Chapter VIII (3)

The future Primate of England was one of the most illustrious witnesses to that feature in the Norman character which made the men of that race welcome strangers from every quarter, and which led to the settlement of so many eminent men of various nations, both in Normandy itself and in the conquered lands of Britain and Sicily.[661] In the days of Richard the Good, monks and priests had flocked into Normandy, even from such distant lands as Greece and Armenia, and the Norman Duke had kept up a close intercourse even with the monks of Mount Sinai.[662] The first great teacher of Bec came from a nearer, though [Sidenote: His birth at Pavia. 1005.] still a distant, region. Lanfranc, Prior of Bec, Abbot of Saint Stephen’s, Archbishop of Canterbury, was a native of the Lombard city of Pavia, and was born of a family which, though perhaps not technically noble, was at any rate [Sidenote: His learning;] eminent and honourable.[663] He was full of all the secular learning of the time, and his range of study seems to have taken in the unusual accomplishment of a knowledge of Greek.[664] A knowledge of that tongue was then probably less rare than it became somewhat later, and it is an accomplishment which might be looked for in Italy, even in the northern part of the peninsula, more naturally than [Sidenote: his knowledge of Greek,] in any country north of the Alps. At the time of Lanfranc’s birth and youth, a large part of Southern Italy was still subject to the Eastern Emperors, and the use of the Greek language survived, both in Sicily and on the main land, long after the establishment of the Norman dynasty. A knowledge of that tongue must therefore have been highly expedient for those who were likely to have any intercourse, diplomatic or commercial, with the parts of Italy where it was spoken; still we cannot suppose that its acquirement formed any part of the ordinary course of study [Sidenote: and of Civil Law.] of a Lombard scholar. But the great object of Lanfranc’s study was one specially adapted to the Imperialist city where he was born, the study of the Civil Law. It was an hereditary calling in his family; his father Hanbald had been a lawyer of distinction,[665] and his son more than maintained the credit of his house. As a pleader, he was eminently successful; the veterans of the courts could not resist the eloquence and the learning with which he spoke, and his legal opinions were accepted as decisive by the magistrates of his native city.[666] His father died while Lanfranc was still young, and his honours and offices were offered to his son.[667] Why a man who had such fair prospects at home should have forsaken that home for the distant and barbarous Normandy, it is not easy to guess.[668] We are told only that he heard that Normandy was a land which [Sidenote: He opens a school at Avranches. 1039.] lacked learning, and that its young Duke was disposed to give encouragement to learned men.[669] At all events, early in the period of anarchy which formed the early years of the reign of William, Lanfranc came into Normandy with a following of scholars, and opened a school in the episcopal city of Avranches.[670] The cathedral church of that [Sidenote: 1172.] city beheld in after times the penance by which the greatest successor of William atoned for his share in the death of the most renowned among the successors of Lanfranc. But the glory of Avranches has passed away. From it, alone among the seven episcopal towns of Normandy, minster and Bishoprick have wholly vanished.[671] But, for those few years of the life of Lanfranc, Avranches must have been an intellectual centre without a rival on this side of the Alps. The fame of the great teacher was spread abroad, and scholars flocked to him from all quarters. But as yet his learning was wholly secular; his pursuits were peaceful, but he thought perhaps less of divine things than Herlwin had thought when he rode after Count Gilbert to battle. At last divine grace touched his heart; a sudden conversion made him resolve to embrace the monastic [Sidenote: He becomes a monk at Bec. 1042.] profession. He left Avranches suddenly, without giving any notice to his friends and scholars, and set forth to seek for the poorest and most lowly monastery that could be found, for one which his own fame had never reached.[672] A happy accident led him to Bec, which then fully answered his ideal.[673] Received as a monk by Abbot Herlwin, he strove to hide himself from the world; he even at one time thought of leaving the monastery, and leading a life of utter solitude in the wilderness.[674] But the [Sidenote: He becomes Prior. 1045.] Abbot required him on his obedience to remain, and he was advanced to the dignity of Prior.[675] He had already proved his fitness to command by his readiness to obey. His predecessor in the Priorship, an unlearned man, had bidden him, when reading in the refectory, to shorten the second syllable of _docere_. The great scholar did as he was bid, deeming holy obedience to be something higher than the rules of Donatus.[676] But such necessity was not long laid upon him; such a light as his could not long be hid under a bushel; his fame was again spread abroad, and, with it, the fame of the house in which he sojourned. Clerks and scholars, men of noble birth, even sons of princes, flocked to profit by the instruction of the learned Prior, and enriched the Abbey with costly gifts for his sake.[677] The society increased so fast that the buildings were found to be too small, and the site not healthy enough for so great a multitude.[678] By the persuasion of Lanfranc, Herlwin was induced to change his abode once more, and to raise a third house, larger and more stately than either of its predecessors,[679] but still within the same valley and [Sidenote: His favour with William.] upon the banks of the same beck. At last the name of the Prior of Bec reached the ears of Duke William himself. Lanfranc became his trusted counsellor,[680] and we shall presently find him acting zealously and successfully on his sovereign’s behalf, in pursuit of the object which, next to the Crown of England, was nearest to William’s heart. [Sidenote: He appears at the Synods of Rome and Vercelli. 1049, 1050.] The fame of Lanfranc soon spread beyond the bounds of Normandy; he appeared, as we have already seen, at a succession of synods, as the champion of the received doctrine of the Church.[681] The theological position of Lanfranc I leave to be discussed by others;[682] it is enough to say that, summoned before Pope and Council as a suspected heretic, he came away from Rome and Vercelli with the reputation of the most profound and most orthodox doctor of his time.[683]

[Sidenote: The monastery of Ouche or Saint Evroul.]

The monastery of Ouche or Saint Evroul had, as far as the eleventh century was concerned, an origin of a different kind from that of Bec; but its story is really little more than that of Bec carried back into an earlier age. That is to say, while Bec was altogether a new foundation, Saint Evroul was, like many other religious houses both in England and Normandy, a restoration of an earlier one. In both countries the Scandinavian invaders had destroyed or pillaged countless churches and monasteries. Many of these last, sometimes after complete destruction, sometimes after dragging on a feeble existence during the intermediate time, rose again, like Crowland and Jumièges, in more than their former greatness. But the case of Saint Evroul was a peculiar one. Its temporary fall was owing, not to the devastations of heathen Northmen, but to the wars between Christian [Sidenote: Story of Ebrulf or Evroul. 575.] Normandy and Christian France. The history of its founder, Ebrulf or Evroul, a saint of the sixth century, is, in many respects, a forestalling of the history of Herlwin of Bec.[684] Of noble birth in the city of Bayeux,—perhaps therefore of Saxon, rather than of either Frankish or Gaulish, blood,—high in favour at the court of Hlothar the son of Hlodwig, he lived, even as a layman, the life of a saint.[685] At last he forsook the world; his wife and himself both took monastic vows; but Ebrulf, as Lanfranc had wished to do, presently forsook his monastery for a deeper seclusion. With three companions only, he sought out a lonely spot by the river Charenton, close by the forest of Ouche, on the borders of the dioceses of Lisieux, Evreux, and Seez. There he lived a hermit’s life, adorned, as we are told, by many miracles,[686] and his cell, like the cell of Guthlac at Crowland, became the small beginning of a [Sidenote: Monastery of Saint Evroul; it escapes the Danish ravages;] famous monastery. The secluded site of the house saved it from the ravages of the Northmen, and the votaries of Saint Evroul, with almost unique good luck, remained undisturbed, while Hasting and Rolf were overthrowing so many holy places of their brethren elsewhere.[687] But, during the troubled minority of Richard the Fearless, when King Lewis of Laôn and Duke Hugh of Paris were invading the defenceless Duchy,[688] the monks of Saint Evroul received two seemingly honourable, but, as it [Sidenote: but is pillaged by Hugh the Great. 943.] turned out, highly dangerous, guests. These were Herlwin, Abbot of Saint Peter’s at Orleans, the Chancellor of Hugh the Great, and Ralph of Drangy his Chamberlain.[689] Both, we are told, were men of great piety, but they showed their piety in a strange fashion. Soon after their visit, Duke Hugh gave orders for the ravage of that part of Normandy. His devout officers either despised or scrupled at plunder of a more vulgar kind;[690] they remembered the hospitality of the monks of Saint Evroul, and requited it by carrying off all the ornaments of their church, including, what they most valued, the relics of their founder and other saints. The holy spoil was duly shared among various churches of the Duchy of France,[691] and a large [Sidenote: The monastery forsaken.] body of the monks of Saint Evroul followed the objects of their veneration. A few however remained behind, and the brotherhood still dragged on a feeble existence for some time. At last the house of Saint Evroul was utterly forsaken and forgotten, and miracles were needed to point [Sidenote: The church restored by Restold.] out the spot where it had stood. A pious priest[692] from Beauvais, Restold by name, moved by a divine vision, came and dwelt on the spot, and found benefactors willing to repair the ruined church.[693] At last one special benefactor [Sidenote: Geroy and his family.] arose. Geroy, a man of great valour and piety, was lord of Escalfoy by the forest of Ouche, and of Montreuil near the Dive.[694] Of mingled French and Breton extraction, he had been attached to the fortunes of the elder William of Belesme, probably as a vassal of some of the estates held by him under the Crown of France. In a [Sidenote: c. 1015.] fight against Count Herbert of Maine, when William and all the rest of his followers had fled, Geroy regained the day by his single valour.[695] In return for this exploit, William introduced him at the court of Richard the Good, by whom he was allowed to succeed to the lordships already spoken of.[696] They had been the property of Helgo, a Norman noble, to whose daughter Geroy had been betrothed, but the marriage was hindered by the premature death of the bride.[697] By another wife he had a numerous family, many of whom were distinguished in Norman [Sidenote: William son of Geroy.] history.[698] He was himself succeeded by his second son William who, like his father, was attached to the house of Belesme, and also distinguished himself in the war with Maine.[699] He had however to contend for the possession of his estates against the violence of Count Gilbert of Brionne, a man who, on this as on some other occasions,[700] seems to have failed to carry into his private relations those principles of honourable conduct which in so marked a way distinguished his administration of public affairs. William was a brave soldier and a faithful vassal, ready to undergo any personal loss on behalf of his lord or of his friend.[701] He was also bountiful to the Church, though he strictly maintained the ecclesiastical privileges of his own lordships.[702] Twice he made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem, once during the height of his prosperity, and once after the great misfortune which clouded his later days. For [Sidenote: Blinded by William Talvas.] he it was whom the fierce Talvas, in defiance of every tie of gratitude, of hospitality, and of feudal honour, blinded and mutilated when he came as a guest to his bridal.[703] The daughter of Talvas too, the cruel Mabel, pursued the house of Geroy throughout life with unrelenting hatred.[704] [Sidenote: He grants Saint Evroul to Bec.] In his old age he became a monk at Bec, a house to which he had already been a benefactor.[705] He had given to Herlwin and his monks the lands of Saint Evroul and the church lately restored by Restold. It now became a cell to the Abbey, inhabited by a small body of monks with Lanfranc at their head.[706] But presently William’s nephews, Hugh and Robert of Grantmesnil,[707] were designing the foundation of a monastery near the lordship on the Oudon from which they took their name. Of these two brothers, Robert became a monk of Saint Evroul; of Hugh we shall hear again in the history both [Sidenote: Restoration of Saint Evroul. 1050.] of Normandy and of England. Their pious uncle approved of the design, but pointed out that the site which they had chosen was lacking in the two great monastic necessaries of wood and water.[708] Let them rather join with him in restoring to its ancient splendour the fallen house of Saint Evroul, placed on a spot suited for every monastic want.[709] Uncle and nephews joined their energies and their purses; the rights of Bec over the church and lands were exchanged for another estate, and the new Saint Evroul arose with the full licence of Duke William, of Archbishop Malger, and of the other Prelates of Normandy. Monks were brought from Jumièges, and a brother of [Sidenote: 1050.] that house, Theodoric by name, became the first Abbot of the new foundation.[710] But the house seems to have been [Sidenote: 1058.] far less fortunate than Bec in its rulers. Theodoric after a while laid aside his office, driven to resignation, it is said, by the cabals of the co-founder Robert of Grantmesnil, who, having made his profession in the house, had obtained [Sidenote: 1059.] the rank of Prior.[711] Robert was chosen to the [Sidenote: 1063.] Abbotship, but, a few years after, he was himself deposed, or driven to resignation, by Duke William,[712] and long controversies followed between him and his successor Osbern.[713]

I have given a sketch of the origin of these two famous monasteries, partly because their stories bring before us so many members of the leading Norman families, but mainly [Sidenote: Connexion of the religious movement in Normandy with the Conquest of England.] as illustrating the great religious movement which was then at work in Normandy, and which was not without its share in bringing about the Conquest of England. When we come to a later stage in our history, we shall see with what art William, and his trusty counsellor Lanfranc, contrived to appeal to the religious feelings of the Normans, to represent the English King as a sinner against the local saints of Normandy, and to represent the Conquest of England as a holy war undertaken to chastise the ungodly. Such a vein of sentiment could hardly have been safely appealed to except at a time when there was a great religious stir in the national mind. One side of this movement is shown in the foundation of so many monasteries, in the zeal with which men gave of their substance for their erection, in the eagerness with which men, often the same men, pressed to become members of the holy brotherhoods. But a still more honourable fruit of the religious mind of Normandy, one however which Normandy only shared with many other parts of Europe, is to be found in the acceptance during this period of the famous Truce of God.

[Sidenote: The Truce of God.]

This extraordinary institution is the most speaking witness, at once to the ferocity of the times, and also to the deep counter feeling which underlaid men’s minds. Clergy and laity alike felt that the state of things which they saw daily before their eyes was a standing sin against God and man, repugnant alike to natural humanity and to the precepts of the Christian religion. States were everywhere so subdivided, governments were everywhere so weak, that, in most parts of Europe, every man who had the needful force at his command simply did that which was right in his own eyes. We cannot doubt that in those parts of Britain where the authority of the English Kings was really established, the evil was smaller than it was in any part of Gaul.[714] Neither can we doubt that in Normandy, during the minority of William, the evil was even greater than it was in other parts of Gaul. But the extreme disorder of that minority was simply an exaggerated form of what might be called the normal state of things throughout the greater part of Western [Sidenote: Private war.] Europe. Every man claimed the right of private war against every other man who was not bound to him by any special tie as his lord or his vassal. And the distinction between private war and mere robbery and murder was not always very sharply drawn. It is clear that, in such a state of things, an utterly unscrupulous man, to whom warfare, however unjust, was a mere trifle, had a decided advantage over his more peaceable neighbours. A few such men as William Talvas might throw a whole province into disorder; and men who were in no way naturally disposed to wrong or violence were necessarily driven to constant warfare in sheer self-defence. The poor and the weak were of course the chief victims; when one gentleman harried the lands of another, the immediate tillers of the earth must have suffered far more severely than their master. It was the tenants of Herlwin, rather than Herlwin himself, who had most bitterly to complain [Sidenote: Undercurrent against the violence of the time.] of the ravages of Count Gilbert.[715] The lower classes then had especial reason to curse the lawlessness of the times; yet we can well believe that there were many men of higher rank, who were dragged into these wretched contests against their own will, and who would have been well pleased to keep their swords sheathed, save when the lawful command of their sovereign required them to be drawn. These two contending feelings can always be traced side by side. Every attempt to put any kind of check on the violence of the times was always received with general good will; and yet the practical result of so many praiseworthy attempts was, after all, something extremely small. The men who were ready to keep the peace, and to observe the rules made to preserve it, were left in a manner at the mercy of those who refused to obey any rule whatsoever. Whatever laws were made to preserve the peace, the peaceable man was still, as before, driven to fight in his own defence. Still the movement in favour of law and order was a very remarkable and a very general one. The call to observe peace towards Christians at home was a call, quite as general, though much more gradual, than the call to wage war against the [Sidenote: Comparison between the Truce of God and the Crusades.] Infidels in other lands. But the call to the Crusade fell in with every side of the temper of the times; the proclamation of the Truce of God fell in with only one, and that its least powerful, side. Good and bad men alike were led by widely different motives to rush to the Holy War. The men who endeavoured to obey the Truce of God must often have found themselves the helpless victims of those who despised it.

A movement on behalf of peace and good will towards [Sidenote: The form taken by the movement necessarily ecclesiastical.] men could not fail in those days to assume an ecclesiastical form. As of old the Amphiktyonic Council, the great religious synod of Greece, strove to put some bounds to the horrors of war as waged between Greek and Greek,[716] so now, in the same spirit, a series of Christian synods strove, by means of ecclesiastical decrees and ecclesiastical censures, to put some bounds to the horrors of war as [Sidenote: Moderation of the reform attempted.] waged between Christian and Christian. And at both times the spiritual power showed its wisdom in not attempting too much. War was not wholly forbidden in either case, for such a precept would have been hopelessly impossible to carry out. But certain extreme measures were to be avoided, certain classes of persons were to be respected, certain holy seasons were to be kept altogether free from warfare. Such at least was the form in which the Truce of God was preached in Normandy. But Normandy was one of the last countries to receive the Truce, and it seems not to have appeared there in its earliest shape. It would rather seem as if the first attempts at its establishment had tried to compass too much, and as if later preachers of peace had been driven to content themselves with a much less close approach to [Sidenote: The Truce first preached in Aquitaine. 1034.] universal brotherhood. The movement began in Aquitaine, and the vague and rhetorical language of our authority would seem to imply that all war, at any rate all private war, was forbidden under pain of ecclesiastical censures.[717] It must not be forgotten that, in that age, it [Sidenote: Difficulty of defining public and private war.] must have been exceedingly difficult to draw the distinction between public and private war. In England indeed, where an efficient constitutional system existed, the distinction was plain. Except when sudden invasion required the immediate action of the local power, no war could be lawful which was not decreed by the King and his Witan. There might be rebellions and civil wars, but there was no recognized private warfare in the continental sense. But in Gaul it would have been impossible to deny the right of war and peace to the great vassals of the Crown, to the sovereigns of Normandy and Aquitaine. And, if the vassals of the Crown might make war on each other, on what principle could the same right be refused to their vassals, to the Lords of Alençon and Brionne? Among the endless links of the feudal chain, it was hard to find the exact point where sovereignty ended and where simple property began. A preacher therefore who denounced private war must have had some difficulty in [Sidenote: Enthusiastic reception of the Truce.] so doing without denouncing war altogether. But the doctrine, hard as it might be to carry out in practice, was rapturously received at its first announcement. As the first preaching of the Crusade was met with one universal cry of “God wills it,” so the Bishops, Abbots, and other preachers of the Truce were met with a like universal cry of Peace, Peace, Peace.[718] Men bound themselves to God and to one another to abstain from all wrong and violence, and they engaged solemnly to renew the obligation every five years.[719] From Aquitaine the movement spread through Burgundy, royal and ducal.[720] But it seems to have been gradually found that the establishment [Sidenote: Relaxation about 1041.] of perfect peace on earth was hopeless. After seven years from the first preaching of peace, we find the requirements of its apostles greatly relaxed. It was found vain to forbid all war, even all private war. All that was now attempted was to forbid violence of every kind from the evening of Wednesday till the morning of Monday.[721] It [Sidenote: Reception of the Truce in Burgundy and Lotharingia.] was in this shape that the Truce was first preached in northern and eastern Gaul. The days of Christ’s supper, of His passion, of His rest in the grave and His resurrection, were all to be kept free from strife and bloodshed. The Burgundian Bishops were zealous in the cause; so especially was Richard, Bishop of Verdun in Lotharingia.[722] But Bishop Gerard of Cambray maintained, on the other [Sidenote: Opposition of Gerard of Cambray.] hand, that the whole affair was no concern of the ecclesiastical power. It was, he argued, the business of temporal rulers to fight, and the business of spiritual men to pray; the pious scheme of his brethren could never be carried out, and the attempt to enforce it could lead only to an increase of false-swearing.[723] This Prelate, in his worldly wisdom, seems to have looked deeper into the hearts of the men of his time than his more hopeful and enthusiastic brethren. At last the new teaching reached Normandy. The luxury of mutual destruction was dear to the Norman mind; for a long time any restraint upon it was strongly resisted, and even the preaching of Bishop Richard himself had for a long time no effect.[724] Miracles were needed to convince so stiff-necked a generation, but at last the apostolic labours of Hagano, the successor of Richard, [Sidenote: The Truce received at the Councils of Caen [1042],] brought even Normandy to a better mind.[725] The young Duke and his counsellors were urgent in behalf of the Truce, and it was at last received by the Clergy and Laity of Normandy in the famous Council held for that purpose at Caen.[726] We are told that it was most carefully observed;[727] but, nearly forty years after, when the long reign of William was drawing towards its end, it had to be [Sidenote: and Lillebonne [1080].] again ordained in another Council at Lillebonne, and all the powers of the State, ecclesiastical and temporal, were called on to help in enforcing its observance.[728]

The men who laboured to put even this small check on the violence of the times are worthy of eternal honour, and it is probable that the institution of the Truce of God really did something for a while to lessen the frightful anarchy into which Normandy had fallen. But we can hardly doubt that a far more effectual check was supplied by the increasing strength of William’s government, as he drew nearer to manhood, and more and more fully displayed the stern and vigorous determination of his character. But neither the one nor the other could avail wholly to preserve Normandy for some years to come [Sidenote: Wide spread conspiracy against William. 1047.] either from civil war or from foreign invasion. A far more deeply spread conspiracy than any that we have as yet heard of was now formed against the Duke. We have now reached one of the great epochs in the life of the Conqueror; we shall soon have to tell of his first battle and his first victory. Within a few years after the proclamation of the Truce of God, not this or that isolated Baron, but the whole of the most Norman part of Normandy [Sidenote: Intrigues of Guy of Burgundy.] rose in open revolt against its sovereign. The prime mover in the rebellion was Guy of Burgundy.[729] He [Sidenote: His friendship with the Duke, and his large possessions.] had been brought up with the Duke as his friend and kinsman,[730] and he had received large possessions from his bounty. Among other broad lands, he held Vernon, the border fortress on the Seine, so often taken and retaken in the wars between France and Normandy. He held also Brionne, the castle on the Risle, lately the home of William’s faithful guardian Count Gilbert.[731] But the old jealousy was never lulled to sleep; the sway of the Bastard was insupportable, and, the greater the qualities that William displayed, the more insupportable was it doubtless felt to be. William had now reached manhood. After such a discipline as he had gone through, his nineteen years of life had given him all the caution and experience of a far more advanced age. He was as ready and as able to show himself a born leader of men as Cnut had been at the same time of life.[732] The turbulent spirits of Normandy began to feel that they had found a master; unless a blow were struck in time, the days of anarchy and licence, the days of castle-building and oppression, would [Sidenote: He plots with the lords of the Bessin and Côtentin.] soon be over. Guy of Brionne therefore found many ready listeners, especially among the great lords of the true Norman land west of the Dive. He, the lawful heir of their Dukes, no bastard, no tanner’s grandson, but sprung of a lawful marriage between the princely houses of Burgundy and Normandy, claimed the Duchy as his right by birth.[733] But, if the lords of the Bessin and the [Sidenote: Scheme for a division of the Duchy.] Côtentin would aid him in dispossessing the Bastard, he would willingly share the land with them.[734] This most probably means that he would content himself with the more purely French parts of the Duchy, the original grant to Rolf, and would leave the Barons of the later settlements in the enjoyment of independence. We can thus understand, what at first sight seems puzzling, why the cause of Guy was taken up with such zeal. Otherwise it is hard to see why the chiefs of any part of Normandy, and, above all, the chiefs of this more strictly Scandinavian part, should cast aside a prince who was at any rate a native Norman, in favour of one whose connexion with Normandy was only by the spindle side, and who must have seemed [Sidenote: Geographical division of Parties;] in their eyes little better than a Frenchman. We can thus also understand the geographical division of parties during the war which followed. William is faithfully supported by the French districts to the East; by Rouen and the [Sidenote: Rouen and the French lands loyal to William.] whole land to the right of the Dive. These are the districts which the division between Guy and the confederate Lords would have given to the Burgundian prince, and which no doubt armed zealously against any such arrangement. To them the overthrow of William’s authority meant their own handing over to a foreign ruler. But to [Sidenote: Bayeux and the Danish lands join the rebellion.] the inhabitants, at any rate to the great lords, of the Lower Normandy, the Scandinavian land, it would seem that the struggle against the ducal power was simply a struggle for renewed independence. We are told that the sympathies of the mass of the people, even in the Bessin and the Côtentin, lay with William.[735] This is quite possible. The peasant revolt may well have left behind it some root of abiding bitterness, bitterness which would show itself far more strongly against the immediate lords of the soil than against the distant sovereign, who is, in such cases, always looked to as a possible protector. But the great lords of the western districts joined eagerly in the rebellion; and the smaller gentry, willingly or unwillingly, followed their banners. The descendants of the second colony of Rolf,[736] of the colonies of William Longsword and Harold Blaatand, drew the sword against the domination of the districts which, even a hundred years before, had become French.[737] Saxon Bayeux and Danish Coutances rose against Romanized Rouen and Evreux. We know not whether the old speech and the old worship may not still have lingered in some out-of-the-way corners; it is certain that the difference in feeling between the two districts was still living and working, just as the outward difference is still to this day stamped on their inhabitants. [Sidenote: Rebel leaders;] The foremost men of western Normandy at once attached themselves to Guy, and joined zealously in his plans. First in the revolt was Nigel or Neal of Saint Saviour, Viscount[738] of Coutances, the son of the chief who had, forty-six [Sidenote: Neal of Saint Saviour.] years before, beaten back the host of Æthelred.[739] The elder Neal had died, full of years, during the days of anarchy,[740] and his son was destined to an equally long possession of his honours. In the very heart of his peninsula stood his castle by the Ouve, already consecrated by a small college of Canons, the foundation of his grandfather Roger, soon to give way to his own famous Abbey of Saint Saviour.[741] This point formed the natural centre of the whole conspiracy. From that castle, Neal, the ruler of the Côtentin, commanded the whole of that varied region, its rich meads, its hills and valleys, its rocks and marshes, the dreary _landes_ by the great minster of Lessay, the cliffs which look down on the fortress of Cæsar, and which had stood as beacons to guide the sails of Harold Blaatand to the rescue.[742] The Viscount of Saint Saviour now became the chief leader of the rebellion, won over by the promises and gifts of Guy, who did not scruple to rob his mother of her possessions, and to bestow them on his ally.[743] With Neal [Sidenote: Randolf, Viscount of Bayeux.] stood Randolf, Viscount of Bayeux, who, from his castle of Brichessart, held the same sway over the Saxons of the Bessin which Neal held over the Danes of the Côtentin.[744] [Sidenote: Hamon Dentatus.] In the same company was Hamon, lord of Thorigny, lord too of the steep of Creuilly, where a vast fabric of later times has displaced his ancient donjon, and where the adjoining church bears witness to the splendour and bounty of the generation immediately following his own.[745] Some personal peculiarity entitled him to bear, in the language of our Latin chroniclers, one of the most glorious cognomina of old Rome, and Hamon _Dentatus_ became the forefather of men famous in British as well as in Norman history.[746] One loyal chronicler, in his zeal, speaks of the rebel by the strange name of Antichrist;[747] but, as in the case of Thurstan of Falaise, the stain was wiped out in the next generation. His son, Robert Fitz-Hamon, was destined to set the seal to the work of Offa and of Harold, to press down the yoke for ever upon the necks of the southern Cymry, and to surround his princely fortress of Cardiff with the lowlier castles of his twelve homagers of [Sidenote: Grimbald of Plessis.] the land of Morganwg. Hardly less famous was a third Baron from the Saxon land, Grimbald of Plessis, whose ancestors and whose descendants have won no renown, but whose own name still remains impressed upon his fortress, and whose sister’s son became the forefather of a mighty house in England. Of her stock came William of Albini, who, like the Tudor of later days, won the love of a widowed Queen, and whose name still lives among his works in the fortresses of Arundel and Castle Rising.[748] By the help of these men the claims of the Burgundian became widely acknowledged. They swore to support his rights, and to deprive the Bastard of the Duchy which he had invaded, whether by force of arms or by the baser acts [Sidenote: Preparations for the revolt.] of treachery. They put their castles into a state of thorough defence; they stored them for a campaign or a siege,[749] and made ready for the most extensive and thoroughly organized revolt which the troubled reign of the young Duke had yet beheld.

The revolt began, as an earlier revolt had begun,[750] with a treacherous attempt to seize or murder the Duke, in which Grimbald seems to have been the immediate agent.[751] [Sidenote: Attempt to seize William at Valonges.] The opportunity was tempting, as William was now at a point in Neal’s own Viscounty, at no great distance from his own castle. He was at Valognes, the old town so rich in Roman remains, and the rich and fanciful outline of whose Gothic cupola is one of the most striking objects in the architecture of the district. Perhaps some scent of the coming danger had reached him, and he had ventured into the enemy’s country in order to search out matters for himself. But, in any case, he did not neglect the chosen amusement to which he and his race were given up, even beyond other men of their time. Several days had been spent in the employment of William’s favourite weapon the bow[752] against either savage or harmless victims. At [Sidenote: William warned by his fool.] last, one night, when all his party, except his immediate household, had left him, while he was yet in his first sleep, Gallet his fool, like his uncle Walter at an earlier stage of his life,[753] burst into his room, staff in hand, and aroused him. If he did not arise and flee for his life, he would never leave the Côtentin a living man. The Duke arose, [Sidenote: His escape.] half dressed in haste, leaped on his horse, seemingly alone, and rode for his life all that night. A bright moon guided him, and he pressed on till he reached the estuary formed by the rivers Ouve and Vire. There the ebbing tide supplied a ford, which was afterwards known as the Duke’s Way. William crossed in safety, and landed in the district of Bayeux, near the church of Saint Clement. He entered the building, and prayed for God’s help on his way. His natural course would now have been to strike for Bayeux; but the city was in the hands of his enemies; he determined therefore to keep the line between Bayeux and the sea, and thus to take his chance of reaching the loyal districts. As the sun rose, he drew near to the church and castle of Rye,[754] the dwelling-place of a faithful vassal named Hubert. The Lord of Rye was standing at his own gate, between the church and the mound on which his castle was raised.[755] William was still urging on [Sidenote: His reception by Hubert of Rye.] his foaming horse past the gate; but Hubert knew and stopped his sovereign, and asked the cause of this headlong ride. He heard that the Duke was flying for his life before his enemies. He welcomed his prince to his house, he set him on a fresh horse, he bade his three sons ride by his side, and never leave him till he was safely lodged [Sidenote: He reaches Falaise.] in his own castle of Falaise.[756] The command of their father was faithfully executed by his loyal sons. We are not surprised to hear that the house of Rye rose high in William’s favour; and we can hardly grudge them their share in the lands of England, when we find that Eudes the son of Hubert, the King’s _Dapifer_ and Sheriff of Essex, was not only the founder of the great house of Saint John at Colchester, but won a purer fame as one of the very few Normans in high authority who knew how to win the love and confidence of the conquered English.[757]

[Sidenote: Progress of the rebellion.]

The Bessin and the Côtentin were now in open rebellion. We are told that men cursed the rebels, and wished well to the Duke in their hearts. But the revolted Barons had for the time the upper hand. They seized on the ducal revenues within their districts, and robbed and slew many who still clave to their allegiance. The dominion of the male line of Rolf, the very existence of Normandy as an united state, seemed in jeopardy. William did not venture to meet his enemies with the forces of the districts which [Sidenote: He seeks help of the King of the French.] still remained faithful. He was driven to seek for foreign aid, and he sought it in a quarter where one would think that nothing short of despair could have led him to think of seeking for it. He craved help of one who was indeed bound to grant it by every official and by every personal tie, but who had hitherto acted towards William only as a faithless enemy, ready to grasp at any advantage, however mean and treacherous. The Duke of the Normans, driven to such humiliation by the intrigues of an ungrateful kinsman, crossed the French border, and made his suit to his [Sidenote: Henry comes to his help in person.] Lord King Henry at Poissy.[758] He met with favour in the eyes of his suzerain; a French army, with the King at its head, was soon ready to march to the support of Duke William against his rebels. It is hard to see why Henry, whose whole earlier and later conduct is of so opposite a kind, stood forth for this once faithfully to discharge the duties of an honourable overlord towards an injured [Sidenote: His probable motives.] vassal. One would have thought that a revolt which, above all others, tended to the dismemberment of Normandy would have been hailed by Henry as exactly falling in with the interests of the suzerain power. Instead of the one strong and united state which had hitherto cut him off from the whole coast from Britanny to Ponthieu, there was now a chance of the establishment of two or three small principalities, each insignificant in itself, and all probably hostile to one another. Such states would run a fair risk of being recovered one by one by their overlord. Henry had himself in past years encroached on the Norman territory, and he had not scrupled to give encouragement to Norman traitors against their own sovereign. Yet the common interest of princes may have led him to see that it was bad policy to abet open rebellion, and he may have doubted whether the aggrandizement of the mutinous Barons of the Bessin and the Côtentin would be any real gain to France. Such neighbours might prove far more turbulent as vassals, and might not be much more easy to subdue as enemies, than the comparatively firm and orderly government of the Dukes of Rouen. At all events French aid was freely granted to the princely suppliant.[759] The King set forth at the head of his army to join the troops which William had gathered from the loyal districts, and to share with them in a decisive encounter with the rebel forces.

[Sidenote: BATTLE OF VAL-ÈS-DUNES, 1047;]

The French and the loyal Normans joined their forces some miles to the east of Caen, in the neighbourhood of the memorable field of Val-ès-dunes. The spot is not one specially attractive in itself; it is not one of those spots which seem marked out by the hand of nature as specially designed to become the scene of great historical events. But we shall see that, for the purposes of the particular battle which was fought there, no ground could have been better suited. Nor, at first sight, does the fight of Val-ès-dunes, an engagement of cavalry between two Norman factions, seem to have any claim to a place among the [Sidenote: its importance in the life of William.] great battles of history. But Val-ès-dunes was the first pitched battle of the Conqueror; it was the field on which he first won a right to that lofty title, and the lessons which he learned there stood him in good stead on a far more awful day. And, more than this, it was there that William conquered his own land and his own people, and by that earlier conquest both schooled and strengthened himself for his mightier conquest beyond the sea. Normandy had first to be firmly grasped, and her fierce Barons to be brought under the yoke, before the hand of William could be stretched forth to fix its grasp on England, and to press the yoke upon the necks of her people. In a word, the strife with Randolf and Neal and their revolted provinces was the needful forerunner of the strife with Harold and his Kingdom. The tourney of Norman horsemen upon the open slope of Val-ès-dunes was William’s school of fence for the sterner clashing of axe and spear upon the palisaded heights of Senlac.

[Sidenote: Val-ès-dunes a battle between Romanized and Teutonic
Normandy.]

And there is another aspect in which the two battles have a common feature. Val-ès-dunes, no less than Senlac, was a struggle between the Roman and the Teuton. The fact was not indeed forced in the same way upon men’s minds by the outward contrast of language, of tactics, of every badge of national difference. Still it is none the less true that, at Val-ès-dunes, the old Scandinavian blood of Normandy found its match, and more than its match, in the power of France and of the French portions of the Norman Duchy. Danish Coutances and Saxon Bayeux were brought face to face with Romanized [Sidenote: District which supported William.] Rouen and Evreux and with royal Paris itself. From all the lands east of the Dive men flocked to the Ducal standard. The episcopal cities of Lisieux and Evreux, along with primatial Rouen, sent forth their loyal burghers, and the men of the surrounding districts pressed no less eagerly to the muster. They came, according to the old division, which the suppression of the peasant revolt had not wholly broken up, arranged in companies which still retained the name of _communes_, suggesting the freedom which they had perhaps not wholly lost.[760] From beyond the Seine came the troops of Caux, and from the south of the Duchy came the men of Auge, and of Duke Robert’s County of Hiesmes. And who can doubt that foremost among them all were the burghers of William’s own Falaise, zealous on behalf of a Prince who was also their own immediate countryman? But the whole west of Normandy, the land where the old Norman speech and spirit had longest lingered, was arrayed on the side of the rebels. Except the contingent of his own birthplace and its neighbourhood, no part of the Duke’s force seems to have come from the lands west of the Dive; all else came from the old domain of Rolf, the oldest, but, then as now, not the most Norman Normandy.[761]

[Sidenote: Description of the field of battle.]

The field of battle lies just within the hostile country.[762] South-east of Caen, in continuation of the high ground of Allemagne[763] immediately south of the town, stretches a long, broad, and slightly elevated plain, sloping gently towards the east.[764] It hardly deserves to be called a hill, and the indentations with which its sides are broken hardly deserve to be called valleys.[765] Several villages and churches, Secqueville, Bellengreville, Billy, Chicheboville, form the boundaries of the field, but the plain itself is open and without any remarkable feature. A ridge somewhat higher than the rest of the ground, known as Mount Saint Lawrence, is the only conspicuous point of the plain itself, and this marks the western boundary of the actual battle-ground. The little stream of the Muance, a tributary of the Orne, bounds the plain to the south-east.[766] To the north lies the high ground of Argences, over which William advanced with the troops of the loyal districts. The French auxiliaries, approaching from the south by way of Mezidon, first reached the little village of Valmeray, where a ruined tower of later date marks the site of the church of Saint Brice in which King Henry heard mass [Sidenote: Junction of the Ducal and French forces.] before the battle.[767] Meanwhile the Duke’s forces crossed the Muance at the ford of Berengier,[768] and at once joined the French. King and Duke now ranged their troops in the order in which it was most natural to meet an enemy advancing from the west. The Normans, who had come from the north, formed the right wing, while the French, coming from the south, naturally formed the left.[769] There was pitched the royal standard, on which we are told that the presumption of the upstart house of Paris had dared to emblazon the eagle of Julius and Charles.[770] King Henry and Duke William, each baton in hand,[771] were now marshalling their troops, and the battle seemed about to begin, when, if we may trust our only detailed narrative of that day’s fight, one side was cheered and the other dispirited by an unlooked for incident.

Ralph of Tesson was lord of the forest of Cingueleiz, [Sidenote: Ralph of Tesson joins the Duke.] the forest some way to the south of Caen, between the rivers Orne and Lise, and his chief seat was at Harcourt Thury. He was a lord of great power, and his contingent is said to have mustered no less than a hundred and twenty knights with their banners and tokens.[772] He had no ground of offence against the Duke; yet he had joined in the conspiracy, and had sworn on the saints at Bayeux to smite William wherever he found him.[773] But his heart smote him when he found himself standing face to face against his lord in open battle. His knights too pressed around him, and reminded him of his homage and plighted faith, and how he who fought against his natural lord had no right to fief or honour.[774] On the other hand the Viscounts Neal and Randolf pressed him to stand firmly by them, and promised great rewards as the price of his adherence. For a while he stood doubtful, keeping his troop apart from either army. We are told that the King and the Duke marked them as they stood, and that William told Henry that he knew them for the men of Ralph of Tesson, that their leader had no grudge against him, and that he believed that they would all soon be on his side. Presently the arguments of his own knights prevailed with Ralph; he bade them halt, and he himself spurred across the field, shouting as his war-cry the name of his lordship of Thury.[775] He rode up to the Duke, he struck him with his glove, and so performed his oath to smite William wherever he found him.[776] The Duke welcomed the returning penitent, and Ralph rode back to his men. His detachment stood aside for a space till the two hosts were engaged in the thick of the battle. He then watched his opportunity, and made a vigorous charge on the side of the Duke.

[Sidenote: Character of the battle; a mere combat of cavalry.]