Chapter III: The First Wars of William Rufus (5)

The march which had been interrupted by the ceremony at Durham was clearly a slow one. William was at Durham in the first days of September; much later in the month a heavy blow fell on one part of the expedition. The greater part of the ships were lost a few days before the feast of Michaelmas, and we are told that this happened before the King could reach Scotland. The King was therefore several weeks in journeying from Durham to the border of the true Scotland, the Firth of Forth; and we are told that many of the land force also perished of cold and hunger.[842] The army however which remained was strong enough to make Malcolm feel less eager for deeds of arms than he had most likely felt in May. At last, near the shore of the _Scots’ Water_, the estuary which parted English Lothian from Scottish Fife, the two kings met face to face, seemingly in battle array, but without coming to any exchange of blows. It is marked in a pointed way that Malcolm had crossed from his kingdom to his earldom. He “went out of Scotland into Lothian in England, and there abode,”[843] There a negotiation took place. The ambassadors or mediators were Duke Robert and the Ætheling Eadgar.[844] According to the most picturesque version, Malcolm, who is conceived as still keeping on the northern side of the firth, sends a message to William to the effect that he owes no homage to him, but that, if he can have an interview with Robert, he will do to him whatever is right. By the advice of his Wise Men,[845] William sends his brother, who is courteously received by the Scottish King for three days. Somewhat like the Moabite king of old, though with quite another purpose, Malcolm takes his visitor to the tops of various hills, and shows him the hosts of Scotland encamped in the plains and dales below. With so mighty a force he is ready to withstand any one who should try to cross the firth; he would be well pleased if any enemy would make the attempt. He then suddenly turns to the question of homage. He had received the earldom of Lothian from King Eadward, when his great-niece Margaret was betrothed to him. The late King William had confirmed the gifts of his predecessor, and, at his bidding, he, Malcolm, had become the man of his eldest son, his present visitor Duke Robert. To him he would discharge his duty; to the present King William he owed no duty at all. He appealed to the Gospel for the doctrine that no man could serve two lords, the doctrine which had been so practically pressed on Robert’s behalf three years before.[846] Robert admitted the truth of Malcolm’s statement; but he argued that times were changed, and that the decrees of his father had lost their old force. It would be wise to accept the reigning King as his lord, a lord nearer, richer, and more powerful, than he could pretend to be himself. Malcolm might be sure of a gracious reception from William, if he came on such an errand. Malcolm was convinced; he went to the King of the English; he was favourably received, and a peace was agreed on. It is added that the two kings then disbanded their armies, and went together into England.[847]

[Sidenote: Question as to the betrothal of Margaret.]

[Sidenote: Question of Lothian.]

This last statement throws some doubt upon the whole of this version; for Malcolm’s alleged journey to England at this moment is clearly a confusion with events which happened two years later. The references too to the earldom of Lothian and to an earlier betrothal of Margaret are a little startling; yet it is perhaps not quite hopeless to reconcile them with better ascertained facts. As I have elsewhere suggested, this earlier betrothal of Margaret to Malcolm is not necessarily inconsistent with his later marriage with her after the intermediate stage of Ingebiorg.[848] Malcolm may at one time have been in no hurry to carry out a marriage dictated by political reasons; yet he may have afterwards become eager for the same marriage after he had seen her whose hand was designed for him. As for the Lothian earldom, we here see the beginning of the later Scottish argument, that homage was due from the Scottish to the English king only for lands held within the kingdom of England. At this stage Lothian was the land held within the kingdom of England; it was what Northumberland, Huntingdon, or any other confessedly English land held by the Scottish king, was in later times. When Malcolm was restored to his crown by the arms of Siward,[849] no doubt Lothian was granted to him among other things. Only Malcolm takes up the line, or our historian thinks it in character to make him take up the line, of implying, though not directly asserting, that Lothian was the only possession for which homage was due. And, on the strictest view of English claims, Malcolm would be right in at least drawing a marked distinction between Scotland and Lothian. He owed both kingdom and earldom to the intervention of Eadward and Siward; but Lothian was a grant from Eadward in a sense in which Scotland was not. Over Scotland neither Eadward nor William could claim more than an external superiority. Lothian was still English ground, as much as the land which is now beginning to be distinguished as Northumberland.

[Sidenote: Treaty between William and Malcolm.]

[Sidenote: Malcolm does homage.]

The version of Malcolm’s submission which I have just gone through is certainly worth examining, and I do not see that it contradicts the simpler and more certain version. According to this account, the negotiation was carried on between Robert and Eadgar. The agreement to which the mediators came was that Malcolm should renew to the younger William the homage which he had paid to the elder.[850] On the other hand, he was to receive all lands and everything else that he had before held in England, specially, it would seem, twelve _vills_ or mansions for his reception on his way to the English court.[851] On these terms Malcolm became the man of William; Eadgar also was reconciled to William. The two kings parted on good terms, but the Chronicler notices, in a phrase of which he is rather fond, that it “little while stood.”[852]

[Sidenote: Return of William.]

[Sidenote: Evidence of the Durham charters.]

[Sidenote: Duncan.]

[Sidenote: Eadgar.]

[Sidenote: Henry.]

[Sidenote: Siward Barn.]

William, Robert, and Eadgar now took their journey back again, as it is specially marked, from Northumberland into Wessex.[853] The realm of Ælfred is still looked on as the special dwelling-place of his successors from beyond the sea. But it would seem that, at some stage of their southward journey, at some time before the year was out, they joined with other men of royal and princely descent in setting their crosses to a document, in itself of merely local importance, but which is clothed with a higher interest by the names of those who sign it. A grant of certain churches to the convent of Durham becomes a piece of national history when, besides the signatures for which we might naturally look, it bears the names of King William the Second, of Robert his brother, of Henry his brother, of Duncan son of King Malcolm, of Eadgar the Ætheling, and of Siward Barn.[854] This is the only time when all these persons could have met. There is no sign of any later visit of Robert to England during the reign of William. But the signatures of Henry and Duncan teach us more. Duncan, it will be remembered, had been given as a hostage at Abernethy;[855] he had been set free by the Conqueror on his death-bed; he had been knighted by Robert, and allowed to go whither he would.[856] Had he already made his way back to his own land, or did he come in the train of his latest benefactor? In the former case, had he been again given as a hostage? Or had William found out that the son of Ingebiorg might possibly be useful to him? It is certain that, two years later, Duncan was at William’s court and in William’s favour; and it looks very much as if he had, in whatever character, gone back to England with the King. The signature of Eadgar shows that the document must be later than the treaty with Malcolm by which he was reconciled to William, that is, that it was signed on the journey southward, not on the journey northward. The signature of Henry is our only hint that he had any share at all in the Scottish business, and it throws a perfectly new light on this part of his history. He was plainly in England, seemingly in favour with both his brothers, and things look as if he too, though he is nowhere mentioned, must have gone on the march to Scotland. Siward Barn, like Duncan, was one of those who were set free by William the Great on his death-bed. We now learn that he shared the good luck of Duncan and Wulf, not the bad luck of Morkere and Wulfnoth. He signs as one of the great men of the north, with Arnold of Percy, with the Sheriff Morel, and with Earl Robert himself.

[Sidenote: Fresh dispute between William and Robert.]

[Sidenote: Robert and Eadgar leave England. December 23, 1091.]

One thing is plain, namely, that this document was not signed in the regular Christmas Assembly of the year. By that time Robert and Eadgar were no longer in England. By that time Robert and William had again quarrelled. We may guess that some of Robert’s old partisans had been less lucky than the Bishop of Durham. At all events, some points in the treaty of Caen remained unfulfilled. Then, as in later times, a diplomatic engagement was not found strong enough to carry itself out by its own force, like a physical law of nature. We are not told what was the special point complained of; but something which the Red King should have done for Robert or for his partisans was left undone.[857] It was simply as a man and a king that Rufus had entered into any engagements with his brother. His knightly honour was not pledged; the treaty therefore came under the head of those promises which no man can fulfil.[858] We are told in a pointed way that Robert stayed with his brother till nearly the time of Christmas. The matter in dispute, whatever it was, might have been fittingly discussed in the Christmas Assembly; only it might have been hard to find the formula by which the Duke of the Normans was to appeal the King of the English of bad faith before his own Witan. Two days before the feast Robert took ship in Wight, and sailed to Normandy, taking the Ætheling Eadgar with him.[859]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Natural phænomena. Fall of the tower at Winchcombe. October 15, 1091.]

[Sidenote: Great wind in London. October 17, 1091.]

[Sidenote: Fire in London. March 28, 1092.]

[Sidenote: Consecration of the church of Salisbury. April 5, 1092.]

[Sidenote: The tower roof thrown down. April 10.]

Either the reign of Rufus was really richer than other times in striking natural phænomena, or else they were specially noticed as signs of the times. About the time of the King’s Scottish expedition, the tower of the minster at Winchcombe was smitten by a mighty thunderbolt, and fell in ruins on the body of the church, crushing the most hallowed images in its fall. The Chthonian Zeus had no place in the mythology of the times; but this destruction, which left behind it a thick smoke and an evil smell, was deemed to be the work of the evil one, the signs of whose presence were got rid of only by the most solemn chants and processions.[860] Two days later, London was visited by a fearful wind, which blew down seven churches and houses to the number of six hundred. Above all, the wooden roof of the church of Saint Mary-le-bow was carried off, and its beams were hurled to the ground with such force that they were driven into the hard earth, and had to be sawn off as they stood.[861] Two men who were in the church were crushed. The citizens could have hardly repaired their houses before another blow came upon them. Early in the next year the greater part of London was destroyed by fire.[862] By Eastertide the cathedral churches of two of the dioceses whose seats had been moved in the late reign stood ready for consecration. On the waterless hill which then was Salisbury, within the everlasting ditches of the elder time, looking down on the field of battle which had decreed that Britain should be English[863] and on the field of council which had decreed that England should be one,[864] Norman Osmund, the doctor of the ritual lore of England, had finished the work which Lotharingian Hermann had began. The new mother church of the lands of Berkshire, Wiltshire, and Dorset, the elder minster of Saint Mary, whose stones were borne away to build the soaring steeple of its successor but whose foundations may still be traced on the turf of the forsaken city, now awaited its hallowing. There was then no archbishop in southern England; the rite was done by Osmund himself with the help of his two nearest episcopal neighbours, Walkelin of Winchester and John of Bath.[865] The ceremony had thus a specially West-Saxon character. The three bishops who came together at Salisbury represented the three――once four――churches, among which the old West-Saxon diocese, the diocese of Winchester, had been parted asunder.[866] But at Salisbury too, the elements, if somewhat less hostile than at Winchcombe and London, were by no means friendly. Five days only after the hallowing, the lightning fell, as at Winchcombe; the peaked roof or low spire which sheltered the tower――doubtless of wood covered with lead――was thrown down, and its fall did much damage to the walls of the new minster.[867]

[Sidenote: Remigius of Lincoln.]

[Sidenote: Completion of the minster.]

[Sidenote: Thomas of York claims the jurisdiction of Lindesey.]

[Sidenote: Remigius wins over the King.]

[Sidenote: Gathering for the consecration at Lincoln. May 9, 1092.]

[Sidenote: Death of Remigius. May 6, 1092.]

A day later by a month had been fixed for another ceremony of the same kind, the crowning of the work of a prelate who seems to have wished for a more stately ceremony and a greater gathering than the almost domestic rite which had satisfied Bishop Osmund. Remigius, Almoner of Fécamp, Bishop of Dorchester, Bishop of Lincoln, was drawing near the end of his famous episcopate. He had reformed the constitution of his chapter and diocese; and we hear that he was no less zealous in reforming the manners of his flock.[868] The darling sin of Bristol――most likely the darling sin of every great trading-town――was rife at Lincoln also; and Remigius, like Wulfstan, preached against the wicked custom by which men sold their country-folk, sometimes their kinsfolk, to a life of shame or of bondage in foreign lands.[869] But beyond all this, he had finished his great work on the hill of Lincoln; the elder church of Saint Mary had grown into the great minster of which later rebuildings and enlargements have still left us some small remnants.[870] The eastern limb had as yet no need to overleap the Roman wall of Lindum; but Remigius had reared, and sought to consecrate, no fragment, but a perfect church. His doorways are there in the western front to show that the building has received no enlargement on that side from Remigius’ day to our own. The work was done, and its founder felt his last end coming. He was eager to see the house which he had builded dedicated to its holy use before he himself passed away. But an unlooked-for hindrance came. The only archbishop in the land, Thomas of York, claimed the district in which Remigius had built his church as belonging to his own diocese.[871] This does not seem to have been by virtue of the claim that the whole diocese of Dorchester came within his metropolitan jurisdiction.[872] The argument was that Lindesey, won for the Christian faith by Paullinus, won for the Northumbrian realm by Ecgfrith, was part of the diocesan jurisdiction of the Bishop of York. And, whatever the truth of the case might be, the warmest of all admirers of Remigius goes some way to strengthen the doctrine of Thomas, when he speaks of Lindesey almost as a conquered land won by the prowess of Remigius from the Northumbrian enemy.[873] The time was not one for doubtful disputations. Remigius, saint as he is pictured to us, knew how to use those baser arguments which were convincing above all others in the days of the Red King. His original appointment in the days of the Conqueror had not been altogether beyond suspicion;[874] and it was now whispered that it was by the help of a bribe that he won the zealous adhesion of William Rufus to his cause. Rufus was at least impartial; he was clearly ready to give a fair day’s work for a fair day’s wages, and what he would do for a Jew he would also do for a bishop. All the bishops of England were bidden by royal order to come together at the appointed day for the dedication of the church of Lincoln.[875] A vast crowd of men of all ranks came to Lincoln; the course of the story suggests that the King himself was there; all the bishops came, save one only. Robert of Hereford, the friend of Wulfstan, the Lotharingian skilled in the lore of the stars, knew by his science that the rite would not take place in the lifetime of Remigius. He therefore deemed it needless to travel to Lincoln for nothing.[876] His skill was not deceived; three days before the appointed time Remigius died.[877] The dedication of the church was delayed; it was done in the days of his successor, some years later.[878] Meanwhile Remigius himself won the honours of a saint in local esteem, and wonders of healing were wrought at his tomb for the benefit of not a few of divers tongues and even of divers creeds.[879]

§ 5. _The Conquest and Colonization of Carlisle._

1092.

[Sidenote: William’s conquest of Carlisle.]

[Sidenote: Mistakes as to the position of Cumberland and Westmoreland.]

It was seemingly from this fruitless gathering at Lincoln that William the Red went forth to what was in truth the greatest exploit of his reign. He went on a strange errand, to enlarge the bounds of England by overthrowing the last shadow of independent English rule. Hitherto the northern border of England had shown a tendency to fall back rather than to advance, and a generation later the same tendency showed itself again. But Rufus did what neither his father nor his brother did; he enlarged the actual kingdom of England by the addition of a new shire, a new earldom――in process of time a new bishopric――and he raised as its capital a renewed city whose calling it was to be the foremost bulwark of England in her northern wars. Whatever any other spot on either side of the sea may be bound to do, Carlisle, city and earldom, is bound to pay to the Red King the honours of a founder. And the Saxon branch of the English people must see in him one who planted a strong colony of their blood on the lands of men of other races, kindred and alien. There is a certain amusement in seeing the endless discussions in which men have entangled themselves in order to explain the simple fact that Cumberland and Westmoreland are not entered in Domesday, forgetful that it was just as reasonable to look for them there as it would have been to look there for Caithness or the Côtentin. Cumberland and Westmoreland, by those names, formed no part of the English kingdom when the Conqueror drew up his Survey. Parts of the lands so called, those parts which till recent changes formed part, first of the diocese of York, afterwards of that of Chester, are entered in Domesday in their natural place, as parts of Yorkshire.[880] The other parts are not entered, for the simple reason that they were then no part of the kingdom of England. It was now, in the third or fourth year of William Rufus, that they became so.

[Sidenote: History of Carlisle.]

[Sidenote: 603-685.]

[Sidenote: Scandinavians in Cumberland.]

[Sidenote: Carlisle destroyed by Scandinavians.]

Lugubalia or _Caerluel_ was reckoned among the Roman cities of Britain. It was reckoned too among the cities of the Northumbrian realm, in the great days of that realm, from the victory of Æthelfrith at Dægsanstan to the fall of Ecgfrith at Nectansmere.[881] Then the Northumbrian power fell back from the whole land between Clyde and Solway, and all trace of Lugubalia is lost in the confused history of the land of the Northern Britons. Its site, to say the least, must have formed part of that northern British land whose king and people sought Eadward the Unconquered to father and lord.[882] It must have formed part of that well nigh first of territorial fiefs which Eadmund the Doer-of-great-deeds granted to his Scottish fellow-worker.[883] It must have formed part of the under-kingdom which so long served as an appanage for the heirs of Scottish kingship. But, amidst all these changes, though the land passed under the over-lordship of the Basileus of Britain, yet it never, from Ecgfrith to Rufus, passed under the immediate dominion of any English king. And, as far as the city itself was concerned, for the last two centuries before Rufus the site was all that was left to pass to any one. The history of Scandinavian influence in Cumberland is one of the great puzzles of our early history. The Northman is there to speak for himself; but it is not easy to say how and when he came there.[884] But one result of Scandinavian occupation or Scandinavian inroad was the overthrow of Lugubalia. We gather that it fell, as Anderida fell before Ælle and Cissa, as Aquæ Solis fell before Ceawlin, as the City of the Legions fell before Æthelfrith.[885] But now the son of the Conqueror was to be to Lugubalia what the daughter of Ælfred had been to the City of the Legions. The king who made the land of Carlisle English bade the walls of Carlisle again rise, to fence in a city of men, a colony of the Saxon land.

[Sidenote: Dolfin lord of Carlisle.]

At this moment the land of Carlisle, defined, as we can hardly doubt, by the limits of the ancient diocese, was the only spot of Britain where any man of English race ruled. Its prince, lord, earl――no definite title is given him――was Dolfin the son of Gospatric, a scion of the old Northumbrian princely house and sprung by female descent from the Imperial stock of Wessex.[886] When or how Dolfin had got possession of his lordship we know not; but it can hardly fail to have been a grant from Malcolm, and it must have been held by him in the character of a man of the Scottish king.

[Sidenote: Dolfin driven out, the city restored and the castle built. 1092.]

[Sidenote: The Saxon colony.]

[Sidenote: Supposed connexion with the making of the New Forest.]

We are not told whether either Dolfin or Malcolm had given any new offence to William, or whether there was any other motive for the King’s action at this moment. We can record only the event. Rufus went northward with a great force to Carlisle. He drove out Dolfin; he restored the forsaken city; he built the castle; he left a garrison in it, and went southward again.[887] But this was not all. Not only was the restored city to be a bulwark of England, but the conquered land was to become a colony of Englishmen. Many churlish folk were sent thither with wives and cattle, to dwell in the land and to till it.[888] We thus see, what seems always to be forgotten in discussions of Cumbrian ethnology, that, at least in the immediate district of Carlisle, the last element in its mixed population was distinctly Saxon.[889] Ingenious writers have guessed that the men who were now settled at Carlisle were the very men who had been deprived of their homes and lands at the making of the New Forest. There is no evidence for this guess, and every likelihood is against it. Though I hold that the dispossessed land-owners and occupiers of Hampshire are not an imaginary class,[890] yet I cannot think that they can have formed so large a class as to have gone any way towards colonizing even so small a district as the old diocese of Carlisle. But it is plain that the land needed inhabitants, and that the new inhabitants were sought for in the south of England. In the Carlisle district then the order of settlement among the races of Britain is different from what it is anywhere else. Elsewhere it is Briton, Angle or Saxon, Dane or Northman. Here, as far as one can see, the order must be Briton, Angle, Pict, Northman, Saxon.

[Sidenote: The land and earldom of Carlisle.]

[Sidenote: History and character of the city.]

[Sidenote: Its analogy with Edinburgh and Stirling.]

[Sidenote: The wall and the castle.]

[Sidenote: Work of Rufus and Henry at Carlisle.]

The land now added to England is strictly the land of Carlisle. We do not hear the names of Cumberland or Westmoreland till after the times with which we are dealing. The restored city gave its name to the land, to its earls, when it had earls, to its bishops when it had bishops.[891] And truly of all the cities of England none is more memorable in its own special way than that which now for the first time became a city of united England. The local history of Carlisle stands out beyond that of almost any other English city on the surface of English history. It has not, as local history so often has; to be dug out of special records by special research. Called into fresh being to be the bulwark of England against Scotland, Carlisle remained the bulwark of England against Scotland as long as England needed any bulwark on that side. In every Scottish war, from Stephen to George the Second, Carlisle plays its part. Nor is it perhaps unfit that a city whose special work was to act as a check upon the Scot should itself have in its general look somewhat of a Scottish character. The site of the city and castle instinctively reminds us of the sites of Edinburgh and Stirling. It is a likeness in miniature; but it is a likeness none the less. The hill which is crowned by Carlisle castle is lower than the hills which are crowned by the two famous Scottish fortresses; but in all three cases the original city climbs the hill whose highest point is crowned by the castle. At Carlisle the castle stands at the northern end of the city, and its look-out over the Eden, towards the Scottish march, is emphatically the look-out of a sentinel. It looks out towards the land which so long was hostile; but it looks out also on one spot which suggests the memories of times when Scots, Picts, and Britons may have been there, but when they found no English or Danish adversaries to meet them. The Roman wall avoids Lugubalia itself, though the inner line of foss, which runs some way south of the wall itself, is said to be traced along the line which divides the castle from the city. But among the most prominent points of view from the castle is Stanwix, the site of the nearest Roman station, which seems to bear about it the memory of the stones of the ancient builders. Here, on the brow of the hill, cut off by a ditch like so many headlands of the same kind, on a site which had doubtless been a place of strength for ages before the Roman came, the Red King reared the new bulwark of his realm. Of the works of his age there are still large remains; how much is the work of Rufus himself, how much of his successor, it might be hard to say. The square keep is there, though sadly disfigured by the unhappy use of the castle as a barrack; a large part of the wall, both of city and castle, is still, after many patchings and rebuildings, of Norman date; it is still in many places plainly built out of Roman stones. Here and there one is even tempted to think that some of those stones in the lower part of the wall may have stood there since Carlisle was Lugubalia. Castle and city bear about them the memories of many later times and many stirring scenes in history. But on that spot we are most called on to trace out, in church and city and castle, every scrap that reminds us of the two founders of Carlisle, the two royal sons of the Conqueror. The names which before all others live on that site are those of William who raised up city and fortress from the sleep of ages, and of Henry who completed the work by adding Carlisle to the tale of English episcopal sees.[892]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Fortunes of Henry.]

[Sidenote: Domfront held by Robert of Bellême.]

[Sidenote: The men of Domfront choose Henry to lord. 1093.]

In the same year in which King William of England thus advanced and strengthened the borders of his kingdom by strength of arms, his youngest brother again became a ruler of men by a nobler title. Whatever was the date or the length of Henry’s day of distress, it came to an end about the time of the restoration of Carlisle. No call could be more honourable than that which again set him in a place of power. Among the many victims of Robert of Bellême were the people of Domfront, the old conquest of William the Great. The castle had passed into the hands of the tyrant, and grievous was the oppression which Domfront and the coasts thereof suffered at his hands. The inhabitants, under the lead of a chief man of the place, Harecher or Archard by name, rose in revolt, and chose the banished Count of the Côtentin as their lord and defender against the common enemy of mankind. In company with this local patriot, Henry came to Domfront; he accepted the offered lordship, and entered into the closest relations with those who had chosen him. He bound himself to respect all their local customs, and never to give them over to any other master. Henry kept his word; amidst all changes, he clave to Domfront for the rest of his days as a specially cherished possession.[893]

[Sidenote: Position of Domfront.]

It was indeed, both in its position and in its associations, a noble starting-point for one who had to carve out a dominion for himself by his wits or by his sword. It was a place of happy omen for a son of William the Conqueror, as the place where his father first began to deserve that title, his first possession beyond the elder bounds of his own duchy.[894] Henry was now lord of the rocky peninsula, which, impregnable as it had once been deemed, had yielded to the terror of his father’s name, and where the donjon of his father’s rearing opened its doors to receive his greatest son as a prince and a deliverer. On one side, the Varenne flowed far beneath the rock, parting it from the wilder rocks beyond the stream. On the other side, on the same level as the castle, but with a slight dip between the two, just like the dip which parts town and castle at Nottingham,[895] was the walled town, in after days itself a mighty fortress, girded with double walls and towers in thick array, and entered by a grim and frowning gateway with two massive flanking towers grounded on the solid rock. But, of all spots in the world, Domfront is one whose lord could never bear to be lord of Domfront only. From few spots not fixed on actual Alps or Pyrenees can the eye range over a wider prospect than it ranges over from the castle steep of Henry’s new lordship. To the north the view is by comparison shut in; but on this side lies the way into the true heart of Normandy, to Caen and Bayeux and all that lies between. To the west the eye catches the hills of the Avranchin; to the south the land of Maine stretches far away, the land of his father’s victories at Ambrières and at Mayenne, the land whose sight suggests that the land of Anjou lies yet beyond it. To the south Henry might look on lands which were to be the inheritance of his children; to the north he looked on lands which were one day to be his own; but to the south-west, towards Mortain and Avranches and the Archangel’s Mount, his eye might light on a region some of the most famous spots of which he was presently to win with his own right hand.

[Sidenote: Change in Henry’s affairs.]

[Sidenote: His old friends join him.]

[Sidenote: Earl Hugh.]

[Sidenote: Henry restored to William’s favour.]

[Sidenote: Henry at war with Robert.]

[Sidenote: He gets back his county.]

For the tide in Henry’s affairs turned fast, as soon as the wanderer of the Vexin became the chosen lord of Domfront. His old friends in his former principality began to flock around him once more. Earl Hugh was again on his side, with Richard of Redvers and the rest.[896] And he had now a mightier friend than all. King William of England soon found out that he had not played a wise part for his own interests, or at least for his own plans, in strengthening his elder brother at the expense of the younger. He was now again scheming against Robert; he therefore favoured the growth of the new power on the Cenomannian border. It was with the Red King’s full sanction that Domfront became the head-quarters of a warfare which Henry waged against both Roberts, the Duke and the tyrant of Bellême.[897] He made many expeditions, which were largely rewarded with plunder and captives, and in the course of which some picturesque incidents happened which may call for some notice later in our story.[898] For the present we are concerned rather with the re-establishment of Henry’s power, of which his possession of Domfront was at once the earnest and the beginning. Favoured by William, helped by his former friends, Henry was soon again a powerful prince, lord of the greater part of his old county of Coutances and Avranches. And this dominion was secured on his southern border by the occupation of another fortress almost as important as Domfront itself, and no less closely connected with the memory of Henry’s father.

[Sidenote: Castle of Saint James occupied by Henry.]

[Sidenote: Its position.]

[Sidenote: Slight remains of the castle.]

This was the castle of Saint James, the stronghold which the Conqueror reared to guard the Breton march,[899] which stands close on that dangerous frontier, in the southernmost part of the land of Avranches. That hilly and wooded land puts on at this point a somewhat bolder character. A peninsular hill with steep sides, and with a rushing beck, the Beuvron, between itself and the opposite heights, was a point which the eye of William the Great had marked out as a fitting site for a border-castle. Yet the castle did not occupy the exact spot where one would have looked for it. We should have thought to find it at the very head of the promontory, commanding the valley on all sides. It is so at Ballon; it is not so at Saint Cenery or at Conches. But in a more marked way than either of these, the castle of Saint James stood on one side of the hill, the south side certainly, the side looking towards the dangerous land, but still not occupying the most commanding position of all. In this choice of a site we may perhaps see a mark of the Conqueror’s respect for religion. The ecclesiastical name of the place shows that, in William’s day, the church of Saint James already occupied the lofty site which its successor still keeps. Castle-builders less scrupulous than the great William might perhaps have ventured, like Geoffrey of Mayenne at Saint Cenery,[900] to build their fortress on the holy ground. The Conqueror had been content with the less favourable part of the hill, and at Saint James, as at Conches, church and castle stood side by side. The natural beauty of the site cannot pass away; the look-out over the valley on either side is fairer and more peaceful now than it was in William’s day; but every care has been taken to destroy or to mutilate all that could directly remind us of the days when Saint James was a stronghold of dukes and kings. The elder church has given way to a structure strangely made up of modern buildings and ancient fragments. The tower of the Conqueror still gives its name to the Place of the Fort; but there are no such remains as we see in the shattered keep of Domfront, hardly such remains as may be traced out at Saint Cenery and on the Rock of Mabel. A line of wall to the south, strengthening the scarped hill-side like the oldest walls of Rome, is all that is left to speak to us of the castle which was William’s most famous work on that border of his dominions. Nothing beyond these small scraps is left of the fortress whose building led to that memorable march against the Breton in which William and Harold fought as fellow-soldiers.[901]

[Sidenote: The castle granted to Earl Hugh.]

We are not told what were Henry’s relations with Britanny at the time when this great border fortress passed into his hands. Bretons had been his only friends at the time of the siege of the Mount; but their friendship for the Count of the Côtentin was perhaps felt for him, not so much in that character as in that of the enemy of the Norman Duke and the English King. It may possibly mark a feeling that the Celtic peninsula might again become a dangerous land, when the guardianship of the chief bulwark against the _Bretwealas_ of the mainland was given to one who had full experience of warfare with the _Bretwealas_ of the great island. The Earl of Chester had a hereditary call to be the keeper of the castle of Saint James. The fortress had, on its first building, been entrusted by the Conqueror to the guardianship of Earl Hugh’s father, the Viscount Richard of Avranches. Hugh’s treason when King and Duke came against him was now forgotten; his earlier and later services were remembered; and the restored prince, now once more Count as well as Ætheling, granted the border castle, not as a mere castellanship, but as his own proper fief, to the lord of the distant City of the Legions.[902]

* * * * *

We have thus seen the power of William the Red firmly established on both sides of the sea. He had received the homage of Scotland; he had enlarged the bounds of England; he had won for himself a Norman dominion hemming in the dominions which are left to the nominal sovereign of the Norman land. And it is wonderful with how little fighting all this had been done. It was only before the island rock of Saint Michael that the chivalrous King had any opportunity of winning renown by feats of chivalry. A year follows, crowded with events, but all of them events which happened within the four seas of our own island. Our next chapter will therefore deal mainly with English affairs, and with some aspects of English affairs which yield in importance to none in the whole history of England. One of the chief personages of our story now comes before us in the form of the holy Anselm. Few more striking personal contrasts are to be found in the whole range of history than those parts of our tale where Anselm and William meet face to face. But more memorable still, in a general aspect of English history, is the work which has been silently going on ever since William Rufus was made fast on his throne, the work which stands broadly forth as a finished thing when the controversy between King and Primate begins. Assuredly no “feudal system” was ever introduced into England by any law of William the Great; but it is only a slight stretch of language to say that something which, if any one chooses, may be called a “feudal system” was, during these years, devised in and for England by the craft and subtlety of Randolf Flambard.