unum coëuntes sententiam, potuissent patriæ reformare ruinam, dum nullum ex suis volunt, alienum induxerunt.” This distinct assertion of the possibility of successful resistance after Senlac should be noted.
Footnote 1532
See above, p. 525.
Footnote 1533
Wid. Amb. 597;
“Hastingæ portûs castris tum quinque diebus Mansit, et ad Doveram vertit abinde viam.”
The affair of Romney is passed by.
Footnote 1534
Chron. Wig. 1066. “He fór upp mid eallon his here _þe him to lafe wæs_, and him syððan fram ofer sǽ cóm.” See above, p. 433. The words in Italics mark William’s loss as more serious than might have been gathered from the run of the story.
Footnote 1535
Domesday, 4 _b_. “Rex habet omne servitium ab eis, et ipsi habent omnes consuetudines et alias forisfactas pro servitio maris, et sunt in manu regis.”
Footnote 1536
See above, p. 411.
Footnote 1537
Chron. Wig. 1066. “He fór upp mid eallon his here ... and hergode ealne þone ende þe he oferferde.” So Florence; “Interea Comes Willelmus Suth-Saxoniam, Cantiam, Suthamtunensem provinciam, Suthregiam, Middel-Saxoniam, Heortfordensem provinciam devastabat, et villas cremare hominesque interficere non cessabat.” This quite upsets the contrary description in William of Malmesbury (iii. 247); “Sensim ergo Willelmus, ut triumphatorem decebat, cum exercitu, non hostili sed regali modo progrediens, urbem regni maximam Londoniam petit.” The notion of a peaceful progress was probably suggested by the quiet surrender of so many towns; but then it was simply through the terror of William’s ravages that they surrendered. Compare the surrender of London to Swend in 1013. See vol. i. p. 397.
Footnote 1538
See above, p. 410.
Footnote 1539
Will. Pict. 139. “Humatis autem suis, dispositâque custodiâ Hastingas eum strenuo præfecto, Romanærium accedens, quam placuit pœnam exegit pro clade suorum,” The affair of Romney seems to be mentioned by no other writer, except Benoît, who follows William of Poitiers, and thus (37686) translates the last words;
“Por c’en ert mult vers eus irié, Laidement lor fist comparer.”
Footnote 1540
See vol. ii. p. 140. The same remark on the absence of castles in England is made by Wace (6454) when describing the conquest of England by Swend;
“N’i aveit gaires fortelesce, Ne tur de pierre ne bretesce, Se n’esteit en vieille cité, Ki close fust d’antiquité; Maiz li Barunz de Normendie, Quant il orent la Seignorie, Tirent chastels è fermetez Turs de pierre, murs è fossez.”
Footnote 1541
The history of the church in Dover Castle is discussed at length by Mr. Puckle in his work on the Church and Castle of Dover (Oxford, 1864), but his argument is somewhat obscured by dreams about the ancient British Church. I have little doubt that the existing building dates from the time of Eadbald, an opinion in which I am confirmed by Mr. G. G. Scott.
Footnote 1542
Wid. Amb. 603;
“Est ibi mons altus, strictum mare, littus opacum; Hinc hostes citiùs Anglica Regna petunt. Sed castrum Doveræ pendens a vertice montis, Hostes rejiciens, littora tuta facit.”
William of Poitiers also (140) enlarges on the strength of the position; “Situm est id castellum in rupe mari contiguâ, quæ naturaliter acuta undique ad hoc ferramentis elaborata incisa, in speciem muri directissimâ altitudine, quantum sagittæ jactus permetiri potest, consurgit, quo in latere undâ marinâ alluitur.”
Footnote 1543
That the castle which William found was the work of Harold seems implied in the demand of William as described by William of Poitiers (108) that Harold should give up to him “Castrum Doveram, studio atque sumptu suo communitum.” The castle already fortified by Harold seems to be opposed to the other castles which were to be built “ubi voluntas Ducis ea firmari juberet.”
Footnote 1544
See above, pp. 241, 245.
Footnote 1545
Will. Pict. 139. “Hinc Doveram contendit, ubi populum innumerabilem congregatum acceperat, quod locus ille inexpugnabilis videbatur.”
Footnote 1546
Will. Pict. 139. “Ejus propinquitate Angli perculsi, neque naturæ vel operis munimento neque multitudini virorum confidunt.”
Footnote 1547
See Lappenberg, Anglo-Norman Kings, 103, ed. Thorpe.
Footnote 1548
Guy of Amiens (599) makes the men of Dover meet William while still on his march from Romney;
“Nec medium complêrat iter, quum territus illi Occurrit populus partus in obsequio, Obtulit et claves castri portasque reclusas: Testatur simulans velle subesse sibi.”
But William of Poitiers (140) merely says that the fire took place “quum castellani supplices deditionem pararent.” It is possible that a distinction may be drawn between the town and the castle, and that the castle did not surrender till William entered the town. “Simulans,” in Guy, must simply mean that the submission was forced, and contrary to the real wishes of those who made it; he clearly does not mean to imply any treachery.
Footnote 1549
See vol. ii. p. 169.
Footnote 1550
Will. Pict. 140. “Armigeri exercitûs nostri prædæ cupidine ignem injecerunt. Flamma levitate suâ volitans pleraque corripuit.” Guy does not mention the fire, but William’s account is confirmed by Domesday, 1; “In ipso primo adventu ejus [Regis Willelmi] in Angliam fuit ipsa villa combusta.”
Footnote 1551
Will. Pict. u. s. “Dux, nolens incommoda eorum qui secum deditionaliter agere cœperant, pretium dedit restituendarum ædium, aliaque amissa recompensavit.” Guy, on the other hand (607), uses words which might be understood as meaning that William expelled the English inhabitants and planted a Norman colony;
“Clavibus acceptis, Rex intrans mœnia castri, Præcipit Angligenis evacuare domos. Hos introduxit per quos sibi regna subegit, Unumquemque suum misit ad hospitium.”
Certainly Domesday shows singularly few English owners at Dover, but this is more likely to be owing to the severe administration of Odo than to any acts of William at this time. And Guy perhaps only meant that William quartered his sick soldiers on the inhabitants.
Footnote 1552
Will. Pict. u. s. “Severiùs animadverti præcepisset in auctores incendii, ni vilitas et numerositas ipsorum occultavisset eos.”
Footnote 1553
Ib. “Recepto castro, quæ minùs erant per dies octo addidit firmamenta.”
Footnote 1554
Ib. “Custodiam inibi relinquens et dysenteriâ languentes.” He had just before said, “Milites illic recentibus carnibus et aquâ utentes, multi proluvio ventris exstincti sunt, plurimi in extremum vitæ debilitati discrimen.” Then William “ad perdomandum quos devicit proficiscitur.”
Footnote 1555
Wid. Amb. 611;
“Illicò pervasit terror vicinia castri, Urbes et burgos, oppida quæque replens.”
Every one knows the legend, followed by Thierry and, hesitatingly, also by Lappenberg (105), about the Kentish men coming with boughs in their hands and extorting from William a confirmation of their rights. It comes from William Thorn, X Scriptt. 1786, and it has, as far as I know, no better authority. The tale describes the Kentishmen as led by Stigand, who was then undoubtedly in London. There is nothing to show that Kent was better treated than the rest of England; as it was put under Odo, it was perhaps treated a little worse. William no doubt promised to the Kentishmen the preservation of their ancient laws, but this he did to Englishmen everywhere.
Footnote 1556
Will. Pict. 140. “Contremuit etiam potens metropolis metu, et ne funditus caderet ullatenus resistendo, maturavit impetrare statum obediendo.”
Footnote 1557
Ib. “Occurrunt ultro Cantuarii hand procul à Doverâ, jurant fidelitatem, dant obsides.” So Guy, 613;
“Nobilior reliquis urbs Cantorberia dicta, Missis legatis, prima tributa tulit.”
Footnote 1558
Wid. Amb. 615;
“Post aliæ plures nimium sua jura timentes, Regi sponte suâ munera grata ferunt. ... Omnes dona ferunt et sub juga colla reponunt; Flexis poplitibus oscula dant pedibus.”
He likens them to flies settling on a wound.
Footnote 1559
See above, p. 358.
Footnote 1560
Will. Pict. 140. “Veniens postero die ad Fractam Turrim castra metatus est, quo in loco gravissimâ sui corporis valetudine animos familiarium pari contulerit ægritudine.”
Footnote 1561
William of Poitiers goes on, “Volens autem publicum bonum, ne exercitus egestate rerum necessariarum laboraret, noluit indulgere sibi moras ibi agendo.” But that he did not go far from Canterbury is plain from Guy, 623;
“Per spatium mensis cum gente perendinat illic, Post aliò vadit castra locare sibi.”
Guy does not mention William’s illness, but his mention of the month’s delay quite agrees with it.
Footnote 1562
See Appendix K.
Footnote 1563
Wid. Amb. 625;
“Guincestram misit, mandat primatibus urbis, Ut faciunt alii, ferre tributa sibi. Hanc Regina tenet Regis de dote prioris Hetguardi: quare dedecus esse putat Sic sibi concessam si vadit tollere sedem; Solum vectigal postulat atque fidem.”
The embassy to Winchester is not mentioned by William of Poitiers.
Footnote 1564
Wid. Amb. 631;
“Unà primates Reginæ consuluerunt, Illaque concedens ferre petita jubet. Taliter et Regis præcepto spirat uterque, Nam dominæ pariter et sua dona ferunt.”
Footnote 1565
Ib. 639;
“A lævâ muris, a dextris flumine tuta, Hostes nec metuit, nec pavet arte capi.”
Footnote 1566
Wid. Amb. 635;
“Rex sic pacatus tentoria fixa resolvit, Quo populosa nitet Londona vertit iter.”
Footnote 1567
See the quotation from Florence in p. 534.
Footnote 1568
The expressions of Guy (663 et seqq.) seem distinctly to assert a siege. We read, for instance,
“Densatis castris a lævâ mœnia cinxit.”
And again,
“Ædificat moles, vervecis cornua ferro, Fabricat et talpas urbis ad excidium.”
Yet it is impossible to reconcile this with the account in William of Poitiers. Guy’s description of Westminster (665) is worth notice;
“Dimidiæ leugæ spatio distabat ab urbe Regia regalis, ante decora nimis, Fertur ab antiquis quæ Guest vocitata colonis, Post Petri nomen duxit ab ecclesiâ. Providus hanc sedem sibi Rex elegit ad ædem, Quæ sibi complacuit jure nec immeritò: Nam, veluti patrum testantur gesta priorum, Ex solito Reges hic diadema ferunt.”
Guy has a little exaggerated the antiquity of Westminster as a royal dwelling-place.
Footnote 1569
Will. Pict. 141. “Præmissi illo equites Normanni quingenti egressam contra se aciem refugere intra mœnia impigrè compellunt, terga cædentes. Multæ stragi addunt incendium, cremantes quidquid ædificiorum citra flumen invenere.” On Southwark as a dwelling-place of Godwine, see vol. ii. pp. 147, 329, 579.
Footnote 1570
Will. Pict. 141. “Ut malo duplici superba ferocia contundatur.”
Footnote 1571
Ib. “Dux, progrediens dein quoquoversùm placuit, transmeato flumine Tamesi, vado simul atque ponte ad oppidum Warengefort pervenit.” Yet Wallingford is on the West-Saxon side of the river.
Footnote 1572
Domesday, 56. “In Burgo de Walingeford ... Rex Edwardus habuit xv. acras in quibus manebant huscarles.” The customs of Wallingford are given at great length. On Wigod of Wallingford, see Appendix PP.
Footnote 1573
See vol. i. p. 410.
Footnote 1574
See vol. ii. pp. 113, 117, 330.
Footnote 1575
See above, p. 485.
Footnote 1576
Chron. Wig. 1066. “He hergode ... [see above, p. 534, note 3] oð þæt he com to Beorhhamstede.” So Florence; “Devastabat ... donec ad villam quæ Beorcham nominatur veniret.”
Footnote 1577
On the submission of Berkhampstead, see Appendix PP.
Footnote 1578
Wid. Amb. 681. See above, p. 502.
Footnote 1579
Ib. 685.
“Omnibus ille tamen primatibus imperat urbis; Ejus in auxilio publica res agitur.”
Footnote 1580
The story is told at length by Guy of Amiens, 687 et seqq. I confess that these stories of secret messages always strike me as somewhat suspicious, to say nothing of the misconception of the state of things involved in the description of London as a besieged town. But it is not likely that Guy should have invented the name and the whole story of his “Ansgardus,” and, as I before said (see above, p. 424), I do not see who he can be except the Staller and Sheriff Esegar. About the siege, Guy, as before (see above, p. 542), is explicit. Esegar is made to say (699),
“Molis et erectæ transcendit machina turres, Ictibus et lapidum mœnia scissa ruunt.”
Footnote 1581
Wid. Amb. 689;
“Solum Rex vocitetur, ait; sed commoda regni, Ut jubet Ansgardus, subdita cuncta regat.”
Footnote 1582
Ib. 693;
“Natu majores, omni levitate repulsâ, Aggregat.”
The “natu majores” may of course be simply the “yldestan þegnas” (see vol. i. p. 78), but here in London we cannot help thinking of Aldermen in the later sense.
Footnote 1583
Wid. Amb. 715;
“Actutum docilis noster legatus ut hosti Mittatur, verbis fallere qui satagat, Servitium simulet, necnon et fœdera pacis, Et dextras dextræ subdere, si jubeat.”
Footnote 1584
Wid. Amb. 723;
“Sed quia vix patulâ teneatur compede vulpes, Fallitur a Rege fallere quem voluit.”
Cf. above, pp. 161, 488, but one is a little surprised at the comparison being made by William’s own laureate.
Footnote 1585
Ib. 725;
“Namque palam laudat Rex atque latenter ineptat Quidquid ab Ansgardo nuntius attulerat.”
Footnote 1586
Ib. 727;
“Obcæcat donis stolidum verbisque fefellit, Prœmia promittens innumerosa sibi.”
Footnote 1587
Ib. 735;
“Pulcrior est sole, sapientior et Salomone, Promptior est Magno, largior et Carolo.”
I doubted for some time whether the Bishop of Amiens had not severed “Carolus Magnus” into two distinct heroes; but by “Magnus” we are most likely to understand Cnæus Pompeius Magnus. He then goes on to state William’s claim to the Crown (737);
“Contulit Eguardus quod Rex donum sibi regni Monstrat et affirmat, _vosque probâsse refert_.”
This is of course the Norman tale of the consent of the Witan being given to Eadward’s devise of the Crown. See Appendix R. and vol. ii. p. 302.
Footnote 1588
Ib. 731;
“Rex vobis pacem dicit profertque salutem, Vestris mandatis paret et absque dolis. ... Hoc igitur superest, ultra si vivere vultis, Debita cum manibus reddere jura sibi.”
Footnote 1589
Wid. Amb. 741;
“Annuit hoc vulgus, jus turn probat esse senatus, Et puerum Regem cœtus uterque negat.”
This passage is worthy of notice by any one who is studying the municipal antiquities of London. At the same time we must remember that it is not merely London which is concerned. So far as the passage proves anything, I should rather take it as a witness to the popular character of the Witenagemót. See vol. i. p. 112.
Footnote 1590
Chron. Wig. 1066. “And þær [at Berkhampstead] him com ongean Ealdred arcebisceop and Eadgar _cild_ and Eadwine eorl and Morkere eorl and ealle þa betstan men of Lundene.” Florence’s list is, “Aldredus Archiepiscopus, Wulstanus Wigornensis Episcopus, Walterus Herefordensis Episcopus, _Clito_ Eadgarus, Comites Edwinus et Morkarus, et de Lundoniâ quique nobiliores, cum multis aliis.” It is clear from this passage that Florence understood the doubtful word _cild_ as, sometimes at least, equivalent to _Æðeling_.
As to the list itself, and the presence of Stigand, Eadwine, and Morkere, see Appendix PP.
Footnote 1591
Chron. Wig. 1066. “And bugon þa for neode, þa mæst wæs to harme gedón.”
Footnote 1592
See above, p. 529.
Footnote 1593
Chron. Wig. 1066. “And gysledan and sworon him aðas.” So Florence; “Datis obsidibus, illi deditionem fecerunt, fidelitatemque juraverunt.”
Footnote 1594
Wid. Amb. 747;
“Novit ut adventum, factus Rex obvius illis Cum puero reliquis oscula grata dedit; Culpas indulsit, gratanter dona recepit, Et sic susceptos tractat honorificè.”
So Ord. Vit. 503 A. “Ipsi ab eo benigniter suscepti, pristinas dignitates et honores receperunt.... Edgarus Adelinus, qui Rex fuerat constitutus ab Anglis, resistere diffidens humiliter Guillelmo se regnumque contulit. Ille verò, quia idem puer mitis et sincerus erat, et consobrinus Eduardi Magni[!] Regis, filius scilicet nepotis ejus, erat, amicabiliter eum amplexatus est, et omni vitâ suâ inter filios suos honorabiliter veneratus est.”
Footnote 1595
Chron. Wig. 1066. “And he heom behet þæt he wolde heom hold hlaford beon.” Flor. Wig. “Cum quibus et ipse fœdus pepigit.”
Footnote 1596
See Appendix PP.
Footnote 1597
Will. Pict. 141. “Orant post hæc ut coronam sumat unà, Pontifices atque cæteri summates; ‘Se quidem solitos esse Regi servire, Regem dominum habere velle.’” Ord. Vit. 503 B. “Cuncti Præsules regnique proceres cum Guillelmo concordiam fecerunt, ac ut diadema regium sumeret, sicut mos Anglici principatûs exigit, oraverunt.... Hoc divino nutu subacti optabant indigenæ regni, qui [non] nisi coronato Regi servire hactenus erant soliti.”
Footnote 1598
See above, p. 449.
Footnote 1599
Will. Pict. 141. “Consulens ille comitatos e Normanniâ, quorum non minùs prudentiam quam fidem spectatam habebat.”
Footnote 1600
Ib. “Patefecit eis quid maximè sibi dissuaderet quod Angli orabant; res adhuc turbidas esse, rebellare nonnullos, se potiùs regni quietem quam coronam cupere.... Denique non oportere nimium properare, dum in altum culmen ascenditur.” The Archdeacon adds, “Profectò non illi dominabatur regnandi libido.” Cæsar, we know, was not ambitious; neither, it seems, was William.
Footnote 1601
Will. Pict. 141. “Præterea, si Deus ipsi hunc concedit honorem, secum velle conjugem suam coronari.” The panegyrist again comments—this time with truth—“Sanctum esse intellexerat, sanctèque diligebat conjugii pignus.”
Footnote 1602
Ib. 142. “Haimerius Aquitanus, Præses Toarcensis, linguâ non ignobilior quam dextrâ.” Mark the wide sense of “Aquitanus.” The name still stretches to the Loire.
Footnote 1603
See above, p. 456.
Footnote 1604
Will. Pict. 142. “Non est diu trahendum nostrâ deliberatione quod desideramus fieri quam ocissimè.” The Archdeacon had just before said, “Familiares suasere ut totius exercitûs unanimi desiderio optari sciebant.”
Footnote 1605
Ord. Vit. 503 B. “Hoc summopere flagitabant Normanni, qui pro fasce regali nanciscendo suo Principi subierunt ingens discrimen maris ac prœlii.”
Footnote 1606
Will. Pict. u. s. “At prudentissimi et optimi viri nequaquam ita cuperent in alto hujus monarchiæ illum locari, nisi præcipuè idoneum perviderent, licet ipsorum commoda et honores per exaltationem ejus augeri volentes.”
Footnote 1607
Ib. “Præsertim sperans, ubi regnare cœperit, rebellem quemque minus ausurum in se, faciliùs conterendum esse.”
Footnote 1608
Will. Pict. 142. “Præmisit ergo Lundoniam, qui munitionem in ipsâ construerent urbe, et pleraque competentia regiæ magnificentiæ præpararent.”
Footnote 1609
See vol. ii. p. 264.
Footnote 1610
See above, p. 130.
Footnote 1611
Will. Pict. 142. “Adversitas omnis procul fuit adeò ut venatui et avium ludo, si fortè libuit, securè vacaret.” Cf. vol. ii. p. 284.
Footnote 1612
Chron. Wig. 1066. “And þeah onmang þisan hi hergedan eall þæt hi oferforon.” So Florence; “Nihilominus exercitui suo villas cremare et rapinas agere permisit.”
Footnote 1613
See above, p. 534.
Footnote 1614
See above, p. 537.
Footnote 1615
Thierry has a story how Frithric, Abbot of Saint Alban’s, cut down trees and put them in the way to block William’s march. For this tale he refers to no ancient authority whatever, but only to Speed! It is not even found in the sufficiently legendary life of Frithric in the Lives of the Abbots of Saint Alban’s.
Footnote 1616
Will. Malms. Gest. Pont. Scriptt. p. Bed. 134. “Nec minùs sed multò etiam magis Rex Willelmus extulit locum magnis reditibus prædiorum, quod ibi regni susceperit insignia. Consuetudo igitur apud posteros evaluit ut, propter Edwardi inibi sepulti memoriam, regiam regnaturi accipiant coronam.” How closely these ideas were connected in William’s mind appears from a letter of his to John Abbot of Fécamp (see above, p. 100), in which he says, “Abbatiam Sancti Petri de Westmonasterio ... in maximâ veneratione et habeo, et ex debito habere debeo. Ibi enim jacet vir beatæ memoriæ dominus meus [see above, p. 249] Rex Ethwardus, ibi etiam tumulata est Regina Etgith uxor ejus inclita; ego etiam ibidem, Dei clementiâ providente, sceptrum et coronam totius regni Anglici suscepi.” Mabillon, Vet. An. i. 219.
Footnote 1617
Will. Neubrig. i. 1. “Quum, peractâ victoriâ, tyranni nomen exhorrescens et legitimi principis personam induere gestiens, a Stigando, tunc temporis Cantuariensi archiepiscopo, in regem solemniter consecrari deposceret; ille, viro, ut aiebat, cruento et alieni juris invasori, manus imponere nullatenus acquievit.” He is followed by Walter of Hemingburgh (vol. i. p. 9).
Footnote 1618
See above, p. 284.
Footnote 1619
See above, p. 282.
Footnote 1620
Will. Pict. 143. “Repudiavit consecrari a Stigando Cantuariensi, quem per Apostolici justum zelum anathemate reprobatum didicerat.” Ord. Vit. 503 B. “Stigandus Cantuariensis sæcularibus curis et actibus nimis intentus erat, et pro quibusdam reatibus ab Alexandro Papâ interdictus fuerat.” Eadmer, 6. “Quam consecrationem licet ipse Rex et omnes alii optimè nôssent deberi specialiter fieri et propriè a Pontifice Cantuariensi, tamen quia multa mala et horrenda crimina prædicabantur de Stigando qui eo tempore ibi Pontifex erat, voluit [noluit?] eam ab ipso suscipere, ne maledictionem videretur induere pro benedictione.” On the ecclesiastical position of Stigand see above, pp. 16, 29, 42, and vol. ii. pp. 342, 605.
Footnote 1621
William of Newburgh, i. 2, remarks, “Aldredus verò Eboracensis Archiepiscopus, vir bonus et prudens, hoc munus implevit, acutiùs intelligens, cedendum esse tempori, et divinæ nequaquam resistendum ordinationi.” He is again followed by Walter of Hemingburgh. William of Poitiers (142) takes this opportunity to praise Ealdred as “æquitatem valdè amans, ævo maturus, sapiens, bonus, eloquens.” In Guy of Amiens too (791), though his name is not mentioned, he appears as
“Præsul celeberrimus unus, Moribus insignis et probitate cluens.”
“Probitas” generally refers to warlike prowess; but Ealdred’s Welsh campaign (see vol. ii. p. 110) was not specially glorious.
Footnote 1622
William of Poitiers (142) speaks casually of those “qui circa monasterium in armis et equis præsidio dispositi fuerunt.” Orderic (503 C) is more explicit; “Normannorum turmæ circa monasterium in armis et equis, ne quid doli et seditionis oriretur, præsidio dispositæ fuerunt.” Presently after he speaks of “armati milites qui extrinsecus erant pro suorum tuitione.”
Footnote 1623
That it was a new crown appears from Guy of Amiens (757);
“Auro vel gemmis jubet ut sibi nobile stemma Illud quo deceat fiat ab artifice.”
He then goes on to devote twenty-four lines to a description of the jewels which adorned it.
Footnote 1624
The procession is described at length by Guy, 787 et seqq.;
“Tempore disposito quo Rex sacrandus habetur, Terræ magnates et populosa manus, Pontificale decus, venerabilis atque senatus Undique conveniunt Regis ad officium.”
Footnote 1625
This is clear from Guy (801);
“Rex, multâ comitumque ducum vallante catervâ, Ultimus incedit cum strepitu populi. Illius et dextram sustentat metropolita, Ad lævam graditur alter honore pari.”
There can therefore be no doubt as to the share taken by Stigand in William’s coronation. He acted as a Bishop, but not as an Archbishop. It is however somewhat strange that Guy should put him so completely on a level with Ealdred, without any hint as to his uncanonical position. On the two Bishops who led the King, see Appendix E.
Footnote 1626
See above, p. 451.
Footnote 1627
Will. Pict. 142. “Eloquutus ad Anglos ... Eboracensis Archiepiscopus ... an consentirent eum sibi Dominum coronari inquisivit. Protestati sunt hilarem consensum universi minimè hæsitantes, ac si cœlitùs unâ mente datâ unâque voce. Anglorum voluntati quam facillimè Normanni consonuerunt, sermocinato ad eos ac sententiam percunctato Constantini Præsule.” Ord. Vit. 503 C. “Dum Adelredus Præsul alloqueretur Anglos, et Goisfredus Constantiniensis Normannos, an concederent Guillermum regnare super se, et universi consensum hilarem protestarentur, unâ voce, non unius linguæ loquutione.” Guy of Amiens (811) is very emphatic;
“Normannus quidam præsul mox pulpita scandens, Famosis Gallis talia verba dedit; ‘Oblatus vobis si Rex placet, edite nobis; Arbitrio vestri nam decet hoc fieri.’ Concessit populus, clerus favet atque senatus; Quod sermone nequit innuit et manibus. Sermo peroratur post illum metropolitæ: Hac eadem linguâ protulit Angligenâ. Spirat utrimque manus, laudat, spondet famulari, Annuit ex toto corde subesse sibi.”
William of Poitiers distinctly counts this as an election; “Sic electum consecravit idem Archiepiscopus,” &c. And he presently (143) makes William’s right threefold, by bequest or hereditary succession, by conquest, and by election; “Quam [Anglicam terram] et hæreditariâ delegatione sacramentis Anglorum firmatâ, et jure belli ipse possedit, coronatus tali eorumdem consensu vel potiùs appetitu ejusdem gentis primatum.”
Footnote 1628
William of Poitiers (142, 143) tells us how the horsemen who surrounded the church (see above, p. 557) “ignotæ [linguæ?] nimio strepitu accepto, rem sinistram arbitrati, prope civitati imprudentiâ flammam injecerunt.” Orderic (503 C) is clearer, “flammam ædibus imprudenter injecerunt.” Guy does not mention the fire.
Footnote 1629
Ord. Vit. u. s. “Currente festinanter per domos incendio, plebs quæ in ecclesiâ lætabatur perturbata, et multitudo virorum ac mulierum diversæ dignitatis et qualitatis, infortunio perurgente, celeriter basilicam egressa est.... Penè omnes ad ignem nimis furentem cucurrerunt, quidam ut vim foci viriliter occarent, et plures ut in tantâ perturbatione sibi prædas diriperent.” Mark the use of “focus” retained in the Romance languages.
Footnote 1630
Ord. Vit. 503 D. “Soli Præsules, et pauci clerici cum monachis, nimium trepidantes ante aram perstiterunt, et officium consecrationis _super Regem vehementer trementem_ vix peregerunt.”
Footnote 1631
The Worcester Chronicler is emphatic on the oath; “Ða on midwintres dæg hine halgode to Kynge Ealdred arcebisceop on Westmynstre, and he sealde him on hand mid Christes béc, and eac swór, ærþan þe he wolde þa corona him on heafode settan, þæt he wolde þisne þeodscype swa wel haldan swa ænig kynge ætforan him betst dyde, gif hi him holde beon woldon.” So Florence; “Quia Stigandus, primas totius Angliæ, ab Apostolico Papâ calumniatus est pallium non suscepisse canonicè, ipsâ Nativitatis die, quæ illo anno feriâ secundâ evenit, ab Aldredo Eboracensium Archiepiscopo in Westmonasterio consecratus est honorificè [the words which he uses of Harold’s coronation], priùs ut idem Archipræsul ab eo exigebat, ante altare Sancti Petri Apostoli, coram clero et populo jurejurando promittens, se velle sanctas Dei ecclesias et rectores illarum defendere, necnon et cunctum populum sibi subjectum justè et regali providentiâ regere, rectam legem statuere et tenere, rapinas injustaque judicia penitùs interdicere.” William of Poitiers and Guy are silent about the oath.
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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
● Typos fixed; non-standard spelling and dialect retained. ● Used numbers for footnotes, placing them all at the end of the last chapter. ● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_. ● Enclosed bold or blackletter font in =equals=.