Chapter XIII: The Negotiations of Duke William.752 (3)

But the country from which, next to his own Duchy, William drew most support in his enterprise, was undoubtedly the neighbouring, the nominally vassal, land of Britanny. When we remember the internal dissensions of [Sidenote: State of the country; war against England probably popular in Britanny.] that country, and the way in which a party among the Bretons had supported William against their own sovereign,[902] this is in no way wonderful. And, though loyalty to a Norman overlord is not likely to have counted for much, another motive may well have worked to fill the Norman host with Breton recruits. The Celtic race has a long memory, and the prospect of waging war in the insular Britain against the Saxon intruder may not have been without charms for the descendants of the Armorican exiles. [Sidenote: Services of Alan Fergant.] Certain it is that the Breton auxiliaries, under Alan Fergant, a cousin of the reigning Count Conan, one of the many sons of his uncle Odo,[903] played an important part in the conquest of England. Even Dinan, so lately besieged by William, now sent its lord to swell William’s muster.[904] Helpers came also from more southern regions; Hamon, Viscount of Thouars in the land of Poitou, came at the head of his force, and, as we shall hereafter see, [Sidenote: Volunteers from Anjou, Touraine, &c.; Geoffrey of Chaumont.] was admitted to William’s most intimate counsels.[905] Angevin auxiliaries we should have been less inclined to look for; but they too are mentioned in our lists.[906] We find also a warrior from the marchland of Tours and Blois, Geoffrey of Chaumont, a homager of Count Stephen of Chartres. He, as we read in the annals of his house, gave up all his fiefs to Sulpicius of Amboise the husband of his niece, and himself went forth to win new fortunes in England.[907] [Sidenote: State of Anjou.] Yet one would have thought that the condition of that part of Gaul would just now have afforded scope enough [Sidenote: War between Geoffrey and Fulk Rechin.] for the energies of the most warlike. The two successors of Geoffrey Martel, Geoffrey the Bearded and our historian Fulk Rechin, were now engaged in a war of brother against brother.[908] It was in this very year that the city of Angers was betrayed[909] to Fulk, and that Count [Sidenote: Geoffrey betrayed to Fulk. 1066.] Geoffrey was led away as a captive to Chinon,[910] the fortress overhanging the Vienne, the fortress so famous in the days when Counts of Anjou were also Kings of England, and so famous again when Capetian royalty, banished from its own Paris, found shelter in the lands which had once [Sidenote: Conan of Britanny; his war against Anjou and death. 1066.] been Angevin. In this same year too Conan of Britanny met with his death, and met it, as some said, by the machinations of William.[911] Strange to say, this suspicion reaches us only from the Norman side. Other authorities, Breton and Angevin, speak only of a war which Conan waged against Anjou, and in which, by whatever means, [Sidenote: Legend of Conan’s death.] he lost his life. It is a Norman writer[912] who tells us how, when William was preparing for the invasion of England, Conan sent to wish him good luck in his enterprise, but at the same time to demand the cession of Normandy to himself. He, Conan, was the lawful heir of the Duchy; the Bastard could have no right; the Bastard too, with his accomplices, had poisoned Conan’s father Alan, and had, up to that day, usurped the possession of a land which should have been his. If Normandy was not at once surrendered to its lawful prince, Conan would at once assert his rights with his whole force. William, we are told, was somewhat frightened, but God delivered him out of his danger. There was a Breton noble, a chamberlain of Conan, who had sworn fealty to William and to Conan alike, and who had borne the message to William as Conan’s ambassador. He undertook—at whose bidding or from what motive we are not told—to rid the world of his Breton master. He anointed the gloves, the bridle, and the hunting-horn of Conan with poison. The Count was engaged in his Angevin campaign, and was besieging the fortress of Château-Gontier, not far from the Cenomannian border. The defenders had capitulated, and Conan seems to have been in the very act of making his triumphal entry into the town. The Count put on his gloves, he grasped the bridle, and unwittingly raised his hand to his mouth. The poison took effect, and before long Conan was a corpse. The murderer left the Breton army, and brought the news to William. The Duke was now at leisure to give his whole mind to the expedition against England.

[Sidenote: William charged with the death of Conan; probabilities of
the case.]

If such a tale as this was current, it is not wonderful that rumour went on to charge William with having instigated a crime by which he so greatly profited. As to the probabilities of the case, I might almost repeat what I have already said when the same charge was brought against William in the matter of Walter and Biota.[913] The whole tale, from the threat of Conan onwards, reads like a romance. Did we find it in a hostile Breton or Angevin writer, we should at once set it down as an invention of hostile spite. And does the romance really gain any further authority, because it has found its way into a Norman chronicle? The silence of the hostile writers surely tells more on the other side. Conan, it seems plain, died suddenly during his Angevin expedition; it was easy to attribute the deed to William; it was no less easy to deck out the story with romantic details. That William was a secret poisoner I, for one, do not believe; but an English writer can hardly avoid the remembrance that, while the deaths of Walter and Conan were attributed to William, perhaps in the eleventh, certainly in the twelfth century, it was reserved for the nineteenth century to attribute the death of the Ætheling Eadward to Harold.[914]

[Sidenote: Negotiations with the Pope.]

The exact order of all these proceedings it is hopeless to try to fix, and it is equally hopeless to try to fix their relations to the great embassy of all. Negotiations with Counts and Kings were, in the age which was just opening, of less moment than negotiations with the Apostolic throne. And indeed it marks a distinct epoch in the history of European politics, when, for the first time, the occupant of the Apostolic throne was called on to adjudge [Sidenote: Alexander the Second. 1061–1073.] a disputed diadem.[915] The reigning Pontiff was Anselm of Lucca, who, under the title of Alexander the Second, had succeeded Nicolas; and, after a violent struggle with the [Sidenote: 1064.] Anti-pope Cadalous of Parma, he was now in full possession [Sidenote: Influence of HILDEBRAND.] of the Holy See.[916] But the ruling genius of the Papacy was already the Archdeacon Hildebrand. He it was who discerned how much the Roman Church might [Sidenote: William’s embassy.] gain by identifying itself with the cause of William. The ambassador of William, Gilbert, Archdeacon of Lisieux,[917] came and pleaded his master’s cause. He told the tale which had been so often told before, the rights of William, the usurpation and perjury of Harold, the despite done [Sidenote: He asks the Papal approval of his enterprise.] by him to the holy relics. William craved the blessing of the Holy See upon his righteous cause; he offered, we are told, but in vague and ambiguous language, to hold of God and of the Apostle the Kingdom which he hoped [Sidenote: Debate in the Conclave. No advocate sent by Harold.] to win.[918] The cause was debated in the Conclave, but it was debated after the hearing of one side only. No advocate of England appeared at the bar of Alexander to defend the right of Harold to the Crown which England had given him. It is needless to seek for the English King’s reasons for not appearing to answer the accusation [Sidenote: A defence on Harold’s side would have compromised the rights of his Crown.] of William.[919] It is enough that, however ready Harold, as a loyal son of the Church, might be to seek spiritual benefits at the threshold of the Apostles, he could not, as a King of the English, allow that any power to give or take away the English Crown was vested anywhere save in the Assembly of the English people. To plead before Alexander would have been to recognize his jurisdiction; it would have been to acknowledge that the Emperor of Britain had a superior [Sidenote: No summons probably sent to Harold.] upon earth. But, before we ask why Harold did not appear, we might perhaps ask whether he was ever summoned to appear, and whether the Roman judgement was not pronounced without so much as an opportunity for defence being allowed to the accused. No writer speaks of any summons as being addressed to the English King; one writer alone hints at the possibility of any hearing [Sidenote: William’s cause opposed by many of the Cardinals.] of the defence.[920] But the cause of justice did not lack advocates even in the Roman Conclave. When Hildebrand dwelt on the benefits which the Church would gain by accepting the jurisdiction thus laid at its feet, many of the Cardinals rejected his arguments with horror. It was not for the Church to become a partaker in deeds of blood, and to sanction claims which could only be enforced by the slaughter of so many men.[921] But in the end the worse reason prevailed. Even in ordinary times, it would have been no more than sound policy to welcome, as far as might be, the advances of a prince like William, who, pious as he might be, had not always shown himself the obedient servant of Rome. His uncanonical marriage,[922] and one or two other exercises of independence on William’s part,[923] would not be forgotten. But, far above all these [Sidenote: Policy of Hildebrand.] lesser questions, Rome was already beginning to practise her characteristic arts under their greatest master. Slaughter, robbery, devastation, all the horrors of an unprovoked war against an unoffending nation, were to be held as nothing when the interest of the Roman See was in the other scale. Never before had such an opportunity been offered to the successor of the Fisherman. It was not merely to win greater authority over a single island. The appeal of William to the Papal Court created a precedent by which the Papal Court might claim the disposal of all the Crowns in Christendom. The voice of [Sidenote: Alexander issues a Bull in favour of William.] Hildebrand conquered. The decree went forth which declared Harold to be an usurper and William to be the lawful claimant of the English Crown. It would even seem that it declared the English King and all his followers to be cut off from the communion of the faithful.[924] William was sent forth as an avenger, to chastise the wrong and perjury of his faithless vassal. But he was also sent forth as a missionary, to guide the erring English into the true path, to teach them due obedience to Christ’s Vicar, and to secure a more punctual payment of the temporal dues of his Apostle.[925] The cause of the invasion was blessed, and precious gifts were sent as the [Sidenote: His gifts to William.] visible exponents of the blessing. A costly ring was sent containing a relic holier, it may be, than any on which Harold had sworn, a hair of the Prince of the Apostles.[926] [Sidenote: The consecrated banner.] And with the ring came a consecrated banner, to hallow the cause of fraud and usurpation.[927] Every help that the [Sidenote: Perversion of the religious sentiment against England.] religious arts of the age could give was bestowed on the man who craved a blessing on the removal of his neighbour’s landmark. Every terror that those religious arts kept in store for the blasphemer and the heretic was hurled against the King whose axe was lifted only to defend his own rights and the rights of his people. The [Sidenote: A Crusade preached against England.] name had not yet been heard; but in truth it was now that the first Crusade was preached, and it was preached by the voice of Rome against the liberties of England.

[Sidenote: Complete success of William’s diplomacy.]

The diplomacy of William and Lanfranc had thus completely triumphed. The great fabric of deception by which their subtle wits had cheated both themselves and others was now brought to perfection. The cause of William was accepted by the voice of his own Duchy; it was accepted by the public voice of Europe; it was hallowed by the judgement of the common Father of Christendom. At whatever stage in William’s negotiations the final answer from Alexander came, there can be no doubt that, from that moment, his own preparations were more vigorously pressed on, and that recruits pressed more eagerly to his standard. His own hopes and the hopes of his followers now rose higher. It was now not only booty and lands and lordships, English Earldoms for Norman knights and English Bishopricks for Norman priests, that William could offer to those who followed him. To every man, from whatever quarter of the earth, who came to serve under the consecrated banner he could now offer the blessing of the Roman Pontiff and every spiritual gift that the Pontiff’s hand could bestow. Never surely did the world see a more perfect triumph of unrighteous craft than when the invasion of England was undertaken in the name of religion.

[Sidenote: Summary.]

The first part then of William’s work was done. We must now return to our own island, threatened as she was by the Norman Duke from the South, threatened, as we shall presently see her, by an enemy hardly less terrible from the quarter whence her older enemies had come. It was the fate of England in this memorable year to be exposed to two invasions at the same moment, and against two invasions at the same moment the heart and arm of Harold himself could not prevail.