Chapter II: The Early Days of William Rufus.4 (4)

Such an appeal as this was indeed going to the root of the matter. It was laying down the rule against which Englishmen had yet to strive for more than four hundred years. William of Saint-Calais not only declared that there were causes with which no English tribunal was competent to deal, but he laid down that among such causes were to be reckoned all judgements where any bishop――if not every priest――was an accused party. Bishop William could not even claim that, as one charged with an ecclesiastical offence, he had a right to appeal to the highest ecclesiastical judge. Even such a claim as this was a novelty either in Normandy or in England; but William of Saint-Calais was not charged with any ecclesiastical offence. Except so far as the indictment involved the charge of perjury, that debateable ground of the two jurisdictions, the offence laid to the Bishop’s charge was a purely temporal one, that of treason against his lord the King. So arraigned, he refuses the judgement of the King of the English and his Witan, and appeals from them to the Bishop of Rome. He justifies his appeal by referring to some law other than the law of England, some special law of his own order, by which, he alleges, he is forbidden to submit to any such judgements as that of the national assembly of the realm of which he is a subject. We again instinctively ask, how would William the Great have dealt with such an appeal, if any man had been so hardy as to make it in his hearing? But we again see how the ecclesiastical system which William the Great had brought in was one which needed his own mighty hand to guide.[288] He was indeed, in all causes and over all persons, ecclesiastical and temporal, within his dominions supreme. But the moment he himself was gone, that great supremacy seems to have fallen in pieces. Lanfranc himself, steadily as he maintains the royal authority throughout the dispute, seems to shrink from boldly grappling with the Bishop’s claim. Some lesser fallacies we are not surprised to find passed over. The daring statement that the sole right of the Bishop of Rome to judge other bishops was established by the Apostles may perhaps have seemed less strange even to Lanfranc than it does to us. But Lanfranc must have smiled, and Thomas of York must have smiled yet more, at the Bishop of Durham’s grotesque complaint that he was deprived of the help of his comprovincial bishops.[289] It was a vain hope indeed, if he thought that King Malcolm would allow him the comfort of any brotherly counsel from Glasgow or Saint Andrews. But the real point is that Lanfranc seems to avoid giving any direct answer to Bishop William’s claim to appeal to a court beyond the sea. Instead of stoutly denying the right of any English subject to appeal to any foreign power from the judgement of the highest court in England, he falls back into Bishop William’s own subtleties about “fief” and “bishopric;” and he appeals to the case of Odo, where it was only the Earl and not the Bishop who was dealt with.[290] The verbal question goes on, till the Bishop declares that he has no skill to dispute against the wisdom of Lanfranc; he has been driven to appeal to the apostolic see, and he wishes to have the leave of the King and the Archbishop to go to the see to which he has appealed.[291] A third time does he, at Lanfranc’s bidding, leave the hall while this question is debated by the King and his council. On his return the final sentence is pronounced by the mouth of Hugh of Beaumont. As the Bishop has refused to answer the charges brought against him by the King, as he invites the King to a tribunal at Rome, the Bishop’s fief is declared forfeited by the judgement of the King’s court and the barons. It really says a good deal for the long-suffering of the prelates and barons, and of the Red King himself, that Bishop William again ventured to make his appeal in more offensive terms than before. He is ready, in any place where justice reigns and not violence, to purge himself of all charges of crime and perjury. He will prove in the Roman Church that the judgement which has just been pronounced is false and unjust.[292] Hugh of Beaumont is driven to a retort; “I and my companions are ready to confirm our judgement in this court.” The Bishop again declares that he will enter into no pleadings in that court. Let him speak never so well, his words are perverted by the King’s partisans. They have no respect for the apostolic authority, and, even after he has made his appeal, they load him with an unjust judgement. He will go to Rome to seek the help of God and of Saint Peter.[293]

[Sidenote: Speeches of the King.]

[Sidenote: The Bishop appeals to Counts Odo and Alan.]

[Sidenote: Cries of the lay members.]

[Sidenote: Intervention of Count Alan.]

[Sidenote: The Bishop appeals yet again.]

[Sidenote: The final sentence.]

Up to this time the King has taken only a secondary part in the lively dispute which has been going on in his presence. We have listened chiefly to the pithy sayings of Lanfranc and to the official utterances of Hugh of Beaumont. But now Rufus himself steps in as a chief speaker, and that certainly in a characteristic strain. His patience had borne a good deal, but it was now beginning to give way. The King’s short and pointed sentences, uttered, we must remember, with a fierce look and a stammering tongue, are a marked contrast to the long-turned periods and legal subtleties of the Bishop. He now steps into the dispute from a very practical side; “My will is that you give me up your castle, as you will not abide by the sentence of my court.”[294] More distinctions, more protests, more appeals to Rome, only stir up the Red King to the use of his familiar oath; “By the face of Lucca, you shall never go out of my hands till I have your castle.”[295] The Bishop was now fairly in the mouth of the lion; yet he again goes through the whole story of his wrongs and his innocence, with some particulars which we have not hitherto heard. When his possessions were seized by the King’s officers, though a hundred of his own knights looked on, no resistance had been offered to the King’s will.[296] He had now nothing left but his episcopal city; if the King wished to take that, he would offer no resistance, save by the power of God. He would only warn him, on behalf of God and Saint Peter and his Vicar the Pope, not to take it. He would give hostages and sureties that, while he went to Rome, his own men should keep the castle, and that, if the King wished, they should keep it for his service.[297] The King again spoke; “Be sure, Bishop, that you shall never go to Durham, nor shall your men hold Durham, nor shall you escape my hands, unless you freely give up the castle to me.”[298] The Bishop now for once says not a word about canonical rights; he appeals, more shortly and more prudently, to the plighted faith of the two Counts who had promised that he should go back to Durham. But Lanfranc argues that the Bishop has forfeited his safe-conduct, and that, if he refuses to give up the castle, the King may rightly arrest him.[299] At this hint the lay members of the Assembly joined in with one voice, the foremost among them being that Randolf Peverel of whose possessions and supposed kindred we have had elsewhere to speak.[300] “Take him,” was the cry, “take him; for that old gaoler speaks well.”[301] But at this stage the Bishop finds friends in the Counts whose faith had been pledged to his safe-conduct. Count Alan formally states the terms of the agreement, and prays the King――Odo and Roger joining with him in the prayer――that he may not be forced to belie his faith, as otherwise the King should have no further service from him.[302] But in Lanfranc’s view the second of the two cases which were contemplated in the agreement had taken place. The King was not bound to let the Bishop go back to Durham; all that he was now bound to do was to give him ships and a safe-conduct out of the realm.[303] The dispute goes on in the usual style. The Bishop continues his appeal to Rome; he again invokes what he calls specially the Christian law, pointing, it would seem, to a volume in his own hand;[304] while Lanfranc asserts the authority of the King’s court.[305] The King then steps in with one of his short speeches; “You may say what you will, but you shall not escape my hands, unless you first give up the castle to me.”[306] The Bishop then makes a shorter protest than usual, the drift of which seems to be that he is ready to suffer any loss rather than be personally arrested.[307] The sentence of the Court is now finally passed. A day is fixed by which the Bishop’s men should leave the city of Durham and the King’s men take possession of it instead.[308]

[Sidenote: The Bishop asks for an allowance.]

[Sidenote: Answer of Lanfranc.]

[Sidenote: The King’s offers.]

[Sidenote: The King and Ralph Paganel.]

The judgement of the Assembly had thus formally gone against the claims of the Bishop of Durham; but his resources were not at an end. Defeated on all points of law, he makes an appeal to the King’s generosity. Will his lord the King, he now prays, leave him something from his bishopric on which he may at least be able to live? Lanfranc again answers; “Shall you go to Rome, to the King’s hurt and to the dishonour of all of us, and shall the King leave lands to you? Stay in his land, and he will give back to you all your bishopric, except the city, on the one condition that you do right to him in his court by the judgement of his barons.”[309] Bishop William, almost parodying the words of a much earlier appeal to Rome, says that he has appealed to the Apostolic See, and to the Apostolic See he will go.[310] Lanfranc retorts; “If you go to Rome without the King’s leave, we will tell him what he ought to do with your bishopric.” Bishop William answers in a long speech, renewing his protests of innocence and his offers of purgation, and setting forth the services which he claimed to have done for the King at Dover, Hastings, and London. The Bishop many times makes his prayer, and the King as often refuses. Then Lanfranc counsels him to throw himself wholly on the King’s mercy; if he will do so, he himself will plead for him at the King’s feet. But the Bishop still goes on about the authority of the canons and the honour of the Church; he will earnestly pray for the King’s mercy, but he will accept no uncanonical judgement. The King then makes a new proposal; “Let the Bishop give me sureties that he will do nought to my hurt on this side the sea, and that neither my brother nor any of my brother’s men shall keep the ships which I shall provide to my damage or against the will of their crews.”[311] It certainly was demanding a good deal to expect Bishop William to go surety for either the will or the power of Duke Robert to do or to hinder anything. The Bishop pleads that the Counts pledged their faith that he should not be obliged to enter into any agreement except the one which had been made at Durham. And the Sheriff of Yorkshire, Ralph Paganel, the same who had been the spoiler of the Bishop’s goods, bears witness that his claim was a just one.[312] By this time the wrath of the Red King was gradually kindling; he turns on the Sheriff with some sharpness; “Hold your peace; for no surety will I endure to lose my ships; but if the Bishop will give this surety which I ask, I will ask for no other.”[313] The Bishop falls back on his old plea; he will enter into no agreement save that into which he entered with the Counts. The King again swears by the face of Lucca that the Bishop shall not cross the sea that year, unless he gives the required surety for the ships.[314] The Bishop then protests that, rather than be arrested, he will give the surety and more than the surety which is demanded; but he calls all men to witness that he does this unwillingly and through fear of arrest.[315] He gives the surety, and another stage in the long debate ends.

[Sidenote: Question of the safe-conduct.]

[Sidenote: Charges against the Bishop’s men.]

[Sidenote: Interposition of Lanfranc on behalf of the Bishop.]

[Sidenote: The Bishop to leave England.]

A new point, happily the last, was raised when the Bishop, having given the required surety, asked for ships and a safe-conduct. The King says that he shall have them as soon as the castle of Durham is in the King’s power; till then, he shall have no safe-conduct, but shall stay at Wilton.[316] He again meekly protests; he will endure the wrong against which he has no means of striving.[317] Then a man of Bishop Geoffrey of Coutances steps in with a new count. The men who held the Bishop of Durham’s castle had――before the Bishop came to the King’s court; therefore, it might be inferred, with his knowledge――taken two hundred beasts belonging to the Bishop of Coutances which were under the King’s safe-conduct. Bishop Geoffrey had surely seen more than two hundred beasts brought into Bristol as the spoil of loyal men in Somerset, Gloucestershire, and Wiltshire; but he is careful to exact the redress of his own loss from his brother bishop and rebel. The men of the Bishop of Durham had refused to pay the price of the beasts; they refused even when Walter of Eyncourt――we have met him in Lincolnshire[318]――bade them do so in the King’s name; he William, the man of Bishop Geoffrey, demands that the price be paid to his lord.[319] The King puts it to the barons whether he can implead the Bishop on this charge also.[320] Lanfranc, for the first time helping his brother prelate, rules that this cannot be done. Bishop William cannot be impleaded any further, because he now holds nothing of the King――the surrender of the castle of Durham is thus held to be already made――and is entitled to the King’s safe-conduct.[321] The Assembly now breaks up for the day; the Bishop is to choose the haven from which he will sail, and to make known his choice on the morrow.

[Sidenote: Conditions of the Bishop’s sailing.]

[Sidenote: November 21, 1088.]

[Sidenote: November 14.]

The next day the Court again comes together. The Bishop of Durham asks Count Alan to find him a haven and ships at Southampton. The King steps in; “Know well, Bishop, that you shall never cross the channel till I have your castle”――adding, with a remembrance of the doings of another prelate at Rochester――“for the Bishop of Bayeux made me smart with that kind of thing.”[322] If the castle of Durham was in the King’s hands by the fixed day, the fourteenth day of November, the Bishop should have the ships and the safe-conduct without further delay. The King then bids Count Alan and the Sheriff Gilbert[323] to give the Bishop at Southampton such ships as might be needful for his voyage seven days after the day fixed for the surrender of the castle. Meanwhile, on the appointed day, the castle of Durham was received into the King’s hands by Ivo Taillebois and Erneis of Burun――names with which we have long been familiar.[324] They disseized the Bishop of his church and castle and all his land; but they gave to the Bishop’s men a writ under the King’s seal, promising the most perfect safety to the Bishop and his men through all England and in their voyage.[325] And, according to the most obvious meaning of the narrative, Heppo, the King’s _balistarius_――a man of whom, like Ivo Taillebois, we have heard in Lincolnshire――was put into their hands as surety for the observance of the safe-conduct.

[Sidenote: Action of Ivo Taillebois.]

[Sidenote: November 21.]

[Sidenote: The Bishop’s voyage delayed.]

[Sidenote: November 26.]

[Sidenote: Charge against the monk Geoffrey.]

[Sidenote: New summons against the Bishop.]

[Sidenote: His argument with Osmund.]

[Sidenote: The Bishop again summoned by Walkelin.]

[Sidenote: Interposition of the Counts.]

[Sidenote: He at last crosses to Normandy.]

It might have seemed that the Bishop’s troubles were now ended, so far as they could be ended by leaving the land which he professed to look on as a land of persecution. But a crowd of hindrances were put in the way of his voyage. Notwithstanding the safe-conduct given to the Bishop’s men, a number of wrongs were done to them by Ivo Taillebois, whose conduct may be thought to bear out his character as drawn in the legendary history of Crowland. The great grievance was that in defiance――so men thought at Durham――of Lanfranc’s judgement that Bishop William was not bound to plead in the matter of the beasts taken from the Bishop of Coutances, two of his knights were forced to plead on that charge.[326] Meanwhile the day came which had been appointed for the Bishop’s voyage. He had been waiting at Wilton, under the care of a certain Robert of Conteville, who had been assigned, at his own request, to keep him from all harm.[327] The castle had been duly given up; all seemed ready for his crossing. Bishop William asked the Sheriff Gilbert and his guardian Robert for ships, to cross in the company of Robert of Mowbray.[328] Under orders from the King,[329] they kept him for five days longer, when Robert of Conteville took him to Southampton. The wind was favourable, and the Bishop craved for leave to set sail at once. The King’s officers forbade him to sail that day; the next day, when the wind had become contrary, they, seemingly in mockery, gave him leave to sail. While he waited for a favourable wind, a new charge was brought against him, founded on the alleged doings of one of his monks, Geoffrey by name, of whom we shall afterwards hear as being in his special confidence. By the sentence of forfeiture pronounced by the Court, all the Bishop’s goods had become the property of the Crown. It was therefore deemed an invasion of the King’s rights when, after the Bishop had gone to the King’s court, Geoffrey took a large number of beasts from the Bishop’s demesne. He had also taken away part of the garrison of the castle, who had killed a man of the King’s. On this charge Bishop William was summoned to appear in the King’s court at the Christmas Gemót to be held in London. One of the bearers of the summons was no less famous a man than Bishop Osmund of Salisbury, a man of a local reputation almost saintly.[330] Bishop William again appeals to the old agreement; he protests his innocence of any share in the acts of Geoffrey, though he adds that he might lawfully have done what he would with his own up to the moment when he was formally disseized.[331] These words might seem to imply that the act of Geoffrey, though done after the Bishop had left Durham, was done before the sentence was finally pronounced. But he cannot go to the King’s court; he has nothing left; he has eaten his horses; that is seemingly their price.[332] He is still repeatedly forbidden to cross, even alone.[333] In answer to an earnest message that he might be allowed to go to Rome, the King sent Walkelin Bishop of Winchester with two companions, one of them Hugh of Port, a well-known Domesday name, to summon him to send Geoffrey for trial to Durham and to appear himself in London at the Christmas Gemót to answer for the deeds of his men.[334] In defiance of all prayers and protests, the King’s officers kept the Bishop in ward night and day; in his sadness he sent a message to the Counts who had given him the safe-conduct, praying them by the faith of their baptism to have him released from his imprisonment and allowed to cross the sea.[335] They answered his appeal. At their urgent prayer, the King at last let him cross. He sailed to Normandy, where he was honourably received by Duke Robert, and――so the Durham writer believed――entrusted with the care of his whole duchy.[336] Perhaps it was owing to these new worldly cares that, though we often hear of him again, we do not hear of him as a suppliant at the court of Rome.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Importance of the story of William of Saint-Calais.]

[Sidenote: Illustrations of jurisprudence.]

[Sidenote: Legal trickery of the Bishop.]

[Sidenote: Reasons for proceeding against him.]

[Sidenote: The first appeal to Rome made by William of Saint-Calais.]

The tale of Bishop William of Durham is long, perhaps in some of its stages it is wearisome; but it is too important a contribution to our story to be left out or cut short. It sets before us the earliest of those debates in the King’s court of which we shall come across other memorable examples before the reign of Rufus is over. We see the forms and the spirit of the jurisprudence of England in the days immediately following the Norman Conquest, a jurisprudence which, both in its forms and its spirit, has become strongly technical, but which still has not yet become the exclusive possession of a professional class. Bishops, earls, sheriffs, are still, as of old, learned in the law, and are fully able to carry on a legal discussion in their own persons. And we see that a legal discussion in those days could be carried out with a good deal of freedom of speech on all sides. As to the matter of the debate, all that we know of Bishop William, both afterwards and at this time from other sources, can leave hardly any doubt that he was simply availing himself of every legal subtlety, of every pretended ecclesiastical privilege, in order to escape a real trial in which he knew that he would have no safe ground on the merits of the case. And, if it be asked why the Bishop of Durham should have been picked out for legal prosecution, while his accomplices were forgiven and were actually sitting as his judges, the answer is to be found in the circumstances of the case. As we read the tale in all other accounts, as we read of it in the formal charge brought by Hugh of Beaumont, we see that there was a special treachery in Bishop William’s rebellion which distinguished his case from that of all other rebels. Why he should have joined the revolt at all, how he could expect that any change could make him greater than he already was, is certainly a difficulty; but the fact seems certain, and, if it be true, it quite accounts for the special enmity with which he was now pursued. The idea of the Bishop which the story conveys to us is that of a subtle man, full of resources, well able to counterfeit innocence, and to employ the highest ecclesiastical claims as a means to escape punishment for a civil crime. It was from the mouth of William of Saint-Calais that, for the first time as far as we can see, men who were English by birth or settlement heard the doctrine that the King of the English had a superior on earth, that the decrees of the Witan of England could be rightly appealed from to a foreign power. The later career of the Bishop makes him a strange champion of any such teaching. The largest charity will not allow us to give him credit for the pure single-mindedness of Anselm, or even for the conscious self-devotion of Thomas. We feel throughout that he is simply using every verbal technicality in order to avoid any discussion of the real facts. A trial and conviction would hardly have brought with them any harsher punishment than the forfeiture and banishment which he actually underwent. But it made a fairer show in men’s eyes to undergo forfeiture and banishment in the character of a persecuted confessor than to undergo the same amount of loss in the character of a convicted traitor.

[Sidenote: Behaviour of Lanfranc;]

[Sidenote: of the King.]

[Sidenote: The lesser actors.]

[Sidenote: Conduct of the laity,]

[Sidenote: not favourable to the Bishop.]

The part played by Lanfranc is eminently characteristic. Practically he maintains the royal supremacy on every point; but he makes no formal declaration which could commit him to anti-papal theories. As for William Rufus, one is really inclined for a long while to admire his patience through a discussion which must have been both wearisome and provoking, rather than to feel any wonder that, towards the end of the day, he begins to break out into somewhat stronger language. But in the latter part of the story, like Henry the Second but unlike Henry the First, he stoops from his own thoroughly good position. He shows a purpose to take every advantage however mean, and to crush the Bishop in any way, fair or foul. So at least it seems in our story; but one would like to hear the other side, as one is unwilling to fancy either Bishop Walkelin or Bishop Osmund directly lending himself to sheer palpable wrong. But, after all, not the least attractive part of the story is the glimpse which it gives us of the lesser actors, some of them men of whom we know from other sources the mere names and nothing more. We feel brought nearer to the real life of the eleventh century every time that we are admitted to see a Domesday name becoming something more than a name, to see Ralph Paganel, Hugh of Port, and Heppo the _Balistarius_ playing their parts in an actual story. The short sharp speeches put into the mouths of some of the smaller actors, as well as those which are put into the mouth of the King, both add to the liveliness of the story and increase our faith in its trustworthiness. As in some other pictures of the kind, the laity, both the great men and the general body, stand out on the whole in favourable colours. It is perfectly plain, from Bishop William’s own words,[337] that he had not, like Anselm and Thomas, the mass of the people on his side. It is equally plain that the majority of the assembly, though they certainly gave him a fair hearing, were neither inclined to his cause nor convinced by his arguments. And the conduct of the Counts Alan and Odo and their companion Roger of Poitou is throughout that of strictly honourable men, anxious to carry out to the letter every point to which they have pledged their faith. The Red King, having merely pledged his faith as a king, and not in that more fantastic character in which he always held his plighted word as sacred, is less scrupulous on this head.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: No recorded movement in Scotland.]

[Sidenote: Movements in Wales.]

[Sidenote: State of Wales.]

[Sidenote: Rhys restored by a fleet from Ireland.]

[Sidenote: Gruffydd’s Irish allies.]

[Sidenote: He attacks Rhuddlan.]

The affair of Bishop William brings us almost to the last days of the year of the rebellion. But, much earlier in the year, events of some importance had been happening in other parts of the island. We are almost tempted to take for granted that so great a stir in northern England as that which accompanied the banishment of the Bishop of Durham must have been accompanied or followed by some action on the part of King Malcolm of Scotland. None such however is spoken of. But the stirs on the Western border had been taken advantage of by the enemies of England on that side. We have seen that British allies played a part on the side of the rebels in the attack on Worcester. Further north, independent Britons deemed that the time was come for a renewal of the old border strife. When Earl Hugh of Chester and the Marquess Robert of Rhuddlan took opposite sides in a civil war, it was indeed an inviting moment for any of the neighbouring Welsh princes. The time seems to have been one of even more confusion than usual among the Britons. The year after the death of the Conqueror is marked in their annals as a special time of civil warfare, in which allies were brought by sea from Scotland and Ireland. Rhys the son of Tewdwr, of whom we have already heard,[338] was driven from his kingdom by the sons of Bleddyn, and won it again by the help of a fleet from Ireland.[339] Men were struck by the vast rewards in money and captives with which he repaid his naval allies, who are spoken of as if some of them were still heathens.[340] These movements are not recorded by any English or Norman writer, nor do the Welsh annals record the event with which Norman and English feeling was more deeply concerned. But there was clearly a connexion between the two. Gruffydd the son of Cynan appears in the British annals as an ally of the restored Rhys,[341] and we now find a King Gruffydd, not only carrying slaughter by land into the English territory, but appearing in the more unusual character of the head of a seafaring expedition. We may feel pretty sure that it was the presence of the allies from Ireland――both native Irish, it would seem, and Scandinavian settlers――which combined with the disturbed state of England to lead Gruffydd to a frightful inroad on the lands of the most cruel enemy of the Britons, the Marquess Robert. The Welsh King and his allies marched as far as the new stronghold of Rhuddlan; they burned much and slew many men, and carried off many prisoners, doubtless for the Irish slave-market.[342] It was clearly through this doubtless far more profitable raid on the English territory that Rhys and Gruffydd found the means of rewarding their Irish and Scandinavian allies.

[Sidenote: Robert of Rhuddlan.]

[Sidenote: His probable change of party.]

[Sidenote: He returns to North Wales.]

[Sidenote: The peninsula of Dwyganwy.]

[Sidenote: The castle of Dwyganwy.]

[Sidenote: Robert at Dwyganwy.]

[Sidenote: Approach of Gruffydd. July 3, 1088.]

[Sidenote: Eagerness of Robert.]

[Sidenote: Death of Robert.]

[Sidenote: His burial at Chester.]

This inroad took place while the civil war in England was going on,[343] a war in which it must be remembered that other British warriors had borne their part.[344] While the lands of Rhuddlan were wasted, the Marquess Robert was busy far away at the siege of Rochester. This would make us think that, like Earl Roger, he changed sides early,[345] and that he was now in the royal camp, helping to besiege Odo and his accomplices. After the surrender of Rochester, the news of the grievous blow which had been dealt to himself and his lands brought Robert back to North Wales, wrathful and full of threats.[346] The enemy must by this time have withdrawn from the neighbourhood of Rhuddlan; for we now hear of the Marquess in the north-western corner of the land which he had brought under his rule. He was now in the peninsula which ends to the north in that vast headland which, like the other headland which ends the peninsula of Gower to the west, bears the name of the Orm’s Head.[347] The mountain itself, thick set with remains which were most likely ancient when Suetonius passed by to Mona, forms a strong contrast to the flat ground at its foot which stretches southward towards the tidal mouth of the Conwy. But that flat ground is broken by several isolated hills, once doubtless, like the Head itself, islands. Of these the two most conspicuous, two peaks of no great height but of marked steepness and ruggedness, rise close together, one almost immediately above the Conwy shore, the other landwards behind it. They are in fact two peaks of a single hill, with a dip between the two, as on the Capitoline hill of Rome. Here was the old British stronghold of Dwyganwy, famous in early times as the royal seat of Maelgwyn, him who is apostrophized in the lament of Gildas by the name of the dragon――the _worm_――of the island.[348] That stronghold had now passed into the hands of the Marquess Robert, and had been by him strengthened with all the newly imported skill of Normandy. The castle of Dwyganwy plays a part in every Welsh war during the next two centuries, and we can hardly fancy that much of Robert’s work survives in the remains of buildings which are to be traced on both peaks and in the dip between them. But it is likely that at all times the habitable part of the castle lay between the two peaks, while the peaks themselves formed merely military defences. Here then Robert was keeping his head-quarters in the opening days of July. At noon on one of the summer days the Marquess was sleeping――between the peaks, we may fancy, whether in any building or in the open air. He was roused from his slumber by stirring tidings. King Gruffydd, at the head of three ships, had entered the mouth of the Conwy; he had brought his ships to anchor; his pirate crews had landed and were laying waste the country. The tide ebbed; the ships stood on the dry land; the followers of Gruffydd spread themselves far and wide over the flat country, and carried prisoners and cattle to their ships.[349] The Marquess rose; he climbed the height immediately above him, a height which looks on the flat land, the open sea, the estuary now crowned on the other side by Conwy with its diadem of towers, over the inland hills, and on the Orm’s Head itself rising in the full view to the northward. He saw beneath him a sight which might have stirred a more sluggish soul. As King Henry had looked down on the slaughter of his troops at Varaville,[350] so Robert, from his fortified post of Dwyganwy, saw his men carried off in bonds and thrown into the ships along with the sheep.[351] He sent forth orders for a general gathering, and made ready for an attack on the plunderers at the head of such men as were with him at the moment. They were few; they were unarmed; but he called on them to make their way down the steep hillside and to fall on the plunderers on the shore before the returning tide enabled them to carry off their booty.[352] The appeal met with no hearty answer; the followers of the valiant Marquess pleaded their small numbers and the hard task of making their way down the steep and rocky height.[353] But Robert was not to be kept back; he still saw what was doing through the whole of the peninsular lowlands. He could not bear to let the favourable moment pass by. Without his cuirass, attended only by a single knight, Osbern of Orgères, he went down to attack the enemy on the shores of the estuary.[354] When the Britons saw him alone, with only a single companion and no defence but his shield, they gathered round him to overwhelm him with darts and arrows, none daring to attack him with the sword.[355] He still stood, wounded, with his shield bristling with missiles, but still defying his enemies. At last his wounds bore him down. The weight of the encumbered shield was too much for him; he sank on his knees[356], and commended his soul to God and His Mother. Then the enemy rushed on him with one accord; they smote off his head in sight of his followers, and fixed it as a trophy on the mast of one of the ships.[357] Men saw all this from the hilltop with grief and rage; but they could give no help. A crowd came together on the shore; but it was too late; the lord of Rhuddlan was already slain. By this time the invaders were able to put to sea, and the followers of Robert were also able to get their ships together and follow them. They followed in wrath and sorrow, as they saw the head of their chief on the mast.[358] Gruffydd must have felt himself the weaker. He ordered the head to be taken down and cast into the sea. On this the pursuers gave up the chase; they took up the body of the slain Marquess, and, amidst much grief of Normans and English,[359] buried him in Saint Werburh’s minster at Chester.[360]

[Sidenote: Connexion of Robert with Saint Evroul.]

[Sidenote: His translation to Saint Evroul.]

[Sidenote: Orderic writes his epitaph.]

[Sidenote: Its character.]

We are well pleased to have preserved to us this living piece of personal anecdote, which reminds us for a moment of the deaths of Harold and of Hereward. Its preservation we doubtless owe to the connexion of Robert of Rhuddlan with the house of Saint Evroul. Otherwise we might have known no more of the conqueror of North Wales than we can learn from the entries in Domesday which record his possessions.[361] But Robert, nephew of Hugh of Grantmesnil, had enriched his uncle’s foundation with estates in England, and in the city of Chester itself.[362] He was therefore not allowed to sleep for ever in the foreign soil of Chester. He had a brother Arnold, a monk of Saint Evroul, zealous in all things for his house, who had begged endless gifts for it from his kinsfolk in England, Sicily, and elsewhere. Some years after Robert’s death, Arnold came to England, and, by the leave of Bishop Robert of Chester or Coventry――Bishop of the Mercians in the phrase of the monk who was born in his diocese――translated the body of Robert to the minster of Saint Evroul. There a skilful painter, Reginald surnamed Bartholomew――most likely a monk who had taken the apostolic name on entering religion――was employed to adorn the tomb of Robert and the arch which sheltered it with all the devices of his art.[363] And the English monk Vital――we know him better by his English and worldly name――was set to compose the epitaph of one who had in some sort, like himself, passed from Mercia to Saint Evroul.[364] In his history Orderic deemed it his duty to brand Robert’s dealings with the Welsh as breaches of the natural law which binds man to man.[365] And it may be that something of the same feeling peeps out in the words of the epitaph itself, which prays with unusual fervour for the forgiveness of Robert’s sins.[366] Yet in the verses which record his acts, his campaigns against the Briton appear as worthy exploits alongside of his zeal for holy things and his special love for the house of Ouche. It is not easy to track out all these exploits, even in the narrative of Orderic himself, much less in the annals of Robert’s British enemies. But all the mightiest names of the Cymry are set forth in order, as having felt the might of the daring Marquess. He had built Rhuddlan and had guarded it against the fierce people of the land. He had ofttimes crossed beyond Conwy and Snowdon in arms. He had put King Bleddyn to flight and had won great spoil from him. He had carried off King Howel as a prisoner in bonds. He had taken King Gruffydd and had overthrown Trahaern. That Howel, his former captive, should rejoice at his fall is in no way wonderful; but the epitaph speaks further of the treachery of a certain Owen, of which there is no mention in the prose narrative.[367] In any case Robert of Rhuddlan stands out as one of the mightiest enemies of the Northern Cymry, and the tale of his end is one of the most picturesque in this reign of picturesque incidents.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: End of the Norman Conquest.]

[Sidenote: The Conquest confirmed and undone.]

[Sidenote: How far undone.]

[Sidenote: Tendencies to union.]

The rebellion was now over, and the new King was firm upon his throne. And with the rebellion, the last scene, as we have already said, of the Norman Conquest was over also. Englishmen and Normans had, for the last time under those names, met in open fight on English soil. Whether of the two had won the victory? Such a question might admit of different answers when the Norman King vanquished the Norman nobility at the head of the English people. In one sense the Conquest was confirmed; in another sense it was undone. Men must have felt that the Conquest was undone, that the _wergeld_ of those who fell two-and-twenty years back was indeed paid, when the second Norman host that strove to land on the beach of Pevensey, instead of marching on to Hastings, to Senlac, to London, and to York, was beaten back from the English coast by the arms of Englishmen. They must have felt that it was undone, when the castles on which Englishmen looked as the darkest badges of bondage were stormed by an English host, gathered together at the same bidding which had gathered men together to fight at Sherstone and at Stamfordbridge. He must have been _Nithing_ indeed who did not feel that the wrongs of many days were paid for, when the arch-oppressor, the most loathed of all his race, came forth with downcast looks to meet the jeers and curses of the nation on which he had trampled. Days like the day of Tunbridge, the day of Pevensey, and the day of Rochester, are among the days which make the heart of a nation swell higher for their memory. They were days on which the Englishman overcame the Norman, days which ruled that he who would reign over England must reign with the good will of the English people. The fusion of Normans and English was as yet far from being brought to perfection; indeed nothing could show more clearly than those days that the gap between the two nations still yawned in all its fulness. But nothing did more than the work of those days at once to fill up the gap and to rule in what way it should be filled up. Those days showed that the land was still an English land, that the choice of its ruler rested in the last resort with the true folk of the land. Those days ruled that Normans and English should become one people; but they further ruled, if there could be any doubt about the matter, that they were to become one people by the Normans becoming Englishmen, not by the English becoming Normans. It is significant that, in recording the next general rebellion, the Chronicler no longer marks the traitors as “the richest Frenchmen that were on this land;” they are simply “the head men here on land who took rede together against the King.”[368]

[Sidenote: How far confirmed.]

[Sidenote: The Norman dynasty accepted.]

[Sidenote: Acceptance of the Norman nobility in an English character.]

But, if in this way the Conquest was undone, if it was ruled that England was still to be England, in another way the Conquest was confirmed. The English people showed that the English crown was still theirs to bestow; but at the same time they showed that they had no longer a thought of bestowing it out of the house of their Conqueror. When the English people came together at the bidding of the Conqueror’s son, when they willingly plighted their faith to him and called on him, as King of the English, to trust himself to English loyalty, they formally accepted the Conquest, so far as it took the form of a change of dynasty. Men pressed to fight for King William against the pretender Robert; not a voice was raised for Eadgar or Wulf or Olaf of Denmark. The stock of the Bastard of Falaise was received as the _cynecyn_ of England, instead of the stock of Cerdic and Woden; for there must have been few indeed who remembered that William the Red, unlike his father, unlike Harold, unlike Cnut, did come of the stock of Cerdic and Woden by the spindle-side.[369] And, in admitting the change of dynasty, all was admitted which the change of dynasty immediately implied. Men who accepted the son could not ask for the wiping out of the acts of the father. They could not ask for a new confiscation and a new Domesday the other way. In accepting the son of the Conqueror, they also accepted the settlement of the Conqueror. His earls, his bishops, his knights, his grantees of land from Wight to Cheviot, were accepted as lawful owners of English lands and offices. But the very acceptance implied that they could hold English lands and offices only in the character of Englishmen, and that that character they must now put on.

[Sidenote: Rufus’ breach of his promises.]

[Sidenote: Englishmen not oppressed as such;]

[Sidenote: but the general oppression touches them most.]

[Sidenote: Rufus and the English.]

[Sidenote: The mercenaries.]

[Sidenote: Their favour helps the fusion of races.]

In this way the reign of William Rufus marks a stage in the developement or recovery of English nationality and freedom. And yet at the time the days of Rufus must have seemed the darkest of all days. No reign ever began with brighter promises than the real reign of William the Red; for we can hardly count his reign as really beginning till the rebellion was put down. No reign ever became blacker. No king was ever more distinctly placed on his throne by the good will of his people. No other king was ever hated as William Rufus lived to be hated. No other king more utterly and shamefully broke the promises of good government by which he had gained his crown. And yet we may doubt whether William Rufus can be fairly set down as an oppressor of Englishmen, in the sense which those words would bear in the mouths of a certain school of writers. His reign is rather a reign of general wrong-doing, a reign of oppression which regarded no distinctions of race, rank, or order, a time when the mercenary soldier, of whatever race, did what he thought good, and when all other men had to put up with what he thought good. In such a state of things the burthen of oppression would undoubtedly fall by far the most heavily upon the native English; they would be the class most open to suffering and least able to obtain redress. The broken promises of the King had been specially made to them, and they would feel specially aggrieved and disheartened at his breach of them. Still the good government which Rufus promised, but which he did not give, was a good government which would have profited all the King’s men, French and English, and the lack of it pressed, in its measure, on all the King’s men, French and English. There is at least nothing to show that, during the reign of Rufus, Englishmen, as Englishmen, were formally and purposely picked out as victims. We must further remember that no legal barrier parted the two races, and that the legal innovations of the reign of Rufus, as mainly affecting the King’s military tenants, bore most hardly on a class which was more largely Norman than English. On the other hand, it is certain that native Englishmen did sometimes, if rarely, rise to high places, both ecclesiastical and temporal, in the days of Rufus. Of the many stories current about this king, not above one or two throw any light on his relations to the native English class of his subjects. The one saying of his that bears on the subject savours of good-humoured banter rather than of dislike or even contempt.[370] On the whole, dark as is the picture given us of the reign of Rufus, we cannot look on it as having at all turned back or checked the course of national advance. When mercenary soldiers have the upper hand, they are sure to be chosen rather from strangers of any race than from natives of the land of any race. There is indeed no reason to think that either a native Englishman or a man of Norman descent born in England would, if he were strong, brave, and faithful, be shut out from the Red King’s military family. The eye of Rufus must have been keen enough to mark many an act of good service done on the shore of Pevensey or beneath the stronghold of Rochester. But all experience shows that the tendency of such military families is to recruit themselves anywhere rather than among the sons of the soil. And nothing draws the sons of the soil more closely together than the presence of strangers on the soil. In their presence they learn to forget any mutual grievances against one another. In after times Normans and English drew together against Brabançons and Poitevins. We may feel sure that they did so from the beginning, and that the reign of Rufus really had its share in making ready the way for the fusion of the two races, by making both races feel themselves fellow-sufferers in a time of common wrong-doing.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Sale of ecclesiastical offices.]

[Sidenote: Prolonging of vacancies.]

[Sidenote: Case of Thurstan of Glastonbury.]

[Sidenote: Geoffrey Bishop of Chichester;]

[Sidenote: dies September 25, 1088.]

[Sidenote: Death of Scotland of Saint Augustine’s and Ælfsige of Bath.]

[Sidenote: Death of Bishop Gisa. 1088.]

[Sidenote: The bishopric of Somerset granted to John of Tours.]

[Sidenote: He removes the see to Bath.]

[Sidenote: Grant of the temporal lordship.]