Chapter XII: The Later Reign of William in Normandy.159 (5)

The city into which William had now to make his triumphal entry was one which might have added fresh lustre even to an Imperial diadem. In his day it was a possession which could hardly be overvalued as a strong military post, as the centre of a rich and flourishing province, as a city itself rich and flourishing, according to the standard of those times. To us it is mainly attractive as a spot on which the history of a long series of ages, before and after the days of William, is still legibly written. Le Mans is one of a type of cities which is spread over a great part of Gaul, but to which England, and even Normandy, can present but feeble approaches. A steep hill rises abruptly above the river Sarthe to the west, and somewhat less abruptly above the lower ground to the east. The ground also falls away in the like sort to the south, while the hill is continued in the higher ground to the north, of which it forms the natural termination. The height, therefore, though washed by the river on one side only, does in effect assume a sort of peninsular shape. Like most elevated sites of towns, the rise of the ground is such as would not be remarkable in a hill whose sides were covered with verdure or forest, but it is quite enough to make the post strongly defensible, and to make the streets of the still existing city steep and hard of ascent. [Sidenote: Growth of the Gaulish hill-fort into the Roman, the mediæval, and the modern city.] This point, like so many points of the same kind, had, in unrecorded days, become the site of a Gaulish hill-fort, and the Gaulish hill-fort had, as usual, grown into a Roman city. The name of the universal conquerors still dwells there, and the most ancient quarter of the city is still traditionally known as _La vieille Rome_. The original Gaulish rampart was, in the later days of the Empire, exchanged, at the bidding of the great Constantine, for a wall of Roman masonry, large portions of which still remain. They show how small a part of the existing town was covered by the famous city of old. The Roman wall still fences in only the higher ground; the fortifications were not brought down to the river till Cenomannia had, in the thirteenth century, been constrained to bow to Paris. Two great monasteries lay, as usual, without the walls. They were placed at the foot of the hill on either side, one of them even lay beyond the river. The growth of the modern city has embraced both, leaving the ancient fortified circuit as a venerable acropolis, retaining its place even now as the ecclesiastical and municipal hearth of the city. To the west the city still presents a stately front to the river. Walls and houses, the dwellings of priests and citizens, still showing, in their rich and early work, the importance of both classes in the Cenomannian state, still rise, stage above stage, up to the highest ridge crowned [Sidenote: The Palace of the Counts.] by the two dominant buildings of the city. To the south-east, on the Roman wall itself, incorporating within itself the very fortifications of the elder Empire, stood, and still stands, the palace of the ancient rulers, the Hughs [Sidenote: The Cathedral.] and the Herberts of Cenomannia. In the north-east corner of the original city, rose the Minster of Saint Julian, the cathedral church of that famous Bishoprick. That soaring apse, which the glories even of Beauvais and Amiens can hardly surpass, had not as yet demanded the sacrifice of that portion of the ancient rampart which hindered the full developement of the mighty temple. Even the stately nave, so strangely attached to the later and loftier choir, itself one of the works in which the builders of the twelfth century aimed most successfully at reproducing the gorgeous foliage of Rome and Corinth, had not as yet assumed its present shape. But the earlier temple out of which it was as it were hewn, whose masonry bespeaks, not the deliberate imitation, but the immemorial retention of Roman forms, was a work of William’s age, and its earliest portions were probably slowly rising at the [Sidenote: William’s “_Joyeuse Entrée_” at Le Mans.] time of William’s conquest.[613] The stern and massive portal which still forms its principal approach, may well have been the one through which the procession swept, which went forth singing hymns and swinging censers, to welcome the prince who had won the city without shedding the blood of friend or foe.[614] With equal joy, real or pretended, men of all ranks in the city went forth to greet the conqueror; shouts of applause met the ear of William as he entered; men knelt as he drew near, and hailed the Duke of the Normans as the lawful lord of Le Mans. [Sidenote: Walter consents to the surrender.] Walter, putting the best face upon the matter, agreed to the surrender with apparent willingness. William had neither motive nor temptation to further harshness. He took peaceful possession of his conquest, but he took care to guard it after the ordinary fashion of a Norman conqueror. [Sidenote: William builds a castle near the cathedral.] In the north-western angle of the city, near the point where William, advancing from his own Duchy, had doubtless made his triumphal entry, a Norman donjon now rose in dangerous neighbourhood to the minster and to the dwelling of its Prelate. So near were the two buildings that, in later days, the towers which, as at Exeter and Geneva, formed the finish of the transepts were deemed to be a standing menace to the royal fortress. Of these towers the reign of William’s immediate successor has a strange tale to tell.[615] They have however left more speaking traces behind them than the fortress which was now the outward trophy of William’s victory. While Le Mans can still boast such splendid remains of the works both of earlier and of later days, the politic devastation of the seventeenth century has left only a few shapeless fragments of wall to bear witness to the former being of the castle with which the Conqueror sought to curb the lofty spirit of the city which was as yet his noblest conquest.[616]

[Sidenote: Submission of Walter.]

Le Mans then was won, and with Le Mans the whole Cenomannian land formally passed into the hand of the conqueror.[617] The rival pretender to the County had given up his claims, for fear, we are told, lest in seeking what was another’s he should lose his own. While the harrying of Maine had been going on, other Norman bands had crossed another part of the frontier, and had carried havoc through Walter’s original possessions of Mantes and Chaumont.[618] [Sidenote: Death of Walter and Biota.] He and his wife soon disappear from the scene. We have no trustworthy details of their death, but rumour affirmed [Sidenote: William charged with poisoning them.] that both of them died by poison. In the mouths of William’s enemies, rumour further added that the poison was administered to them by William’s order, when they were his guests in his own castle at Falaise. This is one of those occasions on which the remark must be again repeated that the charge of secret poisoning is one which it is easy to bring and hard to disprove. In this case the charge is certainly not brought home to William by any direct evidence. It seems indeed to rest on nothing better than the wild assertions of William’s enemies at a drunken revel.[619] To stoop to a crime of this kind, which admitted of no defence, and which could be cloked by no self-delusion, seems to me to be quite inconsistent with a character like William’s, in which, among all its darker features, a certain regard to the first principles of morality, a distinct element of the fear of God, was never wholly wanting. I venture therefore to dismiss the tale as simply part of that stock of uncertified scandal of which William’s age was so fruitful.

[Sidenote: Geoffrey of Mayenne still holds out.]

One enemy had however still to be brought into subjection before William could boast that he was undisputed master of the whole Cenomannian land. Geoffrey of Mayenne, the brave defender of Le Mans, seems to have refused to have any share in the surrender of the city; he had withdrawn so as not to be a witness of William’s triumphal entry; he had been often summoned, but he had neglected every summons, to appear and do a vassal’s duty to his new sovereign.[620] Such an enemy was one of whom it was manifestly fitting to make an example. Call him rebel or patriot as we will, Geoffrey of Mayenne was the sort of man with whom it did not suit William’s purposes to put up with for a moment. If the Duke knew when to delay, he also knew when to hasten. He had won Le Mans without a blow; he had gained his point more easily by bringing a gradual process of terror and distress to bear on the minds of its defenders. No such process would answer with a single determined enemy. It was for the new Lord of Maine to show, once for all, that no man in his [Sidenote: William besieges Mayenne. 1063.] new dominion could resist him with impunity. The Duke therefore led his forces at once against Geoffrey’s town and fortress of Mayenne.[621] The castle was strong, and men deemed an assault to be an hazardous undertaking.[622] But the prince to whom Domfront and Alençon and Arques had yielded, who had himself carried the bulwarks of his own Falaise by sheer strength of onslaught,[623] was not to be baffled by works which were at least not stronger than [Sidenote: Description of the place.] those of so many famous fortresses. The position of the castle of Mayenne is one which bears more likeness to that of Alençon[624] than to that of Falaise or Domfront. It is no Gaulish hill-fortress which has grown by degrees into a Roman and into a modern city. The town of Mayenne stands on both sides of the river from which it takes its name, a river of far greater width than the maternal beck at Falaise or even than the Varenne at Domfront. It may well be that the light craft of the Northmen, who so long harassed the shores and islands of the Loire and its tributaries, may have made their way even to this inland post. At all events, the main point in the fortification of Mayenne was to secure the river. The town covers the steep slopes on either side, and the right[625] bank of the stream still washes the walls of the castle. No buildings now remain which can have witnessed the wars of William and Geoffrey, but the later castle evidently occupies the ancient site. A noble range of bastions rising above the stream, a miniature as it were of the mighty pile of dark and frowning Angers, contrasts well with the steep and narrow streets of the town itself, with the varied and eccentric outline of the great church of Our Lady, and with the thick woods which still overshadow the river close up to the buildings of the town. The greater part of the modern town lies on the right bank, and in William’s time, when Mayenne was less a town than a military post, it was doubtless this part alone, as in the elder Angers, that was encompassed by a wall.[626] But the date of the church of Saint Martin beyond the river shows that, as at Angers, the opposite shore must, at this time, or soon after, have become the site of a populous suburb. To a modern and non-military eye, the site of Mayenne, which could easily be commanded from the higher ground above, does not seem so formidable as that of other places which had yielded to William’s arms; but it must be remembered that, before the invention of cannon, a fortress did not suffer as it now does by being open to the missiles of the enemy. No more striking instance of this difference can be found than in the long resistance which William himself met with before the river fortress of Brionne.[627] At all events, Mayenne is spoken of as a post well defended by the river on one side and by both nature and art on the other, and which was looked on as almost hopeless to carry by [Sidenote: Difficulties of the siege.] assault. Horse and foot, lances, swords, and arrows, the ram and the catapult themselves, were all, we are told, deemed useless.[628] Famine alone could be looked to for the reduction of the impregnable fortress.[629] One only hope of [Sidenote: The Normans fire the town.] immediate success presented itself. Fire at least was at hand, and fire was a weapon with which the Normans were always ready. By the Duke’s order, flaming materials of some sort were hurled over the walls of the town.[630] As ever happened among the wooden houses of those times, the flames spread fast, and did their work fully as well as the sword.[631] The defenders of the town walls and town gates left their posts to rescue, as far as might be, their own houses and goods. The Normans rushed in with a loud and joyful shout. The spoils were abundant; horses, arms, household stuff of every kind, were found in plenty. And all was, by [Sidenote: The castle surrenders. Probable absence of Geoffrey.] the liberality of the Duke, given up to his soldiers.[632] The town was thus taken, and the next day the castle surrendered.[633] This speedy surrender, as well as some other expressions of our historian, might lead us to think that Geoffrey himself was not present in person.[634] Of his [Sidenote: His later history. 1073–1098.] immediate fate we hear nothing; but, thirty years later, either himself, or perhaps a son of the same name, again played an important part in Cenomannian history.[635] The town was restored by William;[636] a garrison was left in the castle; the Duke and his army went home rejoicing,[637] and the few who still ventured to hold up their heads against him within his new dominions soon submitted.[638]

[Sidenote: Succession of deaths in the House of Maine.]

The fate of one person has still to be spoken of. The house of the Counts of Maine might seem to have lain under a ban of fate. Herbert, Walter, Biota, had all been swept away.[639] It may strengthen the belief that William had no hand in their removal when we find that they were soon followed to the grave by a member of the same house whom William had no possible motive to destroy, but rather every possible motive to keep alive. Herbert had died before the marriage of his sister with the Duke’s [Sidenote: Margaret brought from Germany.] son could be carried out. William now sent for her from her German shelter, meaning to bring her up in his own land as the bride of its future sovereign. On account of her youth, the actual marriage was put off for a while, and the fair and pious Margaret was entrusted to the care of discreet persons of both sexes.[640] Before the time for the [Sidenote: Her death.] marriage came, the bride was no more.[641] The tale is told of her, as it is told of one of William’s own daughters, that she shrank from the prospect of an earthly bridegroom, and prayed to be released from so hard a necessity.[642] After her death, as in the case of so many saints, a hair-shirt was found on her, with which, young as she was, she had already learned to bring the flesh into subjection.[643] The body thus early inured to austerity found its last home in the minster of Fécamp, which, along with other churches of her adopted country, she had already learned to love and honour.[644]

[Sidenote: Importance of the conquest of Maine; its connexion with the
conquest of England.]

The conquest of Maine is one of the most important events in the life of William. It stands second only to the Conquest of England. It was in truth William’s first great appearance in the character of the Conqueror, it was a sort of prelude to the still greater work which he had to do beyond the sea. The two events indeed have a direct connexion. William’s rival for the possession of Maine was, if not an English Ætheling, yet the grandson of an English King, a possible, though not a likely, competitor for the English Crown.[645] But the conquest of Maine connects itself with the conquest of England in a more instructive way than through the fact that Walter of Mantes was the son of a daughter of Æthelred. The [Sidenote: Analogies between the two.] circumstances of the two conquests are strangely alike, and the earlier and lesser success may well have served both as a happy omen and as an actual school for the later and greater enterprise. In each case, William took possession of a land, at once against the will of its inhabitants, and to the prejudice of members of the reigning family. In each case, William trampled alike on hereditary right and on popular election. But in neither ease was it the mere brute force of the sword which he opposed to them. Those wonderful arts by which he deceived others, by which he most likely deceived even himself, in the matter of England, were practised with almost equal skill, though in a narrower field, in the matter of Maine. In the case of Maine, as in the case of England, William contrived to give his claims an aspect of strict legality. In both cases he could allege a bequest of a reigning sovereign; in both cases he could allege an act of homage done by a rival: in both cases a marriage, which in neither case ever took effect, was designed to connect William’s house with the house of the rival who thus became his vassal. The circumstances indeed differed in the two stories; the parts in the two dramas were differently arranged. In the Cenomannian version, the bequest of Eadward and the homage of Harold are both united in the person of Herbert. The part of Harold is therefore divided between Herbert and Walter, or rather between Herbert and the valiant Geoffrey of Mayenne. Such differences will always occur, for no events in history exactly reproduce one another. But in each story we see the bequest, the commendation, the intended marriage. In each the conquest is made to take the shape of a legal claim, which is unavoidably backed by force. In each the conqueror contrives to be received with at least the outward consent of the conquered. The two stories are so like one another that we may be sure that the likeness was present to the keen and busy mind of the hero of both. While winning Maine, William was, beyond all doubt, planning how he might win England. He was feeling his way; he was learning his trade; he was practising his prentice hand in the great arts of diplomacy and invasion. It is therefore not only the mere probable chronological sequence, but a close connexion in the subjects themselves, which leads us directly from William’s Cenomannian conquest to the subject of the last section of the Chapter, to the visit of Earl Harold to the Norman Court, and to the memorable oath, whatever was its exact nature, which he is alleged to have plighted to the Norman Duke.

§ 4. _The Visit of Harold and the Breton War. 1064?_

[Sidenote: Position of William and Harold.]

The time was now come for the two born leaders of men around whose career our whole history gathers to meet face to face. As yet, for a little while, their meeting was to be friendly; but in that friendly meeting the seeds were sown of their last meeting on the battle-field. The Duke of the Normans and the Earl of the West-Saxons were now each of them at the height of his glory. The most famous exploits of each had happened within a single year. About the time that William had been receiving the submission of Le Mans and Mayenne, Harold had been waging his great campaign against the Welsh, and, if he had not been winning crowns for himself, he had been disposing of crowns to others and [Sidenote: William and Harold at the moment the two first men in Western Europe.] receiving the homage of their wearers.[646] It is not too much to say that, at that moment, William and Harold were the two foremost men of Western Europe. The great Emperor was gone; the great Pope had not yet risen on the world, though Hildebrand the Archdeacon had already begun to guide the policy of the Court of which he was before long to be the avowed as well as the virtual ruler. Among Western crowns, those of France and Germany were worn by children; on what brow the Crown of England rested I need not again set forth. Kings of greater renown than Eadward or Philip reigned in Northern Europe; but the persevering prudence of Swend, the knight-errantry of Harold Hardrada, can hardly be put on a level with the union of every kingly gift alike in the great Englishman and in the great Norman. Few words are needed to show how far, in Gaul and in Britain respectively, the great Duke and the great Earl outshone the sovereigns to whom the accident of birth had given the right to claim the vassal’s homage from the one and the subject’s duty from the other. Among princes not bearing the royal title, Baldwin, Count of Flanders and Regent of France, could alone be compared with them in power. But no one would bring his personal character and personal exploits into rivalry with those of the renowned rulers of Normandy and Wessex. Harold and William then were the first men in Western Christendom, the one the first in continental lands, the other the first within the Island Empire. [Sidenote: The rivalry between them as yet not avowed.] Nothing had as yet happened to make either the avowed enemy of the other, and two such men must have looked admiringly on each other’s great deeds. Yet each must have looked on the other as a lion in his path; both were already aiming at the same prize, and each must have known that that prize was not likely to be won without [Sidenote: Their meeting. Question whether it was their first meeting.] a struggle with a worthy rival. It is a striking episode in our story when these two mighty men, so soon to be the deadliest of enemies, could meet yet once, as host and guest, in peace and friendship. Whether they had before seen each other is uncertain. They had not met on English ground, for at the time of William’s visit to Eadward, Harold, I need not say, was a banished man in Ireland. Whether they met on Norman ground in the course of Harold’s earlier continental journey we have no certain evidence. If they had met at any earlier moment, their earlier meeting no doubt taught each of them what manner of man he had to deal with in the other. But in no case had that earlier meeting any such direct results on the events of our history as those which sprang out of the strange accident which now for a while made Earl Harold the guest, the friend, the companion in arms, of the Norman Duke.

[Sidenote: Contradictory nature of the different stories.]

I have said a strange accident, because, among all the various statements which are handed down to us as to the occasion of Harold’s visit to Normandy and his alleged oath to William, I am inclined to prefer that version which represents his presence in Normandy as being wholly the result of chance. I need hardly say that there is no portion of our history, perhaps no portion of any history, which is more entangled in the mazes of contradictory, and often impossible, statements than that on which we are now entering. I have already touched incidentally on the [Sidenote: Probable groundwork of truth.] subject in an earlier Chapter.[647] I there said that, with regard both to the alleged bequest of Eadward to William and to the alleged oath of Harold to William, I could not but hold that there is some groundwork of truth in both stories. I held that the absolute silence of the contemporary English writers told, under the circumstances, in favour of a bequest of some kind and an oath of some kind. But the details, as I there said, are told with such an amount of contradiction, many of the statements are so manifestly impossible, it is so hard to fix the date of the event or to piece it on in any way to the undoubted facts of the history, that we can hardly admit anything as certain beyond these bare facts of a bequest of some kind and an oath of some kind. As for the bequest, I trust that I have shown[648] that the groundwork of William’s claim as testamentary successor to Eadward was, in all probability, a promise of the succession, or at least a promise of a royal recommendation to the Witan, [Sidenote: 1051.] made by Eadward to William at the time of the Duke’s visit to England. I trust that I have also shown that that promise was set aside by later arrangements in favour, first of the Ætheling Eadward, and then of Earl Harold.[649] [Sidenote: Connexion between the bequest of Eadward and the oath of Harold.] With regard to the oath, it is, in the Norman accounts, inextricably mixed up with the bequest. In one version Harold is actually represented as being sent into Normandy to announce the devise of the Crown in favour of William. In all the received versions the intentions of Eadward in favour of his Norman kinsman are taken for granted as the ground on which the oath is demanded. The two questions then must be discussed together. As usual, I shall discuss them at large in another part of this volume.[650] I shall here do little more than tell the tale itself, in that shape in which it seems to me to have least of improbability about it. But, as I before said, I can look upon nothing in the whole story as absolutely certain, except that Harold made some engagement or other, which was capable of being construed as an admission of William’s claim to the Crown, and which made his own later acceptance of the Crown capable of being represented as an act of perjury.

[Sidenote: Three different versions; 1. Harold sent by Eadward to
announce the devise of the Crown in favour of William.]

There are three chief statements as to the causes which took Harold into Normandy. According to a version which I have already mentioned, Eadward, perhaps after the death of the Ætheling, determined to make William his heir. He therefore sent Harold over to announce his intention to the Norman Duke, and to confirm the appointment by an oath in his own person. This account I believe to be absolutely fabulous. According to another [Sidenote: 2. Harold goes to reclaim the hostages given by Godwine in 1052.] account, Godwine, on his reconciliation with Eadward, gave hostages to the King for his good behaviour, in the persons of his youngest son Wulfnoth and his grandson Hakon the son of Swegen. These hostages were given by the King to the safe keeping of the Duke of the Normans. Now that years had rolled by, now that Godwine was dead, now that Eadward was, as this version of the story implies, on perfectly good and confidential terms with Godwine’s successor Harold, there no longer seemed any reason why a brother and a nephew of the first man in England should linger any longer in foreign banishment. Harold therefore asks the King’s leave to go to the Court of William and ask for their release. The King warns his brother-in-law against so perilous an adventure; he knew William well, and some harm was sure to happen to Harold, if he trusted himself in his power. The impetuous spirit of the Earl refuses to hearken to the warnings of the Saint. He wrings an unwilling permission from the King, and goes on his errand. He is entrapped into an oath binding him in the fullest way to support William’s claims. He returns to England to receive much more of sorrowful reproof and warning from the King who had foreseen the future so much more clearly than himself.[651]

[Sidenote: The first story a mere invention; the second contains a
certain groundwork of fact. Both stories assume Harold’s
loyalty to Eadward.]

This tale I do not believe any more than the other, but it apparently differs from it as not being pure invention, but as being grounded on a certain basis of fact. Both stories, it will be observed, assume the loyalty of Harold and the confidence placed in him by Eadward, and they thereby at once contradict those other Norman statements which describe Harold as acting with insolence to Eadward, and Eadward as being afraid of Harold’s power.[652] The former story indeed, by representing Harold as sent to announce and confirm Eadward’s choice, implies that Harold had himself no designs on the Crown, or, at all events, that Eadward had no suspicion that he had any. But the second story distinctly implies that, at the time of the journey, Eadward had no intentions in favour of William, perhaps that he had intentions in favour of Harold. This version therefore comes nearer to the true state of the case than the other. With regard to the hostages, I do not believe the tale, but I still suspect that some small amount of truth lurks under it. No English account of the restoration of Godwine mentions that he gave hostages to the King, still less that any such hostages were entrusted to the keeping of Duke William. Such [Sidenote: Improbability of the story of the hostages; its origin.] a story is most improbable in itself, and it distinctly contradicts the real facts of the case. Hostages were given and exchanged many times in the course of the banishment and return of Godwine, once indeed so late as the day of his return, the day before the famous Mickle Gemót.[653] But this was because matters were still under debate, and, when hostages were given, they were given on both sides. When the controversy was over, when Godwine was fully restored to his old honours, there was no longer any need or any room for hostages. At such a moment as that, when Godwine’s family and the whole patriotic party were in the full swing of triumph, when decrees were being passed for their restoration to all their honours, when other decrees were pronouncing banishment against the leaders of the Norman faction, when every road was thronged with Norman knights and priests fleeing for their lives,—at such a moment as this, it is utterly inconceivable that two members of the House of Godwine, a son and a grandson of the great Earl, should have been sent off into what would be in truth captivity, however honourable captivity, at the Norman Court. Nothing short of the express authority of the English Chronicles could make us accept a statement so utterly incredible. And instead of being supported by their authority, it is implicitly contradicted by it. The banishment of Wulfnoth and Hakon is manifestly inconsistent with the statement that all the members of Godwine’s family were restored to what they had before held.[654] I therefore altogether disbelieve in the story of the hostages. But I think that it may not be difficult to trace its origin, which I shall accordingly attempt to do elsewhere.[655] [Sidenote: Third story; Harold’s presence in Normandy accidental, through stress of weather.] I accept then the third version, according to which Harold’s presence in Normandy was purely accidental. According to this account, he was not going to William’s court, either on the King’s errand or on his own. He was sailing elsewhere, to Wales or to Flanders, or simply taking his pleasure in the Channel. I am inclined to think that this last was really the case, and I further suspect that he was accompanied on his pleasure-trip by [Sidenote: Possible presence of other members of his family.] some of the younger members of his family, by his brother Wulfnoth, his nephew Hakon, and possibly his sister Ælfgifu.[656] At all events, the Earl set forth at the head of a considerable company, enough to fill three of the vessels of the time,[657] and he went accompanied by dogs and hawks, ready to enjoy the sports of the field at any points [Sidenote: They set sail at Bosham.] at which they might land.[658] The place of embarcation was close by the favourite South-Saxon abode of Godwine and Harold, the land-locked haven of Bosham.[659] The contemporary record sets them before our eyes as first paying their devotions in that venerable church which still remains as one of the living witnesses of their age,[660] and then as feasting in the Earl’s hall, before their temporary farewell to their native land.[661] As for their voyage, nearly all accounts agree that, whatever was their original destination, [Sidenote: They are driven by a storm to the coast of Ponthieu.] Harold’s ships were driven by stress of weather to the coast of Ponthieu. They were there in the dominions of Count Guy, who, since the slaughter of Mortemer, had become, first the prisoner, and then the vassal, of William.[662] Guy, like the [Sidenote: The right of _Wreck_. Barbarous treatment of shipwrecked persons.] princes and inhabitants of various parts of Gaul, exercised the right of wreck in all its fulness. Their barbarous and unchristian practice on this head is strongly and justly denounced by the panegyrist of William.[663] The shipwrecked man, instead of being looked on as an object of humanity and Christian charity, was looked on as a wretch forsaken of God and man, who became the lawful spoil of the lord into whose hands he was thrown. Indeed the words used might almost be taken as meaning that they were not even satisfied with those unfortunates whom accident threw in their way. Fraud of some kind, false lights or the like, would seem to have been used to entrap the unwary.[664] And woeful indeed was the doom of the unlucky wretch who fell into their hands. Imprisonment was his usual fate, and to imprisonment torture was often added. The higher and more illustrious the victim, the harder was his doom, as from such captives more might be wrung in the way of ransom than could be gained from meaner men. Such was now the fate which threatened the foremost man [Sidenote: Harold betrayed to Guy of Ponthieu and seized by him.] of England, the brother-in-law of its King. A fisherman, we are told, who frequented the English coast, knew the person of the Earl of the West-Saxons. He hastened to Count Guy; for twenty pounds he would show him a captive who would gladly pay a hundred pounds for his ransom.[665] The Count rode in person to the coast, and the [Sidenote: He is imprisoned at Beaurain.] English Earl was seized in his presence.[666] Harold was now kept in prison, perhaps actually in fetters,[667] not, as has been sometimes thought, on the sea-shore at Saint Valery, but in the inland fortress of Beaurain near Hesdin.[668] Some [Sidenote: He sends a message to William.] however of the party contrived to escape; an Englishman, charged with a message from Earl Harold, made his way to the palace of Rouen and to the presence of William. The messenger knelt before the Duke, and told him the tale of wrong, how the great English Earl, without any offence on his part, had been seized by a vassal of Normandy, and was at that moment held in bonds at Beaurain.[669] We can well understand the mingled feelings of William on hearing such a piece of news. The nobler elements of his nature would sincerely abhor the base act of Guy; but his crafty policy would at once discern how great and manifold were the advantages which he [Sidenote: William’s interest in the matter.] might draw out of the crime of his vassal.[670] His rival, not yet his open enemy, was thrown into his hands by an accident which made generosity at once the surest policy. No greater good fortune could befall William than that which made him the benefactor, the liberator, of Harold. He might disarm him by benefits; he might win him over by cajolery; he might entrap him into some engagement, which might be craftily represented as binding the English Earl to something which he had himself perhaps never dreamed of. He could, in any case, establish a claim upon his gratitude; he might perhaps establish a claim upon his honour. Whatever course events might take, some gain, greater or smaller, could hardly fail to accrue to William. His course therefore was clear; Harold was to be set free at any cost. [Sidenote: He sends to Guy and demands Harold’s enlargement.] Messengers were sent, bidden to hasten to Beaurain with the full speed of Norman horsemanship.[671] They were to ask in the Duke’s name for the enlargement of the illustrious captive; they were, if it proved needful, to demand it with threats.[672] Guy, himself for two years the captive of William, had no mind to bring on himself the wrath [Sidenote: Guy brings Harold to William at Eu.] of his new overlord a second time. He put the best face on the matter;[673] the Earl was at once released from prison, and Guy and Harold rode together, hawk on hand, to meet Duke William. The Duke had by this time reached the border fortress of Eu, the castle of the brave and loyal Count Robert.[674] Instead of being the prisoner of Guy, [Sidenote: William’s rewards to Guy.] Harold was now the guest of William. The prompt obedience of the Count of Ponthieu to the bidding of the Duke was rewarded with fitting thanks, with money—no doubt to the amount of Harold’s ransom—and moreover with a large and goodly grant of lands by the banks of the Eaulne.[675] The price was a heavy one, but it was a price which William could well afford to pay for the great advantage which a freak of fortune had thus unexpectedly thrown into his hands.

[Sidenote: Harold’s splendid reception at Rouen.]

Harold was now the honoured guest of William. The Duke of the English, as he appeared in Norman eyes,[676] accompanied his Norman brother to his palace at Rouen.[677] There he was entertained with martial exercises;[678] he received every mark of respect which was due to so illustrious a visitor; he was admitted to the closest intimacy with the Duke and his family. One writer, whose minute knowledge of the subject is a little startling, tells us that William used always to go to bed early, and to leave [Sidenote: Blandishments of Matilda.] Harold conversing with Matilda to a later hour.[679] The winning graces of the Duchess are said to have had no small share in gaining the consent of the English Earl to one part of the engagement which was to be presently [Sidenote: Doubtful date of the events, but before Harold’s marriage with Ealdgyth.] required of him. The date of these events, I need not say, is one of the most puzzling features of the whole story, and it is impossible to do more than approach it by conjecture.[680] But, if there be any truth at all in the tale, it must have taken place before Harold’s marriage with Ealdgyth, itself [Sidenote: Harold engages to marry a daughter of William.] an event whose date is not a little doubtful.[681] One feature in Harold’s engagement, one which is insisted on in every account save one,[682] and one which in many accounts is made the most prominent of all, is his promise to marry a daughter of William. The daughters of William and Matilda were still quite children, while Harold was older than their father;[683] yet we are told that the renown and lofty bearing of the English Earl made so deep an impression on the heart of one of them, that, when she found herself forsaken by Harold, she shrank from the thought of another, even a royal, bridegroom.[684] Whatever we may think of this tale, it can hardly be doubted that Harold allowed himself to be entangled into some engagement of the kind. Such engagements were often lightly entered into, without much serious thought of their accomplishment. And, in the case of an engagement between Harold and a daughter of William, mere difference of age would [Sidenote: Harold’s sister [Ælfgifu?] to be married to a Norman.] make the chances rather against its fulfilment. At the same time, we are told, it was arranged that Harold’s sister—that is, doubtless, Ælfgifu, who was perhaps then present at Rouen—should be given in marriage to a Norman noble.[685] Harold, in short, seems to have been for a while altogether fascinated by the splendid reception which he had met [Sidenote: Harold receives knighthood from William, and joins in an expedition against Britanny.] with at the Norman court. He even agreed, like Jehoshaphat on his visit to Ahab, to accompany William in an expedition which he was preparing against the Bretons, and, either before setting forth or after his return, he allowed himself to receive knighthood after the Norman fashion from the Duke’s hand.[686] It is not hard to understand how Harold may have been beguiled into these certainly unwise compliances. He may well have been dazzled by finding himself an object of the highest honour at the court of the most renowned sovereign in Europe. And he undoubtedly owed William a debt of solid gratitude [Sidenote: Influences brought to bear on Harold’s mind.] for his deliverance from Guy’s dungeon at Beaurain. We can understand too the arts by which William might entrap the conqueror of Gruffydd into taking a share in warfare against an enemy of the same race. An expedition against the continental Briton might be pressed in the most flattering and attractive shapes upon the man who had been the first to show how the insular Briton might be effectually subdued. Gratitude, curiosity, love of adventure, personal and national ambition, a half laudable desire to display the might of Harold and of England in the eyes of Norman comrades,[687] would all work upon his mind. All these motives would unite to lead him to waste time among the fascinations, peaceful and warlike, offered him by his Norman sojourn, time which would undoubtedly have been more wisely spent within his own island and his own Earldom. A speedy return to England was Harold’s wisest policy. But a speedy return would have been uncourteous, [Sidenote: Harold practically a prisoner.] perhaps impossible. Harold was, after all, in William’s power. The palace of Rouen differed in every external aspect from the dungeon of Beaurain. But Harold was perhaps hardly more of a free agent in the hands of William than he had been in the hands of Guy. His fetters were gilded, but he was still in fetters. The guest of William was practically his prisoner; nay, unless Harold walked warily on such dangerous ground, he might, like the guests of Geoffrey of Anjou, exchange the hall of the ducal palace for its prison-house.

[Sidenote: The Breton war; uncertainty of our accounts.]

Of the Breton war in which Harold was thus induced to take a share, it is very hard to make out anything at all clearly. I can find nothing to throw any light upon it in the Breton or Angevin chronicles, and the Norman accounts are anything but satisfactory or coherent.[688] The [Sidenote: Conan Count of the Bretons. 1040–1066.] reigning Count Conan, son of that Alan who had acted so faithfully as William’s guardian,[689] was a kinsman of the Duke’s, each of them owning a common ancestor in Richard the Fearless.[690] It will be remembered that, in the days of William’s childhood, Alan had been looked upon as a possible competitor for the succession of Duke Robert;[691] but we have hardly heard of him during the later years of [Sidenote: His relations to his uncle Odo.] William. We have seen his uncle and guardian Odo acting against William in the campaign which followed the rout of Mortemer.[692] But Odo had been, since that [Sidenote: 1056.] time, seized and imprisoned by his nephew Conan,[693] and a war had since gone on between the Count and Odo’s son, Hoel Count of Nantes. That war however seems to have come to an end before the time which seems the least [Sidenote: 1062.] improbable date for the joint expedition of William and Harold.[694] The Norman account represents Conan as rising in rebellion against William, whose somewhat antiquated suzerain rights are set forth in the strongest language.[695] [Sidenote: A Breton party said to be favourable to Normandy.] But it also implies that some at least of the Breton chieftains took the Norman side against Conan. Conan is further described as being aided by Geoffrey of Anjou, no longer of course the famous Martel, but his less terrible nephew, [Sidenote: Alleged alliance between Britanny and Anjou.] Geoffrey the Bearded.[696] Here again I am unable to confirm the Norman account by any statement to the same effect elsewhere. In fact, the narrative of this campaign, which one would have thought there was no temptation to falsify, is every whit as puzzling as those parts of the story which one may conceive as being misrepresented to the prejudice of Harold.

[Sidenote: Norman accounts of Breton manners.]

The panegyrist of William takes this opportunity of setting forth in strong terms the formidable nature of a Breton war, as well as the barbarism and wickedness of the Breton people. Of this subject we have heard something already from other sources.[697] The land was populous, a fact which is oddly attributed to the polygamous habits of the people. One man had, like the ancient Moors, ten wives or more, and became the father of fifty children.[698] That such an arrangement must have doomed nine men or more to celibacy, and could therefore be hardly looked on as on the whole conducive to population, does not seem to have occurred to the Norman Archdeacon. The land, we are told, was fertile in pasture; it produced vast herds of cattle of all kinds; but tillage was hardly known. Milk—and, one may presume, flesh also—was the chief diet of the people; bread was a rarity.[699] Delighting in warfare, the Bretons were no mean adversaries, even for Normans; terrible in the attack, they were used to conquer, and with difficulty brought themselves to retreat.[700] Their intervals of peace were spent in plunder and slaughter of one another.[701] The whole picture is one deeply coloured by national hatred. But the Breton prince must at least have had the spirit—not to say the follies—of chivalry in him in full measure. [Sidenote: Conan’s challenge to William.] Like William himself, in his warfare with Anjou,[702] Conan, we are told, sent word to William on what day he purposed to cross the Norman frontier.[703] To meet this threatened invasion, the Duke of the Normans set forth at the head of his host, with the Duke of the English as his comrade.

[Sidenote: The Castle of Saint James founded by William.]

The object of Conan’s attack was most likely the castle of Saint James, a border fortress which had been lately raised by William himself some way south of Avranches, in the south-western corner of his dominions.[704] William however forestalled his assailant, and met him within the Breton territory on the day appointed for the invasion of [Sidenote: Dol held for William by Rhiwallon.] Normandy.[705] William’s immediate object was to relieve one of those Breton chiefs who held for him against their immediate lord. The famous but most unfortunate city of Dol was now held in William’s interest by a leader bearing, it seems, the genuine Celtic name of Rhiwallon.[706] This, it will be remembered, was the name of one of the brothers to whom Harold had committed the under-kingship of the insular Britons.[707] [Sidenote: Former history of Dol; ravages of the Northmen. 944. 1013.] No town of Gaul or Britain had suffered more in the days of Scandinavian invasion than the once metropolitan city of Armorica. Once in the days of Richard the Fearless,[708] once in the days of Richard the Good,[709] had Dol been seized, plundered, or burned by Northern pirates. It was now, [Sidenote: Dol besieged by Conan; William comes to raise the siege.] by another turn of fortune, besieged by its own sovereign;[710] and the Norman Duke, accompanied by his English ally, drew near with the purpose of raising the siege.

[Sidenote: Character of eastern Britanny; the language now no longer
Celtic.]